Sandman Read online

  She dropped into unconsciousness, slumping over the steering wheel.

  NINE

  Dr. Dick Slater walked into the kitchen to ask his wife if he could help with dinner.

  But it wasn’t his wife standing by the sink.

  His wife was pinned up against a wall. About two feet off the floor. Pinned and held there by some unseen force. Her face was a horrible mask of terror. Her mouth opened and closed with no words coming forth.

  No words, no sound, no nothing.

  She was naked. Her clothing lying in tattered rags beneath her dangling feet. They appeared to have been ripped off.

  Dick Slater stood rooted to the floor, staring at the impossibly grotesque creature by the sink.

  Washing dishes.

  One of his wife’s aprons tied around its waist.

  The creature had the head of a huge-jawed and bug-eyed dog. Its upper torso was thick, its arms muscular, almost human, hairy. The hands of the thing were clawed. The legs were birdlike. The feet were lizardlike.

  It was smoking a cigarette.

  It looked at Slater through snake eyes.

  It pointed one long finger, with a curved, clawlike nail, toward a dish towel, and said, in a high thin voice, “Would you dry, please?”

  Then the creature began to laugh.

  Judy Slater dropped to the floor, released from her pinned position.

  The creature vanished. The dish it had been holding hit the floor and shattered. The apron fluttered in midair for a moment, and then settled gently to the floor.

  Judy found her voice and began to howl insanely.

  Dick Slater stood paralyzed.

  He finally found the will to move his legs, and stumbled toward his wife, knelt down, put his arms around her familiar nakedness, calming her, soothing her.

  “What in God’s name was that thing?” she screamed at him.

  “I don’t think God sent it, Judy,” he managed to say.

  Dick Slater was no longer an atheist.

  * * *

  The two drifters sought refuge for the approaching night in a ravine, or barranca, as they are called locally.

  A big ditch.

  In the fading light, they spilled their just-stolen money onto the sand. It came to twenty-two dollars and some change. All the kid hitchhiking had had on him. After they’d robbed him, they’d beaten him, stripped him, and then left him naked, bleeding, and unconscious in a ditch.

  As a final gesture of their complete contempt for decency and morals and law, the men had stood over the kid and urinated on him.

  Now they counted the money and split it between them.

  “Enough for a couple bottles of booze and some food,” the one called Harold said.

  “Yeah.” His partner laughed.

  The shadows thickened, deepened into dark purple pockets in the barranca. A slight breeze found its way in. Bits of sand kicked up around the men. Neither man noticed.

  They finished off what remained of a pint of wine and ate a can of beans and some crackers.

  “We’ll stay here the night and save the money for tomorrow. Wait ’til we get some ways down the road.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re new to this area. People like us don’t wander too close to Tepehuanes. The cops there’ll roust your ass hard, brother.”

  “Lay the leather to your head, huh?”

  “No. Not so much that. They’ll just move you along real quick and tell you not to come back.”

  “And if you come back?”

  “Depends on whether you get lippy with them. You get smart-mouthed, you get busted upside the head and land in the pokey. And you get rolled out at six in the morning. Breakfast at six-thirty. Then you work all day. Thirty minutes for lunch. I mopped the same fifty-five-foot corridor eighteen times in one day. We stay out of Mike Bambridge’s town.”

  “Pigs!”

  “Yeah.”

  A shuffling, grunting sound drifted to the pair of drifters.

  “What was that?”

  “Who knows? Who cares? Probably a dog lookin’ for something to eat.” He pulled a filthy, flea-ridden blanket out of an equally filthy knapsack and rolled up in it. “Get some sleep, partner. We’ll pull out about four in the morning. Too hot to move much during the day.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Goddamn wind. It’s hot.”

  “Yeah. And the sand. I hate sand.”

  The odd shuffling and grunting sounds came closer.

  The drifter tossed his dirty blanket to one side and sat up, looking around him.

  He blinked his eyes. Rubbed them. His partner was also sitting up. Both of them were frozen in place by fear and disbelief.

