The Devouring

by T. M. Wright

  The girl said, "No. No."

  He didn't believe her. As she spoke, the image of a gun settled coldly and suddenly into his head. And just as suddenly, he did not want at all to be there, in the darkness, where his eyes were useless. He said, voice quaking noticeably, "I want to help you; believe me, I want to help you. If you have ..." Again a hot pain seared through his belly; again he winced and the pain was gone. He went on, voice quaking once more, as much now from sudden exhaustion as from fear—as if a kind of psychic adrenaline had pushed through him, leaving him light-headed and weak. "If you have a gun pointed at me, I would really appreciate it if you'd point it at something else."

  She began to weep again.

  And Ryerson realized his mistake. She did not have a gun pointed at him. "My God," he breathed, "you've been shot, haven't you?"

  Then, mercifully, from behind him, on the street, he heard the wail of police sirens winding down and the screech of brakes. He glanced around. "Over here!" he called.

  ~ * ~

  Buffalo's Tenth Precinct captain looked very skeptical. He was a balding, cigar-smoking bear of a man named Jack Lucas who was, Ryerson thought, the living amalgamation of all the hard-boiled, hard-bitten, but deep-down-soft-as-butter police captains that TV cop shows had ever produced. Ryerson thought, too, that the man had indeed developed much of his own tough but lovable persona from those same cop-show police captains. Lucas said, letting cigar smoke sift from his mouth as he spoke, "And you say that you're a psychic, Mr. Biergarten?"

  Ryerson, the sleeping Creosote in his lap, nodded. "Yes, sir. Actually, I'm a psychic investigator." He was surprised, even a little disappointed, though he'd never have admitted it, that the man hadn't heard of him. He added, "As a matter of fact, I've helped a few police departments from time to time—"

  Lucas cut in, "Then they're assholes, Mr. Biergarten, because I don't believe in any of that crap. Everything's got a logical explanation, everything's explainable, everything's real; if you can't touch it or smell it or taste it or fuck it, then by God it doesn't exist!"

  Ryerson shrugged, "Yes, I agree, but—"

  "How well do you know this girl, this"—he leaned forward, checked the police report on his desk—"this Laurie Drake, Mr. Biergarten?"

  Sensing trouble, Ryerson answered, "I don't know her, Captain Lucas. That's the first time I've heard her name, in fact."

  Lucas leaned back in his oak desk chair and nodded slowly. "Uh-huh," he sneered, and my granny eats horseshit for breakfast."

  Ryerson found himself getting angry. He didn't want to get angry, because when he got angry his psychic ability either shut down altogether or it went haywire. Here, he guessed—in the Homicide Division of the Buffalo Police Department—it would go haywire. The potential flood of input was simply too great, the psychic atmosphere too much in turmoil; he could see himself fighting very hard to, look like something more than a madman. It had happened before, at theaters and shopping malls, and, for some strange and obscure reason, at post offices. He usually won the fight to present an appearance of normalcy, though it left him exhausted for hours. He said tightly, "If there's some charge you want to place against me—"

  Again, Captain Lucas interrupted him. "What are we going to charge you with, Mr. Biergarten? Do you have anything in mind? You've been very helpful to us. She was a fugitive, you know. This"—again he checked the police report—"this Laurie Drake. She was a fugitive and you helped us catch her. My God, we should be giving you a commendation, shouldn't we? We should be giving you the key to the fucking city, shouldn't we? So tell me, why do you want us to charge you with something? And why in God's name am I so damned inclined to do it?" He stopped, clearly for effect.

  But Ryerson jumped into the gap. "You damned cretin!" he snarled. "I have no more to do with that poor girl than your dung-eating granny does. Now I will repeat, unless you have a specific charge to place against me, I'll accept your thanks and go back to my motel room."

  A long, slow, angry grin spread over Lucas's mouth. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his cluttered desk, and, still grinning, popped his cigar into his mouth and rolled it from one side to the other. "Why did you come to Buffalo, Mr. Biergarten?"

  Ryerson answered, "That's none of your business."

  "I can make it my business."

  Ryerson pushed himself abruptly to his feet. "Then do it!" he hissed, and turned to go. A detective appeared at the open door. "Captain Lucas?" he said.

