by K. W. Jeter
Mike leaned over him, savoring the glow seeping from his skin.
"It's good, isn't it, Doot?"
He clenched his jaw, a shiver spreading up from his groin into the muscles of his neck.
"Yeah…" His whisper slid from between his teeth.
Mike's smile widened, as he watched the transformation.
"We can do it… anything we want…" The voice curled around his ear, sliding into his brain. "Just the two of us, Doot… the two of us… and the water…"
He drew back, pointing to something a few feet away in the room.
"Things like that…" Mike's finger trembled. "They don't mean anything to us now. They're nothing… They don't matter, Doot… we do."
Doot pushed himself up from the floor. He stepped toward the examining table.
There was something beautiful on it.
A thing of blood, and tissue that wept blood. The concealing skin had been peeled away-the thing lay on it as if it were a red sheet that draped toward the floor-and the soft, joyful intricacies had been exposed. The great muscles of the thighs, the nest of coiled intestines, the fist of the heart, clenching and releasing…
The face, its real face, the red secret known at last…
Golden hair, streaked and stiffened with blood, tumbled from the top edge of the table.
Doot gazed at it, his head filling with delight and a leaping certainty, then beyond, as though the limits of his skull were no more, a new world turning in his grasp.
One of its wet hands strained against the leather strap, reaching for him. It grasped hold of his forearm, the red fingers tightening.
He looked down at the hand, the world shrinking to it and nothing else. Somewhere beyond, the flayed lips moved.
It said his name.
The world exploded, his gut heaving in a sudden contraction of nausea and anger. He jerked his arm away from its grasp.
"No!"
The arm continued in a slashing backhand arc, the blow landing across Mike's chest and sending him sprawling backwards.
TWENTY-SEVEN
It let go of her. Anne felt the sudden release of her legs and heard the splash as the thing flailed backwards in the water.
She clung to the iron wheel and looked behind her at the pool. The water's level had gone down nearly a foot from the tiled rim; the layer of burned timbers and other debris shifted, scraping against the sides.
The thing of bone and torn flesh had paddled back, into the center of the pool's open space. Its jawless skull turned from side to side, the empty sockets staring at what was happening. A hissing noise came from the open hole of its throat, and the skeletal hands struck the black surface in fury.
Now she could pull herself all the way out of the pool. She scrambled upright, using the wheel and the metal housing behind it to steady herself. Her shirt clung to her, the night air chilling her skin. The water dripped from her clothes, spreading in a puddle around her feet.
The sound of gurgling and splashing came louder to her. The drain-she turned and ran her hands over the curve of the iron wheel. She grabbed it, pushing against the spokes until it had gone all the way around and come to a solid stop. The noise of water gushing onto the ground, somewhere nearby, grew to a torrent. In the pool, the debris took a sudden lurch downward. The thing's hiss rose to a shrill wail.
***
Mike fell back against the examining room counter. His arm swept across the ancient surgical instruments, sending them clattering to the floor. He caught himself against the counter's edge with both hands. His face contorted with rage when he raised his head and looked at Doot.
He reached down to the floor and came up with a rust-bladed scalpel in his grip. The point of it came straight at Doot's throat as Mike lunged across the room.
Doot caught Mike's arm in both his hands. For a moment, they were locked against each other, Mike's face straining close to his. Mike's eyes turned wet and red, then tears of blood trickled from the corners.
They fell against the examining table, toppling it over. The thing strapped to it screamed in pain, fingers clawing toward her own ravaged flesh.
The scalpel flew out of Mike's grip, skittering across the floor. He forced both hands around Doot's neck, bearing him down.
Doot fought for breath, pushing up against Mike's chest. Suddenly, the face above him, teeth clamped together in its frenzy, blurred with red. He felt his own tears, thick and warm, coursing over his cheeks. He blinked, clearing his sight for a second, and saw in the dark mirrors at the centers of Mike's eyes his own face, the eyes leaking blood.
