Is That Really You?
AN UnderBelly Case File
File#: 8
BY: Steve Campbell
How would you know it was really ME?
Can a nightmare turn into a fact?
CHAPTER 1
Was That You
I am still kind of in a trance, I guess, from what I had to go through. Not more than, well, I guess it started two days ago, and I do not know if it is finished with me or not. What I do know is I am finished with the fantasy I had of trying to find or remove it from the earth. I now know that is never going to happen. That is, unless it decides to leave. You see, they are everywhere, and there are so many of them, I think I will just wait out my days locked up somewhere so I do not become one of the walking impersonators. The worst part is not even seeing them; it is the thought that you already have and just do not know it yet. I know how all this must sound to you out there, but I will tell you from the beginning what I stood for and went into for the story, and just maybe I can save another from going down the tunnel of death I nearly did not escape. I guess I should start back at the beginning of this mistake in ID that has almost got me put six feet under the daisies.
Monday was a happy day, when we all thought it was going to be a normal work week. We go to work, come home, say hello to those in our lives, and then sleep and get ready to start it again. And in most of our now hot LA town, that is what you will get, except for Fred Walters, a 62-year-old who, even though his wife tells him to stop working at the ranch, has never agreed with her. Well, needless to say, tonight he will wish he had retired while there was still breath in his lungs. Fred got home around 10:00 PM, normal for a long day with the cows, boots heavy with dust and the smell of hay still on him, but when he walked in the house, instead of finding a nice wife always welcome to make him happy, he found a woman who looked like Doris. However, by the size of the bites taken from his belly and both legs, it was not Doris at all. The flesh was not torn as an animal would do it; it was like something had taken careful pieces. And the voice message machine that was knocked on in the struggle also recorded a fearless beat of a thing just looking for a meal, maybe, a wet chewing sound between breaths, and something else under it, a low humming like it was pleased with itself.
Tuesday, around 2:00 PM, Harry, the local fix-it-up guy, stopped by Wilma Hartford’s house to fix up a wobbly fan in an upstairs room. As he told it in his own words, “It was like Wilma got a Popeye’s boost of spinach as she picked me up and threw me into her home instead of saying hello.” He said her grip felt wrong, not strong like a person, but tight like something that had too many joints in the same place. “Then the teeth she had, multiple rows all looking my way.” He said they did not fit in her mouth, like they were added in layers, pushing her lips too far apart, stretching them until they cracked at the corners. “I took out my contact cleaner and sprayed it into its eyes.” He told me the eyes were not blinking, not even when the spray hit them, just staring, wide and dry, like glass that had something moving behind it. “That made it run off and disappear.” He said it did not run like a person either; it folded, then stretched, then was gone down the hall faster than his eyes could follow. “I hope I never see that thing again, man!” I will tell you this: after hearing him say it, I do not think he ever will, because I do not think it lets people see it twice.
So there I am with this detail of another thing I was supposed to find, I guess. It has gotten to the point now that my doing a story on the strange is like a side job after I find and destroy the creature, monster, machine, or just thing trying to do wrong to my LA town. I have to say, if I were not here, what would happen? Would they pop up where I was or go unpunished, destroying the nightlife of the busy LA scene? Whatever would happen, this is what I have, a night ahead of me, looking for some reason for it to be here and what it really wants from our town. And there was something else sitting in my gut now, not just curiosity, but that crawling feeling like I was already too late for someone.
I felt the best way to start a search for something unreal would be to check in with my under-town contact, JoJo. She seems to know where not to go and what she needs to bring when she does. I wished a few years back that we could get into more, maybe a life together. Then everything turned on its side when she started looking at me like I was crazy about my stories, and I knew she would not do that, so she is a looker, but that is about it, look and no more, unlucky. Still, there was always something there, a pull that never really left, just buried under all the things we never said.
I felt JoJo would be on 15th tonight due to the crowds and the weather, so that was where I went, but there was not a soul there, like they had run off. Not quite like a slow night, but empty like something had cleared it out. The kind of emptiness that makes your ears ring because there should be noise, and there is none. I then went over to 20th and 10th, where the wild underground parties started, and tonight there was nothing at all. No music bleeding through the walls, no laughter, no late-night deals, just dead air and shadows that did not feel right. That was when I decided to go directly to JoJo’s place, not expecting such a party animal to be there on a nice night, and I got a story that made my skin crawl from my JoJo, who would not leave her house at night now.
I knocked on her door, not expecting a noise or even her being home, and instead I got a “Who are you, and if you’re not, you get ready for pain.” That was new, so I just said, “JoJo, it’s Karl, and last time I checked, these were my pants and hat, girl.” Then the door was opened just enough for a hand to shoot out and grab my shirt and pull me in, the door slamming and locking behind me in a flash like she had done it a hundred times already tonight.
And then she said, “Karl, grab a cushion and wait for me, babe. I will be right there to tingle your ears, doll,” and yeah, that was my JoJo, but there was something off. The voice was right, the rhythm was right, but there was a crack under it, like she was forcing it to sound normal.
JoJo came back with a bottle of rum and a glass of her sugar balls she liked and plopped down across from me and said to me, “You started to drink yet, man?” where I shook my head, so she continued with, “Karl, you will start by the time this night is done and you’re ready to go to your own fortress in the night, and I hope you do baby, because if you plan on wandering you will be down and out before the sun hits the grass.” Her eyes kept drifting to the door even while she talked, like she was listening for something on the other side that I could not hear yet.
I looked at her and said, “What has got you so up in the air, crazy like this girl? You were the most sexy straight-legged lady I knew, and nothing made you skip a beat, Jo, now you’re like a what?”
Before she sat down and started talking to me, she walked around every window, checking to be sure it was locked, pressing on the frames like she expected them to give. She checked the door again, then put a towel under the front door, stuffing it tight like she was trying to block something out, or keep something from seeing in. Only then did she come back, and this time she sat next to me, not across, not even close, but close enough that I could feel her shaking before she said a word.
She leaned into me like we were more than friends, like she needed to borrow something steady from me just to get through the next sentence. I was there but did nothing yet, just let her have the space. Then she looked at me and said, “Karl, I wanted you to know I have told no one about this but you. I feel we were closer at one time, and I pushed you away. I am sorry for that, Karl, but now it gives me the strength to talk to someone, so thank you for stopping by and being that person who cares, baby.”
