Chapter Two (Relative Comfort)
7:15 A.M. Tuesday
The door to the shop opened with a muted clang of bells. Dry desert air spilled inside, annihilating the air conditioning’s feeble attempt to maintain order. A tall man stepped inside, old in his complete baldness, and entered the shop tentatively, attempting to be quiet. His eyes were vacant, deep and lost, and he shuffled slowly with small steps to the counter.
Apparently, no one noticed his entry, and for that, his empty eyes showed a glimmer of hope. No, not hope, but perhaps a certain satisfaction.
He couldn’t believe that he had made it this far. Not that he could really remember, it was all blurry when he tried to bring it back, bits and pieces of snarling and blundering back into the SUV and then burning rubber all the way into town. His head was killing him, pounding furiously in punishment for trying to remember. He gave up and just sucked in the cold air.
He was sweaty and terrified, so the air conditioning in here felt like heaven in contrast to the parching sun out there. But he was also thrilled. So far, no one had seen a thing. Not the mad dash out of the cave, not skidding to a halt out in the parking lot, not even the sticky wetness caked to his face and neck, smeared across his bald head. They were all clueless little worms.
Maybe they would never catch him. The thought thrilled him even more. Maybe he could just keep running forever and stay out of reach. What had inspired him to come to this place? It was so dangerous to be out like this, even in his condition he knew that.
It was the people. He had seen them through the window as he was driving past. Sitting at their tables, casually looking out at the world, or even ignoring it completely. He had turned around before he even realized it, and parked in the middle of the street behind a row of cars. He couldn’t imagine that, just ignoring the outside world and all of its insanity. It was hypnotic, he couldn’t look away. Their fat lazy eyes and the comfortable way they were with each other. Drinking coffee, having inane conversations, scrubbing the counter, reading and laughing and smiling their days away. There was a woman at the counter brushing dirt off of a muffin like it was the world’s greatest problem.
It was their absence of fear that drew him. It was magnetic, he had to get close enough to understand, to find out why they weren’t afraid. Weren’t they scared of anything? Weren’t they terrified, like him?
With only a soft grunt, he ambled up to the counter and leaned in between two customers who were busy scarfing down waffles as if he was waiting to be served. He didn’t even really know what he wanted. He was just so fascinated with it all, with the waffles and the muffins and the casual friendly atmosphere. It was like everything about the car and the cave were distant memories, or dreams that came from someone else’s imagination.
He knew no one had seen him come in. They were all busy with their tragically unimportant lives. So he sat and waited. He smelled the food in the air, mingled with the sweat from the skin. On top of that horrid mixture, he could just barely detect the scent of copper that had plagued him since the car. Now that he was inside, cooling off at the counter in relative comfort, a thin smile appeared on his lips.
He was very close now, this was very exciting. He could feel it rising up inside like before. He had calmed down in the cool air, but now he was overjoyed. It had frightened him before, but this time he was ready. It was stronger this time, full of unbridled potency. He knew that it would not be contained. The thought filled him with a gruesome sort of joy. Very soon now, and he would be complete.
Marcus was stuck chatting with Mrs. Fields from the dry cleaning store at the end of the main drag. She was telling Marcus that people kept trying to scam her with coupons from other stores. Unsuccessfully, of course. He wasn’t sure if he believed her.
"I mean it’s a small town. I’m the only dry cleaner in the downtown area. If you can even call this downtown. I have no competition, haven’t for years, and I never offer coupons,” she said.
"Never?”
She shook her head vehemently.” Never. Why would I? I know everyone here. They all get the same deal. You can’t beat personalized service.”
"We have coupons here at the shop. There’s one where you can get a free waffle if you only buy an orange juice. Only valid on Sundays, however.”
"That’s different. You advertise, you pull in tourists, you even have specials. I do the same thing all the time for the same people. It’s kind of comforting that way.”
"Sounds boring to me ma’am.” Marcus was eager to get out of this conversation.
"When you get old son, you start to like boring. I can’t start changing things now.”
"Yes ma’am. If you say so.”
Mrs. Fields was sweet, but Marcus was busy and she could trap you for hours if you weren’t careful. So he just gave her a wink and went down the counter to where it looked like a customer was waiting.
Watching his feet, to be sure not to slip on some grease or coffee, or any of the multitude of things that could be down there, Marcus plopped his beaten order pad down on the counter and raised his eyes to greet the customer.
It all happened so fast. That’s what they always say, Marcus would think later. But right then, right in the moment when he raised his gaze to the stranger, all of reality seemed to fall away and the only thing he was capable of doing was standing perfectly still. He couldn’t even close his mouth.
