Voracious - Alice Henderson [74]
Noah, waiting quietly by the front door, asked, “Anything?”
Madeline shook her head. “Just a lot of white noise.”
He raised his eyebrows.
She moved toward him, away from the cloud of stench. “When a lot of people touch something over the years, like these appliances, all I get is white noise: a crazy mixture of the thoughts of everyone who has ever been here. I call it the Bus Seat Effect.”
“Bus seat?”
“Yeah. I first noticed it on a bus. My elementary school used these really old buses that had probably driven kids around since the 1950s. Our school district didn’t have a whole lot of money. Anyway, I noticed one day, bouncing along on my way to school, that I didn’t ever get any specific images when I touched a bus seat. I thought it was weird at the time. I mean, think of all the nervous and terrified kids who had used them for decades. I thought I’d get something—an image of a kid crying over a stolen lunch box, or a vision of a kid getting beaten up during recess by the local bully. But nothing. Eventually I realized that I got no images precisely because there were so many kids who had ridden in those seats before me. It was just too much information, a hiss and static of a thousand lives, each with their separate fears and terrors, struggles and triumphs.”
“The Bus Seat Effect. Got it. Want to try the other rooms?”
“Sure,” she said, feeling mildly sick, and not sure if it was due to nerves or the terrible stench.
Together they made their way through the sitting room, a tiny room sporting an ancient stuffed rocker and a magazine rack complete with wilting copies of Better Homes and Gardens dating back at least to the ’60s.
Madeline touched all the furniture, the magazines, the lamp. Nothing.
In the small bathroom, she touched the sink, bathtub, shower curtain, toilet. No images.
She moved into the last room, a small bedroom with a bed, dresser, and wooden writing desk with a lamp. Noah lingered in the doorway while she ran her fingers gingerly over the dresser’s smooth surface, then the writing desk and lamp. Finally she moved to the bed. It was unmade, recently slept in, the dark green comforter spilling over the bed and onto the floor. The sheets looked new or nearly new; they still had creases in them where they had been folded at the factory. A deep maroon, they weren’t the kind of cheap linens that rental places normally stocked. She reached down gently and brushed her hand over the soft cotton of the sheets. Immediately, powerful images swept over her.
The creature, in human form, dark wavy hair spilling about his shoulders, bare olive skin pressed against the sheets, asleep …
Still in human form, gasping, nightmare about the black, terrible void, awake, sitting up quickly, glancing about the room …
Rising, pacing, staring out the window into the moonlit forest beyond …
Falling back on the sheets, sighing, twisting in the covers, moaning, thinking about … thinking about … Madeline …
Quickly she pulled her hand away. Tentatively she reached down and touched the soft sheets again.
The creature in human form, naked and muscular, lounging on the bed, images of Madeline drifting in its thoughts, the scent of her hair, her skin … the creature’s tongue licking its lips, wanting to taste her … then gazing outside at the moon, at the dark silhouettes of the pines against drifting clouds set aglow by the moonlight … where was she … out there … right now …
She could feel his thoughts, his need, his desire for her. He wasn’t planning on killing her. Not anymore. But he had picked out no future victim because he wasn’t finished with her yet.
Madeline wrenched her hand away as if it had been burned.
“What is it?” Noah asked from the doorway, startling her. For a moment, she’d forgotten he was standing there, forgotten where she was, had only felt the creature.
“We have to get out of here now.”
“Why? What is it?”
She hurried toward the bedroom