The Devouring Read online

Ryerson shook his head. "No," he said, and stroked his Boston bull terrier pup, Creosote—so named because Ryerson had found him, shivering and thin and just a lick away from death, six months earlier in a smokehouse in Massachusetts. "He's not going to die, Coreen. He's got asthma. It's a fault of the breed—"

  "Breed?" Coreen said incredulously. "Breed, Doctor? Are you saying that that dog has a pedigree?"

  Coreen was the quintessential bitch. She was also a knockout. She was tall, buxom, red-haired; she had a small, pouty mouth, huge bright-green eyes, and she possessed the sort of natural sensuality that made everyone turn around and look. She used this sensuality to her best advantage. No one could blame her, least of all Ryerson, who, fifteen years earlier, had been one of its first wide-eyed and willing victims.

  He said now, "Did you get the part you were after, Coreen?"

  And she answered, from the small gray love seat in Ryerson's Newbury Street row house, "Which one?"

  He smiled wearily. Was Which one? merely a pose—Well, you know, Rye, there are literally dozens of producers after me. He could not easily peer into her psyche for the answer. He had never been able to peer easily into her psyche. It was like looking into the head of a wild animal; what he saw was usually a mass of harsh angles and static and snow—it was, in fact, one of the things that he found attractive about her in the first place, beyond her obvious physical attributes. It made her mysterious, unreachable, and thus, at the time—when he was still working toward his doctorate at Duke University—a challenge.

  He had quickly found that if he could not easily peer into her mind, it was, sadly, because there was precious little to see. Her concerns in life were basic—food, control, sex, sleep, comfort, and status. The order of those concerns varied from day to day and week to week, of course, as they do with everyone, but control always stayed near the top of the list. She exercised control, of course, with her body and her sensuality. She controlled Ryerson for the three years of their stormy marriage because she got a kick out of controlling him, and Ryerson let himself be controlled because, of course, he loved going to bed with her. It was a pit that he was not about to let himself fall into twelve years later, as she sat prettily on the small love seat, clearly offering herself to him in return for some as yet unasked for favor.

  She sighed and let a sad little grin play on her mouth. "Well, actually, Rye"—Ryerson stiffened; she never called him Rye—"I didn't get the part I was after." She'd been auditioning for a part in a big-budget horror movie called Strange Seed, which was to be shot near Boston. She'd charmed the director, the associate director, the assistant director, a few of the camera operators, and even the male secretary to the producer; the part, she felt certain, was hers. She had failed, however, to consider that the world she moved in turned not on sex alone or on money alone, but on sex and money together, and, bedroom favors aside, there were other women better for the part. She added, "Someone else got it. Someone named Irene!" She said the name as if it were a forkful of bad fish she was trying to get out of her mouth.

  "My sister's name is Irene," Ryerson said, smiling to himself.

  "And she has a face like an owl," Coreen said.

  "My sister has a face like an owl?" Ryerson said. "No, she doesn't."

  Coreen waved the observation away. "No, not your sister. This person who got my part. She has a face like an owl, like one of those white owls you see on cigar boxes—"

  "A barn owl?" Ryerson observed. He stroked Creosote, who gurgled, grunted, and licked happily at Ryerson's chin. "What's the part?"

  "The part?" Coreen asked, momentarily confused—which was nothing new—then hurried on. "Oh, the part. Yes. It was the part of a dead woman. Some woman who died and came back to life."

  Ryerson shrugged. "Well, it seems ready-made for someone who looks like an owl.

  Coreen looked at him. "Is that a joke?"

  Ryerson smiled thinly. "Sort of, Coreen." He paused. "Listen, I'm sorry, but if you've come here for a favor—"

  She cut in sharply, as if offended. "A favor? My God, Rye, husbands and wives don't do favors for each other. Whatever they do, they do out of love." She gave him a straight and serious look, as if she had just uttered an astounding profundity. Then she smiled coyly. "And since you are, as they say, not without influence—"

  "First of all, we aren't husband and wife anymore, thank the good Lord, and secondly, yes—I am completely without influence. I wouldn't want to influence anyone, Coreen, even if I could ..."

