Chapter Eight

1

“What do you mean your father’s missing?” Andy stared into Mary-Sue’s concerned face. She clung to both sides of his shirt, as if doing so was evidence of her truthfulness. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning. When’s the last time you saw him?”

Her soft eyes searched through the darkened woods as if her father was coming up over the hill, so hopeful. But then her face lost its hold and went slack, on the verge of another emotional breakdown. He stroked her auburn hair without realizing it, the impulse to comfort her cued instinct. “Come inside and sit down, okay? Tell me all about what’s going on. I’m sure it’s not something we can’t fix.”

He recalled Jimmy’s car parked behind a set of trees half a block down from his house. Andy did his best not to jump to conclusions despite Mary-Sue’s crying. He guided her to the leather chair, and she plopped down with her knees cradled up to her body. She eyed the bottle of McCormick’s whiskey, and he handed it to her. 

“Take a drink if it’ll calm you down. And you’re shivering. You’re cold.”

He gathered his Iowa State sweatshirt and draped it over her. In the moment she pulled up to the house distraught, he’d forgotten what had happened the other night and their misunderstanding. It didn’t appear to matter to her now. 

He waited for her to speak up after two long pulls from the bottle. 

“This is hard to tell you because it involves you and the house.”

“Me and the house? What are you talking about?”

She placed her hand over his and offered an apologetic look. “It’s nothing against you, Andy. You’re a nice guy. I know we just met, and it was a mean thing to pull, but it was my father who pressured me to do it. He threatened to kick me out of the house if I didn’t. Andy, I don’t have a job, I’m not married, and I have no idea what I want to do with my life. Without my father, I can’t make it.”

“Don’t you have other family?” 

“None that would take care of me,” she sobbed. “But that’s beside the point.”

He patted her back, giving her the benefit of the doubt. “You have a friend in me, okay? And who says your dad is in trouble? You want to go looking for him? I’ll search with you.”

“I’ve looked all day.” She turned her eyes up to Andy’s, and they were swimming in tears. “I went to the police, and they told me I have to wait. My dad has a habit of disappearing without telling me and then turning up much later. But this time I’m really concerned.”

“What were you about to tell me? You said he made you do something. What does it have to do with me and the house?”

Mary-Sue’s chin quivered. “I’m sorry I did this to you, Andy. Please forgive me.”

“What is it? It’s best you just throw it out there.”

“My father,” she whispered, “he made me do it. I like you, Andy. I hope you’re still my friend after I explain everything. My father knows a lot about your late uncle. He’d drink with James in his back yard sometimes and shoot the breeze. James would tell him stories about his magic shows. He even showed my father his stage props. That’s why he was disappointed when he heard James burned most of them. I guess James became a cult celebrity. And then one of my father’s nephews contacted him about the possibility of finding something of James’s to sell for big money.

“And that’s when your other uncle began staying at the place and taking care of the property and trying to sell it. My father tried many times to search the house for something to steal that belonged to James, but Ned locked the place up, and my father didn’t want to get caught for breaking and entering. He was a coward when it came to the idea of prison. His brother went to prison for assault charges for seven years, and when he was released he had scars to show him. Bad scars in unbelievable places. Uncle Mike had been stabbed in the back with a razor blade in the showers, almost strangled to death with an electrical cord, beaten with a pillow case full of broken up rocks, and raped. Uncle Mike used to be a cop, and they don’t treat cops well in prison. When you showed up the other day and Ned left, my father decided to check the house. He convinced me to invite you over and and…seduce you.”

“I knew something was wrong with the way you approached me. It didn’t seem natural. So your father was at my house when I came over?”

“Yes. The plan was to get you out long enough for him to comb over the property. My father wants to retire, and he promised me a piece of the action. I didn’t really believe him, but I depend on him for so much right now. I can’t wait to break away from him, I swear to you, Andy. All I need is some money and a descent job, and I’m gone.”

“Well,” he sighed, surprised that he wasn’t upset, “it doesn’t look like he took anything. I’m not mad, okay? You’re so scared. If that’s what bothered you so much, we can move on. It’s okay.”

“He hasn’t come back since then, and that’s why I’m here. I haven’t seen him or his truck. No phone calls, Andy, and no notes on the table, and no friend of his has called to tell me he’s passed out at their house.”

He helped her up from the couch. “I have to show you something.”

She followed him out the front door. “What is it?”

