Virgil flopped onto his bed with a loud groan. He was
exhausted, and the meeting with the neighbors had only fueled his fatigue. They
began arriving late in the afternoon, though a few others continued to show up
after returning from work. The neighbors who bothered reporting to work had
heard various rumors about other deaths in the city, but all of the stories
were fourth and even fifth hand information by the time it had been shared at
the meeting.
The only new information seemed to
be that some of the deaths had occurred two and three nights before. No one was
clear on when the deaths started, but no one thought they’d been going on for
more than a week.
Nothing else could be discovered
despite many hours of discussion. No one had any clue what had caused the
screeching sound. Yet most everyone had suggested that it seemed familiar to
them. Aside from that one point, nothing else had been resolved, and all Virgil
got for his efforts was a headache while he listened to the questions of his
neighbors being repeated over and over. When the first fight broke out, he
declared the meeting adjourned and sent everyone home with a warning to be
alert.
Which was easier said than done.
The horrid screech shook the entire block from slumber just after four in the
morning, and he suspected that no one had been able to get back to sleep
afterward. His mind had still not slowed down, and his thoughts blurred into
each other.
The meeting had been pointless. No
one knew anything. The police had been just as tight-lipped as he had thought
they would be, and the local news had been silent over the occurrence. Virgil
conceded that if the police hadn’t called the press, neither had anyone else.
He wondered if it might be possible that no one had called the press yet, but
the idea that so many people could be shocked into silence seemed almost
impossible to him.
Is it really? he thought. I didn’t call
anyone from the press to tell them about this, and no one at the meeting
thought to suggest it either. But then, if I called them, what could I tell
them?
He fell asleep without finding any
answers, and he tossed and turned fitfully during the night. His subconscious
mind fed him a steady supply of nightmares in which the bodies had crawled into
his house. They slowly made their way toward him, and he tried to avoid their
outstretched, grasping hands. But every exit closed in front of him, and he
couldn’t escape.
The trio of peeled bodies cornered
him in the living room, and they began clawing at his legs. The woman was able
to pull herself up to stand in front of him, and she stared at him with
lidless, bloodshot eyes before she opened her mouth to scream.
Virgil woke up, but the screaming
didn’t stop. Though he still felt the same sense of urgency to move, he sat up
more slowly than he had the previous night, and his body protested bitterly as
he slid out of bed.
He cast a glance back at Lucy as
she turned on the lamp, and her expression seemed to match his own bleak
thought: Who will be dead this time?
The screams subsided, but the
screeching went on. A man and a woman had screamed in unison, but Virgil didn’t
recognize the voices. He had just opened the door to his room when a boy began
to scream. A few steps into the hallway, he heard a girl’s shrill cries pierce
the night before she was silenced as well. By the time the screeching had
faded, both of his children had ran past him to climb into bed with Lucy.
Virgil called emergency services
and, as he had the night before, he hung up on the dispatcher. He left the
house to gather with the other husbands. The expressions of the other men were
no less grim than his own, but no one bothered to ask questions. Instead, they
turned to stare at him as he walked out into the street.
He turned at the sound of a cough
and nodded a greeting to Tony. “Looks like you got yourself elected as the
grand poobah,” Tony muttered under his breath.
Virgil sighed and nodded. “Right,
everyone look around. Who’s missing now?”
Tony was the first one to speak.
“Alberto is missing.”
“So is John,” another voice
declared.
Virgil looked up the street toward
Alberto’s house first, and he pointed at the empty driveway. “It seems to me
that his house will be empty. I think Alberto probably took off right after the
meeting last night.”
“That doesn’t sound like too bad
an idea,” Tony observed.
Virgil’s gaze drifted across the
street to John Lane’s house. He’d had John and his wife Christine over for
barbecues. John’s daughter, Rachel, had been over for slumber parties with
Kathleen, their twelve-year-old daughter. The boy who had died would be Rory,
John’s seven-year-old son. As he thought of the children’s names, his mouth
pulled into a tight frown.
He turned to regard Tony with an
anxious expression. “I can’t ask you—”
“Skip it,” Tony cut him off.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
John’s house was quiet, and the
door was open. Virgil exchanged a nervous glance with Tony as they crossed the
yard. But there was no body waiting for them by the front door. The whole lower
section of the house was empty, and they returned to the stairs in the foyer.
Virgil stood with his foot frozen
on the first step, and he debated with himself if he really wanted to put
himself through the same nightmare again. He ended the debate and began to
climb the steps.
All of the doors on the second floor
were open, but no lights were on. The corridor was dim, lit only by the light
from the window at the far end on the hall.
Virgil swallowed, trying to find
his voice. “Do you want to just throw up now and get it over with?”
“Throwing up would require that I
had something to eat today.” Tony shook his head. “I haven’t.”
“Good point,” Virgil said. He
stepped to the first open door and raised his hand to feel for the light
switch, snapping it on. He grimaced at Tony. “Yeah, we’ve got a winner.”