I did not know what to say, so I just nodded in agreement and let her keep going with what she was going to tell me.
“Karl, do you remember Beverly and Sherry, the girls I used to run with?”
I nodded again and then swallowed, waiting in anticipation of bad things to come, because she used the words used to, knowing the last time I saw JoJo, the three of them were tight as can be, almost always together, and now she said ‘used to’. So I said nothing and let her unload what was bothering this very proud and strong-willed woman.
“Well, Karl, they are out there someplace, but it would not be them any longer. I guess I could tell you they were replaced with something else that looked on the outside like them, but nothing was left of them inside.” Her voice dropped lower, almost a whisper now. “When I went over to Beverly’s place after she did not answer a few days back, the place was a mess, and she is a clean freak, baby. She was also there and also a mess, like she had not cleaned any of her things for days.”
JoJo’s grip tightened on my arm as she went on. “When I went in, since she gave me a key, she was just standing there with stains all down the front of her shirt. Not like food, Karl… darker… thicker.”
“When I told her, ‘What’s going on, you're having a bad lady month?’ she just stood staring at me. Not blinking. Not breathing right. Just… watching.”
She swallowed hard before finishing. “Then she opened her mouth, and it was no longer a girl’s mouth. It was something else.”
So I ran out and slammed the door behind me and ran to Sherry’s place.”
Right then, JoJo put her head on my shoulder, and this time I did hug her for comfort, because whatever she saw had followed her here in her head and was not leaving anytime soon. She cried for a good twenty minutes, not loud, but shaking, like every breath hurt to take.
When she sat back up, she wiped her face and said, “Karl, I am so glad, so very glad, I needed to tell someone. I am so sorry for the way I treated your stories before. I always thought they were just made up, trying to impress me, never that they were real. And I can tell you now I am so sorry I drove you away, my dear Karl.”
“So I went over to Sherry’s place and did not go in, but kept knocking until the neighbors came out, saying, ‘I can hear her in there through the walls.’ And that is when I took my key out and unlocked her door and pushed the door open, and we all just stood there watching as I said ‘Sherry baby, you ok, let us know if you’re hurt, honey.’”
Her voice broke again as she said, “Then again, a messy, disgusting thing slowly walked around the corner… slow, like it was learning how to move right in her skin.”
“And the neighbors all said, ‘Oh my god, that can not be our Sherry girl, close the door, close it.’ So I did.”
She turned her face to me then, eyes wide and tired all at once, and continued.” “And I went and got new locks for my door here and have not left the house since, Karl.”
I looked at Jo and asked, “What are your plans now?” She did look at me for a long while and said with a smile, “Why, Karl, you have something in mind, baby?” She leaned her head just a little, eyes soft but watching, like she was testing me more than asking.
I must say that was not what I had in mind at all, but she set a path down a road I would have gone with anything I had about three months ago, so I had to just step softly here. So I said to her No big deal at all, “I just wanted to know if you needed anything from me or if you planned on going out in the morning. I would be able to get you something if you were in need.” I kept my tone level, even gave a small shrug, like it was just another question, nothing behind it.
With that statement, she moved a bit further away and said, “Karl, I guess I really hurt you back then, didn’t I? I am sorry for that, and now I see I made a mistake. If you ever wanted to see where we could go, you know where I am, dear.” She paused there, looking at me a second longer than needed, then added, “However, for now I see you’re all business, and I appreciate you not taking advantage of what would have been an interesting evening, so no, Karl, I am good. You just need to be careful in the streets and watch for anything as you do, honey.”
With those final thoughts, I got up, and she hugged me like a lover would, not a friend, and I returned that. There was a weight to it, like something unfinished still hanging between us, something that might never get said out loud. Then she walked to the door to allow a fast exit, as she did at the entrance.
And as I was walking out of her building, I did realize I was not as alone as I used to think, and if I was really ready, I had three options I could pursue just in the past few months. That thought stayed with me for about three seconds, just long enough to feel human again.
And I was feeling good about myself when two people walking slowly and not very human-like came around the corner in front of me. Their steps were off, not in rhythm, almost dragging but not quite, like they were being pulled forward instead of walking on their own. Their heads did not turn right when they looked, more like the whole upper body shifted just enough to face my direction.
So I went down an alley and into an open door before I closed and locked it behind me. The handle felt wrong in my hand, cold and slick like it had not been touched in a long time, or had been touched too much by something that did not belong.
I found myself in a rear room of some kind of clothing store, from the looks of it, racks of garments hanging still like they were waiting for people that would never come back. I could just barely see light under one of the doors, so I opened it slowly and went into the main showroom. The place had that empty echo to it, every step sounding louder than it should, like the room was too big for just one person.
I started walking around before exiting the front entrance onto the same road that had my yellow Ford waiting for me, and I made sure not to look back, because I was not sure I wanted to know if those things followed behind me. When I got in my Mustang, I did not wait a second. I turned the key and sped off into the night, not even looking to see what was coming. I was sure .I was sure whatever was coming would not be paying for parking, and I was even more sure I did not want to sit still long enough to find out if it had learned how to use a door handle. I started down the street in my Ford Mustang like the devil himself had offered me a better rate on gas if I could just keep ahead of him for ten more blocks.
CHAPTER 2
creatures
LA at night usually has a pulse to it, a beat, a little wickedness mixed with perfume, but tonight the whole town felt like it was holding its breath. Even the traffic seemed wrong. Cars were there, sure, but too spread out, too careful, too quiet, like everybody out on the road had already seen one thing too many and was trying not to catch the next. I kept checking my mirror, and every time I did, I hated myself a little for it, because once you start looking for something impossible, you begin to give every shadow a face. A man crossing the road became a maybe. A woman standing under a light became a might be. A dog digging in a trash can became something else completely, for one full second. I needed a place to think, and in my line of work, that usually means a place with coffee and a waitress who has seen too much to be impressed by a reporter with a hat. So I swung over to Danny’s Spot on La Cienega, a twenty-four-hour little palace of weak pie and strong nerves. If the world is ending in LA, half the people who know it will eventually pass through a diner. I pulled in and right away noticed six empty spaces by the front that should have been full. That did not mean much on its own, but then I looked through the big front window and saw people sitting inside, not talking. People in diners talk, complain, flirt, lie, chew, cough, laugh, and make promises they do not intend to keep. Silence in a diner means either heartbreak or murder, and I did not see flowers on any table.
