Shivers (20 page)

“What was he doin’ when
you
last saw him?” Dolly asked Ralph.

“Oh, it was so long ago, I can’t quite recall,” Ralph replied. “Driving a cab, I guess. George was never one to discuss his affairs.”

“No sir,” Porky said emphatically. “Not him.”

Ralph finished his beer and left the bar. Enough talk—now it was time to find George.

He walked back up to McGreeley’s. As he expected, Steven was still sitting there, and now it was way past eleven. The man was staring into his beer morosely, shutting out the world. Ralph eased noiselessly onto the stool next to him and said, “How ya doin’, big guy?”

Steven looked up with a start. “Oh, it’s you. You scared me.”

“Didn’t mean to.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Come on, we’re going to pay a call on George.”

“Huh?”

“Last name begins with F. Third Floor. Just a few blocks down the street. Ready?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know where George lives. While you were here, I did a little detective work. Do you want to come with me or not?”

Steven looked very excited. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

They were out of the bar before the bartender had time to rouse himself and go wait on Ralph. They walked down to the dry-cleaning store Porky had mentioned and briefly discussed what Steven would say if George was home. Ralph also explained where and how he had obtained the information.

The doorway next to the dry cleaners was a dirty, smelly alcove lit by a dim yellow light-bulb. The outer door had two small windows, both of which were shattered. The doors on the mailboxes—the ones that hadn’t been torn off— were twisted and battered. Ralph looked up and down the list of names next to the buzzers. George
Forrance
was listed as being the occupant of 3C. As the inner door was ajar there was no need to use the buzzer. The bottom of the door scraped against the grimy, piss-stained floor as Steven struggled to open it. Finally they got through and started up the narrow stairs. There were no lights in the corridor.

They could hear sounds of activity from behind the apartment doors. TV sets, radios, voices raised in contention, food sizzling on the stove. Someone on the second floor was cooking bacon. They paused on the stairwell between the second and third floors.

“You go up first,” Ralph directed. “He may not talk if he sees us both. I’ll be behind you. If there’s any trouble, I’ll be right nearby.”

“Great. If it wasn’t for the beers I had I’d be awfully nervous.”

“Don’t be.”

Steven gave a reassuring nod. He continued up the stairs. Something small and brown skittered across the hallway as he reached the top.

The stairs continued at the end of the hall, which was only a few feet long. Apartment 3C was the farthest door on the left. Steven knocked on Forrance’s door and waited for a reply.

He knocked again.

Nothing.

There was no doorbell. No knocker. Not even a little peephole.

“George? Mr. Forrance! Are you home? It’s me, Steven Everson.”

Nothing.

“Lina Hobler sent me to see you. She’s all right, George, if that’s what you’re worried about. She’s- okay. Look, I just want to talk to you.”

Steven looked over toward the stairs. Ralph was out of sight in the shadows.

“Mr. Forrance. Please let me in. I’d very much like to talk to you. I can make it worth your while. I’ll even pay you for information, if that’s what you want.” Steven banged again, furiously. “Let me in, God damn it!” He couldn’t have waited this long for nothing. He would not go home now. He would
not
go home. “
Please!”

Suddenly Ralph was at his side, dangling a key chain. “Let me try one of these. I can get in almost anywhere with one of these babies.” Steven stepped aside and let Ralph try the keys, one after another. “You didn’t hear anything inside there, did you?”

“Nothing. What’s the use of breaking in if he’s not home?”

“So we can look around. See where this guy is coming from. You never can tell what we might find.”

Both of them had the same thought:
We might find Joey.

Another rat ran across the hallway like a furtive messenger.

Just then the key in Ralph’s hand worked and the door was pushed open. They were both hit by the foul blast of an awful odor. Ralph reached in his hand and found the light switch.

A bunch of rats, a dozen or so that had been on the bed, ran into their crevices as the man advanced into the room.

“Yuchh,” Ralph said. “I hate vermin.”

