The foot hung over a three hundred-yard drop.  A length of white shoestring snapped and jumped in the wind.  The sneaker was an expensive Japanese knock-off of an American brand.  What flesh could be seen from below was yellow-gray, the color of a squashed highway possum. 
     Steam rose in waves from the rocks and profuse plant life.  The heat of the pre-summer day had begun to vaporize the wet earth.  Up the face of the steep cliff, this effect was almost hallucinatory.  Sunlight gleamed intensely on the red shale walls.  The dreamy quality of the midday air was so delusional, in fact, that when Jerry Wilson saw the foot, he wasn't sure it was really there. Certain that he was invading someone's privacy, he hesitated.  He called out to the owner of the foot not wanting to interrupt a sunbather or lovers doing something.
      He had stopped with his wife and two daughters to climb the well-concealed path to the top. Jerry was out of shape and overweight, not prepared for rock climbing. 
      "Beth, it's fantastic.  You can probably see for miles," Jerry yelled down, stumbling his way up the narrow ledge.  The locals never attempted this trail.  The stone crumbled easily, especially in spring, and all along Route 32, signs warned of falling rocks.  As he crawled forward, he dislodged a razor sharp, football-sized stone.  It gained momentum as it bounced and spun and finally slammed into the driver side door of the Wilson's mobile home. 
      "That's great Jerry," Beth yelled back.  "We need lunch, and if you fall, we probably won't get it."  She squinted up at the jutting cliff, at her husband's huge rump wagging back and forth and thought about how he would be limping for days.  Just wonderful, she thought.  The top was accessible from a road that came nearly to the edge.  This was later thought to be the scene of the crime, if there was a crime.

     Norman watched Wheel of Fortune on his rented TV.  He was fascinated with Vanna White and usually solved the phrase without even seeing the letters.  Next to his bed, a scanner with a booster scratched on about police business in his district.  "'What do you get when you fall in love?'" he spoke absently to Pat Sajack.  The nurse brought in his dinner, which was more of a late lunch. 
     "Enough germs to cause pneumonia," she answered. 
     "No, no," he said, smiling, "I'm just solving the puzzle."
     She looked at the series of blank white rectangles and shook her head.        "There aren't any letters up yet.  You mean you can tell what it says just by that?" 
      "It's a knack," he said.  The contestants began to fill in the letters.  On the screen, a man from New Mexico asked for an "O".  "Yes," said Pat Sajack, "We have four "O's"!"  The audience and Vanna applauded. 
      "I'll be damned," the nurse said, now determined to see if the prediction was right. 
      "Wait a minute!"  Norman turned the sound down. 
      "I want to see if y'all are right," the nurse squawked.
      "Pipe down," he said, no longer friendly.  He listened to the scanner with his head cocked to one side.
      "Well damn," the nurse said, looking at the silent screen, "You must'uv seen that show before."
      “Miss, do you have a car?”
      “I sure do,” she said, “where do you want to go?” She was joking.
      He listened to the scanner.
     “Sounds like the cliff just across from the power plant,” he said. “Wanna go?”
     “What the hell are you talking about,” the nurse said.
     “Police business,” he said. “We’re going for a ride.”