I went in with my recorder in one pocket and my nerves in the other. Betty was behind the counter. Betty had worked there long enough to see marriages start, affairs end. She looked up at me and instead of saying hello, she said, “You need to get whatever story you came for and get gone, Karl.” “That was not encouraging. Nice to see you, too, sunshine,” I told her, taking the stool at the end of the counter. “What happened? Somebody finally complained about the meatloaf?” She leaned in and kept her voice low. “You joke all you want, but three people came in here tonight acting wrong. One woman sat at booth four and stared at the sugar caddy for twenty minutes like she was trying to remember what it was for. One man asked for water, and when I gave it to him, he just touched it with his fingertips and smiled, and even shook a little. Then a young guy came in and went straight to the restroom and did not come out.” Now that got my attention in all the wrong ways. “Has not come out as in left by the window,” I said, “or has not come out as in still in there practicing his campaign speech?”
Betty did not smile. “As if he is still in there.”
I looked toward the hall. The restroom door was shut. No sound. No movement. Just one of those plain brown doors that suddenly seemed to have normal for this night, I said, “Did anybody check on him?” and after a quick look at the same door, Betty said, “One busboy did, he came back white as a napkin and quit on the spot almost 30 minutes ago.” I found that not encouraging, so I slid off the stool, and Betty caught my wrist. As she whispered, “Karl.” I turned and looked my old friend in the eyes and said, “Yeah?” and she continued to whisper, without saying anything I wanted to hear, as if she already knew too much, while saying, “Do not let it bite you.”
That is the kind of sentence a man should never hear when going to look at an unknown thing.
I walked toward the restroom, taking my time, because bravery is mostly just moving slower than your fear wants you to. The hall smelled like coffee, bleach, and something underneath it all that should not have been there. Not rotten exactly. Not yet. More like meat left in a warm room after the night was done, and it had no purpose. I walked up to the door and listened, hearing nothing, so I knocked and said, “Buddy, are you alive in there?” There was nothing at all, no sound or words I could hear, so I knocked again. “Listen, if you died in a diner restroom, I want you to know that is not the way to be remembered, buddy.” Still nothing. So I did what years of getting in the wrong place told me to do: I opened the door to an empty room, no man, no mess, except for the footprints. That would have been good news if not for the fact that there was nowhere for anyone to go. One toilet, one sink, one tiny frosted window too small for a cat, and nobody there. But on the mirror, written in something greasy and half-clear like it had been done with spit or oil, were the words:
YOU LOOK BACK TOO MUCH
I will tell you something honest. I did not like that one little bit. I stepped in and looked at the floor. Wet shoe prints. Bare footprints too, thin and long, almost human if you were to count fingers as toes. They led right to the wall beside the sink and stopped. Not turning. They just stopped. Then I noticed they were not all there; I could see the heel from one foot and nothing else. You did not have to be a genius to know when a wall is more than just a wall, so I tapped on it, Hollow.
“Terrific,” I muttered. “A secret passage in a diner bathroom. That is exactly what every city needs.” I felt along the paneling until my fingers found a seam. Then a latch. I pressed it, and part of the wall gave inward with a little sigh. Beyond it was a narrow service corridor with pipes overhead and one dim bulb at the far end. The air in there was warmer, damp, and carrying that same low smell that had been hanging all over the city tonight, not death, not sickness, strangeness. Now, a wise man would have called the police. But the police and I have an understanding. They believe I am insane, and I believe they arrive just in time to explain why they are too late. So I took out my little flashlight and went in. Hoping I could get a piece of that pie I saw on the counter later. The corridor seemed to go down and bend twice, then opened into a basement room under the diner. There were old crates down there, broken chairs, boxes of paper goods, and one thing hanging from a meat hook in the middle of the room that made me stop so hard I nearly swallowed my tongue.
It was a cow hide, fresh, still wet in places.
Only it had was not from a cow but something or someone else. It had been opened and stretched carefully, almost respectfully, as if somebody had removed it to study how a thing ought to fit. Under it on a table were pieces of clothing. A ranch jacket. Work shirt. Belt. One boot.
Fred Walters had come home from the ranch two nights ago, and now part of his wardrobe was in a basement under a diner.
I took out my recorder and started recording notes. When your life gets stupid enough, the proof becomes the only thing standing between you and screaming. Then I heard it from the corner of the course. Not a growl, not footsteps, but just a humming from what I could not see. Low and pleased with itself, just like on the message machine recording from Fred’s house. Soft at first, then getting louder, as if it was ramping up, I hoped not to make me a meal like Fred was.
I killed the flashlight, and the humming stopped. For one second, the whole world held still. Then I heard a wet sound from the far corner of the basement, behind a stack of old, forgotten boxes. Something moved there, Slow, Careful, not surprised, but calculated to come closer to me? I edged left, trying to get a better angle, and my shoe came down on something that cracked, not like glass but bone. I closed my eyes for half a second and said to myself, Karl, one of these days your luck is going to leave you at the wrong door. Then the thing in the corner laughed, but not from the corner at all. I do not mean a human laugh. I mean, the idea of laughter done by something not like a real mouth would sound. It came around the boxes wearing Harry’s face. I must say I was stunned for a second. I should change that to some of Harry's face, but enough that I knew him as the fix-it guy, the local chatterbox. Cheap aftershave. Bad stories about fishing. Only now his smile was wider than it had any right to be, and his eyes were dry, too open, too fixed. His skin looked loose in some places and stretched in others, like it had been pulled over a frame still deciding what shape it wanted.
“Well now,” it said in Harry’s voice, almost perfect except for the wetness under it. “There he is.”I backed up one step. “Harry, you look terrible,” I said, trying not to just scream as its head twitched, not offended, just adjusting. “Not Harry,” it said. “Not anymore. But we liked him. Handy fellow. Quick hands.” That sentence will stay with me for a while. “What are you?” I asked because once a man is already in the basement with a smiling skin thief, manners are all he has left. The not-harry thing tilted its head. “We are what is left when the inside goes soft.”
