And none of that was the most horrible thing. The most horrible thing was that Devin couldn’t shake the feeling he’d seen this impossible creature somewhere before. Yes, he’d seen it back at his house, in the shadows, when it attacked Karston, but it was more than that, an older memory, as if he’d somehow known this grotesque thing all his life. As if his own brain were saying, Of course, this is it!
The sudden light surprised the fiend. The yellow of its eyes smoked over into black and it reared in annoyance. Feeling his legs briefly free, Cody kicked the monster in the chest. Its long arms loosened further, letting a frenetic Cody slip from its pythonlike grasp. In less than a second, he was half on his feet, scrambling, screaming, and bolting past Devin, out the door and into the store beyond.
Before Devin’s log-jammed brain could even register what was going on, he was alone with it in the bathroom.
It raised its head. The original squash-yellow of its eyes returned and the orbs seemed to focus on Devin. Its mouth opened into a perfect circle and it growled. The sound that came from it was more like a wind than anything animal or human.
Where have I seen this before?
Before he could wonder further, Devin’s instincts took over. He raised the extinguisher and pressed the lever, sending a long thick stream of white foam out across the bathroom and into the rubbery, batlike face.
Eyes blacking over again, the thing reeled at the chemical assault. Its arms curled and the claws curved backward to wipe the stinging foam away from its face, but by then, Devin had hurled the metal canister at it and was out the door himself.
Bursting out, he nearly rammed into Cheryl. She was standing by the door. From the twisted look of terror on her face, she’d obviously caught a glimpse inside.
“What is it? What is it?” she shrieked. Devin was too busy shoving her toward the exit to answer. He reached the door that led to the rear of the building and flung it open, pulling them both out into the cool night air. He didn’t stop to look back until they were halfway across the huge parking lot. It didn’t seem to be following.
Then, gasping for breath, he said, “Did you call the cops? Did you tell them?”
She nodded. “The dispatcher said they were having trouble with their radios, but she’d send someone as soon as she could.”
Okay then, they could all just walk to the front of the store together. He looked around. One Word Ben was sitting on a steel post near a streetlight at the far end of the lot, as far away as he could possibly get and still see his parents when they came. When he saw Devin looking at him, he stood up, shifted on his feet, then sat back down. Devin looked left and right, but other than he and Cheryl, there was no one else in the lot.
“Cody. Where’s Cody?” he said to Cheryl. “Did you see him leave?”
She shook her head. “He ran to the other side of the store.”
Crap. Maybe he was cut. He could be bleeding to death.
Remembering what had happened to Karston because he’d waited too long, Devin turned back toward the door and started walking. Cheryl followed, but he whirled and ordered, “Get Ben and walk around front. Grab some cops and tell them what’s going on!” he said.
A pained look flashed on her face. “No!” she said.
“Go!” Devin screamed back as if he were slapping her with the word. “Hurry!”
She nodded, whirled, and started trotting off toward Ben.
Cheryl would be safe. She had to be. But he couldn’t leave Cody to that thing any more than he could abandon him to the two Slits, no matter how angry he was. He walked back to the door, desperately scanning the trash bins for a piece of wood or metal, anything he could use as a weapon.
He prayed it was gone. He prayed he could just get in and pull Cody out.
He pulled the rear door open as gently as he could and creeped back in. Once he reached the main room, he stood there, staring out the front windows. The mob swarming outside the club was huge, and not a single officer was visible among the mass of forms. He could see the swirling lights from the empty police cars, though; they were streaming into the store, weaving through the slats on the cribs, making the dangling stars and dolls cast long misshapen shadows everywhere. Any one of the shadows could be a monster. Who knew how long it would take Cheryl to get someone’s attention?
“Cody?” he whispered into the black.
The other side. Cheryl said he’d gone to the other side. That was where all the racks and shelves of children’s clothes were. As he passed the main entrance, he looked toward the back of the store toward the restrooms. Fluorescent light glowed from behind the cracked door of the men’s room, but everything beyond it seemed quiet.
Maybe it was gone.
Devin took a few more steps. When his sneaker hit something sticky, he looked down at the linoleum. There was a trail of something thick and dark, like oil. He pushed at it with the toe of his sneaker, and it smeared easily. Blood. He closed his eyes, not wanting to believe that it was Cody’s, but followed the trail nevertheless, moving softly from display case to display case. By the time it stopped, Devin had reached the far wall.
“Cody?” he whispered again. Before he could inhale after speaking, something lurched up behind him. Long fingers wrapped tightly around his skull and jaw. He felt his head yanked backward with incredible force. His body followed, but the pulling continued. Before he knew it, he was on the floor with a muscular figure leaning over him, something dripping from one of its long arms.
Cody.
“Cody, man…”
“Shhh!” Cody whispered. “It’s still out there, over by the cribs. In the bathroom, I smacked it with my guitar. It was like slamming into a brick wall. I think I ruined the axe.”
Devin recalled the splintered wood. “Yeah,” he whispered, “I think you did.”
