The Devouring Read online

  What made the experience great for Ryerson was how much intermingling there was—not just the intermingling of bodies, pleasant as that could be, but the intermingling of souls and psyches, too. When for a precious few seconds, the lovers intermingled themselves, their lives, and sum totals. When they opened themselves up and swallowed each other.

  He thought that that was what had happened with Joan Mott Evans, who lay beside him on her bed. She had been lying quietly beside him for a good ten minutes, while her breathing slowed and softened. They were naked on top of a blue quilt; a night-light burned at the other side of the room.

  Ryerson, the first to speak, said, "That was beautiful, Joan."

  She said nothing. He could sense a feeling of comfort and contentment from her. For another minute or so he stayed quiet, then he added, "You're beautiful."

  She covered her hand with his. She whispered, "I think this is the start of something, Rye."

  In the semi-darkness, he said, "I'm smiling."

  "And?" she said.

  "And what?"

  "And anything else, Rye?"

  He nodded. "Oh. Yes." He turned over on his side. She turned, faced him. He lovingly stroked her cheek, her neck, the slope of her breast.

  At the other side of the closed bedroom door, Creosote began to whimper. Ryerson said to Joan, "He and I have grown very attached."

  "Uh-huh," she said. "Well, let's you and me grow attached, okay."

  "I'd like that very much," he whispered.

  ~ * ~

  In Room 1512 of the Buffalo Memorial Hospital, Laurie Drake was still in the fetal position, still had her thumb in her mouthand her eyes open; nearby, a device had been set up to drip a mild salt solution into her eyes every few seconds, so they wouldn't dry out.

  "We're getting some response," said Dr. Wayne Chandler to Guy Mallory.

  "Oh?" Guy said, uncertain what the doctor was referring to and unwilling to let him know it.

  Chandler nodded. "Her EKGs have altered since she was brought in, and now and then she appears to look around the room—moving her eyes only, of course."

  "Of course," Mallory said.

  "Her coma is deep," Chandler went on, "though not so deep that we see no hope for recovery. I do think she'll be with us a good long time. A month, perhaps. Maybe longer."

  Mallory sighed. "Jesus, Doc—"

  "Doctor," Chandler corrected him, then smiled an apology. "I'm sorry—I just have this aversion to 'Doc.' You understand, I'm sure."

  Mallory said, "Yeah, I understand. I was going to say that I've seen a few like her. You know—people in comas, and I have to ask myself what the hell is going on in their heads. Where they are, you know. Because if they're not here, with us, where are they?"

  Chandler nodded. "It's a question all of us ask, Detective. And I wish I could answer it."

  But even Laurie Drake could not have answered that question, because language was beyond her, just as language is beyond any fetus. Which is what she was, essentially. A developing organism, something newly created, not yet whole—regardless of the physical evidence to the contrary. Inside her skull, her brain was struggling to renew itself, but in the process of conception, all that was Laurie Drake had been swept away, and a new Laurie Drake was emerging. Whether she would be as precocious as the old Laurie Drake, whether she would have a predilection for hot fudge sundaes, or would develop an early interest in the opposite sex, or be drawn to horror movies, all as the old Laurie Drake had been, was yet to be seen.

  But that evening, while Ryerson Biergarten again made sweet and soul-consuming love to Joan Mott Evans, and Captain Jack Lucas lovingly cleaned his Colt .45, and Gail Newman slept a fitful sleep, and Detective Andy Spurling went on his shift—despite the awful pains in his stomach—and Lilian Janus kept herself locked in her bathroom, and Benny Bloom dreamed of Nurse Scotti, she—the new Laurie Drake—was destined to be one of the lucky ones.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Following Morning

  Irene Sabitch, in the Records Division of the Buffalo Police Department, asked her coworker Glenn Coffman, "What do you know about Jack Lucas? He's the captain over at the Tenth Precinct."

  Coffman glanced briefly at her from his own monitor. "Not a whole lot. I hear he's an asshole, that's about it." He looked at his monitor again.

  "Well, if he is, he's got good reason for it." Coffman glanced at her again. "Oh? Why's that?"

  She answered simply, "He's dying."

  Coffman shrugged. "That's tough. What of?"

  "Cancer."

