Part 16 (1/2)

And Vaughn got his first good look at his destroyer.

not a dog not a dog at all oh jesus And Vaughn got religion in that instant, oh yes he did, p.i.s.sing himself and praying to his maker as the horrible maw clamped down harder this time, piercing his jacket and sweater, cracking his chest like a walnut. He felt something go pop and squirt stale rank mist, as twenty years' worth of pent-up tobacco smoke vented from his punctured right lung . . .

oh G.o.d oh G.o.d help me . . . and then he was out of the light, removed from the light forever: the monster lifting him in its jaws, carrying him helplessly farther into the warehouse dark. He smelled himself, borne on the beast's hot breath, got a vivid flash of his future at the pay end of the food chain. The animal started to run and his mind blacked out, snapped back again: awash with agony, denied the luxury of oblivion. There was no escape, save death. And death was still minutes away.

Vaughn spontaneously voided, almost as a courtesy, loading his pants and throwing up the last meal of his life. Chunks and stomach acid wrapped around his face, lay scalding in his eyes as the monster loped across the broken rubble of a back-alley lot.

Then suddenly he was falling, the agonizing pressure on his torso released. There was no mercy in the movement, just a sickening plummet and the brittle crack of his skull fracturing as his face smacked a ragged outcrop of cinder block and slid. His cheek came away like cheese through a grater. His head filled with billions of stars.

The seeing part was over now, and shock was setting in. The noises he made were not human at all. Blindly, he s.h.i.+vered as the thing flipped him over onto his back. He heard panting, felt the tug of something working at his belt, then the front of his jeans.

Dim confusion flickered in his muddled trauma-mind. Buried memories wrenched themselves free, floated to the surface as raw experience. Was he having his diaper changed? It seemed like it, yes. But there was blood in his mouth. His vision whirled and blurred. His mind skittered and split in half, trying to make it make sense: part regressing to infancy, part fast-forwarding to death.

A giant loomed over him. A hairy mountain with hands. Its breath was a swampland of hot damp rot and something else that he recognized. It took him all of one infinite second to place; and, once known, it was too late to forget. It was a smell that yanked him unpleasantly back to the present.

The smell of tequila.

oh G.o.d.

Then his sodden pants were shredding and sliding down his legs, bunching in tatters at his ankles as his bare a.s.s slapped the icy ground. Oh G.o.d, he thought, his mind at once totally, terribly clear. His s.c.r.o.t.u.m retracted into a shriveled pouch, his p.e.n.i.s turning thimble-sized as it shrunk like a turtle's head ducking into its sh.e.l.l. Vaughn went fetal, felt his sanity smack against reality like a bird hitting a plate-gla.s.s window as the beast hunkered over him, its monstrous hands gripping his knees. He fought to keep his legs closed. It spread its arms wide. Vaughn heard two wet pops.

The world went hot and white.

He came to less than three seconds later: his pelvis cracked like a sloppy-wet wishbone, his hips dislocated, his thighs mashed into the ground on either side. The monster hovered at the shattered juncture as its great snout descended, buried itself in his all-too-exposed crotch. His mind bargained madly through the pain, going sorry I'm so sorry I'll never f.u.c.k again oh please jesus . . .

The monster sniffed him a moment, reading his scent. Then the corners of its ghastly mouth curled upward, became something that very much resembled a sly and wicked smile.

And then the jaws snapped and closed, sawing through strips of omentum and coils of colon, coming up from below to latch hold of his spine and shake it like a dog with a rag. He shrieked and wheezed, shrieked again. His bowels tore loose as his spine went snap and the world went red and numb and dead, as the great chomping maw came away with a mouthful, leaving him a huge raw jigsaw-puzzle gap where his groin used to be.

OH G.o.d OH G.o.d OH G.o.d OH.

At that moment, Vaughn merged with the scream, became that wild and dying sound, his soul spinning out and out of his throat like a slowly unwinding thread. His eyes attempted one final focus, saw only eyes and fur and blood-covered snout. It hovered inches above him, br.i.m.m.i.n.g.

And then, horribly, opened wide.

Vaughn Restal's mouth was open, too, caught in the act of his last dying gasp. It left him no defense against the sudden gus.h.i.+ng torrent of his own masticated organs, a steaming mouthful of entrails spilling into his face. His mangled p.e.n.i.s slapped his cheek like a gory coda: a pallid slug, skidding down its own slime trail.

Vaughn Restal died, choking on his own s.h.i.+t and viscera.

Nora felt certain that Syd would be pleased.

21.

In the hours that followed her departure, Syd had way too much time to drink and think: pacing the too-small confines of his apartment, alternately d.a.m.ning her and cursing himself for being such a fool. He'd actually gotten dressed to go chasing after her, got all the way down to his car before he realized he didn't have a clue where she'd gone, if she was still even in the town. Or the state, for that matter.