Tony sighed and stepped around
him. The body on the bed gave no indication of its gender, but the pink and
fuchsia décor of the bedroom suggested that it was Kathleen. Virgil moved
solemnly to the bed to make sure the girl was dead, and again he wondered why
he should feel relief to know that Kathleen was gone.
Even as he thought it, another
part of his mind answered, Because
there’s a good chance that her mother might be alive.
The next room was an empty guest
room, while the third was Rory’s room. “Oh, fuck,” Tony blurted and staggered
away from the door when the lights came on. He fell onto his butt and started
moaning. “Dear God in heaven, hallowed be thy name...”
Virgil listened to Tony pray as he
stared at the two halves of the boy. He hadn’t been peeled, which made him
unique.
Instead, his upper body lay
against one wall while his legs and lower stomach lay in an awkward jumble
against the other wall. There were cracks in both walls near the ceiling, and
wide streaks of blood leading down to the two halves. It looked as if the
pieces had been thrown forcefully, and both halves had slid, creating bloody
trails from their points of impact to where they’d come to rest on the carpet.
Just over the foot of Rory’s bed
was a huge puddle of blood. Virgil moved to the bed and looked down, gasping in
short breaths through his mouth as his gaze followed the line of the intestines
that still joined the two halves together.
He glanced back and forth at the
walls before he raised his hands and put them together in front of his chest.
He slung them outward, as if to throw the two halves with his own hands.
Raising his head, he saw the spray of blood on the far wall in spite of the
colorful posters which were hung all the way around the room.
He stepped around the bed and
looked at the wall, moving his finger to hover over a line of blood while he
traced the path. He decided that the blood was almost neck height to him, and
he was fairly tall at six foot nine. The spray dipped at the corner of the
room. He doubled back to confirm the same dip in the other corner. He turned to
look at the bed, and then at the crack in the wall above the headboard.
Whatever threw him was big, he thought and swallowed. Way bigger than me.
He swallowed again and looked down
at Rory’s legs. They were covered in bright blue pajama pants, though the legs
were soaked through with spots of fresh blood. Virgil grimaced while his
conscience nagged at him that he needed to be sure of his suspicions. He knew
that leaping to conclusions would be a mistake, but the idea of undressing the
legs filled him with revulsion.
Virgil walked to the legs and
knelt down. He leaned out and froze, taking a long, shuddering breath and
wriggling his fingers to ease the ache that had suddenly gripped them. He moved
slowly to grab the waistband and slide the flannel pants down.
The legs flopped limply as they
untangled, and he saw first the obvious wounds caused by broken bones. He laid
the legs out as straight as possible and sat back.
Then he saw the deep red bands
that he knew would turn darker over the next few hours. Around the left leg
were four wide bruises, while there was only a single thick band along the
right side. He leaned over and opened his hand, waving it over the legs as he
curled and uncurled his fingers.
No, he
thought, shaking his head. That’s just
not possible.
Tony’s gasp stirred him from his
trance, and he looked up to see that his neighbor’s normally brown skin was
instead almost grey. Virgil drew his hand away from the legs and stood up while
Tony continued to stare at him.
“What were you doing?” asked Tony.
“Looking for clues.” Virgil shook his head.
“But there’s nothing here. Come on, let’s check out the last room.”
Tony leaned heavily against the
doorframe, and he stared at Virgil with glazed, sick eyes. “Man, I can’t.”
“Then stay in the hall.” Stepping
over the legs, Virgil walked around Tony. “If I need help, I’ll scream.”
Tony smiled weakly as they crossed
the hallway. “If you scream, I’m running.”
Virgil allowed himself a slight
smirk as he paused at the door. “Now he tells me,” he muttered before he turned
on the light and stepped into the master bedroom. He moved to the bed to check
two peeled and quite dead bodies. As he backed out of the room, he looked to
the ceiling. Thank you for sparing her.
The police were not so pleasant
during their second visit. Almost as soon as they had arrived, a pair of
uniformed officers dragged Virgil by the arms to stand by one of the patrol
cars. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” one of the officers spat at
him.
Virgil glanced down at the name
plate above the cop’s badge. “Well, officer Parks, I’m part of our neighborhood
crime watch, and now we’ve got two dead families in my neighborhood. Seeing as
how you don’t have any answers for what’s happening, I’m trying to figure out
things for myself.”
“This is a police matter,” the
other officer said.
Virgil shook his head. “No, this
is a public matter, you self-righteous prick!”
“Watch it!” the other officer
warned.
“Hey, fuck you too, buddy!” Virgil
shouted. “Last night, I saw three people peeled! The mother survived that
attack, and you’ve got jack shit to tell us about it!” He clenched his jaw,
trying to calm himself down. “Tonight, I had to look over the bodies of
neighbors who have been to my house for dinner. Their kids were friends with my
kids, and now, all of them are dead.”
