T. Wright - The Changing

They evaporated. They did that, as if on command, when something startled him or when he got a telephone call in bed. And on the very rare occasions when he had a woman in bed with him, they made no appearance at all, which he appreciated.

He sat bolt upright in the bed. He hadn't heard movement elsewhere in the house so much as he'd felt it, as if something were being dragged up the stairs. "Who is it?" he called, and reached instinctively for the thirty-eight Smith and Wesson he kept in the nightstand near his bed. There was no reply. He whispered, "Damn it!" and wished the rain would stop so he could hear better. He tossed the blanket off and swung his feet to the floor. He was dressed in pajama bottoms but no top; a shiver went through him because the room had gotten chilly from the cold front that had brought the rain. He moved with much more grace and speed than a man his size, feeling the way he did, would be expected to move, to the bedroom door, stood to the right of it, and listened. Yes, he could hear it now. A slow, methodical dragging sound, as if someone with a bad leg were moving toward the bedroom down the hall.

Junkie, he thought, though that, he knew, would be a first for this neighborhood. But hell, there was a first time for everything, wasn't there?

"Where's the light switch?" Ryerson Biergarten asked, fumbling to the left inside the door to Douglas Miller's apartment. The old man-on the way up the stairs he had introduced himself as Ira Cole, the house's owner-said, from behind Ryerson, "Ain't got no overhead light. You got to use the one on the desk."

The large room was very dark. Ryerson could make out only vague, amorphic shapes in it a table, he guessed, a small couch, a chair, and to the left against the west wall, what looked like a desk. He went to it, groped some more; his hand hit a metal lampshade hard; he cursed at the sudden pain in his knuckles.

Ira Cole called, "You think you're gonna be long, mister? Like I said, remember, you can look but I can't letcha do more than that without a warrant, not without Douglas's permission, you know-"

After what seemed like an eternity, Ryerson found the switch on the desk lamp. He turned it on. Behind him, Ira Cole droned, "Got to respect a person's privacy, you know. Got to give a person the benefit of the doubt-"

"Your phone!" Ryerson snapped.

"My phone?" Ira Cole said, surprised.

"Yes! Where is your phone?!"

"It's… down… downstairs," the old man stammered. "It's down in my… apartment. You wanta use it? You can… you can use it-"

But by then, Ryerson was pushing past him and was heading for the stairs.

McCabe realized that his nausea and headache were going away. He knew why. It was because he had stopped malingering and was doing his job again. He was catching the bad guys. He was laying in wait for the bad guys. He was a being a cop, and it felt good. Christ, it had been a long time, a long, long time since he'd felt so good, so alive, so necessary…

There was a phone on the nightstand next to the bed. It rang. McCabe snapped his gaze toward it. For Christ's sake, what a hell of a time for the phone to ring; how the fuck was he going to hear anything?!

And in the semi-darkness, as the rain pelted the windows, he didn't see the hint of a shadow on the hallway wall opposite the bedroom door. Didn't see it because he wasn't looking at it. He was looking disbelievingly, angrily at the phone.

It continued to ring. McCabe mouthed at it, "Shut up, Goddamnit!"

And realized in that instant that he was allowing himself to become distracted, that he had stopped paying attention to the problem at hand, that here and now he had to work with what little he had-the failing light, the continuous rushing noise of the rain, the heavy dragging sound of the thing in the hallway

The phone stopped ringing.

He caught his breath. He whispered a tight, vicious curse, one that had fear in it. Because he couldn't hear that dragging sound anymore. He could hear only the rain and the quick, thumping sound of his pulse in his ears, which was itself too loud, he thought frantically, too fucking loud…

And he could hear something else. Something breathing in a slow and labored way. Something that had as much pain, he knew, as he had fear. He could hear that pain; it was so clear in the ragged, labored breathing. Then, abruptly, it stopped, too.

And he could see what he supposed was the shadow of a tall chest of drawers he kept in the hallway with various odds and ends on it-shaving stuff, a broken lamp, a photograph in an eight-by-ten frame …

The phone started to ring again.

And McCabe imagined someone at the other end of the line repeating again and again, Answer it, answer it, answer it – And with the quickness of light, moved by its own incredible pain and its soul-tearing need, the thing that had invaded McCabe's home reached around the doorway and grabbed McCabe's protruding belly and ripped desperately at it.

When Ryerson Biergarten got to Tom McCabe's house, he saw what he had expected to see; the line of police cars, the ambulance, the drone of people responding to an emergency with practiced and skillful efficiency. Because when he had listened to McCabe's phone ring over and over again, he had felt the low rumble of panic starting, the eruption of pain, the frenzy, the frenzy… And even ten miles away he had felt McCabe's pain, McCabe's agonized scream had erupted from his throat-and then he had pushed a startled Ira Cole to the top of the stairway and almost down it, though he'd caught himself in time; "Reese's Pieces!" Cole had muttered, which was his own way of cursing. So Ryerson wasted no time being startled by what he saw at McCabe's house. Instead he moved immediately toward the ambulance, which was just then receiving the stretcher with McCabe on it. A cop stopped him. "That's far enough," the cop said.

Ryerson decided not to argue with him. He asked, "Just tell me this; is he dead or is he alive?”

“Who are you?"

Ryerson felt his temper flaring, fought it back. "I'm a friend. And that's all I want to know; is he dead or is he-"

"He's alive. Barely."

The ambulance pulled away, siren blaring.

"Thank God," Ryerson breathed. And he over-heard from nearby a woman who was apparently one of McCabe's neighbors talking to a detective. "He just came running out of that house with this, this.. . thing chasing after him, and he fell down, right there"-she pointed at a spot on the lawn midway from the house to the street-"and he just

… twitched."

"What hospital?" Ryerson asked the cop. "Highland," said the cop. "Who'd you say you were again?"

"A friend," Ryerson answered, hoping it was enough. "A good friend." And he went back to his old Ford, hesitated briefly, trying to decide what exactly he wanted to do, and drove back to the Samuelson Guest House.

It was not confusion that made Douglas Miller sit so stiffly, as if paralyzed, hands gripping the arms of the hard plastic seat at the Trailways Bus Station half a mile north of downtown Rochester. It was not confusion. It was stark and terrifying knowledge. Self-knowledge. Awareness: God in heaven-this is what I am! I'm not human at all! This is what I am!

He was fighting that knowledge, of course. He'd fought it for two months now, as the thing inside him-the thing that poor, damned Lila Curtis had unwittingly shared with him, the thing that had weight and substance-as that thing had grown inside him, had gained strength inside him until now he, Douglas Miller, didn't need the rationale, the mythical excuse, of the image of the full moon to let it loose. To give it the control it wanted. To give it himself, when it wanted.

And there was another realization hitting him. Another bit of awful knowledge to push back.