Ravenous (31 page)

Vanessa lost all control of herself. It was just too much, one thing too many, and suddenly her thoughts were bright and clear and she was no longer drunk.

She moved through the apartment like the winds of a hurricane and managed to cause almost as much damage. She broke everything she could get her hands on, everything that would break. The apartment became filled with the sounds of breaking glass and silverware clanging to the kitchen floor. Back in the living room, she clutched the pot of one of her hanging philodendrons with both hands, jerked it hard and broke the hook that had held it, then lifted it high about her head and threw it downward hard onto the coffee table. The terracotta pot exploded, the glass top of the coffee table shattered.

Knuckles rattled on the frame of the screen door outside the apartment's front door. Someone pressed the annoying buzzer again and again. Then, more knocking.

Vanessa stopped.

Her breathing was accompanied by something she had no memory of ever doing before—each rapid exhalation was a growl. She wondered how long she'd been doing
that
. She looked around at all the destruction. At all the mess. But she was not thinking clearly, and the mess did not register in her mind as something she'd created.

“Vanessa?
Vanessa
!” It was Shirley Kidderman, a widow in her fifties who lived next door to Vanessa there on the second level of Willow Park Apartments. “Vanessa, are you all right in there?”

Vanessa realized she was not standing as she'd first thought—she squatted on the floor, knees up on each side, hands dangling between them.

What am I doing down here?
she wondered.

From outside the door: “Vanessa! If you don't answer, I'm calling the police!”

Panting and growling ...
 

Police?
Vanessa thought.
No, no, I don't want the police ... do I? Definitely not. But ...
why
not? I ... I don't know. I just don't want them involved.

She felt as if she were waking from a deep, muddy sleep. She stood up straight, stretched her arms above her head, then avoided the broken glass on the floor as best she could all the way to the door.

“Shuh—
Shirley
?” Vanessa called, her voice hoarse from all her screaming.

“Are you okay in there, honey?”

Vanessa unlocked the door, pulled it open, then unlocked the screen door. Shirley pulled it open, and Vanessa stood back so she could come in.

“Honey, you look like hell,” Shirley said. “Is everything—”

Then she saw the living room, all the destruction.

“Oh, my ... God,” Shirley said, her mouth dropping open helplessly for a moment. Slowly, she turned to Vanessa. “I think you should lie down, Nessa.” She closed the door, put an arm across Vanessa's shoulder, and carefully steered her through the broken glass to the hall, and down the hall to the bedroom. Shirley took her to the bed, and they sat down on the edge. “I want you to get undressed, and put on your nightie, or whatever it is you sleep in—”

“Naked.”

“Fine, then take off your clothes and—why are you breathing like that, Nessa?”

Vanessa stopped breathing as her head jerked around to look at Shirley, frowning, blinking. “Like what? Breathing like what?”

“Well,” Shirley smiled, “it
sounded
like you were ... “ She laughed once. “Like you were
growling
, honey.”

“Growling.”

“Yes.”

“I ... I ... I'm sorry.”

“You're not having trouble breathing, are you?” Shirley frowned and cocked her head. “Should I take you to the hospital?”

“No, I ... I can breathe just fine. He ... he's dead.”

“Who's dead?”

“Hugh.” Vanessa had told Shirley all about Hugh—she told Shirley most everything.

“Dead? How? What happened?”

“I don't know. I just called his cell phone, and someone ... told me ... that he's dead.” Vanessa stood and clumsily undressed as Shirley pulled the bedcovers back.

Shirley stepped back and said, “You just take a nap, now, okay? You've been drinking, haven't you, hon?”

“Oh, yeah. For quite awhile, now. I think ... my hair is numb.” She turned naked to Shirley and smiled and laughed hoarsely.

But in spite of that smile, Shirley flinched a little, because suddenly, Vanessa just did not look herself, did not look quite right. Something—Shirley wasn't sure what, but
something
—about her face was different. Her hair? No, no. Her ... her
eyebrows
. Yes. Had they always been
that
thick? Shirley did not think so. And was Vanessa developing a ...
mustache
?

