“It is Khalil Saad,” he answered.
“Oh,” Annie called, “I wonder, could you come to the front window and draw a little blood, please?”
Up until now, the standard procedure had been to open the front door and draw a few drops of blood there. Nobody had thought it was necessary to keep the door closed and use the window.
That didn’t mean it was a bad idea. Khalil looked at Smith, who tried to shrug and almost fell. They both made their way to the window.
Smith leaned on one crutch while he fished out his switchblade, then jabbed his left little finger and held it up where Annie could see it. It seemed a little stupid to be deliberately wounding himself like this when he was practically held together with bandages already, but he obliged his hostess.
Annie smiled at the sight of his blood, then looked expectantly at Khalil.
Khalil took the knife from Smith and pricked his own finger, reopening a wound he had already used several times.
Annie nodded. “Be right there!” she called through the glass.
A moment later the door opened, admitting them.
As they stepped inside Annie started to say something about the crutches, and Smith started to ask about the now-clearly-audible screaming, but Khalil cut them both off.
“Mrs. McGowan,” he said, “If you would please?” He held out the switchblade.
Annie grimaced, but she took the knife and stuck herself, piercing the scab on one finger.
Blood flowed redly.
She handed Smith the knife; he accepted it and put it back in his pocket, and all three of them relaxed.
“Annie,” Smith asked, as he closed the front door, “What’s the noise?”
“Oh, let me show you!” she said, clearly proud of herself. “It’s upstairs.”
Smith was in no condition for climbing stairs. After several attempts, Khalil assisted him up the stairs, leaving the crutches in the foyer.
2.
Khalil and Smith stared down at the thing in the tub, Smith leaning heavily on Khalil’s shoulder.
The creature’s chest was sunken in, leaving a cavity roughly the size and shape of a football. Its T-shirt had been cut open and folded back, and the human skin beneath had been stripped off. Its feet, too, were bare of both shoes and skin.
The rest of it was wrapped in the shredded remains of a thick green plastic shower curtain, bound up tightly with loops and loops of picture wire around the legs, neck, and shoulders. Elsewhere, long strips of white adhesive tape and tan package tape criss-crossed the plastic. Its arms were bound behind it – underneath it, now. Fluffy green towels were wrapped around its head and stuffed in its mouth.
The green wrapping made it look something like a gigantic ear of corn, still in the husk, with the towels forming the stem – but the grey feet didn’t look much like tassels, and the grey chest didn’t fit. It was as if the ear inside the husk had rotted away from within.
Except that rotted or not, it was moving. It twitched, and tossed its head from side to side, and it kept up an amazingly loud high-pitched moaning, despite the gag, that set Smith’s teeth on edge.
“It had your voice, Mr. Smith,” Annie said, smiling proudly. “I suppose it’s the one that was after you originally.”
Smith glanced at her, startled.
“Really?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Annie said, nodding. “That’s how it got in. It had your voice.”
“What did…” Smith began. He stopped, and asked, “You cut out that black thing, the heart?”
“That’s right.”
“But you didn’t eat it?” he persisted.
“Not yet,” Annie admitted. “I just couldn’t. Not raw, not all slimy the way it was.”
“But… where is it, then?” Smith asked.
Annie said, “Down in the kitchen.”
He turned back to the tub. “And it’s still alive?”
Annie nodded. “Has been for hours,” she said.
Smith shuddered; he felt suddenly queasy.
“Has it been screaming the whole time?” he asked.
“Oh, no, not really,” Annie told him. “Just sometimes. It’s not happy, of course, but it hasn’t screamed the whole time.”
Smith nodded. “I see,” he said uneasily. He reached down and pulled the towels away from its face.
It looked up at him from red, inhuman eyes. The skin on its face hung in tatters.
“You!” it said, in a hoarse imitation of Smith’s own voice.
Smith nodded. “Yup, me,” he agreed.
“You,” it said, “I came here for you.”
“I thought you might,” Smith said, “But I wasn’t expecting it to be tonight.”
It made an indescribable noise.
“You left us a note at the Samaans’ house,” Smith said.
It nodded, wary.
“You said something about itching?”
“Yes,” it said, “The skins itch. They… we’re grown to fit. Each of us grows to fit a particular skin, and any other skin will itch, always. It’s horrible.”
Smith blinked. “But the skins wear out,” he said.
The thing nodded. “I know,” it said.
“But that means that eventually, you’ll all be wearing itchy, wrong skins.”
“I know,” it said.
Smith shook his head. “Bad design,” he said.
The thing jerked about, but said nothing.
“You know,” Smith said, “I think that there’s a lot of bad design in you things. The way you breed, where it takes two weeks and it can be aborted with a stomach pump if you catch it early enough, that’s not really very efficient. And you’re dependent on your stolen skins for a lot, and you aren’t any stronger than some of your prey – you rely a lot on surprise and ignorance, don’t you?”
The creature blinked up at him.
“I know you can slip through narrow places, and change your shape somewhat, but it’s not easy, is it? I mean, you can’t just melt down and slide away under a door.”
“Not…” the thing said, then hesitated.
“Go on,” Smith said, “What good do you think it’s going to do to hold back? We’ve got your heart down in the kitchen – or is it so much a heart as the larva you grew from?”
The thing managed to shrug at that. “Name’s not important,” it said.
“You were saying, about shape-changing?”
“Only… can’t do it in sunlight. And can’t do it if we know someone’s watching.”
Smith smiled. “That’s why you couldn’t get through my window that first night, because I was watching you? Shit, that’s as stupid as vampires and garlic.”
The nightmare just stared up at him.
Smith bent down a little farther.
“You know,” he said, “One of you told me that you’re supposed to be the next step for supernatural evil, the predator that can finally wipe out humanity. I think that’s bull. I think you’re an evolutionary dead end, just like vampires – except I’d bet my shirt you guys aren’t going to last any three hundred years.”
He straightened up and turned away.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing to Khalil and Annie, “Let’s go.”
As Smith worked his way back downstairs, one step at a time, he asked Annie, “What did you do with its heart?”
“Oh,” she said, “Well, I told you, I couldn’t face eating it raw, so I saut?ed it with butter and mushrooms and onions. I was just starting on it when you two got here – that was what got the screaming started again. Would you two care to join me?”
Smith gagged and almost lost his balance.
“Saut?ed?” he asked.
Annie nodded.
Smith was appalled by the thought – but when Annie served out the portions he suppressed his reservations and ate his share.
He had to admit that although it still tasted horrible, it was better than eating them raw.
3.
“You know we didn’t get them all,” Buckley said angrily, “And we probably never will, now. That was a damn fool stunt, blowing up the place like that. Sure, it messed them up, and we got a lot of them in the confusion, and we probably mostly kept them from breeding this month, but now we don’t know where the hell they all are!” He glared at Smith.
“We didn’t know all of them anyway,” Smith pointed out, sitting stiffly so as not to aggravate any injuries. “They were already slipping away, one or two at a time.”