  "Yeah," Lucas growled, "what is it, Spurling?"

  Spurling said, "They dug the bullet out of that girl's stomach. It's from someone's service revolver, sir."

  A name came to Ryerson. It came to him quickly, and there was pain attached to it. And, had he been thinking—had he been able to think beneath the psychic storm that was raging inside his head—he'd have stayed quiet. But, like a burp, the name "Newman" escaped him, and, sighing, he wished to heaven that he could snatch it back; he even thought for one glorious moment that neither Spurling nor Lucas had heard him.

  But Spurling was looking wide-eyed at him in astonishment.

  And behind him Lucas jumped to his feet and barked, "Get me Gail Newman's address and phone number. Then book this asshole!"

  ~ * ~

  Leonard McGuire, Uniformed Officer, Buffalo Police Department

  All his life, Leonard McGuire wanted only to be of service, wanted only to do what he was told to do because that made life easier for him. At home, his father—who had assured him time and again that he, Leonard, "didn't have the brains that God gave geese"—made all of Leonard's decisions for him, because, he assured Leonard, "You certainly can't make them yourself." In school, Leonard, who was not at all stupid, did precisely what he was told by his teachers and made it through twelve grades with hassles to no one. When he joined' the Marines, he was sure that most decisions would be made for him, decisions like when to get up, when and how to eat, when and how to take showers, when, even, to go and find a woman to spend time with. And for a while in boot camp it was true; all his decisions were made for him and he was as contented as a sleeping cat in a pocket of sunlight. But then boot camp ended, he was shipped off to be an electrician's mate aboard an aircraft carrier, and for the first time in his life he was required to make his own decisions. And because he never had, he couldn't. He buckled, snapped, and was discharged. Several years later he was hired by the Buffalo Police Department (thanks to the fact that his father was then a city councilman). His solemn and secret vow was this; never make waves, never seek promotion, do what you are told, do it immediately, enforce the law, be invisible. He thought he had the tools to do this. He thought his career with the Buffalo Police Department was going to be long and peaceful. But soon he found that decisions were required of him every day—Do I let this speeder go with only a warning? Do I draw my gun on this guy whose hand is so close to a knife? Do I pick up that streetwalker or wait for someone from Vice to do it? Do I look the other way when I see someone take two or three newspapers from the automatic vendor on the corner? These questions were tough questions at first. After all, hadn't he been assured over and over again that he didn't have the ability to make his own decisions? Hadn't someone always made decisions for him?

  But much to his surprise, he found that he could make decisions, that his mental apparatus was in pretty good working order, in fact. When, for instance, the streetwalker sauntered up to someone's car and leaned over, he knew that all he had to do was cruise by, maybe say, "Take it somewhere else, honey," because it was a victimless crime, after all, and it was Vice's job to regulate it. And so he began to make decisions. Most of them were right; some of them weren't. And after a while the ones that weren't began to turn the tide, began to convince him yet again that, as his father had said, he didn't have the brains that God gave geese. Then each of his decisions became momentous and nerve-jarring. And he longed to have all those decisions made for him, so when he was wrong, someone else would get the blame.

  ~ * ~


  In "The District"

  He couldn't believe it, but it was true. At last he had forgotten his name. He smiled at that. It was funny forgetting his name. It was something to laugh about. But he didn't laugh; he hadn't laughed, he guessed, in ten years. He only smiled, took another slug of MD 20/20, and put the bottle on the pavement between his legs. He sensed that one of the thousands of rats that roamed this area was nosing about nearby, so he waved weakly at it, mumbled, "Go way, get outta here!" then picked up the bottle again. He turned his head in the direction of the rat, which was scurrying off into the darkness. "You'll have your chance quick enough!"

  John, he thought. Sure, that was his name. Or George. Or Bill. It was something common, anyway.

  To his right, he saw the headlights of a car approaching. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the glare, muttered a curse. Moments later the car pulled up on the wrong side of the road, so the driver's side was directly in front of him. The window went down. He heard: "Whatcha doin' there, buddy?"

  He answered, "I'm dyin' here. What's it to ya?"

