Eat'em (18 page)

Chapter 40

Ichabod collapsed in a splash of gore. The pointblank range of the shotgun turned his head inside out and scattered infected bits of brain and bone and tooth and tongue all over the side of the shed, piled trash, and dried leaves.

The weapon’s kick was almost enough to knock me clean out. And already I could hear Eat’em complain in my ringing ears about firing a gun so close to his face. Also, he was ticked I’d jumped to the ground without warning him first, but warning my demon of my plans never seemed to bode well when others were present to hear them too.

The farm’s new landlord didn’t fair well either. He didn’t have an exploded head like the one who ‘gave him life’ but he was back to his spasms and was now vomiting waves of dark bile. In less than a minute he would be mindlessly trying to eat whatever was in his destructive path, which I didn’t so much care to be on, so after a quick apology I pumped the empty shells from the chamber, aimed at Terry’s head and again pulled the trigger. This time, instead of a bang, I was greeted with the dull
thap
of metal smacking metal.

If there were more rounds, Terry had them, and I was fairly confident he wouldn’t give them up without a fight.

I ran.

Twigs and dead leaves cracked with my every step as I sprinted back into the woods. The bumbling brute just as quickly took off in the same direction. His grunts and screeches, more than the foliage underfoot, gave ample evidence he was gaining more ground than I could put between us. He was clearly not as fast as Crane or Trevor or Parsons, but he easily outpaced me.

I didn’t turn to see just how much he outpaced me, but by the sounds he made I knew I wouldn’t make the freeway before he was eating my face and washing it down with my insides.

A case could be made for the stupidity in the decision, but I figured higher ground would be safer than running through the unfamiliar trees, hoping to lose the beast at my heels.

I leapt to a low branch of a split oak with relative ease and barely struggled to climb to the second and third. My only hope was that the high-jumping, tightrope running capabilities of the infected were cut-off whenever the link was lost. If not, I hoped I could climb high enough that the fall would kill me and I wouldn’t have to experience being Terry’s midnight snack in the middle of the shrouded grove.

I pulled myself to an upper branch, about fifteen feet from the ground and looked up toward the canopy. The limbs thinned considerably, much faster than I thought from the ground. Only halfway up the tree and my footing already bowed. It wasn’t nearly as high off the ground as I figured it’d be either. Maybe thirty-five feet total, possibly forty. High enough that I’d be in considerable pain if I fell to the ground, but not so high that I wouldn’t be conscious when Terry’s yellow teeth ripped into my windpipe.

Still, I lifted myself once more and grabbed a branch overhead so narrow that my hands wrapped entirely around it. As luck sometimes wins out, Terry stopped at the base of the oak inefficiently clawing at the tree instead of climbing it, I didn’t have to worry about fighting Spider-Man for the high ground after all.

I sat on the highest branch I could reach and stared out at the sky. Killing didn’t weigh on me as it had the first few times. I didn’t think I’d be doing it for much longer with the course of things, but at least I’d be able to get a full night sleep before I inevitably fought my last fight.

I swung my legs around the branch so I straddled it and gave Valentine a call.

He answered groggily, “You better be dying.”

“About to,” I said. “I could use a ride.”

“You’re kidding me. It’s almost four in the morning.”

“I can call Dixie,” I said, “but if I recall you wanted me to call you when I was in a jam first.”

“Yeah right.”

“I’ll buy you breakfast,” I said.

Eat’em answered ecstatically, “Pancakes!”

Before I could give Val directions, a hand wrapped around my ankle. Apparently, Terry figured out how to climb.

I dropped my phone and hoped the sickening
crack
wasn’t enough to break it completely. Terry’s teeth sunk into my shoe and I kicked him hard with my other foot. I stomped over and over until all I could hear was whistling and the meaty
thump
of my shoe smacking against his forehead repeatedly.

The beast dropped, crashing into several branches on his way back to the earth.

