by Dan Wells
with my own urine. I didn't even remember peeing. Mr. Crowley was a monster. Mr. Crowley was the monster. I was too scared to think about hiding—I simply sat and watched, freezing and nauseated. Crowley extended his right hand once more into a claw and began cutting away the stranger's layers of clothing. “Try to kill me,” he muttered. “I bought you a hat.” He reached down with both hands and grimaced, and I heard hideous cracking—one, two, three, four-five-six—a string of, shattered ribs. He stooped lower, out of my sight, and stood up a moment later clutching a pair of shapeless, bloody bags, Lungs. Slowly, Mr. Crowley began unbuttoning his coat. . . then his first flannel shirt.. . then his second . . . then his third. Soon his chest was bared to the cold and he gritted his teeth, breathing heavily and closing his eyes. He switched the ragged lungs into his human left hand, brought his demonic claw up to his belly, and sliced himself open just below the ribs. I gasped, just as a faint grunt escaped between Crowley's clenched teeth; it didn't look like he'd heard me. Blood poured from his open belly and he staggered one step, but quickly righted himself. I felt past shock now—too numbed by what I had seen to do anything but stare. Mr. Crowley coughed again, wracked with pain, and shoved the lungs desperately into the gash in his abdomen. He fell to his knees, his face wrenched with pain, and I watched as the ' last bit of lung disappeared into him, as if drawn up by something inside. His eyes opened suddenly wide, wider than I thought possible, and his mouth moved fearfully in a futile, noiseless gasp for air. Something dark oozed out of his wound and he reached for it quickly, pulling out another pair of lungs—similar to the first but black and sickly, like the lungs in a cancer commercial. The black lungs hissed as they slid from his open wound, and he dropped them on the stranger's dead body below. He paused there a moment, suspended in the utter silence of asphyxiation, motionless and airless, then gasped loudly and abruptly, like a diver emerging from a pool, desperate for air. He took three more breaths like that, huge and hungry, then began to breathe at a calmer, more measured pace. His right hand shrank back to normal, shifting somehow from monster to human, and he clutched his open wound with both hands. The hole sealed up, closing itself like a zipper. Half a minute later, his chest was whole again, scarless and white. The branches above me gave way suddenly, dropping a clump of snow on the ground around my hiding place. I bit my tongue to keep from screaming in alarm, and threw myself on my back in the hollow between the trunks. I could no longer see Crowley, but I heard him jump to his feet; I imagined him tensed and ready to fight—ready to kill anyone
who'd witnessed even a part of his actions. I held my breath as he walked toward my trees, but he didn't stop or look in. He stepped past and stooped to look for something in the snow— the discarded knife, I assumed—and after a minute he straightened up and walked to his car. I heard the trunk click open, and a rustle of plastic, then the door slammed shut and he walked back to the corpse, his footsteps even and deliberate. I'd just watched a man die. I'd just watched my next-door neighbor kill him. It was too much to process; I felt myself start to shiver uncontrollably, though whether it was from cold or from fear I couldn't tell. I tried to clamp down on my legs to keep them from shaking the undergrowth and giving me away. I’m not sure how long I lay there in the snow, listening to him work, and praying that he wouldn't find me. Snow was in my shoes, pants, and shirt; it had crept down through my collar and up from my belt, all of it ice cold—so cold it burned. Outside, plastic rustled, bones thumped, and something squelched wetly, over and over. Eons later I heard Crowley dragging something heavy, followed by a grunt of effort and the click of his boots on the ice of the lake. Two steps. Three steps. Four steps. When he reached ten steps I allowed myself to lean up—ever so slowly—and peer out of the trees. Crowley was out on the frozen water, a black plastic sack flung over his shoulders and the ice saw dangling from his belt. He walked slowly and carefully, testing his steps and trudging through the bitter wind. His silhouette grew smaller and smaller, and strong gusts heavy with shards of ice raced around him in fury, as if nature were angry at what he had done—or some darker power was pleased. Half a mile out, his lonely outline disappeared completely into the wind and snow, and he was gone. I clambered awkwardly out of the trees, my legs like jelly and my mind racing. I knew I needed to cover my tracks somehow, and snapped off a low-hanging pine branch. I walked backward toward my bike, brushing away my footprints as I went—I'd seen an Indian do it in one of those old John Wayne movies. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do. When I reached my bike, I pulled it up and raced around the far side of the trees, hoping Crowley wouldn't see my footprints that far away from the scene of the killing. I reached the road and jumped on, peddling madly in order to reach town before he returned and passed me in his car. Around me the pine trees were dark as demons horns, and the setting sun on the oaks turned the bare branches red as bloody bones.
