Eat'em (12 page)

Chapter 25

The jail has a visitor center for those of us who can’t post bail and haven’t been convicted yet. It’s a combination of a nuthouse lobby and the play area at most dental offices. The biggest difference is the number of security guards hovering around the exit, with its mocking neon sign and condescending poster that states “prisoners not permitted past this point.”

A vibrantly colored play set with twisting plastic tubes like a tiny roller coaster for large beads sits on a jigsaw puzzle play mat on one side of the room. A guard armed with a pistol and pepper spray stands to the side near an empty table with miniature chairs designed to accommodate visiting children.

One could mistake this room for a fortified daycare.

I’m the only one without a gun. All the protection is for me, of course. More accurately, it’s for whoever is behind a set of electronically locked doors. They are receiving a brief just to see me. As if I could spring a trap capable of disarming half a dozen police officers with nothing but my bare hands.

Though I’m fortunate enough to be out of cuffs in this room, it’s still disconcerting to see chains locking every piece of furniture to the floor. Maybe it’s a precaution; however, from my short stint here, I wouldn’t put it past someone being unable to resist using anything in sight as a possible weapon.

I rest my head on my hands and watch Eat’em slide beads back and forth along the twisting tracks of the child’s toy. Each time he reaches the end he triumphantly declares himself the winner and starts on a new set of beads.

The armed guard looks like he’ll doze off at any minute. He pays neither Eat’em nor the self-propelled beads any attention.

My mind drifts along a sea of contemplation as Eat’em plays with the winding rods and various spinning blocks. What if my demon is from an alien planet? Maybe his planet and ours take up the same physical space. They collided eons ago, but instead of one destroying the other, they passed through one another. I think Eat’em and I must be stuck between these two worlds, seeing into both, but each of us can only affect one or the other. We’re the last remnants tying the two realms together.

“Jacob,” a familiar voice breaks me from my daydream. “How are you?”

Professor Kempter squeezes between a couple officers and floats her way toward me. She’s got the grace of any runway model and dresses the part. Her lavender skirt hugs her full-figured hips in such a way that advertises her appearance as something more than a man might be able to handle. There’s elegance in her step, even as her weight shifts her side-to-side, and it all brings her a certain intimidating – might I say – sex appeal.

“Hanging in,” I say. “You got a haircut.”

“You noticed.”

“You look great.”

She takes the seat in front of me and scoots as far from the table as the chain will let her.

“You always look great,” I say.

“Well,” her cheeks struggle through a half-smile. “You look horrible.”

“It’s the outfit,” I say. “But I thought you liked orange.”

“It clashes with your eyes.”

I laugh. “You’re full of shit.”

“You’re modest.”

“And you,” I say.

“Have no reason to be.” She bats her eyelashes.

Our relationship was never so flirtatious before I found myself locked up. It’s not that bars made her more attractive. Only a fool wouldn’t be captivated by Professor Kempter (She calls it
The Three B’s: Beautiful, Beneficent, Buxom).
It’s more that nothing quite takes your guard down so much as being surrounded by actual guards.

Her plum cheeks pale as her mood sombers. She nibbles on her lower lip and huffs before saying, “I’m doing everything I can.”

“I know,” I say.

“I’m doing everything I can next to bringing in a mouse.”

“I know.”

“Showing them,” she covers her mouth with her hand. “Showing them what happens.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I could,” she says. “I could break one of their legs. Let them see it heal for themselves. I could show them violent behavior when the chain is broken. I could show them just how connected they are… the common conscience. Moving together like synchronized swimmers…”

“You can’t.” We’ve had this conversation before. Pain swells in my chest each time. It’s like the air goes bad and I can’t fully exhale.

I look to Eat’em and his beads for comfort. He smiles back at me, announcing loudly, “Won again!” I flash him a quick grin, letting him know I see him.

“You can’t, professor,” I say.

“Jodi.”

“Jodi,” I repeat. I shake my head and released the words with the painful breath of air. “They took everything.”