He guided her through the front yard and down the road to the set of trees where the pick-up truck was parked. “This is your father’s truck, isn’t it?”

She froze. “Yeah, but it doesn’t make sense. Where is he then? That ruins Deputy Stafford’s theory that he’s with Mrs. Johnston. I don’t even think they’re dating anymore. This means something happened to him. It has to.”

“How can you be sure? What if the car broke down, and he walked somewhere to get it fixed?”

“Then why hasn’t he turned up by now?” she snapped, kicking the passenger side door. “The tires aren’t flat, the hood’s not propped up, and my dad hasn’t turned up for over twenty-four hours.”

He was startled by her outburst. “Then what do you want to do?”

“Deputy Stafford said if he didn’t show up by tomorrow, he’d put the wheels in motion to form a search party.”

“I’ll look with you, okay?”

She smiled for a brief moment. “Sorry I yelled at you.”

“Should I take you home?”

“Will you stay with me tonight? I know it’s asking a lot after admitting I set you up for my dad to break into your uncle’s house, but it’d mean a lot to me.”

“Okay,” he replied, not having to think about it. Despite the short time knowing each other, he couldn’t let the closest thing he had to a friend go, especially over something so trivial compared to a missing person. “Let me grab my cell phone and keys, and I’ll be right out.”

He retrieved the items, working fast, thinking how it was strange to learn the truth about Mary-Sue and her father. He pictured the man sneaking through the rooms and cursing under his breath after finding nothing. What if Mary-Sue was right and something did happen to her father? The only possibility was the truck breaking down on the side of the road and the old man walking back home and suffering a broken ankle or a heart attack and was lying dead somewhere in the woods. 

He locked the door—paranoid that someone else might search for a James Ryerson collectable—and brought his concern back to Mary-Sue. “Do you think he could be out there in the woods? He might’ve had car trouble and decided to walk back to your house.”

“Why would he hide the truck like that?” It was obvious she’d considered the idea herself and refuted it. “Sure, he could’ve broken down, but he wouldn’t have hidden it like he did unless it was from the other night when he was breaking into the house. Otherwise, he would’ve pulled over to the shoulder like any normal person would.”

Mary-Sue wrapped her arms around him, grateful for his kindness. “Thank you for being so nice to me. I don’t deserve it. I lied to you.”

“I’ll move on. And besides, there’s nothing in that house that’s really worth a damn…although I did find a cool film projector.”

 

The farm was blanketed by nightshade from the overhanging oak and maple limbs that surrounded the property. The land in this part of Anderson Mills wasn’t any good for growing crops, but it was perfect for dairy farming. The rich scent of hay and cow patties circulated in the soft breeze. The red and white painted farm house also contained horses, which Mary-Sue explained were kept for local shows. They paid her father yearly rent for taking care of them. Andy didn’t realize how many ways a farmer could make extra money on the side, including burglary. 

Mary-Sue walked him to her house, a white and brown colonial. The woods were yards out from the east end of the house. The cattle pens were located across the way. Andy made out a few glinting eyes through the darkness. 

“How many people work on this farm?”

“Four, but today’s an off-week. We take our own vacations, I suppose. The workers will be back next Monday. We still do the milking by hand. People pay high prices for naturally produced milk without hormones. These cows have it pretty fucking good. They eat hay in the shade, we spray them down with water, brush them to give ’em a massage, and they’re not corralled or hooked up to weird devices. Eddie Stolburg’s slaughterhouse is along the same lines. They humanely butcher their meat. It’s the new fad.”

“It’s a contradiction,” Andy scoffed. “How can you kill something humanely, not that I’m a vegetarian or an activist.”

“Stolburg injects the cow with a kind of natural stimulant that gets them high, and yes, I agree, it’s hard to say anyone can humanely kill anything, but it’s better than most of the industry. The other two slaughterhouses can go through a hundred cows in a day, at least, and they’re crowded and stamping through their shit, and their throats are slit and they just bleed to death everywhere. It’s deplorable. And most slaughterhouses hire illegal immigrants, and if they get injured on the job, they have no legal rights. The meat industry’s a real mess. It’s too bad nobody cares.”

She motioned for him to enter the house. “And we don’t raise chickens. My father used to, and when he tried to make me cut the head off of one, I fainted and hit my head.” She pointed at the faded white line above her left eyebrow. “Doctor had to give me twelve stitches. I landed on a sharp rock.”

