Husk (11 page)

“What did I do?”

“Sheldon, when did you get here?”

Fuck!

“It's good to see you, dear. I've been so lonely.”

I clasped my head in my hands.
So close
, I thought, but close to what I still wasn't sure. “I'm fine, Mom. Just been . . . real busy.”

“No.” She pulled her blankets up to her chin, her eyes shot through with fear. “It's not you.”

“It's me, Mom. It's Sheldon.”

“It's not you. I know who you are.”

“It's Sheldon, Mom,” I tried again, struggling to keep my voice down to a harsh whisper. “Your son.”

“You're not Sheldon,” Mom said, her eyes suddenly wide but focused on the wall behind me. I could count the veins beneath the opacity of her skin. Hell, I could hear the blood sluicing its way through her system. I clutched at the armrests and the metal dented under the pressure. “I know my Sheldon, you're not him. He's a fornicator and a homo.”

“Got it in one, Mom,” I mumbled.

“I speak to God about Sheldon,” she continued. I shifted my lips in an effective mime show of her harangue. “I speak to Him every day and I pray every night that He might show Sheldon the error of his ways. He lives a life of sin. He doesn't know that I know. I thank the Lord his father died before he could see the abomination his son has become.”

“Your husband was gay,” I interrupted. “I'm pretty sure. You just said so.”

“Roland was a good man. I kept him from temptation.”

“Whatever you say. Mom, I've got some news. I don't have. A lot of time here.”

“He was a good boy once. I don't know what happened. He strayed.”

“I got a job, Mom. A good one.”

“He became an actor. That's what made him queer. All those liberals. That's how they get you.”

“It'll pay enough to. Help you stay here.”

“I asked him to pray to God for guidance.”

“Maybe I could have you moved. To a better place.”

“Do you know what he said to me?”

“If I'm an actor. Then this is what God wants.”

“‘This is what God wants.'”

“God doesn't make no mistakes.”

“‘God doesn't make no mistakes.' Even then, he was lost.”

“I was there, Mom. It's me.”

“I love you, Sheldon. That's what I said to him.”

“Now you're just. Flat-out lying. What would God think about that?”

“I love you, but God will surely punish you for your sinful ways.”

“You might have. Had a point there,” I admitted. I took her hand, feeling the throb of her blood push into my palm. It was like cradling an injured sparrow. “Mom, I have to go now. I don't know if you'll understand. I just wanted. I don't know what I wanted. But you'll be fine. I'm going to make sure of it.”

“I love my son,” she said. “I always tried to make sure he knew that. Please believe me.”

I held myself still, barely able to keep from squeezing her hand harder. “I know you did. What happened to him. Was not your fault.”

“Sheldon was not the easiest child to like. So many problems. So intelligent. Always asking questions.”

“I'm sure he just. Couldn't help himself.”

“I don't want you to take him.”

“I won't,” I said. “I won't take him, I promise.”

We sat in conflicted silence.

“Take him where?” I asked.

Her hand tightened around mine. “Please tell me you won't take him. Take me, please.” I pulled my hand away. Mom breathed out a whine and scratched ineffectually at me. “Don't take him, he's a good boy. He's just confused.”

“Who do you think I am, Mom?”

Her clawing became more agitated, pulling at the sheets. She whipped her head back and forth, her sparse hairs getting caught in her mouth. “I won't let you. You can't have him. It was all my fault, I should have been stronger for him.” I took her hands and held them still. She fought at the familiarity of my touch, gasping in rage, but there was no muscle behind the battle. She quickly went limp, but her eyes glared at me, seeing me, seeing something. “I hate you.” There was no confusion in her eyes, no fear or pretense. For perhaps the last moment of her life, she was focused on the now.

“Where do you think. I'm going to take Sheldon?” I asked.

“To Hell.”

“Mom, it's
Sheldon
,” I hissed. She writhed and groaned at the sound, but I refused to let her go. “Please see me, Mom. Just this once. I'm right here.”

