The Devil Next Door

9

Louis broke the connection, slid the phone back in his pocket.

Setting his drink aside, he started wondering what he had for a weapon in case he needed one. He wasn’t a hunter or a hobby shooter, so he didn’t have any guns. His trout rod and reel didn’t count for anything. There were knives in the kitchen, of course. He went to the closet by the front door and dug out a driver from his golf bag. Then the step out there creaked again. He pulled the sheer aside from the oval window set in the door.

Just the mailman.

Old Lem Karnigan.

Louis sighed. What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he inflating this all into something bigger than it was, some crazy conspiracy?

Lem saw him out of the corner of his eye and waved absently.

Louis pulled the door open.

Lem was pushing seventy, but hadn’t retired and there was no talk of him doing so. They’d probably have to force him out. Lem’s wife had died two years ago this past winter and his kids were all moved away. He probably didn’t have anything but the job. And that was sad when you thought about it.

He was standing on the bottom step sorting letters and fliers. The mailbag strapped over his shoulder looked impossibly bulky and heavy. Almost too much for a skinny old guy like him.

“One of these days, Louis,” he said without looking up, “I’m getting out. I’m going down to Florida with the rest of the old coots. I ran into Ronny Riggs last week, just up from Miami Beach. You know what he said? He said there’s beaches down there where the girls don’t wear no tops. How do you like that? he says. So I say, Bobby, I like that just fine.” Chuckling to himself, Lem looked up and his laughter stopped. He saw Louis’ disheveled appearance, the crusted bloodstains on his shirt. “Jesus. H Christ, Louis! What the hell happened? You get in a fight?”

Louis shook his head. “Some kid got in an accident… I had to help. It was a real mess.”

Lem just stood down at the bottom of the steps, staring at him.

And as Louis watched, it was almost as if a shadow passed over his face. Lem shuddered, his mouth pulled into a scowl. It looked as if something, something necessary had just drained out of him. And that quick.

Then he did the most amazing thing: he sniffed the air.

Sniffed it like he could smell the blood all over Louis. Like an animal.

“You okay, Lem?”

“So you helped that kid, did you?” Lem said. “Well, that was kind of you.”

Louis just swallowed. Gooseflesh had broken out on his arms. Look at his eyes. Look at his goddamn eyes. What Louis saw made him wish that he’d brought the golf club with him. Because Lem’s eyes were flat and black and shiny like those of a rattlesnake right before it strikes. Just like the kid’s eyes… nothing in them.

“You okay, Lem?” he said again.

Lem squinted, his lips pulled back from his teeth. “No… no I ain’t all right, Louis Shears. I ain’t all right at all. I was thinking… I was thinking about last Christmas… you never left me a tip like you used to do. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s my job to deliver your fucking mail, but a tip tells me you appreciate the job I do. That I bust my ass six days a week in good weather and bad, bringing you you’re fucking mail.”

Louis made ready to spring back inside. “Well, Lem, I’m sorry about that. Last Christmas was a bad time for us. Michelle’s mom got sick and all. Everything was crazy.”

Lem ran his tongue along the fronts of his teeth. “Sure, Louis, sure. Guys like you, they always got an answer for everything, don’t they? Well, don’t you worry, Mr. Louis Shears, I know my job. I do my job. Ain’t nobody that has to tell me how to do my job, least of all you. Here’s your goddamn mail.” He crunched it up in his fist, letters and magazines and fliers, threw at Louis. “There you go, you sonofabitch.”

And then he ambled away, glancing over his shoulder from time to time at Louis like he hated the sight of him. He moved up the sidewalk, talking to himself. The real frightening thing was that he was moving with a rolling, loping gait like that of an ape.

And worse: he was digging in his mailbag and tossing letters in the air.

Tossing them in bunches.

Then he stopped at row of rose bushes at the Merchant’s house next door, unzipped himself and took a piss. Right there in plain view.

Louis just stood there.

There was something in the water, something in the air. He didn’t know what, but they were all starting to lose it. What in the hell was happening? He’d seen it come over Lem, that emptying of all he was or ever had been, leaving something behind that was primal and uncivilized, raging.

He wondered if it was the blood on his shirt.

Lem had been all right until he’d seen the blood. Didn’t they say that the sight and smell of blood could create a sort of aggressive response in animals? In dogs? Was that true for people, too? No, that was ridiculous. There had been a sudden inexplicable aggression in Lem, but it had been more than that. He was like the kid or the cops. Suddenly, somehow, things like ethics and self-control had suddenly vanished, leaving a predatory anger in its void.

Louis shut the door.

Then he locked it.

He peered out the window.

At the Merchant’s house next door, Lem left mail scattered on the lawn. Two houses down at the Loveman’s, he dug into his bag, scratching around in there like an animal rooting in soil for grubs. Then he put a hand to his face and shook. He tossed the bag aside and just wandered away up the walk like he was sunstruck.

It was happening and Louis knew it.

Something horrifying and unknown was taking the town one by one…