by Ray Garton
“It’ll die soon.”
Jason used his right hand to wipe the blood from his eyes. The slashes on his face burned, and his left arm was paralyzed by pain—numb from the elbow down, but above that, nothing but agonizing pain. His bloody face was a mask of agony—eyes squinting, lips peeled back over his teeth, making a low groaning sound.
But he had heard the voice. He turned.
A tall man in a long black coat and old-fashioned hat, face shrouded in shadow, stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, a cane in his left hand, a shotgun in his right with the barrel pointed at the ground. His words were clipped, very precise. His voice was rough, like gravel being ground up. He turned to a dark car parked in the wrong direction behind him at the curb, its driver’s side door hanging open. The man bent forward and put the shotgun in the car, then closed the door.
As the man turned back to Jason, his face was caught in the dull glow of the porch light. His right eye looked a bit larger than the left and seemed frozen in place, and his face was horribly scarred and puckered. Shadow and light played over the long scars, making them look deeper than they really were, no doubt. He walked onto the lawn and approached Jason.
“Are you badly hurt?” the man said.
Jason opened his mouth to reply, then fainted.
* * * *
As he pulled up in front of Doris’s house, Hurley saw the figure standing in the yard across the street waving at him. The man waved one arm back and forth, high over his head.
Hurley flicked on his searchlight, manipulated the toggle until the light shone directly on that yard, on the tall man in the black coat and hat—
“Oh, boy,” Hurley said.
—and on what appeared to be two bodies on the lawn. He realized that was Emily Crane’s address.
He’d been on his way home when Cherine in dispatch relayed Doris’s call. He’d agreed to take it, figuring it was another nuisance call. He’d been fully prepared to read Doris the riot act this time.
Maybe I should arrest her, he’d thought. Scare her a little. Maybe then she’d think twice before calling.
His eyes on those two dark heaps on the lawn, Hurley grabbed the mike and said, “Trooper one in need of a bus and backup.” He gave his location. “I’ve got what appear to be two bodies, a broken window, a strange man standing in the yard waving me over—something’s cooking. Let’s hurry up with that backup, people, I don’t know what, but something’s up over here.”
He got out of the SUV, flashlight in hand, shut the door, and hurried across the street. He reached down and zipped up his green jacket—it was damned cold. His breath appeared before him then was swept away by a bone-chilling breeze as he rushed forward.
“Sheriff Ferrell Hurley,” he said to the tall man.
“This young man is need of medical attention,” the man said, leaning on the black cane with a silver handle.
Hurley eyed the man cautiously. “What happened here?” he said. He looked down at the young man on the lawn, his face bloody. He seemed to be passing in and out of consciousness. Hurley crouched down beside him and said, “I’m Sheriff Hurley. An ambulance is on the way.”
“Thuh-thanks,” the boy said, his voice hoarse.
“It should be here any minute, so don’t worry, you’re going to be fine,” Hurley said, standing again. He hoped he was right, for the boy’s sake.
He walked over to the other body. It was moving, writhing painfully.
“He was attacked,” the man said as he came to Hurley’s side. “The young man, I mean. He was attacked by that,” he said as he pointed down at the thing before them with his cane.
As Hurley stood over the body, his mouth slowly opened. He stared dumbly down at the thing on the lawn. His eyes narrowed a little as he tried to figure out what he was seeing.
It did not help.
Hurley hunkered down beside the thing on the ground because it was making sounds. He listened, wondering if it was trying to speak, but it only made sickening gurgling sounds. That was not surprising considering the fact that most of its head was gone.
He could make out a woman’s body, overweight, pale—about Emily’s size, build, and color—but covered with hideous sores that seemed to grow larger before his eyes, all of them red and swollen and running. Blisters rose and popped as he watched, as if the body were bubbling like a witch’s cauldron.
Emily? he thought. What remained of the face left no doubt in his mind: It was his receptionist.
The rest of the body was covered with patches of brown hair that came and went. One hand had five fingers with normal-looking nails and a wedding ring, while the other was buried in fur, and sported long, curved fingers that came to deadly points—claws with bits of red tissue clinging to them.
“It will die soon,” the man said. “It’s harmless now.”
Hurley stood and said, “What the hell is it?”
“The answer to that question is quite lengthy, and one that you probably will not like.” Although his voice was craggy, he spoke with a crisp East Coast accent, upper crust. Even with that broken voice, he spoke as if he had marbles in his mouth. There was no contempt or haughtiness in his manner of speaking, but Hurley recognized that the possibility for it was there—it was just that kind of accent.
“Well, I—wait.” Hurley turned to fully face the man.
He wore an eye patch and his face was badly scarred.
“Who are you?” Hurley said.
The man inclined his head cordially and said, “Daniel Fargo is the name. And you, Sheriff—Harley, did you say?”
“Hurley, Ferrell Hurley.”
“You, Sheriff Hurley, are precisely the man I need to talk to. But for now, I think we should concentrate on getting this young man some help. He’s bleeding.”