Steven stood in the doorway as Ralph moved toward the bed to see what the rats had been chewing on. A few cockroaches that had gathered on top of the mattress in the brief time since the rats had relinquished it ran in instinctual flight from the vibrations of the private eye’s footsteps. A few of the duller ones clung to the covers on the side of the bed. Ralph leaned over and looked down.

Bloodstained sheets. All Ralph saw were bloodstained sheets. And a pile of clothes lying next to the bed on the floor.

“Nothing,” he said in disgust. “There’s nothing here.”

Steven didn’t move from the doorway. “What do we do now?”

“
You
go home and get some rest. Killing yourself from lack of sleep won’t do your brother any good. Besides, you may need your strength in the days to come.”

Steven didn’t ask what he meant by that. “Is that blood on the mattress? Or that stuff we found at the subway station?”

Ralph rubbed his chin. “I’m not sure.” He grabbed the sheet in his big hands and ripped it, tearing off a piece to put in his pocket. “We’ll find out. We might as well get out of here. I’ll assign someone in the office to keep an eye on the place in case this Forrance guy comes back, assuming . . .”

Steven gave him a quizzical look.

“Assuming he’s alive. That blood on the sheet, there’s an awful lot of it. But no body.”

Steven gulped. “The rats?”

“Nah. There’d be
something
left.”

“You don’t think
it
dissolved, do you?”

Ralph just looked at him.

“Are you going to tell the police about this?”

“What for? There’s no body. What can they do? I can find out the blood type—if that stuff on the sheet
is
blood, sure doesn’t smell like it—and make sure it’s not the same as your brother’s.”

“God,” Steven groaned. He hadn’t thought of
that.

“Can you make it home by yourself? I’ve got a couple of calls to make. I want to stay here until one of my men shows up to watch the place. It’ll give me a chance to look around.”

“I’m staying.”

“Steven, this is what you’re
paying
me for.”

“He’s my brother, Ralph.”

The private eye shrugged. “Okay.”

“Besides,” Steven added, “who wants to take the subway back to Manhattan at this hour?”

Long after most of the others had gone home for the day, a skeleton crew remained behind in the police lab for emergencies, routine tasks, and cleanup. Tonight, there were two new additions. Ernest Hendon, who often stayed late, as the head of the department is wont to do, and Henry Judson, his bright, spirited lab assistant.

They had had a lot of work to do during the daylight hours, and therefore had to hold off on re-examining the strange substance from Room 919 until the evening. They had gone through the day efficiently but automatically—their minds not on their work but on the possibilities of the discovery they might make once their normal routine was over.

So they subjected the splotch of blood, flesh, bone, and cloth to a battery of exhaustive tests, trying to determine how part of a human being’s body could have turned into a mush of jelly.

They stopped for coffee at ten.

“I didn’t realize it was this late,” Ernest said. “We’d better leave soon or we’ll never get any sleep tonight.”

“I keep thinking that we’re so close, though.”

“I know what you mean, Henry. All right. We’ll stick it out to midnight. You can come in late tomorrow. Me, I better be here bright and early as usual. Wilminter wants the chemical analysis by noon.” He ran his hands through his thick thatch of black hair and yawned. “I don’t know how I can still keep my eyes open.” He was a medium-sized man, with an olive complexion and pointed features. Now and then he wore wire-frame glasses, too vain to wear them outside of work. He had been head of the department for nine years, since he’d turned forty. He was good at his job and enjoyed it.

Henry Judson was a comparative newcomer, a “boy” of thirty-one, with a pleasantly homely countenance and longish brown hair that was fine and soft as silk. He had big, blue eyes magnified by thick-lensed spectacles. He seemed to be very industrious and was possessed of unusual curiosity. He wanted very badly to determine the process that had created the stuff he’d been assigned to classify earlier in the week.

Ernest drained his coffee cup and looked over a sheet of paper on the top of his clipboard.

“Well, let’s see. We’ve ruled out explosions, implosion, artificial chemical means, acids, alkalines, erosion, natural decay,” his hand went back through his hair again, “and exposure to the elements. I admit, I’m stumped.”

