The Hunger (35 page)

“You’re home now,” was all he could think to say. “You made it home.” His emotions were beginning to overwhelm him. He wanted to sob. Never again would he let her go. They circled one another, a slow dance.

He recalled their past: lying on a beach in Florida, Sarah holding forth on age vectors in the baking sun. He had laughed aloud at her intensity. Sarah in her lab, her voice strident, the atmosphere charged with her energy. Sarah in bed, loving.

As the shock of her arrival wore off she became more real to Tom. He kissed her. Her mouth was sour and he drew back. Tears appeared in her eyes. “I have a confession —”

“Not yet.”

Her eyes widened. Her fingers came up to his bandages. “She hurt me,” he said.

“Don’t call her ‘she.’ Miriam isn’t a ‘she.’ That’s a human word.”

“What, then? Woman?”

“A female of another species. A woman is a human being. Miriam is a mockery of humanity. Women stand for life, Miriam stands for death.”

“You’re pale,” he said. He didn’t want to pursue any conversations about Miriam right now. Not until they both felt a lot better.

Phyllis and Charlie had drawn close, instinct making them seek the comfort of the group. Tom could not blame them. He felt it too: something black and cold was in this room.

“I may look pale but I feel good,” Sarah said. “I wish I didn’t feel like this.” Tom detected more than a little desperation in her voice. He began to wish Phyllis and Charlie would leave. He wanted Sarah alone.

“We didn’t understand how dangerous she was,” Phyllis said.

Sarah turned to her. “I failed, Phyl. You believed in me, but I failed.” She was starting to back away, as if their closeness disturbed her.

“We got a lot of data, Sarah.”

“Not enough. You don’t know the half of it. She didn’t let you have anything of real value.”

Sarah kept backing away. Tom made a gesture to Phyllis and Charlie, nodded toward the door. “Yes,” Sarah said, “it’s best if they leave.”

“Sarah,” Phyllis said, “I don’t want you to think you failed.”

“Please, Phyl.”

“I’ll go, but just don’t think you’ve failed. It isn’t over yet. Remember that. We haven’t even begun to work on that data.”

“Yes, Phyl.”

“I think you’d better cut it short,” Tom said at last. Sarah looked as if she were about to explode. When the door closed behind them at last, Sarah took a ragged breath. She was now on the far side of the room, poised like a cornered animal.

Sarah had known from the moment she entered the apartment what Miriam had done to her. Another trick.

They smelled so good.

She wanted to handle them, to caress their warm, moist skin, to draw them close to her.

How accommodating Miriam had been. And why not, when she knew what this was going to do to Sarah. She wanted to run . . . and then again she didn’t. There was something very pleasing about them, about Tom especially, the slow way he moved and the trust in his eyes. This odd feeling isolated her from them, forced her into a kind of loneliness she had never known before.

When the door closed behind Charlie and Phyllis, Sarah knew that Tom was endangered. He should not be alone with her. Not when she was like this.

She strove for control. “Stay on that side of the room,” she said.

He looked across at her, a question in his eyes. The wall was directly behind her. She could not get farther away from that wonderful scent. If she opened her arms, called to him, he would come. She must not allow herself to do that.

“Darling?”

“Tom, don’t come any closer!”

“You’re joking.”

“I am not.”

“Didn’t you come here to be with me?”

There was such hurt in his tone. She wanted to go to him, but she did not dare. He took a step closer. Her flesh crawled, but her arms came up. Another Sarah, mean and evil, smiled, another voice welcomed him. She could hear his pulse as he approached, hear the whisper of his breath, the faint liquid sound as his lips parted.

“We had good times. Don’t you remember?” She did remember, as he had no doubt intended she should. Sweaty hours banging away at one another. Such innocence and pleasure.

“Tom,
stop!
”

Thank God it had finally come out. The shout stunned him. He stood still, his smile fading. “Why?”

“Just do it. Don’t come a step nearer. Not one step!”

He bowed his head, remained motionless.

“Go into the bedroom and close the door. I made a major error coming here. I’ve got to get out and I can’t possibly make myself do it unless you leave the room.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tom, I can’t stand it much longer! Please just do as I say, even if you don’t understand.”

