Mask of Flies (6 page)

Payton walked into the
bathroom and leaned on the sink next to Allie.” I didn’t mean you
any harm; I just thought it was something you should know.”

Allie thought of Greg
Reich, how his words didn’t mean any harm, but tore her apart with
their implications, like a live grenade left at her doorstep. “You
are one hundred percent sure it was Rick you saw? At the Milk Bar—I’m
pretty sure he’s a bit old for that place.”

“I’m positive it
was him. You introduced me to him at this year’s Christmas party.”
Payton twisted a lock of her chestnut hair. “I’m not the person
that goes around making up wild stories.”

“I know you’re not.
It’s just a difficult thing to hear.”

“I was going to say
hi to him, but he looked drunk, mumbling to himself by the bar. He
started chatting up this weird lady, a regular at that bar, always
comes alone, always carries one of those old portable CD players . .
. a Discman.” Payton’s brow crumpled. “I don’t know why
anybody would want to go out just to listen to some old CDs.—the
woman’s definitely odd.”

“Please spare me the
rest.”

Payton acquiesced. “I’m
really sorry Allie. I’m sure you can find a better man.”

Allie afforded the
intern a forced smile as she walked towards the door. “Hate to
sound bitter, but I don’t think there’re any good ones left.”

Almost
8:30 and
still no
sign of Rick
.
I think
it’s official.
Tony picked up his cell phone and tried
Rick’s cell for the third time. He needed something to calm Jim
down. “There’s gotta be a valid explanation. Maybe he had a
family emergency,” Tony to himself.

Rick had disappeared
before yesterday’s meeting with the auditor from Adult Protective
Services, Mrs. Thornbury. Jim had to scramble to find somebody
competent to brief Jane Doe’s chart, while the auditor waited, and
she wasn’t the most patient woman.

“Where is this Rick
Soblinski,” Mrs. Thornbury had asked. “His name is all over his
charts, yet he is nowhere to be found. I need a conclusive report,
and he is the man I need to speak to!”

Jim squirmed in his big chair,
adjusting the collar of his shirt. “We are working on finding him,
but I have several other employees capable of giving you the
rundown.” Watching Jim flustered was utterly delightful.

Tony heard one ring,
and then the call cut immediately to Rick’s voicemail, no different
from his earlier attempts. He looked out the small rectangular
window, and watched the snow pour down with ennui. The pummeling
Buffalo winter charmed in its infancy, but after months, crossing out
winter days on the calendar became a welcome event.

“What a shit storm we
have on our hands”. Jim Haynes leaned half his body through the
doorway like a churlish jack in the box. “Thornbush will have our
asses.”

“Mrs. Thornbury, you
mean?” Tony said. Jim was never good with names.

“Yeah, sure.” Jim
bent back out and waved out the door. “Steve, get in here.”

Steve Wallace, the
night shift supervisor, walked into his and Tony’s office, looking
completely depleted. His job was to make sure all of the hall’s
residents got to bed and didn’t try to wander off in the middle of
the night, but it was way past quitting time for him. He sat, a shiny
bald head fixated to a dense neck, connecting down to broad
shoulders. His abdomen blossomed into a full beer gut during his two
years at Oak Leaf—life after the Marine Corps. Tony once noted
Steve’s likeness to Bull from the show
Night
Court
. But, now, he wore severe bags under his eyes and a
blank expression that now reminded him more of Uncle Fester.

“There was an
incident with the Jane.” Jim sat down and pointed to the other
chair for Steve to follow. “Steve had to take her to the emergency
room late last night. He just returned from picking her up.”

“What happened?”

Steve sat, facing
Tony’s desk. “Around 3am, I heard a scream from Summer Hall. I
ran over as fast as I could, room 137 was opened, Jane Doe’s room.
I saw blood spattered on the walls as I got closer. The Jane stood on
her bed; her were hands and gown covered in blood; she had numerous
lacerations and puncture wounds to her face—self-inflicted. We got
her to the ER. She lost a good amount of blood, but the wounds were
superficial, so the hospital released her back to us.”

Tony felt like he
swallowed a brick. “That’s awful. They didn’t hold her on the
grounds of her potentially being mentally unstable?”