I wish I could tell you that made sense to me then, but all it did was make my stomach try to push out and eject its contents. The thing took one step closer. Its knees bent wrong for a second, then corrected. “You have seen too much, Karl.” That I did not like either. So I said “Funny,” as I moved toward a stack of old soda crates and tried to sound braver than I felt. “I seem to hear that a lot nowadays,” and then, looking at the Harry thing directly, I said, “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
Then it did something I had not expected. It sniffed the air around me like a dog catching rain and said softly, “You have touched one who still remembers.” I thought of JoJo right away, which made everything in me go cold as I tried to figure out what part of this I was not told, what memory was not shared earlier, then I said, “If you so much as go near her, I will turn your smile into a coin slot.” It gave that fake laugh again. “They remember at first. Then they don’t. Then they open the door themselves.” And with that, it came at me.
Now, I do not want this to sound heroic because it was not. What it was was ugly and fast and mostly made of panic. I grabbed the nearest thing, which happened to be a glass syrup bottle, and smashed it across the side of what used to be Harry’s face. The bottle broke, syrup and glass going everywhere, and the thing screamed like a tea kettle whistling with church bells. However, it was already on the path to him. I went backward into the table with the cow hide on it, took the whole setup down with me, and for one terrible second, Fred Walters wrapped around me like a wet blanket from hell. I threw that off, scrambled sideways, and the creature lunged again, slipping in syrup. That gave me the kind of miracle that, for some reason, wiggles its way in to help me. I kicked a rolling crate into its legs. It dropped to one knee, still smiling, still reaching, and I grabbed a lantern from the shelf and brought it down on its head until the glass exploded. The flame caught., Not big , not movie big, it just caught enough on fire to smell burnt. Whatever was wearing Harry hated fire more than needing to stay in the cellar right then. It reeled back, clawing at itself, humming turned to shrieking now, and that was when I saw it, really saw it, under the burning shirt front. Not one body. Layers. Stringy pale movements under the skin, like several thin things were working together inside one suit. And that was it for me, I just ran like I was on fire to the corridor. Behind me, it slammed into the wall so hard the pipes shook. I heard it coming after me in jerks and stretches, scraping the concrete, hitting the sides, burning and furious. I burst through the hidden panel into the restroom, nearly took the sink off with my hip, and hit the main diner floor yelling, “Everybody out! Right now, unless you want the special tonight to eat you first!”
That got movement, no conversation, but the stairs were full in seconds as people scrambled. Betty did not even ask questions, which is one more reason I tip her better than I can afford. She started shoving customers toward the door while I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall.
The restroom door blew open. The harry whatever thing came out burning in patches, skin hanging in strips, face changing while I looked at it. For one second, it was him. Then Wilma. Then, a man I did not know. Then something with too many teeth was trying to remember how lips worked.
One lady near booth three fainted dead away. A trucker threw a pie at it. I cannot say that it helped, but I respected the spirit. I unloaded the extinguisher into the thing’s face. White powder blasted over it, and for a moment it staggered blind, making that low hum again, except now it sounded angry, embarrassed maybe. Then it turned toward me with what was left of its mouth open too wide and rushed. I jumped over the counter. Betty swung a coffee pot into its head with the conviction of a woman protecting her tips, and that bought me enough time to grab the short metal order spike from beside the register. When it clawed over the counter after me, I drove that spike up under its chin with all the grace of a dockworker. It jerked. Trembled and then all at once it went loose. Not dead, but worse. What I saw I can not explain, but what I thought was, it collapsed into itself like a coat full of worms suddenly deciding to stop pretending. Skin folded. Bones softened. The whole thing dropped in a wet heap on the tile and started pulling inward, threads of it gathering together, shrinking, tightening, becoming a mass no bigger than a dog before slithering under the pie case and through a floor vent with a sound like somebody sucking stew through their teeth.
Then it was gone, the diner was silent, and Betty looked at me, coffee pot still in hand. “Karl.”I looked at her eyes and said, “Yeah?” As she continued, “You are paying for the counter.”
I nodded while saying. “That feels fair.” Then we both had a moment of laughter before we heard the sirens coming closer. Police came. Statements happened. Nobody said the truth because nobody in that room wanted to hear themselves say it out loud. By the time I got away from there, it was near three in the morning, and I had three facts I did not want.
Item: These things could wear people, maybe more than one person at a time.
Item: fire hurt them, but not enough.
Item: Somehow, they knew me by name.
When I got back to my apartment, I did what any sensible investigator does after surviving a skin-wearing basement choir monster. I locked every lock I had, put a chair under the knob, boiled coffee, and spread my notes across the table.
Fred from the ranch. Wilma. Beverly. Sherry. Harry. Empty streets. Wrong people. That humming. The words on the mirror.
YOU LOOK BACK TOO MUCH.
I sat there staring at that line until the sun started threatening the blinds, and then something hit me so hard I stood up fast enough to spill half my cup.
These things were not just feeding. They were learning.
Learning voices, Movements, Habits, Homes, and they were spreading to where? And if that was true, then this was not some wild animal problem or escaped science mistake roaming around looking for supper. This was practice. Rehearsal. Replacement on a city scale.
I was just reaching for the phone to call in every favor when it rang. I could not answer right then. ring, I had decided nothing yet when there came, ring, a knock at my door. Three light taps. Then JoJo’s voice, the voice of the remembered, as the harry thing called it, from the hall. “Karl, baby, you going to let me in or what?” I froze. Because I had been with JoJo less than four hours ago. And no matter how pretty a girl is, she cannot be at my door and on my answering machine at the same time. The machine was already blinking. And from the speaker, before I even moved, JoJo’s voice started to scream on its own. “Karl,” it said, shaking and breathless, “do not open the door. It followed you home. I saw you get into your car, baby. My phone was down, and it just started working again! I will be home, so do not think I am anywhere else. Karl Baby!”