“I think we ought to talk about it.”

“No! Go away!”

He was moving closer again. In a moment she was going to open her arms once more and this time she would not be able to stop.

Miriam called it hunger. A mild word.

“
Please!
” She cast her eyes down, felt her muscles tensing for the kill. Her body was preparing to spring at him. Hot, anguished tears poured out of her eyes. Very softly, she made a last plea. “Don’t touch me.”

“You’re serious. You’re absolutely serious!”

She looked up at him. He was four feet away. She could not warn him again.

“OK, I get the point. But why, Sarah?”

“Just do as I say. Do it now.”

At last he began to move toward the bedroom. For a horrible moment she thought she was following him, but she managed to go out the front door instead. Her movements were sinuous and quick. She reminded herself of a rat questing through a maze. There was another person in her, powerful and evil, and she was losing control.

The hallway was empty. That was a small miracle, and Sarah was grateful. She could smell them all around her, behind the doors of their apartments. The moan of need that came out of her mouth was hardly human.

Sarah knew where she had to go, where it was intended she go. There was only one place that did not smell human, only one being who did not tempt the hunger. Miriam had made her point. For Sarah the only thing that now mattered was getting back to that house. Doing it through the crowded Manhattan streets was going to be hell. She clung to the notion that she would not kill another human being.

As the elevator descended, she tried to prepare herself for her ordeal. She had moved in the streets before, after all, and hadn’t eaten at all the last time. She remembered the man on the sidewalk whom she had nearly killed, the apartment balcony she had climbed.

That was with the streets empty. Now they were going to be jam-packed. ‘I am a human being,’ she thought. ‘I will not harm my fellow man.’ Will all the willpower left to her, she resolved to remain a human being. The hunger she felt, after all, was not her own.

It belonged to the creature’s blood. The need to kill was not her need, it was Miriam’s. She resolved to keep telling herself that. Then the elevator doors opened and she saw Alex at his post. ‘Miriam’s hunger,’ she repeated, ‘not mine.’

She managed to slip past him, get through the front door and out onto the sidewalk.

Madness. People everywhere, more even than she had imagined. She made an involuntary lunge at a passing businessman, managed to dash past him into the middle of the street. Brakes squealed, horns blared. A cab swerved, slurred to a stop. The driver was cursing, the passenger staring terrified from the backseat.

There was no time to waste, no opportunity to miss. She got in. “Whassmatter with you? I got a god-damn fare in here!”

“Emergency!”

“Call a cop, lady. You nearly got yourself run over. Now get outa here.”

“Somebody’s about to die. I’m a doctor.”

The driver rolled his eyes. “OK,” he said, “where to?”

Sarah told him Miriam’s address and opened the window. The fumes from the street would perhaps mask some of the smells within the cab. She listened as the driver reassured his passenger that all was well, the detour wouldn’t take long. Many drivers would have refused to budge, she knew that. But she had gotten lucky. This guy had a heart.

As soon as the house appeared Sarah leaped from the cab, raced up the steps and began hammering the knocker, pressing the buzzer, trying the door.

She could feel Miriam standing just the other side of the door. “Please,” she said softly, “please open it.” She did not want to shout. Attracting the attention of the neighbors was dangerous.

After the longest thirty seconds of Sarah’s life the door clicked and swung open. She staggered in and slammed it shut behind her, on all the bustle and beauty, and the hideous temptation, of the world of man.

Miriam knew at once that Sarah’s will had proved stronger than her need. She sighed with displeasure, let the poor thing into the house, waited for the inevitable recriminations.

Sarah’s hunger would eventually break her will, but until it did Miriam would have to endure this annoying independence. She hardly heard Sarah’s wails of anguish, her roaring anger, hardly felt the clawing and the pummeling as she pulled the girl up the stairs and back into their bedroom.

“I’ll return when you’re feeling more reasonable,” she said. “Try to calm yourself.” There was little point in saying more. Sarah was stronger than the others, a lot stronger. Too bad. It was going to make things that much more difficult for her. She had a romantic vision of herself as the great healer. A fool’s vision. The world has forgotten that romance has two aspects, that of love and that of death. Sarah didn’t know it, but she had moved to the side of death.