  They were surrounded by the impossible.

  “Holy shit!”

  Blocky, stumpy, stubby manlike forms stood around them, staring at them through empty eye-holes, slowly swinging thick arms back and forth.

  The drifters shook their heads. Blinked. Harold said, “Kids in costumes.” He shouted, “You kids get the hell outta here. What’s wrong with you, anyways?”

  The creatures lumbered closer.

  “Ah, them ain’t kids, Hal.”

  Closer.

  “Sure they’s kids. What else could they be?”

  He was about to find out.

  Most unpleasantly.

  Harold stood up and walked toward the sandmen.

  He picked up a stick. “I’ll bust your heads, you punks.”

  The odd shapes grunted some sort of reply.

  When he drew close enough to take a good hard look, Harold stopped. His heart thudded heavily in his chest. He knew fear. Real fear. He took a step backward. Turned around and started to run.

  He screamed as he had never screamed before in all his worthless life when an earth-heavy hand fell on his shoulder, stopping him. The hand squeezed. Harold’s collarbone shattered; the muscles in his shoulder were crushed amid the crunching and his screaming.

  His arm flopped uselessly.

  The sandman tore it off and tossed it to another of his kind.

  Blood poured from the ripped shoulder.

  Harold’s partner stood in silent, mind-numbing horror; his feet felt as though they were rooted to the ground.

  Harold’s wild screaming prodded the drifter into motion.

  A world of pain now enveloped Harold.

  His partner found he had no place to run. He was surrounded by the . . . things.

  Blunt stubby fingers worked at Hal’s face, digging in, gaining a hold.

  His flesh was jerked off. Peeled like the skin from a tangerine.

  The manlike form popped the bloody, whiskered, and hairy skin into his mouth-hole and chewed and smacked contentedly.

  Harold had passed out from the hideous pain. He was dropped to the now-bloody sand.

  The creature knelt beside him. Put his mouth-hole to Harold’s eyes and sucked them out.

  Harold’s cohort in worthlessness turned to run. Right into the outstretched arms of another creature.

  Nose to nose-hole with it.

  Partner howled and shrieked as the sandman began to crush the life out of him. Blood poured from his nose and ears and mouth. And a ropy coil of intestines protruded, gray and slick, from his mouth.

  The sandman sucked them into his mouth-hole.

  The sounds of bones being crushed joined the breeze-whipped minuscule sounds of sand particles bouncing around the bloody earth-stage, mingled with the low moaning of the wind in the barranca.

  Partner’s gurbling and choking sounds were cut short as fingers dug into his head, popping the skull open. Brains gushed forth and other sandmen gathered around, sucking them up greedily.

  The sandman holding Partner in his last embrace began eating his face, then tore off limbs and dug out organs and flesh from the trunk of Partner.

  Crunching and slurping, lipless smacking and toothless chewing drifted on the breeze.

  Those who could not find the strength to partake of the feast seeme
d to melt into the hot sand, once more becoming a part of that which they had once been.

  They were ignored.

  But a few thin lines of sand stretched out from the mounds to suck at the blood and tissue and scraps of flesh tossed away.

  The shadows grew a darker purple as dusk lifted her skirts and settled gently over the bloody landscape.

  And when night dropped its curtain over the land, the shapes lumbered away from what remained of the carnage, leaving behind scattered bones, scraps of flesh still clinging to their stark whiteness.

  One of the sandmen carried a hipbone in its hand as it lumbered away into the darkness, melting into the night.

  There were fewer of them now, but those that remained were bigger, stronger.

  They had no thinking process; not as humans or animals know it. Their sole purpose was to kill, eat, survive.

  They lumbered away to a safe place. There, they would stay until the need for food and blood brought them out again.

  Soon.

  * * *

  Mary Beth opened her eyes and looked up into the face of Mike Bambridge.

  She blinked a couple of times, bringing him into clear vision.

  “Easy now,” Mike told her. “You’re all right. Neighbors heard the horn and phoned the police. The call went out, and I got here first. Peter and me. Are you hurt anywhere?”

