Ch. 6
Ca-arl, Ca-arl, Ca-arl, Ca-arl...
They wouldn't shut up, chanting over and over in that sing-song voice like bigger children taunting a smaller child in the school yard.
Cooommmeeee ppppllllllaaaaaaaayyyyyyy wwwwwwwiiiiiiiittttthhhh uuuuuuusssss!
Screw you!
Carl circles his wife, feeling strange, yet strong in his defiance. He does not want the answers, not like this.
What he wants is an end to it, somehow.
Even if he has to die.
And he would die, defying and fighting, taunting them in return. If they wanted him so much, then why didn't they come to him? Why did they hide and beckon? Were they afraid?
Cowards...
Ca-arl... Cooommmeee ppplllaaayyy.
No! Never! Go away! Leave me alone! Leave us alone!
Something hisses. Ssshhhee's dddeeaadd.
Carl cringes, and a sob hitches in his throat. Yes, she is dead, but so what? They still weren't having her, or him.
Do-on't fffiiigghhtt.
Carl covers his ears, but he can still hear the gibbering whispers. He turns his back, despite the danger he knows it presents. Yet he doesn't care. Let them come, tear him apart, or him tear them apart.
He wants to tear the thing apart that killed his wife. He wants to tear the Ghost Man for the suffering he likes to cause. He wants to tear, rent, mutilate – not for the sake of revenge or self-appeasement – to make them stop. He just wants it to stop.
He feels strange again, altered and unusual. His heavy body forces him to his hands and knees, but not to crawl like a groveling human. He hurts again as the strangeness burns through him, bringing to him the sense of liquid motion with each movement of his limbs smooth, even and strong. It frightens him because of the pain and how odd it is. He cowers again, whimpers, begging for it to stop.
What is this? Why is this happening? Make it stop, just make it stop!
Ca-arl, Ca-arl...
Carl cringes again, trembling in terror and in rage.
Shut-up!
Throaty cackles send shivers up Carl's unusually supple spine. They sound closer now, and he knows it is because he has his back turned.
The smell of blood permeates everything, and his rage increases. He wants to scream, howl, cry out. It's too much, all too much. The hisses and whispers are at his back, in his ear. They are coming. They know they have him. They can creep upon him now that his back is turned. The blood-stench fills his airway, packing his lungs. He stares, unblinking, into the endless waste of desert where sand dances in unfelt winds, winding into dust-devils then fading mere moments after birth.
Life and death in the blink of an eye. They find it amusing, Carl knows. Death is funny to them, a necessity for their own purpose, and a joke.
He hates them, and hates them, and hates them.
I hate you.
Ca-arl.
His name is hissed, and the heat of fetid breath brushes against his neck. Carl arches his back like a bristling dog, the muscles in his shoulders and legs bunching in readiness. The breath pours foul and continuous down his back. Somewhere, far beyond seeing but not beyond hearing, a woman screams. Another dying beyond comprehension. Saliva drips from jaws that are not his own, yet still his.
Why the hell not?
Saliva drips from another's jaw, onto his back.
Faster than a man can blink, Carl whips around and lunges – jaws wide, and fangs tearing.
NSNSNS
And then Carl was in his room. He knew it was his room. He could see the familiar shapes and their small details. Moonlight spilled like silver over everything, and Carl's eyes absorbed every iota of that light until the room was as plain to him as though the artificial lights were on. He saw his bed, dresser, the mirror over the dresser, and the face of his wife and himself in the picture on the night-table. He saw it all with unnatural clarity, but accepted it.
He had more important things to do than wonder.
He turned, and trotted out of the room...
Trotted?
No, no time to think on it.
He entered the living room, moving with more silence and more fluidity than a cat on the hunt. He came into the kitchen and heard the clack of claws on the tiled floor. He moved to the sliding glass door leading to the back and halted at the phantasmal reflection staring back at him with moon-lit yellow eyes. He saw a thing, a creature, but accepted it as he had accepted everything else that he was experiencing. No time to do otherwise. It was a dog-like thing, similar to a picture he saw once of an animal called a Tasmanian tiger that was now extinct. The fur was short and close to the body like skin, dark in color but striped in a different shade. The snout was long and narrow, and the ears stiff and pointed. The body itself was large, maybe even larger than a wolf, and lean with visible ribs and sinewy muscles that twitched and rippled with the slightest movement.
The paws were strange.
No, not paws, half-hands.
They were long-fingered, with a workable thumb, and tipped with curved claws like scythes.
What is this? No, no time... But why he had no time, he could not say. He just knew. Everything was instinctual to him now, and he knew better than to disregard it.