Cody didn’t seem to care. His eyes were crazed, glazed. He was terrified. Devin had never seen Cody like this, had never imagined he would. He rolled up and knelt beside Cody. They both held on to the sides of the cribs, looking out between the slats, watching for even a hint of movement.
“What do you think it is?” Devin whispered.
Cody looked at him and gave him a weaker version of his sneer. “Are you really that stupid? Can’t you figure anything out? It’s the thing from your damn song!”
The information felt like a slap. “No,” Devin answered. “No way. The song was just a lullaby my grandmother sang to me when I was a baby.”
“Yeah? Then your grandmother’s a freaking witch,” Cody hissed. He was bobbing back and forth, occasionally grabbing his arm and looking at the blood on his palm. “It’s not stopping. I feel dizzy. Not good.”
It looked like the big cut on his arm was the only damage, but there were so many dark stains on his shirt, Devin couldn’t be sure. Cody looked out at the floor. “I say we make a run for it, dive for the front door, and hope it opens. If it doesn’t, we can force it.”
Devin shook his head. “The police will be here any second. Let’s just wait!”
A bursting laugh of air flew from Cody’s mouth. “You, always with the goddamn waiting. What if they don’t? I’m going to pass out. It’s thirty yards, man. Let’s go!”
Devin stared at Cody’s blue eyes. They were wavering. His head seemed to list on his neck. “I’m probably not going to get that door open without you,” Cody said.
Devin counted his breaths. He kept hoping Cheryl and Ben had gotten someone’s attention, that at any second those doors would burst open from the other side, the police would rush in, and they’d be saved.
But the only thing that happened was that Cody’s eyes began to droop. As he held his arm, the blood seeped between his fingers and dripped onto the floor.
Devin tried to remember first aid, how to make a tourniquet. Could he do that?
He took another breath. Another thick drop of Cody’s blood fell.
“Okay,” Devin finally said. “Let’s go. On three.”
The light in Cody’s e
yes seemed to flare. A slight smile went to his lips.
“See that?” he panted. “I keep telling Cheryl you’re not so stupid.”
“One…” Devin said, tensing. “Two…”
Before he could say three they were both running, stumbling across the children’s clothing section toward the front door. Nothing else seemed to move except them. The beautiful glass double doors loomed closer and closer. The lights from outside grew brighter.
One second, Cody was beside him, even getting a little ahead; then there was a slight rush of air, and he was gone.
Devin stopped and whirled. Cody was on the floor, on his back, his arms above his head. He was moving. His arms looked wrong, too long. At once, Devin realized the thing was dragging him back into the depths of the store, away from the blinding light.
As Devin watched, it pulled Cody beneath a rack of footsie pajamas, the little cloth legs and feet parting to make way for the creature and its prey.
Devin turned and jumped after them. His feet felt rubbery underneath him. The thing, along with Cody’s torso, vanished beneath the rack.
There was a horrible snapping sound. Then Cody’s powerful voice fell to screaming louder than Devin had ever heard it before. Just before Cody’s feet vanished beneath the rack, Devin leaped across the floor and managed to grab one. He held the ankle, then the whole leg, bracing his feet against the linoleum and pulling as hard as he could.
“I’ve got you! I’ve got you!” he said, but he had no idea if Cody could hear him, because the cutting sound just grew louder. It was louder than the pounding rush in Devin’s head, louder than Cody’s screams, which peaked, then faded into nothing.
For a second, for one brief instant, all of Devin’s pulling and yanking seemed to pay off. The leg came free in his arms. But Cody was no longer attached.
As the police burst through the front door, filling the darkness with the beams of their flash-lights, Devin, his mind collapsing, could think only one thing:
Cody had been Torn.
11
The police grilled them for hours.
“Are you sure that’s what you saw?”
“Was it like the monster in your song?”
“One kid died and your song got popular, right? Did you think your song would get even more popular if someone else died, too? Did you think it would be cool?”
Terms like “satan worship” and “cult sacrifice” were bandied about, making Devin fearful, frustrated, and ultimately angry. He worried that if they had dressed in trench coats or in Goth style they’d have been charged and convicted on the basis of fashion. He realized grimly that misunderstanding and suspicion were just as much part of the long-standing legend of rock as the fame and the money.
He wished Cody were here. Cody would love to see how much the police were freaking out, how desperate they were to find anything that would give the slaughter some kind of sense, some kind of order. He imagined Cody laughing at them, making up stories just for fun.
Yes, officer, we worship a fish god who lives in a giant lair beneath the sea. Your so-called goldfish-bowl castles are a mere echo of our god’s home. It does crave human blood at times….
Or the more familiar: The music made me do it. Voices in the song told me to kill our lead guitarist, so I figured, hey, what the hell. I mean, wouldn’t you?
It would be so simple to get them to believe anything. Anything except the truth. But that, Devin had to admit, sounded, even to him, even now, in the cold light of the small room they kept him in, the strangest of all.
One Word Ben was the first to be released, either because he was the only one who didn’t claim to see a monster, or because his one-word answers made things go faster. Cheryl was second. She was hysterical, and she’d only caught a glimpse of the thing in the men’s room, so her description was easily dismissed, both by the police and by her.