8 I slept very little that night, haunted by what I had seen at the lake. Mr. Crowley had killed a man—killed him, just like that. One moment he was alive, screaming and fighting for his life, and the next moment he was nothing but a sack of meat. Life, whatever it was, had evaporated into nothing. I longed to see it again, and I hated myself for that. Mr. Crowley was a monster of some kind—a beast in human form who seemed to absorb the lungs of the man he had killed. I thought about Ted Rask's missing leg, Jeb Jolley's kidney, and Dave Bird's arm—had Crowley absorbed those parts as well? I imagined him built entirely out of pieces of the dead; Dr. Frankenstein and his monster rolled into one unholy killer. But where had it started? What had he been before the first piece was stolen? I saw again a vision of dark, leathery skin, a bulbous head, and long, scythe-like claws. I was not religious, and knew next to nothing about the occult or the supernatural, but the word that leapt to mind was “demon.” The Son of Sam had called the monsters in his life demons. I figured if it was good enough for the Son of Sam, it was good enough for me. My mom was smart enough to leave me alone. I threw my pee-soaked clothes in the laundry when I got home and took a shower. I suppose she saw the clothes, or smelled them, and assumed I'd had one of my accidents. It's rare for bed wetters to lose control while awake, but all of the reasons it might happen—intense anxiety, sadness, or fear—were sensitive enough that she avoided the subject that night and took out her frustration on the laundry instead of on me. When I got out of the shower, I locked myself in my room and stayed there until almost noon the next day, though I was tempted to stay longer. It was Thanksgiving, and Lauren had refused to come; the tension in the house would be overwhelming. After what I'd just been through, however, a tense dinner was nothing. I got dressed and went into the living room, “Hi, John,” said Margaret. She was sitting on the couch and watching the end of the Macy's parade. Mom looked up from the counter in the kitchen. “Good morning, honey.” She never called me honey unless she was trying to make up for something. I grunted a vague response and poured a bowl of cereal. “You must be starving,” said Mom. “We're going to eat in just a couple of hours, but go ahead—you haven't eaten since lunch yesterday.”
I hated it when she was nice to me, because it seemed like she only did it in emergencies. It was like an open acknowledgement that something was wrong; I preferred to let things fester in silence. I chewed my food slowly, wondering what Mom and Margaret would do if they knew the truth—that I had not been hiding because of fear or emotional turmoil, but because I was fascinated by the possibilities of a supernatural killer. I'd spent the night piecing together bits of the puzzle and the criminal profile, and I was delighted by how well it all worked. The killer was stealing body parts to replace ones that no longer worked—Crowley had bad lungs, so he got new ones, and it made sense that he'd killed the other victims for the same reason. His leg used to be so painful, but yesterday he had walked without limping or straining—he had replaced his bad leg with the one he stole from Rask. The black sludge found by each victim came from the old, degenerated parts he discarded. The victims were old, large men because Cr
owley was an old, large man, and needed body parts that fit him. The dual nature of the violent killings and the methodical aftermath came from Crowley's own dual nature—a demon in a man's body. Or, more correctly, a demon in a body made up of other men. The forty-year-old story Ted Rask had found in Arizona was probably the same thing—probably the same demon. Were there more demons like him? Had Crowley been in Arizona forty years ago? Rask, despite being a showboating jerk, was on to something, and he died because of it. But throughout my thinking, I kept going back to the killing itself, and the blood, and the sounds, and the screams of a dying man. I knew, academically, that it should bother me more—that I should be throwing up, or crying, or blocking the memories out. Instead I simply ate a bowl of cereal, and thought about what to do next. I could send the police to his house, but what evidence would they find? The last death had been a drifter that no one would even remember, let alone miss, mid Crowley had sunk the body and all the evidence into the lake; he was getting smarter. Would