Robert Walker - Fatal Instinct

He shook with the fear now pervading his mind. The Claw wanted him to be caught, wanted to see him suffer for the deaths of all those women, be shot down by police like a sniveling dog. Having digested so many sins of the victims, Leon would go to Hell, where the Claw could control him further. Was that it? Was that what this was all about?

Leon thought of how the monster had come to him in his lowest moment of weakness, when he was most vulnerable, at the side of his mother's coffin; how it had materialized out of nowhere to make promises to him, to befriend and console him. There had been no one else.

But it had all been a lie… a lie leading to this… And the reason was simple. The Claw was no angel; the Claw was an agent of Satan that'd been lurking about the funeral parlor for years, no doubt, just waiting for someone like him-the perfect victim-to come along*

And now this devil had led him to his own end.

“ I won't let him get away with it! No!” shouted Leon, rushing to the kitchen, tearing open cabinets, locating every horrible, disgusting object that he and the Claw had ever collected. In the basement, he searched for and found several crates and boxes, and in a black corner of the room he thought he saw the specter of the Claw staring at him.

Snatching on the light, he saw that it was just an old coat-rack that'd been here for years, and yet, moments before, he would have sworn it was the Claw come for him.

Shaken, he dragged the crates upstairs, where, in the brightly lit kitchen, he began to pack them with the awful remains, each jar sloshing with his excited hands. There weren't enough crates. He'd have to return to the basement for a box. He did so cautiously, this time taking a flash with him and turning on the light before he dared look again at the coat rack. It was still a coat rack.

He snatched up the sturdiest-looking box, flicking away at a cockroach that scurried along its flap. He then returned quickly to the work remaining in the kitchen.

Finally it was all packed, and he stood wondering how he could get each crate and box outside without drawing attention to himself. Then he flushed red with heat, wondering if the cops were having the place watched. If he stepped outside with a single crate, they'd snatch him up, the evidence on his person. All they'd have to say is that he was acting in a suspicious manner.

He went from window to window, his paranoia rising. Every car on the street looked like an unmarked squad car or surveillance vehicle. He had to calm himself, maybe wait until nightfall. But by nightfall, they could be back with a search warrant. He must dispose of the bloody evidence and he hadn't the time or stomach to ingest it all at once.

He had been such a fool…

He froze where he stood because the deathly silence of his house was whispering to him in the voice of the Claw, asking, “Where're you going, Ovid? Whhhherrrrrr're yoooou goooo-ing? O-vid… O-vid?”

A strange wind was sweeping up from the open basement door that looked now like the throat of Hell, ready to swallow him whole.

The telephone rang shrilly and the whirr and whisper within the whirr was suddenly gone, the house raging with silence again, save for the intermittent, insistent ring of the phone.

He went to the phone hesitantly but once there he grabbed it up, saying, “Hel-hello?”

“ We're going, Ovid.” It was him, the Claw, on the line. He'd never telephoned him before.

“ Going?” He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry and cottony. In the background, he could hear the sounds of rushing traffic, suggesting a phone booth or perhaps a car phone. “Where?”

“ We'll disappear… go elsewhere… where they can't find us. Just wait for me there.”

He was momentarily confused. Could he trust the Claw? “For how long?”

“ For as long as it takes.”

“ I thought when you didn't come last night… and the cops came this morning…”

“ Cops?”

“ Police were here, asking questions.”

“ Yes, I see they've fixed on locating Leon. That's why we must disappear.”

“ Another country, another city, where?”

“ You will know in time.”

“ I don't have any time. They're bound to come back.” Leave them to me.”

“ All right… all right, I will.”

The Claw hung up. Ovid knew now that the Claw was not an imagined creature of the dark or some other facet of Leon's own personality. The phone call had been real. This, along with the fact that the Claw hadn't abandoned him, after all, went a long way to quell Leon's frazzled nerves. As much as he feared the Claw, he realized, he needed him; that, in a sense, the Claw was him.

Still, he must dispense with the incriminating evidence he had so foolishly allowed to accumulate all around him. He must give some thought to the boxes. While he sat there, staring at them, his eyes wandered into the living room, where an old carpet reminded him of the blood-soaked Oriental rug still in the trunk of his car. He remembered, too, that his tools had been used in every killing.

There was so much to think of, so much to do. He returned to the windows, going about the house, staring out. He saw no strange cars now. Every car on the block could be accounted for; he had stared down this length of asphalt for years, so he was sure. He saw a few people milling about, but he saw no one that looked out of place.

He went to the rear of his house and gazed for a long time before he decided that the alleyway was at peace with itself, and that there weren't a thousand cops hiding behind trash cans, garage doors, telephone poles and bushes. He had to traverse his backyard to the garage, where his little car was kept. He had a good notion of what he wanted to do with all the evidence, although he wasn't sure he could get away with it.

For now, relatively sure of his safety, he began to make trips to the car and back, carrying one crate at a time, carefully placing them into the trunk atop the soiled, bloodied rug that had been Mrs. Phillips' shroud only two nights before. Leon was cautious with each crate, but when he lifted one of the less sturdy boxes, the bottom gave way and he went to his knees in an attempt to keep the jars from hitting the kitchen floor. But one containing a victim's heart shattered, sending a slick of formaldehyde out from his knees. Through this the organ slid across the floor, slapped against the first rung of the basement steps and then flip-flopped down and down, leaving a thin liquid trail of gruel in its wake.

“ Damn, damn,” Leon cursed at the delay. It meant more cleanup, more wasted time. He went down into the basement, fetched the now soiled heart and brought it back up to the kitchen. He found tape, reinforced the box that had come loose and jammed the dirty heart down into the box between the other jars.

He then looked down at the broken jar and the mess created by the formaldehyde. He had always detested the odor, but it had never bothered the Claw. It was, however, sure to go rank if he did not clean it up quickly. He grabbed a kitchen towel, but knew this would not be enough. He needed newspapers, lots of them.

He found a stack in the corner in the living room and threw them about the kitchen floor, stomping over them in a wild dance. He saw the headlines about the Claw and knew he must destroy the papers, too.

“ That'll do it,” he promised himself.

In five minutes he had the problem soaked up, and with a damp mop and Cheer he cleaned the linoleum, much pleased with his progress. But he knew that the heat outside was not doing the other organs much good in the trunk of his car.

He now crushed all the newspapers into a Hefty bag and tied it off. This he took outside to the trash cans and shoved it all into a can belonging to him. This done, he retrieved the now well-taped box, returned to the garage and grabbed his toolbox. He put the last box and his tools on the backseat of the car and in a moment was cautiously making his way out of the area.