  “I don’t think so,” she managed to say. She sat up, worked her arms, and moved her legs. “No. I seem to be all right.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  She told him. From the rattling glass to the dead cop. Then she pointed out the long slime-trail leading from the kitchen, across the garage floor, and then out into the back yard.

  Mike looked at Peter. “Get a team out here to take some samples of that ... whatever it is.”

  “You want me to call Leo and Stanford?”

  “Yeah. Good idea.” He looked around. A lot of neighbors had gathered in their yards. “Have someone tell them Mary Beth surprised an intruder. He’s gone—we hope—and she’s all right.”

  Uniformed cops began walking toward the neighbors, and Mike went into the house and used the phone.

  His radio was squawking as he walked back to his car.

  “Sheriff Sandry’s in the office, Chief. Says it’s very important he meet with you. Pronto.”

  “OK. That’s ten-four. It’s time. Have a unit bring him out to the Fletcher residence. I’ll wait here for him.”

  “Ten-four, Chief. He’s on his way.”

  Mike waited for a moment, watching as Mary Beth walked back into her house, unassisted. Peter approached the car. Informed him about Sandry’s coming over. “This going to get you in trouble with the sheriff, Pete?”

  “I don’t think so, Mike. I really don’t care whether it does, or not.” He grinned at Mike. “You got an opening in your department?”

  “For a damn Injun?” Mike returned the grin. “Always, Pete. But I can’t see it coming to that.”

  “Dr. Fletcher says she isn’t hurt; refuses to go to the hospital to be checked. I asked your department to call the hospital and send a doctor over here to have a look at her. Just in case.”

  “Good thinking.” He sighed heavily. “If this is any indication, Pete, I have a hunch it’s going to be a very long night.”

  “I have the same feeling.” Loneman could not suppress a shudder. “This is book and movie stuff, Mike. Stepping right out of the pages and off the screen.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Mike said glumly.

  * * *

  Leo and Stanford met Sheriff Burt Sandry. The sheriff looked at their credentials, and returned them without comment.

  Then the men stood by Mike’s unit and talked for several minutes, with Stanford doing most of the talking.

  In the middle of it, Sheriff Sandry had to sit down.

  The expression on his face would have been priceless, had it not been for the gravity of the whole situation.

  Watching Sandry, it was all Peter could do to keep from laughing; even though he was well aware this was no laughing matter.

  The sheriff sat for a few seconds in silence. He blinked a few times. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.

  Mike said, “Everything they’ve told you is true, Burt.”

  “You burned the body of a hospital orderly?” Sandry managed to croak.

  “Yes.”

  “Because you thought he was the Devil?”

  “Possessed by the Devil, Burt.”

  “Did he grow horns and a tail?” the sheriff said sarcastically.

  Sandry was no newcomer to the field of law enforcement. He’d first been a city cop in Tuscon, then a member of the state police. After being shot twice and decorated many times, Sandry took early retirement and ran for sheriff. He was a good sheriff.

  Sandry looked up at Mike. “Mike, are you nuts, man?”

  Stanford said, “Carleson’s people have matched up the blood samples just flown in from the islands, Sheriff. They match with the samples taken at the Kelly house.”

  The sheriff looked skeptical. “Same blood type, Inspector?”

  “Same blood.”

  The sheriff closed his eyes, and mumbled something under his breath. Opened his eyes. “Inspector, that is impossible!”

  Stanford smiled. A little. “When one is dealing with the Devil, Sheriff—voodoo, black magic; call it what you will—nothing is impossible. Absolutely nothing.”

  Burt Sandry cut his eyes to Mike. “Let’s put this . . . hoodoo on the back burner for a minute. You missing a body, Chief?”

  “How’d you find out about that?”

  “No supersleuthing on our part, Mike. Several of my officers were to attend the funeral. The director got all hinky when my people asked to see the body, so one of my deputies slipped around to the viewing room. Empty casket.”

