The New Neighbor (25 page)

 
– she snapped him like a twig.
 

The crack of bone was like a gunshot in the small room.
 

Robby felt sick and had stopped trying to control the convulsive shakes that were raging through his body. He tipped the piece of wood up and leaned it against the wall and curled up on the bed like a frightened child. He
felt
like a frightened child.
 

The Lorelle creature stepped over Prosky's body and came toward the bed, burning eyes locked on Robby.
 

He felt his insides shriveling. Why didn't she stop? Why wasn't it
working
?
 

Then she saw the piece of wood and stopped. Her black lips pulled back over her fangs and she exhaled a long, wet hiss as her wings folded over her back. She turned to him again and stared for a long time as she began to walk backward. Her lips curled into a hideous mutation of a grin. When she reached the doorway, she spoke.
 

"Come over later, Robby," she said in her thick, distorted voice. Then, with a chuckle: "I'll suck your cock."
 

She was gone.
 

Robby stayed on the bed for a while, his whole body shaking so violently that the headboard rattled noisily against the wall.
 

People would be coming soon. They would want answers to their questions and they would expect Robby to provide them. He couldn't do that. Not yet. He needed help. He needed
someone
.
 

Robby got off the bed and went to Prosky's twisted body. There was no need to check for signs of life. He was bent backward at an impossible angle, mouth and eyes frozen open.
 

Robby's chest ached. It wasn't a physical pain – it was his fear and sudden feeling of isolation, of abandonment. Prosky had been his only ally, the only one who could help him save his family from her. Prosky's death felt to Robby like ... his own.
 

What could he possibly do now? Surely anyone he talked to about a woman who was really a succubus and who had flying Malamutes would laugh at him at best, or try to have him put away at worst. He didn't know
what
he was going to do, but he had to do something. He needed transportation.
 

Kneeling beside Prosky, he shuddered as he reached down with an unsteady hand and pulled back a flap of the man’s coat until he found a pocket. He hesitated, then winced as he slipped his hand into the pocket.
 

He removed the car keys and got away from the body as quickly as possible.
 

Standing just inside the doorway, he peered out to see if either Lorelle or her pets were waiting for him, but saw nothing. With one glance back at Prosky, Robby headed for the car.
 

Claws clicked against pavement.
 

Robby swallowed his scream and broke into a run.
 

The door on the driver's side was wide open and Robby dove in, pulled it closed behind him and locked it.
 

Hell of a lotta good that'll do
, he thought, looking at the glassless windshield and passenger-side window.
 

The keys jangled as he fumbled to find the right one, and his breaths were coming hard and fast as –
 

 
– claws screeched on the door and –
 

 
– Robby chose a key and slipped it into the ignition successfully as a small whimpering sound grew in his throat, and –
 

 
– a head popped up in the window beside him and –
 

 
– Robby screamed and threw himself down on the seat, arms over his head protectively.
 

Nothing happened.
 

He heard rapid-fire panting and lowered his arms cautiously. He looked up to see the dirty face of a scraggly-haired mutt grinning in at him, its pink tongue bobbing as it panted happily.
 

Robby heard himself giggle coldly as he started the car. The curious dog dropped away from the window and Robby drove away.
 

Steering was difficult because his hands and arms were shaking so much. The car jerked forward and slowed a few times at first as his foot jittered on the accelerator.
 

What if he got pulled over? With all the broken glass, the chances were good.
 

License and registration, please
.
 

Urn, here's my license, officer, but ... I don't know where the registration is. This isn 't my car.
 

Whose car is it
?
 

Belongs to a friend of mine
.
 

And where is your friend now
?
 

He's lying dead on the floor of his room at the Motel 6. He was killed by a succubus, officer.
 

"Wouldn't sound good," Robby muttered with a chuckle. "Wouldn't sound good at all." His chuckling became laughter as he stammered, "Nuh-no, uh-
uh
, nosiree!" And as he drove across town his laughter dissolved into deep, quaking sobs and his vision was blurred by tears. He began to feel dizzy, light headed, as if he were slipping down in the seat, further and further, until –
 

 
– he reached his destination. The right front tire of his car bumped over the curb and stopped on a strip of grass that ran along the sidewalk. He turned off the ignition, got out and staggered across the lawn in front of a small modest house. There were no lights on inside or out.
 

Robby fell heavily against the wall beside the door and pressed a thumb to the doorbell. He pressed it again and again, knocked several times, then pressed down on the button so the bell rang over and over.
 

"Yes!" a voice called inside. "Coming! I'm
coming
!"
 

Footsteps thumped over the wood floor inside.
 

The porch light came on. Locks clicked and the door opened.
 

Robby pushed himself away from the wall and swayed before the open door.
 

"Robby? Robby
Pritchard
?"
 

"Pastor ... Quiller ... man ... "
 

Robby fell into the pastor's arms and lost consciousness.
 

Chapter 17
 

A Domestic Squabble

Moments after a senseless and infuriating dream about Karen, George awoke clenching his teeth in anger as hot knives twisted in his eye sockets, and in his mind he heard himself scream,
Awww, hell, I might as well just break her fucking neck and get it over with before she wakes up
!
 

He sat up, blinked his sticky eyes, and tried to massage the throbbing from his temples, thinking,
My God, what's
wrong
with me, what am I
thinking,
what's
happening
to me?
 