“You going for a new look, Nessa?” Shirley said.

“Uh ... what?” she said as she got into bed.

“Oh, nothing.” Once Vanessa was lying on her back in bed, Shirley swept the covers up and over her. “Now, you get some sleep, and I'll see what I can do with that mess out there.”

Vanessa's hair was spread about her face on the pillow when she raised her head and said, “Oh, Shirley, you don't have to—”

“Don't tell me what I don't have to do. Now, sleep.” Shirley crossed the room and turned off the overhead light. The blinds were closed. The room became dark.

Shirley frowned as she backed out of the bedroom door, deeply concerned for her friend.

Vanessa turned onto her right side and watch Shirley leave the bedroom—and she was asleep by the time Shirley pulled the door closed.

 

* * * *

 

Jason was glad he'd decided to stay home from work that day.

He'd slept in,
way
in. He'd finally risen at ... at—his eyes were so bleary when he sat up that he could not read the green numbers on the digital clock on his nightstand. It looked like something after noon. Was it
that
late? Why had he slept so long?

Jason went into the bathroom wearing only his boxers, and emptied his full bladder. When he was done, he went to the sink and washed his hands. He saw his face in the mirror—the bandages on his cheek and forehead had not gotten through the night in very good shape. They had peeled nearly all the way off.

Something ... wasn't right.

He frowned at his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror over the sink, leaned in close. The cuts beneath those hanging bandages did not look the same. He reached up and took the bandages all the way off, and gasped.

The stitches in his forehead were still there, all four of them—but the wound they'd held together was gone. All the wounds on his face were gone.

Jason began tugging at the bandage on his upper left arm. He unraveled it as quickly as he could with his right hand—and the bite on his arm was gone. It was not
better
—it was
gone
.

“Holy shit,” Jason breathed at himself in the mirror. He touched his face, the places where that creature's claws had broken the skin four times in a couple of drags across his face.

He went back into his bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. He sat there for a long time, frowning, thinking about his healed wounds. Finally, he stood with a sigh and put on a robe, slipped his feet into black slippers, and left his bedroom.

Mom had left a note on his refrigerator while he slept.

 

Jason dear,

I want you to sleep as long as you can, so I'm not going to disturb you. When you get up, let me know and I'll fix you breakfast. Or lunch. Whatever you want.

 

The last thing Jason wanted was for her to see that he'd healed overnight. She would go crazy. He wondered what she would do. Probably call the pastor of her church and insist there'd been a miracle.

He would put the bandages back on before leaving his apartment so he would not have to explain his healed wounds—because he could not explain them.

But as it turned out, he did not leave the apartment.

Jason's feet felt like blocks of lead and his arms were filled with heavy sand as he went to the bar and, with effort, hiked himself up on one of the stools. He took a banana from the basket of fruit on the bar and peeled it, ate it slowly, lips smacking as he chewed with his mouth open, something he did not typically do—even his jaw felt heavy.

He thought of his dreams—only one dream, really, over and over again. Something about a house, that damned house, so familiar—

It's the Laramie house, isn't it?
he kept thinking.

—and yet so unreal, big and towering, a small jungle growing up around it, the wind-blown winter branches clawing at the old walls and squealing over what little glass remained in the windows. The house pulled at him in his dreams with a malignant strength.

Jason stood and staggered over to the window that provided a view of Andrea's house and yard. Jimmy was home, his pickup in the driveway. Jason sighed as he thought about his time with Andrea much earlier that morning. Why had Andrea run off like that? What had gone wrong? Guilt made his chest feel full. He went back to his bed—this time, he flopped onto it, then turned onto his right side.

Jason was hungry. But it was a strange hunger. He was thinking about his hunger as he drifted off to sleep.