After the statement from a machine that has always been right with what it reported, I went to the windows, opened it, and ran down the fire escape to the ground as the steps lowered, then flung back up again. I was not looking at what was in the hall and did not care because now I was off again
I hit the seat of my yellow Mustang so hard I nearly bounced back out of it, and I will tell you now there are few sounds sweeter in this life than an engine turning over when something with the manners of a graveyard dog may be stepping around the back bumper. I slammed the door, locked it, and punched the gas like I knew I could. The tires barked, the rear fishtailed just enough to make me feel like I was escaping in style, and then I was out on the road again with the buildings of that block slipping behind me like I had escaped a bad thought.
I do not mind saying my hands were shaking. Brave men do not talk about that, but brave men are usually dead and quiet, so I will go ahead and be useful. My hands were shaking so badly I almost missed second gear, and I kept looking in the mirror with that crawling sickness up the back of my neck, waiting to see one of those things stretched across the trunk smiling through the glass or cutting through my top to me directly. And these words came to my thought, “YOU LOOK BACK TOO MUCH,” and I screamed out while I was driving and looking, “Damn right I will keep looking too!” I saw only an empty black street, one flickering lamp, and a city that had decided tonight was a fine time to pretend it had no witnesses.
The thing about LA is that it lies well. It can have murder in one apartment, jazz in the next, and a man buying roses on the corner, and by morning, it all looks like sunshine and palm trees in a brochure. But tonight the lie is thinner than usual. Too many windows were dark. Too many sidewalks were bare. The town had a listening quality to it, like something below the pavement had put an ear against the whole city and was waiting for a signal.
I needed information, and I needed a place where men still lied for cash instead of blood, so I swung east toward a little all-night card room and bar called the Brown Palm. The Brown Palm was one of those places where the furniture had seen things and the ashtrays had opinions. More importantly, a bartender there named Nicky knew every runner, fixer, dealer, driver, dock rat, and half-employed ghoul who could move through the city at night without being asked why. If something unusual was herding people off the streets, Nicky would have heard about it, even if only from the men too drunk to know they were saying something worth hearing.
I parked out front and took a second before getting out. The place looked open enough. Neon sign buzzing. Three cars. Music low behind the walls. But there was that same feeling again, the one I had gotten before stepping into bad rooms, the sensation that the night had already seen me and filed a note. I checked my pocket for my little recorder and the flathead screwdriver I had come to trust more than some priests. Then I went in.
There were maybe a dozen people inside, but they were clustered close, nobody drifting, nobody laughing loudly. That alone was wrong for the Brown Palm. Nicky was behind the bar, polishing a glass that had already surrendered to cleanliness fifteen minutes before. He saw me and gave me the kind of nod a man gives when he would rather see a doctor, because at least a doctor means only one kind of trouble.
“Karl,” he said. “You look like a guy who lost a fight with a curtain.”
“Window,” I said. “Curtain was innocent.”
That got half a smile out of him. “What are you drinking?”
“Truth.”
“We’re out. Want rye?”
I slid onto the stool and leaned in. “Why are the streets empty?”
His smile went away. “You noticed too.”
“I notice when my town starts feeling like the day after judgment.”
Nicky set the bottle down but did not pour yet. “Around eleven, word started moving through the clubs and side houses. Everybody said the same thing in a different way. Don’t go where the music stops. Don’t follow anyone you know into an alley unless they tell you your middle name first. If somebody looks at you too long, leave.”
“That is a charming public campaign,” I said. “Who started it?”
He lowered his voice. “A couple of girls from Pico. A porter from the Ambassador. Two cabbies. One trumpet player who swears he saw his own drummer walk into a loading tunnel, then saw the same drummer come in through the front door five minutes later, asking where he’d been.”
That got a cold little wire around my spine.
“Loading tunnel,” I said. “What tunnel?”
Nicky looked past me before answering. “There are old service passages under parts of the district. Most are shut, some are not. Delivery tunnels, storage ways, and old utility cuts. Places rats gave up on. Lately, people have heard things down there. Humming.” I stopped him from talking by raising my hand and said, “ Did you just say humming as in singing closed mouth humming, Nicky?” As he looked at me a bit funny and said, “Ya, humming, you know, in the shower, humming, ok? Also, some metal scratching sounds in the vents. Like somebody moving furniture wrapped in wet blankets.” He finally poured the rye. I drank half in one shot because sometimes a man needs medicine and not philosophy. “Who knows the tunnels best?” I asked.
Nicky did not answer right away. He looked at the mirror behind the bar instead, eyes narrowing like he did not like his own reflection tonight. “There’s an old city maintenance foreman, retired now, named Ben Crowley. Lives above a locksmith shop on Gower. Mean as a winter spoon, but he’ll talk if you tell him I sent you and if the moon is in a forgiving mood.” I said, “That's all?”
“No.” He leaned in a little more. “Karl, there’s another thing,” Nicky rattled off.
There always is.
“Tonight is the fourth night after the heat rolled in. Every year when the air sits wrong, the old hands on night crews say the underway wake up. They call it ‘the feed nights’.”
I stared at him. “The what, did you just say?”
He shrugged like he knew how crazy it sounded and hated that it was still true. “A few nights every summer, not every district, not every year, but when it happens, people clear off early and keep their doors locked. The stories say things come up hungry and wearing what they can. Then by sunrise after the third night, it’s over, and the city goes on as if nothing happened.”
I sat back with that. “And nobody thought to tell me this before?”
Nicky gave me a long look. “Karl, people tell you things all the time. You’re the only one crazy enough to go check.”
I thought that was true enough to be rude.
I asked him for paper and drew a rough map while he talked, marking which clubs went quiet first, where cabbies stopped picking up fares, and where a pianist vanished from one side of a block and reappeared wrong on the other. When he was done, the marks formed a shape without anyone intending them to. Not a circle exactly. More like a drift toward one older part of the district where warehouses, backstage storage, and utility buildings all knotted together around a closed-down municipal pumping annex nobody used anymore.
There it was. The center, or close enough for a reporter with a half-full drink and bad luck.
I was folding the map when the bar door opened, and every head in the place turned too fast.
JoJo stepped in.
Now that should have been good news, except I had left her locked up tight in her place with fear in her hair and no plan to step outside till daylight. Here she came anyway in a red jacket and black heels, looking like the JoJo from better nights, smiling just a little too slowly.
