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.

Despite many hours of discussion, no one had any ideas as to what had caused the screeching sound. Yet most everyone had suggested that it seemed familiar to them. In the end, nothing 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 wound down yet, 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.

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 dreams in which the bodies had crawled into his house. They slowly made their way toward him, and no matter how he tried to avoid them, the trio of peeled bodies cornered him and began grasping at his legs. The woman was able to pull herself up to stand in front of him, and she stared at him with lidless eyes before opening her mouth to scream.

He 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 screaming subsided, but the screeching went on unabated. 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.

He called emergency services first. As he had the night before, he hung up on the dispatcher and 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 light 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.

Tony looked up the street to Alberto’s house first and waved 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 eyes drifted across the street to John Lane’s house. He’d had John and his wife Christine over for barbecues, and his daughter Rachel had been over for slumber parties with Kathleen, their twelve year old daughter. He nodded to himself. 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, but the door was left 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 to the second floor. Virgil stood at the bottom and debated with himself if he really wanted to put himself though the same nightmare over again.

Still he began to climb the steps. He saw that all of the doors on the second floor were open, but no lights were on. He swallowed as he tried 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 during the day.” Tony shook his head. “I haven’t.”

“Good point,” Virgil said and stepped to the first open door. He raised his hand to feel for the light switch and snapped it on. He looked at Tony and gave a short nod. “Yeah, we’ve got a winner.”

Tony sighed and stepped around him. The body on the bed gave no indication of it’s gender, but the pink and fuchsia décor 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 with a thought: -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 somewhat unique. Instead his upper body laid against one wall while his legs and lower stomach laid 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 had slid slowly to where they’d come to rest.

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 eyes followed the line of the intestines which 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.

Slowly, he 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 slid the light 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 straightly as he could and sat back. Then he saw the deep red bands which he knew would slowly turn darker over the next few hours. Around the left leg were four wide red bruises, while there was only a single thick red band along the right side. He leaned over and opened his hand, waving it over the legs and slowly curling and uncurling his fingers. -No, 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 looking grey. He drew his hand away from the legs and stood up while Tony continued to stare at him. “What were you doing?”

Virgil shook his head. “Looking for clues, but there’s nothing here. Come on, let’s check out the last room.”

“Man, I can’t.”

Virgil nodded. “Then stay in the hall. If I need help, I’ll scream.”

Tony smiled weakly as they crossed the hall. “If you scream, I’m running out of the house.”

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 see 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 his 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 back. “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 before he shook his head. “Tonight, I had to go look over the bodies of neighbors who have been over to my house for dinner.” He 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?”

“Sir-” officer Parks began in a more subdued tone of voice.

“No, hold whatever thought you might have come up with. I have to go save my next door neighbor from a couple of assholes like you,” Virgil growled. 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 brow beaten. “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 tax payer, and you’re a public servant who I called to solve a murder, not to lecture me or my neighbor. I also think I’m a witness, and not a suspect. Or am I wrong?” Virgil took a few steps at 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.”

“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 him with a hand raised cautiously in front of him. “Sir, please calm down. We still do need to question you. 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 and took a long breath. “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.

“No, I mean what,” Virgil said. “Go look at that little 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 a hand at 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 and groaned. “It’s no wonder you won’t talk to the press; you people are still thinking 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.”

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 towards his house with Tony staring at him for most of the walk. “Damn Virgil, when do you grow a set?”

“I’ve had them since I was a child,” Virgil muttered and made a faint smile at his neighbor. “They’re just scared, Tony, and scared guys 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 still had no answers when sleep finally pulled him under.