A wave of anger swept out from his heart, and his arms straightened, tossing Mike back, breaking the hold on his throat. His hands caught on Mike's face, thumbs pressing against the ridges of the cheekbones.
The skin tore.
He felt his hands slide into wet, trembling flesh, as Mike's skin peeled back from his mouth and red eyes, wadding into folds at his ears. Mike tilted his head back, the raw face pulling the tendons of the neck through their splitting cover.
Doot grabbed the other's arms and pushed. Mike's shoulders arched backward, breaking open his chest. The wet skin tore down the center, the muscles beneath breaking to reveal the ribs, the lungs and heart at the core.
Mike screamed, fury mixed with agony.
The flesh of the arms parted in Doot's grip, skin shredding into tatters over the muscle and sinew.
Mike curled into a ball, red hands clutching at his own flesh, as though trying to hold it in, to stop the process of disintegration.
Doot wiped his face with his arm as he staggered to his feet. He looked down at the thing writhing in front of him.
It couldn't stand; the ragged split that had burst open its chest now ran all the way down its abdomen, spilling out the loops of intestine. Inside the blood-soaked jeans, the pelvic bones cracked, jerking the legs apart, a puppet with cut strings. Blood trickled across the ankles as it scrabbled at the floor.
The exposed lungs labored, as the hands pushed the chest, organs sagging against the ribs, up from the puddle beneath it. The red eyes, insane in their wounded mask, fastened their gaze on Doot. The raw facial muscles constricted as it reached a hand toward him. An obscene mewling came from the red mouth, the sound mixing with the pain-filled whimpering of the thing strapped to the overturned examining table.
Doot backed toward the door. His hands found it, and he turned and staggered into the hallway. Mike, the thing his torn flesh had become, crawled after him, the protruding bones of one hand scraping across Doot's leg.
He kicked the groping fingers away and ran for the stairs.
On the landing, stopping to catch his breath-he heard the howling then, another animal sound mingling with the ones coming from above. Through the broken-out window, he saw the red, watching eyes, like points of fire. The dark wolf shapes ran at the crest of the hills, or stood still and raised their throats to the night sky, the wild notes of their voices overlapping into one cry of exultation.
He stumbled from the last step of the grand staircase, into the lobby. He looked up at the carved beams of the ceiling. He could hear, from above, Lindy's whimpering, the sound leaking out of her like the blood oozing from her flesh. And closer, the mewling-hate and desire beyond words-of the other thing, crawling toward the head of the stairs.
Doot stepped back, hands outstretched, the sounds of pain and madness swirling about him. He turned and ran toward the door.
The motorbike-it stood only a few yards away from the verandah steps. He picked the small machine up in his arms and staggered back with it toward the building.
Inside, he screwed open the gas cap and tossed it away. He tilted the bike upside down, holding it by the wheels to keep it in position. The gasoline gurgled, pouring out of the tank; it spread in a widening pool around his feet.
The last drops spilled out, the fumes rising to his nostrils. He let the bike drop onto its side.
"Doot…"
A voice, no longer human, sc
reamed his name. He looked up and saw Mike, the thing of tattered flesh and red bone, at the staircase landing. The wet, red eyes glimmered with an avid frenzy. It flopped its broken-jointed hips over the next steps down, pushing itself forward with its crippled legs. A hand lifted, straining toward Doot, the skin of the palm dangling in shreds. It held something, a piece of bright metal. The scalpel.
There were matches in the brown paper sack, ones he'd brought with all the other stuff. Doot ripped the sack open and found the box, spilling half of them on the floor as he tore off the wrapper.
He backed away to the door, leaving a trail of gasoline footprints. With his spine against the boards, he lit one match and held it to the book until the others had burst into flame. He tossed it to the wet slick shining in the sliver of moonlight from the windows.
A wave of heat brushed across his face as the gasoline turned to flame. At the sides of the lobby, the dry rotten curtains caught, the fire leaping through them up to the ceiling. The splintered panels between the beams smoldered for only a second before bursting alight.