  Mike nodded. “Yeah. Andy’s body is gone.”

  “That’s disgusting. Anybody that would steal a body ought to be horsewhipped. Publicly.”

  “It wasn’t stolen, Burt.”

  “What do you mean, it wasn’t stolen? What happened to it?”

  “We, ah, think he just got out of the casket and walked away.”

  Sandry did some rapid thinking and blinking, but he kept his mouth closed for the moment. Wondered if maybe he should call the boys and girls in white coats with butterfly nets and restraints.

  He looked at the men gathered around him. They sure looked serious enough.

  Maybe it was just a joke. Peter was a prankster from the word go. Yeah, that was it. They were all putting him on.

  “OK, boys. You’ve all had your joke at my expense. Joke time is over. Now what’s really going on around here?”

  No one laughed.

  “We’re leveling with you, Burt,” Mike said.

  “Mike ...” Sandry got out of the car and faced the Chief. “Andy is dead, goddammit! Dead people don’t just get out of caskets and walk off!”

  Mike reached in the car and got the packet of pictures Connie had shot of the sandmen. He handed them to the sheriff.

  Sandry visibly paled as he eyeballed the blow-ups. He cleared his throat a couple of times. He looked at the pictures Stanford had brought from the islands—pictures of the death house on the beach.

  Taking great care, he slowly replaced the pictures into the Manila envelope.

  “We need to talk at length, Mike.”

  “Agreed.”

  “This place secured?”

  “Yes. I’ve left a couple of my men here. I’m running short of personnel, Burt.”

  Sandry shook his head. “Not anymore, you aren’t. My people are available as of now.” He glanced at Peter. “Get on the horn and get a team in here, Pete. Right now. They take their orders from Chief Bambridge. Got it?”

  * * *

  Coffee cups and sandwich wrappers littered the conference table at the hospital. Unless they wanted to use the civic center, this was the biggest room available
.

  Still, it was fogged with cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoke.

  Sheriff Sandry drained his coffee cup and expelled breath slowly.

  Mind-boggling.

  Looking at his cup, he asked, “What’s the latest on Dr. Fletcher?”

  “She’s resting comfortably,” Clineman said. “She was badly frightened by ... something.”

  “And you all believe the . . . Devil is behind all this?”

  “I believe that something, well, supernatural is behind it, yes.” Clineman really spoke for them all.

  Dr. Slater was not present. No one knew where he was. His phone went unanswered.

  Sandry slowly shook his head. It was all just too much. Everything thrown at him had had a mind-numbing effect. But the part of him that relied on logic cried—screamed—out that he should reject what he’d heard.

  Yet deep within him, in that part of him—the primitive inner entity—that runs deep and goes back to the caves . . .

  ... he believed.

  He didn’t want to believe.

  But he did.

  “That slime-trail leading from the Fletcher house?” Sandry asked.

  “Traces of excrement, urine, chlorine, and the thousand other elements found in any sewer line,” one of Carleson’s assistants informed the sheriff.

  Sandry shuddered. Made no effort to hide the shudder. Goose bumps appeared on the sheriff’s arms. The short hairs on the back of his neck seemed to him to be standing straight up.

  “This Kelly kid—bring me up to date on him.”

  “You know all that we know,” Mike answered. “And we’re in a bind where Paul is concerned. He’s an eight-year-old boy. Can you imagine the uproar the press would create if they got wind of us planning to move against a small child? Accusing him of being in cahoots with the Devil?”

  “We’d all be out looking for new jobs,” Belline said. “And damned lucky to be able to find one.”

  “At all costs”—Leo eyeballed everyone around the table—“I believe we must keep our suspicion of Paul from the press.”

  All agreed.

  The thought of doing real harm to a child was totally repugnant to the sheriff. Although there were some kids he’d like to take a paddle to.

  Sandry spread his hands. “Then . . . what do we do?”

  Stanford spoke the damning words that no one wanted to hear. “Kill the demon.”

  “Who among us would do that?” Dr. Thomas asked. “I know I could not.”