“I know.”

“You have nothing to give the mice.”

“I know.”

“Nobody is going to let me go collect a sample for you,” I say.

“I know,” she nibbles at her lip again. “But if you could somehow tell me. Tell me where I can find him. Maybe you wouldn’t have to.”

The thought is preposterous and my answer comes without consideration.

I shake my head and say, “No.”

Chapter 26

My first instinct upon seeing the dead body was to dial the police. I punched 911 into my phone and stared at the glowing screen. But no matter how much I wanted to press the call button, I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk being questioned.

Even if I called anonymously, part of me feared my phone could be traced. And if it couldn’t, I would still surely be questioned about it once the apartment was linked to the deserted gas station. I needed to avoid being caught up in too many coincidences. Until I knew what was going on, until I could prove what was going on, until others knew what was going on, I couldn’t tie myself to it.

Something told me I was more than a mere curiosity to law enforcement. I was a suspect. And I couldn’t afford to be one.

I turned off my phone and tried the doors. Of course they were locked. Probably deadbolted. The only other way I could see in was to climb through the kitchen window. Breaking the glass was hardly an option, not with the potential of a light-sleeping neighbor, so I worked to jiggle it free of the small hook that kept it shut tight.

After a few tries it worked. The window slid freely and I pushed it to the top of its track and climbed in after my demon, who was all too eager to explore the contents of the dozen or so cupboards.

I snuck through the dark, careful not to touch anything. Fortunately, my short search confirmed the apartment was vacant, other than the body in the living room. I flipped the lights and squatted beside him.

The ambiance conflicted with the dead man. Not just that it was too pristine to house something as morose as a corpse, but he felt misplaced. It wasn’t the kind of home you would expect a man such as him to live or even visit. Nor was it decorated in a way that I figured a convenience store clerk might set up his home. It was the home of obsessive compulsion. Everything had its place, organized for efficiency more than comfort. And without a single sign of struggle this man, who was not Trevor Schrekengost, lay displayed across the floor of the immaculate home – his arms and legs crooked as if he collapsed without a hint of warning.

“It can’t be?” Eat’em shrieked from the kitchen. “The evil hag has a sister!”

I looked up in time to witness a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth maple syrup soar from the kitchen, smacking into a wall before plopping onto the carpet. Eat’em leapt behind it, wielding a steak knife like the sword of Achilles in defense of Troy.

“You pursue me for the last time, Hell Spawn!” Eat’em shouted. “Now you face the same fate as your sister, Jemima, yes. What say you?”

He plodded toward Butterworth and lifted her from the carpet with his tail so they stood eye-to-eye. The thin spikes along his brow stood on end as his face drew into a grimace.

“Nothing, yes,” he said. “Your silence will win no favors from me. Remember this day, Butterworth. For it is your last.”

With that Eat’em struck the syrup bottle with enough force to send it toppling to the floor. He pounced on it and their battle commenced – the demon’s only upper hand was the bottle’s inability to fight back.

“Damn you, Butterworth!”

I turned my attention back to the body before me. He was around my age. Eighteen. Nineteen at most. Skinny with curly brown hair. His eyes were brown and stared at nothing. His face was neither frozen in fright nor gripped in surprise. Rather he looked trapped in a scene of serenity like a Buddhist Monk who’d spent a lifetime in meditation.

A sudden impulse came over me to feel his neck for a pulse, like I’d seen hundreds of times by made-for-television cops. The gesture proved pointless. The man was dead.

Still, his chest gave the impression of a gentle rise and fall. I knew my mind only played tricks on me. I experienced the same phenomenon at my parents’ vigil. If I could only shake them, they’d awaken. The mind often sees what it expects to see. Sometimes what it wants to see. But it rarely sees what is actually there. It must have been why the world was so closed off to seeing my crimson demon in his plight to rid the earth of the evil that was the maple syrup sisters. And it was why, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t see the dead man as an empty vessel incapable of breathing.

