It was so sudden, so loud, that Selma Conroy screamed. She recoiled from the sound as if it had tried to bite her.
Homer smiled at that. He looked from the phone to Selma and back again. The phone was on the counter in the kitchen. It rang a second time.
“You going to get that?” he asked calmly.
“No.”
“You should. It could be that reporter again. Don’t want to make them suspicious.”
Selma stared at him as the phone rang a third time.
“Go ahead,” Homer prompted.
Selma reached out for the wooden chair that stood in the corner. She pulled herself up slowly, her joints creaking and popping.
“You got old,” Homer said.
She said nothing, grunting with the effort. The phone rang again and again before she tottered into the kitchen and picked it up.
“Hello?”
There was no sound behind her, nothing to let her know that Homer had also gotten up, but suddenly he was there, his body pressing against her. When he was a baby his skin was always furnace hot. Now he was cold. So cold.
“I would like to speak with Selma Conroy,” said a voice. A stranger’s voice. Male, accented. And hesitant.
“This is she,” murmured Selma, her voice still small. “Who’s calling, please?”
Homer bent close to listen. Selma could barely feel his breath, but what little there was stank of corruption. It was like the open mouth of a sewer.
The caller said, “My name is Dr. Herman Volker from the State Correctional Institution at Rockview.”
The breath caught in Selma’s throat.
“I would like to speak with you about Homer Gibbon.”
The breath in Selma’s throat wanted to burst out of her as a scream. God, how she needed to scream.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
ON THE ROAD
STEBBINS COUNTY
Trout called Marcia to get an update on the Volker research and put the call on speaker.
“Marcia, we got what you sent but—”
She cut him off. “Where are you idiots?”
“Heading to Dr. Volker’s place. Why, what’s up?”
“I don’t know but all hell seems to be breaking loose around here. I called you a dozen times. Murray’s been on my ass about you. The police are keeping it off the regular channels, but all I hear are sirens, and Nell over at the diner says that about a dozen state police cars and half as many ambulances have gone by in the last fifteen minutes.”
“Heading where?”
“Doc Hartnup’s. Whatever’s going on there is getting worse.”
“I know,” Trout said. “I can try going back there, but Dez will just run me off again.”
“Mm,” grunted Marcia. “I still can’t understand what you see in that piece of trailer trash. I mean, sure, she’s got the body and the face, but she is seriously damaged goods. You’d need to win the lottery just to pay her therapy bills. Providing she ever got her head out of her ass long enough to go to therapy.”
“Jealousy is an ugly thing, Marcia.”
Marcia snorted and hung up.
A line of National Guard troop trucks passed them, heading south. Trout counted thirty of them.
“Lot of men for flood control,” said Goat.
“No shit,” agreed Trout. He said nothing for a few seconds, then he punched in another number. He did not put this call on speaker. It rang three times, and he was rehearsing what he was going to leave on the voice mail when a voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Dez…?”
A pause. “I don’t have time for this, Billy.”
“No, don’t hang up. Listen, Marcia’s been telling me that some weird stuff’s been happening at Doc’s. Or at least in town somewhere.”
“That’s none of your—”
“Stop,” he said. “I’m not calling for a story. I … just wanted to see if you’re all right. She said there were ambulances and all.”
A much longer pause.
“Dez?”
“Why?” she asked.
“Come on, Dez … don’t be like that.”
“I’m working here, Billy.”
“I know … that’s the point. You’re on the job and something bad is happening. I need to know you’re okay.”
This time the pause was so long that Trout had to check the screen display to make sure the call was still connected.
Dez said, “I’m … not injured.”
It was the same thing she’d said earlier and it was a funny way to phrase it. It felt awkward and evasive to Trout.
“You sure?”
“I’m fine, Billy,” she snapped, then she took a breath and said it again. This time it was a softer voice than he’d heard her use in months. “Really, Billy. I’m okay.”
Trout relaxed by half a degree. “JT?”
“We’re both good,” she said, and before Trout could say another word, Dez hung up.
Trout held the phone in his palm, weighing it, wondering if he could throw it all the way through the windshield. Beside him, Goat was studying him and for once he wasn’t wearing a joker’s smile.