  "How do you know?"

  She nodded at her monitor. "It's part of the employee records, so I have access to it."

  "Limited access, Irene. Those records are confidential—"

  "I know that. I wasn't snooping. Too much, anyway. I was only trying to open that damned set of files, and his name came up, so—"

  "How'd his name come up?"

  "It was in the news articles about that murder/suicide in Erie. You remember, Lila Curtis—"

  "So that's her name. Lila." He grinned. "I was pretty close. I said Lily, didn't I?"

  "Yes, you did, congratulations. Anyway, Lucas was down there, in Erie, at the time. Apparently the Erie police chief is a close friend of his and since he was there, anyway, he asked him to help."

  Coffman eyed her silently for several seconds. Then he said, "And you think that screwy user number is his—Lucas's?"

  "I'm almost positive of it."

  Coffman sighed. "Well, for God's sake, Irene, you've got a list of user numbers there; why don't you just find his—"

  "I did that, and it didn't work."

  "Well then, what you do is, you call up this Captain Lucas and you tell him, 'Captain Lucas, I have a disk here that I believe has your user number on it, but the user number on file doesn't work. Was it changed? Did you change it?' "

  She nodded. "I did that, too. He says he doesn't know a damn thing about it—and those were his words exactly. He even ordered me to stop looking into the whole thing."

  "Why in hell would he do that if he doesn't know anything about it? It doesn't make sense."

  "You're very good at stating the obvious, Glen."

  "Uh-huh. So what did you tell him?"

  "I told him okay, I'd close down the file, I'd erase it."

  "And he believed you?"

  "I don't think so. When I got to work this morning, the disk was missing."

  "My God—"

  She smiled, pleased with herself. "Good thing I took the precaution of making a copy."

  ~ * ~

  At the Tenth Precinct

  "Well, where is he then?" Ryerson asked the desk sergeant.

  "Listen," the sergeant answered, "all I know is that Captain Lucas left the building at nine-thirty this morning. He didn't tell me where he was going and I didn't ask."

  Ryerson shifted Creosote from one arm to the other; Creosote had his soft plastic duck between his teeth and as Ryerson shifted him, the dog growled as if annoyed.

  "That's some dog," the desk sergeant quipped.

  Ryerson ignored the remark. "Could you tell Captain Lucas that I was here?"

  "And you are?"

  "My name's Ryerson Biergarten."

  The desk sergeant wrote it on a memo pad. "You're that psychic, right?"

  Again Ryerson ignored him. "Is there a place called Frank's in Buffalo?"

  "Frank's?" said the desk sergeant, turned, and called to a couple of uniformed cops behind him, "Hey, any you guys heard of a place called Frank's?"

  One of the cops answered, "You mean Frank's Place? Yeah. It's on Eddy Street."

  The desk sergeant turned back to Ryerson. "You got that?"

  "I got it," Ryerson said.

  "You know where Eddy Street is?"

  "No," Ryerson answered, "but I have a map."

  The sergeant grinned. "I thought you were psychic." A brief pause. "The hell with the map. What you do is, you go back out to the street, you turn left, you
go five blocks, you make another left—" He paused, glanced back at the uniformed cops. "Hey, is Eddy Street north or south of Minerva?"

  The same cop answered, "Minerva? Where's that?"

  And Ryerson said, "Thanks, anyway. I'll stick with the map."

  "Suit yourself," the desk sergeant said. And as Ryerson turned to go, he called, "You ain't gonna like it down there, believe me."

  ~ *~

  The image of a blue sky littered with dark gray smudges was with Ryerson almost constantly now, though he tried hard to put it aside. The blue was still soft, pale, and pretty, but the smudges moved and pulsated as if they were alive. There were perhaps half a dozen of them, Ryerson thought. He wasn't sure of the number because each time he tried to study them—much as he'd study a painting or a photograph—they shifted crazily, like snakes squirming off, and he found that his view of them was always oblique.

  His guess was that each of the dark gray smudges represented, as he'd told Captain Lucas the day before, "an entity."

  "An entity?" Lucas had said then, his voice dripping with incredulity. "What sort of entity, Mr. Biergarten?"

