The Changing (The Biergarten Series) (20 page)

But Douglas Miller had turned then and gone into his apartment, leaving behind the only thing that Ira Cole had lately found hard to take about him: his smell.

~ * ~

"Do you have any answers for me, Creosote?" Ryerson said. The dog was sitting on the bed beside him, duck between his paws. "What do you think? Do we get hold of some silver bullets, like Joan did?" He grinned uncomfortably, because he knew—his "special brain" told him—that "Joan," whoever she was (and maybe someday he'd find out), had done what. . .
damnit
, what
popular mythology
told her she should do?
Kill the beast with a silver bullet, kill the beast with fire, kill the beast with holy water, kill the beast with flowing water, kill the beast with a stake through its heart, kill the beast in any of a number of prescribed ways
. Depending on what the beast was, of course, and how it manifested itself.

But there was something else at work here. In Rochester.

Something that
mythology
had never reckoned on.

Something that had gotten loose from . . . somewhere (God knew where), something that played a kind of game of cat and mouse with a person's soul, something that rooted out the evil, the black ooze it found there, and built on it, and when it was tired of the game, gobbled it up.

Ryerson scratched Creosote behind the ears. "What am I talking about, fella? Tell me what I'm talking about. Tell me what it is I'm thinking." Because Ryerson could not really verbalize what he was thinking—getting hold of the substance of it was like watching a dim star; you looked slightly to the left or to the right; you looked slightly away from it, because if you tried to see it straight on, it merged with the overwhelming darkness and was gone.

Creosote quieted suddenly.

"What's the matter, fella?" Ryerson coaxed. Creosote began to whimper.

"Creosote, what's the—"

Ryerson heard a knock at the door; he snapped his gaze toward it. "Mr. Samuelson?" he said.

There was no answer.

He called louder, "Mr. Samuelson? Is that you?”

“No," he heard. "It's me. It's Mr. Ashland."

~ * ~

You live
, thought Loren Samuelson with a strange kind of poetic grace,
you love, you die!
Simple. Life is simple. You get it, you lose it. Simple.

Hello, hello, Marie Anne!
and a small, weak smile spread over his mouth as he watched his wife, dead fifteen years, float appealingly in the air above him, watched her reach longingly for him.

Come home, Loren
, she whispered,
Come home, Loren, come home, Loren
.

"Yes," he whispered through the blood filling his mouth.

You are done with this body, Loren. A new life waits for you; we will have a life together. Forever. Come home, come home.

"Yes," he managed gurglingly. "Yes."

I love you, Loren. Come home. Come home
.

He nodded. "Yes," he said again, though it was inaudible now, even to himself. And with a small, grateful smile on his lips, he mouthed the word "Home," and he died.

In Edgewater, Pennsylvania, sixteen-year-old Larry Wilde's Great Aunt Katherine was trying hard to comfort him in his grief; she wasn't having much luck. Larry's tears wouldn't stop, and they'd been coming now for nearly two hours.

"There, there," Great Aunt Katherine soothed, holding the boy's head to her old but very ample bosom.

"I loved her, Aunt Katherine. I loved my mother!"

"There, there," she repeated, wished that she could think of something else to say, and decided that the repetition itself was probably comforting. "They'll catch him. They'll catch the bastard."

Larry stopped weeping for a second or two; he'd never heard his staid Aunt Katherine use a word like that, and he wasn't sure what to think of it. He said, "You think so? Do you really think so?"

"Of course," she said.

"They'd better!" Larry said, hate and venom welling up with his tears.

"They will," Great Aunt Katherine assured him. "If there's a God in heaven, they will!"

~ * ~

Fear gripped Ryerson
Biergarten's
chest like a snake, making his breathing ragged and his head spin. He called, "What do you want, Mr. Ashland?"

"I want to talk. I have some information for you."

Ryerson said nothing; he glanced at Creosote, who'd stopped whimpering and was now as stiff as a lead pipe; Ryerson would have had to look closely to be sure the dog was alive.

"Mr.
Biergarten
? Are you there?"

Ryerson called back, his voice choked with apprehension, "How did you get in? Did Mr. Samuelson let you in?" It was a delaying tactic; it gave Ryerson time to gather his wits about him.

"Yes, of course, Mr.
Biergarten
. Please let me in. I have some very important information for you."

Ryerson's hand went to Creosote's ears and scratched them nervously; Ryerson let out a trembling sigh. He wanted desperately to yell, "Perhaps some other time, Mr. Ashland," but again the words
This is it!
came to him, as they had when he'd been talking to Detective Andrews. Only now they meant so much more. Now he had to listen to them. Now he had to do his damned
job
!

He put his arm around Creosote, stood with him, went to the door, and hesitated: "Are you alone, Mr. Ashland?" he called. He wasn't sure why he'd asked it; he'd gotten a quick, unclear image of two people beyond the door. Two entities, at least.

"Yes, I'm alone."

Ryerson turned the knob, opened the door.

It was the smell that hit him first; a smell that was a nerve-jarring combination of blood, ammonia, and bile. It swept over him from the hallway like a shroud, and made him even dizzier than his apprehension had. He put his free hand out and steadied himself on the door frame.

"Are you okay, Mr.
Biergarten
?"

Ryerson answered, straightening, and shaking his head to clear it, "Yes, thank you." He looked the man squarely in the eye. He said, "Please don't call yourself 'Mr. Ashland.' I know who you are. I was at the hospital—"

Miller grinned; it was designed to be coy, Ryerson thought. It wasn't; it was malicious. "Were you?" he said. "And were you also at my apartment?"

Delay!
Ryerson told himself. "You said you had some information--" he began, and stopped abruptly. An image had flashed into his head: the image of two people lying naked together. It came and went as quickly as a glance. He repeated, "You said you had some information for me."