Andy sat on the living room couch, and she relaxed on the rocking chair across from him. There was no television or stereo in the room. “How do you pass the time? There’s no electronics.”

“I have a television and a boom box in my room.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not a dumb country girl. I do know how to have fun. I bet I could drink you under the table. You ever play pinochle drunk? You went to college. Don’t you party?”

“That depends on what you mean by party.” He was hesitant to go into details of his lame social life. “I dated a girl, and we watched a movie every Friday night and went to dinner, no big deal. The rest of the week was studying and working at the campus bookstore to help pay my tuition. I can’t say I did the fraternity thing. Only rich brats have that luxury.”

She moved from the chair to the couch next to him. “Anderson Mills has a bowling alley, or you can hit Barleycorn’s Pub, or Silver Lake is perfect for camping. You ever canoe the lake in the middle of the night? You should try it. It’s peaceful, something I could use now.”

“I wasn’t saying you don’t know how to have fun,” he backtracked. “My fun is watching movies. I’m a simple man. Maybe I’m not the one who knows how to have fun. I mostly like cheesy movies like Pretty in Pink and Mannequin. You watch those movies now, and it defines the 80’s, but you don’t see movies now that define anything. It’s all to sell something. Movies tie in commercial products more now than ever. It’s not about cinematic artistry. Hell, my college professor hired me to watch these horrible turkey horror movies that are over thirty or forty years old, and they don’t try and sell anything. You can tell what decade they were made just by watching ten minutes of them. It’s a slice of history. A time capsule.”

“So what are your projects?” she asked. “Do you have a movie you want to make? It’s cool you graduated from film school.”

“Right now, I have no ideas. Not really.” He shifted closer to Mary-Sue, enjoying her proximity. “I shot some short films in college. One was about a mom who hides her son when his name is picked for army enlistment during the Vietnam War. Poor guy gets drafted, right? The kid ends up going to war after a lengthy chase from state-to-state, hotel-to-hotel. The movie was pretentious though and bogged down by a lot of dialogue. I’ve done others, but nothing I’m too excited about. I’ve been thinking about shooting a documentary about my uncle and the mystery around his death.”

“You could do interviews around town. Yeah, that’s a good idea. People still talk about him, no offense. A lot of people don’t believe he died and others think something else happened to him.”

“Like a government conspiracy?” He laughed, but the thought had crossed his mind before. “The idea of my uncle murdering thirty or fifty or whatever number of people is ludicrous. He was a drunk frustrated with his career, but he wasn’t a killer. It’s impossible.”

“I agree, but a lot of people take what the police say as law—ironically.”

“That’s bullshit. Now I feel I’d be committing a big mistake on my uncle’s behalf if I didn’t try and straighten things out, or at least shed new light on the situation. I guess it wouldn’t cost a lot to rent a camera—and digital is cheaper than film these days—and to interview people wouldn’t cost money, but I’d probably face a lot of bullshit from the police.” 

“I bet you’d be fine. I think people would be very interested in knowing the truth, or at least looking at it in a different way. You’d have to be sneaky about it.”

“A lot of independent filmmakers have to bend rules to complete the scenes without a permit or scout locations that they haven’t had permission to use. It’s mostly a matter of budget, but in this case, everything I need is in the people of Anderson Mills. I’ll find a way.”

“I’d talk about what I think happened with your uncle in your movie. And maybe if I was there with you, I could help you convince people to talk. I could be your assistant. I know everybody in town.”

She suddenly checked the time, worried. “Do you want to go looking for my father again for a little while? You could be right. He could be in the woods.”

“Anything to help, sure.”

He waited in the living room as Mary-Sue dug out two flashlights from a kitchen drawer and then returned. “Okay, let’s go.”

 

2

This is a mistake.

Ned had put it off all day. Pricilla’s Tarot Card Reader and Medium wooden sign displayed the hours of business. She was open until midnight during the weekdays. Underneath the paintings of a glowing crystal ball and numerous astrological signs, it mentioned Pricilla performed house calls. 

I wouldn’t want that batty chick in my house. 

He waited on the front step, the porch light’s glow extending out to his parked truck. The light itself seemed to beckon him. 

What are you waiting for, huh? 

A shrouded head peeked out from the window and drew back the curtain. 

Now you have to go. The woman spotted you. 

The front door opened. He grumbled under his breath, regretting his decision, and walked across the threshold, though he was alone once inside. Here goes twenty dollars. How many drinks could that have gotten me at the bar?