The stranger appeared to be fluttering. On the surface he was only a tall, old man with a bald head, but to Marcus’s astonishment he seemed to be blinking in and out of existence. There was just no other way to say it. He would phase in and out, changing shape and appearance, not flowing smoothly like liquid, more like a fuzzy television changing channels too quickly. But that wasn’t all. No, Marcus saw other things as well. Darker things. He saw the man change, his face distort into something primeval and monstrous, then flutter and change into something more animal than man. He got a glimpse of dripping teeth and slanted yellow eyes, then he was back to normal as if nothing happened. Another change, and this time Marcus thought he saw something that looked like an insect’s proboscis, but the stranger changed again too quickly to tell. If this was a television, someone else was holding the remote.
Marcus was transfixed, he couldn’t look away. Strangely though, he was not afraid. He was too confused, too fascinated to be afraid. Words were only a memory, thoughts an illusion. Time was someone else’s bad idea. He was tumbling backwards, out of everything he felt was real. The only thing he felt now was cold.
The stranger would seem to hold an image only for an instant and then shudder and change into something grotesque and new. It never stayed long enough to gather any details, to make a full picture in Marcus’s mind that he could make sense of. It reminded him of the snippets that linger after dreams, drifting like smoke across the mind and tormenting him as they fail to coalesce.
Only a few seconds later did he realized that he was still gasping, and in a startling moment of clarity—a lonely instant when the man in front of him was just a man--Marcus finally noticed the blood.
"Oh dear God," Marcus whispered. He would have liked to say something more, to find out if the old man was alright, or to learn what had happened to his blood splattered head, but he never had time. Things changed too quickly for Marcus then.
Without a word, the strangers eyes met Marcus's frozen stare and it was like gazing into the black desert sky on the darkest of nights. The emptiness he saw in those eyes, the seeming lack of a functioning consciousness throttled his will, keeping Marcus helpless and motionless.
All of a sudden, the fluttering became faster and more intense. It was building, he thought. It's winding up to something. The man was now an insect, hideous and groping with a long black beak. It twisted around in a convulsive shudder, and then the stranger had a dog face, long fangs and yellow eyes. The eyes of a predator. A hungry predator that snarled and bared its teeth. Then back to human, over and over again. It was getting faster and shuddering more violently every time. It was definitely building up to something.
The stranger opened his mouth and a high pitched unearthly screech filled the shop, certainly scaring the bejesus out of everyone who was inside. They were all looking over his way now, gasping and screaming in turn.
Then in a quick motion, he grabbed Frank Harper--who until recently was enjoying a nice piece of lemon pie--and sank his teeth into Frank's neck.
When the stranger pulled away with a dog's face where his head should have been and a chunk of flesh between his teeth, all the color and life drained out of Frank. He slumped lifelessly over the counter, and gushed pools of blood everywhere. A good life, a good reputation, a hell of a carpenter, it all spilled out onto the floor in a horrible waste.
Mrs. Field screamed, hell everyone screamed, and it all became chaos in an instant. Jeremiah Trenton grabbed the mutating stranger by the shoulders and tried to haul him to the ground. But he was too quick to be taken down easily. His face once again became a snarling dog and he bit into Jeremiah's hand. Jeremiah howled and they both fell back and struggled on the floor, out of Marcus's view. Everyone one else in the shop was crowding around the two men, making a circle but too stunned or afraid to do much but watch.
Leaning over the counter, Marcus saw Jeremiah manage to pin the stranger down with his knees. The thrashing dog had a hold of his hand and was shaking his head back and forth, trying to pry it loose. Being a three time high school wrestling champion probably saved his life in that moment, but all he was able to extract from the monstrous face that had grabbed his arm was a bloody mangled stump. He looked bewildered, amazed, and before he could truly react to the loss of his hand, the stranger fluttered and changed again, this time taking on the face of a deadly insect, smooth and angular, and sank a long needle from its snout straight though Jeremiah's heart.
There was no recognition, no pain. Just the cold eyes of a soul no longer there, and then he was gone, fallen in dead weight on the floor.
Watching Jeremiah Trenton die without mercy finally broke Marcus out of his trance. They had been friends since the fifth grade, had grown up on the same street. But Marcus wasn't thinking about the past. This was intolerable. He grabbed a knife from the butchers block behind him and leapt over the counter.
As the stranger was getting back to his feet, customers from all sides grabbed him and held him in place. Marcus came in swiftly and jabbed the oversized knife deep into the man's adams apple. Bubbles of blood appeared, gushing from the stranger's throat, he wheezed for a second, then fell back on the floor where he lay gurgling, and then dying.
Marcus felt no regret, just a seething desire start breathing again.
For long moments as people gathered themselves together and tried to grasp what they'd just seen, no one spoke. A few cried, and most of them sat down and began shaking in late reactions to the trauma, but there seemed to be no words for times like these.
It was Sarah who broke the dizzying spell of silence. "What the fuck was that?" she screamed, spelling out each syllable. She was still shaking uncontrollably.
"I don't know," Marcus said grimly. "But at least we know now that whatever it is, it can die."
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