T. Wright - The Devouring

He was in something of a blue funk, because while he hated jails, as everyone did, added to the usual reasons (they were places where people were locked up; they smelled bad; the people in them were almost universally unpleasant) was the fact that the psychic input here was not only dizzying and overwhelming, as it was in shopping malls and post offices, it was depressing as hell, too. It was sepia-toned, dead-ended, and desperate in a futile and resigned way. In his head it looked the way it smelled-of urine, sweat, and stale cigarette smoke.

So, the blue funk persisted.

It wasn't the first time he'd been in jail. During his junior year at Duke University he'd gotten rip-roaring drunk with several other juniors and they had collectively mooned the sorority house where Coreen lived. They were caught, as the cop who arrested them said, "with their pants down," charged with "lewd and lascivious behavior" and put in the drunk tank for the night.

It wasn't the last time Ryerson got drunk. For five years after that he consistently worked himself into a stupor, consistently made a fool of himself in public places, and consistently got arrested. At last, he realized that he was sliding into alcoholism, and that if he didn't quit drinking, he'd slowly kill himself. A year later, after several failed attempts at putting booze behind him, he was offered a drink and said no. On the night that he sat in a blue funk in the Buffalo holding cell, he hadn't had a drink in nearly fifteen years.

~ * ~

In "The District"

"Power!" the woman breathed. She had power. Power to be, to have, to control, power to change! It made up for the darkness, made up for the pain, made up for her time here in this damp and stinking place.

Because another damp and stinking place was where she had sprung up and had begun to visit herself upon the earth.

Power! Control! Change!

And what had that last poor fool called her -werewolf? That was for others to imagine, only one of the evil fantasies her beautiful living children could indulge in and so, through it, take power for themselves.

And so give power to her.

Werewolf indeed! The fool. That was for that other creature. The creature she had sprung from. The creature whose flesh hung now like paper on its bones and whose eyes mingled with the liquid that its brain had become.

~ * ~

Captain Lucas came to Ryerson's cell at 9:30 that morning. He had a sheet from a computer printout in his hand, and as the guard opened the cell door for him, he smiled gloatingly.

He sat on the bed next to Ryerson and held up the sheet of paper as if holding up a picture of one of his kids; "You know what this is, Dr. Biergarten?"

Ryerson glanced disinterestedly at him, and looked away. "I don't like to be called doctor."

"Shit," Lucas cried, "I would if I were you. If I had a fucking doctorate in para psychology, I'd sure as hell want to be called fucking doctor."

Ryerson shrugged. "Call me what you wish to call me."

Lucas guffawed. "Call you anything but sober, isn't that right?" He guffawed again, immensely pleased with his joke.

Ryerson chose to ignore the remark; he nodded at the computer printout. "What you have there, Captain Lucas, is a litany of past mistakes. I paid for those mistakes, and I can't see that what happened a decade and a half ago has any bearing at all on what you're investigating now."

It was Lucas's turn to shrug. "What we have here, Dr. Biergarten, is the record of a loser. Once an alky, always an alky, that's what I say."

"You're a real phrasemaker, aren't you, Captain?"

Lucas quickly grew angry. He waved the computer printout so it flapped in the air. "Whether this has anything to do with Laurie Drake and Detective Newman is something we have yet to determine-"

Ryerson cut in, sighing. "You called Tom McCabe, didn't you?" Tom McCabe was Chief of Detectives in Rochester, New York, where Ryerson had worked on what had become known as "the park werewolf." He and McCabe had grown close during his investigation, and Ryerson assumed he'd be an excellent character reference.

Lucas said, "Yeah. Sure. I called him. How'd you know?"

Ryerson answered simply, "I know a lot of things, Captain." He paused. "I assume that Tom vouched for me?"

"He said you worked with him and he said he was sorry to hear you were in trouble. That's about it."

"You're lying."

Captain Lucas grinned. "What ever your friend said, Mr. Biergarten, doesn't make a bit of difference here. I don't care if you're the fucking queen of France, you're trying to play footsy with us and I don't like it one damn bit."

Ryerson leveled a withering gaze at him; he wished mightily that his gifts included telekinesis as well, so he could mentally untie the man's shoelaces or make his cigar fall into his lap. Instead, he said, "Tell me, Captain Lucas-just how much do you value your credibility here at the Buffalo Police Department?"

Lucas looked confused, a little apprehensive. "What are you talking about?"

Ryerson shrugged; he hated doing this, he thought a person's private life should indeed remain private, but for some reason this man bore him a lot of animosity, and if the man had his way, Ryerson would probably sit in the holding cell until Christmas. He said, "What I'm talking about, Captain, is what you do at night. At"-he paused, probed about in the psychic atmosphere-"at Ed's Place."

Lucas grinned broadly. "Ain't no Ed's Place in Buffalo, my friend." He put his hands palm down on the bed, as if preparing to stand.

Ryerson went on. "The name of the place doesn't matter much. Whatever it's called, it's what you do there that gives you such a kick, isn't it?"

Lucas hissed, "You son of a bitch!"

Ryerson shook his head. "No, Captain. I just want to get out of here, that's all. And if I have to blackmail you to do it, then I will."

Lucas's cheeks puffed several times with anger and frustration. Finally, he pushed himself violently to his feet, went to the cell door, barked, "Guard! Guard!" glanced around at Ryerson, and said very succinctly-through lips tightly clenched with anger-"You'll be free as soon as I can clear the paperwork. Just don't leave the city."

"I have no intention of leaving the city," Ryerson said. "I've got business to attend to here."

Then the guard came and let the captain out.

Ryerson sighed. He thought that the years he'd spent gambling-which seemed to have gone hand in hand with his drinking-had paid off; at least he'd learned how to bluff. Because what he'd read from Captain Lucas had merely been vague-only that Lucas went to a bar on certain nights and while he was there he did something that made him feel ashamed. Ryerson had read no more than that. He didn't think he'd have been able to, anyway, because whatever it was that Lucas did at the bar made him feel so very ashamed that he pushed it far back into his consciousness and let it lie hidden most of the time.

At 11:00 that morning Ryerson was let out of the holding cell. He located the police matron-who was getting ready to go home-got Creosote back, was told by the desk sergeant that the Woody was at the Buffalo Impound Garage, five blocks away, and was reminded one more time by a growling Captain Lucas, "I don't care what you think you know about me, ace; if you try to go back to Boston or whatever damned hole you climbed out of, I'll haul your bare ass back here personally."

It was 11:25 A.M. when Lucas gave Ryerson this warning.

Not quite five minutes later Laurie Drake, in Room 12 of the hospital wing of the Buffalo City Jail, began to suffer the torments of the damned.

~ * ~

The thing inside Laurie had no color, or shape, or smell, but it did have mass, though very little of it, and weight, about a quarter of a gram, and it traveled about in her veins like a blood clot. Most of the time in the past two months, ever since, on a dare, she'd gone at night into the area called "The District," she had had no idea she was playing host to it; she'd felt a vague discomfort now and again, or her belly ached, and she would think that she was at last beginning to have her period.