“It’s difficult to
get a proper diagnosis when she doesn’t talk. I sent an email to
the head nurse to issue a light sedative at night, and maybe consult
a specialist to perhaps get some sort of basis for her state of
mind.”

“I like that
approach,” Jim said. “But we have an auditor hot on our heels
here. We can’t just dump this all on Kaja. We need to show that we
are being proactive, immediately.

“Tell me about it,
the auditor is coming back at noon and, I’m assuming, is completely
unaware of the situation?” Tony said.

Jim nodded. “You
assume correctly. That crap Rick pulled yesterday didn’t exactly
get us off on the good foot with Thornbush. I think it’s best to
relay this to her with some tact. Rick is fired by the way. I don’t
want to hear any excuses—from you or him.”

“I don’t think you
will be seeing him around here anymore,” Tony said. “He didn’t
show up to work today. We should have a nurse in Summer Hall taking
up for him, I’ll see that she gets in there to check on the Jane’s
bandages and make sure she is stable . . . It just doesn’t make
sense that a woman in a catatonic state wakes up in the middle of the
night and attempts to tear off her face.”

“I know—just make
sure everyone has their story straight when the auditor gets back.
All in all, Steve handled the situation, but I don’t want any room
for speculation regarding the cause of her wounds. Before I forget,
did you find out anything from the Silver Creek facility?” Jim
asked Tony.

“I talked to the
office manager a few minutes ago. She received a follow up to her
report with the local sheriff’s office. They identified an 86
Cutlass Supreme entering the Silver Creek home at 2am, on the morning
The Jane arrived. They pulled video from a ATM machine from outside
the gas station across from the facility.”

“Who would’ve
thought there was a smart cop in Silver Creek,” Steve said. “Did
they get anything besides a make?”

Tony turned a page in
his notes. “The car blew a red light, heading eastbound on Highway
93. And the intersection had one of those new motion triggered
cameras that snaps photos of cars behaving badly. The sheriff’s
office got a hit on the photographed license plate. It came up
registered to an Elias Kingbird in Salamanca, the town that’s built
on the Seneca reservation.”

“Did they find him?”
Jim asked

“A deputy visited the
address on Kingbird’s registration, but the house was abandoned. He
inquired around the neighborhood, but all he heard was Kingbird was a
recluse and nobody has seen him, or the car, in years. A clerk at the
corner gas station mentioned the Kingbirds owned a sizeable piece of
land on the outskirts of the reservation, but he didn’t know the
address. The parcel existed before the implementation of the
reservations directory.”

“Salamanca to Silver
Creek is about an hour apart. I know there are closer retirement
homes, why drive that far? Jim paused and ran his fingers through his
mustache. “I’ve little faith that the Silver Creek deputies will
make any headway in Salamanca. Tony, I want you to go out there and
ask around.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious.
I can handle things here while you go. We are going to show the
auditor we are taking action.”

Tony hadn’t had much
experience in cases that required such outward intervention, but he
knew the situation would most likely worsen if he wasn’t proactive
in finding more details about the new patient. “It would be nice if
we could find out some insight on her condition, looks like I don’t
have a choice in the matter.”

Phosphorescent neon
light glowed through the doorway of room 369 of the Niagara Villas
Motel. The charnel stench of the rotten man in the doorway combined
with the dead woman’s expelled bowel content saturated the air with
virulence. Russell uncloaked himself and resumed his legless form:
black teeth, black eyes, and tarry skin. He couldn’t believe Morrow
was able to maintain control of the corpse he inhabited for so long,
over such a distance. Not long ago, his focus could only manipulate
animal carcasses within the confines of the Allegheny forest, for a
day at most

“Morrow, sir, th-the
breeder has escaped.” Russell’s words felt like mush falling out
of his mouth. “He saw me when he awoke, I tried to resume
character—as the auditor, but it was too late. I’m sorry, I had
to break away. Having control of him for the entire night was too
long for the first run.” Russell was famished; being without the
live thought of his host was debilitating.