“Karl, baby,” she said. “Thought I might find you where bad decisions get poured.”
Every part of me wanted that to be my JoJo. That is the danger with things that wear the familiar. They do not have to fool your eyes if they can get your hopes working first.
I stood but did not move toward her. “What are you doing out?” I said slowly as I looked her up and down like a fine steak.
She came a little closer. Beautiful as ever, voice just right, I turned to Ricky and said, “You have any strawberry schnapps JoJo likes back there?” Right then, I could see Ricky get a small smile, and it went away as he told me, “Ya JoJo, you're in luck”, and poured her a glass and handed it to her. However, when she grabbed it, it spilt on her hand, and nothing happened at all. AS we both watched this, JoJo did drink it down and put the glass on the counter upside down like a pro drinker would. Then JoJo said, “I got scared being alone. Though maybe I’d rather be scared with you.” With that statement, Nicky went very still behind the bar.
I smiled like I had not noticed a thing. “Then, JoJo, when did you get that fixed, Honey?”
Her head tilted. “Karl, what do you mean, baby?”
From even further away and behind the bar, Nicky said,” Your problem with strawberries, JoJo, you turn deep red and swell everywhere from a drop on your skin. Do you not get that from the body copy you took?” With that, Nicky screamed out, “Everybody down and out, we got us a copycat here in a JoJo suit!”
I kicked my stool into her path and shouted, “Everybody away from it!”
The thing that JoJo was wearing did not even bother pretending after that. It lunged over the stool instead of around it, mouth opening too wide, jaw stretching with a soft tearing sound that made half the room scream and the other half start praying to whichever god works night shifts. Nicky threw the rye bottle at it, and I came over the bar, catching the club blackjack he kept under the register for men who forgot how tabs work.
I hit the thing across the temple hard enough to drop a bull. It staggered, smiled wider, and gave that damned humming purr from deep in the chest. Not pain. Pleasure. Like this was the part it had been looking forward to.
It slashed at me and caught my coat instead of my stomach, for which I remain mildly grateful. Men in the Brown Palm started throwing chairs at it, not out of bravery but because panic sometimes chooses furniture over your hand. The creature bounced off a table, crawled halfway up the wall in a way no woman ever has unless she was in a circus or a nightmare, and then sprang back for me. I brought the blackjack up again, and Nicky, bless him, hit it with the soda siphon full in the eyes.
The spray made it hiss and jerk its head back.
Contact liquid. Cleaning spray. Soda pressure. Harry had used contact cleaner, and it had fled. That detail chose that moment to leap back into my brain and wave a flag.
“Anything with salts, solvents, cleaners, get it!” I yelled.
One waitress came over the bar with ammonia. Another man started hosing the thing with seltzer like he was settling a bet. The creature twisted, shrieked, skin twitching under JoJo’s face, then bolted not for the door but for the rear service hall.
I was after it before Sense could sit me down and explain things.
It ran through the kitchen and straight at the old delivery hatch in back, a broad steel door hanging half open over a stairwell. It took the stairs three at a time. I followed with a dish towel over my mouth because the air below smelled like old heat, mold, and the inside of a turned-off fridge with food inside.
CHAPTER 3
Going Home
The stairwell dropped into a service passage of brick and sweating pipes, old city bones nobody upstairs remembered. The thing’s footsteps were ahead of me, wrong and skittering. I flashed my light and saw wet prints in two patterns, heels and something else, as if it kept shifting while it ran. Further on I found pieces of fabric snagged on a pipe, not just from JoJo’s jacket but from other clothes too, as if these tunnels collected cast-off selves.
The passage branched twice before opening into a broad chamber under the pumping annex. There were old valves there, rusted wheels, dead gauges, and a pit in the middle ringed by cracked tile. Warm, damp air rose from it, carrying that low humming, only now it was not one voice. It was many, soft and overlapping, like a choir practicing underwater.
I killed my light and crouched behind a fallen control cabinet.
They were there.
Five, maybe six of them, moving in and out of the far dark. Some people wore well enough at a distance. Some did not. One had a man’s shoulders and a woman’s hands. One kept touching its own face as if checking whether it still fit. Another was crouched over a heap of clothes, choosing. And all of them drifted around the pit, dipping down now and then like dogs at a trough.
The one in JoJo’s shape was among them. It turned partway toward the pit, and the face slackened, melting out of performance for a second. Under the pretty features was motion, pale and stringy, as if many narrow things were sharing the work.
Then something rose in the pit. Not all the way out. Just enough.
A pale slick bulk, too large to be a person, pressing up against the rim as if it did not like to leave the warmth below. I never got a full look, and I am content to keep that small mercy. What I saw was enough. Fold upon fold of flesh or membrane, mouths or openings working in the sides, and a long arm or feeding limb lifting up one of the discarded jackets and dropping it back. The pit thing hummed once, low and satisfied, and the others around it answered like children at school.
There was your answer. Not an invasion, not forever, just a cycle. Something under the city woke on certain heat nights, sent its gatherers up, fed, copied, practiced, and would likely go back down before sunrise after it had had enough. The city would call it a rumor because the city always prefers rumor to truth.
I backed away slowly, because if I stayed there another two minutes, I would either get caught or go insane, and since I know I hate the food at the asylum, I will need to pass today. I made it back to the Mustang with the map in one pocket, a stink on my coat, and a thought building itself one brick at a time.
If this were a feed cycle, then it had a rhythm, and rhythms can be broken.
I went home at dawn, if you can call a furnished worry-box with thin walls a home. I did not sleep. I made notes and called one man after another, building a team to attack the city's underground plumbing. Then I called Ben Crowley, who turned out to be exactly the sort of retired public servant who looks like he ate nails as a boy and found them too soft. He met me above the locksmith shop in his undershirt with a wrench in one hand and disappointment in the other. “You Nicky's a fool reporter?” he asked.
“I’ve been called worse by cleaner men.”He let me in and spread old district diagrams over a table scarred by time and temper. When I showed him the rough pattern from the bar and the pumping annex, he grunted as I had just confirmed something he had spent years trying to forget.
“They rise through vented maintenance cuts on hot pressure nights,” he said. “Old steam imbalance used to set it off. We sealed most of the useful shafts years ago.” “Most?”I said too quickly.