“You're a trickster,” she snapped. Her teeth were bared in her fury, she was a dancing skeleton in my arms. “You're the devil, but I won't let you take him.”

“It's me, Mom.
Please
.”

“I'm not afraid of you. I spit at you.” A weak stream of drool slipped over her lower lip and moistened her collar. “I spit in your face for the glory of God.”

“Who am I, Mom?” I yowled. Her face flattened under the force of my yell. N. Nowlan's heart rate monitor rushed faster. “Tell me! Who do you think I am?”

“You're Death,” she said, and she collapsed to the bed, eyes shut.

I shook her by the shoulders, snarling.
I should eat her
. The idea ran screaming through my skull.
Eat her. Destroy the bitch. That'll show her who's death and who isn't
. I lifted her hand to my nose and took a sniff, glorying in the aroma, the meat so tender, bones so fragile.
Like chewing on salmon bones.
The thought made me grin. I placed her fingers in my mouth. They lay slack atop the points of my incisors, the skin dimpling.
It's what she deserves, after all. They all deserve . .
.

I stopped, letting go but keeping my teeth tight around the fingers so that the arm swung from my mouth.
Who deserves it? Who deserves what?
What was I contemplating here? A feeding frenzy? Indiscriminate killing? I had my mother's hand in my mouth, I had almost eaten my mother. Was I serious? For fuck's sake, something was seriously wrong with me, and I had better come to grips with its implications before I took such an enormous step. There's survival for the sake of survival, and I understood that the eating of live flesh was somehow now an essential part of my being. I wasn't yet prepared to search for an efficient means of exterminating myself, so I was going to have to find a way to manage my appetites somehow.

But eating one's own mother? Out of spite? That surely toed a line in someone's sandbox.

Lost in a moral quagmire, I ignored the scrabbling of fingers in my mouth. The fingers grabbed at my tongue, gained purchase and pulled me downward, finally getting my attention. My mother clasped my tongue in a death grip, her nails scraping at my taste buds. Her eyes blazed a dark insanity.

“I've got you now, fucker,” she wheezed, showering my face in spittle and venom. “You thought you could kill me, but I'm stronger than you thought!”

“
Gluawop!
” I said, gargling around her digits. I batted weakly at her arm to loosen her grasp but she hung on, sliding off the bed as I stepped backward and pulling me to my knees to avoid losing the tongue altogether.

“I'm taking you with me, Satan!” she yelled, astoundingly powerful of voice. “Take me now, Lord, while I still have the strength!”

I screamed in panic, snapping her back into unconsciousness. I thrashed my head away, spitting out her fingers. There was a slight copper taste in my mouth, overlaying the flavor of her flesh, sparking my fear. The panic threw fuel on my hunger and I roared in confusion. N. Nowlan's body shivered once and his monitor flat-lined. I stumbled to my feet and flew toward him, throwing off his blanket and taking as enormous a bite as I could out of his upper leg, another, anything to quell the beast. I pulled him to the floor in my fluster, knocking over his
IV
and leaving him splayed on the cold tile. I loosed another scream, deeper, the nutrition of
N
.'s ligaments taking instant effect. I hefted his body in a fireman's carry and rushed out and down the hall, knocking over carts and trays, continuing my shrieking, hoping that it would keep people out of my way.

I ran freaking into the night, only composing myself when I reached my car and had to drop N. into a snow bank and search my pockets for keys. I jammed the body into the trunk and threw myself into the driver's seat, tearing out of the lot, crumbling with shame as I savored the remnants of N. between my teeth. But overlaying that flavor, far worse, was the vinegar tang I still tasted of the one drop of my mother's blood that had seeped out of her finger.

Tasted it, and liked it.

It's the eyes.

That's what's most unsettling for people upon meeting me. And re-meeting me. What I mean to say is, they never get over it.

My eyes used to be a lovely brown, deep, hued like a mug of Sumatra. Almost black, but just so. Unsettlingly dark, but projecting the intrinsic warmth of an aged ski lodge or neighborhood pub. My best feature, often remarked upon by casting directors, boyfriends, and strangers alike.