  "All I'm saying is that you know people. And because you know people—"

  "No," Ryerson said firmly.

  She looked appraisingly up at him from the love seat for a half minute, trying to gauge the firmness of his position. Then, nodding slowly, she went on, "Yes, of course. I understand. But you know, Rye, what makes this world go around—"

  "No," he said again.

  "Well then, I'll tell you," she said, misinterpreting his answer.

  "No," he said yet again, very firmly. "You're not going to tell me what makes the world go around. I know what makes the world go around. Inertia. Not sex or money or whatever it is you were going to say, Coreen. Inertia! Conservation of momentum! We learned about it in high school."

  She sighed heavily, in resignation, and stood: She was normally almost as tall as Ryerson; now, wearing very high heels, she contrived to appear even taller. She conjured up her most regal and offended look—chin jutting forward, eyes looking at Ryerson down the bridge of her nose, and she said, "You are weird, Doctor." It was a phrase she had used quite a lot during the breakup of their marriage and Ryerson said now, as he had so often then, "No more than anyone else, Coreen."

  She focused on Creosote, who was trying mightily to lick Ryerson's chin. "And so," she finished, "is your disgusting dog!" Then she stomped from the house.

  ~ * ~

  Joan Mott Evans had never been in Boston before and she wasn't sure what she thought of it. She found the Boston accent intriguing, and the people passably friendly, at least the few she'd met—a bus driver, a drugstore clerk, a cop who'd given her directions to Newbury Street. But the aura of the city seemed stiffer than she was used to. She'd lived in Buffalo for the past several months, but she thought of Erie, Pennsylvania, as her real home, and before that, Brockport, New York, home of Brockport State College. She was used to small towns and small concerns, where it was true that everyone knew everyone else's business, but it was also true that if you were in trouble, a lot of people knew about it, and someone was usually willing to help.

  Boston wasn't at all like that. How could it be? Crowds made people turn inward, and look for identity within themselves; crowds made people yearn to be something other than just another face, or another body. And what was a city like Boston if not simply a very well-mannered crowd? She grinned self-critically. Or maybe, she decided, she was reading much more into what the city was telling her than she ought to; maybe she wasn't being fair.

  She turned her head to look at the number of the row house to her right. "Damn," she whispered, because, as usual, caught up in her thoughts, she'd lost track of where she was and what she was doing. Ryerson Biergarten—whom she'd come from Buffalo to see—lived at a number behind her and on the other side of the street. She pulled his letter from the pocket of her simple rust-colored fall jacket and checked the return address. She repocketed the letter, and, not for the first time, had misgivings about being here, in Boston, on her way to see the most celebrated and successful of the nation's psychics. She thought, also not for the first time, that it was like the criminal hanging around the police station and acting nervous. Sooner or later someone was bound to ask questions, and sooner or later all the terrible answers would come spilling out. Especially if the someone asking the questions was Ryerson H. Biergarten.

  She turned around, started back down Newbury Street. She saw Ryerson's house almost at once. It was a two-story white row house with black shutters on long, narrow windows. And there was a tall, attractive woman
coming out the front door. Joan caught the woman's eye and the name "Coreen" flashed through her head. Doesn't fit her, Joan thought. She looks like a bitch. But the name, she realized, could have come from anywhere. It could have come from some elderly man sitting in one of the row houses, for instance, his thoughts on a long-dead love affair. That sort of thing had happened before, as if the frequency of Joan's psychic receiver changed at random, so, from time to time, what she received was a burst of something totally unrelated to the moment. She had a quick and urgent desire to call out the name, to see how the woman would react, but within a few moments the woman climbed into a late model LTD Crown Victoria and was speeding away from her, southwest down Newbury Street. Joan sighed; these quick bursts of psychic input were always strangely wearying.

  A few moments later she was ringing Ryerson Biergarten's doorbell.

  Chapter Three

  In Buffalo, New York

  Laurie Drake said to her best friend Jennifer Wright, "They do too eat people."

  Jennifer rolled her eyes. "No, no, no, Laurie—werewolves eat people."

