T. Wright - The Devouring

"Listen," he called to the man in the apartment, "I've got an arrest warrant for Warren Anderson-"

"He ain't here. I told you that!"

"The amount of the check"-another surge of pain went through him, deeper; he doubled over, waited for it to subside. "The amount of the check is just twenty dollars. You pay it, Mr. Anderson, and you're free."

Silence.

"Mr. Anderson?" Spurling coaxed, and realized, with relief, that the pain in his stomach seemed to be subsiding.

"Twenty dollars?" the man called.

"That's all. Shit, if you haven't got it, I'll loan it to you."

"Yeah?"

"Sure." Spurling glanced at the floor; he had seen movement there. His gaze settled on his pants cuffs, which appeared to be hanging over his shoes much more than they usually did. He looked back at the door. "Sure," he called, again. "As long as you promise to pay me back, Mr. Anderson."

"Twenty dollars? That's all it is? Just twenty dollars?"

"That's all, Mr. Anderson. I've got it in my hands right now." Once more he glanced in confusion at his pants cuffs, then at the door again. Strange, he thought, but the apartment number seemed to be higher on the door than it had been five minutes before. "Why don't you do us both a favor, Mr. Anderson, and open up."

And inside the apartment, Warren Anderson wondered if the cop would indeed loan him the twenty dollars to cover the bad check. He opened the door.

And looked down at the kid standing there who was awash in clothes five sizes too large for his eleven-year-old frame.

Anderson muttered, "What in the hell-" and smiled a big smile of deep relief. His smile broadened when the kid produced a gun from inside his suit jacket and pointed it directly at Anderson's forehead. Anderson threw his hands into the air. "Hey, don't shoot me, kid!" he laughed. The kid fired. A .45-caliber bullet tore at a hard angle through Anderson's forehead, into his brain, out the other side, and imbedded itself high on the north wall of Apartment 3C.

~ * ~

At Frank's Place the woman named Doreen was getting off her barstool. "Nice talkin' to ya," she said, took one last tug on her glass of whiskey, called, "Hey, I'll see ya, Sam," to the bartender, who looked over and said, "Yeah, sure."

Then Ryerson asked her, "Who are you?"

"Name's Doreen," the woman answered.

"No, it isn't," Ryerson said, because for just one moment, one half second, the snow he was reading from her had lifted and he had caught a glimpse of something hard and dark and obscene beneath.

The woman smiled coyly. "Whatever I want to call myself, my man, then that's my name. I want to call myself Ginger Rogers, then that's what you gotta call me." She turned her back to him, glanced around. "Nice little dog you got there. Better watch out no one steps on him," and she laughed quickly, and left the bar.

The bartender watched her go, then turned to Ryerson. "That's one nasty dame," he said.

"Yes," Ryerson said, "she is that."

Lilian Janus, dressed in a pink vest and skirt, white blouse, nylons, and white Naturalizers for her part-time job at Sibley's Department Store, had been sitting for two hours on the edge of her bed with her eyes on the naked corpse of her husband. It lay on the floor on its stomach, arms out straight, legs together, feet pointing in opposite directions, head supported by the handsome, cleft chin.

She was noticing for the very first time that the hair on his legs ended abruptly at the tops of his thighs. Practically every other part of his body, even his shoulders and his back, was covered with curly black hair. She remembered how proud he was of that hair; she remembered that he said he looked "manful" with so much hair on his body.

She had already sent her children off to school. They'd asked, "Where's Daddy?" because he was almost never absent from the breakfast table, newspaper in one hand, coffee cup in the other. "He went to work early," she'd explained, which they had readily accepted.

She now had a pair of scissors in her hand. They were a good, sharp pair of hair-cutting scissors that she'd used countless times on her husband's and kids' heads, and she was transferring them from one hand to the other, blade to palm, handle to palm. As she did this, she was remembering the way her husband had tried to seduce her the night before, his erection bobbing up and down as if to beckon her to the bed with it.

"Damned pig!" she hissed at him. "Whoever killed you, I thank them!"

She'd developed a few theories about the murder. Perhaps, while she and Frank were asleep, a burglar had come into the house and had put a knife straight into his heart, just to be safe. Or perhaps Frank had gotten up to fix himself a ham sandwich and as he carried the knife about, he fell on it. That would account for the fact that the point of the knife was now protruding from his back just to the right of his spine.

She got off the bed, kneeled next to Frank's body, and settled back on her heels. She had the hair-cutting scissors clutched tightly in her right hand. She transferred them to her left, leaned forward, and whispered to Frank's corpse, "Even in death you're very manful, aren't you, Frank?"

She had another theory about his murder. It was, she thought, the least likely of all because it involved another woman. His lover.

She'd seen her, briefly, in the mirror over the bathroom sink-a woman with flashing green eyes, an exquisite oval face, and an air of murder and hate that hung about her like a shroud. Lilian had known about that woman for a long time. She'd often seen her in mirrors, though never as clearly as she had last night. She knew that the woman's name also was Lilian, which was not, she thought, a very strange coincidence, because Lilian was a common enough name.

That woman could have killed her husband, she decided.

The woman named Lilian who seemed to exist only in mirrors.

Last night she could have come out of the mirror and shoved a steak knife deep into Frank's heart and then laid his body out straight.

So she, the real Lilian, could cut that awful black hair from him.

She leaned over Frank's back. With the hand that held the scissors she put the tip of her finger to the tip of the knife and pressed on it till a trickle of blood started. She smiled, withdrew the finger, and began to snip.

~ * ~

Ryerson Biergarten said to Joan Mott Evans, "I can't shake it, Joan. It just sits there and I can't shake it."

Joan, seated next to him on the couch, their hands clasped, had a good idea what he was talking about, not only because he'd described it to her-the field of pale blue, the dark gray smudges-but because she could see it, too, after a fashion. Not as clearly as he saw it, it was true. And it didn't stick with her, either; it came and went randomly on waves of psychic interference. But she could sense what he sensed in it-the evil, the threat, the obscenity.

"They're people," Ryerson whispered. "Yes," Joan said.

"People like Lila." He felt Joan's hand tighten. He added, "And Laurie Drake."

"It's always the young ones," Joan whispered.

"I don't think so," Ryerson said. "I don't think age matters. I think it's all in the soul."

She smiled. "You surprise me."

"With talk of the soul? I don't mean to."

"I got the clear idea that you were … antireligious."

He smiled, turned his head slightly to look at her. "I'm not antireligious, Joan. I have my beliefs, like everyone else."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Yes," he said, "I know you are."

She let go of his hand suddenly. "I don't think I could ever get used to that, Rye."

"Get used to what?" he asked, feigning ignorance.

"You know very well what. That … habit you have of looking into people's heads whenever you want."