Doot raised his hand against the heat, fiercer now. A curtain of flame and black, roiling smoke filled the space. He fumbled behind himself, squeezing past the boards over the door. The cool night air rushed over him as he staggered out onto the verandah.
He fell to his knees in the dirt beyond the steps. He managed to crawl a few more yards, his shadow lengthening in the growing orange light, a flickering radiance from the burning building. Then he collapsed onto his shoulder in the dust.
Rolling onto his back, Doot pushed himself up onto his elbows. The entire front of the building was engulfed in flames. The windows of the second story cracked from the heat, raining down brilliant shards of glass.
He got to his feet, the fire shoving him back. With a roar, the boards over the entrance fell away, a gout of flame rolling out. The heat hit his face and chest, blinding him.
When he opened his eyes, shielding them with his upraised arm, he saw the thing crawling through the center of the fire. Still alive, but now a mass of charred flesh wrapped in flames and smoke. In the burning doorway, it raised its blackened face. The raw sockets where the eyes had been could still see somehow; its empty gaze fastened onto Doot. The mewling sound, of hunger and rage, seeped through the cracked fragments of teeth.
It raised its hand, now only a stump of bone, two fingers and a fused thumb gripping the scalpel. The mewling shrieked up in pitch, to a cry of animal hate, as the thing crawled across the verandah's smoldering planks.
Then it died.
It curled into an eviscerated husk, pitching forward onto the steps. The legs curled up into the chest, the bones of the knees cracking through the ribs, breaking the shriveled lungs apart. The heart, a black fist, clenched a final time, then dangled loose in its web of connective tissue.
The blind face gaped up at the flames towering above. The hand's stump flopped against the bottom step, the scalpel falling into the dust.
***
He found her by the edge of the swimming pool. The burning building lit the grounds and the hillside with a fierce, shifting orange radiance.
Doot lifted Anne up, her limp arms trailing across the iron wheel of the pool's valve controls. Exhausted and soaked through, she clung to him, the dark water puddling at her feet.
Running toward her, he had heard the sound of the water running from the pool's drain into the stone-lined culvert. Already the gushing noise had dwindled to a slow trickling.
He heard another sound, as he wrapped his arms around Anne. A hissing, broken by something almost like sobbing-the last noises of a dying creature. It came from inside the pool.
Doot looked over the tiled rim, holding Anne away from the sight. The pool was almost drained of the dark water now. The Nelder-thing lay at the bottom, its elongated carcass caught in the wet, charred timbers and debris. The arms of bone and raw stringy muscle moved, the clawlike hands flopping back and forth. It lifted its skull head, the gaunt jawless face gaping open, the throat dark and empty as the eye sockets.
He pulled her away from the pool, onto the dirt.
The flames' orange light danced across the dark puddle from which they'd stepped.
His gaze fastened onto the shimmering wetness. Anne pushed herself back from his chest, her eyes searching his face.
"Doot!" Alarm grew in her voice. "Doot, what is it?"
He let go of her and knelt by the pool, drawing his hand through the thin layer of water. He stood up, holding his wet palm close to his face. The sulfur smell rose into his nostrils.
The world turned silent. Beyond the roar of the fire leaping into the sky-another silence, that of things watching, and waiting.
The creatures in the hills-they had ceased their howling. But they were still there. He felt the pressure of their expectant gaze, intent upon his every movement.
He licked the water from his palm. Its sweetness burst inside his head. His blood sang, a shrill high note, as it surged into the muscles of his arms and chest.
Anne grabbed his shoulders, bringing her face close to his. "Doot, are you okay?"
He closed his eyes, then opened them; his tongue drew across the moisture on his lips. He looked past her, to the darkness in the hills.
He nodded, slowly. "I've never… felt better…"
Pushing her aside, he strode toward the culvert, and the pool's drain pipe. He knelt down, cupping his hands under the trickling flow. He gazed down at the dark water filling his palms, the thin rivulets running down his wrists. Then he raised it toward his mouth, to drink.
