Tim Curran - The Devil Next Door

He hoped so.

For the idea of becoming some primal beast was frightening. The idea that he might get “infected,” might become something like Dick Starling.

Because if that happened…what might he do to Macy?

Louis shook it from his head, trying to tell himself that Earl Gould was nothing but a crazy old crackpot whose brain was soft from too much research, too many crazy old books.

But he didn’t believe it for a minute…

When Rosemary Kittery, the mother of Shannon Kittery-Macy’s old pal- tried to lock up K amp; G Apparel on Main that evening just after eight, three men came in and they had other ideas. She was hanging the CLOSED sign on the door and they burst right through it, nearly knocking her on her ass.

So much for subtlety.

Right away, Rosemary knew she’d made a godawful mistake by not just closing the doors at four or even five. Things were happening in town. Maybe you could, like Rosemary, tell yourself different, but the proof was in the pudding. The pudding in this case being two cops in dirty, ragged uniforms. Then a third whose uniform was unbuttoned, his bare chest and face painted up with what looked like blood. Like warpaint as if he were some fanatical Kiowa warrior preparing to die in battle.

Rosemary swallowed, doing her best not to scream outright.

“Evening,” said the older of the three. He had white hair and a crooked mouth, a perfectly lopsided mouth truth be told. “Sorry to barge in on you, Miss…”

“Kittery, Rosemary Kittery,” she said in a weak voice, not knowing what else she could say. But she knew she had to keep calm. Show no fear. These three were crazy, but she had to act like they were not. “Is…is there a problem?”

“She wants to know if there’s a problem,” the painted warrior said, a tall muscular fellow with blank eyes. “Don’t that beat all.”

The other cop, short and fat with a porcine face, just shook his head. “You see it all in this job.”

The white-haired cop ignored them. “I’m Sergeant Warren,” he said. “These two are Shaw and Kojozian. Don’t pay ‘em any mind. Last thing you want to do with a couple sick bastards like this is pay them the slightest attention. You do…well, look out.”

“Yeah, look out,” Shaw said.

Kojozian chuckled. “The Sarge is right, ma’am, you get me going and I’m a real barrel of fucking monkeys. I lose control, I like to start putting my hands on people, you know? Sometimes I touch ‘em in all the wrong places. I’m funny like that.”

“For chrissake,” Shaw said, “you’re gonna scare her. She don’t need to know about that. Don’t you pay him no mind, ma’am.”

Rosemary, a slight blonde woman pushing forty who still maintained her varsity cheerleader figure, blinked her big blue eyes a few times. “I won’t,” she said.

Dear Christ, look at their eyes.

Just look at their eyes.

Something was missing there and something else had taken its place.

“Both of you shut up,” Warren said. “We’re here on business. If anybody’s gonna paw up this broad it’ll be me.” He smiled at her. “No offense, ma’am.”

Okay, this was not good.

Rosemary had seen this one before, this Warren. Maybe in the paper or around town. He’d been a cop forever. At first she hadn’t recognized him. It was as if he’d undergone some subtle change…maybe his face was too long or too wide, his eyes too sunken. It was there, something was. Looking at him and the other two, she knew she had to play this cool, play it natural. Because there was no getting around the condition of their uniforms or the fact that they were stained with blood. A lot of blood. What she thought were freckles on Warren’s face were not freckles at all.

She smiled thinly, wanting very much to scream. “Well, you said you were here on business. How can I help you?”

“She wants to know how she can help us,” Kojozian said.

“Maybe you ought to show her,” Shaw said.

Warren sighed and lit a cigarette. “Why don’t the both of you pipe down? Thing is, ma’am, our uniforms are looking pretty bad. And we’re cops, you know? We have to keep the peace and Greenlawn don’t want its peace-keepers parading around in rags like this. We were eyeing up those trenchcoats in the window, the khaki ones. They look pretty smart.”

Rosemary just stood there, their eyes on her. They did not blink. They did not do anything other than burn holes right through her. “Well,” she finally said. “Why don’t you try them on?”

“Yeah, that’s what we were thinking,” Warren said.

Shaw and Kojozian knocked displays out of the way getting to the trenchcoats in the window and all Rosemary did was keep smiling. It seemed that her smile was painted on. She didn’t think she could have pulled her mouth out of it even if she wanted to.

The cops put on the trenchcoats right over their ragged uniforms. Warren’s fit him all right, but the other two were big men and they couldn’t begin to get them on. Kojozian tried damn hard, splitting open a few seams in the process.

“Look what you did!” Warren said.

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Rosemary said. “You need bigger sizes is all. I have a couple more in the back room. I’ll get them. Try on some hats while you wait.”

They bought it, seemed to be buying it.

“Do what the lady says,” Shaw told the other two. “Goddamn monkeys.”

She went into the back room at a leisurely pace, humming under her breath, taking the time to straighten a display of shoes as she went. She was good, she knew she was good. She’d been in the high school drama club and it certainly showed. In the back room, she moved around some boxes so it sounded like she was doing something. She could hear them muttering to themselves, admiring Warren’s trenchcoat. It was hot and muggy out there and they wanted trenchcoats. God.

Breathing hard, Rosemary slipped out to the loading dock and opened the back door. She could still hear them. They were arguing. While they were thus engaged, she slipped out the rear door, closing it quietly behind her. Oh, it was going to work, she was really going to escape and she knew it.

The heat of the day hit her as soon as she stepped out into the alley.

She jogged around the side of the loading dock and they were waiting for her.

Not the cops.

No, the children.

Maybe not children exactly, but teenagers.

Fifteen or twenty of them and they all looked like the cops…bloody, faces streaked with grime. She recognized more than a few of them from school, from parties Shannon had had. Holly Summer and Janet Weiss, Kalen Archambeau and Brittany Starling. Sure, the gang was all here. Tommy Sidel, Shannon’s boyfriend, was even there. All the girls from school. And Tommy. That was not only strange, but disturbing. But what was even worse was that they were all naked.

Completely naked.

Rosemary opened her mouth to say something, but she knew it was probably pointless. Their eyes were simply dead, their faces pale, their mouths grinning.

She tried to move past them and they tightened their circle, staring and staring. And those faces, dear God, just bleached of anything remotely human. A few of them were drooling and more than a few had dried blood smeared around their mouths as if they’d been chewing on raw meat.

“Please,” Rosemary said. “I need to get past.”

But they stood their ground.

Behind them was a huge pile of rubble. It was the remains of Hobson’s Shoes that had burned down the winter before and finally been demolished. The kids all had chunks of red brick in both hands. Good size pieces, broken and jagged.

“Tommy,” Rosemary said. “Let me go, okay? We’ll go home and see Shannon, all right?”