Yet, with no time to react, I too found myself suddenly breathless. The realization I locked myself in an inescapable deathtrap only hit me as I heard the unmistakable sound of a key sliding into the outer lock of the apartment’s front door.

“You listen here, Butterworth. If I hear a single peep out of you… oooo… I’m going to destroy you to the likes which have never been seen.”

Eat’em shushed the bottle of syrup from a shelf above me. I hid amongst coats, starched and pressed, in a small linen closet that faced Trevor’s front door. I tried to keep my nerves from rattling me. Claustrophobia didn’t have the same affect on me as massive crowds, but I feared making the slightest movement, that the pitch-blackness would amplify any miniscule noise, changing it into a riotous clatter.

The closet provided no light, nor did it allow for any visual of the room beyond. I was left to nothing but my hearing – a sense not as finely tuned as my eyesight, as I’d spent most of my life trying to ignore it.

I listened to the apartment’s new arrival. Footsteps clamored one way and another. They were neither angry nor pacing. Nor did it sound like a search for whoever left the kitchen window open. This was the clomping around of busy feet. Whoever it was, he was cleaning.

He moved back and forth through the small apartment. Spraying. Scrubbing. Dusting. Vacuuming. Until everything fit in whatever idealistic chaotic harmony he imagined. Cupboards opened. Closed. Then the footsteps stopped in front of the closet. The handle turned. The door opened. And once again I stood before the gas station clerk.

Chapter 27

Trevor stood between six-foot-four and six-five. He maintained the five o’clock shadow of a grizzled vet and a shaggy mess of dark brown hair. He looked in tip-top shape and could have passed for any of the runners I once competed with. Except he could run on fences and probably had no intentions of another foot race.

For the briefest moment his expression held no emotion. It was the face of a sleepwalker, his consciousness elsewhere. When his cognizance returned his jaw flapped open in the same dumfounded expression I must have had on my own face.

He expected a row of garments equally spaced along the rod to the accuracy of a measuring stick. Instead he found an equally flabbergasted Jacob Brook. And I hadn’t put enough thought into my plan of attack to do anything more than land a pitiful karate chop on one of his too-broad-to-care shoulders. It was meant for his face, but he ended up being a foot taller than I remembered him when he lurched over the register.

Unlike any number of Russians or treacherous Brits unfortunate enough to be on the other end of a strike from the MI6 operative James Bond, Trevor didn’t collapse into the cataleptic ball of dreamland I hoped he would. To be honest, he didn’t fall, stumble, or even react in any manner that would be considered worthy of mention. He stood, statuesque, bewildered and unamused.

“I really like what you’ve done with the place,” I said. I made an attempt for the door, but stopped under the pressure of a grip too strong for the hand that made it.

He pulled me close and grabbed my face with both hands. His fingers bore into my cheeks as if he were a blind man assessing my attractiveness, except his touch was more menacing. Violent. He peeled my eyelids down with his thumbs as he wrenched my head ever closer to his, until the tips of our noses almost touched.

“What…” he said. “Do. You. See?”

“I don’t understand,” I tried to push away, but he held firm. Eat’em remained still on the closet shelf, reassuring the syrup bottle that it would be okay. It will all be over soon.

“Don’t play coy with me, Jacob,” Trevor yelled, prying my eyes wider, staring into them with empty vortexes. “This is a coincidence? You’re just a home invader, huh? You happened to choose my homes?”

“Your homes?” He said my name. He knew my name.

“My homes,” he said. “Mine!”

“I don’t know…”

He squeezed my skull. A burning sensation scorched my temples. It felt like my head might crush under his firm grasp. The sensation stayed even as he let up. He said, “This is not by chance. You see something. These. Eyes. See something. What is it? How is it that you know when nobody else knows?”

“Know what?” I screeched as his fingers dug into my scalp. “I don’t know anything. I swear I don’t know anything.”