 

* * * *

 

Andrea sat at the kitchen table with Jenny, each with a coloring book open before them, coloring the pictures. In the living room, some game blared loudly on the television as Jimmy watched it and made his way through a case of Budweiser. The baby was sleeping. She was tired, her eyes heavy with grey half-moons beneath her eyes.

Jimmy had been behaving oddly all day. He seemed tired, and yet there was something oddly energetic about his behavior, something quick and jumpy. He did not speak to her, and behaved as if she weren't there at all. That was typical of him—but it was the
only
typical thing about him that day. Otherwise, he did not seem himself at all. But Andrea found that she did not care. She was too preoccupied with her own thoughts.

She had only a foggy memory of the night before ... of going to the house, of being with ... others. She'd wanted to stay, but she felt a strong need to come back here, to take care of her children. But the need to stay there had been
powerful
.

It was really real,
she thought.
All of it. I was there ... with them ... the others.

“Look, Mommy,” Jenny said, “I colored a green hippot ... hippoto ... Mommy, how do you say that word again?”

Andrea stared down at the book open before her, coloring in a picture of a giraffe. She worked absently on all the greenery surrounding the giraffe, and the tree from which it was eating—but she wasn't seeing it. Her staring eyes weren't seeing much of anything. She was lost deep inside her own mind.

“Mommy? What's this called?”

Still, Andrea did not answer. She was too busy studying the dark picture in her mind. It was a picture of that shadowy grey house and the others she'd seen there. She'd felt a strong sense of belonging with them, a
rightness
that had made leaving difficult.

The only other thing she was capable of thinking about was her hunger.

“Mommy?
Mom
my!” Jenny reached over, closed her little hand on the sleeve of Andrea's blue sweatshirt, and tugged a few times.

Finally, Andrea's whole body jolted in her chair and she looked down at her little girl. She cleared her throat, then said, a bit shakily, “Whuh-what, honey?” She frowned as she smacked her lips. There was an odd metallic taste in her mouth.

“This thing, Mommy, this animal,” Jenny said. “What's it called again?”

“It's a hippopotamus. But you can call it a hippo.”

“Thank you, Mommy.” Jenny vigorously returned to her coloring, eyes intense, the tip of her tongue glistening in the corner of her mouth, lips pressed tightly together.

Andrea did not go on coloring. Instead, she stared down at the partially colored picture as she fell back into herself like someone falling down a deep well.

The house, and the others in it, would not leave her mind.

The hunger, which she'd experienced and satisfied earlier, gnawed at her. She remembered
how
she'd satisfied it. At first, she was horrified, but that passed quickly. Then she thought of the hot, wet gratification of feeding. Her tongue passed slowly over her lips.

She tried to think of Jason—of their times together, of the way he treated her, touched her, loved her—but her mind was held firmly in the memory of feeding.

What must Jason think of her, leaving him so suddenly like that? She knew it was for his own good ... but how could she explain that to him? She would have to, though, sooner or later.

Andrea heard voices. Jenny's. And Jimmy's. Saying something to her. Was Jimmy ...
shouting
?

A hand slapped her face.

Andrea was jerked from her dark thoughts and she realized there was something in her mouth, something waxy.

“The hell you
doing
, eating that thing?” Jimmy said.

It took a moment, but Andrea finally realized that she had been chewing up the green crayon in her hand. She spit the waxy, chewed-up pieces into her left palm.

Jimmy had not meant to slap her face—he'd slapped the crayon from her mouth. But that did not make her face sting any less.

“Fix me something,” Jimmy said. “Fix me a ... I don't know, a-a ... a
sandwich
, maybe. And some chips, what kinda chips we got?”

Frowning and looking troubled, Andrea stood and went to the waste can, dropped the chewed-up crayon pieces into the garbage. “We don't have any chips,” she said.

“What? Why not?”

“You ate them.”

“Then why didn't you get
more
?”

“Because I just
haven't
yet.
Okay
?” Her words were clipped and cold—not the way she normally spoke to Jimmy.