  The driver chuckled. "That sounds like a hell of a way to spend an evening. Why don't you hop in, and I'll drive you down to the Salvation Army for the night."

  "No thanks. I don't like it there. They make you pray."

  "Nothing wrong with prayer, my friend."

  "Didn't say there was."

  Another chuckle, then the driver's voice grew tighter, more demanding. "Why don't you get in the car anyway?"

  "An' why don'tchoo get fucked!"

  The driver's door flew open. Moments later, John, or George, or Bill, found himself being thrown into the car's backseat and heading south down Peacock Street. He mumbled a few incoherent curses, vomited, then passed out.

  When he awoke thirty minutes later, he had a scant three minutes to live.

  They were the most pleasurable three minutes of his life.

  Chapter Ten

  The trick that Joan Mott Evans used to rouse herself from sleep when the dream began was a simple one. When she saw that she was approaching the spot where Lila was buried—and she always approached it from the east, through a field of horsetail and clover, at night, under a full moon—she bit her lip very hard, hard enough, in fact, that when she awoke, she found that she was bleeding. But that was okay—the blood was okay. Because the dream was hell.

  It's what she did the night that Ryerson Biergarten was doing his clumsy dance for Captain Jack Lucas. She came up over the rise in the field of horsetail and clover—it had the creamy sheen of a full moon on it. She saw the wire fence to her left, used to keep the horses that once roamed these fields from wandering into the roadway. She saw, at the bottom of the slope, the place where Lila Curtis was buried. And she knew that the nightmare was about to begin again.

  So she bit her lip. And started the blood. And awoke screaming, "Lila, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Then, because it was a scene that had been repeated countless times in the past four months, the panic, the fear, and the enormous sense of pleading and apology wore away almost at once, and she was left to get out of bed and take a long, hot shower to wash the sweat off.

  ~ * ~

  The first words Gail Newman said when her eyes fluttered open and she saw Guy Mallory's face above her were, "How is she? How's Laurie?"

  Mallory, who wanted very much to be tough about it, who wanted to growl at her, "She's locked up, thank -God," saw that Gail was genuinely concerned, so he answered simply, "She's going to be okay. They got the bullet out and she's going to be okay."

  Gail's eyes closed. "Thank God," she whispered. She could feel the starched sheets beneath her, could smell the faint sting of antiseptic, could hear someone being paged once, then again, over the hospital intercom. She whispered, "I had to do it, Guy. I had no choice. She came after me." She opened her eyes again. "I really had to do it!" she insisted, her voice high and hard and tense because she'd mistaken the look of concern on Guy's face for one of skepticism.

  He nodded once. "Yes, I know."

  Gail became aware of the bandage around her neck, and of the IV letting blood into her arm. She asked confusedly, "What'd she do to me, Guy?"

  Guy answered, a small nervous smile flitting across his mouth, "She bit you. As close as we can tell, she bit you, Gail." He hesitated, as if uncertain how to continue.

  "And?" Gail coaxed.

  He shrugged. "I don't know, sweet cheeks. They tell me you lost a lot of blood." He inhaled deeply, was clearly finding it hard to continue.

  Gail coaxed again, "C'mon, Guy, be straight with me, okay?"

  She saw another nervous smile appear on his mouth, saw him glance around. "Oh, hi," he said.

  Another male face appeared next to his—the face of a man in his sturdy sixties who had a full head of bright white hair, piercing hazel eyes, and an air of quiet but intense authority about him. "Hello, Miss Newman," he said. "I'm Dr. Chandler; I'd like to ask you a question or two if you feel up to it."

  "What the hell is going on here?!" Gail said aloud, and felt a sudden wave of nausea and dizziness wash over her.

  Guy began, "She bit you, Gail, like I said—"

  And Dr. Chandler broke in. "Sergeant Mallory, if you could please leave me alone with Miss Newman for a few minutes."

  Guy shrugged, said, "Sure okay, I'll be right out here," and left the room.

  Chandler began, summoning up a kind of stiff and uneasy bedside manner, "So tell me how you're feeling, Miss Newman; you gave us all a bit of a scare."

  Gail said, "What did she do to me, Doctor?"

