I said, “Yeah, it has to be Amy who’s wrong. Again.” I said to her, “You remember the night all those guys burst in looking for the, uh, thing a few weeks ago? And you threw it in the river…”
She shook her head. “I remember that event, but there was no dog.”
John said, “We took him to the vet! He ate the chocolate?”
“Do you have the receipt?”
“Sure, I … wait, no, she didn’t charge us.”
“We did not go to the vet that night, John.”
Chastity said, “If you concentrate, if you focus hard on them memories, you can break them apart, find the real memories in there. Hiding. See, they picked the wrong target with me. You can make me doubt the world, but you won’t make me doubt myself. My memory, my false memory, was tellin’ me that Mikey’s father was some guy I slept with, a guy I met at the lake and then left town after a one-night stand. But I ain’t never done that in my life—the kind of man who does that, he don’t make it to my bed. And if I had a kid, a real one, I’d be livin’ in a better place. In a better town.”
I said, “And your friends, your family, they wouldn’t wonder why you’re acting like you’ve got a child, out of the blue?”
“Don’t talk to my family, what there is of it, and I’m not much for socializing. That thing, it knew it. Picked me for a reason, I’d say. But it didn’t take.”
John said, “Okay, okay. So, let’s focus on the most immediate problem. Now they’re both in there, in that room, the kid and the dog, neither of which are of this world. What the hell do we do? Leave?”
Amy said, “If we can get it to drop its disguise can we, I don’t know, talk to it? Find out what it wants?”
I said, “How in the world do we get it to drop its disguise?”
John said, “We’d have to make it want to. Wait, while it’s in dog mode, does it have to behave like a dog? Maybe I go in and say, ‘Oh look, since you’re just a dog, surely you wouldn’t mind licking some peanut butter off of my balls.’”
“Maybe just knowing we can see through it will be enough,” suggested Amy.
John said, “I wish we still had the Soy Sauce. It would know what to do.”
Chastity said, “The what?”
I said, “What he’s referring to is slang, for a, uh, substance. Think of it as a performance-enhancing drug for people with any kind of paranormal abilities. Or whatever. It’s the reason we can do what we do.”
John said, “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that on the Sauce we would be able to see through the thing’s camouflage, through the whole illusion.”
“Anyway,” I said, “it’s moot, because we tossed our only vial of the stuff into the river.”
Chastity said, “Well, that conversation was a good use of our time.”
I said, “All right, so we go in and we talk to it and try to find out what it wants. And if what it wants is to feed on us and, uh, breed on us, then what?”
We all just looked at Chastity. Only she could say this.
“We kill it. Only cure for a parasite.” She looked at us. “Any idea how we do that?”
John said, “They don’t like fire.”
Amy said, “We’re not going to start a fire in an occupied motel.”
Chastity nodded. “So much crack in this place, fire would get the whole town high. No, we got to take him somewhere else, away from all the people. Mikey and your dog both.”
John said, “I know a place.”
All four of us cautiously approached the motel room door, the only one of us who was armed was Chastity, with her revolver. John asked her if she wanted him to take the gun.
“No. If this goes wrong and something has to be done, it’ll be me who does it.”
I said, “Just be ready—this thing is going to try to pull on your heartstrings. It’s going to play up the little kid stuff, he’s going to bat his eyes and say, ‘You wouldn’t shoot me, Mommy!’ You sure you’re ready for that?”
“Nope. But I’ll do it anyway. If you’re tellin’ me you wouldn’t have any problem pulling the trigger in that situation, well, that ain’t nothin’ to brag about.”
She steeled herself, pushed open the door, and screamed.
From the neck down, the creature standing in the doorway was little Mikey Payton, just as we’d seen him, wearing a faded LeBron James T-shirt. From the neck up, he was Diogee. Specifically, the ass part. The dog’s two rear legs were draped over Mikey’s chest, its tail stuck straight up into the air where Mikey’s forehead would have been.
The dog’s anus opened and closed like a mouth and said, “Look, Mommy! I’m a butthead!”
Chastity slammed the door.
I said, “Okay, I was … not expecting that.”
The huge, gun-toting, screaming black woman had drawn the attention of the bikers around the burn barrel. The fat guy from behind the counter leaned his head out of the office a few doors down, looking annoyed. It sounded like motel rules were being broken.
Lemmy Roach said, “Chastity? What’s happening?”
I said, “Nothing to see here! It’s fine!”
Then the curtains of our room were ripped aside and what appeared there wasn’t Mikey, or the dog, or dog-butt Mikey. It was a naked young woman, visible from the hips up. She was splattered with blood and appeared to have one wrist shackled to a headboard with a pair of handcuffs. She pressed herself against the window and screamed, “HELP! THEY’RE GOING TO KILL ME!”
Two more guys ran out of a nearby room to join the bikers at the burn barrel. Roach yanked a pair of short shotguns into his hands and screamed, “THEY’VE GOT LACY!”
I was, in that instant, sure that no woman named Lacy had ever existed. I was also sure that every single person in the vicinity would instantly remember Lacy, have a head full of fond memories of her, and feel an overwhelming urge to protect her.
Roach led a pack of bikers toward the door, each of them drawing firearms. Chastity screamed at them to stay back and, when they refused, brandished the revolver.
“You go in there, you’re gonna die! It’s a trap!”
Of course, the bikers had no reason whatsoever to believe this was anything but the ravings of a lunatic who had kidnapped a female friend of theirs, and also they had shotguns. The sound of conflict had carried across the grounds and room doors were popping open all around us, disgorging biker dudes eager to join the fight. One woman in black leather quickly hustled away three young kids—some of these bikers had families.
The “woman” behind the glass continued to scream and beg for help. John, Amy, Chastity, and I faced a phalanx of shotguns and black leather.
Roach, brandishing a total of four shotgun barrels by himself, screamed, “CHASTITY, YOU’VE GOT THREE SECONDS TO PUT THAT DOWN AND GET OUT OF THE WAY!”
John said to him, “This may seem like a weird time to ask, but do you know Ted Kno—”
There was a commotion at the opposite end of the parking lot. Everyone spun around to see three black NON trucks come barreling in. There was no entrance to the lot over there, they just smashed through the motel’s sign and flattened a row of shrubs, skidding to a stop. A dozen black cloaks flowed into the parking lot, bringing their weird-ass weapons to bear.
The naked woman in the window screamed and pulled on her restraints.
The downpour chose that moment to resume.
The nearest NON cloak was the same one that had led the charge into John’s living room that night weeks ago—or at least, this one was wearing the same puffy-cheeked infant mask. It opened its baby mouth—it had tiny little rubber teeth—and said, “STEP AWAY FROM THE ORGANISM.”
Thinking back, I’d say this was a mistake. These instructions made perfect sense to me, John, Amy, and maybe Chastity. That was it. No one else in that crowd knew what “organism” they were referencing, or where it was, or in what direction they should step in order to find themselves “away” from it.