“How much money did you drop?” she wanted to know, those eyes not black ice now, but something colder, maybe absolute zero where even oxygen freezes. “And, better yet, how much did you borrow from that loanshark, from-”
“Change the record,” Weams snapped, sweat beading his brow.
“You have a problem,” his wife said. “You’re an addict. You need help.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you? You know what I heard? Lyon’s wife is leaving him and he’s about to lose his house. Does that little bell ring familiar?”
Weams’ hands were shaking and it took both of them to get his drink to his mouth. “Leave Lyon out of it.”
“How about Specks…how is Specks doing?”
Weams slammed his drink down on the coffee table. “Why the hell are you always asking about Specks? Do you like the guy? You got something going on with him?”
“That’d be the day,” she said. “He’s a creep and we both know it. An ex-con. How can you associate with a guy like him?”
“He’s okay.”
And Weams almost started laughing. Sure, he’s okay. And Pauly Zaber? He was okay, too. Salt of the earth. Just normal, hard-working guys.
Lila laughed. “Me and Specks. Don’t be ridiculous.”
But Weams didn’t think he was being ridiculous. He just stared at his wife, his complexion pasty, his eyes red-rimmed and fixed. “Sometimes I wonder about the two of you.”
“You don’t look good,” Lila said, crossing to the picture window and looking out across the darkened yard, the trees blowing in the wind, the gate creaking open and shut on the fence. “You look sick. Maybe you should tell me about it.”
“About what?”
“About what happened tonight? Did you sign away the house? The car? Is it that fat loanshark? What’s his name? Zab-”
“I’m fine, dammit!” Weams told her, brushing perspiration from his face. “I’m perfectly fine! Can’t you see that? Can’t you see how fine I am?”
*
When the phone rang just after midnight two days later, Weams came awake with a scream on his lips. He held it in check, shivering and sweating, trying hard not to remember what he’d been dreaming about. Lila was gone. Out God-knows-where with God-knows-who.
He stumbled over to the phone. “Yes? Hello?”
“Listen, Weams, you got to get over here.” It was Lyon and he sounded funny. Drunk? Crazy? Maybe both. But there was something in his voice, a sharp-edged dread that was positively frightening in its urgency.
“C’mon, Lyon…do you know what time it is?”
But Lyon didn’t seem to care. “You have to get over here. I mean it. Something’s happening and, God, Weams, you gotta help me…”
“Calm down, will ya? Just take it easy. Tell me about it.”
Weams could imagine him over there, clutching the phone in a sweaty hand, alone in that house now that his wife had left and just white with terror…but terror of what?
Lyon’s voice went down to a whisper, a gritty rough sort of whisper like he was afraid somebody was listening. “It…it started about midnight, no eleven-thirty…I’m not sure, but that’s when I first heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“Something scratching at my door.”
Weams’ belly felt loose. “Scratching? Like what? A dog? A cat?”
“No, nothing like that…just a scratching like…like maybe nails being drawn over the outside of the door.” He paused there, as if he was listening again. “It kept on and on and, God help me, I was scared for some reason…I didn’t dare look out there…”
“But you did?”
Lyon swallowed. “Yes.” Swallow. “Yes, I did. I…I crept up to the bathroom window and looked out on the porch-”
“And?”
All he could hear was Lyon breathing, licking his lips. “Out there…I wasn’t sure…something fat and white like a body, Weams…something that didn’t have a head and didn’t have legs…it was scratching the door with its fingernails…”
Weams just stood there, sweat running down his spine. He wanted desperately to fall over like a post. He was dizzy and nauseous and his throat had constricted down to a pinhole. His breath came in short, wheezing gasps. “Lyon…you’re losing it…do you know what you’re saying to me?”
But then the phone was dropped and there were sounds over there. The sound of shattering glass. The sound of something thumping and crashing around, something wet and heavy.
And, of course, there was also the sound of Lyon screaming.
*
An hour later the police were all over Lyon’s house, snapping pictures and taking measurements, asking questions and getting few answers. But mostly just pulling their peaked caps off and rubbing their eyes, trying to get the sight of what they’d seen out of their heads.
Specks pushed past the big cop at the door and Weams followed right behind him, right into the slaughterhouse. It was bad. It was more than bad. Besides the shattered glass on the floor and the ragged curtains billowing in, there was a lot of blood. Looked like someone had butchered a steer in there. But what both Specks and Weams saw was the form on the couch with the bloody sheet thrown over it. The sheet had slipped off Lyon’s face and it was marble-white, eyes staring up at something nobody else could see.
The bad thing was the sheet ended right where Lyon’s legs should have been.
“Where…where are they?” Specks said in an empty voice.
“Can’t find ‘em,” one of the detectives admitted.
Specks looked around-through the debris and drying pools of blood, the clods of black earth on the floor-like maybe he might catch a glimpse of them. Shoved under the couch or tucked behind a chair.
The cops started hammering them with questions and Specks said he was just a friend, didn’t know anything more about it. Weams told them about the phone call. About Lyon saying something was scratching outside the door. But that’s all he said. He wasn’t about to go farther. Not then. Not yet.
The cops seemed to believe them, but they studied the two men, gave them some funny looks. Maybe they saw how pale they were, how they shook, the way they fumbled their words and started at the slightest sound like they were expecting something. But Specks and Weams had just lost a friend and that’s all it was, that’s all it could be.
Outside, Weams had to fight not to get sick. That metallic, sour stench of blood was all over him, he couldn’t seem to get it out of his head.
“You know, you know what this means-”
“Shut up,” Specks warned him. “Just shut the hell up.”
The coroner’s people were examining the broken window in depth by flashlight. With forceps, they were pulling strands of something from the shards of glass still in the frame. Looked like strands of tissue.
An old lady was standing under a tree with a cop. She was a slight thing with a wrinkle for every year. Looked like a good wind would send her sailing over rooftops and trees like a sheet blown from a line.
“I saw something,” she was saying. “I don’t know how you’d exactly describe it.”
“Do your best,” the cop said.
“A big white monkey,” she said.
The cop just looked at her. “Ma’am?”
“ Yes, sir. That’s what I thought. It was hopping down the walk like a monkey, like one of those apes in a circus, you see? Using its hands to push it along, swinging its body and slapping along with its hands…but it was white…funny…”