Miller nodded.

Ryerson wondered,
Is it the light?
Because the lights in the corridors of the Samuelson Guest House had always been dim; "Saves electric," Loren Samuelson had explained.
Or is this man actually gray?
Ryerson's thoughts continued.

Miller said, nodding toward Ryerson's room, "May I come in?"

Ryerson backed mechanically away from the door. "Yes. Of course."

Miller moved forward, his gait stiff and awkward, as if his knees were locked.

Ryerson nodded at the room's only chair besides his desk chair—an oak rocker. "Sit down, Mr. Miller."

Miller nodded and sat slowly—painfully, Ryerson thought—in the chair, let his head go back as if in contemplation, and whispered hoarsely, "I know who your murderer is, Mr.
Biergarten
."

Ryerson sat in his desk chair at the opposite end of the small room. It wasn't far enough; the smell that wafted from Miller still washed over him in long, rolling, suffocating waves. He took a quick, shallow breath, then another, realized that if he kept it up he'd hyperventilate, and breathed normally, though it was an effort. "Do you?" he said to Miller.

Miller nodded in a barely perceptible way, head still back, gaze on the ceiling. "It's George Dixon." He paused. "It's Jack Youngman." Another pause. He went on, in the same ragged, hoarse whisper, "I thought it was Greta, my Greta—"

Again an image of two people lying naked shot through Ryerson's head. But he saw the man more closely this time. It was Miller. And he saw the woman, too, and knew it wasn't Greta Lynch, but someone else. Someone . . . younger. Someone the age of Lila Curtis.

"Yes," Ryerson managed, "I know it wasn't Greta." He tried to alter his breathing again, unsuccessfully. In his arms, Creosote still was as stiff as a lead pipe, and Ryerson was beginning to worry about him. "What . . . makes you think it was George Dixon?"

"I talked to him," Miller answered.

"When?" Ryerson asked.

"Before he died."

Ryerson said nothing. Another image had pushed into his head, painfully this time. Not the pleasant image of two attractive people lying naked together, but the image of a man lying broken and squashed, like the close-up of a
Junebug
that has gotten under someone's heel. It made his stomach wrench. He fought for composure, got it, though just barely, and asked, "When did he die, Mr. Miller?"

"Today," Miller answered simply.

"How?"

Miller grinned. "He turned inside out, I think.”

“Good Lord," Ryerson breathed.

"Just like Jack Youngman did."

And the same image blasted into Ryerson's head: a man lying twisted, broken, squashed.

Miller said, still grinning, "Jack Youngman turned inside out. It was fatal." He chuckled deep in his chest, like a bulldog might, if it could chuckle.

"That was today, too?" Ryerson asked.

"Yes," Miller answered. He'd stopped grinning; he was speaking simply, dispassionately. "That was today. Dixon was today. Youngman was today, too. So was McCabe." His grin returned; it was lopsided and threatening. "And so is
Biergarten
."

Ryerson caught his breath. Another image was pushing into his head, an image he wanted desperately to stop, but couldn't—an image of something amorphous, something the color of dirty cream, something that moved like a tidal wave inside this creature who called himself Douglas Miller, something that filled his insides and gobbled him up and moved him about as if he were some grotesque marionette. And all the while the man, Douglas Miller, the Kodak Park employee, Greta Lynch's would-be lover, former high school athlete, was himself squashed, beaten, murdered.

My God
, Ryerson thought,
the man is dying!

"And today," the man said, "is
Biergarten
."

"Like hell it—" Ryerson began, intent upon lung-
ing
from the room and out into the night.

But Douglas Miller beat him to it. Douglas Miller screamed—in much the way that he'd screamed at the hospital, when the orgasm had wracked him—and threw himself from the chair and out of the room.

Creosote began to whimper.

Ryerson sat open-mouthed for several seconds. Then he called, surprising himself, "Wait! No! Miller! Wait!" And with Creosote whimpering under his arm, he vaulted from the room in crazy pursuit.

When he got down to Birr Street, Ryerson saw Miller lurching toward Lake Avenue. He was a good one hundred feet off, but the street was well-lighted by new streetlamps, and Ryerson could see, as Miller passed under first one, then another, then another streetlamp, that the man was changing—growing taller, wider, his gait becoming less awkward, more graceful—more profoundly and impossibly graceful.

"Miller!" Ryerson called.

And then the change began to reverse itself. The profound gracefulness became, by degrees—as Miller was illuminated beneath first one then another of the streetlamps—an awful, stiff lurching movement; then the man lost his height, lost his bulk, became clearly something stick-like rattling around inside his clothes.

That's when he turned the corner onto Lake Avenue and Ryerson lost sight of him.

It was early evening, and there were people on the street. Walking toward him, a middle-aged woman in a huge gray cloth coat—though the temperature was in the sixties—caught his gaze stiffly, held it for a few seconds, looked away, and passed by. On the opposite side of the street a couple in their twenties walked hand in hand, and Ryerson got a quick feeling of peace and harmony from them. And at the end of the street, a boy was coming his way on a bicycle. Ryerson waited for him, forced a smile, and held a hand out to stop the boy when he was twenty yards off. The boy stopped; Ryerson saw that he had a basket with several newspapers in it The
Rochester Times Union
, the city's evening paper. The boy said with a friendly smile, "Want a paper, mister? I got a couple left."

Ryerson shook his head. Creosote, who had come back to life, grunted and gurgled. "No," Ryerson said. The boy looked disappointed. "Okay," Ryerson amended and dug some change from his pocket.

"You okay?" the boy asked.

"Yeah, sure," Ryerson answered, aware that he was trembling. "
Here.
" He gave the boy a quarter, took a newspaper from him, rolled it up, shoved it into his back pocket.