His eyes lifted to mine. “Enough that men got complacent.”
He showed me the true old map. Deep under the district ran a dormant intake line linked to the pumping annex and four vent shafts disguised as drainage, service ladders, and utility crawlways. If the creatures were using those as up-paths, then sealing or poisoning the shafts during the peak of the cycle might starve them out or force them back before dawn. And if the stories of the old crews were right, dawn mattered. After the third feed night, once direct sunlight hit the street grates and warmed the wrong metal and stone, the things retreated and stayed under for another year or more.
That was the first good news I had heard since somebody’s borrowed mouth smiled at me. The second came when I realized tonight would be the third night. You see how this case was kind enough to include a deadline. Now all I needed was a way to drive a whole nest of skin-borrowing sewer fiends back to bed before sunrise. That is where men like Peter Vance become necessary. Peter was not what you would call legal-minded, but he knew pumps, pressure canisters, smoke rigs, cleaning compounds, delivery hoses, and how to get three of anything without writing his last name down. By noon, we had a plan ugly enough to have merit.
We would hit every mapped shaft and branch access around the annex and flood the passages with a mix of industrial cleaning vapor, bleach smoke, and brine mist. Not enough to kill a whole district, though I admit the math got friendly with the line, but enough to make the tunnels unlivable for anything that hated solvents and salts. Then, at the annex itself, we would rig the old intake heaters. Ben still knew how to start and superheat the pit chamber, forcing whatever was below to choose between the tunnels and the deep line.
And just to keep the city from noticing a full war under its feet, we had to do it in the small hours when the streets were still mostly clear and when the feed things came up thickest.
That evening, I made one other stop before the job, and that was JoJo’s apartment. I did not know if I would find my JoJo or one of the copies, and there are few knocks heavier than the knock you give on a door when the answer may break something inside you.
She answered with a chain still on.
Her real eyes were there.
Not pretty because they were calm, pretty because they were alive and moving and tired and angry and full of a person still thinking her own thoughts. I nearly hugged the hallway.
“Karl,” she said, “if you are here to tell me I should leave town, I can’t.”
“No,” I said. “I’m here to tell you to stay in, lock it up, and if anyone who looks like me comes by tonight, shoot first and complain later.”
That got her attention in a hurry.
I told her enough to keep her safe and not enough to give her the kind of dreams medicine cannot fix. She listened closely, then took a revolver out of her purse like she had been born waiting for the moment a man asked whether she still had it.
“You be careful,” she said.
“I am always careful,” I said while looking at the carpet
She lifted one brow.
“Fine,” I said. “I have been adjacent to careful for years.”
She smiled then, small and real. It helped more than the rye had.
JoJo had to open the door, and she did so; she could thank me in JoJo’s way.
We had a goodbye lovers' hug for real. I needed it so I could be off for the endgame tonight, knowing what might be waiting at the endgame.
CHAPTER 4
Battle Again
By midnight, we were in place. Ben was at the control shed by the old annex. Peter and two borrowed municipal men at the shaft caps. Me moving between them with the map and a flashlight and the sort of mood that makes a man think fondly of office work. The district above us had thinned out again. The clubs still open were hollow and nervous, the sidewalks mostly empty. Somewhere far off, a siren ran and kept running.
At twelve forty-three, the humming started through the grates.
It came up from the city in threads, almost too low to hear if you were not already afraid. Then one grate on the west side lifted a fraction, and fingers came through, long and pale and wrong.
“Now,” I yelled.
Peter cracked the first vapor canister into the shaft and shoved the hose in after it. Ben opened the old pressure line. From three more vents around the block, white chemical fog began pouring down into the hidden ways. The humming changed at once, went sharp and confused, then angry. Another grate jumped, then another. Something below started slamming into the iron like fists in a coffin.
The west grate burst and two of them came out fast, half-shaped, eyes wide and mouths too eager. I hit the first with the sprayer unit Peter had rigged for me, a brutal homemade lance that blasted hot brine and solvent in a hard stream. The thing screamed and peeled backward off the curb, smoking where the spray touched it. The second got one foot clear and then Ben, old and sour as sin, brought a shovel down on its hands and sent it back under with language that would have curled the paint off a church.
“More coming!” Peter yelled.
He was right. Across the annex yard, a service hatch banged open, and three shapes came pouring out, two wearing faces and one not bothering anymore. We had planned for pressure and poison, not a footrace, so of course, the city gave us a footrace. I ran toward the annex door with them behind me, got inside, and threw the lock bar just as the first one hit the steel.
The old pumping annex was a cathedral for dead machinery. Big brick room, iron ladders, catwalk, intake wheels, and the pit chamber access below. Ben had already gotten the emergency heat coils humming through the lower line. The floor under my shoes had that faint shiver to its machinery when it decides, after years of sleep, that tonight is work.
Something rammed the outer door again.
I headed down the ladder into the lower chamber because there are moments when, if you do not walk toward the terrible thing, the terrible thing comes up and meets you on its own terms. I preferred to be impolite first.
The chamber below was hotter than before, steam rolling along the walls. The pit in the middle was alive with motion. The gatherers were panicking now, skittering around the rim, some trying to climb the walls, some dragging at discarded clothes as if those still mattered. The great pale bulk below was lifting higher, not fully out but higher than before, irritated by heat and fumes, humming loud enough now to rattle my teeth.
It knew it was under attack.
Good.
I went to the control bank on the far side, where Ben had marked the old override wheels in chalk. Open heat. Seal intake. Reverse pressure. Simple words for a plan likely to get me eaten. I grabbed the first wheel and hauled it. Rust fought me, then lost. Steam belched from the side valves. One of the gatherers came at me in the shape of a policeman, missing half its mask. I hit it with the sprayer, and it dropped howling into the pit, where the larger thing below seized it and pulled it under like a cook annoyed by waste.
That told me more than enough about their family structure.
I got the second wheel moving just as two more climbed the bank together. One wore Fred Walters from the shoulders up. I hated that. I hit him anyway. The other got onto me, fingers digging through my coat and into my shoulder, mouth opening at my neck. I jammed the spray nozzle between its teeth and pulled the trigger. The back of its head burst wet against the valve wall, and the thing slid off me in pieces that kept trying to remember each other.