they dredge a lake on an anonymous tip? Would they search a respected man's house on the word of a fifteen-year-old? I couldn't imagine that they would. If I wanted the police to believe me, I had to get them there at the scene of a murder—they had to catch him demonhanded. But how? “John, can you help me with this stuffing?” Mom was standing by the table chopping celery, watching the parade in the other room. “Sure,” I said, and got up. She handed me the knife and a couple of onions from the fridge. The knife was almost identical to the one the drifter had tried to kill Crowley with. I hefted it a bit, then chopped down through layers of onion. “Time for the juice,” she said, and pulled the turkey out of the oven. She picked up a large syringe, poked it into the
turkey, and squeezed the plunger. “I saw this on TV yesterday,” she said. “It's chicken broth, salt, basil, and rosemary. It's supposed to be really good.” By force of habit she'd poked in the syringe just above the turkey's collarbone, right where she would have inserted a pump tube into a corpse. I watched her inject the broth and imagined it swirling through the turkey, embalming it with salt and seasonings, filling it with an artifical perfection while a thick stream of blood and horror dripped out the bottom and fled underground. I peeled off the skin of the second onion, dry and papery, and chopped the bulb in half. Mom covered the turkey and put it back into the oven. “Don't we need to put the stuffing in?” I asked. “You don't actually cook stuffing inside the turkey,” she said, rooting through the cupboard. “That's a case of food poisoning waiting to happen.” She pulled out a small glass bottle with a tiny pool of brown at the bottom. “Oh no, we're practically out. John, honey?” There was that word again. “Yeah.” '' “Can you run over to the Watsons and borrow some vanilla? Peg's sure to have some; at least someone on this street has her head on straight.” That was Brooke's house. I hadn't allowed myself to think about her since Dr. Neblin had asked me about her—I could feel myself fixating on her, thinking about her too much, so my rules stepped in to stop me. I wanted to say no, but I didn't want to have to explain why. “Sure.” “Take a coat, it snowed again.” I pulled on my jacket and went down the stairs to the mortuary. It was dark and silent; I loved it like this. I'd have to come back later, if I could do it without making Mom suspicious. I went out through the side door and looked across the street at Mr. Crowley's house. Snow had covered everything with a two-inch blanket of white. Nothing was dirty after it snowed, at least not that you could see; the surface of every car and house and sewer grate was white and calm. I plodded through the snow to the Watsons', two houses over, and rang the doorbell. A muffled shout drifted through the door. “I got it.” I heard footsteps, and soon Brooke Watson opened the door. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, with her blond hair curled into a knot and held in place by a pencil. I'd avoided her since the dance, when she'd backed away so warily. Now she smiled— she actually smiled—when she saw me. “Hey, John.” “Hey. My mom needs some vanilla or something. Do you guys have any?” “Like, ice cream?” “No, it's brown, it's for cooking.” “Mom,” she called, “do we have any vanilla?” Brooke's mom stepped into the hall, wiping her hands on a towel, and waved me inside. "Come in, come in—don't leave him standing out there,
Brooke, you'll freeze him to death.“ She smiled as she said it, and Brooke laughed. ”You better come in,“ she said with a smile. I lacked the snow off my shoes and stepped inside, and Brooke closed the door. ”It's your turn, Brooke, come on!“ shouted a high voice, and I Saw Brooke's little brother and father lying on the floor with a sprawling Monopoly game laid out in front of them. Brooke flopped down on the floor and rolled the dice, then counted out her move and groaned. Her little brother, Ethan, cackled with glee as she counted out a stack of play money. ”Pretty cold out there?“ asked Brooke's father. He was still in his pajamas, with thick wool socks on his feet to keep warm. ”It's your turn, Dad, go,“ said Ethan. ”It's not bad,“ I said, remembering last night. ”The wind's gone, at least.“ And I'm not hiding in the trees while my neighbor rips a man's lungs out, so that's good, too. Brooke's mom bustled back into the room with a tiny Tupperware of vanilla. ”This should be enough to get you through,“ she said. ”Would you like a cup of hot chocolate?