The Becoming - a novella (13 page)

But where was the
person who had been warming himself in front of the fire? There was only one
entrance to the cabin, at least as far as George could tell, and he had been
standing in front of it for a long time. Had the cabin’s occupant departed just
prior to George discovering the tiny abandoned village? Or was he even now
hiding in one of the rooms behind the three closed doors lining the hallway?

And if he was
hiding, why? Could it be he was afraid of George? Certainly he couldn’t be any
more fearful of George than George was of him at this very moment. A strained
chuckle forced its way out of George’s constricted throat. He wasn’t sure whose
voice rang in his ears, but it sure as hell didn’t sound like his.

Scattered
throughout the interior of the cabin was the spoor of various small animals
that had apparently taken up residence, and George was forced to step around
their droppings as he made his way cautiously toward the hallway. He couldn’t
see any animals—or any living thing at all, for that matter—but it was clear
the embers cooling in the fireplace across the room had not been built by any
wild animal, large or small.

George hesitated,
unsure of how to proceed, unsure whether he even
wanted
to proceed but
unable to stop himself. He had to see who or what was in here with him. His intuition
screamed he wasn’t alone, and he was not about to strip off all his clothes and
spread them out in front of the fireplace without fully scouting the interior
of this creepy house first.

The question was
simple—a cliché, really—but perplexing: which door should he open first? The
crushing silence weighed on George with an almost physical presence. The only
sound he could hear was the rushing of blood in his ears. He felt (
knew
)
if he chose the wrong door he would be trapped inside a room with no escape and
some God-awful, red-eyed, foul-smelling monster closing in to do who knew what
to him
Oh, you know what; yes you do, don’t kid yourself Georgie boy. It’s a
cold-blooded killer, and it will rip your head right off your body, and the
last thing you hear will be your skin tearing and your bones breaking, and the
thing will drink your blood and snap off your limbs one by one, and you will
never be found, not ever
.

Every fiber in
George’s terrified body was telling him to run, to sprint out of the cabin NOW
into the freezing early evening drizzle and take his chances with a slow death
from hypothermia. The only reason he didn’t bolt was he felt (
knew
) that
if he tried to run, he would be pursued by the creature and taken down from
behind; that he would never see it coming. The die was cast, George thought,
with the emphasis on
die.
He had no choice but to confront the monster
now.

George
unconsciously shrugged the Mossberg 464 lever-action hunting rifle off his
shoulder as he stood in front of the three closed doors, holding the gun in
front of his body like a shield with two stiff arms, knuckles white, hands
shaking.

Decision time.

He chose the
middle door to open first for no particular reason other than it was the one
directly in front of him. Grasping the knob in one sweating, shaking hand,
George turned it slowly, listening intently for the slightest hint of a sound
from the other side of the door, something that would give him an indication
whether anyone (
anything
) was inside the room.

Silence. Deathly
silence, George thought to himself as a hysterical laugh bubbled up from his
gut. He choked it off in what sounded like a sob.

Predictably, the
door creaked as it opened. George thought it was the most terrifying sound he
had ever heard. It swung wide to reveal a bedroom, devoid both of furniture and
of people. In fact, beyond the straw, animal droppings and other detritus of
wildlife habitation, he could see nothing inside the room at all.

Relieved, George
stepped into the bedroom and poked his head warily around the door, and when he
did he leaped back, a strangled scream escaping his throat, as he found himself
face to face with . . .
something.
His panicked eyes registered a
massive form, a mountain of shaggy hair covering a head placed atop a gigantic
body. Straw and leaves and dead grass stuck at odd angles out of the filthy,
unkempt head of hair and small worms or maybe even maggots appeared to be
wriggling inside it as well.

And the smell. It
was horrific. A stench of death, of rot and decomposition, assailed George with
an intensity beyond anything he had ever experienced. In the back of his racing
mind he wondered why he had not noticed it when he first opened the door, and
he realized he had been holding his breath in fear.