Whatever Pricilla would reveal, it’d be smoke blown way up his butt, but maybe it’d be fun. He’d glared at the house for years without a second thought, but after Andy came into town and relieved him of it, he still carried the burden of his brother’s death and he wanted to finally be rid of it. 

“Shut the door behind you,” the lady requested from another room, through a decrepit throat. “Come in already.”

He did as he was told, still without a good look at the woman. He took in the aromas of mildewed carpet and jasmine candles. The furniture was draped in white blankets. In the far corner, she had a television and a collection of astrology books and the occult on a bookshelf. 

Lucrative hoopla. The woman will probably tell me unicorns and dragons are real by the time the night is over. 

He caught her profile and followed her. They passed a kitchen to the left. A bottle of wine was propped on the kitchen table alongside a block of expensive cheese and crackers. The hallway he was in led directly to a side room. Silver beads hung in the doorway. He stepped through them to find the strange woman hunched over a round table lighting a series of black and red candles. 

Her words were a creak. “Have a seat, Mr. Ryerson.”

“How do you know who I am?” He was skeptical, but caught off-guard, nonetheless. “You’ve seen me before? I guess I’m a local.”

“I knew your brother, James, very well.” The woman’s voice had an accusation in each syllable. He couldn’t see her face yet under the gray cloak she wore. She gave off the appearance of a gypsy. “It’s unfortunate what befell him. He was playing with the spirits, and they’re not always what they appear to be.”

“Why are you telling me this, ma’am? I thought you read palms and futures.”

“I do that to make ends meet, as we all do in our own lines of work. But you’re in danger and so are many people. Some have already died because of your brother’s mistakes, but he’s not the only one to blame.”

The woman turned up to him, and he got a look at her. She was shrouded in dark blue velvet with a red sequined sash. Rings choked each of her fingers in the color of indigo blue, olive green, ivory white, and burgundy red. A broach that looked like an eye was pinned at her hip. Her face was deep in shadow, most of her features hidden except her long and crooked nose that looked like a gnarled ginseng root. Hard lines covered what probably once used to be smooth skin, her mouth set in a permanent sneer. 

“If you want your future to be read through tarot cards or your palm read, then your best advice would be to leave right now, Mr. Ryerson.” The woman picked up a green bottle of unmarked wine from the table. The fluid ran into two bronze goblets decorated with red diamonds. “Drink this with me and have a seat.”

A sliver of anxiety slowed his response. It has to be a put-on. Somehow, Pricilla knew you were coming. I don’t know how, but something’s not right.

“You’re skeptical,” Pricilla laughed. “Everyone is, and they have a right to be.”

He reached into his pocket to produce a twenty dollar bill. 

“Keep your money, Ned Ryerson. You’re here now, so why don’t you sit down and listen? I have a lot to tell you. People are in danger, including your nephew. Andy is in the middle of a potential disaster. If you’re to understand, then I’d suggest you keep an open mind.”

The walls of the room were painted black with the glow of neon green stars. He spotted a Ouija board in the corner and a stack of tarot cards face down on a smaller table. A large mirror hung behind Pricilla, gold-framed and gaudy with gems and stones. An astrological map explaining each person’s sign hung to the right of him, written in fancy cursive writing. 

“Astrology, tarot cards, Ouija boards, magic, it’s all a lie,” she confessed, stealing his attention. “You’re correct to raise your brow at me and this room. But I’m the real thing, Ned, or I became real after I met a priest named Edgar Hutchinson. The priest knew your brother well. Your brother has put the idea in your mind to visit me. That’s the only way he knew you’d ever listen to me and stop what’s happening.”

He lifted himself out of his chair to leave when Pricilla shouted, “Sit down, Mr. Ryerson! I’m making the ultimate sacrifice for people who won’t even appreciate it. Now you listen hard and listen real good. There isn’t much time to banter or question me, so you sit right back down and hear me out!”

Sweat burned the nape of his neck. He didn’t like the way things were turning out tonight. It was getting uncomfortably weird. “Fine.” He lowered back into his chair grudgingly. “I’m listening.”

The tremble in her arms shook the table as she spoke. “Priest Hutchinson was a born oracle. He could communicate with the gods and talk to the dead. He ignored them at first until he grew older. Trips to Egypt, Jerusalem and the Middle East provided him with a basis to confirm the dead were really communicating with him. The spirits begged to be released from purgatory. Those are the only real spirits an oracle can speak to, Mr. Ryerson. These spirits are trapped between heaven and hell in limbo, their fate undecided, and their souls lost. They beckoned him at all hours of the night to be set free.

