Milo hovered beside Henry, feeling the situation coming slowly to a head. That feeling of wrongness becoming nearly palpable, filling the air between them.
Steve glanced down the hallway, back to Henry, pulled out a cell phone, flicked on the camera app. “I won’t show anyone, Henry,” he said. “I just want this so I can convince myself later that it really happened. Even though you’d think this would stick hardcore, after I left, I had trouble holding on to your image in my mind. It kept slipping away.” He lifted the phone and aimed it in Henry’s direction. “I knew I needed to come back, to prove to myself–”
And then one of Henry’s massive hands flicked up quickly from his side, shot forward, and popped Steve’s head like a grape.
Blood, bone, and gristle sprayed out from between Henry’s fingers, splattered the wall behind Steve. He crumpled to the ground. Bled onto the carpet and hardwood floor. Henry took three steps backward, just staring at what he’d done. A few minutes later, Faye returned from the kitchen with the coffee.
When she saw Steve’s body, she stopped dead, her mouth fell open just a little, then she very deliberately moved over to the nearest flat surface, placed the coffee cups on it, and said almost too quietly for Henry to hear: “What have you done?”
T E N
Small, one-bedroom apartment. Spiral-bound notepad. The top of the first page reads: Inferne Cutis: Latin for “below the skin.”
That’s what they call themselves. Pretentious motherfuckers.
William Krebosche looked up from his notes, read the clock on his bedside table: 2:47 a.m. He’d been listening to his digital voice recorder and transcribing every word for the past three hours. Even though it was very clear, he wasn’t able to salvage all of it. Some words when they entered his brain just became unintelligible, garbled by some external filter he didn’t understand. Something unknown that, for whatever reason, protected the Inferne Cutis from scrutiny. Soon enough, the very notion of this filter would fade, just like the other memories.
As it turned three o’clock, and the recording finally ended, Krebosche leaned back in his chair, rubbed his eyes, and steeled himself for the fact that he would now have to write the entire article in one sitting, as quickly as he could, so that it made some kind of sense by the time it was finished. He planned to have the piece published in the local newspaper through an editor acquaintance, Paul Darby, who worked there. He hoped it would then be picked up by larger outlets, and the domino effect would take over.
He thought briefly about Edward Palermo, who should be dead right now. Once Carl Duncan had left the warehouse on Kendul’s trail, and Palermo’s men were back inside, Krebosche’s uncle Gerald – who’d witnessed firsthand, as had William, the “accident” that set them all down this path – was supposed to kill Palermo. Just walk into his ridiculous little caboose and put him down. But in a heartbeat, that plan had gone to shit. Gerald had panicked when Palermo sent men out to search the grounds.
Krebosche would shed tears over his uncle later, but he did wish one more had been added to the list before the body count was over.
Which made him think, too, about Carl Duncan, his old high school friend –
– his only friend, his conscience didn’t let him forget.
Yes, OK, only friend, then. Although he wasn’t entirely convinced that he was capable of having what other people called friends – could count on one hand (and even that was overkill, if he was being honest) the number of people he’d ever thought of as such. And all those relationships ended horrendously, anyway, through no fault of his own. Or at least that’s what he told himself. On some level, he knew there was something socially wrong with him, but he’d always been unclear what it was that drove people away. What it was precisely.