“An ambulance is on the way. Why are you here, Mr. Fargo?” Hurley said.
“I got here only a few minutes before you. I have a police scanner in my car and I heard the call. I happened to be very close by, so I thought I would check to see if this was ... well, if it happened to be what I was looking for. And it was. That’s why I’m still here. Do you know the people who live at this house, Sheriff?”
“I do. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to check on them now.”
Hurley walked carefully but unsuccessfully around the pieces of glass—it crunched beneath his feet. He stepped through the picture window—most of the pane was gone, with only a few jagged shards jutting from the edges—and into the living room.
“Hello? Hugh?” No answer. Hurley had a heavy, ominous feeling about what he was likely to find in the house.
“Hugh? It’s Ferrell, Hugh. You around?” His voice fell into empty rooms.
He went into the kitchen and found lumps of raw hamburger in the sink. On his way back out of the kitchen, he noticed three large drops of blood on the tile, just before the threshold. He bent down to get a closer look, to make sure it was blood. Just beyond the threshold, two shiny black boots appeared, with a cane next to the left one.
Hurley snapped upright and said, “Mr. Fargo, if you don’t mind, this is a crime scene, and you are—”
“Has there been any raw meat left out in the kitchen?”
Hurley cocked his jaw to the right as he examined Fargo’s face in the better light.
How could he know that?
Four long pale-pink scars dragged across his face from the left temple down across his nose, where it had dug deep and broken the nose, and down across the right cheek to the jaw. Others criss-crossed them, but the first four were the deepest. His upper lip had been restored, but not very well—it appeared crooked on his face. Fargo had grown a thick but well-trimmed mustache the color of iron just above it, improving the lip’s appearance somewhat. His right eye was larger than the left and did not move naturally in its socket. The larger right eye was a light blue, while the right was a striking violet. Bushy iron-grey brows arched sharply over his eyes.
Hurley put a hand on his hip. “No
w what makes you ask that, Mr. Fargo?”
“Experience. A steak, maybe? Left out on the counter? Half-eaten?”
“Look, I don’t know who you are, but you’re in the middle of my crime scene. Have you already been in this house?”
“I have not.”
“What are you, then, a psychic? You’re gonna tell me what happened here? So you’ll get on TV and—”
“I am most certainly not a psychic, Sheriff Hurley. Once upon a time, I was an English professor. At Yale. But that was a lifetime ago. Now, I spend my time and money finding and solving the very problem you find yourself facing right now, Sheriff Hurley. You’ve already had a couple of nasty killings. Eviscerated, half-eaten. What has the lab come up with, Sheriff? Are they as baffled as you are? Or have they come up with something solid but confusing? Like ... a wolf?” He spoke the last two words quietly.
“Who the hell are you?” Hurley whispered.
“I’m being honest with you, Sheriff. My name is Daniel Allen Fargo. Would you like to see my driver’s license?”
“As a matter of fact, I would.”
“Fine. Just don’t be alarmed—I’m only reaching for my wallet.” Fargo slipped his right hand under his coat, came out with a long, slender, expensive-looking wine-colored leather wallet. He hooked his cane on his right elbow so he could slip his license out of the wallet and hand it to Hurley.
It was a Connecticut license, current, with an unmistakable photograph of Fargo.
“You said you have a police scanner in your car?” Hurley said, handing the license back. “Why?”
“For this very reason. I have tracked someone here to your town, someone I’ve been following for a long time now.”
“Look, I don’t have time for this, okay? But I need to know—how did you know about the raw meat?”
“The way I have it figured is this: The woman who is now dying on the front lawn was having urges and hungers she did not understand. Raw meat came closer than anything else to satisfying that hunger—but still, not quite. Is there a pet in the house?”
“A pet?”
“A dog, a cat?”
“Oh, I don’t know if—wait, she’s got a picture of a cat on her desk at work. Yeah, she has a cat.”
“You will find its remains somewhere in the house.”
“She has a family—a husband, three kids.”
Fargo said nothing for a long moment, just stared down at the floor. Finally he lifted his head and said, “Then I do not envy you your job tonight, Sheriff Hurley.”
Holy shit, Hurley thought. Why can’t anything just be easy?
“Okay, look, Mr. Fargo, I want you to go outside to—you drove here, right?”
“Of course.”
“Go get in your vehicle and stay there till I come out. Understand? Do not leave. I want to talk to you, but I can’t right now, I’ve got other things to do.”
“Sheriff?” Deputy Kopechne called.
“Yeah, I’ll be right there,” Hurley replied. To Fargo, he said, “Stay there until I come back out, and if the media shows up, don’t you dare talk to them, understand? If you do, so help me God, I’ll throw you in jail. Now, please, get out of here.” He ushered Fargo back up the hall to the front of the house.
Kopechne stood in the center of the living room. There were other deputies out on the lawn.
“Now, what are you going to do, Mr. Fargo?” Hurley said as he took Fargo to the door.
“Stay in my car until you come back out, and I’m not to speak to the media.”
