T. Wright - The Devouring

Ryerson kneeled over what was left of Joan Mott Evans. Her body lay on its back on the bed, arms wide, legs together, as if she were on some invisible cross. And the green night-gown she wore was streaked everywhere with her blood.

Behind him, in the bedroom doorway, the cop breathed, "Jee-sus H. Christ!"

Ryerson, his gaze on Joan's open eyes, waved at him to go away. "Leave us alone," he pleaded.

"I sure as hell will not …"

Ryerson reeled around, his face a mask of agony. "For the love of God, let me say good-bye to her."

The cop hesitated.

Ryerson hurried on. "I won't touch anything. Just, please, let me be alone with her."

The cop said nothing for a few moments. Then, "Sure, pal. Just, like you said, don't touch nothin'. Not her, not nothin'! You understand what I'm saying to you?"

"Yes," Ryerson nodded. "Thank you."

The cop sighed, glanced around the room, then looked at Ryerson again. "Is the phone in the kitchen?"

"No," Ryerson managed, voice trembling. "It's in the living room. It's on an end table."

The cop nodded at Joan. "She your wife?"

"No. A friend."

"Sure," the cop said. "I understand." He gestured toward the living room. "I'll be phoning this in. You got five minutes." A short pause. "Oh, leave the door open, okay?" And he disappeared into the living room.

Ryerson turned back to Joan. He shook his head briskly in disbelief. He whispered, "Why, Joan? My God, why?"

She lay very still.

His eyes scanned the wounds that traced her body like a hundred dark red tattoos; they crisscrossed here, paralleled there, formed a rough circle there, there a rough triangle, there what could have been the letter C , there what looked like the number two. Some of the wounds had let copious amounts of blood, but most were all but dry, and this told Ryerson that thankfully, she had died early in the attack.

Grief was, strangely, a new experience for him. He'd never lost anyone terribly close, except his mother, who had died when he was not yet into his teens. What grief he'd felt since then had been the grief of others-a friend whose father died in an automobile accident, a business acquaintance whose wife died of leukemia. And although their grief bore into him, although there had been moments when he felt their grief almost as strongly as they did, for a quarter of a century he had never faced the prospect of living with grief interminably.

That prospect hit him very hard now. It made him numb and speechless; it made him want to crawl into himself and hide from the obscenity that had happened here.

And it was that need, that compulsion to run from his grief, that nearly made him deaf to her.

Nearly made her words-which vaulted the ever-widening gap between death and life-inaudible.

But even through his grief he heard her, and he said aloud, "Joan?"

Her body did not respond. Her eyes were fixed, her pupils dilated, her heart quiet, her blood was rapidly congealing in her veins. But still she spoke to him. And because she was beyond the limitations that life imposes, she told him many things at once. And he heard them all.

She told him how much she loved him. How much she longed to be with him. How precious their brief time together had been, that she would carry that time with her through eternity. That she had real happiness now, and peace.

And at last she told him that she knew her murderer. She told him, too, that although she knew better now-and he even heard a wry chuckle from her at that-in life she would have said that her murder was just.

And then she was gone.

Ryerson stepped away from the body on the bed. All at once he did not see it as Joan Mott Evans. He saw it as the home where her spirit had lived for a few years. And now her spirit had flown from it.

His gaze lifted and passed slowly about the room. He saw that the debris that littered the lawn and pranced about droolingly in the other rooms and hung from the windows and hunkered around on greasy thighs was nowhere in evidence here.

He said aloud, his voice still trembling, but as much now with hope as with grief, "Good-bye, Joan."

He went into the living room. The cop was there, notepad in hand, one wide-mouthed, gauzy-eyed, translucent demon hanging around his neck; another, a dull burnt orange, was shimmying up his leg on incredibly long, thin arms. The cop nodded toward the bedroom. "You finished?"

Ryerson nodded.

"Are you up to answering a few questions then?"

"Sure," Ryerson answered, and gestured to indicate a short hallway off the living room. "Bathroom first," he said.

The cop shook his head. "I can't let you go in there. I'm sorry. If I let you corrupt the crime scene-" He stopped. "Whatcha gotta do? Take a leak?"

Ryerson nodded.

"Okay, then. But like I said before, don't touch nothin'."

Ryerson started for the bathroom; the cop called after him. "Flush it with your elbow, okay, buddy?"

"Yes, okay," Ryerson said.

"And if you-" He stopped, apparently unsure of himself. He continued. "I'm sorry, but if you … find anything-in the toilet, I mean-let me know before you use it."

"You're very thorough," Ryerson said.

"Sure," the cop said, as if aware he was being humored, and Ryerson went down the hallway to the bathroom.

The cop knocked on the door half a minute later. "Hey, buddy," he called, "on second thought, why don't you go out back or something, okay?"

There was no response. He knocked again. "You hear me, buddy?"

Still nothing. He pushed the door open.

The bathroom was empty.

"Dammit!" Ryerson breathed as the Woody clattered to life. Beneath that clatter he could hear the wail of sirens to the east; he hoped the grisly trail he'd be following did not lead in their direction.

He put the Woody in gear, glanced to his left at the front door of the house, saw the cop appear there and unholster his weapon. He put the accelerator pedal to the floor; the Woody ambled backward and hit the patrol car just behind it with a thud. He desperately put it in first, pulled forward, glanced to his left again. The cop had the gun leveled at him and had assumed a wide-legged, straight-armed stance. "I don't wanta shoot you!" he screeched. Ryerson caught and held the man's gaze. He realized that he was telling the truth-he did indeed not want to shoot, and the chances were only slight that he would. Ryerson put the Woody in reverse, and backed around the patrol car while the cop, maintaining his military stance all the while, duck-walked in a half circle to keep Ryerson in his sights.

Ryerson backed out of the driveway and swung the Woody around so it was facing east. He could see a soft, undulating red glow at the end of the street, beyond the glare of the high beams. But in the light of the high beams themselves, he saw only the street. And that meant that the evil thing that had visited Joan's house had gone in some other direction. He pulled quickly back into the driveway, noted that the cop was still keeping him in his sights. He yelled through the open window at the cop, "Call Captain Lucas. Tell him to meet Ryerson Biergarten at Frank's Place. He knows where it is."

The cop yelled back, "Get out of the car!" and cocked the gun.

Ryerson kept his eyes on him. He realized that the chances were now about fifty-fifty that the cop would fire. "And if you can't get hold of Captain Lucas," he yelled, aware that the wail of sirens was very close now, that he had perhaps thirty seconds before the other cars arrived, "call Guy Mallory and tell him the same thing." And he put the Woody in reverse, backed out of the driveway again, and swung around so he was facing west.

His high beams showed him what he had expected to see-the obscene debris left in the wake of the thing that had visited here lay at random on the street in a kind of zigzagging trail. He floored the accelerator. With aching slowness the Woody clattered off to the west, but not before a bullet tore through the passenger window, then through the windshield, which exploded in a shower of shattered glass. Ryerson felt a dozen or more wounds open on his face and arms.