The New Neighbor (22 page)

"He's never been an outdoor cat. He can't take care of himself, he'll get
hurt
!"
 

"My ass," George growled, opening the front door. "He'll kill anything that
moves
! He's a cat, not a goddamned retarded blind child!" He flung Monroe out the door; the cat spun head over tail through the air before rolling over the grass with a pathetic screech.
 

Karen ran after him in her bathrobe, crying, "You son of a bitch! You goddamned monster!"
 

She swept Monroe up in her arms, but George didn't stay to watch any more. He turned away, knowing she'd bring the cat back inside. Then he froze. He suddenly realized he was naked.
 

Jen was staring at him. He didn't make a habit of parading naked in front of his daughter. He felt a rush of embarrassment and thought that
she
was probably embarrassed, too. But she wasn't.
 

Jen's gaze was aimed straight at his crotch. Her left index finger was locked between her lips and her checks were sucked in deep beneath her cheekbones. Her right hand was under her robe, between her legs. Her eyes were narrowed in the same way they would be if she were smiling. He realized she’d been watching him for a while, ever since he’d come out into the living room. It looked almost as if she were –
 

George hurried down the hall, trying not to think about it.
 

Back in his bedroom, he put on jeans and a blue chambray shirt, ignoring the slight tingle that passed through his cock when he thought of the way Jen was sucking on her finger..

* * * *

Robby knew everyone was home before he went into the house. Both cars were in the driveway and after seeing her still in her robe on his way out that morning, he knew Jen hadn't caught the bus to school. Inside, he hurried straight to his room, giving no one time to speak to him. He dropped his books on his desk, removed his coat and sat on his bed.
 

He felt as if someone had been pounding his brain with a meat tenderizer. He'd been told too much too fast and was still trying to process all of it. On top of that, he was still heavy with fatigue.
 

But it ain't the flu
, he thought morbidly.
 

Before dropping Robby off at the corner, Prosky had given him several pages printed off the internet. He'd folded them into a small square and put them in his back pocket.
 

"Read these today," Prosky said, "then meet me here tonight at nine. Bring a sack of burnt woodchips from your fireplace and a dry towel."
 

Robby took the papers from his pocket and laid back on his bed to read them. On the first page Prosky had written,
From—DEVILS AND ANGELS by Thelonius Pascali, 1962
. A quarter of the way down the page was the heading,
LILITH AND HER DAUGHTERS.
 

At first, Robby thought it was the same story Lorelle had told him the night he first saw her sculpture. But as he read on, he realized she had been careful to leave out a few important details.
 

According to Mr. Pascali, after Lilith fled the Garden of Eden and Adam told god of her rebellion, god sent three angels named Sanvi, Sansanvi and Semangelaf to retrieve her. By the time they found her on the desolate shore of the Red Sea, she was engaged in sex with countless demons and giving birth to a brood of baby girls – as many as a hundred a day, many of which she ate alive between couplings to appease her hunger, which was almost as voracious as her sexual appetite. When she saw the three angels, Lilith was enraged and told them to go away. They told her they'd been instructed by god to return her to Eden. With the blood of her daughters on her lips, she laughingly told them there was nothing in Eden that interested her. She was perfectly happy with her demon lovers.
 

The angels were appalled by what they saw and watched in horror as Lilith's daughters – winged, reptilian creatures – crawled through the dirt, maturing at an incredibly rapid rate, some of them writhing with the insatiable demons before flying away. Once again, the angels asked Lilith to return with them, saying they dreaded relaying to god what they had seen and could not leave her behind in such decadence knowing that she was feeding on her own infants.
 

Lilith still refused, but she sneeringly promised that if the angels were to write their names near a newborn, she would spare the child.

As a result of that promise, parents took precautions for centuries to protect their babies from Lilith. Until a girl was twenty days old and a boy eight years, parents would draw a circle in charcoal on the wall above the child's bed containing the words "Adam and Eve, barring Lilith" and on the door they would write "Sanvi, Sansanvi, Semangelaf."
 

"But what of Lilith's legions of daughters, the
succubi
?" Pascali wrote. "Infants were of no interest to them. Instead, they engaged in another of their mother's favorite activities: seduction. Stealing into bedrooms by night and placing all other members of the household into a deep sleep, the succubus seduced men – sometimes women and even
children
– in their sleep, sucking from them not blood but their energy, vitality, and any goodness they might process; the ability to give, to feel compassion, or even to love those closest to them.
 

“The succubus, in human form, was irresistibly beautiful and had the ability to prey on each victim's most secret weaknesses. She returned night after night, using her beauty and charms to convince her victim that there was nothing wrong with their lurid relationship, all the while stripping the unsuspecting man or woman of all humanity and reducing him or her to little more than a wild animal, until she reached her ultimate goal: to consign the victim's soul to eternal damnation.
 

"Working in league with Satan's minions, the immortal succubi are said, in legend, to roam the earth to this day. If that were true, then it is indeed safe – but sad – to say that in today's society of low moral standards and self-centered lifestyles, a succubus in human form could quite likely lead a normal life, carrying out her evil deeds nightly without ever raising suspicion."
 

Robby slapped the pages onto the bed and sighed. It all sounded like some kind of pornographic fairytale. In fact, it was probably too ridiculous to
work
as a fairytale.
 

But it fit. It fit so well, it made Robby's blood run cold.
 

He had the rest of the pages, but they were just more of the same, all of which confirmed that Lorelle had left out an important part of the story, a part that she apparently felt was too revealing – although Robby knew that, had she told him the whole thing, it wouldn't have crossed his mind in a million years that she was a
demon
.
 