I am not proud of all my nights, but that one earned a place.
The humming from the pit rose into a shriek. The heat coils had gone full on now, and the chamber was becoming a kiln. The pale mother bulk below thrashed upward, blind mouths opening, limbs or feelers slapping the tile as it tried to climb out or away. I ran to the third control and started the reverse pressure line.
Nothing.
I hit it again.
Nothing.
Then a voice came over the annex intercom, crackling and mean.
“Karl,” Ben said, “that last line’s manual release only. Bottom right valve by the pit.”
Naturally, it was.
I looked toward the pit and saw the wheel there, half hidden in steam on the near side of the rim. Between me and it, the mother thing was lifting more of itself clear, huge, and shiny with some kind of ooze and hateful in a way that made the mind want to cover itself. Around it the smaller gatherers were collapsing, scrambling, or dropping back in, driven wild by heat and fumes.
I went anyway.
You do not need every step. They were unpleasant. I slipped twice. One of the lesser things got a hand around my ankle, and I kicked its fingers apart against the tile. Steam scalded half my face enough to remind me I still owned skin. Then I reached the valve, grabbed, and put my whole back into it. The wheel resisted, then turned one screaming inch, then another.
The mother thing surged up at that moment, one great limb hitting the rim near my shoulder hard enough to crack tile.
I turned the wheel until something below slammed open with a roar.
The reverse pressure line took hold.
Hot chemical vapor and superheated air blasted down through the pit chamber from above and around, forcing everything in that room toward the deep intake line beneath. The mother bulk writhed, shrieked, and began collapsing inward, not dying exactly but being driven, crushed by pressure and heat back into whatever underground throat had birthed it. The lesser gatherers went with it, some leaping, some dragged, some simply letting go of shape and sloughing into pale lengths that vanished below.I did not stay for the encore.
I made for the ladder as the floor shook under me. Ben was shouting something through the intercom, probably a prayer disguised as an insult. I got halfway up when the chamber below boomed once, then again, and the whole annex building shivered like a dog after rain. Peter had fired the line charges on the feeder shafts. Not explosives big enough for headlines, just enough collapse to seal the side vents and bury the useful rises.
I climbed out onto the main floor as dust and steam rolled after me. Ben yanked me through the outer door just before a section of interior brickwork folded in behind us with a noise like a giant shutting a drawer. Then we ran. There was no shame in it.
We cleared the yard, got behind the truck, and watched the grates along the district spit one last ugly breath of white vapor and then go still. The humming dwindled block by block until it was just city noise again, tires, a horn, one drunk yelling at a light pole like old times.
The sky in the east had gone gray. Sunrise was coming.
We waited there, the three of us, looking at the streets as if expecting one last parade of horrors to come staggering out and demand a rematch. Nothing did. The sidewalks stayed empty for a while, then a milk truck went by. Then a woman with a little dog. Then a newspaper boy on a bicycle, sleepy and swearing softly at his own life. Regular morning pieces sliding back into place.
By eight, the district had started pretending none of it had happened. Street sweepers worked around the annex closure. Police called it a steam-line rupture with chemical contamination in the service ways. Clubs reopened late with jokes about bad plumbing. Men who had hidden all night came back into the daylight and called themselves practical. Whatever victims there had been were folded into disappearances, private tragedies, and official confusion, as cities do when truth is too misshapen to wear in public. I drove to JoJo’s place after the sun was fully up.
She let me in this time without the chain.
The apartment looked the same as before, except that fear had packed part of its bags. She poured me coffee and looked at the burn on my cheek without asking first whether it hurt. That is one of the reasons I have always liked women more than men. The right woman can tell what matters and skip the ceremony.
“So,” she said. “Is the world still ending?” “Not today,”I said with a smile.
She nodded once, accepting that as both answer and limit. I then told her the streets would fill again tonight, and she could go out if she wanted, though I advised against immediately celebrating civilization with strangers. She laughed softly at that, and it was the nicest sound I had heard in three days. “You did it then,” she said.
“No,” I told her. “The city did what it always does. It survived badly and moved on quickly.”
She came and kissed my cheek, the unburned one, because she had class, and for a minute, the whole business felt far away. Not gone. Just outside the room where it belonged. I did look at her with a longing of what could have been, I could see she knew that also, so instead of ruining the moment she did what JoJo always did she made it about the joke in the cracker jacks box as she said, “ YOu know Karl, if we did get together before, I think you might already be apart and on our own, and that would mean I would be gone for the sewers now, and this would not have happened like this today, I will take this over what could be baby any day.”
By noon, LA was itself again. Cars honking for no reason. Women in bright dresses. Men who were late for lunch would complain about it after they got it. The clubs and alleys had their noise back. Whatever came up from below had been fed enough, hurt enough, and forced back down enough to end the cycle for another long stretch. Maybe a year. Maybe ten. I had no interest in making calendar notes for the occasion.
I sat in the newsroom later, trying to write the truth in a form other people could survive reading. Sam took one look at the copy and told me to remove the word mouths in the sides, because the paper was not financing nervous breakdowns by column inch. I cut what I had to, kept what I could, and filed the rest in the drawer where impossible things go when the city is not ready to meet itself.
That night, after the edition closed, I stepped outside and looked down the block. Music spilled from a club door. A cab nearly ran over a man too in love to pay attention. Somebody somewhere was frying onions. It all looked so normal it made my teeth hurt.
That is the worst and best thing about a case like this. The world does not heal. It resumes. It pulls its coat straight, wipes its mouth, and tells you it never cried out in the first place.
Still, I will take resumed over ended any day.
I got in my Mustang, turned the key, and let the city noise settle around me like old lies. For now, the streets were full of people again, and the people looked like themselves. For now, that was enough.
Later that night I sat down with my recorder and added this case to the pile, The real case story that will someday long in the future be called some crazy name, but for today it is just “ Is that really You” I guess that is as good as any title for the mislead long dead designers that made the system for these creatures to come up and take what was wanted. I, however, will hopefully not be around here when they come back in a year, two years, or ten years, so get your bottles ready and buy a sprayer to douse down grandma who could not walk just a day earlier, to protect what you are from the creepers of the underground.
