The Devouring Read online

  Ryerson slammed the telephone book closed with a thud. "Nuts!" he whispered. There were no veterinarians open twenty-four hours a day, at least none that advertised in the Yellow Pages.

  He went over to Creosote, got down on his haunches, gently stroked him. "It's okay, fella," he whispered. "You're going to be all right; I won't let anything happen to you." Creosote's quick breathing slowed, though only for a moment, as if his master's soothing words had temporarily eased his anxiety.

  Ryerson shook his head. "Dammit, dog; why can't I read you?" It wasn't entirely true that he couldn't read Creosote. He usually got something like the snow between channels on a TV set. But from time to time, though very fleetingly, he got a feeling of unbridled and unreasoning joy—the response of an animal to health, and life, and the unquestioned fact of its immortality.

  Now he was getting only snow, and something that felt vaguely like pain or pressure that was impossible to grab hold of—each time he tried, it slipped away. He straightened. He knew that his only recourse was to put Creosote in the Woody and drive around until he found a vet whose office was in his home and wake him up.

  He gently lifted Creosote into his arms. "It's okay, fella," he crooned. "It's okay; we'll get you fixed up."

  ~ * ~

  Joan Mott Evans decided that she wasn't hungry after all; she closed her refrigerator door. There wasn't much to eat anyway. Some plain yogurt—which, at 2:00 in the morning, wasn't terribly appealing—a few stalks of celery, a jar of Hain's 100% Pure and Natural Peanut Butter, and half a loaf of Hollywood Dark Bread that should have been given to the birds a week ago.

  She sat at the small round kitchen table and poked idly with her fingernail at a hardened drop of spaghetti sauce that had escaped her desultory efforts at cleaning.

  She thought, What did Jimmy Carter call it?—A "malaise of the spirit"? She whispered, "Well, I've got it, Jimmy." Damn, but if her trip to Boston hadn't gone so badly! Damn, but if Ryerson Biergarten hadn't turned out to be such a crud! Damn, but if she didn't have to hide this . . . thing inside her head for the rest of her life; if only she could share it. That would make it easier to bear, of course. Sharing guilt always made it easier to bear. She didn't know why, but it did.

  The kitchen was dark. She preferred it that way. She wasn't up to appliance pastels and knotty pine cupboards and the Corning Range Top at the moment.

  She wondered what she would be doing if one of her succession of boyfriends—or, better yet, a compilation of them all—were here with her at that moment. Would he be trying to coax the reason for her "malaise of the spirit" from her? Probably. He'd probably be trying to make a joke of it—"Mayonnaise of the spirit," he'd say. "Goes great with sliced turkey." And she'd say, trying mightily to smile, "Okay, turkey, where would you like to be sliced?" which he'd try hard to interpret as merely a good-natured joke, although he'd insist on seeing something cutting and personal in it (and, of course, there would be something cutting and personal in it). After a while he'd lean back in the small wooden chair, with his hands behind his head, and he'd observe sagely, "Let's get some light on this," and stand and turn on the overhead light. "Shed light on a problem," he'd say as he sat back down, "and you go a long way toward solving it."

  She smiled as these thoughts came to her; as far as she was concerned, all of her boyfriends had been losers. She pursed her lips. No, they weren't losers—they had turned out, merely, to be right for someone else, not her.

  She dismissed her succession of boyfriends with a self-critical smile and a shake of the head.

  Like Ryerson Biergarten, she enjoyed the very early morning—it was just past 2:00— when the psychic atmosphere had only a light breeze in it, a breeze stirred up, mostly, by night creatures on the prowl—tomcats, owls, the occasional raccoon or opossum, both of which had, in the past decade or so, grown bold enough to make regular forays this far into the outskirts of the city. Most of the occasional psychic drifts she got from these creatures were pleasant because they were so simple and guileless, and—like Creosote—often an open and tingling expression of joy at the mere fact of being alive. At other times, and for blessedly brief moments, she got a whiff of naked and screeching terror; she'd see the ground moving rapidly away from her, she'd feel a heavy wind on her back, then an instant of tremendous, scorching pain. She knew what caused this. In the thirty acres of open fields behind her house there were probably ten thousand field mice and a hundred cottontail rabbits. And in the maple trees ringing the fields there were probably a half-dozen owls who nightly swooped silently down, grabbed one of the hapless mice or one of the baby cottontails in its talons, and just as silently carried it off to be swallowed whole at the nest.

