Virgil Porter sat up rigidly in his bed as soon as the screeching began. There was no way anyone could have slept through such a loud and inhuman sound. He was alert and tense to the point that he sprang to his feet and moved halfway to the door before his wife Lucy turned on the bedside lamp.

“What is that?” she asked and moved to get out of bed.

“Don’t get up. Just wait here,” Virgil said. “I don’t think it’s coming from inside the house, but I want to make sure.”

“It might be a burglar alarm,” Lucy said, though she knew that she was grasping at straws in an effort to calm her nerves.

Virgil stared at her with a doubtful expression as he tried to figure out what the sound was similar to. He had nothing close to compare it with, but he was sure it wasn’t a new trend in car alarms. “Just stay here while I check it out.”

He padded down the hallway and waved to his son and daughter both to go back into their rooms. Halfway down the steps, he froze as new sounds joined into the screech. Every hair stood on his body when he recognized the sounds were of a man and woman screaming in sheer terror. Their shrieks were brief, and yet the screeching continued unabated.

Virgil swallowed and turned to look up the stairs, where he found his family staring back at him. “Go-” he began, but stopped when Lucy shook her head.

“Just call the police,” she whispered.

“Someone probably already is by-” Virgil’s throat locked when a little girl began to scream. His heart pounded, and he looked up to see both of his children clinging to Lucy with their faces buried against her blue terrycloth robe.

The girl’s terrified voice faltered and faded away, and then the screeching ended as well a second afterward. Virgil gasped, finally letting go of his breath. He turned to move down the stairs, but he couldn’t at first. His legs felt too rubbery to trust. He set his hand on the railing to steady himself and began to walk down into the main hallway.

He checked the tiny window set beside his front door to see several of his neighbors were outside already. He opened the door and waved to his next door neighbor, Tony Wharton. They both moved to join the group of husbands gathering in the middle of the street, and Virgil started to look around to see who was missing. Others did as well, but no one was quite ready to speak yet.

Finally the silence got to Virgil and he cleared his throat. “Who’s missing?” His question wasn’t answered, rather his neighbors began to ask questions of each other at random. What was the noise? Where did it come from? Did anyone see anything? The questions continued to come without answers, and the men were only repeating themselves. Virgil set his fingers at the corner of his mouth and made a high pitched, loud whistle. “Hey! Nobody knows what happened yet, so there’s no point asking any question but who’s missing! Now look around, and try to figure out who isn’t here, because they’re probably dead, and so is their daughter.”

Silence settled over the men. Some looked at him angrily, but he didn’t care. From the middle of the crowd, he finally heard someone speak. “Roy.”

Heads turned and looked around before several nodded. “Yeah, it’s Roy Jackson missing,” Tony agreed. “He lives up at the end of the block.”

Virgil turned to look where Tony pointed and sighed. “Right, who’s coming with?”

“Ah hell,” Tony groaned, turning to watch most of the men backing away from Virgil. “Well it looks like I’m going, but the rest of these guys-”

“No, I’ll go,” Alberto Sanchez said as he moved to stand beside Virgil and Tony.

“Somebody should call the police, but tell them not to bother with an ambulance.” Virgil said and started to walk up the street. He offered a thin lipped smile to Tony. “Thanks. If I had to walk over there alone, I was going to shit my pants for sure.”

“I probably will anyway,” Alberto said and laughed soundlessly.

Tony only nodded, and Virgil’s smile fell quickly. He didn’t know his neighbor Roy. It didn’t really matter, because whatever had happened, he knew that they were already dead. His mind tried again and again to find a logical source for the screeching, but he still could not think of anything. It was something primal and almost familiar to him, as if it was a sound he should recognize. Even thinking about it caused his skin to prickle all over again.

The front door to Roy’s house was wide open. Virgil heard the footsteps of both his neighbors stop, and he turned around to frown at them. “Please don’t make me go in there alone.”

Tony shook his head. “I’m going, but shit, man. This doesn’t look good.”

“Maybe we should leave this up to the police.” Alberto suggested.

“They’ll rope the place off and maybe ask us a few questions, but I doubt they’ll tell us what happened in there.” Virgil spun around and started walking toward the front porch of the house.

He made it up the first step before he heard a noise from inside the house. He didn’t slow down, but his mind began to work at identifying the new sound. He was just inside the door when he realized that it was a woman breathing shallowly.