The walls of the apartment were closing in on Tom. He stood in the foyer, his mind racked with indecision. He should follow Sarah, go back to that house again.

But he could not. That pretty little house held nothing for him but terror. Pink brickwork, window boxes, romantic white shutters, all seemed evil and grotesque, like makeup smeared on some sneering face. The screaming terrors of last night seemed to come close to him. His hand touched the bandages on his face. Had they been demons? Were such things real? His belief in science had evaporated. All the grand procession of knowledge now seemed nothing more than smugness and ignorance.

In the face of something such as Miriam, had a man any power at all? There was no place to turn. Prayer meant nothing to him. His childhood prayers had gotten only silence in reply.

If that silence was sacred, he had not known it until now, and he felt it was too late to challenge the rock of his disbelief. He could not turn to God for strength.

There seemed nowhere to turn. He just didn’t have the courage to break the spell of Miriam. Or did he? He imagined taking Sarah in his arms and shouting out his love so loud it would penetrate to the depth of her soul.

That love, that was truth.

That was his weapon.

He took a step toward the door. One step, no more. He remembered the look in Sarah’s face as she had pleaded with him not to come near her. “I love you, Sarah! I love you!” His voice echoed. Sunlight echoed across the living room. He saw little clouds beyond the window, white and fluffy. He screamed the scream of nightmare.

Miriam decided to wait a bit before telephoning the victim. It would be best if he could get up the courage to come on his own. That way she could let him force his way to Sarah, to succeed where he had failed last night. It was doubtful, however. Human courage had its limits.

She went to the garden to pick flowers. It was a soothing pastime and it would be best if the house appeared as cheerful and sweet as possible. The windows must be opened, the curtains drawn back. There should be music on the stereo, something soothing, perhaps Delius’
Florida Suite
, or the overture from
The Land of Smiles
. Perhaps there should be some fruit and wine set out. No, just wine. Fruit was too much trouble. She didn’t even know if they still sold natural fruit, it had been so long since she had noticed.

Carefully avoiding even a glance at her destroyed rose arbor, Miriam clipped until her basket was heavy with marigolds, snapdragons, iris, all the wealth of her garden. She loved the exuberant life of the flowers. Nature demanded nothing more of them than that they open each morning to the sun. Miriam’s race was not so lucky. From her and her kind much more was demanded. Not all that nature wants from its children is innocent.

She carried the cut flowers onto the sun porch, laid them on the table which contained the portrait of Lamia. She looked into her mother’s eyes, rendered by the artist as pale blue. Before the invention of contact lenses and shaded glasses Miriam’s species was marked as having the evil eye. The artist had not wanted to offend his client by giving her eyes their true color.

The portrait was a source of peace and reassurance to Miriam. The eyes said to her, ‘Go on, never stop. For me, be immortal.’

Tom had managed to get as far as Miriam’s front door. The house stood before him, the vortex of a deadly whirlpool. He was reminded of the flowers that eat flies, using their nectar and their beauty as bait. Tom hated most the beauty of the place. It should have foreboded somehow of the danger within. Must Miriam always smile?

It was a sunny morning, the sky now clear blue. Before him the house glowed in sunlight dappled through budding trees. The green shutters were open. Behind them silk curtains billowed in the fresh breeze. He heard music and saw shadowy movement in the living room.

For an instant he was ready to run, but the music seemed at odds with danger. It was happy, rich music, the kind of thing he might have heard drifting up from the bandshell on a summer night of his boyhood. He supposed that he had been seen, and the music was meant to make him feel just as he did.

He had imagined how life was going to be without Sarah, and had wound up here, telling himself how he loved her. Still, it was going to be hard to get to that front door to ring the bell. If anything the obvious musical attempt to soothe him made him more uneasy than ever.

Either he go in that house now or face the fact that he would never see Sarah again.

How desperately she needed him. When somebody you loved has nowhere left to turn, you help. If there was such a thing as a human compact, that was part of it.