     Jerry Wilson called to his wife to stay where she was.   His voice had a slightly choked, slightly strained quality, which she attributed to the trial of his climb.
     "Like I wouldn't," she mumbled.
     Slowly, he climbed the last eighty-five feet along an almost invisible out-cropping of rock.  He was dripping wet.  High blood pressure forced him to stop every twenty feet.  Dirt was packed under his fingernails and his palms were getting sore from the abrasive stone.  He began to wonder what had possessed him to try this.  But the foot hadn't moved yet.  He saw a small dark cloud above.
     Flies. 
     As he got near the ledge, he could hear the furious buzzing.  It seemed thousands of them were going in and out of sight.  There had to be at least five thousand flies.  One or two would come down to investigate him, fat and bloated, flying close, blue heads like tiny sapphires glinting in the sun.  The hum was mesmerizing. 
     That many flies.  They wouldn't just swarm in one place.  They weren’t like bees were they?   He had struggled so hard to get to the top of the cliff.  It would be a shame to stop now.  Something to tell the boys at work. 
     Jerry still thought someone was sunning himself on the ledge above.  For some reason, the insects didn't figure into it.  He considered not disturbing whomever it was but deep down he knew what was up there. 
     The foot was clearly visible now and the dead wrinkled flesh made him pause.  A shoestring was jumping up and down. 
     When the emergency team arrived, two men went up and called back requesting rescue equipment.  No hurry.  They sounded upset.  Jerry Wilson was in his mobile home and wouldn't come out.  Volunteer firemen kept the area below clear of gathering spectators and motorists.
     The first two to go up couldn't function and had to come down.  One of them needed oxygen.  Then the others began to dare each other to climb the wall.  Several of them took the dare and up they went.
 

     Buzzards circled.  The stench rolled down the cliff, like old wax.   Every bit of the dead man's flesh that touched the rock was flattened down.  The man's skin was pressed deeply into the irregularities of the stone.  His face was exposed, looking left.  Almost one quarter of the head was crushed flat. 
     Having fallen or been pushed from the top, the man had lain in the sun and weather for two weeks.  His skin was gray with purple bruises where it had impacted with the jagged stone.  The birds had been at him.  The uncovered flesh was pecked full of holes.  Bone showed through several of the wounds.  It was decided that he was a male of 230 pounds, short, with dark curly hair and green eyes, (though eye color had to be chemically determined later.)  He was in a fetal position with the right hand under the chest, left arm under the head.  His buttocks were in the air, like an inchworm, and the feet were crossed.  The right foot was over the edge.  He wore blue shorts with yellow trim and a maroon colored shirt that said:

                                   COSGROVE SPEED SHOP
. 
     White matter extruded from his eyes, nose, ears and mouth.  The mouth was opened wide from the pressure of this growth, which mushroomed, like wet plaster from the face, like squeezing a rubber doll.  This substance excited the flies, which continued to cover each of these nodules like a living blanket. 
     One of the paramedics flicked a fly from his arm and was startled to find that it burst into a noxious black powder, staining his arm. 
     Bones that had broken in the fall were completely smashed.  They created a sack of shattered fragments that conformed to the hard shapes beneath it.  When they turned him over, the body remained stiff, like a dead, dried out animal on the highway, it resembled a ground hog, frozen in its sleep.  Maggots and hundreds of insects that had not seen the sun for two weeks ran for cover as their shelter was disturbed.  This caused several of the men to drop to their knees.  The odor, the sight of human flesh being ravaged by bugs, and the man with the pop-it doll face, had the volunteers sick and vomiting.  They had to shake the body to remove all the vermin. 
     Then came the jokes.
     Someone suggested that he was taking a nap.  But nobody laughed.  The man had defecated and the back of his shorts were stained.  One volunteer offered the shorts to his friend.   When they tried to straighten the man out, he creaked like an old door.
 

     The coroner's assistant was taking pictures.  He was thin and frail, gasping when he first saw the thing lying there.  Most did.  Strong men strained as they struggled to get the corpse into a plastic bag.  A dog began to howl.  Somewhere, higher up, the animal began to squeal. 
     Someone was coming.  Just out of sight, rocks crunched under unsteady feet.  Instinctively, the men looked to the dead thing and then to the sound of the approaching stranger.  They wanted to see the face of this person, perhaps blundering into the situation by accident, or just curious thrill seeker.   They didn't want to miss the reaction.  They continued to straighten out the legs, thanks to someone with an eight-pound hammer.
 