Virgil stepped up to push his
finger in the cop’s face when he tried to look away. “There’s a little boy
upstairs that’s been ripped in half. His guts are spread all over the floor,
and you want to get pissy with me about walking in to
see it for myself? Why? Are you doing us any favors by lying to us and
pretending that nothing is happening?”
Officer Parks began speaking in a
more subdued tone of voice. “Sir—”
“No, hold whatever thought you
might have come up with,” Virgil said. “I have to go save my next door neighbor
from a couple of assholes like you.”
Neither officer bothered to
restrain him, and instead they walked behind him quietly as he crossed the yard
to where two other officers were still shouting at Tony. His neighbor was
slouched over, looking more and more browbeaten. “Hey guys, the bodies are that
way!” Virgil pointed at the house. “How about doing your damned jobs instead of
holding a pissing contest?”
“Who the hell do you think you
are?” one of the officer shouted and strode towards him with a menacing glare.
Virgil was having none of their
threats. “I think I’m a taxpayer, and you’re a public servant who I called to
solve three more murders in my
neighborhood. I sure as hell didn’t call you to lecture me or my neighbor. I
also think I’m a witness, and not a suspect. Or am I wrong?” Virgil took a step
toward the cop, nodding when he began to back up. “Now, this makes the second
night that I’ve called you people, and I know for a fact that we’ve lost two
families in this neighborhood. I believe our neighborhood isn’t alone with this
problem, and it seems to me that you’ve been trying to keep the truth from
going public.”
Officer Parks nodded, “Sir—”
“If you try to question me instead
of going in there to do your job, I’m going to call for a press conference on
my front lawn this afternoon,” Virgil promised. He turned slowly, staring down
each of the officers. “If someone gets killed tomorrow night, and it isn’t me,
then you can expect to see me in another neighbor’s house when you arrive. If
you’ve got a problem with that, you’d better arrest me now.”
Officer Parks stepped closer to
Virgil. “Sir, please calm down. We still need to question you, even though you
aren’t a suspect. You were the first person on the scene.”
“Yes, but there’s nothing that
I’ve witnessed that you people can’t see for yourselves,” Virgil said.
“Whatever killed my neighbors is long gone, and I don’t know what killed them
anymore than you do.”
“You mean who, sir,” officer Parks
corrected him.
“No, I mean what,” Virgil said. He
pointed toward the front door. “Go upstairs, and look at that boy’s body. Look
at where both halves connected with the walls, and you tell me that a human
being could do that.” He shook his head. “No, screw that, look at the bruises
on his legs! It looks like a hand print, but that’s got to be impossible,
right?”
“Why would it be impossible?”
officer Parks asked. “Maybe if they were a drug user—”
“And you’re full of shit too,”
Virgil cut him off and sighed. “No, it’s impossible because in order for a hand
that big to grab him, the thing that ripped him in half had to be about fifteen
feet tall.”
He held up his hand in an effort
to quell the incredulous reactions of everyone, including Tony. “Hey, I just
said it’s impossible, but go look at the bruises. It looks like a giant hand
gripped his legs and pulled him in two with one smooth action.”
“A human couldn’t do that, sir,”
officer Parks said.
“Are you angling for a promotion?”
Virgil asked. He groaned in frustration, glaring at the officers. “It’s no
wonder you won’t talk to the press; you people still think that you’ve got to
prevent a panic over a serial killer. I’m telling you, whatever this killer is,
it sure as hell isn’t human.”
The officers went inside to check
on the bodies, and from then on, the questioning became as routine as it had
been the night before. The police let them leave, and he walked back down the
street toward his house.
Tony stared at him for most of the
walk. “Damn, Virgil,” he said when he was sure they were well out of earshot
from the police. “When did you grow a set?”
“I’ve had them since I was a
child.” Virgil made a faint smile at his neighbor. “They’re just scared, Tony,
and scared people sometimes want to shout at anyone who seems to be under their
own rank in life. Besides, I got a lot more information out of their silence
than you would have suspected.”
“Such as?”
“We aren’t the only neighborhood
this is happening in, and I’m willing to bet that the timing of the killings
overlap. The police don’t want to cause a panic by going public with the news,
but those guys are on the verge of panic themselves.”
“You don’t think they can solve
these murders, do you?”
Virgil shook his head. “I don’t
think anyone can.”
He waved to Tony as he went into
his house, and he was not surprised to find his wife and children sleeping in
bed. He slipped into bed with them, laying his arm protectively over both of
his kids as he closed his eyes.
Sleep wouldn’t come. His mind
began to pick at the differences in the two families. Rory hadn’t been peeled,
and Christine hadn’t survived. He could concede that perhaps Roy’s wife had been
stronger, but he wasn’t so sure. Yet there seemed to be no reason for why Rory
had been killed differently.
He had no answers when sleep
pulled him under. |