Catharsis [Novel]

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

            Whispering outside the room's door brings me joltingly back to the moment.  Two voices.

            "I know he's in there.  He's got to be.  We checked all the other rooms."  A deep voice quietly resonates from just a few feet away.

            "But why hasn't he said anything, then?  It's not like him to be quiet like this," replies a lighter, higher-pitched voice.

            "I don't know.  Maybe that crap he's always on finally put him to sleep.  It had to happen eventually."

            "You think it's possible?  If he's finally asleep and no longer talking, then I say we leave 'im alone."

            Blinking my eyes, I realize they're talking about the man in the room with me.  The man in my arms.  The man that until just a few seconds ago I had had my teeth buried into the side of his neck.  The man that drew me here.

            Looking down at the puncture marks on the taut skin of his neck just below the chin, I instinctively lick the wound a few times (Why is that instinctual?  Even if it does feel right, it should never be natural.  For some reason, though, my licking does seem to stop the bleeding.) and then shiver as the realization of what I just did sinks in.  Both the horrifying action with my tongue, and the more soul-torturing one that preceded it.

            As much as I don't want to, I think I'm going to have to come to terms soon with what I am.  Or as least, what I've become.  As hard as it is to believe, the evidence piling up towards that conclusion is beginning to get overwhelming.

            But I feel so...good right now.  I feel even stronger and faster and more alert than I did after my encounter with the trash man.  I haven't felt this powerful ever, in my entire life.  The strength and speed, and the overwhelming desire to use it, bubble through me like the carbonation in a bottle of soda.  It's going to need released...and soon.

            "...in there, I swear."

            A third voice has now joined the others, and the raw fear wrapped around his words instantly piques my interest.  Something's up.

            "What are you talking about, Leroy?  Are you crazy?  No one else is in there.  It's just Kemmy finally sleeping off that nasty dope he's gotten himself into."

            "We're on the second floor, man.  You can't be serious," continues the deep, bass voice.

            "I'm telling you I saw someone...or something...crawl into that window," the new voice pipes in and the fright that laces every enunciation of his words pulls at something deep within me.  It excites me.  I smile at the man on the other side of the door in spite of myself.  "I was outside trying to find Rick and Mateo after they ditched me, and when I came around the side of the house I saw it.  It was hanging on the side of the house, and then it just, I don't know, slithered in or something.  It was spooky.  And I'm telling you it's in there."

            "What 'bout 'Teo and Rick, Leroy?  Did you see them out there after you saw this other thing on the wall?"  The mockery in the high-pitched voice is unmistakable to me.  This Leroy guy is not high on the social totem pole here.

            There's a pause before Leroy's soft voice continues.  "Yeah, I think so."  But he doesn't say anything more.

            Checking to make sure the unconscious man cradled in my arms is no longer bleeding (He isn't.  My licking of his neck seems to have sealed up the little holes I had made with my incisors.  Now he just looks asleep.  Well...pale, unhealthy, dirty and frighteningly disheveled, but asleep.), I gently lower him to the floor of the room so that I can focus all of my attention on what's going on a few feet away from me behind the thin plank of fifty-year-old wood that's serving as a door.  I'm getting the feeling this is going to involve me real soon.