Three
New York City, July 3, 1993
“ What do you think, Ovid?”
The Claw insisted on calling him Ovid. He didn't know what it signified, but the Claw told him that he renamed all of his followers.
“ She'll do…”
“ You sure, now? Don't wanna rush you into anything.”
“ Let's do it, Claw.”
“ You got the hammer?”
“ Got it.”
“ You worked out the place?”
“ Quit worrying.”
“ Time to feast?”
“ Time to feast.”
Sometimes Ovid thought it was like talking to himself, and sometimes it was like talking to an entirely different person.
But when the Claw was stalking a victim, they were of the same mind.
She was about thirty yards away. She had come out of a grocery store, her arm wrapped around a bag. She looked troubled, preoccupied. She didn't notice his approach. She took exactly the right course, toward the area he had planned to drag her after hitting her with the hammer. Once she was unconscious, he would have his way with her, and so would the Claw.
He knew the Claw liked to rip women open. He knew the Claw liked to bite and tear with his teeth, too, and eat some of the parts. The Claw was a real animal.
He, too, liked some of it. He liked using his teeth on her. At first, though, when he tried tasting what the Claw tasted, it made him vomit. He had become more accustomed to it now, and he no longer threw up, but he still didn't much like it.
He lessened the distance between himself and his victim, feeling the hefty hammer in his hand beneath the coat. He had slit the pocket to accommodate both hand and hammer. All the other tools he required were in the safe place.
She looked over her shoulder, saw him and quickened her pace. He sensed her fear. He liked the feeling it made in the pit of his stomach. He took longer strides toward her. She would reach the alleyway entrance in a moment. He must be quick.
She looked around again, half stumbled on seeing him so near, and she let out a scream just as the hammer came down. Her groceries spilled and he dragged her limp form down the darkened alley, out of the streetlights that cast his shadow in the horrible shape of a hunchback. But the hunchback's shadow was due to the cumbersome woman he had slung over his shoulder.
He passed a house where some lights had come on, pressed himself and his victim against the fence and held his breath. The people inside had heard the scream that had been curtailed by the blow to her head. She was bleeding. He could smell it. He reached up to her scalp to touch the warm spot, getting his fingers sticky with it. The Claw would be pleased.
He made his way toward his destination with his burden, wishing the Claw would be of more assistance during this stage of preparation, but the Claw said it was a way to show faith in him, and that it would be wrong of the Claw to assist in this part of the ritual.
He and the Claw swore never to be weak ever again, never to go hungry or without power. They took power when they took life, the Claw said. They took sustenance when they took life. They had every right to what they could take.
He dragged her into the blackness of a city basement at sublevel. Earlier he had snapped the lock and placed his toolbox inside. He expected the Claw to enter behind him, knowing the Claw was nearby, watching out there in the night.
The woman moaned. Heat rose off her as if she had a fever. He guessed her to be in her late twenties. She was rather thick with a pleasant, plump face, her hair left to fall straight to each side. She hadn't taken very good care of herself, he thought. She reminded him of his mother.
He wondered what was keeping the Claw; he feared she would regain consciousness too soon and wake up screaming, before the Claw arrived. Where was he?
He laid her now on the grimy floor. She rolled to one side. She was waking. He didn't want to hit her again for fear another blow might kill her. The Claw wanted her to be alive when he ripped into her.
Then the Claw was in the room with them. Ovid hadn't even seen him come in. It was amazing, as if he had materialized out of the black emptiness all around them.
“ We need light,” said the Claw, and it was as if the words were whispered into his brain through some kind of weird telephone. He heard the words as if from far away.
“ Light could draw somebody.”
“ Light,” ordered the other.
“ All right, light.”
Ovid set up a small flashlight fished from his tool chest. “How's that?”
“ Better.”
He saw the Claw extend his shiny, metallic, scissorslike right hand. It was a devastating weapon, sparkling in the weak light, the ice-pick ends seemingly hungry for flesh. The Claw extended the razor-sharp, three-pronged piece of metal over the woman's body, and with a mere swipe, cut open the fabric of her cotton print dress. Then her bra and panties were cut. Next came the skin, the blood bubbling up. But this was just the Claw at foreplay.
Ovid swallowed hard, watching the claw pendulum back and forth slowly over the helpless victim.
“ You want to take a bite out of her?” the Claw asked him.
“ Yeah, can hardly wait,” lied Ovid, who knew he could wait.
“ Do it… Do it now!”
He clamped down on her throat, and with his teeth he drew back blood and tissue. At almost the same instant, the Claw dug deep into her chest and jaggedly pulled down and down and down. The woman's scream was lost with her vocal cords, which Ovid ripped out with his teeth.
The Claw now bit at her lower parts, tearing away chunks of her flesh, rolling it around in his mouth, spitting some out, swallowing other pieces.
The Claw went into a frenzy over the still-kicking, nerve-rippling corpse, digging again into her and ripping away. He then did it a third time. When he finished, he asked for the eyes. These were cut away, handed to him, and he fed on them.
Spent, lying against the dead woman, the Claw dug out her insides, carefully placing the intestines alongside the body before looping them in a winding, circular pattern about the limbs. He then went back inside her for the heart and kidneys. They both became perturbed at finding only one kidney.
“ Take what we have,” said the Claw.
He found the plastic bags in the tool chest. The heart was severed and put away first. Then the left kidney was bagged.
“ We'll finish the liver here,” the Claw told him.
“ All right, all right.”
“ I want the head,” said the Claw.
“ What? Whataya mean?”
“ The head.”
“ You want to take her head with us?”
“ Yes, dammit.”
“ What for?”
“ For later.”
“ All right, all right.” With a carpenter's knife used for cutting linoleum, he began an effective slice all around the throat. He could feel the head coming, held now only by the cervical vertebra. The linoleum cutter soon severed this last connection. The head tumbled from the body as if scurrying off. He grabbed it and instantly the Claw snatched it from him. It dangled at the end of the claw.
The eyeless face was further disfigured by the Claw while Ovid went for the raw liver, but there was a noise outside.
“ The light!”
Ovid shut it down. Someone was coming down the stone steps, was just outside the door. Whoever it was saw the broken lock and had seen the strange glow inside; whoever it was dropped what he or she was carrying and rushed away.
“ Tools, collect up everything, everything!” cried the Claw.
Ovid did so as quickly and as carefully as he could, and when Ovid turned around, he found himself alone with the decapitated, mutilated corpse. The Claw had left empty-handed. He'd have to leave the head, and hope that he could get away with his tools and the two organs in his toolbox.
He rushed out into the dark. No sign of the Claw.