“ ”I would!“ shouted Ethan, and jumped up and raced into the kitchen. ”No thanks,“ I said, ”Mom needs this for something, and I'd better get back with it soon.“ ”If you need anything else just let me know,“ she said with a smile. ”Happy Thanksgiving!“ ”Happy Thanksgiving, John,“ said Brooke. I opened the door and she stood up to follow me. She looked as if she were about to say something, then shook her head and laughed. ”See you at school,“ she said, and I nodded. ”See you at school." She waved as I walked down the steps, flashing her braces in a wide smile. It was achingly beautiful, and I forced myself to look away. My rules were too ingrained. She was safer this way. I trudged back home, the vanilla shoved deep into my pocket and my hands curled into fists for warmth. Every house looked the same in the snow—a white lawn, a white driveway, a white roof, the corners rounded and the features dulled. No one would ever guess, driving by, that one home contained a joyful family, another contained a wretched half family, and yet another hid the lair of a demon. Thanksgiving dinner passed as well as could be expected at my house. Every channel was running either a family movie or a football game, and Mom and Margaret watched blandly as they ate. I arranged my chair to get a good view of the Crowleys' house, and stared out the window all through the meal. Mom flipped through the channels restlessly. Before Dad left, Thanksgiving was a football day, from start to finish, and Mom complained about it every year. Now she flipped through
the games aggressively, pausing longer on the non-game channels, as if to give them a higher status. They didn't remind her of Dad, so they were better than the rest. My parents never got along super well, but it had grown worse in the last year before he left. Eventually he moved to an apartment on the other side of town, where he stayed for almost five months while the divorce wound its way through the intestinal tract of the county courts. I stayed with him every other week, but even the brief contact they made while making the switch was too much for my parents, and eventually they just stayed on opposite sides of the supermarket parking lot, late at night when it was empty, and I carried my pillow and backpack from one car to the other in the dark. I was seven years old. One night, halfway to my mom's car, I heard my dad's engine roar; he turned on his headlights and pulled out onto the road, turning at the corner and disappearing in an angry rush of sound. It was the last time I ever saw him. He sent presents on Christmas, and sometimes on my birthday, but there was never a return address. He was as good as dead. Our meal ended with a store-bought pumpkin pie and a can of spray-on whipped cream. The turkey carcass crouched in the center of the table like a bony spider; I thought about the dead man at the lake, and reached out and snapped a turkey rib with my fingers. The TV droned in the background. There was a marked absence of conflict; this was as close as my house got to happy. “Good evening, and welcome to Five Live N
ews. I'm Walt Daines.” “And I'm Sarah Bello. Many people are choosing to celebrate their Thanksgiving holiday with deep-fried turkey, but the deep-fryers can be dangerous. More on that in a minute, but first an update on the Clayton County killer who has thus far claimed three lives, including Five Live News reporter Ted Rask. Here's Carrie Walsh with a report.” All three of us sat up straight, eyes glued to the TV. “The town of Clayton is afraid,” said a young reporter standing by the Wash-n-Dry; she'd probably been stuck with this job because she was too junior to pass it on to anybody else. It was much brighter on TV than it was outside at the , moment and I guessed that she'd probably filmed this segment around two in the afternoon. “Police patrol the streets at all hours of the day, and even now, in full daylight, I am accompanied by an armed escort of police officers.” The camera pulled back to show that she was flanked by an officer on each side. “What is everyone so afraid of?” she said. “Three un- . solved murders, in the space of just three months. The police have very few leads, but investigative reporter Ted Rask uncov ered evidence so sensitive, the murderer killed him for it.” Her voice was even, but her eyes were bloodshot and her knuckles gripping the microphone were white as bone. She was terrified, "Today, assisted by Agent Forman of the FBI, we bring that