Now, my eyes are still my most arresting feature, but for a far different reason.

You'd be surprised how easily an eye can be damaged if you never blink.

I mastered the undead art of simulating breath, but only as a means of communicating with others. Without the impediment of speech — so necessary in society — I never would have bothered to relearn the unexpectedly onerous art of lung and larynx manipulation to achieve aural interaction.

So it is with the eyes, or rather, the blinking of eyelids. An almost completely unconscious impulse that occurs upwards of twenty thousand times a day. If you don't blink, you don't provide your optic organs with a mop and sponge to clean and protect their valuable finish. And if your lachrymal glands are on the fritz and can't produce saltwater, or your eyes don't register discomfort at the myriad motes that bombard it constantly, you don't blink. A grain of sand, fine as dust yet harsh as barbed wire, can affix to the lens for days without notice.

Thus, I present my eyes. Windows to my soul. Festooned with wounds. Scratched, streaked. Scuffed, lacerated, scraped, pitted. Once-penetrating ocular marvels reduced to globes of mottled limestone with underlying streaks of brown shale, as if someone took steel wool and scrubbed my lenses to remove some particularly vexing sties.

A daily regiment of saline squirted into each eye at regular intervals helped stave off the erosion for a few months. I wore safety glasses at first when I walked outside, then a fashionable pair of ski goggles, and then tinted flight goggles I had absent-mindedly pocketed and taken home after a day's work as an obviously doomed fighter pilot on an episode of
The X-Files
. Something had eaten at the power couplings to the engine, a rust monster or something, which thereupon hurtled my character into a mountaintop at mach 5, and only Mulder and Scully could stop it. I was the wingman, not the main pilot. I had two lines: “What the—” and “Ahhh!” I gave it my all but, as Rowan related, I had the scream of a prepubescent child undergoing a tantrum. The sound effects guys foleyed in a stock scream over my agonized face as I smacked into the rocks and the jet exploded around me. I didn't feel so bad about keeping the goggles after that, even if I never had a practical use for them. Until now.

I can still see. Hazy, milkwater world it now is, but still recognizable. Clearer than you might expect, as pupil and iris are all but absent underneath the abrasions. But I would fail any driving test.

It was a repulsive carpet, fashioned with depressing swirls of orange and green. It did, however, effectively disguise the crusted beads that led out from the door of apartment 4E and down the hallway to the stairwell. You'd notice only if you were looking for them.

The door was unlocked. It moaned soulfully as I pushed it open.

Nice touch
, I thought, and entered.

The smell was immediate, intense and luscious.

I entered the tiny foyer, a five-foot square space of tile that butted up against the kitchen to my left, a hallway to my right, and a living area directly in front of me. Out of habit I shuffled the snow off my feet, but there was no such need for formalities. The apartment was a tomb.

“Craig?” I whispered to the crypt. “Mr. Neal? You here?”

It had hit me that morning during shooting. I had just taken a shotgun blast to the back, and supposed hero Duane Linwood (late of the Disney Channel's
Tales of a Tenth Grade Superstud
)
was triumphantly holding the gun aloft over my prone form. The evil (i.e., me) was dead, was the presumption, as few ever came back from such injuries. Ah, but good old Lester hadn't become a maniacal slayer of buxom lasses without gleaning a few offbeat survival techniques, and had fortuitously been wearing a bulletproof vest (knowledge of such to be revealed in a lengthy epilogue by a grizzled forensic examiner whose sole filmic purpose was to glimpse at my remains, mutter exposition, and then act surprised when he turned around to discover that Lester's body had mysteriously vanished. The end?). Lester would then arise, as if from the dead, and come at Duane with one of several deadly contrivances he had hidden around his cellar dwelling. Such is the life of near-indestructible killers, always one more trick up the sleeve, one more boo to the audience.