    A figure appeared.  Stepping into the afternoon sun, he was covered with a large green plastic poncho and bright yellow rubber lineman's coveralls.  He wore rubber gloves with two fingers removed on the right hand, rubber boots, and a welder's mask hid his face.  In the center of the black glass, a small hole allowed the only view from inside.  The man fought to stay on his feet.  He flipped the mask up, showing his sweating face.  His eyes were burning with intense determination.  In his left hand he carried a crossbow, with five arrows in the built in quiver. 
     "You men stand back," he shouted.
 They did what they were told without question.  The cops were all down below keeping the growing crowd from climbing up.  The rescue squad was all volunteer; not one of them was a hero and they had no intention of protecting a dried corpse.  They huddled against the cliff wall, confused and frightened at this crazy sight.
     Then the dead man began to sing.  From his mouth came bird noises, cats and dogs, laughter and weeping, fragments of music, screaming children.  The firemen were stunned by the horrible sound and began dropping again to their knees.  The thing was moving; dead, dried out like a road-killed groundhog, it was a rippling snake on the stone shelf.  Tiny sparks of light moved back and forth with colors like neon and flesh.  The miasma of sound swelled and giant cats growled and groaned, crackling like great power, cyclones whirling in the air. 
     The man in the green poncho nodded his head and the mask snapped down into place.  He moved toward the writhing dead thing.  He notched an arrow and pulled back the bow lever.  The shaft was hard wood and the metal tip had been removed. It was sharpened to a cruel point.  All around him swirled vibrations of maddening sounds and retching noises.  He heard the wailing of animals, the whispering of his memory and the call of those he loved.
 

    Chief Bobby Rearson turned off his beeper.  "Shit," he muttered, looking up from his cards, which weren't bad at all.  He went to the pay phone. 
     "Rearson," he said.  "Make it snappy."  The woman had just started and the Town Council thought it necessary to have her own dispatcher.   Bobby was already having an affair with her and since his wife left, it was a natural move. Their relationship was getting old and he felt comfortable abusing her now and then, just as he had his wife. 
     "Bob," she said questioningly.  "Bob, somebody fell off Top Rock."
     "Who did?"
     "A tourist called it in and said some guy's dead up there.  Everybody's up there.  You turn off your beeper again?"
     "None'a your business.  Where abouts did this happen," Rearson said coolly.
     "Across from the Jersey power station.  Everybody's' there and you better get over there."
     "Yeah, I'll go right now."
     "Bob," she said, "latter on, you wanna come over for--"
     He had already hung up. 
     He thought about going.  Back at the table, he kept the news to himself and drew another hand.  These cards were much better; three jacks, two tens.    "Yeah," he said.  He won the hand and decided to take his time.  Popping another beer, he ordered a martini and considered the situation.  Police work could be so tedious, demanded so much time. 
    An hour later, Bobby lost most of his paycheck and it was time to go see who had gone over the cliff.  He drove the roundabout route to the top, intending to walk to the edge and look down.  Full Nelson's bar was on the way.  He stopped in and knocked back another martini.  The Phillys were playing Cincinnati.  Five men at the bar roared their approval at a home run. 
    The chief grabbed some peanuts, sat down to watch the next hitter and ordered another.
 
 