  It was only when a car passed by on the road fifty feet in front of the house or when one of her neighbors got up because of insomnia that her good feeling, her sense of peace and aloneness, was dulled. Because the input she sometimes received then—though most of the time, because her powers were in their infancy, she received nothing at all—was the same sort of complex worrying, and yearning, and questioning that she got randomly when she went into the city.

  ~ * ~

  Ryerson Biergarten, Creosote cradled lovingly in his arms, knocked loudly for the fifth time on the massive oak door. On the doorjamb there was a six inch by three inch brass plate which read "Craig Gibson, D.V.M." Below that there was a doorbell, and just below the doorbell there was a piece of notepaper taped to the wood with the words "Please Knock Loud" written on it in a childish hand.

  Creosote was not doing at all well. His shallow breathing had grown even shallower, and his respiration had doubled.

  Ryerson knocked loudly again. Then he yelled, "C'mon, for Lord's sake! Get out of bed!" He knew—he could sense it—that the big Victorian house was occupied. Three people, he guessed. A man, two women; one of the women was young, maybe a teenager.

  He saw a light go on in a second floor window. Then the window was pushed open and a male head appeared. "What the hell do you want? Do you have any idea what time it is?"

  Ryerson called back, "My dog's very sick. Can you help him?"

  The man, whose head was backlit so Ryerson could not see his features well, hesitated, then called, "Is it urgent?"

  Ryerson thought, No, I do this sort of thing as a hobby! "Yes," he called, "it's very urgent. Please help him!"

  The man was opening the front door a minute later.

  ~ * ~

  In Buffalo, at 98 Delaware Avenue, in a three-room, second floor apartment, in a house that had four similar apartments, Gail Newman was awakened from sleep by what she thought at first was a cat fight. Since she'd brought Laurie Drake's cat, Magic, home two days earlier (it didn't matter that Laurie, still missing, was technically a fugitive—a promise was a promise after all, and, as Laurie had said, the cat couldn't feed itself) it and her own cat, Thomas, had fought at least a dozen times. Thomas was usually the instigator, since the apartment was his home turf, but Magic always made a good showing of himself, although Thomas was nearly twice his size.

  Gail sat up in the twin bed, turned on the bedside lamp, and scanned the small room. "Okay, you two!" she hissed. "Can it or you're both going outside." Then she saw that Thomas was asleep in his usual spot, on a small upholstered club chair in one corner of the room. As she watched, he lifted his head and squinted sleepily at her.

  Then she heard the high, squeaky, extended ring of the doorbell (which, from the vantage point of sleep, she realized, could easily sound like a cat fight).

  "Damn," she whispered, swung her feet off the bed, stood unsteadily, got her yellow robe from the back of the door, and went grumbling into the living room. The doorbell sounded again just as she put her finger on the intercom button. "Yes?" she said.

  "Miss Newman?"

  A woman's voice, she thought, and said again, "Yes?"

  "Miss Newman?" the voice repeated.

  No, Gail corrected herself; the voice sounded more like the voice of a young girl—it was
hard to be sure over the intercom. "Who is this, please?" she asked.

  "Are you there?"

  "Who is this?" Gail insisted. Yes, she thought, it is the voice of a young girl. Maybe some local kid trying to be funny; within the next few moments the girl might quip, Is your refrigerator running?

  "Can I come up?" asked the voice.

  "Not until you tell me who you are and what you want," Gail answered.

  A short pause, then, "I'm hurt, Miss Newman. Can you help me? I'm hurt," and Gail heard what she supposed was a twinge of pain in the girl's tone, although, again, the squawk of the intercom made it difficult to be sure of anything.

  Gail said, "What happened to you?"

  Silence.

  "What happened to you?" Gail repeated. "How are you hurt?"

  She heard a soft, quick giggle, then, "I've been raped, Miss Newman."