As I lurched upward, a noisy and graceless process (later edited into a resurrection of sly fluidity during post-production), I gargled out my line: “You think you've defeated me? A boy like you? I have spoken with the devil himself and come away smiling. I can never die.” Deathless prose. Then, according to script, Lester was to frisbee a rotary saw blade directly at Duane's awaiting head. It would graze his temple, eliciting torrents of blood (they'd trim it back to keep us
PG
-13, then release the extra blood in an unrated
DVD
), but he'd come back unbowed with fists a'blazing. We'd trade barbs and blows, a fight to the death in dimly-lit crowded quarters, ultimately ending in Lester's throat impalement with a handy piece of rebar.

Duane waited expectantly for the rubber blade to hurtle toward him, trying not to flinch. The prop saw sat patiently in my grip, awaiting its moment to shine.

All I could think was
shit shit shit shit shit.

Back from the dead. That was me. And in all the confusion, all the ridiculous planning of career opportunities and dietary options, I had forgotten one of the basic tenets of the zombie genre; if you're bit, you change.

Craig was bit. Craig, the morgue attendant. Craig, the guy who had removed my innards before I snapped his forearms, had gotten a heaping dose of Sheldon. And that simple fact, I had bit someone and let him live,
that
had slipped my mind.

I strode off the set over Zed's objections, muttering apologies.
Calm down
, I told myself.
You bit Mom, remember?
I had called often to check in on her condition, not daring to show my face again. The nurses reported no change, she was still delusional, still ranting. Of N.'s disappearance there was no mention, and I could not hazard asking about him. I figured they must have had some primo lawyers keeping the whole disappearance quiet, or N.'s family had simply shrugged in relief at not having to pay for a funeral.

This meant nothing, I knew. So Mom
seemed
fine. I had only pierced her finger, probably, the pinprick of my incisor; the infection could still be festering, biding its time. Craig, I had sliced open a jagged seam along his hand and drooled contagion within him.

I started scanning online news sites, searching for any mysterious deaths being reported, any recent missing persons cases left unsolved, any pets run away. In Toronto, this only gave me hundreds of possibilities, a proverbial haystack of needles. Fucking useless, is what I mean to say. No way to be sure, although I could reasonably ascertain that there were no reports of a body being found with strange cannibalistic bite marks about its exterior. Small favors.

I tracked down Craig's address, using a pay phone to dial every Craig and C. Neal in the book, asking for the gentleman who worked in the morgue, hanging up at every
huh
,
what
, or
who
. Only two numbers gave me possibles, both calls picked up by answering machines. One was for a fairly ritzy address in Bedford Park, the other for an apartment in Scarborough.

I went with the apartment.

Now, entering at three in the morning, I figured I had guessed correctly. It was dark inside, but from the light of the hallway behind me I could glimpse suggestions of carnage.

The bloody handprint on the wall was a dead giveaway.

“Craig?” I tried again. “Buddy?”

I closed the door behind me, locking it and fumbling for the light switch. Speckles of red spattered the carpet leading down the hall. I ignored them and walked into the den, keeping low until I reached the curtains to pull them shut. The apartment was on the fourth floor of a nine-story complex, but it was one building of many, all with open windows looking in my direction. There was no sense in leaving myself open to any possibility of detection. From this vantage point in the suite, something was clearly amiss. Standard couch, standard coffee table, standard flatscreen television atop standard pressed wood entertainment unit. All overturned or broken. Very little blood, but salt-stained boot prints were stomped into the white carpet. A lot of them. A few pictures hung askew on the walls, images of happy times. Craig and a woman on a water slide, Craig and the same woman on a beach, the duo and a newborn child posing at a hospital bed, the woman's hair bedraggled, Craig looking exhausted, both beaming.

I looked toward the hallway, toward the bedrooms.

For the first time since death, I was truly afraid.

I walked down the hall, avoiding stepping on the trail of blood that led my way. Odd I should feel squeamish.

