Flesh

“Know anything about it?” he asked Jake.

Jake shook his head.

“When I stripped him down this morning, I found it along with the hematoma—that discoloration you see there. Frankly, I didn’t know what to make of it. A bruise is usually caused by blunt trauma that breaks capillaries in the skin. So I asked myself what could’ve hit this man in such a way as to follow the curves of his body this way.”

“Something flexible,” Jake said.

“A whip,” Barney suggested. “Maybe a hose.”

“That occurred to me. The problem is, the epidermis showed no evidence of injury, which you’d expect if the man had been struck by that kind of instrument. And the ankle wound made me suspicious. So I made an incision at the wound and followed the track of the hematoma to his neck. What I found was a two centimeter separation between the fascias and—”

“Spare me the jargon, huh?” Barney said.

“Along the entire length of the bruise, the connecting tissue between the skin and underlying muscle was no longer connected. It’s as if approximately an inch-wide area of skin had been forcibly raised from the inside.”

“What are you gettin’ at?” Barney asked.

“Something entered this man’s body via the ankle wound and burrowed its way up to his neck.”

“Y’mean like somethin’ alive?”

“That’s just what I mean.”

“Balls.”

Steve tapped some ash off the end of his cigar. It dropped into a gutter at the foot of the table. “I found considerable trauma to the brain stem. Appears that it had been chewed into.”

Jake stared at the body. “Something tunneled up his body and bit his brain?”

“That’s sure the way it looks.”

“Jesus,” Jake muttered.

“Okay,” Barney said. “So where’s it at, this thing?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“After this man was deceased, it chewed through the posterior wall of his esophagus, traveled down to his stomach, chewed through the stomach wall and made a beeline for his colon. Chewed through that, and exited through his anus.”

“You gotta be kiddin’.”

Steve punched his cigar dead in the metal gutter. Then he bent down and picked up a pair of boxer shorts that had been turned inside out. The seat was smeared with feces and blood.

Barney wrinkled his nose.

Steve picked up a pair of blue jeans, also pulled inside out. Down the right leg was a narrow trail that diminished as it neared the cuff. “Kidding?” he asked.

Barney shook his head slowly from side to side.

“What could’ve done something like this?” Jake asked.

Steve shrugged. One side of his mouth stretched upward. “An ambitious snake?”

“Yer a festival a’ laughs,” Barney said.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what did this, but it appears to have been something shaped, at least, like a snake.”

“I never hearda’ snakes doing shit like that.”

“Who has?” Steve said.

“Smeltzer was alive when this thing got in him?” Jake asked.

“Definitely.”

“How can you tell?”

“The amount of subdural bleeding and the quantity of blood on his right sock. I’d guess, from the degree of coagulation of his ankle wound, that the thing got into him only minutes prior to his death.”

“And it left his body after his death? How do you know that?”

“Again, the amount of bleeding. Very little in the areas that it chewed through on the way out.”

“Fuckin’ Twilight Zone,” Barney said.

“So what do you make of it?” Jake asked.

“I couldn’t say.”

“We’re talking, here,” Jake said, “about a guy who blew off his wife’s head and started to eat her. And you’re saying that, before he went at her, this snake-thing burrowed up his leg and bit him in the brain?”

“That’s sure the way it appears.”

“And after I shot him, it took off.”

“Didn’t see it, did ya?” Barney asked.

“I didn’t stick around long. I took a quick look through the restaurant to make sure there wasn’t a third person, then I headed back to my car to call in. I must’ve been gone close to fifteen minutes. I guess that gave it time to get out.”

“The poop-chute express,” Barney said.

“It might still be in the restaurant,” Jake said.

“I already searched around here,” Steve said, “and the van that brought him in. Didn’t want that thing sneaking up on me.”

Barney sidestepped, reached over, pinched a leg of Steve’s white trousers and lifted. “I already checked that, myself,” Steve said. He raised both cuffs above his socks.

Barney crouched for a close look, then turned to Jake. “How ’bout you?”

“I took three showers after—”

“So y’got hygiene. Lift your pants.”

Jake drew them up to his knees. Barney squatted beside him, took a long look, then slid Jake’s socks down around his ankles.

“Okay, so now we know you guys aren’t gonna start munchin’ on me.”

Jake nodded. “So I’m not the only one who thinks this snake-thing made Smeltzer go haywire.”

“It don’t make sense, but it makes sense.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree,” Steve said. “It sounds mad but the possibility is certainly there…some kind of creature that sustains itself through a symbiotic relationship with its human host. A parasite. But it doesn’t simply take its nourishment from its host, it somehow controls his eating habits.”

Barney smirked. “Less Smeltzer was in the habit a’ eatin’ his wife.”

“So we’re talking,” Jake said, “about a snakelike creature that burrows into a person, takes control of his mind, and compels him to eat human flesh. That is what we’re talking about here, right?”

“Can’t be,” Barney said. “Last time I looked I wasn’t nuts.”

“If there’s another way to interpret this situation,” Steve said, “I’d be more than eager to hear it.”

“Yeah. You guys are figments a’ my fuckin’ nightmare.”

“Neither of you, I take it, has ever heard of a similar situation.”

“You gotta be kiddin’.”

“I’ve heard of cannibalism,” Jake said, “but never anything about a snake or whatever that gets inside you and turns you into one.”

“Gentlemen, I think we’ve got a situation.” Steve slipped a fresh cigar from a pocket of his white jacket, stripped off its wrapper, and bit off its end. He spat the wad of leaf into the table gutter. He licked the whole cigar. Then he poked it into his mouth and lit up.

“I drove over to Marlowe, yesterday, at the request of a colleague, Herman Willis. Thursday afternoon, the nude body of a twenty-two-year-old female was found. It had been buried in a field just east of Marlowe. Might never have turned up, except a kid happened to be out playing in the field with his dog. The dog found the grave. The kid ran home for a shovel, apparently thinking he had stumbled onto a buried treasure. He dug for a while, then ran home yelling.”