After hitting the ground he ran in the direction of the whistling and I realized they were sirens. The police must have been able to trace Terry’s phone. Or maybe someone else called when they heard the gunshot. Nevertheless, they were at the property and Terry, himself, was running toward them with insatiable hunger on his mind, and my shoe in his hand.

I remained in the tree, glad I hadn’t given Val the address before our call was rudely interrupted. He’d be mad tomorrow, but for now, I had the safety of the Texas oak. I wrapped myself around a sagging limb and ignored gunshots and wailing sirens.

I slept.

Chapter
41

Sergeant Cameron, a twenty-something year old cop with a sparkling complexion and teeth that belong in a toothpaste commercial, corroborates a nonsensical story about how Terry’s death was an accidental shooting. Cameron’s the face of the APD, some golden boy that helped the lieutenant bring me down, Terry’s death is a mishap, and the whole story’s a giant steaming pile of bunk.

The dead are so easily made martyrs.

Bellecroix mentioned the man’s killing as if collateral damage was expected out of police officers. Like a magician revealing a mark’s selected card, he manipulated the crowd into believing death is merely an illusion the prosecution is capable of pulling off. And for his next trick, please bring Sergeant Cameron to the stage.

He has oily black hair, slicked back, requiring constant grooming to keep from clumping or falling to the side. His eyebrows are cherry blond, so I imagine black isn’t his usual hair color. It works in opposition of his uniform as most of the officers grouped in the back of the courtroom have clean buzz cuts, flat tops or fades.

“He came running out of the forest like he was being chased or something,” Cameron says. That’s about where his credibility ends. “He had his arms up and was screaming. We didn’t know he was screaming for help until it was too late. You know. Some of us thought he might have a gun. We didn’t know he was the one who called it in. He came running out holding something. I thought it was a gun. Looked like a gun.”

“What was it?” Mike asks.

“Like L.T. said,” Cameron points over my shoulder toward Bellecroix, “it was a shoe.”

“Who gave the order to shoot the man wielding a shoe?”

“Nobody specifically. I saw the shoe. I opened fire. He was holding it like this,” Cameron holds his hand up as if he’s pointing a gun. He twists so the jury can see his imaginary shoe. “I knew I’d done wrong. So did we all know. But it was an honest mistake. In the dark, he could have been armed.”

“Did you yell a warning for him to stop?”

“Hell yeah we did,” Cameron says, “but all that’s already been brought up back in April. I said it then same as I’ll say it now, we thought he had a gun. It may have been an error in judgment, but I don’t think it was, lives might have been saved. Especially, you know, had it been a gun.”

“And not a shoe.”

“It looked like a gun.”

Earlier in the year, a case went public regarding the State of Texas vs. the Arlington Police Department. No suspects were found outside of the two men involved. The case settled as a public dispute between one Terry Lee and the headless trespasser. Police, then, said Terry was crazed, had shot the victim while on the phone with dispatch and then ran into the woods to wait for first responders. They called it ‘suicide by cop’ and the case was pretty much a farce.

Finding the second shoe at my home upon my arrest drastically changed that first case. Terry became a victim. His guttural screams of rage became frantic cries for help. The police acting in self-defense became a tragic accident.

“Anyway,” Cameron says with a silky Texas twang, “we didn’t know at the time Mr. Brook’d ever been present. You can gather all that from what was said back in April. We’d only known of the two men and that’s all. ‘n’ everything changed in light of new evidence from what we learned about Mr. Brook being there and that he’d killed some other victims too.”

“Allegedly,” Eat’em says. He chimes in every so often, but has mellowed significantly since the start of the trial. I think we’re both ready to accept whatever fate comes our way. “I don’t recall you killing anybody. And I’ve been with you the whole time, yes. Put me on stand, I’ll clear things up.”

