T. Wright - The Devouring

Benny cocked his head and looked quizzically at her. "What are you doing?" he asked.

Her mouth closed, opened, closed, opened. Small gurgling sounds came from her.

Benny cocked his head the other way. "Are you hurt?" he asked. A sudden scorching pain ripped into his belly; he doubled over. "No," he whispered. "Please, no!"

~ * ~

At that same moment, at the home of Lilian and Frank Janus, Captain Jack Lucas was saying, "Jesus, this is making me sick."

"Yeah," said Detective Mallory, "tell me about it."

"I mean it," Lucas said. "I gotta get outta here," and he pushed his way out of the Janus's bathroom, through the bedroom, and into the hallway.

In the bathroom Guy Mallory adjusted the blanket that covered Lilian Janus to her neck. She was in the fetal position; her thumb was in her mouth; the bandages at the side of her face had been torn halfway off-probably, Mallory supposed, by the woman herself-revealing the dead white skin beneath. The woman's open eyes were glazed over, as if by a nictitating membrane, although as he watched her, Mallory could see them move occasionally, as if she were watching a dream play itself out.

Mallory shook his head. "What the hell is going on here?" he asked no one in particular.

And Detective Andrew Spurling, standing in the bathroom doorway, said, "Captain's getting a little squeamish in his old age." He chuckled.

Mallory turned his head, fixed him with a stern gaze. "Haven't you got something to do, Detective?" he said.

Spurling, looking offended, answered in a tone of ill-disguised surliness, "You talking to me?"

"What did you say?" Mallory barked; he and Spurling were friends, after a fashion. They'd downed a few beers together, had bullshitted together, and their relationship was usually casual and cooperative. Mallory, however, had a very well developed sense of command, and Spurling's sudden change in attitude had taken him by surprise.

Spurling answered, "I asked if you were talking to me. If you were talking to me, Ser geant Mallory, then you'd best show a little respect."

Mallory was very quick. He stepped forward, grabbed Spurling by the collar, lifted him so he was on his tiptoes, and growled, "If you ever talk to me like that again, Detective, not only will I see to it that you're busted to patrolman, but I will personally break your jaw. Do you understand that? Nod once if you do."

Spurling hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. Mallory let go of his collar. "Good," he said, "now go and do whatever it is you were hired to do." He looked past Spurling at Officer McGuire. "McGuire, where the hell is the damned ambulance?"

And McGuire, who lately seemed to have lots of answers, responded, "It's just parking out front now, Sergeant."

~ * ~

Ryerson Biergarten asked the same desk sergeant he'd talked to the previous morning, "What call is Captain Lucas on? Where?"

And the sergeant, smiling, answered, "What are you going to do-go and watch?"

Ryerson took a breath, counted to three silently, then said, calling up his most authoritarian tones, "This is a matter of life and death, Sergeant. If you don't cooperate with me-" He stopped. When he went on a moment later, his authoritarian tone had changed to one of urgency. "Where on Ormond Street is he? What number?"

The sergeant was flabbergasted. "I-I never said anything . . ." He turned to the uniformed cops behind him. "Hey, you guys are witnesses, I never said anything to him about where the captain is; you'll vouch for me, right?"

The uniformed cops, a half-dozen of them, all looked up in unison, and confusion.

"Never mind," Ryerson said, "I know where to find him." And, with Creosote tucked under his arm, he went to his Woody, parked in front of the station, and drove north, toward Ormond Street, and the house where Lilian and Frank Janus used to live.

~ * ~

"Spurling?" called Guy Mallory from the bathroom of the Janus house; two ambulance attendants had just lifted Lilian Janus onto a stretcher. "Coming through," said the lead man, and Mallory stepped out of their way, into the bedroom. "Spurling?" he called again.

Officer McGuire, standing guard near the bedroom door, offered, "He left a few minutes ago, Sergeant."

"He left a few minutes ago?" Mallory was incredulous. "Did he say where in the hell he was going?"

McGuire nodded. "Yes, sir. He had to use the john downstairs, sir."

"Uh-huh," Mallory said. "And how about Captain Lucas?"

"He left the house, sir."

Mallory fumed, "What is this-the Keystone Kops?"

"Yes, sir," McGuire said.

"Are you trying to be funny, Officer?"

"No, sir."

Mallory nodded at Frank Janus's naked body in front of the bed. "Cover that, would you, McGuire," he said.

"Forensics hasn't been through here yet, sir."

Mallory rolled his eyes. "Everyone's an expert!" he whispered.

"Yes, sir," McGuire said.

There were several people in the room-a police photographer who was stepping gingerly around to line up shots, a technician just beginning to dust everything in the room for fingerprints, a woman kneeling over what had been incorrectly presumed to be the corpse of Lilian Janus; the woman had a small glass specimen holder in one hand and what looked like a flat-bladed scalpel in the other; she was scraping the inside of the corpse's left arm with it.

"Uh, miss?" Mallory said.

McGuire offered, "She's with the M.E.'s office, Sergeant."

"I'll ask the questions, McGuire."

"Yes, sir."

The woman looked around at Mallory. "I am with the Medical Examiner's Office, Detective."

"Okay," Mallory said, "but would you mind telling me what the hell you're doing? You've got the body-what in God's name would you need with-"

"They're fresh," the woman said, smiling an apology for interrupting him. "The scrapings are fresh tissue, more or less. It's going to be another hour, maybe two, before the M.E. starts his autopsy, and by then this body will be well into the process of degeneration. Cellular structure is very fragile, Detective, especially if you intend to do the kinds of tests with it that we think are going to be required. What we've got here is something very, very strange."

Spurling appeared in the doorway and stopped next to McGuire. McGuire said, "Yes, sir,” and Spurling looked confusedly at him; then he grinned, pleased. "You're a good man, McGuire," he said.

"Yes, sir," McGuire said, and the heel of his foot hit the floor.

Mallory called sharply, "You're not in the army here, McGuire. Loosen up."

"Yes, sir," McGuire said.

"And cut out the damned 'yes sirs' and `no sirs.'

"Certainly," McGuire said.

Spurling said, "There's some bozo downstairs looking for Captain Lucas."

Ryerson, standing on the sidewalk halfway to the front porch steps at the Janus home, was fighting to maintain some appearance of composure and normalcy.

It was a difficult fight, but so far he was winning it.

Most of those around him were uniformed cops. Pat Farrel, the reporter for the Buffalo Evening News , was there, too, waiting impatiently for word from someone on what was going on. "Mr. Biergarten," he'd said when Ryerson had appeared at the house and had asked one of the uniforms if he could see Captain Lucas, "what would interest a psychic investigator here? Does this have some-thing to do with that 'psychic storm' you talked about two days ago?" and Ryerson had been forced by what he was seeing to ignore him.

The Janus home was in a fashionable west side neighborhood. It was a big, cedar-sided contemporary house surrounded by similar houses. The lawn was elegantly manicured, the landscaping a tad ostentatious, though not overbearing, and the whole effect was one of calculated neatness, and taste.