T. Wright - The Devouring

Laurie nodded brightly. "Sure. Why not?"

To which Gail could say only, "Yes. Good," then she left the room to speak with Mallory in the hallway.

He said, his voice low, "The kid's lying, Gail."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I just talked to the M.E. The woman's been dead for at least twenty-four hours."

Gail took a deep breath. "Jesus Christ," she breathed, "I hate this."

"Join the club, sweet cheeks."

"Please don't call me that, Guy." A pause. "Okay, who's going to do it?"

Mallory, putting on his magnanimous look, offered, "Well, since I'm the senior officer here-"

"The hell with that," Gail cut in. "You'll scare the crap out of her. I'll do it." And she went back into Laurie's bedroom and told her, "Laurie, I'm afraid you're going to have to come with me."

"Am I under arrest?" She seemed strangely unconcerned, even a little pleased.

Gail shook her head. "No. You're not under arrest, Laurie. But I do have to remind you of your constitutional rights." She was not, she realized, doing this by the book.

Laurie said, "You mean like I have the right to remain silent, and the right to have an attorney present and all that stuff?"

Gail extended her hand. "Yes, Laurie." Laurie took her hand, stood. Gail told her her rights. "Do you understand?"

"Sure." Laurie glanced quickly around her room. It was a very girlish room, thanks to her mother. The colors were all soft pastels, the bedclothes frilly, the furniture properly dainty-looking. She said, "This is really awful, isn't it, Miss Newman?"

Gail answered after a few moments. "Perhaps you should bring a change of clothes, Laurie. Why don't I give you a moment to do that, okay?"

Laurie answered, "Who's going to take care of Magic?"

"The cat? That's his name-Magic?"

"Uh-huh. He can't feed himself, you know." Gail put her hand comfortingly on Laurie's arm. "I'll take care of him, Laurie. He can keep my cat company."

"He's mean, you know. He's real mean. I'll bet you he's the one that killed my mother."

Gail let her hand drop. She nodded at the doorway. "I'll be out there waiting for you, Laurie." She glanced quickly around the room. Two windows; she'd have to tell a uniform to watch them. "I'll close the door to give you some privacy. You've got five minutes." And she turned and left the room.

Five minutes later she knocked on the door. "Laurie," she called, "I'm sorry, but it's time to go." She waited, got no answer, knocked briefly again. She pushed the door open.

The room was empty.

~ * ~

Benny Bloom

At Buffalo Pierpont High School Benjamin Bloom (who much preferred the name "Benny") was almost universally thought of as "a nerd," especially by other nerds, who regarded the term as a badge of honor.

Benny couldn't help being a nerd. He was very smart, loved poetry-especially the poetry of T. S. Eliot-and had a natural shyness that made him look clumsy and ineffectual. His hobbies included stamp collecting, butterfly collecting (he waited for the butterflies to die a natural death because he couldn't bear the thought of killing them), astrophysics, and, of course, poetry. At sixteen and a half his attraction to the opposite sex was in full bloom, so to speak, although he was yet to, as he told his closest male friends, "relieve myself of my cumbersome virginity."

Two Days Later

Ryerson was rifling through the Yellow Pages of the Buffalo telephone book in search of veterinarians open twenty-four hours a day. It was 1:30 in the morning. At a little past 12:00, Creosote had begun to whimper pitifully. A half hour later he crawled over to a corner of the motel room, plopped down, still whimpering, and began to breathe very shallowly, and quickly. Ryerson was sure that each of those short, shallow breaths was going to be his last.

Ryerson slammed the telephone book closed with a thud. "Nuts!" he whispered. There were no veterinarians open twenty-four hours a day, at least none that advertised in the Yellow Pages.

He went over to Creosote, got down on his haunches, gently stroked him. "It's okay, fella," he whispered. "You're going to be all right; I won't let anything happen to you." Creosote's quick breathing slowed, though only for a moment, as if his master's soothing words had temporarily eased his anxiety.