Trevor’s mouth fell open and he snapped at my neck. I thrust my arms between his and grabbed his chin, forcing his face away as best I could. With him pulling my face closer and me pushing his away, for a second I felt like I’d fallen victim to the world’s least comfortable slow dance.

“I swear,” I wailed. “I swear I don’t.”

He relented, but kept hold of my cheeks. “Then why are you afraid? If you are so oblivious, why is it that I am able to taste your fear?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, “maybe it has to do with the dead man on your floor?”

“Ha,” never had there been a more humorless laugh.

Trevor dragged me into the living room and shoved me to the floor in front of the dead man.

“What do you see?”

I saw my mother. The haunting image of her death still haunted me. Her exuberance robbed from her.

“Nothing,” I said. “A dead man?”

“Wrong!” Trevor shouted. “He is not dead…”

“He’s not dead.”

“No,” he said, “he lives in me.”

The dead man blinked. Had I blinked, I might have missed it. But I didn’t. His porcelain like eyes rolled back so far they looked like the eyes of a man blinded with cataracts. When they oriented to their proper position, they no longer appeared lifeless. Color returned to his nose and cheeks. His cracked lips parted, forming a bear-trap smile.

Both men spoke together, “I live in him.”

I fumbled in my pocket, gripping the handle of the steak knife I’d retrieved from the demon cowering in the closet with his frienemy, Mrs. Butterworth. All of my fear rose into my throat and I knew I would never breathe again until they couldn’t. I had to strike.

“What do you see now?” They asked at the same time. “Tell me, Jacob, do you see death? Or life?”

Their question answered with a knock at the door.

Nothing could have been more serendipitous than the three loud thuds.
BANG! BANG! BANG!

Trevor and his back-from-the-dead roommate looked up at the same time. They spoke in unison, “Who did you bring…?”

With a sideways thrust that would bring tears to the eyes of the most experienced swordsman, I shoved the serrated blade into Trevor’s chest plate until bone obstructed hilt.

I threw the other man off me and ran to the closet.

“Eat’em,” I said, “let’s get a move on.”

“You’re alive?” Eat’em said. “Terribly unexpected, yes. Mrs. B., I guess I owe you ten dollars.”

“You were betting on me?”

“Against you.”

“With a syrup bottle?”

“Yes,” Eat’em said, “And I’m going to need to borrow some money. Do you have ten bucks?”

“No, what?” I said, “Never mind that, we need to go.”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I turned back to the living room, ready to brace myself in case the dead man had found his footing. He convulsed on the floor, writhing, bleeding from his nose and eyes, bile pouring out his lips.

“Okay, Eat’em, say goodbye to your lady friend,” I said. “Come on, buddy. With haste.”

“She’s not my lady friend,” Eat’em said. “I’ll have you know, Mrs. Butterworth has agreed to marry me. She will now be Mrs. Butter’em.”

“Fantastic,” I said, “bring her with you. We’ll have a wedding. Just get down and let’s go.”

Bang!

“Okay,” Eat’em said. “You hold her.” I grabbed his newlywed spouse and Eat’em climbed onto my shoulder.

“Jacob!” It came from outside. It was Val. “I know you’re in there. Open the door.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Mrs. Butter’em does not approve of such language,” Eat’em said.

“Screw Mrs. Butter’em.”

“Hey!”

“We’ve got a bigger problem.”

All we needed to do was go out the backdoor. We could go home and tell Val he must have followed someone else. Maybe that would work. Why in the world would he follow me anyway? Now, I had to worry about him putting himself in danger. I had to worry about bloodletting Trevor all over the apartment too. Perhaps I should burn it down. Pretend like it’d never happened. I mean, all I really had to do was get out, lure Val away, convince him something happened that didn’t actually happen, and somehow cover up yet another crime scene from APD.

But there was one giant roadblock preventing our salvation.

The risen-dead roommate rose in front of the doorway. Blood poured from his face and his eyes turned a spidery red from rage and madness. He lurched and let out a guttural scream. Then he came toward us.