  Gail hesitated, uncertain. Then she said, "That's nothing to joke about, young lady—"

  "It's true," the girl insisted, "it's true! I've been raped, my boyfriend raped me!"

  And Gail, convinced, said, "Open the door when you hear the buzzer."

  ~ * ~

  Dr. Craig Gibson, D.V.M., said, looking very confused, "As close as I can tell, Mr. Biergarten, your dog has suffered a severe asthmatic attack."

  They were in the doctor's examination moth, in the east wing of the big Victorian house. Creosote, breathing normally, lay asleep and heavily sedated on, a stainless steel examining table between them.

  Ryerson said, "Pardon me, Doctor, but I know when he's having an asthma attack—"

  "Yes, I'm sure you do, Mr. Biergarten. I'm just giving you what I'll admit is profes-sional guesswork. If you'd like to leave the dog with me for a day or so, I can do some workups on him and then give you something a bit more definitive."

  Ryerson considered the proposal for a moment, then shook his head. "No," he said, "thank you. He seems to be all right now."

  "The symptoms could recur at any time," Gibson warned, "so I really think that for the dog's own good—"

  Ryerson shook his head, lifted Creosote from the examining table. Moments earlier he'd read something very unpleasant from Dr. Craig Gibson, D.V.M. He'd read that the man hated dogs. "No, thanks," Ryerson said, trying hard for a tone of cordial apology. "I appreciate your efforts, though." He shifted Creosote carefully to one arm, reached into the inside breast pocket of his gray tweed sport coat. "Will you take a check?"

  ~ * ~

  The knock at Gail Newman's door was a soft triple knock that she answered at once.

  She found Laurie Drake smiling up at her from the hallway. "Hello, Miss Newman," Laurie said. "I wasn't really raped." And her smile increased.

  Gail reached quickly, caught Laurie's arm, pulled her into the apartment, locked and bolted the door. She turned sharply to Laurie. She began hotly, "You brat! You god-damned brat—"

  Laurie broke into a fit of sobbing.

  "Jesus Christ!" Gail breathed, led her to the couch, and sat down beside her. After a moment Gail said, "I'm sorry, Laurie. I lost my temper. I don't like jokes about rape. Please understand." Laurie continued sobbing; her head was lowered, her face was in her hands, and her shoulders heaved with each sob. Gail went on. "Do you want something, Laurie? Some water?"

  Laurie continued sobbing. Beneath the sobs Gail thought she heard what sounded like cloth ripping.

  Laurie's cat, Magic, trotted into the room from the kitchen, came over to Laurie and rubbed against her ankles. Gail said, "There's your cat, Laurie. Say hi."

  The sound of cloth ripping was more pronounced now, Gail realized. And the tone of Laurie's sobbing had changed, too—there were short bursts of what sounded like laughter in it.

  Gail put her hand on Laurie's arm. "I'm going to have to call the Department, Laurie. You understand why, don't you?"

  The white pleated blouse with puffed sleeves that Laurie was wearing ripped down the sides.

  Gail stood abruptly.

  Laurie's head came up from her hands. Her gaze fell on Gail.

  Gail gasped, "Who are you?"

  And the woman on the couch breathed, "You asked what I wanted. I want you, Detective Newman."

  Gail backed toward her bedroom door. She kept her service revolver in the bedroom, in the drawer of the little nightstand.

  The woman on the couch stood. The bottom of the shredded blouse came halfway up her stomach, and the jeans were raggedly torn down the inner seams—she looked for all the world, Gail thought frantically, confusedly, like a cover illustration for some torrid and kinky romance.

  "Laurie?" she managed. "You need help; let me call someone." She was at her bedroom door now.

  The woman advancing on her across the small living room said, sneering, "The only thing I need right now is you, Detective." And she opened her mouth to reveal the huge white canines within.

  "God in heaven," Gail whispered, and launched herself into the bedroom toward the little nightstand. She hit the side of the bed with her stomach. A gust of air and a quick "Uhh!" of pain and surprise escaped her. She doubled over, fell backward to the floor, saw the woman standing victoriously above her, scrambled up, fumbled for the drawer pull, felt an incredibly strong hand on her neck, pulled the drawer open.