If Big Mike hadn’t already shot down the request, I might have entertained the idea. Unfortunately, my lawyer already stated, putting my ‘imaginary friend’ on stand was about the dumbest idea he’d ever heard of.

“I’ve got manuscripts from this spring’s trial,” Mike says as he opens his manila folder and searches a stack of papers. “You said then that no rational man would have considered Terry’s actions as anything less than an attempt on Officer Denman’s life. You said he was crazed, carrying a weapon, and he tried to bite another officer. Is that so?”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“You did,” Mike shows Cameron a sheet of paper, “right here.”

“Ah…” the officer stalls, tapping the page and nodding as he does. “This. I do remember saying this. See, the key word here is rational. See, what I meant by that, and what I mean now, is that the events preceding that, those events had taken the rationality out of the situation. You understand?”

“I don’t.”

“Well, it’s simple,” Cameron nods. “Real simple really. Mr. Lee… Terry… he suffered from post traumatic syndrome. That’s what had happened. He’d seen this horrific thing, which Mr. Brook’d done, and that’s why he was acting the way he was. ‘Course we didn’t know that then. That’s why it’s said the way I said it. But we know it now. He had the PTS and that’s what made me say no rational man.”

Mike nods.

“You can’t really go off what I said then anyway,” Cameron continues. “Memory’s only as reliable as the one of us with the worst of it. The evidence is where you’re going to find your answers. And’s far as I can tell you, all the evidence points to this man, Jacob Caleb Brook, killing them folks.”

It feels like a horrible place to end the conversation, but Mike ends it with no further questions.

Chapter 42

Climbing down the tree in the daylight proved more difficult than climbing up at night. Eat’em coerced me to take a leap of faith, but I didn’t feel compelled to shatter my ankle upon landing. Instead I slithered down – like a snake competing with vestigial arms and legs – I groped down the wide trunk of the oak, sliding on my chest as I dropped from foothold to foothold, limb to limb.

At the base I retrieved my cracked smart phone from the large tree’s discarded leaves. The screen lit when I touched it, but only long enough to reveal a flashing battery to indicate my phone died sometime in the middle of the night.

As I climbed back over the dropped barbed wire and followed the dirt road toward the freeway, I peeled off my dirty shirt and used it to wipe away what little blood that stained my skin from the previous night. My scarred torso might be enough to terrify passersby, but it seemed the better option to running the risk of getting taken into custody, once again, for wearing a blood-stained t-shirt.

Police staked out the farmhouse overnight, but they were gone by the time I woke up forty feet above the ground. Surely, they would be back, but I took advantage of their absence while I could.

Eat’em’s long fingers clung to my collarbone as he swayed back and forth on my upper back. His prickly skin felt warm even compared to the midday sun, which kissed my forehead, creating beads of sweat.

I wondered if I would have a demon shaped suntan line. The thought never crossed my mind before, mainly because I never made a habit of being shirtless, but now that I considered it, I almost wanted to laugh at the preposterousness of trying to explain it.

In the past I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to conclude whether Eat’em is somehow stuck between two realms or if he’s even tangible at all. I know he must be, because where light hits him he creates shadow. If I were to have only imagined him, I wouldn’t have also imagined his ability to manipulate the world around him, especially the way he is subject to light and darkness the same as any other physical object. Even if my mind were creative enough to manifest such a creature, there was no way I could also warp my perception of the physical world to compensate for his presence. Also, as Dixie had demonstrated time and again, she could, at the very least, feel Eat’em on the occasion he was brave enough to touch her. She compared it to having the sixth sense of being watched, that something else is present. She felt an extra electricity in Eat’em, though she couldn’t perceive him in any other way. Similar to a ghost story in which a wispy figure is briefly caught on camera, just enough out of focus to question its very existence. That’s how she explained Eat’em. The way the hair on the back of your neck stands up and you knew something was near though it can’t be placed. That was Eat’em. Yet to me, he was as real and tangible as ground beneath my feet.

