The flap of skin peeled back; a gummy ribbon of stagnant black goo ran down his chest, hot at first, and ice cold by the time it had reached his stomach. The smell that had only hinted at its power during the past day was now released, a satanic genie billowing out of a bottle; it filled the bathroom like a cloud of death.
The dead stench instantly made Perry’s stomach turn inside out-he spewed bile into the sink, where some of it mingled with the running water from the tap and headed down the drain. Perry stared at the wound, not even bothering to wipe the vomit from his mouth and chin.
There was more of the viscous muck packed in the wound, like black currant jelly at the bottom of a half- empty jar. The dead Triangle had rotted. Horror stole his breath and made his heart hammer a triple-time beat of desperation.
The consistency resembled a rotten pumpkin a month after Halloween-pasty, runny and decomposing. Green tufts of the same gossamer mold spotted both the wound and the dead Triangle. Shiny black rot clung to the mold filaments.
The most disturbing part of the image in the mirror? He wasn’t sure if all the rot came from the dead Triangle’s fork-punctured corpse. Some of the green mold looked as if it grew right out of his skin, like a creeping, crawling messenger of demise.
The sink’s running hot water slowly clouded the mirror. In a daze, Perry wiped the steam clear-and found himself face-to-face with his father.
Jacob Dawsey looked haggard and gray. He had sunken eyes and thin, smiling lips that revealed his big teeth. He looked as he had in the hours before Captain Cancer finally stole him away.
Perry blinked, then fiercely rubbed his eyes, but when he opened them his father still stared back. Somewhere in his brain, Perry knew he was hallucinating, but it didn’t make the experience any less real.
His father spoke.
“You always were a quitter, boy,” Jacob Dawsey said, his voice the same thick growl that always preceded a beating. “You get a little booboo and now you want to give up? You make me sick.”
Perry felt hot tears well in his eyes. He blinked them back-hallucination or no, he wouldn’t cry in front of his father.
“Go away, Daddy. You’re dead.”
“Dead and still more of a man than you’ll ever be, boy. Look at you-you want to give up, let ’em win, let ’em put you down.”
Perry felt anger surge. “What the hell am I supposed to do? They’re inside me, Daddy! They’re eatin’ me up from the inside!”
Jacob Dawsey grinned, his thin, emaciated face showing the teeth of a skeleton. “You gonna let ’em do that to you, boy? You gonna let ’em win? Stop acting like a woman and do something about it.” The steam steadily clouded the mirror, slowly obscuring Jacob Dawsey’s face. “You hear me, boy? You hear me? You do somethin’ about it!”
The mirror clouded over. Perry wiped at it, but now only his own face stared back. Daddy was right. Daddy had always been right; Perry had been a fool to try and escape what he was. In a violent world, only the strong survive.
Perry took a slow, deep breath, and prepared his mind for what he had to do.
Time to get his game-face on.
61.
Officer Ed McKinley turned left onto Washtenaw Avenue and headed east toward Ypsilanti. Traffic slowed all around the Ann Arbor police cruiser, just a touch, even for people who traveled at the speed limit. In the passenger seat, Officer Brian Vanderpine stared out the window, far more alert and attentive than usual.
“Eight dead,” Brian said. “Man, that’s a lot.”
“That’s the tenth time you’ve said that, Brian,” Ed said. “How about you give it a rest?”
“I just can’t get over this. Shit like this doesn’t happen in Ann Arbor.”
“Well it does now,” Ed said. “I’m not surprised, really. We’ve got foreigners from all over the damn planet going to school here. And every last one of them thinks America is evil.”
“Yeah, we’re evil, but they sure are happy to come here and get an education from us.”
Ed snorted. “Yeah. I guess the schools aren’t evil, just everything else about our culture. Funny how that works out so well for them.”
“I would love to find the bastard responsible for all this,” Brian said.
“You think the feds know what they’re doing?”
Ed shrugged. “I dunno. Something fishy is going on, that’s for sure. They show up exactly when this shit goes down. Not before. We get no warning, just a body count.”
The radio squawked: “Car seventeen, come back.”
Brian grabbed the handset and thumbed the “talk” button. “Car seventeen here, go ahead.”
“How far are you from the Windywood apartment complex?”
“We’re heading east on Washtenaw at Baldwin,” Brian answered. “Only a couple of minutes away from Windywood. What’s up?”
“Disturbing the peace. Complaint is from an Al Turner who lives in apartment B-303. Says the guy below him is screaming and has been for days. The screamer is listed as Perry Dawsey, apartment B-203.
Brian turned to look at Ed, a quizzical look on his face. “Perry Dawsey. Why does that name sound familiar?”
“I wonder if that’s the same kid that played linebacker for U of M a few years ago.”
Brian again thumbed the “talk” button. “Roger, Dispatch, we’ll check it out.”
“Be advised,” the dispatcher said. “Complainant says Dawsey is very large and potentially dangerous.”
“Roger that. Car seventeen out.” Brian hung up the handset.
Ed frowned. “Very large and potentially dangerous? That sure sounds like the Perry Dawsey I saw play.”
Brian squinted against the bright winter sun. He remembered watching U of M’s “Scary” Perry Dawsey. “Very large and dangerous” certainly fit the bill. It was just a disturbing-the-peace, but he didn’t like the sound of this call, not one bit.
62.
In through the nose, out through the mouth. One last, deep breath.
Focus.
Play through the pain.
Perry reached up with his right hand and sank his fingers deep into the wound. He didn’t bother trying to control his screams of pain, he just hooked the fingers and scooped. Fingernails scraping hard against his open flesh, he yanked the Triangle’s squishy black corpse out of his body. The tail offered only minute resistance before it broke off, weakened by rot that had turned the body into little more than paste. Perry tossed the handful of gore into the sink, where it landed in the trails of puke and steaming water.
He scooped twice more, screaming anew each time, grabbing everything he could out of the wound. Blood again poured down his chest, running down his crotch, down his inner thighs to form small puddles on the floor.
Pain filled his mind, rusty barbed wire wrapped tightly around his soft brain, but he knew he had to stop the bleeding. Stop it fast. He stared at the wound-it was now a fist-size hole, and quite a bit beyond the abilities of