He had to escape,
to get away, to run. George tripped over his own feet and fell to the floor,
heels scrabbling as he scuttled backward, his rifle useless and now forgotten
after dropping it in his mindless panic. One of his fingernails ripped off as
he grabbed at the pine floor, and he didn’t notice. A splinter embedded itself
deep into his palm, and he didn’t notice that either.

A whimpering sound
filled George’s ears and he realized it was coming from him. He couldn’t stop
it and didn’t care. His only conscious thought was to get away from that
horrible thing stepping out from behind the door. He shoved himself desperately
across the dirty floor as the monster shambled after him, and he kept going
until he smashed into the far wall of the empty bedroom. The thing followed, eyes
red as George had known they would be, breath stinking and foul as George had
known it would be, and George now knew he was going to die; he was going to die
all alone somewhere deep in the northern Maine woods at the hands of something
foreign and inhuman.

The massive
creature kicked the Mossberg across the room, whether on purpose or by accident
George couldn’t tell. It clattered against the wall and fell to the floor. For
one brief moment George thought the shotgun might go off when it struck the
wall, blasting the creature to kingdom come and saving his sorry ass. But of
course it did nothing of the kind.

The thing turned
and advanced on George, a blood-chilling growl of fury issuing from deep in its
monstrous chest. It grabbed George, slapping one meaty paw onto each ear and
shaking his head violently from side to side. George heard a terrifying SNAP
and knew it was the sound of his own neck breaking. He felt one instant of the
most incredible pain he had ever experienced, and then a tingling numbness filled
his extremities.

He began to drift,
to lose consciousness, and was amazed to discover the fear was gone. He could
see blood splattering the floor, lots of it, and although he knew it was his
own blood, he found he didn’t care. George’s last conscious thought was that
the creature’s putrid breath wasn’t quite as disgusting as he had thought it
would be.

Then he was gone.

4

Mike McMahon and Sharon Dupont
buckled themselves into the cruiser and Sharon prepared to drive out of the
Paskagankee Police station parking lot. “So,” Mike said, “What was that all
about?”

“What was what all
about?”

“That guy we just
tossed into a holding cell, the one you called by his first name even though
you never looked at his driver’s license; he taunted you about your father. You
two know each other.” Mike phrased it as a statement, not a question.

Officer Dupont was
silent for a moment, making a show of checking both directions for oncoming
traffic before pulling out of the lot and turning north on the tiny town’s Main
Street. The rear tires spun on the slick pavement before gaining traction, then
the cruiser accelerated slowly along the mostly empty thoroughfare. Finally she
answered. “Yes, I know Earl Manning. He was a couple of years ahead of me in
high school. After he graduated—a minor miracle in and of itself—he became a
regular at the Ridge Runner where my dad used to spend most of his time.”

“The Ridge Runner
is a bar, I assume.”

“That’s right. Out
on Ridge Road. Original, huh?” The young officer flipped her hair behind her
ear in what Mike McMahon was already beginning to recognize as a subconscious
reaction to stress.

“Is this something
you’d rather not discuss?”

Another
hesitation, shorter this time. “No, it’s okay. It’s just that I’m not used to
talking about myself, that’s all. Besides, this is a small town, in case it had
escaped your notice. Eventually you would hear all about my dad anyway. And
about me, too, I suppose.”

Mike watched two
cars slide partway through a four-way stop a couple of hundred yards ahead. The
storm was worsening as temperatures continued their downward spiral. The
driving conditions were iffy now and weren’t going to improve any time soon. He
hoped people would have enough sense to stay off the roads, this being a
Saturday, but doubted that would be the case. “So your dad is pretty well-known
around here?”

Officer Dupont
coughed out a laugh, short and bitter. “You could say that. He held down a bar
stool pretty much twenty-four hours a day at the Ridge Runner for most of the
last ten years, starting the day after we buried my mother.”

