Andrew Neiderman - Deficiency

But something very unexpected happened when he began to make love to Paula Gilbert. He had a need he had been unaware of until he was actually making love to her. Usually, this was a feeling he experienced before he went looking for prey. Something in his body always first sent signals to his brain to tell him to go on a hunt. He hadn't had any such signal all night. What was going on?

Why were his periods of contentment getting shorter and shorter? At this rate, he'd be hunting day and night and never have a rest. It was like those batteries running cell phones and the like, he thought. After time, they held a charge for less periods of time and had to be recharged so often, it was cheaper or easier to throw them away and start with a new one.

But how was he to do that? He couldn't throw away his body and start with a new one, could he?

Or could he?

Something was rising toward the surface of his memory. He sat in the dark and waited patiently for it to break out. It was coming, coming up out of his past. Something to do with his body. What?

It stopped coming up.

He grimaced as if he could squeeze his brain like an orange and force the memories to drip out.

It was sinking again, going deeper and deeper into the blackness. Wait, he wanted to shout. Don't give up. Come back to me.

Tell me who I am.

Exhausted with the effort, he finally gave up and started the engine of his vehicle. Paula was still in the rear seat, breathing with such great difficulty, he could hear her gasps clearly. The sound was haunting him.

"Stop it!" he screamed at her. "Just die quietly like the others." It occurred to him that he had never spent this much time with a woman afterward. He would take what he needed and leave them. It was his own fault now, of course. He had taken her in his car. He could have left her on the side of the road, he realized, left her in the bushes by the lake if she had begun to die immediately.

For a while he was surprised by what happened but she didn't show signs of anything detrimental, so he told her to dress and he would take her back to her car. She was quiet, but he interpreted that simply as her sense of contentment. Let her savor the lovemaking, he thought proudly.

Then he looked into the rearview mirror and saw she basically hadn't moved.

"Get dressed. We'll be back at the tavern soon," he ordered. She didn't respond so he pulled over to the side of the road and leaned over the front seat. He flipped on the overhead light and saw what was happening.

"Damn it," he shouted at her as if it was entirely her fault. Cars whizzed by, even at this hour. He was back on a busy highway. A few hundred yards down was the first of those houses he had pointed out to her on the way to the dam. So he turned around, shifted into drive, and shot forward, now speeding toward the tavern. When he arrived, he saw a pickup truck with three men crowded in the cab pulling out of the lot. He waited until they were gone and then he drove in, pulled alongside her car, and deposited her in the front seat. He flung her clothes into the rear of her car, got back into his, and drove off thinking maybe no one would find her until morning at least and by then it would be far too late. She would be unable to tell anyone about him, not that anyone would believe her if she did.

When he pulled into the driveway of the rooming house, he hesitated before driving around back. There was something stuck in the front door, a piece of paper. It waved gently in the breeze. He looked around cautiously, his sixth sense triggered like the instinct of a wild animal. He could practically smell the presence of someone else. It was faint. Whoever it was had been here and gone. He got out of his car, leaving the engine running, and went to the door to pull the sheet out from between the screen door and the front door. It was from the minister, a Reverend Dobson.

Dear Mrs. Martin,

I hope you are all right. I came by to comfort you and discuss the funeral to see if there was anything special you would like me to do. Please call me as soon as you can.

God Bless,

Reverend Dobson

He had forgotten about that; he had forgotten there would be a funeral. How stupid of him. He was taking too much pleasure in all this and making too many mistakes. Of course, he would have to leave this place now. There was no doubt anymore. He really was enjoying the area, the peacefulness, the easy pickings. He had been feeling like a fox in a rabbit warren. All he had to do when he was hungry was reach out.

After he parked his car behind the house, he went in through the backdoor and up the stairs. He went to the old lady's bedroom and looked in on her corpse again almost as if he had expected she had moved.

"Thanks," he said. "Now I have to go."

Blaming her made him feel better even though he knew how ridiculous it was. He felt drunk, intoxicated. The evening had been full of ups and downs and it left him giddy. He might even have trouble sleeping, he thought. He was too wired.

He went to his room and packed his bag reluctantly. This place was really very comfortable and he had so looked forward to the morning, to sitting by the lake. It had been so relaxing. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. It was the old lady's fault. If she hadn't been so pathetic, he wouldn't have killed her.

Of course you would have, he told himself. She would have pointed you out. You had to be sure she couldn't do that.

He continued to argue with himself, even considering remaining one more day, and then, suddenly, it began as always, a slight ringing in his ear. He went to the window and looked into the night.

It was out there... something threatening. It was coming in this direction. He couldn't stay here any longer, no matter what he wanted.

He hurried now and then he rushed out and started down the stairs, still regretting his quick exit. He paused at the foot of the stairs. An idea occurred to him. Confuse the trail, keep whatever it was from following his scent. He went into the kitchen and looked around. The old gas stove was perfect, he thought. Carefully, he prepared the flammable oils and put them in a frying pan. He started the fire and then he let it spread to the molding on the floor. He watched the fire, fascinated with how quickly it invaded the heart of the old wood and crept in behind the walls. He could hear the crackle and the small explosions. The home was as brittle as old bones.

He was saddened by it all as he walked away. By the time he got into his car, he could see the hot illumination in some of the windows. It wouldn't be long, he thought. The fire was ravenous.

He drove away slowly, looking back when either a gas pipe or the heating oil set off an explosion. The flames were crawling out the windows and up the sides of the house now. What a parasite fire is, he thought.

It never occurred to him that he was one too.

"Hey," Steve Battie called to Terri as she was going through the corridor and the emergency room. He was in an examination room. "You've got to stop and see this."

"What do you have?" she asked stepping into the room. The sight before her stopped her cold. Her first thought was it looked like a patient who had overdosed on Coumadin, an anticoagulant drug to help prevent the formation of blood clots in the blood vessels or dissolve them by decreasing the blood's ability to clump together. Because they prevent clotting, they can, if poorly managed, cause severe bleeding.

Terri had never seen a case like this, even in her textbooks. Two lines of blood trickled out of the young woman's eyes like red tears. The trauma appeared all over her body. It looked like an explosion of arteries and veins. There was no question she had intracranial bleeding as well.