Norman Kirk gazed intently into the spot of light and sound between his eyes.  He could see a small piece of what was happening.  It was the Lobesomen. Squirming and coiling like a snake, it imitated a mass of several unidentifiable animals and began to rise.  The arrow clicked into place with a timeless surety.  Wood and feathers formed a somehow ancient and familiar union.  The mask was hot and his head was steaming, as the world seemed to grow dark.  Only the tiny hole stood between him and the growing terror.  He leaned into the stench and depressing noise as though it was a hot wind.  He could hear the squad guys moaning.  Feeling the nausea himself, he moved his head back and forth, panning, which diminished the effect.  Long dull white claws had grown from the hands of the corpse and the fingers began to spread, to flex.  A ring of silken black hair grew from the base on its neck.  Above the din, the lone dog continued to howl.
     The bolt leapt at the speed of thought and chunked into the chest of the wriggling slug.  The mass of jelly-black matter jerked and rose up on two legs raking the air.  The firemen screamed, and the arrow went through cleanly, striking the stone behind with a thump. 
     Kirk saw the blood rise as a red haze.  It was a mist that was carried on the wind toward him.  It was gushing from the wound like a high-pressure pump.  He raised his left hand and covered the hole in the mask, then turned his two exposed fingers under to protect them.  Immediately, he was covered with the bright red liquid. 
     It subsided.
     He loaded another arrow and shot it into the abdomen of the thing.  Again, the viscous blood sprayed, red and warm, carried by the breeze.  Kirk was coated from head to foot.  The shafts of the arrows were dipped in a powerful nerve poison. which quickly did its work.  The man in the monster died as he surfaced.  Kirk moved in, slipping inside the rubber boots.  The phycho-hypnotic effect was mind bending in its power, but it was lessened by the shield. 
     It was dying.
     The men standing along the wall had already begun to forget what happened.  They were beginning to recover.  Two of them were lying on their backs.  Kirk loaded another arrow.  He was only a few feet from the flailing black mass.  The gaping eyes were clear, like a freshly dead fish.  They were like a horse's eyes with huge black pupils, deep shining orbs, the size of eight balls.   The talons, strong and needle sharp, were capable of tearing through leather like linoleum knives.  Human features were winking in and out, taking shape.  Kirk had been waiting for it.  The nose and eyes were more defined, growing more recognizable, losing the trappings of life.  Hands flickered between digits and deadly claws.  Ectoplasmic flesh sparkled and glowed, animated, as beast parted from human.
     The head flashed, now fully retrieved, mouth open wide, with blood and shreds of flesh caught between the teeth which visibly shrank as Kirk watched. 
    Then it was completely restored and finally lay still. 
    "Stop right there!"  Chief Rearson bellowed at the whole group.  "Put your hands up!"
     "Police business," Kirk said flatly, spinning around.  He didn't want to take off the mask.  Not yet.  His voice was muffled and he wasn't sure he could be heard.  Facing the young town cop, he squinted through the hole, took a chance, and dropped the crossbow.   "Inspector Kirk, State Police," he said.
     "Kirk," Rearson said, "is in the nut house.  Move away from the weapon and get your hands in the air."   Rearson had his gun drawn.  The emergency squad men were pointing to the maimed corpse trying to warn the cop of something terrible.
     "I'm backing off, son," Kirk said.
     "What the hell are you doing?  Why are you wearing that shit?"
     "He was hiding, Ace.  He's hiding now." Kirk answered, regretting it as the words left his mouth.   He took off the mask and glanced at the body.  Small and ugly, it was the body of a troll.  There on the stone cliff, lay the remains of the helpful little doctor.  Illano Iranio was still bleeding and twitching.
 