He hummed joyfully as I walked to Val’s apartment, ignoring the hot pavement beneath my sweltering feet.

“Where have you been, neighbor?” Isaac greeted me as I came through the door. He looked as tired as I felt, as Val often called me, a bag of smashed ass.

“Camping,” I said. “Where’s my uncle?”

“He went looking for you, dimwit,” Isaac said. He loaded dishes into the washer, organizing them as he spoke. “Val woke me up last night and said you were missing and he thought you might be in trouble. Asked if I would wait for you here and call him if you showed up before he did. Sounds like you’re in trouble.”

“I’m fine,” I said, “I just need to get cleaned up and changed. Mind texting him for me? My phone died or else I would have called.”

“Ugh…” Eat’em belched as I grabbed some fresh clothes and dumped my dirty shirt and shoe in Val’s hamper. “It smells like a potpourri convention, yes. Where’s the scent of pizza crumbs and Monster and Red Bull and perspiration? Where’s the charm?”

I closed myself into the bathroom and shouted through the door, “Did you tidy up or did Val?”

“I did,” Isaac said, “I don’t know how you two live like this. It’s an armpit in here.”

“Yeah,” I said, “well, I hardly live here anymore, so you know, whatever.”

“That’s right, how’s the girlfriend?”

I turned on the shower for me and ran the sink for the demon. It took some training, but he finally bathed on his own. Though, he didn’t use much more than water, and even then, he wasn’t the biggest fan of getting wet. Maybe nobody else had to smell him, but so long as I did, he’d bathe.

“She’s good,” I yelled. “Busy doing something community service related. I forgot what it’s called. Like Big Brothers, Big Sisters, but that’s not it.”

“You don’t know the name,” Isaac laughed, “of where your girlfriend works.”

“No, I do. I just forgot it.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll just ask her tonight.”

“What do you mean, you’ll ask her tonight?”

“Ah yeah,” Isaac’s voice grew louder and less muffled, as if he pressed his face to the bathroom door. “You know Dr. Reeder?”

“Yes,” I said.

Eat’em said, “Yes! Yes! And Yes! Monads!”

“Well, one of his students is in some band,” Isaac said. “Asked Reeder if he wanted to go to a concert. So he’s making a shindig out of it. And I thought I’d invite y’all.”

“You hang out with Dr. Reeder?”

“Yeah, man,” he said, “I told you, I love philosophy. You think you’ll come?”

I dried off and threw on my fresh outfit, a pair of shorts and a white tee.

“I’m fairly sure Val’s going to be too pissed off for me to want to go anywhere,” I said, opening the door.

Isaac greeted me with a toothy grin. “No, man, I already talked to him about it. He’s cool. I told him it’d be good for you to get out and be normal.”

“Normal?”

“Well, whatever?” Isaac said. “I don’t know what the deal is. You stress him out. Maybe he gets stressed easily. Doesn’t matter. I asked if he wanted to tag along and told him to invite you and Dixie. And since you’re here before he is, I figured I’d go ahead and ask you.”

“Do I have to dress up?” I asked.

“I’d look nicer than that,” he pointed to my clean clothes. “I’m not going to get caught dead in what I’m wearing. But, I guess it doesn’t really matter for you. You don’t got to impress anybody. Val and I are the stags.”

Eat’em shook dry as he sauntered into the living room. He took a detour toward the kitchen and hollered for me to open the fridge. I obeyed and grabbed a water for myself.

“I guess I’ll go,” I said.

“Alright,” Isaac said, “in the meantime you ought to relax. Your impromptu camping trip looks like it’s did you in. Now, that you’re here and Pat’s on his way back, I’m going to go rest, myself. But I’ll see you all tonight. Good catching up.”

“Likewise,” I said as Isaac left.

“That evil scumbag!” Eat’em yelled from the kitchen.

“What?” I asked.

“She’s back!”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?” Eat’em asked. “Jemima!”