“Everything cool?” Goat asked.
Trout shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t think it is.”
Raindrops began spattering on the windshield as they made a right and drove under a stone arch that read GREEN GATES 55-PLUS COMMUNITY.
Below that, in painted script, it read LEAVE ALL YOUR TROUBLES BEHIND.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
HART COTTAGE
Lee Hartnup stood in the shadows of his family house and watched the officer die.
Because he did not need to breathe, he was able to scream continually the whole time, from first bite until the thing that was his body turned away from the lifeless meat.
He did not understand that.
The thing fed on anything it could catch. People, animals, insects crawling on trees. It fed, tearing each living being apart, drinking the blood, eating the flesh, gnawing bones. And then it stopped. Floating in the inner darkness but still connected to every nerve and sensation, he could tell that it was not a feeling of satiation that compelled the monster to stop feeding. The hunger that lived inside this hollow man was insatiable, vast and eternal. And yet it stopped.
Why?
His body let the policeman’s corpse slide down the side of the house and sprawl in an ungainly tangle of limbs.
Why discard it? Why stop eating when there was so much meat left?
And at that thought—at the fact that this thought came from his own mind—the screaming started again.
The body moved. It shambled toward the front porch steps, moving awkwardly as rigor mortis took a greater hold over each joint.
Please, he begged, let it stop me completely. That was his only hope now, that the death stiffness would freeze his body and stop it from doing these terrible things. He had no way of telling time, but he knew that rigor began setting in about three hours after death. Rigor was growing in him quickly. But it would take up to twelve hours for it to reach its peak, and then it would last for three days.
Three days.
Surely if rigor made this lumbering monster fall and lie stiffly in the grass someone would find him within three days. Find him, and do what was necessary to stop this. Bury him. Dissect him. Burn him.
Please … anything!
He would welcome any death, any true death, no matter how painful or protracted, as long as it stopped this.
At the bottom step the thing’s feet hit the wooden riser and rebounded. Hartnup tried to listen inside that darkness for some trace of a mind, of a presence. If something was there, if there was some consciousness or spirit—even that of a ghost or demon or whatever had done this to him—then perhaps he could reason with it. Bargain with it.
The right leg bent at the knee and the foot rose over the riser and thumped down on the bottom step.
Hartnup felt it happen but nowhere in this vast darkness could he detect the slightest trace of a directing intelligence.
What was making the legs move? What allowed this thing to encounter the problem of an obstacle like stairs and come up with the solution of stepping up? Even a newborn baby could not do that. This thing has less consciousness than an infant, so how—how—HOW—was it doing this?
His rational mind tore itself to pieces trying to solve that.
The dead thing took a second step, a third, and then it was on the porch, facing the front door.
With a burst of terror more profound than anything he had so far experienced, Hartnup knew what door this was. Just as he knew what unbearable horror lay behind it.
Through the closed window he heard the sound of voices. Two women. One was a stranger. The other.
April.
His sister.
And the laughter of children.
The thing raised a hand and pounded on the door. It was limp, almost completely slack, but it was loud.
“Hey, Ken—did you lock yourself out?”
The other woman’s voice, coming close, a trace of laughter in her words.
The creature pounded again. And again.
And then the door opened.
Hartnup begged God to let him die for real and for good and to not have to be a witness to this.
His loudest cry was as silent as death, and not even God heard him.
Hartnup tried to scream loud enough to drown out the other screams that now filled the air. He tried.
He tried.
He tried.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
GREEN GATES 55-PLUS COMMUNITY
Dr. Volker surprised them by answering the door after the first knock. He pulled it open abruptly as if he intended to spring out at them, but then he froze, his eyes narrowed and suspicious.
“Who are you?”
Trout smiled. “We spoke on the phone earlier, doctor. I’m Billy Trout, Regional Satellite News.”
Volker was in his late sixties. Beyond retirement age. His sharp German features were softened by age, his blond hair thinned to a pale rime. He wore a thick velour bathrobe and one hand was buried to the wrist in one deep pocket. The pocket sagged under a heavy weight, and Trout suddenly felt his testicles climb up inside his pelvis.