  And despite himself, despite all that he knew about how to approach people like Jack Lucas—people who, as Lucas had put it, believed that "everything's got a logical explanation … if you can't touch it or smell it or taste it or fuck it, then by God it doesn't exist!"—Ryerson had answered, "An evil entity." Which elicited a half minute's worth of hooting laughter from Lucas—laughter so loud and uncontrolled, in fact, that one of the detectives in the outer office had stuck his head in and said, "Is everything okay here?"

  But evil entity fit, Ryerson thought now, as he maneuvered the Woody down Minerva Street on his way to Eddy Street, then to Frank's Place, where, he was sure, he'd find Captain Lucas.

  But there was this, too; if each of those obscenely pulsating dark gray smudges on a field of soft, pretty pale blue represented an evil entity—or, as Joan preferred it, a demon—then each of those smudges had to signify a person, too. Ryerson knew this as certainly as he knew that the sun would set, though it had taken Joan to make him see it clearly. "I don't know where they come from," she'd told him. "I guess they come from the same place that all suffering and loneliness and pain comes from. From us. From all of us."

  He stopped for a red light at the corner of Minerva and Eddy streets. He looked first right, then left, hoping to see a sign that said "Frank's Place," but he saw only a succession of tattered two- and three-story brick buildings in both directions. Near the center of the block to his left there was a sign that read GREYHOUND PACKAGE EXPRESS, and beyond it a neon sign was flashing the word "EAT" in green. On impulse, he turned right.

  Upon reflection now, he thought that Jack Lucas had had good reason to toss him out of his office, because he'd handled the whole thing badly. He'd let the grotesque and deadly scenario developing in Buffalo overcome his good sense. Because while "evil entity" had elicited a half minute's worth of hooting laughter from Captain Lucas, "demons" had gotten a full minute's worth of stony silence. Angry and unreadable silence. "I don't believe in demons!" he had said finally. "And I think that anyone who does is a child."

  "Yes," Ryerson nodded, "I agree—that is, of course, if we're talking about the archetypal demon that climbs out of hell to take possession of us. And I'm not talking about that at all, Captain. I'm talking about the demons we create." That, Ryerson remembered, had clearly touched a raw nerve with Lucas.

  "Whatever . . . problems any of us have, Mr. Biergarten," he'd begun, "are ours to deal with in our own way."

  "You don't understand; I'm sorry, Captain, you don't understand. I'm not talking about psychic demons; I'm not talking about behavior, I'm talking about things we can touch, and feel, and taste—they're your criteria, after all. I'm talking, for instance, about this woman—"

  And that's when Lucas had thrown him out.

  ~ * ~

  Ryerson saw a small, weathered, handmade sign just ahead—dark blue letters on a white background: FRANK'S PLACE it read. He pulled over to the curb, locked all the Woody's doors, glanced about. There were a couple of haggard-looking men on the sidewalk, and, as Ryerson watched, they went into Frank's Place. Moments later he followed.

  ~ * ~

  Benny Bloom knew that most of the kids at Buffalo Pierpont High School thought he was a nerd. But that was okay, because a nerd, by definition, was different, and different was usually better. It was all a matter of perception. Being thought of asa nerd was one thing, but actually being a nerd was something else entirely. Being a nerd was a privilege and an honor. If you were a nerd, it meant that you were above average, it meant that you were superior.

  Or so Benny told himself.

  In practice, Benny thought, being a nerd was a damned lonely business. The only people who wanted to hang around nerds were other nerds, and nerds as a group were boring.

  Nerds didn't get any girls, either. Unless they were girl nerds.

  And Benny Bloom wanted girls. Not girl nerds. He wanted the cheerleader types, the foxes with creamy white thighs and huge breasts and softly sculpted necks. The trouble was, the only ones who got those girls were jocks—the guys with meat for brains and tree limbs for arms, and pants three sizes too small at the crotch. The guys who could say "Hi, baby" and get away with it (Benny had said "Hi, baby" once, just to try it out, because he'd heard the jocks say it. "Baby?" asked the particular cheerleader type he was talking to. "What do you mean?" Benny shrugged. "Jeez, I don't know," he answered. "Just that, I guess? 'Hi, baby.' I was just trying to be friendly. I didn't mean anything by it. I'm sorry." "Don't mention it," said the girl, smiling to herself, and walked off).