    Bobby Rearson's day had been bad from the start.  Councilman Weissman had torn him a new ass-hole, first thing.  Too many false arrests, mostly young girls and long-hairs.  Rearson hated hippy scum, but he loved the fuzzy young chicks that seemed to gravitate toward them.  Arresting people was a good way to make contact.  It was like a dating service.  For the young people in his jurisdiction, things were intolerable.
     Weissman was in a rage because Bobby had busted a kid for the robbery of a store.  The kid's alibi was cast iron.  He had attended a big party with his parents and over a hundred Kiwanas had seen him there all night.  Rearson had roughed him up, left marks. 
     'Nam had been hard on him. The real drinking had started there.  It was only a symptom.  He drank to forget, but he never did.  Ha-ha had gone the whole route in Southeast Asia.  Four of the countries he had been in had been defoliated.  His company would go in after the planes went over, with leaves and birds dropping from the trees. 
     Grammar school children sent letters from home.  These little acts of love were most of the kindness that he had ever known.  He would sit in the barracks reading and think of them as dead, like the little zipper-head kids he saw every day.   'Nam, 'Nam, 'Nam; if you didn't go and you didn't wish you had, you had to listen to the guys who did.   Either way, nobody ever came back from 'Nam.
     At the moment, he was shitfaced.  Beer, martinis, a couple of fine little jokes out by the back door of Full Nelson's and the fact that his paycheck was no more, all combined to piss him off.  He parked by the access road and headed down to the site.  The view of New Jersey across the Delaware was panoramic.  There was one other car, red dash light still flashing and a women dressed as a nurse was sitting behind the wheel. The doors were locked, window open just a crack though it was a hot day.  He didn’t bother with the nurse. Whatever she was doing could wait, besides, anybody could get a dash light. 
     Ha-ha sniffed the air.  Something musky and damp was coming up from the ledge.  The afternoon sun was shining through a thin fog that had come up.  Fog was rare up that high, but that didn't occur to him.  Huge galvanized steel towers stood on both sides of the path.  They were like giant insects on the march, stretching down over the hillside and across the river to the New Jersey power station.   The cables suspended above snapped and clicked with electricity.  He reached into his pocket and touched his badge in its plastic folder. 
     "Yeah," he said with great satisfaction.
     The path was narrow, enclosed on both sides by high grass and weeds.  They created a natural gauntlet.  The wires clicking overhead made him dizzy and light-headed.  He could feel the vibration going through his body, though he couldn't remember the lines having that effect before.
     He was Rearson.
     He stroked the magnum.  Unbuttoning the strap, he pulled it and spun the cylinder. Loaded and beautiful.
     "Well, how about it punk?  Do you feel lucky?  This is the .357 Magnum, most powerful handgun in the world..."
     No, no , this was an accident where some asshole had fallen from the cliff.  The guy was dead; there were a bunch of good buddies from the squad down there.  Get it straight for Christ's sake! 
     Bobby had been chewed out by everybody, and he was late to the scene.  He had no account of his whereabouts.  Full Nelson's wasn't even in his jurisdiction and he knew that if he could just fire one legitimate round, just one shot at anything, he wouldn't have to explain about that. 
     When he saw the squad guys squatting along the rocks, being held hostage by a fucking weirdo in a raincoat; everything covered in blood, and a dead guy with arrows growing out of him, it was just wonderful.   He took a deep breath and saw his fortune change. 

    Kirk suddenly realized how crazy he must sound. 
    "Young man," he said, "I am a state investigator.  I am covered with a highly toxic substance.  That's why I have this gear on.  Please stay where you are."
    Rearson was in the position.  Both hands were on the butt of the weapon, finger gently squeezing the trigger. 
     "Son, this rain coat and these gloves have to be cut from me, I think, and I can't reach my badge.  But I assure you that I have it," Kirk said cautiously. 
     Ha Ha began to grin.  He couldn't help it.  Detective Kirk was famous and everybody knew him.  This clown wasn't Kirk.  This was some nut that was going down.  Bob tried hard to keep his excitement in check.  He began to feel just a little nauseous and saliva dripped from his mouth, something he never did.  He thought the dead dwarf had moved.  But that wasn't possible. 
     It was just a nervous reaction, the dead did that sometimes.
     To his left, the coroner and the emergency squad members were beginning to recover.  They sounded like drunks.  None of them could remember what happened but it was bad and they tried to warn the Chief.  Ha Ha took that as a request for protection.  He was sweating and feeling groggy, trying to tear his gaze from the bloody carcass.  The guy in the rain- coat, the victim, the men from the squad; everything was out of line here.  His head was swimming. 