“You planted the
seed, but he killed her? Explain yourself.” Morrow’s lips did not
move; his hollow voice boomed in Russell’s head. The revolting
vessel hobbled from the doorway into the gore filled room. Underneath
his charcoal fedora the skin from his decayed face slewed off,
exposing the spoiled meat underneath. He was eyeless with
purple-black skin, a full body bruise.

For Russell, assuming
full control of Rick had been alien and wonderful—especially
fornicating with the woman, but after, he had to break free and be
alone. Overstimulated and exhausted, he had pulled himself way from
Rick, sat in the chair, and regressed to his legless shape. “Rick
woke up in a frenzy. He saw me in the corner and charged me. I
cloaked myself and hid from him, but the racket woke the woman. She
screamed, and the breeder went over to the bed, ripped the phone from
the nightstand, and bashed her face with it until the shrieking
stopped . . . He had no idea the woman was in here with him.”

“Manipulation of a
man’s darkness can have dire consequences—as you now know. You
familiarized yourself with his mind prior to possession, correct?”
Morrow cracked the neck of his cadaverous host’s neck.

“Yes, of course,”
Russell replied. He didn’t appreciate being talked to like an
idiot. He sustained Morrow’s once meek existence over a century
through the old woman, showed him how to feed off the living. Russell
felt he deserved his respect. But Morrow has grown incredibly strong.

“No fool! I taught
you to remain hidden, act subtly, but you were fixated on the
creation of your grand dream—that garish barroom. The soiling was
interrupted when he found you hiding in plain sight, shitting in a
urinal. His host’s jaw slowly dropped open, a consequence of its
decomposition. Morrow pushed it closed with annoyance. “If you
would have taken your time to slowly acclimate yourself, you wouldn’t
have felt the need to disassociate. You should have waited.”

“How could I know he
would come in to take a piss after one drink?” Russell had worked
hard camouflaging the darkness in Rick’s mind, bending the man’s
imagination into the clever distraction, as he opened a doorway
inside of him. But Rick came into Russell’s hiding spot and
witnessed the soiling. He became aware of Russell’s presence.

“If you were paying
attention to what he was doing, or drinking on the outside, instead
of focusing all your attention on the construction of the dream, then
you would have realized that the bathroom was not an ideal hiding
spot. You are acting like an amateur, letting your ego get the better
of you,” Morrow turned his back to Russell and faced the bed. “I
will take care of this dead woman; it’s a shame, she would have
been the first. You are growing weak.”

“Y-yes. I’m sorry
sir.”

“Remember that it is
I who taught you how to navigate into this world—through the old
woman, allowing you to feed off the living, so heed my words: You
will not last in this world without a host.” Morrow lurched over to
the battered woman on the bed. He cradled her head in his vessel’s
swollen hands and looked at Russell. “There’s a place close, with
similar properties to the hill of Ga’hai, where death calls out to
the living. Its energy will sustain you, for a while. You will come
with me there, and you will help clean up your mess.”

Morrow’s vessel
opened his mouth and began to heave violently. Glimmering red backs
swarmed out of him, until his face was covered in a mask of flies.
The swarm migrated over to the dead woman and entered all available
apertures: ears, nose, what was left of her mouth—until all inside.
The old hiker’s body fell lifelessly onto the bed. And the swollen
eyes of the bludgeoned woman opened.

Morrow, inside the
battered woman, struggled out of the bed, disoriented by broken
equilibrium. A bloated hematoma assumed the woman’s entire
forehead; her nose smashed flat, eyes bruised slits. Blood washed
over the woman’s head, darkening her hairline with caked rust. With
the exception of the pink ankle socks on her feet, her corpse was
completely nude.

He balanced the woman
at the foot of the bed and wrapped the hiker’s body in the bed’s
blood caked comforter, like a diseased cocoon. He looked at Russell,
speaking with the woman’s voice. “Rick will be of no use locked
in a jail cell, and we don’t have the time or the resources to
create another breeder.” Morrow jerked on the soiled sheet,
utilizing the fresh muscle tissue of the recently deceased woman, and
the hiker in the snowsuit fell to the ground with a dry thud. “We
will dispose of our friend from the woods; but the woman will serve
to bait out our Rick” Morrow said as he pulled the wrapped corpse
out the door and into the black of the night.