“The oldest documentation of oracles existing spans back to the New Kingdom. These oracles were mostly plaintiffs to solve cases for the kings in Egypt or appointed by the courts to solve disputes. Toward the end of the 18^th dynasty, oracles were finally banned, but the spirits—what the Egyptians called gods—still existed. The rise of Christianity marked the end of the idea of magic, sorcery and oracles being anything but devil-worshipers and sinners. The people with true abilities were hanged, burned, tortured or stoned. But mark me, Mr. Ryerson, the dead can talk to the living, and some of us can still hear them. The only difference between men like Priest Hutchinson and the others like him is that he eventually listened. Priest Hutchinson used the dead to contact deceased family members and friends and lovers. 

“He visited churches across the United States and Europe, and after years of quiet celebrity, the spirits challenged him with new requests. They wanted to be set free on the world and live again. Never again would they be flesh and blood, but the power of the dead is great, Mr. Ryerson, and when they give to someone, they plan to take later on. The dead demanded the priest murder their enemies, share horrible secrets with the living, to haunt their murderers and enemies, and to bring terror to the loved ones who’d moved on after their deaths. Ultimately, the dead abhor the living. They wish us ill.”

Ned broke in, feeling awkward and scared. “H-h-how do you know all of this?”

Pricilla lowered her hood. The mane of silver hair uncurled. Liver spots showed through her thin hair and speckled her face. Her eyes went small, and then she frowned. “I know this because the priest came to Anderson Mills to face his demons, Mr. Ryerson, and he hid himself in James’s house. Priest Hutchinson tried to heal people despite the challenge of spirits cornering him with their demands. In any given day, he’d be told the whereabouts of dozens of remains of murdered victims throughout Black Hill Woods. Names and faces would flash into his mind. The spirits could send the pain of the families, the heartbreak right into him. Can you imagine the incredible burden? The tortures?

“He came to me in desperation. Maybe the priest considered me a confidant and knew I’d believe what he explained to me shortly before he committed suicide. People heckled him after he revealed secrets of the dead to the living. It isn’t always popular when a stranger tells you the truth about a family member, especially if it’s from a spirit of ill-will. He came here to hide, and I kept him as comfortable as possible through our conversations. Then, after a week’s time without sleep and non-stop bombardment of the spirits, the man couldn’t take it anymore. He took his life at that house, Mr. Ryerson, and his spirit remains there. Being an oracle—born an oracle—he has the power to contact the living as a ghost.

“Priest Hutchinson is an incorporeal spirit, and he’s doing everything he can to escape the world of the dead. He’s responsible for the murders your brother has been accused of. The dead want attention, they want to be recognized, they want to be saved, but they’ve been ignored for so long. They wish to reap terror and death in order for the living to hear their plight, and now that they’ve found a way to channel their intentions in this world, they won’t stop. The reality is the dead can’t ever be returned to flesh. They can’t be saved. And if we can’t save the dead, then the dead wish us the same horror as they experience for eternity, and they’re already succeeding.” 

Ned was rooted in his chair, mortified. The conviction in the woman’s glistening eyes was alarming. Pricilla drank a full glass of wine and poured another one, taking only a breath before indulging in it. She then eyed him with savage interest as the alcohol kicked in. 

He was confused as to what to say next, so he spat it out. “Why am I the one to stop them? What the hell are you talking about? What does this have anything to do with James? Or Andy? This is madness, lady. It’s nonsense. You expect me to believe everything you’ve just told me? I mean, really?”

“I told you Priest Hutchinson could speak to the living now that he’s dead,” Pricilla continued. “And he spoke to your brother. This man used your brother for his ends. The dead harbor many secrets, and I explained they can’t be turned into flesh again, but they can be other things. They can mimic life and come close to the real thing, but they’ll never be pure flesh and blood. Your late brother was a popular magician, and he used the spirits to improve his act. At first they served him well without expectation of payment. And like Priest Hutchinson, they began to request special things of him. 

“The ghosts inhabited your brother’s props through the use of contagious magic. This means that an object is taken over by a spirit and is magically charged, like how a rabbit’s foot draws luck. Your brother learned from the dead how to draw their spirits into an object. It’s how they escaped their realm. The spirits of the dead fed his magic, but when they turned against him and stole that girl during his act and never gave her back many years ago, James lashed out against them. He shut them out and locked himself up in that house.