    Kirk flipped the mask back down.  He poured his attention into the little hole and felt better.  The thing wasn't dead.  Maybe just a second wind.  From the growing cornucopia that was the head, great clots of blood spewed to the ground and into the air. There just couldn’t be that much blood inside that little man.  It was like a throat clearing, a hydraulic cough.  It curled worm-like around the wooden arrows, unable to pull them free. 
     A shot went off behind him.  It took off the side of his rubber boot without touching his foot.  His first thought was that the blood might seep into his sock.  The second bullet hit one of the medics, far off target. The man screamed. Then the spray reached Bobby Rearson.  It hit him full in the face.  The Chief went down on one knee.  He was unprepared for the terrible taste and smell that assailed him.  He vomited and passed into the land of unpleasant dreams.

    Death was felt by all the men at the same time.  A subtle release from the nausea and a return of clarity began as they revived.  Norman Kirk acted quickly to cover up again and the spray missed him by a fraction of a second.  Through the hole so carefully drilled in the dark glass, the unspeakable sight had little effect.
    Rearson was moving.  Kirk rushed to the outstretched hand and kicked the .357 over the cliff.  This was a dead man, he thought.  No reason to join him.  The old man began to shout obscene orders at the stunned volunteers.  His talent for getting even the dumbest man to jump got them moving.  Someone got back on the radio and called for another stretcher.  Chief Rearson was on his back blinking at the sky and the world was spinning.

 

"If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly reflected upon the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone so far as to combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength super human, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice foreign intone to the ears of men of many nations, and devoid of all distinct or intelligible syllabification.  What result, then has ensued?  What impression have I made upon your fancy? 

I felt a creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question.  "A madman," I said, "has done this deed, some raving maniac, who has escaped from a neighboring maison de sante."    --Edgar Allen Poe 
The Murders in the Rue  Morgue

 The victim, a man, was pleading for mercy and momentarily Tchelitchew seemed to relent, and looked pitying, only to resume his adamant attitude.  "I was there," recounted Ford.  "We saw the man flayed alive, strung up.  The raw skin was drawn down again and again over his limbs as in a film montage.  Tchelitchew vomited.  Then Ford vomited...Hard little clumps like lumps of black blood," Ford wrote in his diary. --Parker Tyler
The Devine Comedy of Pavel Tchelitchew