And that thought had made him crazy, sent him careening back to hit the bottle and bounce off the walls. And even though three days ago he would have laughed out loud if someone had suggested that he would ever let himself get so totally flummoxed over a complete stranger, he could not deny it: she was in him now, under his skin and in his blood, completely invalidating his previously sacrosanct autonomy.

The phrase rebound relations.h.i.+p sprang to mind. Syd laughed until he cried. This was not about ”healing” and ”feeling good about yourself” or any other psychobabble bulls.h.i.+t; this was something he'd hungered for his whole life long. The simple truth was he needed Nora, needed her desperately in his life.

And now she was gone.

He stumbled into the kitchen, found the bottle of tequila, downed a double shot, looked around. Detritus from their lost weekend lay scattered across every available surface. He began to clean: muttering to himself as he sorted through the wreckage, tried to put his life back in order. Dirty plates and crusted cookware, empty bottles and full ashtrays were everywhere. He found a broken wine bottle in the living room; as he washed the dishes he found the little-chicken-that-wasn't, still congealing in the bowl.

What the h.e.l.l was that all about? He tried to remember and the pain between his eyes returned, a dull-bright throbbing ball of misery deadbang in the center of his skull. The only way he could make it go away was to not think about it, concentrate instead on the mundane.

Syd thought of Karen, for some strange reason. As he cleaned he flipped the stove light on, spotlighting the little figurines perched atop the range hood. They were the figures from their wedding cake: little wind-up G.o.dzilla and King Kong toys, custom-altered into a tiny monstrous bride and groom. King Kong sported a little top hat above his nasty simian scowl; G.o.dzilla had a veil, and clutched a tiny bouquet to her scaly reptilian breast. When you wound them up, they whined and wobbled mechanically forth, and sparks shot out of their mouths.

Syd looked at them, began to giggle.

Just like real life, he thought.

And that started him to laughing, a manic Renfield cackle that continued as he wandered from room to room to room, for the first time realizing that what he had was not a home but a shrine, an altar to a dead past upon which to sacrifice his hope for the future.

Whatever else Nora had done, she had also-in the s.p.a.ce of a few short days-blown holes in every weak-kneed rationalization he had for continuing to p.i.s.s his life away: letting it slip past him one second, one month, one decade at a time, until one day there would be nothing left but bitter regrets and recriminations; miserably staring back down the wrecking-ball trail of all his missed and blown opportunities.

For the first time in years, he'd actually felt like it was good to be alive. Like it was worth any price to stay alive, so long as it was lived on these terms and no others. By comparison, nothing else mattered: not his job, not his friends, not the place where he grew up or the existence that had evaporated out from under him. It was all completely worthless without her.

He wandered into the bedroom then, collapsed into a fugue-state of physical and mental exhaustion. As he drifted off the events of the last several days blurred and ran in his mind until he didn't know what was real and what was a dream anymore, or exactly where the line was drawn.

He only knew that since he'd met Nora the life he'd been living made no sense at all.

If it ever had.

Syd awoke to strange sounds from the kitchen. But this time, he didn't wake up confused. From the moment his eyes opened, there was only one thought in his head: the sum total of all his obsessional focus. His only prayer, answered.

She's here. She actually came back.

There was no way to overstate the magnitude of his relief. It was like getting the Governor's phone call, two seconds before they threw the lever and the trapdoor dropped. To downplay his relief would be to minimize his panic, and his panic had been nothing short of epochal.

But at the same time, there was no peace in the revelation, no automatic reprieve from the killing tension. Her return did not imply a full pardon. It might merely be a stay of execution: a way of dragging out the torture for another day or two.

I gotta go out there, he told himself. And then we've got to have a little talk.

He had blacked out on the bed with all his clothes on.

His body, upon waking, was exactly where he'd left it. He pulled his face from the pillow, looked up at the clock. It said five thirty-six. He heard the clank of plate on plate, unconsciously braced himself for the deja vu sound of destruction. When it didn't come, the psychic noose eased off a notch: not enough to free him or anything, just enough to keep him from choking on the stress.

His footing was a little unsteady as he hoisted himself up. He braced himself on the bedside table, instantly flinched as he remembered the cut on his hand. He looked at his palm.

The gash was gone.

Had he really cut himself? He couldn't clearly recall. All this drinking had screwed with his memory as well as his equilibrium. Syd had some very uneasy a.s.sociations with alcoholism, and the psychology of blackouts frankly terrified him, with their tacit self-exonerating clause of oh, I must have been drunk, I didn't know what I was doing. Lurking way in the back of his head was the understanding that they'd have to discuss this aspect of their relations.h.i.+p someday. But not yet. Certainly not now. There was plenty of time to work those kinds of problems out later.

The main thing was, Nora was back; and there wasn't a thing in the world that couldn't be worked out from there.

Syd opened the bedroom door and the smell hit him: rich and heady, overpoweringly compelling. It was the smell of meat, receiving the kiss of flame. She was cooking again.