“Years later, the dead must’ve convinced him to try his act again, or maybe he couldn’t stand them anymore. And you know what happened from there. His final show, over fifty were dead and missing. James did his best to stop them, but there is no rationalizing with the dead. The horrible event drove him to burn the objects and drive the spirits back to the world of the dead, but he didn’t destroy every object, Mr. Ryerson.”

Ned was on the dividing line of believing her or considering her senile. The way she spoke, the drive behind her words, how could it be a fabrication? Most psychics spoke of a person’s fortune, love and life expectancy, not the secrets of the dead. And during most psychic readings, the participant wasn’t terrified and neither was the psychic.

Pricilla stood. He hadn’t realized before that she was using a cane. She picked up the wine bottle from the table and drank from it with an audible chug, the liquid inside sloshing at the palsied shake of her wrists. 

“I bought this bottle special. Redoma wine, it’s made in Portugal. It’s lavish, for me. I usually drink the cheap Zinfandels or an occasional Malbec.” She raised the glass with a tearful glance. “My last drink, friend, so heed what your brother tells you. Correct his mistakes.”

“What?” He rose from his chair with a start, wanting to shake some sense into her. “Pricilla, what’s happening? How can I correct my brother’s mistakes? What the hell are you saying?”

Pricilla lost hold of the bottle, and then she, too, crashed to the floor. He rushed to her side to help her up, but when he touched her, her muscles grew rigid. She threw aside the cane and launched to her feet. 

Then the miraculous turned into a menacing spectacle. He gasped at the blood gushing from her eyes and mouth, seething through the pores of her skin like melted wax. 

“I don’t have long, brother,” she said in a low voice not her own, but instead a man’s. “It’s James. I swear to you it’s me! The spirits will try and stop me eventually. This body won’t last long against their energies. I’ve let a group of spirits escape. I destroyed the items they inhabited, but there’s a film projector at the house. Andy’s been using it to watch movies. The spirits are using tricks of light and magic to make the images on the film come alive. People are being killed because of them.”

Ned recalled Andy was watching horror movies for a job given by his professor at Iowa State. He couldn’t question what was truth or lie, not when the woman’s face was slick with running blood. The woman’s eyes drowned in crimson, and the blood spattered the floor. 

“My God, w-w-what do I do?”

The woman’s words were obstructed by the blood she coughed up. “Destroy the projector. Burn it—burn the entire house! It’s charged with the spirits of the dead. They’ve grown stronger after the deaths of those at the club. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it’s my fault. Burn the projector. Burn everything. Do it, brother. You have to destroy the film projector!”

Ned staggered back shaking his head. He eventually struck the wall. 

“I’ve used this woman’s body to contact you, and now it’ll die. Don’t let her death be in vain!”

Upon those words, both eyes ejected from Pricilla’s sockets, breaking when they hit the floor. Her tongue slithered from the mouth and slapped the floor a wet piece of meat. Teeth slithered from their gums, abandoning their posts. Hair bled from the follicles and turned into a flesh-slide, running down the scalp. The woman’s skull cracked open down the middle with a brittle breaking, the glisten of her brains visible under the room’s lights. He fled in terror unable to watch a moment longer, and as he crossed through the front door, Pricilla’s body disintegrated. 

 

3

Sheriff O’Malley stood with the heads of forensic research, Dr. Samuel Duncan and Dr. Michelle Menzer, in the lab on the fourth floor at the Green County Police Forensics Department. The corpse of Jorg—no last name—was displayed naked on the metal table beneath a surgical dome light. Everyone was dressed in blue scrubs and wore paper face masks. The sheriff grew nervous at the way Duncan and Menzer treated the body, as if it were a fallen meteor, an alien. The meeting had been arranged special in the wake of the multiple murders in Anderson Mills.

“It’s not human,” Dr. Duncan finally said after ten minutes of silently prodding the remains with a scalpel and forceps. His bushy white eyebrows budged up and down as he stared down at the anatomical anomaly. “There are no genitals, and no signs the genitals were ever removed. This man was born neuter. The body is mostly comprised of fat and muscle, hardly any bone.” 