Something hit his hands, dashing the water out onto the dirt.
His head jerked around, the muscles of his shoulders and arms bunching. Teeth clenched, he gazed up in fury at Anne.
She grabbed hold of his wrists, bending over him.
"Doot…" She looked into his eyes, pleading with him. "Don't…" Her grip tightened, straining against the swelling muscle of his arm drawing back to strike her. "Do you want to end up like them?"
His arm froze in place, the clenched fist raised above her head.
The water trickled from between his fingers, running to his elbow. He looked away from her, to the black, shining thread, radiant in the burning light.
Then he cried out, head tilted back, throwing his hand out in front of him. The black drops scattered onto the dust.
AFTER
Thin smoke drifted in the early morning light. He brought the Peterbilt to a halt, then pushed open the cab door. At the head of the lane, he stood looking at the smoldering ruins.
Then the trucker spotted the figures lying on the ground in front of what had been the old clinic building. He ran toward them, already knowing that one of them was his son.
"Jesus fucking Christ!"
It looked even worse when he got up close. There was a Corvette parked near the burned building, the red paint of its fender and hood blistered from the heat. And in the charred rubble sprawled a blackened corpse, barely recognizable as having been human, the stumps of its hands clawing out from the ashes.
The trucker knelt down and lifted Doot's head. His son's eyes dragged open; they pulled a glimmer of recognition into focus, then started to fade away again. The trucker stood, bringing Doot up with him. Doot hung, limp from exhaustion, against his father.
He brushed his hand against Doot's brow. "What the hell happened out here?"
Doot opened his mouth, as though about to speak, then shook his head. It would have to wait.
The other figure, a girl he recognized now from Doot's high school, had stirred, raising her face from the ground. Her clothes were sodden and stained dark. The trucker left his son wobbling for a moment, and helped the girl to her feet.
"You all right?" He bent down to look in her eyes.
A nod. "I'm…" She drew a deep breath. "We're okay."
He walked them toward the truck, one on either side, their arms thrown over his shoulders.
Doot stopped halfway up the la
ne. He turned his head, looking back at the remains of the building. This close to him, the trucker studied his son's face. He hadn't ever seen him like this. No longer a gangly kid, but… different. Older, and harder, as though the fire had melted something out of him.
"What is it, son?" He tried to see into Doot's eyes. "What's wrong?"
Doot's gaze went out to the empty hills. He shook his head, slowly.
"Nothing." His voice quiet. "I just want to get out of here."
Then he turned back toward his father and the girl, and smiled-his real smile-and walked with them toward the truck.
***
The hawk circled in the radiant sky. The scent of fire and smoke had drawn it; sometimes, when the endless sweeps of dry grass burned, the flames drove the small, tender creatures out into the open. Or when the fire was gone, leaving nothing but the blackened valley fields, the dead things brought out others to feed on the scorched carcasses. Then the hawk could wheel about, and dive, and eat his fill.
But not this time. There were dead things in the ashes-one burned, a thing of ash itself; the other still wet and red, soft hanging meat on the arms clawing up from the bottom of the empty pool. The pieces of another lay mired in the thick, shallow water. But nothing would approach these things to pick apart the bones and find the bits that could be eaten. The dead things smelled of death, and worse; their decay seeped into the earth and poisoned it.
The hawk's wings stroked the air, lifting it above the dry hills. Its razor eye saw a shack below, in a small open space. And a stone basin, filled near to its edge with dark, oily-looking water. The water shimmered with circular ripples from the slow dripping of the spigot at the basin's head.
The hawk spiraled upward. But it could still see. Everything-that was its nature. It saw a lean wolf shape come out of the shaded recesses of the hills. The animal put its paws on the basin's edge and leaned its sharp-pointed muzzle over. It drank, tongue lapping up the water.