Robby sat up on his bed and stared at his shoes for a long time, knowing it was going to be a long wait till nine o'clock. The house was silent and Robby craved the sound of another voice. He needed to talk to someone, particularly about the crazy thoughts he was having. He knew Dylan had stayed home from school and hoped he was not too sick to talk. Robby had to get out of the house and didn't want to be alone.
 

With his coat on, he started down the hall. A door opened behind him.
 

"Robby?" Jen whispered.
 

His back stiffened.
 

"Robby? Where you going?"
 

He walked faster and rounded the corner.
 

The living room curtains were closed and the room was dark. His mom sat before the television looking thin and weary, the glow of the television turning her face a soft electric blue.
 

Outside, Robby hurried down the street, never looking at Lorelle's house, hoping she wouldn't see him and call him over.
 

Mr. and Mrs. Garry's cars were both in the driveway. It wasn't unusual for Mr. Garry to be home – he was a carpenter and his work schedule was sporadic – but Mrs. Garry was a telephone operator, worked five days a week and seldom took a day off. As he neared the house, Robby heard Ozzy Osborne playing so loud that the bass was rattling the front window. That was even more odd than Mrs. Garry staying home from work. Dylan's parents insisted that he listen to his rock music on headphones so they couldn't hear it.
 

Robby knocked hard, but knew they would never hear him above the music, so he opened the door a crack and called, "Hello?"
 

Somewhere beneath the thunder of the music, Robby could hear the television playing.
 

"Hello? Dylan? Mrs. Garry?"
 

No response. He went inside and closed the door, wincing at the music's volume. Rounding the corner of the entry way, he saw Mr. Garry's slippered feet from behind, propped up on the ottoman in front of his plush, overstuffed chair.
 

"Mr. Garry?" Robby said. "Is Dylan around?"
 

The feet didn't move.
 

He got a whiff of what smelled like shit and wondered if he'd stepped in something on his way over.
 

Stepping forward, he tried again: "Um, Mr. Garry? I was just wondering if –"
 

Robby stopped when he noticed that someone had spilled something on the carpet and splashed the television screen.
Judge Judy
was on and dark fluid speckled Judy Sheindlin’s face.
 

“Mi-Mi-Mister...Garry?" Robby's voice was lost beneath the music.
 

Keeping a distance from the chair, he walked around it, saw Mr. Garry's bare calves, saw his bathrobe lying open in front, his right hand lying palm up on the armrest. What looked like chocolate pudding clung to the front of the terrycloth robe, except ... it wasn't exactly the color of chocolate.
 

Mr. Garry's mouth was open.
 

So were his eyes.
 

So was his forehead.
 

In fact, most of the top of his skull was gone and the pudding-like substance had dribbled over the edge of the opening, into his eyes and down his cheeks like thick dirty tears and onto his robe.
 

Robby staggered backward, hit the end table by the sofa and fell on his ass, gagging. He rolled over and tried to scramble to his feet, but his stomach convulsed and bile burned his throat.
 

"Dylan!" he gurgled, wiping his mouth and gasping as he climbed the sofa to his feet. "Duh-duh
-Dylaaaan
!"
 

He ran down the hall toward Dylan's room, the source of the music that was pounding through the walls. He tripped over a shoe and fell face-down to the floor. Except he didn't land on the floor. He landed on something soft and wet.
 

Mixed with the odor of feces that he'd smelled in the living room was the rosy smell of Mrs. Garry's perfume.
 

Robby propped himself up on his arms and realized that the shoe he'd glimpsed before tripping over it had not been empty. Mrs. Garry was wearing it and she lay beneath him, face up, arms spread at her sides. Her left eye was closed as if she were asleep, but the right half of her face was no more than bits of shattered bone and bloody shreds of flesh. Robby babbled as he tried to get off of her, slipping twice before –
 

 
– her left eye opened, blinked, and she hissed a wet parody of his name: "Aaww-eeee?
Aaww-eeee
?"
 

With a childlike whimper, Robby crawled clumsily down the hall, trying to stand, until he saw the hammer on the floor. He'd seen it before. It belonged to Mr. Garry. The clawed end looked as if it had been caked in mud, but he knew it was not mud that filled the gap in the forked claw. He stared at it, motionless for a moment, then carefully stood, staying close to the wall as he passed the hammer.

"Dylan?" he called, only a few steps from Dylan's closed bedroom. His voice was hoarse and broken. "Dylan? Please? Are you there?"
 

Dylan did not reply, but as Robby went farther down the hall he heard something ... a voice ... it sounded like Dylan's voice ... high and shrill ... singing along with the loud music.
 

He looked back at Mrs. Garry. Her fingers twitched like the legs of a dying spider, tensed, then became limp. Robby took the remaining steps to Dylan's room and put his hand on the doorknob. He clenched his eyes shut before opening the door.
 

The music hit him like a wall and he opened his eyes to see –
 

 
– nothing more than the mess that was Dylan's bedroom.
 

"Dylan?" he called, knowing there would be no response.
 

He backed out, closed the door and heard the voice again, singing along like a small child. It was coming from the bathroom.
 

Robby called his friend's name again as he ran to the bathroom and thunked the half-open door with his palm.
 

Dylan was slumped, naked and pale as snow, in the bathtub, his head leaning against the tub’s edge, eyes closed, lips moving slightly as he tried to sing, arms lolling in a foot of dark-red water. His bloodstained clothes were crumpled on the floor.
 

Robby dropped to his knees beside the tub and rasped, "Dylan! Dylan, what's ha-happened?"
 

Dylan's eyes opened slowly and he tried to lift his head, but failed.
 

"They ... won't let ... me go ... " he breathed.
 

"Go
where
?"
 

"Her house."
 

"
Whose
house?" Robby asked, but he already knew.