Richard Laymon - Flesh

“Y’mean like somethin’ alive ?”

“That’s just what I mean.”

“Balls.”

Steve tapped some ash off the end of his cigar. It dropped into a gutter at the foot of the table. “I found considerable trauma to the brain stem. Appears that it had been chewed into.”

Jake stared at the body. “Something tunneled up his body and bit his brain?”

“That’s sure the way it looks.”

“Jesus,” Jake muttered.

“Okay,” Barney said. “So where’s it at, this thing?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“After this man was deceased, it chewed through the posterior wall of his esophagus, traveled down to his stomach, chewed through the stomach wall and made a beeline for his colon. Chewed through that, and exited through his anus.”

“You gotta be kiddin’.”

Steve punched his cigar dead in the metal gutter. Then he bent down and picked up a pair of boxer shorts that had been turned inside out. The seat was smeared with feces and blood.

Barney wrinkled his nose.

Steve picked up a pair of blue jeans, also pulled inside out. Down the right leg was a narrow trail that diminished as it neared the cuff. “Kidding?” he asked.

Barney shook his head slowly from side to side.

“What could’ve done something like this?” Jake asked.

Steve shrugged. One side of his mouth stretched upward. “An ambitious snake?”

“Yer a festival a’ laughs,” Barney said.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what did this, but it appears to have been something shaped, at least, like a snake.”

“I never hearda’ snakes doing shit like that.”

“Who has?” Steve said.

“Smeltzer was alive when this thing got in him?” Jake asked.

“Definitely.”

“How can you tell?”

“The amount of subdural bleeding and the quantity of blood on his right sock. I’d guess, from the degree of coagulation of his ankle wound, that the thing got into him only minutes prior to his death.”

“And it left his body after his death? How do you know that?”

“Again, the amount of bleeding. Very little in the areas that it chewed through on the way out.”

“Fuckin’ Twilight Zone,” Barney said.

“So what do you make of it?” Jake asked.

“I couldn’t say.”

“We’re talking, here,” Jake said, “about a guy who blew off his wife’s head and started to eat her. And you’re saying that, before he went at her, this snake-thing burrowed up his leg and bit him in the brain?”

“That’s sure the way it appears.”

“And after I shot him, it took off.”

“Didn’t see it, did ya?” Barney asked.

“I didn’t stick around long. I took a quick look through the restaurant to make sure there wasn’t a third person, then I headed back to my car to call in. I must’ve been gone close to fifteen minutes. I guess that gave it time to get out.”

“The poop-chute express,” Barney said.

“It might still be in the restaurant,” Jake said.

“I already searched around here,” Steve said, “and the van that brought him in. Didn’t want that thing sneaking up on me.”

Barney sidestepped, reached over, pinched a leg of Steve’s white trousers and lifted. “I already checked that, myself,” Steve said. He raised both cuffs above his socks.

Barney crouched for a close look, then turned to Jake. “How ’bout you?”

“I took three showers after—”

“So y’got hygiene. Lift your pants.”

Jake drew them up to his knees. Barney squatted beside him, took a long look, then slid Jake’s socks down around his ankles.

“Okay, so now we know you guys aren’t gonna start munchin’ on me.”

Jake nodded. “So I’m not the only one who thinks this snake-thing made Smeltzer go haywire.”

“It don’t make sense, but it makes sense.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree,” Steve said. “It sounds mad but the possibility is certainly there…some kind of creature that sustains itself through a symbiotic relationship with its human host. A parasite. But it doesn’t simply take its nourishment from its host, it somehow controls his eating habits.”

Barney smirked. “Less Smeltzer was in the habit a’ eatin’ his wife.”

“So we’re talking,” Jake said, “about a snakelike creature that burrows into a person, takes control of his mind, and compels him to eat human flesh. That is what we’re talking about here, right?”

“Can’t be,” Barney said. “Last time I looked I wasn’t nuts.”

“If there’s another way to interpret this situation,” Steve said, “I’d be more than eager to hear it.”

“Yeah. You guys are figments a’ my fuckin’ nightmare.”

“Neither of you, I take it, has ever heard of a similar situation.”

“You gotta be kiddin’.”

“I’ve heard of cannibalism,” Jake said, “but never anything about a snake or whatever that gets inside you and turns you into one.”

“Gentlemen, I think we’ve got a situation.” Steve slipped a fresh cigar from a pocket of his white jacket, stripped off its wrapper, and bit off its end. He spat the wad of leaf into the table gutter. He licked the whole cigar. Then he poked it into his mouth and lit up.

“I drove over to Marlowe, yesterday, at the request of a colleague, Herman Willis. Thursday afternoon, the nude body of a twenty-two-year-old female was found. It had been buried in a field just east of Marlowe. Might never have turned up, except a kid happened to be out playing in the field with his dog. The dog found the grave. The kid ran home for a shovel, apparently thinking he had stumbled onto a buried treasure. He dug for a while, then ran home yelling.”

“Musta’ gave’m a good turn.”

“Here’s the interesting part: the body had been eaten. Quite a lot of the skin had been torn off, portions of muscle devoured.” The cigar in Steve’s hand was shaking. “She had bite marks all over her body. Some were just enough to break the skin, others took out chunks of her. Her torso had been ripped open. Her heart had been torn out and partly eaten. Her head…she had been scalped. Her skull had been caved in with a blunt instrument, possibly a rock. Her brain was missing.”

“Holy fuckin’ mayonnaise,” Barney muttered.

“Willis had never seen anything like this. I think he called me in more for moral support than for my professional opinion. At any rate, the teeth marks and the saliva samples we took from the wounds indicated that her assailant was human.”

“Yer sayin’ she was a victim of this thing.”

“Of someone ‘occupied’ by this thing.”

“When was this person killed?” Jake asked.

“Wednesday, around midnight. Willis was able to pinpoint the time of death pretty accurately based on her stomach contents. She’d been seen at a local pizza joint at eight that night. The degree to which the pizza had been digested—”

Barney flicked the back of his hand against the hip of the body stretched in front of him. “So, where was Ronald Smeltzer Wednesday night?”

“I don’t think Smeltzer did it,” Jake said. His heart was beating fast. “That van, the one that tried to run down Celia Jamerson, was coming from the direction of Marlowe. Thursday afternoon. Someone, some thing, got out of the van alive. There was blood on the pavement behind the rear door. I followed the traces into the field, but couldn’t…” He shook his head. “Where the van crashed was only a few hundred yards from the Oakwood Inn. Suppose what I tried to follow was this snake-thing and it found its way to the restaurant, got into Smeltzer that night?” Jake turned to Steve. “You got that John Doe from the van?”