“It’s as if someone took the man and put him in a blender. Then turned it up to high speed and let it run for four hours.”

“Short of securing a corpse from the morgue and testing your theory outright, I don’t think we can determine if it has possibilities.”

“I know it’s not very realistic.”

“What we have here isn’t very realistic. We can’t look anymore for realistic answers. A man’s body does not wind up what way due to natural causes. A body is blown up—sure, you have a hell of a mess, but you don’t get a human gelatin mold like this. A body is left for the wind and the rats and the rain to get at for weeks, but it still doesn’t turn into
jello.
The flesh, blood, and bones of that man—and his clothes, considering the fibers we also found in the mixture— went through some extraordinary process, if indeed it was Mr. Peterson up there on the wall of room 919, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out what happened to him. No, your blender theory may not be all that farfetched. Grotesque, certainly, but not farfetched.”

“You mean,” Henry said, his throat dry and scratchy, “someone might have cut up a body, inserted it in a blending machine, and smeared the contents on a wall in the shape of a man?”

“A disgusting, insane ritual killing. And an awful lot of trouble for someone to go to. Someone with a strong stomach.”

“Do you really think that’s the answer?”

“No. No, I don’t. But I think you’re on the right track. We have to find something, some process, something out of the ordinary, that would have a similar effect on a human body. Not a cuisinart. But something else.”

“What, sir?”

“I don’t know.” Ernest went back to the hotplate. “I’m going to have another cup of coffee. One part of me wants to go home and sleep for the rest of the week.”

“I could stay, sir. You
did
say I could come in late tomorrow.”

“Yes, I did.” Ernest thought for a moment. “All right, my intrepid young friend. You go on with the research. I’m going to bed.” He went to the coat rack in the corner. “You can finish the coffee, I won’t be needing it.” He put on his jacket. “Much as I’d love to stay and help, I’m afraid I’d be of no help in this condition. Good night. And good luck.”

“Good night, sir. Say hello to your wife for me.”

“Will do. And uh, Henry?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No blenders or bodies from the morgue, okay?”

Henry smiled. It looked so odd on him. “No, sir. Good night.”

Ernest left the lab, turned to the right, and went out the front door. He headed toward the parking lot and his warm waterbed.

Henry waited until his superior’s footsteps had faded, then went back to work. He looked at the small mass of reddish material lying in the white basin, wondering if a simple staring at it would be more successful than all the probing, magnifying, and poking about. He wondered if he should—could—touch it. Just once. Surely it could do no harm? If he washed his hands thoroughly both before and after? After all, it was only a glob of flesh, blood, bone, and fiber —nothing that could harm him. Just one touch? That’s all. Just to see what it felt like?

He could feel the excitement rising within him. He went to the sink and washed up with soap and hot water. He dried his hands off with toweling—clean, unused towelling. Then he went back to the table, turned up the light shining on the goo, and studied it more carefully.

He lifted his hand, moved it toward the glob, touched the glob with his index finger.

A stab of excruciating pain entered his mind, scorching pain—searing into every nerve, every cell, every synapse. Henry cried out. It was as if a needle had punctured his brain. God, it hurt. It
hurt.

Henry felt his mind being wrenched into an alternate continuum. The entire life of Peterson raced by in a matter of
seconds.
Then he saw
horrifying
images: people herded together like concentration-camp inmates, people working—
slaving,
really—on some terrible contraption.

He saw Peterson’s death.

And then—most terrible of all—something hideous reached out and
touched
his brain.

“Arrggghhh!”

Henry’s mind was no longer his own.

Deep down in a subconscious part that still belonged to him, Henry knew he had brought it on himself.

Henry lifted the mass of organic and inorganic matter up in his hands and brought it over to the sink. He turned on both faucets full blast and let the water run over the substance and start to wash it down the drain.

He tried to resist. This substance was too important—their only link. He pulled his hands away from the faucet—the substance was
safe
again!—and walked back over to the basin.
Must resist.

He put the substance back in the basin where it belonged.

Before Henry’s eyes the substance began to
grow.