Then:
A dream...just a dream...
 

Pain rippled through his stiff body as he tried to pull himself from his stubbornly oppressive sleep. He was cold, chilled to the bone, and he realized, finally, that he was on the floor beside the bed.
 

Slowly, he rose and sat on the edge of the bed, still feeling irritated, close to anger. Looking across the room, he muttered, "What ... in ... the
hell
," when he saw that the window was gone. Not broken ...
gone
.
 

George groaned and scrubbed his face, searching for some memory that would explain the gaping hole in his bedroom wall, but could remember nothing. Except ... Lorelle ... soft flesh and graceful shoulders ... taut back muscles moving urgently ... rhythmically ... sighs and moans and then –
 

 
– George's hands jerked away from his face and he gasped at the memory.
 

An explosion of movement, something black shooting up toward him through two bloodless slits that had split open in Lorelle's back like misplaced vaginas and then –
 

 
– nothing. Not even dreams.
 

He walked naked to the torn-out window, puzzled by the absence of broken glass on the floor until he saw the window scattered in pieces on the grass outside.
 

It had been broken
out
, not in.
 

"Excuse me, sir," a sharply-dressed blonde woman called out, hurrying across the lawn from the sidewalk. She held a microphone attached to a cord that disappeared into the bulky black leather bag at her side. "Could I ask you a few questions?"
 

There were others behind her, another woman and three men, as well as two cameramen. They jogged across the lawn, microphones clutched, rattling cameras perched on their shoulders.
 

George stepped back, overwhelmed by a rush of paranoia that rivaled the worst of his pot-smoking days.
 

The questions came all at once:

"Do you know Ronald Prosky?"
 

"What happened to your window, Mr. Pritchard?"
 

"Can you explain the symbol on your front door?"
 

"Is there any truth to the rumors that Dylan Garry killed his parents in a satanic ritual?"
 

Prosky? Symbol? Satanic ritual? What were they
talking
about? George felt dizzy, disoriented, as if he'd awakened in the wrong house – the wrong
life
.
 

"Mr. Pritchard?" the blonde woman called. "Sir? Would you care to comment on any connection there might be between –"
 

"Please," George said hoarsely, moving toward the hole in the wall, "please, I answered questions yesterday. I'd rather not –"
 

"Do you know if your son had any interest in Satanism, Mr. Pritchard?"
 

A bubble of anger began to grow in George's stomach and he clenched his fists at his sides.
 

"Does your son listen to heavy metal? Ozzy Osbourne or Metal –"
 

"Is there any connection between the disappearance of Ronald Prosky and –"
 

"Is the symbol on your front door a Satanic –"
 

"Were you shocked to hear of the murder of –"
 

"Get off my lawn," George said, just loud enough to rise above their voices.
 

The blond woman stepped forward. "Mr. Pritchard, if you could just –"
 

"Get off my fucking lawn, lady," he shouted as he went to the large hole that had replaced his bedroom window. His knuckles turned white as he clutched its splintered edge, leaned out and, through clenched teeth, shouted even louder, "Get off my fucking
lawn
, do you understand?
All
of you!
Get off my lawn
!"
 

Their rapid-fire questions came to a staggering halt and they stared at him, mouths open, caught in mid-sentence.
 

The inside of George's skull felt ...
red
. A bright, flaming red. He spotted others – two men, one wearing a suit and holding a microphone and the other with a television camera – scrambling out of a van with KCPM-24 painted on the side and he roared at them, "
All
of you!
Stay away from my fucking house
!"
 

The two men stopped, then backed away.
 

George wanted to slam the window shut and the fact that he couldn't made him even angrier. Instead, he turned and stalked across the bedroom for his robe but stopped, glanced down and found his penis jutting rigidly before him. He reached down to touch it and stopped when he saw the splinters of wood protruding from his palms and fingers, their tips embedded just beneath his skin.
 

Reporters, for God's sake
, he thought, staring at his hands as he gritted his teeth together.
I wake up and my fucking window's gone – just
gone –
and then I've gotta deal with reporters closing in like fucking scavengers and I get two handfuls of splinters and I'm sick on top of that, probably the damned flu everybody else in the house has given me, and she's sound asleep! Like a fucking baby!
George stared at his wife, her head buried in her pillow, then looked at his hands again.
 

He bit his lip and fought back the urge to close his fist and drive the splinters in deep, just to feel the pain and have something real to scream about, because a scream was rolling inside him – a bright flaming
red
scream – building up, pressing at his throat from below, and he was opening his mouth to let it out when –
 

 
– Karen sat up in bed and croaked, "Whahappened? What's ... why's it so cold in ... the window ... Monroe ... did Monroe get out?"
 

"I
hope
so," he growled in a voice like two wet rocks being rubbed together hard. "And I hope his fur's lining somebody's fucking
tires
." He stormed out of the room, not bothering to don his robe. His erection was still pounding uncomfortably, almost painfully. In the bathroom, George found the tweezers and began to pick the splinters out one at a time, holding his hand close to his face, cursing and wincing with each biting tug, then tossing them into the toilet.
 

And his penis remained rock-hard.
 

He finished his left hand and started on the right, fingers trembling, lips moving rapidly and quietly as he breathed obscenities –