Ryerson shook his head. "Dammit, dog; why can't I read you?" It wasn't entirely true that he couldn't read Creosote. He usually got something like the snow between channels on a TV set. But from time to time, though very fleetingly, he got a feeling of unbridled and unreasoning joy-the response of an animal to health, and life, and the unquestioned fact of its immortality.

Now he was getting only snow, and something that felt vaguely like pain or pressure that was impossible to grab hold of-each time he tried, it slipped away. He straightened. He knew that his only recourse was to put Creosote in the Woody and drive around until he found a vet whose office was in his home and wake him up.

He gently lifted Creosote into his arms. "It's okay, fella," he crooned. "It's okay; we'll get you fixed up."

~ * ~

Joan Mott Evans decided that she wasn't hungry after all; she closed her refrigerator door. There wasn't much to eat anyway. Some plain yogurt-which, at 2:00 in the morning, wasn't terribly appealing-a few stalks of celery, a jar of Hain's 100% Pure and Natural Peanut Butter, and half a loaf of Hollywood Dark Bread that should have been given to the birds a week ago.

She sat at the small round kitchen table and poked idly with her fingernail at a hardened drop of spaghetti sauce that had escaped her desultory efforts at cleaning.

She thought, What did Jimmy Carter call it?-A "malaise of the spirit"? She whispered, "Well, I've got it, Jimmy." Damn, but if her trip to Boston hadn't gone so badly! Damn, but if Ryerson Biergarten hadn't turned out to be such a crud! Damn, but if she didn't have to hide this . . . thing inside her head for the rest of her life; if only she could share it. That would make it easier to bear, of course. Sharing guilt always made it easier to bear. She didn't know why, but it did.

The kitchen was dark. She preferred it that way. She wasn't up to appliance pastels and knotty pine cupboards and the Corning Range Top at the moment.

She wondered what she would be doing if one of her succession of boyfriends-or, better yet, a compilation of them all-were here with her at that moment. Would he be trying to coax the reason for her "malaise of the spirit" from her? Probably. He'd probably be trying to make a joke of it-"Mayonnaise of the spirit," he'd say. "Goes great with sliced turkey." And she'd say, trying mightily to smile, "Okay, turkey, where would you like to be sliced?" which he'd try hard to interpret as merely a good-natured joke, although he'd insist on seeing something cutting and personal in it (and, of course, there would be something cutting and personal in it). After a while he'd lean back in the small wooden chair, with his hands behind his head, and he'd observe sagely, "Let's get some light on this," and stand and turn on the overhead light. "Shed light on a problem," he'd say as he sat back down, "and you go a long way toward solving it."

She smiled as these thoughts came to her; as far as she was concerned, all of her boyfriends had been losers. She pursed her lips. No, they weren't losers-they had turned out, merely, to be right for someone else, not her.

She dismissed her succession of boyfriends with a self-critical smile and a shake of the head.

Like Ryerson Biergarten, she enjoyed the very early morning-it was just past 2:00- when the psychic atmosphere had only a light breeze in it, a breeze stirred up, mostly, by night creatures on the prowl-tomcats, owls, the occasional raccoon or opossum, both of which had, in the past decade or so, grown bold enough to make regular forays this far into the outskirts of the city. Most of the occasional psychic drifts she got from these creatures were pleasant because they were so simple and guileless, and-like Creosote-often an open and tingling expression of joy at the mere fact of being alive. At other times, and for blessedly brief moments, she got a whiff of naked and screeching terror; she'd see the ground moving rapidly away from her, she'd feel a heavy wind on her back, then an instant of tremendous, scorching pain. She knew what caused this. In the thirty acres of open fields behind her house there were probably ten thousand field mice and a hundred cottontail rabbits. And in the maple trees ringing the fields there were probably a half-dozen owls who nightly swooped silently down, grabbed one of the hapless mice or one of the baby cottontails in its talons, and just as silently carried it off to be swallowed whole at the nest.