He flowed when he moved with a grace no dog ever possessed, or even a cat. Say for the light tap of the claws, he made no sound, and felt ghost-like because of it. Stopping before the sliding door again, he shivered.
He reached up, and flipped the latch to the door, then slid it open with a flick of his hand-like paw. He slipped out into the cool night, and smells filled his nostrils. Animals, exhaust, plants, moisture, something he was fairly certain was his own scent emanating from the house... and in the distance, he caught blood. No time to think. It was time to go. Time to rid himself of that smell.
Without another thought, Carl, or the thing that carried his consciousness, launched into a run that had the wind roaring through his ears as claws sent up a spray of dirt and sand. Everything around him became a blur as he fled from civilization into the wilderness that felt right to him, as though it all belonged to him now. The breath never burned his throat or seared his lungs. Its passage was steady, as was the thumping of his heart that resounded like a drum in his keen ears. The led-heavy fatigue of weariness and hunger seemed like a dream to him now. It was as though the body he possessed could never know such weaknesses, and the thought made him delight in it.
He ran faster, if it was possible. He had somewhere he needed to be, and marking the path was the unseen taint of blood in the air. He followed it like a rope, turning when the smell weakened, whipping around trees, shrubs, rocks, or whatever else got in his way. Time held no existence for him, and soon he found himself deep into the desert.
He was almost there. The smell of blood was strong, and intermingled with the chemical stench of fear, and the human stench of sweat. Then he heard a scream.
" Help me! Why won't you help me!"
Carl caught the distant lights of fires dotting the night. Music was blasting loud enough to wake the dead, and forms dancing or milling about the fires or sitting before tents were black masses against the amber glow.
But Carl didn't care about that. His destination was much closer. He veered, just a little, until he saw two lone figures several yards from the masses. The female was on the ground, trying to back away. The other loomed over the scrambling form, slowly approaching, taking his time because he had all the time in the world. The woman turned her head to the partying throngs and screamed and sobbed with all she had.
" Why won't you help me! Please! Help me!"
But they wouldn't help her, because they didn't even know she was there. The man wouldn't let them know.
But Carl knew, because he had smelled the blood. The man had never hid his scent, because he had never needed to.
The man flipped and caught something in his hand that flashed red light from the fires.
A knife. He was also smirking.
" Not gonna work, bitch," he said so confidently. He kept stalking toward the woman, and she scurried back with a tear-slicked face.
Don't call her that! But no words came out of Carl's mouth, only a throaty, guttural snarl.
The man turned. The dog-thing that was Carl roared, and leaped with jaws gaping and fangs bared.
" No!" the man screamed, but it was cut short. Carl, or the thing Carl was now, was on the man. He tore into him, biting, gnashing, and clawing. Blood filled not only his scent but his mouth and his vision. Rage burned through his screaming blood, and his heart was like the crash of thunder. Flesh split within his teeth, bones snapped, and the man's cries became liquid gurgles of agony.
Do not touch her! Ever!
When the man finally stopped struggling, Carl's creature body stopped tearing. He had the man's arm in his jaw that was warm and sticky with blood. He opened his jaw and let the man's limp, broken body drop with a thump to the ground. Looking down at the man's torn face and sightless staring eyes, recognition struck Carl like a hammer.
He knew this man. Or, at least, had seen him before.
He was a young man, heavy-build, stringy brown hair... The image of him filled Carl's mind. The man crossing the street, one of the ones who had looked at him.
Carl heard a sob. Numbly, he looked up and turned his yellow eyes to the woman. Young, heart-shaped face a twisted mask of terror and sorrow. She was wearing a dress of flower-patterned material, but it was soaked with blood that originated from a wound on her arm. When Carl looked at her, she feebly tried to back away, choking out a cry of exhausted terror.
The chemical scent of fear was strong on her. He could hear her heart pounding. Beneath that, small and steady, he heard another sound, another heart, though there was no one else around. It was a tiny sound, and would have been overlooked if Carl had not caught it. And he knew, instinctively as with everything else, that this woman was pregnant.
It shocked Carl so much that he could not move. He stared at her, wonderingly, and in his haze of distortion, the face of the woman – for one brief moment – took on the lovely face of his wife.
Even in this strange body, tears still burned in his eyes, spilling down his canine face.
If only.
He whimpered, then turned away, facing the direction he had come.
If only.
He leaped into a bounding run, tearing across the open wastes in a cloud of torn up sand. His heart beat painfully, and tears flew from his yellow, moon-lit eyes.
If only...