  Dr. Chandler appeared to be considering her question for a moment. Then he nodded. "As the sergeant said, Miss Newman, you were bitten—"

  "For Christ's sake, how many times do I have to be told that?" She stopped, again felt nauseous, closed her eyes against it.

  "Dizzy?" Chandler asked.

  She nodded.

  "You lost a good bit of blood, I'm afraid," he added.

  Gail whispered tightly, "She bit me, I know that, Doctor. But for God's sake, what else did she do?"

  "Yes," he said, clearly to gain time. After a moment he went on. "Actually, we think she ... withdrew some of your blood—"

  "Oh my God!"

  "A small amount—"

  "She sucked my blood?!" Gail cut in. "My God, what does she think she is, some kind of vampire?" Again, dizziness pushed through her. She closed her eyes.

  And Chandler said, "Yes. I'm afraid that's precisely what she thinks."

  ~ * ~

  "Wait a minute," Irene in the Records Division said to her coworker, Glen Coffman, "I remember someone named Curtis."

  Glen growled at her, his fingers poised over his keyboard, gaze fixed on his computer monitor. "In a moment, Irene; I've got Darth Vader cornered here!"

  She looked at him, astonished. "Glen, this is not a video arcade!"

  "We all need a diversion, Irene." He punched three keys in rapid succession, then threw himself back angrily in his gray metal secretarial chair. "Dammit, goddammit!" he hissed. "I almost had him!"

  "Can you forget about Darth Vader for a moment, Glen? I'm trying to talk to you about this file I've been trying to open for the last five days."

  He sighed, got up, went over, studied her screen. It read, as before:

  FILE DIRECTORY

  CURTIS L.BAK

  JME.BAK

  HAWKINS.LET

  LET.BAK

  FORMAT.CMD

  STAT.CMD

  OPER.CMD

  JME.OPE

  USER NUMBER?

  He shrugged. "I see you still haven't opened it." A pause. "You want my advice, Irene? Give it up. If there are no hard copies available anywhere, it's clearly something of no interest to the Buffalo Police Department."

  She sighed. "We won't know that until we get a look at it, will we, Glen?"

  Another shrug. "Okay, so don't take my advice."

  "Gladly. I only wanted you to know that I think I remember someone named Curtis."
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  "So do I," Glen offered. "She was my kindergarten teacher. Miss Curtis. Great big fat woman; she had a mustache and smelled like sour cream."

  Irene sighed again. "Can you be serious for just half a minute, Glen?"

  "Sure." He checked his watch. "Starting now."

  “Thanks."

  "So?" he coaxed.

  "So, I was only saying that I remember someone named Curtis. I remember it was a case from outside Buffalo, outside New York, in fact, if I'm not mistaken." She paused.

  "And?"

  "And that's about it. It was a murder case, I think. A murder/suicide—"

  Glen was nodding.

  "Why are you nodding?" Irene asked.

  "I remember it, too. Her name was Lilian or Lily—something. But her last name was Curtis, and you're right, it was a murder/ suicide; I remember reading about it in the Evening News, maybe four, five months ago. It was a story out of Pennsylvania, I think."

  Irene stood. "I'll be back in a while."

  "Where you going?"

  "To the Evening News. I'm going to check their morgue."

  Glen looked at his watch again. "Irene, it's ten-thirty; their morgue's not open now."

  She started for the door. "It is for people whose boyfriends are city editors."

  "Oh," he nodded. "Yes, I see."

  ~ * ~

  Detective Spurling and Captain Lucas booked Ryerson as a material witness in a case of attempted murder. It landed him in the Buffalo jail for the night, sans Creosote, who was given over to a police matron. "I hate these snotty little dogs," she explained, but agreed to keep him until morning when, Ryerson presumed, he'd be able to post bail.

  He was in something of a blue funk, because while he hated jails, as everyone did, added to the usual reasons (they were places where people were locked up; they smelled bad; the people in them were almost universally unpleasant) was the fact that the psychic input here was not only dizzying and overwhelming, as it was in shopping malls and post offices, it was depressing as hell, too. It was sepia-toned, dead-ended, and desperate in a futile and resigned way. In his head it looked the way it smelled—of urine, sweat, and stale cigarette smoke.