Reaching around to feel for a switch, he turned on a light and regretted it instantly. On the floor in front of him was a body. At least he wanted to believe it was a body. He didn’t want to believe that any human being could survive being peeled.

“Oh my-” Alberto turned away from the door.

Virgil glanced back to see him throw up on the porch. He heard another splash behind him and thought absently -I guess Tony thought it was a good idea too.-

He was close to being sick himself, but something felt wrong to him. He knelt down beside the body and shuddered. He could hear the woman breathing, but the only way he could tell that the body was Roy’s wife were the soft whimpers that occasionally escaped her lipless mouth.

He stood and looked around the living room to search for a phone. He didn’t find one, and he moved gingerly around the woman to try the kitchen. His eyes dropped down as the woman’s hand closed tightly around his ankle.

“Guys, help!” he called out, and he was all too aware of the way panic had caused his voice to sound shrill.

“Oh god,” Alberto moaned and spun away to heave bile onto the porch.

Tony staggered through the front door and fell onto his knees. His face pinched in a look of revulsion as he reached for the woman’s bloody hand. Virgil had to look away while he worked to pry her fingers loose, but the sound of her fingers squishing in Tony’s grasp was still bad enough to have his head spinning.

He didn’t bother to thank Tony or even look down. Instead he went into the kitchen looking up for most of the trip. He didn’t want to see the trail of blood left by the woman on her way through the house.

When he looked down, he did throw up. He wiped his mouth and looked up at the body leaned against the refrigerator, and then down at the pool of blood where Roy’s wife had to have been laying before she’d attempted to… and his mind locked as he tried to figure out how she has moved. Neither dragging nor crawling seemed possible to him.

His glazed eyes drifted over the phone, and it still took him another couple of seconds to realize that he’d missed it. He noted gratefully that it was on the opposite side of the kitchen from the body. Yet even thinking it, he knew he would have to check before making the call. Roy however, was already dead, and Virgil wasn’t sure whether to be upset or relieved.

He walked to the phone and dialed 911. “Emergency services, this is-”

“Listen there’s probably already been a call made about this, but…” Virgil swallowed and shook his head. “Sir, I’m calling from my neighbor’s house on Crescent Avenue. There was a loud noise of some kind, and then-”

“Did anyone survive?” the dispatcher cut him off.

Virgil was about to ask how he had known, but it occurred to him that there was suddenly a tangible note of apprehension  in the dispatcher’s voice. “Yeah, there’s a woman here, but I don’t know her name. She’s breathing shallowly, but she’s been skinned.”

“Please hold.” The line went silent for a few seconds before the dispatcher returned. “Sir, can you stay on the line with me until the police arrive?”

“Uh… I’d really rather not,” Virgil admitted.

“Is there a problem, sir?” the dispatcher asked.

“Yeah, there’s another peeled body behind me here in the kitchen, and the smell is starting to get to me. I’ll have to wait for the police outside.” He didn’t wait for permission before he hung up and left the kitchen.

The next hour was a blur. The police asked very few questions, and he had been sent home with a warning to be careful. As he walked to his house, he wondered if his neighbors had been careful or not. Though Lucy tried to get him to explain what he’d seen, he could only sit in his kitchen while staring blankly ahead.

His mind was churning with chaotic thoughts, but time and again, he returned to the fear he’d heard in the dispatcher’s voice. He saw the same fear in the eyes of the officers who had questioned him. Something had the police spooked, and Virgil had a sick feeling that Roy and his family weren’t the only people to die that night.

He raised his head to watch Lucy making a pot of coffee, and his eyes drifted to the window to confirm that the sun was starting to rise. “Are you going to work today?”

Virgil turned to gape at her in frustration. “Lucy, I’ll spare you the details, but I just saw two out of the three dead bodies in my neighbor’s house. I’m trying to figure out whether or not the police already have some other cases like this coming in from last night, and I’m wondering if it’s a good idea to stay in this neighborhood if...” he trailed off and shook his head. “No, I’m calling in sick today, and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that Tony and Alberto are calling in sick as well.”

Lucy turned to lean back against the counter and watched him timidly. “What do you think happened to them?”

“Damned if I know.” Virgil sighed. “I keep thinking that I should know that sound. Something about it is familiar to me, but then it’s so completely alien that I can’t put a name to it. If I’m right, I think most of the neighbors will be calling in today.”

Lucy watched him rise from the chair and walk toward the kitchen door. “Where are you going?”