T. Wright - The Devouring

But that day, the day of her driving test, Joan knew that something was wrong as soon as Lila got into the car. She could see trouble in her, in her eyes and in the set of her mouth. And every once in a while some-thing tight and cold and miserable leaped from Lila's brain into hers and made her shiver.

"What's wrong?" Joan asked.

And Lila, flashing a pale copy of her usual bright smile, answered, "Just nervous. About the test."

Joan nodded. "Sure. That's understandable, but you've been driving now for three or four months. Just pretend when the examiner sits down there"-she nodded at Lila's side of the seat-"that it's me."

Lila's smile flattened. "Thanks. That's a good idea. I'll do it."

Joan studied her for a few seconds. "What's wrong, Lila?"

Lila, looking straight ahead, answered, "I'm sick, Joan. Oh, God, I'm so sick!"

That had been the beginning of their walk together through hell.

~ * ~

Now, seven months later, after Joan's ill-at-ease feeling had dissipated, there was a soft knock at her front door. She got a twinge of apprehension, no more, then, convincing herself that it was only the paper boy collecting, she went and answered the knock.

Her face dropped when she saw Ryerson Biergarten, Creosote in his arms, standing on the porch. He smiled apologetically. "Am I disturbing you, Joan?"

"Of course you are," she answered, pretending weariness.

His smile faded. "We've got to talk, Joan," he said. "About Lila."

She sighed resignedly, because she'd heard a very firm resolve in his voice. She nodded. "Yes. We do," she said, and backed away from the door to let him into the house.

~ * ~

At the Buffalo Police Department's Records Division

Glen Coffman asked, "What'd you find out at the Evening News last night, Irene?"

She punched a few figures onto an equation she was jumbling, glanced at him. "Nothing. They wouldn't let me in."

Glen smiled, pleased. "Didn't you tell them who you were?"

"Of course I told them who I was. I told them I was a cop, and they-"

"Wait. Who's 'they'?"

"A janitor."

"Oh."

"A wise-ass janitor at that, too. He said if I wanted to get into the building's morgue at that hour, I had to have a warrant. Jesus, everyone's a damned civil libertarian." She sighed. "And I guess there's nothing wrong with that, really. It's just that I hate wasting my time."

"What about your boyfriend?"

"What about him? He wasn't there."

"Didn't the janitor know him?" Glen was smiling; he was clearly enjoying himself.

Irene looked askance at him. "Why don't you get out your Space Wars or your Star Wars or whatever juvenile game you play when you should be working?"

"Don't mind if I do." A pause. "You going back there today, Irene?"

"Yes," she answered.

The woman was sated. And because she was sated, and Laurie's fantasy satisfied, and the incredible need gone, if just temporarily-like the feeling of release that comes after orgasm-Laurie herself should have by now made a reappearance.

But she hadn't.

She lay inside the woman, beaten and weary from battle with her, unable even to cry out again, "Mommy. Help me, Mommy!" She wanted only to fall into a long and dreamless sleep, where she did not have to be a part of this woman, where she did not have to watch the woman animate herself so sensuously and murderously; where she did not have to hear the awful sucking sounds and feel the warm blood coursing into her mouth, and into her throat, and into her belly.

The belly where Gail Newman's bullet had been.

The belly that was torn and bleeding now because of this woman. The belly that threatened to split open and end both their lives.

But there was this, too: The woman had begun to think, to reason. She had changed-because Laurie's fantasies about her had changed-from what had at first been merely an overripe eating machine, to vampire, and now into a sentient being, who, at any moment, could toss the bleeding, dying Laurie Drake inside her away, like some kind of tumor, and go off-a new and separate creature from her host-to do the things that her host's fantasies had told her she must do.

~ * ~

She was wearing clothes that she'd found in the Buffalo City Jail's locker room, a blessedly short distance from where she'd encountered George Orlando, and where his body now lay, a fearsome smile on his face. The clothes were a size smaller than her body required, but that was okay; tight was appealing. She was wearing a long-sleeved white blouse, no bra, a green cardigan sweater that barely took the chill off the early November day, a black, mid-calf-length formfitting skirt, and red high heels. She was a quarter mile east of the jail, on Lawrence Street, in a fashionable and self-important neighborhood of small elite restaurants, and specialty shops-a yuppie's paradise. Around her, men of various ages, and even a few women, turned their heads to stare appreciatively, and she gave some of the men and some of the women a flat, close-mouthed, come-hither smile.

She did not dare open her mouth too wide, of course. As it was, the long, deadly canines within pushed into her lower gums slightly, making it appear, to the casual observer, that she was pouting.

"Hi, Alex?" she heard.

She turned her head to the left and saw a tall, thin, ruggedly handsome man dressed in a blue Chevron mechanic's uniform and matching hat. The man was bending over the open hood of a BMW 320i while the man in the driver's seat read a copy of Fortune magazine in the driver's seat.

The woman stopped walking and gave the mechanic her flat come-hither smile. She opened her mouth slightly. "Alex?" she said, her voice the same velvet drizzle it had been at John and Vera Brownleigh's house three nights earlier.

The man dropped a screw into place on the BMW's carburetor. "You don't remember me, do you?"

"Of course I do," the woman answered, still opening her mouth only a little; she knew instinctively the best answers to give her prey.

"I thought so," the man said. "How could you forget old Jimmy Buck, right?" He tightened the screw, fished another one from a spot in front of the radiator, dropped it into place. He was very good at his work, and it showed in the quick, efficient, graceful way he did it.

"I couldn't," the woman breathed.

And something suspicious passed across the man's brow because he'd just realized that this woman was not the woman he'd been with. "Yeah," he said, "good seeing you." He tightened the screw. "Start 'er up," he yelled, and the thirtyish yuppie male in the driver's seat started the BMW, smiled, and craned his well-coiffed head out the window. "What was the problem, Jimmy?"

"Stuck metering valve," Jimmy answered, and closed the hood. He turned to the woman on the sidewalk. He said, having decided at last that she was merely a hooker out of her usual territory, "Go on home, honey. These people don't want nothin' to do with the likes of you."

She said, pretending offense, "Why don't we let them be the judge of that."

The man in the BMW leaned over toward the driver's window and called in his most casual and unassuming voice-as if he merely wanted to do her a favor-"Going anywhere in particular, miss?"

~ * ~

"You believe in possession," Joan Mott Evans said.

Ryerson Biergarten, Creosote running about near his feet, a soft plastic duck tightly clenched in his teeth, said, "We're all possessed by one thing or another. With some of us it's by our work. With others it's by alcohol or drugs. Why can't a very few of us be possessed by things we don't normally see or touch?" It was the paraphrase of a speech he used to give at his night class in parapsychology at New York University. He felt vaguely foolish and embarrassed now because he thought he sounded stiff and formal, which was precisely the opposite tone that he wanted to strike with this woman. Joan picked up on his embarrassment and decided to let him stew in it for a while. So there was silence for a few moments while Ryerson squirmed a bit, then Joan said, "Possession like in The Exorcist , you mean?"