The night was silent and dark.
“Go!” said Agent Ostler in my ear, and I rose to a run. Elijah stayed close behind me, and we reached the door just as Detective Scott broke it open with a heavy metal ram. Potash went in first, Diana right on his heels, assault rifles up and scanning the corners, hunting for monsters in the shadows. Elijah and I followed behind, hoping that Rack’s attack, when it came, would involve something more targeted than a grenade or a spray of bullets. Everything about him suggested that he would want to finish this in person, face to face, and that was our only hope for success. I held my breath and stepped through the door. Detective Scott brought up the rear, with a half dozen armored cops behind him. Their whispers echoed in my earpiece:
“Clear.”
“Moving up.”
“On your six.”
“Clear.”
A stairway in the main entry led up to the second floor, and two cops watched it while the rest of us snaked through the main floor, making sure it was empty. The house seemed normal, almost disturbingly so, but here and there we saw a hint of something more: one of my Pancho’s Pizza flyers, pinned to the wall with a thumbtack. News clippings about the three victims held with magnets to the fridge, like a proud display of a child’s latest drawing. Stains on the living room couch and carpet, which might have been blood, or might just as well have been anything.
“Soy sauce,” whispered one of the cops, as if he was trying to convince himself that the worst-case scenario wasn’t true.
“He doesn’t have a mouth,” I reminded him. The cop gulped nervously.
We found a basement door near the back, and two more cops stayed to watch that, guarding against a surprise assault from below. Elijah and I stayed close to Potash and soon found ourselves back at the base of the stairs.
“It’s now or never,” said Diana. Potash grunted and started the climb.
“Go carefully,” said Ostler, her voice crackling in our ears over the radio. “Don’t try to kill him, just get Mr. Sexton close.”
“Roger that,” said Potash as he reached the top of the stairs. We paused to listen.
“Welcome to my home,” said a soft, whispering voice. I gripped my knife, pulling it out of the sheath, knowing it was useless. Potash and Diana both turned to the left, identifying the source of the words, and we moved forward cautiously. A door at the head of the landing was open—the door leading in to the master bedroom, I guessed, based on what I’d seen of the house. Was he simply waiting inside for us? Had he known we were coming?
How was he talking?
Potash counted silently, locking eyes with Diana, and on three they burst into the room, all subtlety gone, shouting out commands to get down, to put his hands on his head, and the rest of us surged in behind them ready to run toward the killer, ready to sacrifice anything we could just to give Elijah the opening he needed, but nothing moved, and all we heard was a soft, wheezing laugh.
There was a body in the bed, lying on top of the covers: light hair and fair skin and most of the flesh on his torso missing, chewed to bits by human teeth. The head, as before, was untouched.
The lips were moving.
“Put my hands on my head,” said the voice. The corpse’s eyes were unfocused and glassy. “Of course you would say that. But which hands, and which head?”
Potash and Diana scouted the room quickly, checking corners and closets and any nooks or crannies that might conceal an attacker. The master bathroom was attached, and Diana opened the door only to stagger back, gagging. Potash looked at her in alarm, but she shook her head.
“Clear,” she coughed, “and no need to double check. I can go my whole life not knowing what’s in that tub.”
“It’s meat,” said the body on the bed. There were flies on his wounds, buzzing in small circles before landing lightly and rubbing their forelegs together, licking the bloody flesh with tiny black probosces. The mouth moved by itself, as if it were completely independent from the rest of the body. “Puppets can bite,” he said softly, “but they can’t swallow.”
I nodded. “If he’d left gobs of flesh behind anywhere we’d have found it,” I said. “He had to hide it somewhere.”
“He could have burned it,” said Diana.
“I saved it for you,” said the corpse. I walked closer, looking at the thing’s pale skin, and its mouth twisted into a leer I could only assume was a smile. “Do you like it? I don’t have guests often, you’ll forgive me for not being here to receive you in person.”
“Are you close?” I asked.