But Devin—Devin was the only witness to the actual murder. The only witness to both murders, and the only one who insisted on what he saw, who described it in unbelievable detail.
So they tested him for drugs, but since the results would take days, they grilled him for hours more, then tested him again in case they would be unhappy with the results from the first tests. Then they had a psychiatrist speak to him. Then they grilled him some more.
They wanted very badly to press charges, but when the crime scene photos and forensics came back, showing the hole in the bathroom ceiling, the shattered guitar, the thick scratch marks on the floor and walls, and the sheer strength needed to rip Cody’s leg off, they corroborated his story. And when Devin’s father, looking older and smaller than he’d ever seemed before, bellowed and threatened to sue, the detectives finally conceded that “something like” what Devin described might actually have occurred.
But on the way out, as if Devin couldn’t hear, they advised his father of their various theories: that the killer had threatened Devin in some way so that he was unwilling to give honest testimony, or that he was on drugs, or that he was crazy. When his father pushed, though, they admitted they couldn’t prove any of that. So, yes, they’d let him go, for now, but they wanted to know his whereabouts 24/7.
The car ride home was shorter but more grueling than his time at the station. His dad babbled about Columbine and asked him over and over about drugs, about gangs, about guns. The sharp, steady man had never seemed so clueless before, never felt so far away.
As they drove, the morning light seeping between the trees felt as brittle as Devin’s tired head. His sinuses were on fire. He had some sort of cold, maybe a fever.
It was only when his mother hugged him, warm and soft in a housecoat she’d worn since he was a child, that Devin realized how cold and stiff he felt. She looked at him, brushed his hair out of his face, and then quickly made an excuse to vanish into the kitchen to get him something hot to eat. They would talk later, after he’d rested. After she’d had a nervous breakdown or two.
Devin plodded up the stairs, entered the hallway bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and tossed them on the floor. Seeing the blotches of dried blood on the pants and shirt made him dizzy, but he managed to stumble into the shower. The burst of warm water soothed his skin and forced his shoulder muscles to relax; yet even though he stood there for a long time, something in him still stayed cold.
Cody was dead. Karston had been a blow, but Cody was different. He was more like a force of nature, and forces of nature shouldn’t die.
Until that moment, when Devin felt as if a part of himself was missing, he never realized how much he both hated Cody and loved him, how much he thought he was a jerk, an asshole, yet shared Cody’s opinion of himself, that he was some kind of god.
Devin stepped out of the shower. The sound of his parents arguing downstairs floated up through the heating vents. Their harsh whispers were short, angry, desperate. The details of the grudge match flew past him. He couldn’t care less. He went into his room and closed the door, silencing them.
He threw himself back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. Eventually, he looked out the large window, where he caught the tops of the trees shifting in a hard wind. The woods seemed to go on forever.
A greater truth had suddenly opened up for Devin. It sat there in front of him, thick and black, utterly unknown and waiting to swallow him whole: a monster.
A monster had killed Karston and Cody. Not some wacky deformed homeless guy with a hatchet—a for-real, beyond-the-ken-of-mortal-understanding monster, or whatever you wanted to call something so strong you could shatter a solid body Les Paul against it without even slowing it down.
And it looked so damn familiar.
Even now he wanted to look under his bed, to make sure it wasn’t there.
Could it really have come from the song like Cody said? How screwed up was that? Was it created by the song, or did the song “call” to it? What were the rules? Were there any rules? Did it only take bad children? Was he safe? He didn’t feel safe.
Was Cheryl s
afe? Was One Word Ben?
Cheryl. The last time he’d seen her was when her parents took her out of the station. Her beautiful smooth skin was totally white, and there were deep red circles under her eyes. He had called to her, but she’d been far down the hall, being pulled into one of the interrogation rooms.
He grabbed his cell and punched her number on the speed dial.
“Hey,” she said in a flash. She sounded tired, as if he’d woken her.
“Hey,” he said back. “How are you?”
“Horrible.”
“Me, too. Your parents ever going to let you out of the house again?”
“I hope not. Yours?”
“Downstairs fighting about something. I don’t know who’s going to win.”
“Did you talk to Cody’s family?”
Devin was surprised by the question. “No. I just got back.”
“I want to call, but I’m scared. Like it would make it more real.” Her voice was cracking. After a silence, she asked, “Was it real?”
Devin thought about it a second and said, “Yes.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a longer pause, but Devin didn’t think of hanging up. The silence was fine. Just knowing she was on the other end, despite the space between them, felt good.
After a while, Cheryl broke the silence. “It’s all over the chat rooms, you know. They’re thinking of canceling school Monday. There’s a radio station playing the song, creeping people out. There’s a video clip Judy sent me from the club. It’s got a great shot of…Cody…singing…and there’s more of those dust dots flying around.”
More silence.
“Maybe you should see it,” Cheryl said. “I’ll send it to you.”
Devin stood, walked to his laptop, and woke it. “I’ll take a look,” he said. “What do you think they are?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the angels from the song, the ones we’re supposed to lie to. Maybe Cody didn’t lie well enough,” she answered.
The e-mail was already in his in-box. With a click, the large video file started downloading.
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