Dreamcatcher(60)

'Ahhh! A hhh! Oh God let go! Fuckin thing, let go! Jesus! My f**kin sack! Jeesus!'

Before he could get either hand beneath the tail, a mouthful of needles sank into the side of his neck. He reared up, bellowing, and then the thing was gone. Beaver tried to get to his feet. He had to push with his hands because there was no strength in his legs, and his hands kept slipping. In addition to McCarthy's blood, the bathroom floor was now covered with murky water from the cracked toilet tank and the tiled surface was a skating rink.

As he finally got up, he saw something clinging to the doorway about halfway up. It looked like some kind of freak weasel  -  no legs but with a thick reddish-gold tail. There was no real head, only a kind of slippery-looking node from which two feverish black eyes stared.

The lower half of the node split open, revealing a nest of teeth. The thing struck at Beaver like a snake, the node lash?ing forward, the hairless tail curled around the doorjamb. Beaver screamed and raised a hand in front of his face. Three of the four fingers on it  -  all but the pinky  -  disappeared. There was no pain, either that or the pain from his ruptured testicle swal?lowed it whole. He tried to step away, but the backs of his knees struck the bowl of the battered toilet. There was nowhere to go.

That thing was in him? Beaver thought; there was time for that much. It was in him?

Then it uncoiled its tall or its tentacle or whatever it was and leaped at him, the top half of its rudimentary head full of its stupidly furious black eyes, the lower half a packet of bone needles. Far away, in some other universe where there still might be sane life, Jonesy was calling his name, but Jonesy was late, Jonesy was way late.

The thing that had been in McCarthy landed on the Beav's chest with a smack. It smelled like McCarthy's wind  -  a heavy reek of oil and ether and methane gas. The muscular whip that was its lower body wrapped around Beaver's waist. Its head darted forward and its teeth closed on Beaver's nose.

Screaming, beating at it with his fists, Beaver fell backward onto the toilet. The ring and the lid had flown up against the tank when the thing came out. The lid had stayed up, but the ring had fallen back into place. Now the Beav landed on it, broke it, and dropped ass-first into the toilet with the weasel - thing clutching him around the waist and chewing his face.

'Beaver! Beav, what - '

Beaver felt the thing stiffen against him  -  it literally stiffened, like a dick getting hard. The grip of the tentacle around his waist tightened, then loosened. Its black-eyed idiotic face whipped around toward the sound of Jonesy's voice, and Beav saw his old friend through a haze of blood, and with dimming eyes: Jonesy standing slack-jawed in the doorway, a roll of friction tape (won't need that now, Beaver thought, nah) in one dangling hand. Jonesy stand?ing there utterly defenseless in his shocked horror. This thing's next meal.

'Jonesy, get outta here!' Beaver shouted. His voice was wet, strained through a mouthful of blood. He sensed the thing getting ready to leap and wrapped his arms around its pulsing body as if it were his lover. 'Get out! Shut the door! B - ' Burn it, he wanted to say. Lock it in, lock both of us in, burn it, burn it alive, I'm going to sit here ass-deep in this f**king toilet with my arms wrapped around it, and if I can die smelling it roast, I can die happy. But the thing was struggling too hard and f**king Jonesy was just standing there with that roll of friction tape in his hand and his jaw dropped, and goddam if he didn't look like Duddits, dumb as a stone boat and never going to improve. Then the thing turned back to Beaver, its earless noseless node of a head drawn back, and before that head darted forward and the world detonated for the last time, Beaver had a final, partial thought: Those toothpicks, damn, Mamma always said -

Then the exploding red and blooming black and somewhere far off the sound of his own screams, the final ones.

9

Jonesy saw Beaver sitting in the toilet with something that looked like a giant red - gold worm clinging to him. He called out and the thing turned toward him, no real head, just the black eyes of a shark and a mouthful of teeth. Something in the teeth, something that couldn't be the mangled remains of Beaver Clarendon's nose but probably was.

Run away! he screamed at himself, and then: Save him! Save Beaver!

Both imperatives had equal power, and the result kept him frozen in the doorway, feeling as if he weighed a thousand pounds. The thing in Beaver's arms was making a noise, a crazed chattering sound that got into his head and made him think of something, something from a long time ago, he didn't know just what.

Then Beaver was screaming at him from his awkward sprawl in the toilet, telling him to get out, to shut the door, and the thing turned back to the sound of his voice as if recalled to temporarily forgotten business, and it was Beaver's eyes it went for this time, his f**king eyes, Beaver writhing and screaming and trying to hold on as the thing chattered and chattered and bit, its tail or whatever it was flexing and tightening around Beaver's waist, pulling Beaver's shirt out of his overalls and then slithering inside against his bare skin, Beaver's feet jerking on the tiles, the heels of his boots spraying bloody water in thin sheets, his shadow flailing on the wall, and that mossy stuff was everywhere now, it grew so f**king fast -

Jonesy saw Beaver thrash backward in a final throe; saw the thing let go its grip and leap clear just as the Beav rolled off the toilet, his upper half falling into the tub on top of McCarthy, old Mr Behold-I-Stand-at-the-Door-and-Knock. The thing hit the floor and slithered around  -  Christ, it was quick  -  and started toward him. Jonesy took a step backward and swept the bathroom door shut just before the thing hit it, making a thump almost exactly like the one it had made when it hit the underside of the toilet seat. It hit hard enough to shiver the door against the jamb. Light flickered in shutters from beneath the door as it moved restlessly on the tiles, and then it slammed into the door again. Jonesy's first thought was to run and get a chair, put it under the doorknob, but how dumb was that, as his kids said, how f**king brainless, the door opened in, not out. The real question was whether the thing understood the function of the doorknob, and if it could reach it.