Mike looked down
at the cruiser’s bench seat and then across at Sharon Dupont. She stared
straight through the windshield, concentrating on navigating the slick streets.
If she noticed him looking at her, she didn’t give any indication of it. “I’m
sorry about your mother,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“No reason why you
should.”

“How old were you
at the time?”

“Twelve.”

“So you went
through your teen years with no mother and a father too busy drinking Budweiser
to raise his daughter properly?”

“Yeah, that pretty
much covers it,” she said. “My dad was always an enthusiastic drinker, but
after mom died, alcohol took over his life. I think he single-handedly kept one
shift working overtime at the Anheuser-Busch plant down the road in New Hampshire.”

The big Crown
Victoria police cruiser slid to a stop in front of the Unitarian Church on the
corner of Main and Elm Streets. Officer Dupont angled into the parking lot and
turned the car around so they could monitor traffic on the two cross streets
and stay off the increasingly dangerous roads for a while. She cranked up the
car’s interior heat to combat the chill permeating the vehicle.

Mike turned in his
seat to look at the pretty, young officer. “Sounds like the sort of situation
you’d be anxious to escape.”

“Oh, I couldn’t
wait to get out all right, and eventually I left Paskagankee to attend the FBI
Academy, but of course you know all of that from my personnel file.”

“True enough,”
Mike answered. “But your file doesn’t explain why you suddenly came back to
this tiny, little place in the middle of nowhere. Nothing against Paskagankee,
but it seems to me you wouldn’t be too quick to return, especially since you
were doing well at the academy. I saw your performance scores, and you were
kicking ass down there. What happened?”

“My dad was
diagnosed with liver cancer a couple of years ago, and for a while he did okay.
About six months ago, though, he started going downhill fast. I have no
brothers or sisters, and with my mother gone . . .” She lapsed into silence and
stared out the windshield at the empty streets, now rapidly glazing over with a
thin coating of ice. Something like defiant regret hardened her features.

“You came back to
care for your father.”

 Sharon nodded. She
fiddled with the turn signal and looked everywhere but at Mike. “I made a
promise to my mom before she died that I would look after my dad. She knew he
would have trouble coping after she was gone. I came back for my mom, not for
him.”

Mike said nothing,
and she continued. “Then my dad died a few weeks ago, after I got hired by Chief Court, your predecessor, and I haven’t gotten around to leaving town for good yet. I
don’t know why. Inertia, I suppose. So now you know the sorry, little life
story of Sharon Dupont, some of it, anyway. Would I be out of line asking my
boss what
you’re
doing here? Why you gave up a real career in a thriving
city where you could actually make a difference to come here and take over a
little Hicksville police force?”

Mike laughed.
“Subtlety doesn’t work for you, does it, Officer Dupont?”

“My friends call
me Shari.”

“Okay, Shari then.
Yeah, it probably would be out of line, but I guess it would only be fair to
dish a little dirt on myself since I have the scoop now on you.”

The cruiser’s
radio crackled with an incoming call. Mike shook his head in mock remorse.
“Looks like my little sob story will have to wait. It seems we have work to
do.”

5

Ida Mae Harper had lived in
Paskagankee her entire life. Eighty-six years and counting, all spent in the
little town a few miles south of the Canadian border, and Ida Mae was still
going strong. She had gotten married at age 16 to a young man by the name of
Wallace Harper, eight years her senior, a laborer at the leather mill located
hard by the Penobscot River. The couple spent nearly fifty years together
before Wallace’s sudden death more than two decades ago turned Ida Mae into a
widow.

A stroke, they had
told her after Wallace buckled and fell to the floor one Sunday afternoon over
boiled dinner. Ida Mae thought to herself that they could call it a stroke if
they wanted to, but she knew what had really killed Wallace—too many decades of
sixty hour work weeks at the mill. Regularly scheduled double shifts, the
occasional triple shift, week after week of working without a day off, you name
it, and Wallace did it because he wanted to provide the best life he could for
his Ida Mae.