—It’s so good! she exclaimed. Tom saw with some distaste that the body part for which David Willet was nicknamed had already been eaten. The sister was now clunkily prying apart the boy’s skull and scooping out big squiggles of brains.
—Want some? she asked, offering a handful.
“No thanks,” Tom said. “I’m trying to cut down.” He cleaned up the broken mirror, faintly unnerved at the glimpses of his own graying face in the pieces. He set the VCR back, made the bed, and packed the strewn clothing into the hamper. Then he checked the fridge for beer but grimly discovered only cans of Bud. Forget it, he thought.
At last the sister emerged, her little mouth smudged red. —I’m done, Tom. I’ll wait in the car while you clean up the rest.
Tom glanced at the offal in the tub. “Thanks a lot,” he said.
««—»»
And just as the night has its share of callers, so, too, does it have its share of watchers. One such watcher was Jervis Phillips.
He’d set up an hour ago with the telescope and Czanek’s receiver, expecting Sarah and the German to repeat last night’s performance. But they’d never arrived. The only activity to be seen in Sarah’s window was Frid, the cat, which milled disinterested about the dorm room. Jervis could hear it purring over the receiver. Every so often its bottomless eyes seemed to gaze directly into the telescope, as if it knew Jervis was watching. God, I hate that cat, he thought.
But then he spotted motion in another window. It only took a moment for him to realize it was the Erblings’ room.
Jervis pulled his azimuth to the left and focused in.
Then he froze.
Jeeeeeeeesus Christ.
Insanity. That’s what smiled back at him through the telescope. This was not a voyeur’s cheap thrill. This was insanity.
The unwatchable things he watched consumed only minutes. The Erbling girls, naked, lay limp on the floor. A naked guy, who looked just like Do Horse Willet, was fighting another guy who looked just like Tom.
“It is Tom,” Jervis muttered, eye pressed to the barlow.
But why was Tom’s face gray and sunk eyed? Furthermore, what was that lunatic scene? Most bizarre of all was the woman who presided over this, a woman in a black cape and sunglasses.
Now Tom was dragging Do Horse to the bathtub. And the woman…
She’s eating him, Jervis realized.
Jervis took his eye away from the telescope, away from the crimson frenzy. Illusion, he thought. That’s all. He finished a Kirin and rationalized. Too much drinking, too little eating, and the mind plays tricks on you.
He calmed his terrors with reason, convinced himself that when he looked back in the telescope, he would see none of the rampant madness he thought he’d seen. He would see no murder, no cloaked woman, no blood. He would see normality.
He looked back into the telescope—
Jeeeeeeeesus Christ!
—and saw Tom stuffing handfuls of innards into a plastic garbage bag as the black cloaked woman pushed a final clump of human brains into her red smeared mouth.
—
CHAPTER 19
What time was it? The faintest dawn gathered in the window. Birds chirped. It must be five or five thirty.
Lydia slid carefully out of bed, slipped on her panties, and padded about the dark room. It occurred to her that she could put her clothes on and slip out right now, leave a tawdry note like “Thanks for the good time, see you around.” How would Wade react to that? It was too hard nowadays to judge the nature of emotions—a litmus test would be so much easier. Her cutoffs lay on the floor, her loaded derringer on the desk. Did she, a rather dedicated police officer, want to get involved with Wade, a rather undedicated student?
How could they be compatible? They were opposite in so many ways. The physical thing had been good; was she letting that fog her focus? This seemed different, though. The sex aside, her heart deciphered itself: she did want to be involved with him. Even better, maybe she already was.
She heard footsteps in the hall. They sounded stealthy.
Abruptly then, the doorknob jiggled.
But surely Wade had locked the door. Only idiots leave their doors unlocked, she thought.
Then the door opened.
Lydia grabbed her gun and hid behind the desk. A figure entered cautiously and took time to close the door without making noise. Lydia made no details of the shape. It crossed the room in silence and stopped at the foot of Wade’s bed.
Was the figure deliberating? It stood still a moment. Then, quickly, it began to reach for Wade.
Lydia snapped on the light and pointed the .22 at the 5x zone of the trespasser’s torso. “Don’t move,” she ordered.
A wearied face stared at her. Wade leaned up from bed, squinting.
“I don’t believe it,” the trespasser said. “I’m being held at gunpoint by a topless blonde.”
“A topless police officer,” Lydia corrected, but then she thought: Oh my God, it’s true! I’m practically nude!
Wade laughed. “Put away your heat, Annie Oakley. He’s a friend of mine.”
“Goddamn it!” she shouted. Embarrassment flooded her. “Get him out of here! And quit laughing!”
“In the hall,” Wade said to Jervis Phillips, who quickly scooted out. Lydia couldn’t remember ever being this pissed off. “Sorry,” Wade apologized, and put on his robe. “These things happen.”
“Shit!” she yelled at him.
Wade went out to the hall. Lydia quickly put on her cutoffs and top. The conversation was easy to overhear.
Jervis sounded hesitant. “I saw something. I know it sounds crazy, but I think I witnessed a murder. Over at the girls’ dorm.”
“You’re right, Jerv. It sounds crazy. You been drinking?”
“Of course. I guess I passed out at the end of it, because it happened around two A.M. He killed him.”
“Slow down. Start at the beginning.”
More hesitance. “I, uh, I was checking out the dorm with a telescope; I wanted to see what Sarah was doing with the German guy, but they never showed. Anyway, another window was lit up, the Erblings’ window, so I, you know, I—” Jervis spoke with caution, charting his words. “I saw a woman in black. She had a guy with her. The guy was Tom.”
“Tom?”
“Yeah. And then the Erbling girls popped up. That guy Dave Willet was with them, the guy everyone calls Do Horse—”
Wade chuckled.
“—and Tom killed him.”
Wade stopped chuckling.
“He killed him. Then he threw his body in the bathtub. Christ, there was blood everywhere. And then that woman came in, that woman in black. She…ate him.”
“The woman in black ate Do Horse?”
“That’s right. You should’ve seen it.”
“And I guess she ate the Erblings too, huh?”
“No, no, but she did something to them, knocked them out somehow. Something. Tom rolled them up in a rug and took them out.”
Wade was chuckling again.
“I know it sounds crazy. If you don’t believe me, let’s go over there and check it out. I know what I saw. It was Tom.”
Now Wade seemed to be hesitating. He didn’t believe this nonsense, did he? “Tom’s car hasn’t been in the lot for two days,” Wade mentioned. “And last time I saw him, he gave me the slip.”
“Wade, it’s true. I can prove it. Let’s go over there.”
Silence.
Then Wade came back in the room. “Did you—”