Dr. Menzer added her take of the report. “If you notice the opened sternum, the bones are ill-formed cartilage. The bones are practically transparent, without marrow. The blood doesn’t run from veins, and there is no evidence of a circulatory, lymphatic, or a digestive system. He has a ninety-five percent smaller brain than the average human. He has no lungs. Both Dr. Duncan and I have made incisions along the arms and legs to inspect these bones, and they are the same cartilage as the sternum. This isn’t a human body. Not born naturally, at least.”

“What the hell is it then?” the sheriff demanded. “The man killed nearly a dozen people today. He has to be something, and saying he’s not a human being isn’t getting me anywhere. You’re the experts. Don’t you have anything else to share? Come up with something credible. You’re scientists. Be pragmatic.”

Dr. Menzer looked him over with her almond-colored eyes. “I apologize for the people that have died, but this isn’t a human being. You said so yourself, he has no fingerprints. He carried no identification. No one knows who he really is, and there’s no conclusive way to prove how he exists. According to science, he can’t be alive.”

“He wielded a clever at me. Trust me, he was very much alive. He’s real enough to commit these crimes. Damn it, this isn’t what we need. This is inconclusive bullshit.”

Police Chief of Green County, Ben Graham, offered his encouragement. “We’re stumped, okay? It’s not anyone’s fault. Dr. Menzer is right, this will take further research. Frankly, being in the room with this thing puts me off my cookies. It looks like a human being, but the internal workings say it isn’t so. Hell, the bastard has no bones or a circulatory system. What can anyone say about it now? We might have to call the government on this, FBI maybe. They’ll have better equipment.”

The sheriff rubbed his chin. “Yeah, and what if they just take this body away and file it somewhere like Area 51 and never get back to us? What do I tell the families of the folks who died? What crap explanation do I feed them?”

The episode at Silver Lake with Jill Hammock drove deeper his concerns. Kevin Brenner’s body was missing, and the blood on the road suggested foul play. Detectives Kyle Redding and Frank Garrison were compiling evidence at the scene, but Jill said that six people had cannibalized her boyfriend. There were still people out there murdering people, and this strange corpse wasn’t a satisfactory conclusion to the investigation. It was only a beginning. It was obvious the slab on the table murdered the people today, but what else was out there in Anderson Mills? And where did it come from?

Chief Graham agreed with the sheriff’s concern. “I’ve never had this happen to me. No one has. It doesn’t make sense. Okay, nobody has to know what this man is or isn’t. He’s a murderer, bottom line. Until we find out the orders from the higher up assholes, this is what we stick with, okay?”

“What is the purpose of this man existing?” the sheriff asked, not commenting on the advice. “This man couldn’t live very long. He’s not intact. He couldn’t eat.”

Dr. Menzer pointed at his trachea. “He does have an esophagus and stomach but no intestines. The stomach is swollen to three times its size. It’s about to burst.”

“That’s because he was eating his victims,” the sheriff said. “He was built to murder and eat people. God, even that sounds crazy.”

“Nothing’s crazy at this point,” Dr. Duncan assured him. “But I know once the FBI gets here, you can say goodbye to this body. We’ll never see it again. You’re right, Sheriff.”

The sheriff understood the body was now government property. He eyed the opened skull. It was a shell of fat and tissue. He was left with questions, but he couldn’t linger in Green County long. Deputy Stafford was pulling a double on night patrol with many other of his officers. They were searching for the six involved with trespassing on the Hamdens’ property and kidnapping—and potentially murdering—Kevin Brenner, and he almost forgot the murder of funeral caretaker Cal Unger. 

“You call me when something turns up,” the sheriff confided in Chief Graham, “if anything does turn up. I think we’ll be left in suspense on this one. And I hate suspense.”

He left the lab for the elevator. It would take him twenty minutes to drive back to Anderson Mills. When he reached his patrol car in the parking lot, he received a call on dispatch. “O’Malley here.”

“It’s Stafford,” the voice answered with a sharp crackle. “I’m running out on a call from Walter Smalls at his gas pump. He says there’s an intruder. I also have something else to tell you.”

“Yeah,” he said, aggravated by another wave of bad news given by his deputy. 

“Those graves that were disturbed at Anderson Mills Cemetery, Kyle Redding called and told me the graves were empty.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Those weren’t even dug up, how can that be? Jesus, I better get down there. I’ll meet you at Walter’s shop as fast as I can get there.”

He piled into his car and started the engine. He sped onto the highway, the dread of what could be waiting at the gas pump haunting him all the way back to Anderson Mills.