The smell was enough to make me want to gag. Cloying, animal, dominating the senses until it felt like throwing up would be a relief, cleaner and less gross than enduring this.
I used the back of the tome as a surface to rest the paper on, making my way through the house. Store-bought meat and the packaging for meat littered the floor in adjacent rooms. Cats and rodents hissed and growled as I passed too close to their food.
He was in the room opposite the front door, at the far end of the house.
A broken old man, clearly malnourished to the point that he should be in a hospital. His reactions were delayed as a cat hopped up into his lap to nibble at something that really didn’t look like it belonged on a dinner plate. Not cooked, barely taken care of. His arms were pocked with injuries where animals had nibbled on him and he’d been too slow to react. Some looked infected.
He smelled like he’d shit himself, sitting there.
A table laid out for a banquet, except the banquet had gone to rot. The guests remained, lurking at the edges of the room, on and under furniture, staring.
Pauz perched on the back of the chair, just behind Dowghty’s shoulder.
“It looks like it’ll be just me today,” I said.
“I know,” Pauz responded, confirming suspicions I hadn’t even allowed myself to voice.
4.07
The smells, the little movements as trash in the corner was nudged by rodents, the noises and scrabbling sounds, and the heaps of filth all made the space seem smaller than it was, almost as if it distorted around Pauz and his host. The dust, moisture and dead bugs on the sliding glass door to the backyard made even the light seem dingy and insufficient.
But, I noted, the effect of Pauz’s self wasn’t as powerful as it had been before. I felt the pressure around the edges of my thoughts, the gradual dissolving of my peripheral thoughts, but I didn’t feel as though I were being swept away in it all.
Which in no way diminished how fucking scared I was, or how gross and intimidating this space was.
I was going to fuck this up on some level. It was practically inevitable. I just hoped I could reduce it down to a level I could manage.
I needed Rose here. I was flying fucking blind.
I wanted to ask if he knew what had happened to Rose, but I couldn’t afford to look weak.
“Am I talking with you, Pauz, or am I talking with Mr. Dowght?”
“Me,” Pauz said.
He traced a clawed fingertip along Dowght’s cheek. The man, sixty or so, reacted as if he were underwater, as if every action faced resistance. He slowly raised a hand to stop the imp, but Pauz was gone well before the hand reached him.
I realized, belatedly, that the man wasn’t old. He was withered. Atrophied.
I wanted to tell Pauz to leave the man be, but I knew I didn’t have the ability to actually follow through if he kept going. If I was going to bargain, I couldn’t demand things that I couldn’t force or convince the imp to give me.
“I’m assuming he’s aware of… our business?” I asked.
“He’s not aware of anything,” Pauz said.
“Is that true, Dowght?” I asked.
He barely reacted, only lowering his arm gently to the table. He clenched his fist for a moment, and I wondered momentarily if it was a reaction, a sign. But he was only working out the kinks that came from sitting in the same position too long. He was oblivious to the ragged looking rabbits, stray dogs and cats that were perched on and around the table.
Dowght was gone, mentally, a shell.
“Guess so,” I said.
Pauz wasn’t letting his hosts die out of some cunning plan. He was all about disruption of the natural order, and the power power he had over someone, the more he disrupted their natural functioning.
That raised questions, as well as some general concerns.
I approached the table. The animals didn’t budge.
The chair at the foot of the table was already occupied. A cat, a squirrel and two field mice sat on a pile of what looked to be clothes, junk mail and meat packaging, torn up and soaked with urine and trampled shit. The cat was mangy, not having cleaned itself, and one of its eyes was the same milky white as Pauz’s. The squirrel climbed halfway up the cat to get closer to me, incisors bared, eliciting a hiss from the cat.
I dropped the tome on the table, aiming for impact, hoping to scatter the animals. It made a very satisfying ‘bang’ with the landing, stirring dust and various papers across the table.
The animals, however, went straight for the ‘fight’ instinct. Bristling, teeth bared, poised to jump on me.
Gloved hands on the back of the chair, one foot on the leg, so I wasn’t simply tipping it over, I slid the chair away from the table, simultaneously turning it so the chair back blocked the animals from reaching me.
The animals hopped down from the chair, scattering to the edges of the room, where their bodies disappeared into the shadows, their eyes catching the light to glow in the dim. I heard the cat snarling and fighting with something in its way as it settled beneath a decorative chair.
Dowght hadn’t even reacted. The man looked like he was on his last legs. It got me thinking about what would happen when he died.