  They were coming out of an advanced placement class in mythology at the Henrietta Heberling Memorial Junior-Senior High School and were on their way to lunch. They were best friends because most of the other kids in the school thought they were strange and unapproachable. The fact was that they were very bright, brighter in fact by half than their classmates, and so they had gravitated to each other. Jennifer, however, couldn't help but think that Laurie could be impossibly dense at times. She went on, her tone very instructional. "Vampires are subtle, Laurie. They feed, but they don't feed too much. They don't waste anything."

  Laurie would hear none of it. "I know what I saw—"

  Jennifer cut in, laughing, "My God, it was only a movie."

  "Nothing is only anything, Jennifer," Laurie interrupted icily. "Don't you think that people research these things?! Of course they do. Besides, what we're talking about here is hunger! Have you ever been hungry, Jennifer?" She paused; they both knew the answer to that—Jennifer had never wanted for anything. Laurie nodded sagely. "Of course you haven't. I have. I've been hungry enough to eat an old shoe—and let me tell you something—"

  Behind them a man's voice said, "Hurry along, girls." They turned their heads in unison to see the physical education teacher, Mr. Piper, behind them. He added, "Cheeseburgers today; you don't want to miss out on cheeseburgers, do you?" And he slid gracefully past them and into the cafeteria. "What a fox!" Jennifer whispered.

  Laurie would normally have agreed very heartily, but her stomach—which had been aching on and off now for several days—suddenly began to ache very badly, so her only response was a whispered "Uh-huh."

  ~ * ~

  In Boston

  Hell, Ryerson thought, convinced that Coreen had returned for another whack at him.

  "No!" he called, although he was on the second floor of the house and whoever was ringing the doorbell couldn't possibly hear him. With Creosote in his arms, he made his way down the open spiral staircase to the front door. He hesitated. The doorbell rang again. He looked down at Creosote, whose tongue was wagging at him. "It's a woman, isn't it, boy?" Creosote's tongue wagged harder. Ryerson went on. "And it's not Coreen, is it?" Creosote's tongue disappeared into his mouth; he cocked his head questioningly. "It's a stranger," Ryerson said. "Someone from out-of-state." Creosote's head cocked to the other direction; his tongue reappeared briefly.

  Ryerson pulled the door open.

  He had never seen Joan Mott Evans before. He had tracked her down to Buffalo, using various standard sources—the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Vital Statistics, the New York Motor Vehicle Department. At the beginning he had only her first name to go on, which was given to him by the parents of poor, damned Lila Curtis; "Our daughter had a friend," Mrs. Curtis had told him. "Someone she confided in, someone she looked up to, like a big sister. She said her name was Joan." He had a good description of her, too, also given to him by Lila's parents. And eventually, using those two pieces of information—Joan's first name and her description—it had been easy enough to track her down, although when he'd arrived at her house in Buffalo two months earlier, there had been no answer to his knock.

  "Yes?" he said now.

  "Hi," said Joan Mott Evans with a slight, unconvincing smile, as if sorry she were disturbing him. "We've never met, Mr. Biergarten." Her smile flattened. "Not formally, anyway."

  "Yes?" he said again.

  "I was in the city visiting a friend—her name's Nadine Homer; perhaps you know her."

  Ryerson shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not." The description that Lila Curtis's parents had given him had been very accurate—short auburn hair, a round, appealing face, small straight nose, large, round, expressive gray eyes; "She's very nice to look at," Lila's father had said. "She's no beauty queen, but she is nice to look at."

  Mrs. Curtis had merely shrugged and said, "Yes, I suppose so." She had a trim and athletic-looking body, too; Ryerson got a quick mental picture of her doing an hour's worth of aerobic exercises each morning—it was an image he liked, because he had always been a firm believer in a healthy body being necessary to the maintenance of a strong and healthy mind.

  Joan rattled on, clearly nervous now, but trying hard not to show it. "I have a copy of your book...." She produced a copy of Conversations with Charlene from her purse and thrust it at him. "And I was wondering if you could autograph it for me."

  He smiled graciously, took the book from her, patted the pocket of his shirt—beneath his ragged white pullover sweater—and said, "I'm sorry, I don't have a pen."