  Chapter Nine

  Some things happen purely by coincidence. A woman whose mortgage is two months past due and whose kid's shoes are too tight because she can't afford new ones wins the New York State Lottery purely by coincidence. And, purely by coincidence, a man decides not to board a plane and learns a couple of hours later that it crashed with no survivors. Another man leaves for work two minutes later than usual, for whatever reason, and is broadsided by a runaway bus that would have been two minutes behind him had he left for work at his usual time.

  All by coincidence. Chance. Which, like gravity, is a force that no one understands completely.

  And so it was purely by coincidence as well that Ryerson Biergarten was passing Delaware Avenue at 2:15 that morning, after leaving the home of Dr. Craig Gibson. And it was purely by coincidence, too—along with, perhaps, a sudden shift in the direction of the psychic breeze—that he looked to his left to see a young, brown-haired, shabbily dressed girl stumbling through the glow of a streetlight one hundred and fifty feet away.

  He braked hard; the Woody pulled to the right; he swung a wide left onto Delaware Avenue and floored the accelerator. Beside him on the passenger's seat, Creosote whimpered in his sleep, as if in protest. Ryerson braked hard again so the Woody came to a halt beside the streetlamp. He jumped from the wagon, looked over its roof in the direction the girl had been moving, between two darkened houses, and called, "Hello. Are you there? Are you all right?"

  He heard weeping at a distance, from that direction, and he strained to see past the glow of the streetlamp and into the area between the houses, but his eyesight was pitifully poor at night and he saw little more than the vague, hulking dark shapes of the houses, and a shaft of blacker darkness in between.

  The weeping grew softer, as if the girl were moving away from him. "Hello?" he called again. "Are you all right? Answer me, please!" He hesitated going after her in the darkness. Six months earlier, near the end of his investigation of the murders in Rochester, New York, he'd gone after someone else in darkness and it had nearly cost him his life. He had, then, to rely on the sight of the creature he was chasing, to see through its eyes.

  "Please!" he called now. "I want to help you."

  The source of the weeping seemed to steady at a point midway between the houses. Ryerson saw a light go on in the second floor of the left-hand house; he heard a dog begin to bark somewhere far down the block. Then, screwing up courage against his night blindness, he walked out of the glow of the streetlamp and into the darkness.

  A porch light went on at the same house, the front door opened, and a thin woman in her fifties, dressed in a green nightgown and a man's dark suit coat, appeared in the doorway. "What's going on here?" she whispered harshly,
as if afraid her own voice would wake the neighbors.

  Ryerson, crossing her lawn, said, "There's someone in trouble," and nodded at the area between the houses. "There!"

  "Trouble?" the woman said.

  "Someone's hurt, I think," Ryerson added.

  "Someone's hurt?" the woman said. "Who?"

  Ryerson was parallel with the front of the house now. He said, as he vanished into the darkness at the side of the house, "I don't know."

  The woman said, "I'm calling the police," and slammed her door shut. A moment later Ryerson heard it being locked and bolted. Then he heard, in front of him, "I didn't mean it." It was the voice of a young girl.

  He stopped. He could see nothing ahead of him in the area between the houses. He said, in his most soothing tones, "Please, come into the light."

  "No," the girl said.

  "Are you hurt?" Ryerson said.

  "Yes," said the girl. "I'm hurt," and it was clear from her tone that she was telling the truth.

  Ryerson took a couple of steps forward. "Please," the girl said frantically, "stay where you are!"

  "Yes," Ryerson said, "I will. I'm sorry." Then, for an instant, he got a picture of himself backlit by the light of the streetlamp a hundred feet behind him. He was seeing through the eyes of this young girl, he realized. A stab of pain shot through his belly; he winced. The pain dissipated. He said, "Where are you hurt? Is it your stomach?"

  After a moment the girl answered, as if surprised, "Yes. It's my stomach. God, it hurts!"

  Ryerson got an image of himself once again, through her eyes, and the image stayed with him long enough that he was able to gauge from it how far away he was from the girl—too far, he knew, to lunge for her, which would probably be foolish, anyway. He asked, "Are you carrying a weapon?" He wasn't sure why he'd asked it; it seemed a ludicrous question at best.