"What's funny?" she said. "You're funny."
A twisted nervous grin snaked about on his lips. "I don't mean to be," he said, and thought, It's because I'm chunky. She's laughing at me because I'm chunky. His attention riveted again on the fluttering movement over her rib cage. As he watched, it changed, grew more frantic; a lump appeared there, as if someone's head were trying to push through.
She laughed again, a high-pitched, squealing laugh that sounded like a siren out of control in a small, empty room.
Alan dropped his glass. It shattered on the hardwood floor; Perrier splattered all over the bottoms of his Haggar dress slacks and he glanced down and said, "Oh, shit!" He looked up again, at Loni. She was standing. Her mouth was open wide. And the lump at her rib cage was not a lump anymore. It was a basketball-sized mound that had ripped through the side of her blouse. He could see a few strands of gleaming wet brown hair there, at the head of the mound, and he could hear someone weeping and grunting intermittently as a soft, whitish-yellow substance like melted butter plopped to the floor around Loni's left side, below the bulge. "Wanna mess around?" Loni said.
"No," Alan whispered, backing toward the door, his gaze flitting quickly from the mound as it grew larger, to Loni's face, and her marvelous gleaming canines. "Please, no. Thank you, no. I've got to be going, anyway; I've got to be going home to my wife; I'm sorry; she loves me and I love her; we love each other; love is all we have in life; I'm sorry . . ." He knew he was babbling. He knew he was going to die.
Loni advanced quickly on him, took his well-coiffed head in her graceful, strong hands, and sank her teeth deep into his jugular. The last thing he saw was that mound at her rib cage explode. He did not see Laurie Drake's body pop out. He did not see it fall with a bone-crushing thump to the floor. He did not see it curl into the fetal position, and stick its thumb into its mouth, and open its eyes wide.
~ * ~
"For instance," Joan Mott Evans was saying just then, five miles away, "what do you do when he … makes a mistake in the house?"
Ryerson answered proudly, "He doesn't make mistakes. He never has, not even when I first brought him home."
Joan raised an eyebrow. "Then he's one in a million."
"Yes, he is," Ryerson said, still with unmistakable pride.
Joan nodded to indicate Creosote, who was again on the floor and again showing an interest in Ryerson's argyle socks. "Some of the demons I've seen have a face like his, Rye."
Ryerson looked quizzically at her, unsure if she was joking with him. "Oh?" he said. "That must have been damned spooky."
Again Joan raised an eyebrow, thinking he was poking fun at her. "It was," she said. "It is.”
Like all Boston bull terriers, Creosote had a flat face, large eyes that were vaguely cockeyed, a wide mouth that showed lots of gum, and nostrils that were pink and flaring. He also had the added charm of a large black wart just below his right eye. He was hungrily studying Ryerson's left sock.
Ryerson said, "You're not kidding, are you, Joan?"
She smiled uncomfortably. "Not about that, Rye."
Creosote latched onto the sock. Ryerson reached quickly down, pried the dog's jaws apart, put him on his lap, stroked him-which caused a kind of ragged purring sound to start in the dog's throat-and said to Joan, "Where do you think these demons come from?"
She answered slowly, thoughtfully, "Not hell. I don't believe in hell. I believe in suffering and loneliness and pain. I believe that they exist and that they torment us. I believe that demons can bring them to us." She paused. Ryerson could read confusion and frustration from her, as if she wanted very much to say precisely what she meant but realized that it was impossible. He left the silence alone. After a few moments she went on. "I don't know where they come from. I guess they come from the same place that all suffering and loneliness and pain come from. From us. From all of us."
"You sound awfully cynical about the human race, Joan," Ryerson said, regretting at once his vaguely preachy tone.
She shook her head. "No. I'm not. Along with the pain I know there's joy. I've experienced it. Everyone has; some of us more than others, of course." An image of someone Ryerson guessed was Lila Curtis leaped from Joan's mind to his. "Sometimes it's a sort of balancing act, isn't it, Rye? The joy and the pain. I think if you've got just a little bit of pain it can smother a lot of joy." She smiled quickly, as if embarrassed. "Like a toothache."
Ryerson said gently, "Tell me about Lila's pain, Joan."
Joan sighed. "Yes," she nodded firmly. "I want to. I need to."
~ * ~
Power! the woman whispered. Enough power to break away from this damp, stinking, dark place someday soon and walk among the living.
Because she'd have life in her, too. Because the young ones, the strong ones, the ones with life coursing through them, would feed her. And as their numbers grew from the few that were with her here, now, the awful stuff she had been built up from would change; and she would change. She would become what they were.
Life would push through her.
And the others, the weak ones, the ones with life only at the edges of their eyes, and within their groins, would sustain her for a time. And they were plentiful enough.
The man saw to that.
He loved her, he wanted her, he needed her. Most of all, he wanted to live, so he saw to it that the weak ones, the ones no one watched after and no one cared for, were abundantly supplied.
And because he gave her what she needed, she gave him what he needed.
She gave him herself.
Chapter Thirteen
Joan Mott Evans said, "I loved her. I loved Lila." She paused, on the verge of tears. "I've told you that, haven't I, Rye?"
Ryerson reached out and put his hand comfortingly on hers. "Don't worry about repeating yourself, Joan. Just tell me what you want to tell me."
She closed her eyes briefly, sighed. "It's like putting a puzzle together, Rye. But the puzzle's got too many pieces, and they're all the same color."
He patted her hand. "Yes. I understand."
She glanced at him, then down at the table. "Maybe you do. I hope so." A short pause. "I didn't kill her." She looked up at him entreatingly. "Did you think I killed her?"
"No. I never thought that."
She looked down at the table again andsaid softly, "Lila killed herself. And her boyfriend. She knew that something was wrong inside her; she knew they'd gotten her."
"They?
"The demons."
"Yes. Of course."
"You think I'm nuts, don't you?"
"No. I think you have good reasons for your beliefs. Many people believe in demons. I have a friend, a cop actually, who claims that there are demons who sit on his chest at night."
Joan looked offended. "Don't make fun of me, Rye."
He frowned. "I'm only trying to let you know that if you thought you were alone-"
"I never thought I was alone." It was a simple statement of fact. "Never alone. Only by myself from time to time. Like Lila."
"Are you saying there are similarities between you and Lila, Joan?"
She looked surprised by the question. "Of course there are. We're both vulnerable-we were both vulnerable; I was the lucky one; they got her, not me. Trouble was, they wouldn't let her go. They stayed with her."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning just that. They stayed with her; they stayed inside her somewhere. I don't know where. In her belly, in her intestines, in her heart. And they wouldn't let go of her. They made her get up and move around."
An image came to Ryerson then. It was an image from his childhood, when the same awful dream had tormented him for months. In the dream he entered a stone crypt. At the center of the crypt lay an open stone sarcophagus with a man inside dressed in a loose-fitting dirty white gown. When Ryerson drew closer, he could see that the man's face was yellow, his eyes large and round and pale, his lips a dull green. The man sat up. A kind of stiff, halting laugh came from him as if he were trying the laugh out to see if it still worked. He turned his head very mechanically, as if his neck were on dirt-encrusted ball bearings, and he said, "Boys! Bimbos! Beads!" in a high, hollow whisper that made his yellowish cheeks puff out briefly, then deflate. It should have been comical. It wasn't. Not from him. It was an image which had, then, pushed Ryerson screaming into wakefulness. Now it merely made him cringe.