  She smiled back, searched a few moments in her purse, came up with a gold Cross pen, and handed it to him. She said, as he wrote on the title page of the book, "Actually, we have met, in a way. You came to my house a month ago."

  He handed her the book. "Thanks," she said, and began to stuff it into her purse.

  "No," he said, "please. Read the inscription."

  She smiled nervously at him. "The inscription?"

  "Yes. Please read it."

  She took the book from her purse, opened to the copyright page, then to the title page. She read:

  To Joan Mott Evans,

  Let's talk.

  Rye.

  She kept her head down for a good half minute, as if reading the short inscription all that time. Then, sighing, she looked up at him. "I'm sorry," she said.

  Ryerson, seeing her embarrassment, extended his arm welcomingly. "No," he said, "I'm sorry. That was unfair. Please, come inside. I'm sure there's a lot we have to say to each other."

  ~ * ~

  In Buffalo

  Irene Sabitch scowled at her computer monitor in the Buffalo Police Department Records Division. Her coworker, Glen Coffman, sitting behind his own computer monitor a few feet away, said, "You look like you just chomped down on a clove of garlic, Irene. What's the problem?"

  She glanced at him, still scowling, then looked back at her monitor. She said tightly, "The problem is this new system." She guffawed. "Foolproof, my ass!"

  Glen got up, went over, stood behind her, and scanned her monitor. "Just punch in the user number, Irene. It's 001.BPD," and he started for his seat.

  "I tried that," she said.

  He stopped, looked back, shrugged. "Try it again."

  "I tried it six times, Glen."

  He went back and put his hand on her shoulder to coax her from her chair. "Let me give it a try, okay?"

  She stayed put. "For God's sake, Glen, I can punch in user numbers just as well as you can.

  He hesitated, looked at the screen again. He was reading the computer's "file directory."

  It showed him a list of files on that particular computer disk which were available for inspection by the computer operator. It read:

  FILE DIRECTORY

  CURTIS L.BAK

  JME.BAK

  HAWKINS.LET

  LET.BAK

  FORMAT.CMD

  STAT.
CMD

  OPER.CMD

  JME.OPE

  USER NUMBER?

  He reached over Irene's shoulder and punched in "001 .BPD." The screen cleared. A moment later these words appeared on it:

  INVALID USER NUMBER.

  RETURNING TO FILE DIRECTORY

  He scowled. The file directory and its maddening "user number?" request came back on the screen. He said, "Well, someone's screwed up royally here. That user number is locked into the system—"

  "I know that, Glen," Irene said, and glanced around at him. "You don't have to shout."

  He looked back at her. "Was I shouting? I'm sorry." He studied the screen. "Where'd you get this disk?"

  "From the hard disk subsystem. I was updating files, this appeared, and I made a copy of it."

  "Uh-huh. That explains it then. Those files"—he nodded at the screen—"were in the system before it was restructured. So it's got a personal user number on it."

  "Oh, yeah?" Irene teased. "Whose?"

  "Whose?'' Glen said. "I don't know. We should have a list of personal user numbers around here somewhere. Find it and input every one till this damned file opens up."

  She rolled her eyes. "Glen, do you know how many user numbers that could be?"

  "Not many. A few thousand. But, hell, you type pretty fast." He chuckled, went back to his own monitor, sat down, looked back. "Hey, have you seen my games disk? I was halfway through Space Wars yesterday."

  ~ * ~

  Lilian Janus

  At thirty-three, Lilian Janus had what she considered a more or less perfect life. Her home was comfortable, she kept it neat; her children were nicely behaved and did well in school; her husband, Frank, was handsome and a good provider.

  She had a part-time job as a cosmetics salesperson at Sibley's Department Store, in Buffalo. She liked the job because it enabled her to meet women she felt were much like herself, women whose only real concerns in life had to do with the inexorable approach of middle age, and, she assumed, the bothersome and sometimes unreasonable sexual overtures of their husbands. Because (everyone knew it) sex, or the promise of it, was merely something "that enables a woman to catch a husband and keeps a husband at home." Her mother, rest her sainted soul, had drilled it into her since she was twelve years old.