“Very good. Don’t forget it. Now,” he said, opening the door, “out you go.”
Hurley followed Fargo out the door and onto the lawn. As Fargo went on toward the street, Hurley went to Deputy Eddings’s side and said quietly, “See that man with the hat?”
“Yes.”
“Follow him to his car and tell him I told you to take his car keys. Then I want you to stand by that car and wait for me to come out and relieve you. He’s not to talk to anyone. Understood?”
“No problem,” Eddings said, and he was off.
Hurley went to the side of the strange Emily-creature on the lawn. Now it only twitched occasionally. The sores on its body had worsened. He reached down and lifted the left hand, looked at the wedding ring—he remembered Emily saying that Hugh had spent a fortune on the rock it sported, more than he could afford at the time.
Hurley went back into the house, closed the door, and turned to Kopechne. “My God, a few minutes ago, I was on my way home. To a nice dinner with my wife. Now I’m dealing with that thing on the lawn—did you see that?”
“What the hell is that?” Kopechne said, his eyes suddenly wide. He tossed Hurley a pair of latex gloves, and Hurley tucked the flashlight under his arm and put them on. Kopechne did the same.
“Well, it was Emily Crane.”
“You kidding?” Kopechne said.
“Apparently, that guy out there knows what it is. He seems to know more about all of this than I do. But it looked to me like Emily. What’s left of her, anyway. Come on, let’s go upstairs. I’m dreading it, but we have to.”
Hurley led the way. Every step up took him closer to the hallway up there and a possible bloodbath. He saw it in his head on the way up—blood sprayed on the walls, four bodies on the floor—one big, three small—like something out of a Tarrantino movie. He did that often—the reality, no matter how awful, could not compete with his imagination, so no matter what awaited him, it wasn’t as bad as what he saw in his head on the way there. But that could still be pretty fucking bad.
The hallway was empty. No blood on the walls, no bodies on the floor.
The floor creaked and popped beneath them as they made their way slowly along.
“Sheriff,” Kopechne said.
Hurley stopped and turned around. Kopechne pointed at a closed door. There was a smear of blood on the creamy paint job.
He took in a deep breath through his nose, lips pressed together hard. He unsnapped his holster, drew his gun. Kopechne did the same.
They flanked the door, and Hurley reached out, turned the doorknob, and shoved the door open.
Silence. No movement, no sign of life at all.
But it wasn’t just silence. It was a particular kind of silence that Hurley had heard before in his work—a silence heavier, thicker than normal, the kind of silence that wound around your neck and squeezed your throat closed. This silence was the sound of death.
Hurley stepped into the doorway, the grip of the gun resting in the palm of his left hand.
The bathroom was empty. But Hurley’s eyes were immediately drawn to something in all that pale-blue and white—a splash of blood on the side of the outer side of the bathtub at the other end of the room. The shower curtain had been drawn the length of the tub.
Hurley wondered what awaited him behind that curtain.
There was more blood on the floor at the base of the tub, some on the edge, a smear on the curtain.
Hurley did not want to look in that tub. But it was his job.
He led the way into the bathroom, past the towels on their racks, the cupboards, no doubt filled with more towels and washcloths. There were a couple of toys in one of the sinks and a big blue fish on the toilet lid.
Hurley slowly pulled the shower curtain back. It made a metallic hissing sound as it slid open.
He saw part of it to the left, under the faucet and shower. There were two more pieces at the other end of the tub. It had been a grey short-hair tabby. Now it was in three pieces.
Is there a pet in the house?
Dammit, Hurley thought. Who the hell is that guy and how the hell does he know what he knows?
There wasn’t much left of the cat’s entrails. They were ... gone.
Raw meat came closer than anything else to satisfying that hunger—but still, not quite, Fargo had said.
“Fuck,” Hurley said as he turned away from the bathtub, stepped around Kopechne, and left the bathroom quickly. He took a ha
rd right just outside the door and continued down the hall, opening doors as he went along.
The children’s bedrooms were empty—the girls’ room with its many stuffed elephants and its collection of dolls, and the boy’s room with its dinosaurs and sports posters.
The master bedroom, he decided, was at the end, and sure enough, there it was, and what he found came very close to what he’d seen in his head.
* * * *
The telephone trilled throughout the house.
Hurley looked at the phone on the nightstand, let it ring a couple times, then went over and picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Who’s this?” a woman said.
“This is Sheriff Farrell Hurley. Are you a relative or friend of the Cranes?”
“Oh, my God. What’s happened?”
“Who is this?”
The woman’s voice began to fracture with panic. “I-I’m Emily’s friend, Terri. I have her children over here. What’s happened?”
“Uh ... tell you what, Miss—?”
“March, Terri March. And it’s missus.”
“Mrs. March, I’m going to come over to your house as soon as possible, and we’ll talk. Give me your address.” He quickly pulled out his pad and pen and wrote down the address. “I’ll be there as soon as I can get away from here.”
“You’re not going to tell me what’s happened?”
“I’d rather discuss it in person.”