The handprint was next to an open doorway. The tracks led inside, drops getting larger, becoming splashes, then a lengthy swatch of red that ended at a pair of legs dangling over of edge of a bed. Shapely legs, legs someone had cared about, legs now ornamented with ragged bite marks.

I turned on the light.

The woman from the picture.

I recognized her from the color of her hair. There was nothing else to go by.

The face of some loveliness was now an orifice. The skin had been ripped out from the middle and now hung in curtains on either side of the head. I could picture Craig, insatiably hungry, pushing his fingers in like an eager child opening a bag of potato chips. The skull had been forced inward until the bones had given way, its contents scooped out like a jack o' lanterns until there was nothing left. It was late winter outside, but already a few industrious flies were setting up shop within the hollow of her thoughts.

I stifled an urge to take a nibble and moved on.

I left the bedroom and went to the next door, also open. I left the lights off, but from the glow of the shuttered window I could see it was a child's bedroom. Dora the Explorer wallpaper trim, a small bed still equipped with guardrails to prevent nocturnal fall-out, a Spongebob plush on the floor. What was left of Craig's daughter was heaped in the corner, shredded beef. I closed the door before my hunger could make demands that my self-control could not withstand.

This was not the work of something that cared about being caught. This was raw appetite. If I had harbored a hope that Craig would be like me, perhaps prove a kindred spirit, someone to talk to, form a support group with, that hope was long gone. I was alone, and making a friend an impossibility. Anyone who suffered the side effects of my personal plague was doomed to a post-death existence of mindless eating.

Of Craig himself there was no sign. I checked out the rest of the apartment to be thorough, but aside from further boot prints, I found nothing.

Judging by the scent, Craig's first foray into cannibalism had been recent, not more than two days previous. Craig was out on the streets of Toronto, shambling, feral, ravenous, and clearly insensate. There should have been something in the news by now. Craig didn't seem one to lurk in the shadows; he would have locked onto the nearest source of nourishment and begun bingeing.

How did he even get out of the building?
I imagined myself as Craig, lying in bed, feverish, telling the wife it was nothing, just a bug picked up somewhere from work. He'd be fine in the morning. She's too trusting, too scared to call an ambulance, doesn't want to jinx Craig's recovery. Then, for a brief instant, he leaves the world, checks out, dead. It couldn't have been too long an interval, she would have called someone. Then, the demon rises, Craig no longer, now only monstrous appetite clad in flannel pajamas. It surprises Craig's wife, crushes her skull, slurps out its contents. It hears the cry of a child in the next room and instinctively follows the noise, helpless to stop, unbound by morality, compelled to honor its bloodlust. There is no sense of satiation, no ability or desire to stop when full. Perhaps Craig was still inside somewhere, screaming, an unwilling voyeur to his body's new self. And then . . . what? Could it find its way out of the apartment? Could it master a doorknob? Did it understand the concept of “doorway”?

I looked again to the footprints on the carpet, noted how many of them there were. How fresh they seemed. The signs of struggle in the den were too clean. Only a few traces of blood. Nothing to do with Craig's family.

Someone else had been here.

There was nothing I could do. Whatever had happened, Craig would never return. I toyed with calling the police, but gave it up, too dangerous. Let someone else find this, the damage was already done. Craig's wife and child weren't getting any deader.

I left, locking the door behind me and exiting as rapidly as I could, watching out for any insomniacs who might be strolling about the halls in search of late-night conversation. I walked around the building, not sure what I was looking for, not finding anything but a nagging paranoia. I looked up at the buildings that surrounded me, suddenly feeling exposed, watched.

Other than the omnipresent hum of traffic somewhere miles away, nothing stirred.

I walked back to my car and drove home, keeping to the speed limit, thinking of legions of the dead attacking the city, thinking of Mom, thinking of my depleting stocks of food. Soon, the food was all I cared about. I scanned the sidewalks, turning onto the expressway to reach the perimeter and take a leisurely hunt for transients and runaways.

The negligible distinctions between my actions and Craig's didn't bother me one bit.