  And Benny had wondered more than once what it would be like to be a brainy jock, the kind of guy who could say "Hi, baby," and quote T. S. Eliot in the same breath.

  "Hi, baby," he said now (at approximately the same time that Ryerson Biergarten, Creosote in his arms, was sitting down at the bar at Frank's Place), and Nurse Carlotta Scotti answered, "Sorry, Benny, but did you just say something?"

  And turned away from her, his buttock exposed for yet another shot, he said again, "Hi, baby," and added in the same breath, "In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo."

  "What woman is that, Benny?" Nurse Scotti asked.

  "Hi, baby," he said again.

  And she said, half scoldingly, "No, Benny, please don't flex your buttock, it only makes it harder to get the needle in."

  But Benny wasn't flexing his buttock. Benny was changing.

  ~ * ~

  The bar at Frank's Place had a high sheen from too much varnish and was streaked with beer. When the bartender asked, "What's your poison?" he looked like he really meant it.

  "Ginger ale," Ryerson answered.

  "Uh-huh," said the bartender, raising a very thick and bushy eyebrow. "One tall ginger ale coming up."

  "Actually," Ryerson said, as Creosote strained mightily to lick his chin, "I was looking for someone." He glanced about. Frank's Place was all but empty. At the rear the two haggard men who'd come in before him were seated at a small wooden table playing cards. At the opposite end of the bar a buxom woman in a tight green dress sipped at what looked like a water glass full of whiskey. As he glanced at her, she glanced at him, grinned, looked away. Ryerson repeated, "I was looking for someone, but I—"

  "Her name's Doreen," said the bartender, and nodded at the woman in the green dress.

  Ryerson said, "No, you don't understand. I was looking for a man."

  "Not here you don't look for no man," the bartender growled.

  "I'm afraid you still don't understand," Ryerson said. He stopped. An image had shot from the bartender's mind to his. "Have you got a back room?"

  "A back room? What for?"

  Ryerson shrugged. "For whatever."

  "Yeah?" said the bartender, leaning over the bar. "What kind of whatever?"

  Creosote finally found Ryerson's chin and gave it a long, loving lick.<
br />
  The bartender nodded. "You talkin' about something with that dog? Is that what you're talking about, mister? If it is—"

  Ryerson decided it was time to change the subject. "Do you know a man named Lucas?"

  The bartender shook his head immediately. "Don't know no one named Lucas."

  And from the opposite end of the bar the woman drawled, “Ah do."

  Ryerson looked at her. She had the water glass full of whiskey poised at her lips. "Whatchoo want with old Lucas?" She took a slug of the whiskey, put it down hard. "You a friend a his? You don't look like no friend a his."

  Ryerson got up from the barstool, went over to the woman, sat beside her. Creosote began to whimper.

  "Somethin' wrong which your dog?" the woman asked.

  Creosote tried to burrow in between Ryeron's side and arm; Ryerson stroked him reassuringly. "Hey, it's okay, fella," he said, then, to the woman, "He comes here, doesn't he?"

  "Lucas? Sure. He comes here. He's a friend a mine."

  Ryerson foundthat he could read from her only what he usually read from crazies, and animals—what looked in his mind's eye like the snow between channels on a TV set. "A friend of yours?" he said, and wondered why she'd been so quick with information. "Is he here now? It's imperative that I get in touch with him."

  "Imperative; is it?" said the woman. "Imperative?!" She grinned, took another sip of the whiskey, glanced down the front of her low-cut dress, reached in, and adjusted her bra.

  Creosote's whimpering grew louder.

  She went on. "Why don't you tell Doreen what's so imperative, and I'll relay the message to him when he comes in."

  The bartender brought Ryerson's glass of ginger ale; "Buck fifty," he said, and Ryerson dug in his pockets, found a dollar bill and some change, and put it on the counter.

  ~ * ~

  Detective Third Grade Andy Spurling's fondest memories were of growing up in Syracuse, New York, where he was thoughtof as the toughest kid on the block, and the quickest with a six-gun. His six-guns, of course, were made by Mattel, but they were made of real metal, not plastic like they are today, and they were heavy, and their action was much like the action of a real gun. The one he carried now, for instance.