Frank Holtz walked silently through the soft powdered snow.  Cobalt blue light dusted every mound and slope, every fence post and every branch.  The full moon, directly overhead, like a frozen flash of lightening, threw hard sharp shadows.  In the woods west of Merser, Holtz stood watch.  A slender stand of trees to his left ran down a hill for a short distance.  He was waiting along the fencerow and absently, he let his hand rest on the barbed wire. The skin of his palm stuck to the rusted metal.  He winced, tugging on the wire, and exhaled a white plume into the frigid, fifteen-degree air. 
     Above him, a white meadow swelled across the horizon.  But it was something on the other side of the trees that he had come for.  The cornfield below the fence and the trees lay like a gleaming sea.  Objects seemed to waver in the peripheral.  He grudgingly pulled his hand from the wire and left a piece of flesh.  The other hand gripped his weapon. 
     Through the trees, just on the other side of the field, tiny yellow windows threw dull light onto the ground.  As he watched, a black form moved along the rows of denuded corn stalks.  It loped along through the snow.  Holtz observed an unnatural gracefulness, without stumbling, walking and crawling, moving as fast as a race horse. 
     "The old man was right," Frank whispered.
     The shapeless thing turned.  Holtz guessed its distance to be about three or four hundred yards.  As he spoke, it emitted a violent hiss, as though it heard, but no cloud came from its mouth.  At first it moved without haste, reversing its direction.  Then, picking up speed, it looked like a charging bear.  It covered half the field; its bulk shuddering visibly and then vanished into the snow. 
     "Lost it."
     There was a pause as he stood still and suddenly sticks began to crack and pop all around him.  Thin breaking bones snapped right next to his head. 
     "Jesus--what--?"
     He spun around.  Spun again.  Sweat broke on his forehead, freezing to tiny beads of ice.  Cold rivers ran down his ribs.  He wasn't afraid.  It was some other, unfamiliar feeling.  He tried to run and discovered that his coat was stuck to the fence.  The sweat flowed down his back  and stung like bees where the sutures held him together.  The cuts and punctures were not completely healed and he was burning in a dozen places.  These were new stitches, holding together what the old ones had missed.   Some of the stitches pulled loose.  He yanked at the cloth, desperately tearing it with both hands.  It came away.  The wire jangled like a crude broken guitar and he ran.  Trees and fence posts became black menacing ghosts.
     Holtz yanked the gun up.  It was a short, lethal spear gun with custom oak shafts.  Several flesh-colored surgical rubber tubes were pulled taught.  He'd had an unreasonable fear that the thing would go off in his pants.   No safety, just big rubber bands.  Norman had insisted that it was necessary. Guns wouldn’t do anything. A cop wasn't much without his gun.
     A deep gurgling, deep breathing came from behind him.  It came from the trees.  He turned.  Still it came from behind.  The grisly intake of breath was like a death rattle.  It was too long.  The sound gave indications of a huge chest cavity.  Holtz could imagine muscle being ripped from bone.  It seemed to go on and on, from a few feet away, then right next to his ear. 
     Fur, soft and cold, brushed his neck.  It was like a cat nuzzling.  An electric charge went through his spine.  Short hairs stood stiff all over his body.  Holtz fought the urge to run.  He would have, but for the fact that none of this was close to real.  To flee something that he couldn't later prove went against his sense of duty.  Though it might mean his death, it still held.  He stood fast.
     A cloud had been hiding the moon.  It slipped past, throwing the blue light everywhere.  The thing appeared.  With it came a wave of crushing dizziness.  Frank put his left hand over his eyes and peered through his fingers.  It helped.  A few yards away the dark shape seemed to unfold.  It was exploding in slow motion, a flower of fur and claws that roiled along the clean snow.  Mouth and jaws flopped to the ground, sagging under the weight, thousands of incisors, the teeth of small dogs and the giant incisors of predatory cats all in one gaping maw.  It yawned in the pristine white meadow while Frank Holtz watched.  He began to drip saliva, struggling with the nausea.  His feet were pinned to the spot.  He reached into his shirt pocket and found the glasses.  They were sunglasses that had been opaqued, with tiny holes drilled into the center of each lens.  They looked like the old X-ray glasses that kids would order from Popular Mechanics.
     He slipped them on.  Instantly, his mind began to clear.  He could make out the movement, but the terrible effects were gone.  Backing up against the fence, he dug in with booted feet.  He took aim, as well as he could, moving his head from side to side to keep the image from blurring, and squeezed the trigger.
 

    Ward 3 was a light security patient facility.  It was equipped with basic medical hardware.  Here, people were treated in self-help programs: drug offenders, alcoholics, and mild mental illness.  These patients stayed in comfortable rooms with crisp white sheets strictly on a volunteer basis.
     Being there was a trade off.  In order to save his pension, Norman Kirk had strictly volunteered.  He rested with his feet up on several pillows.  On the night table was a stack of folders.  The bed was covered with clippings and books.  He had old reference tomes on European folklore; obvious titles such as Bigfoot and Yeti.  There were old police reports; everything he could get on the Jersey Devil, and not so obvious books called Lycanthropy, The Church and Superstition, Medieval Sorcery and Diary of a Fiend. 
     It was true he had come to Ward 3 in a semi-violent condition.  At the constant urging of his wife and Commissioner Le Montour he had re-committed himself.  All of this was directed toward saving his dignity, but he suspected that the image of the department was more the issue. 
     One floor above, there was a far different environment.  There were padded cells, straight jackets and small rooms to administer electro-shock therapy.  While it wasn't discussed much anymore, electric shock was still used in severe cases. 

     Pending an investigation--that was tending to yield absolutely nothing--Norman Kirk would either remain in Ward 3 or be moved to the floor above.  He was a State Police Chief of Detectives who had been on his way out.  When most old cops were trying to fill time, Kirk had gone balls-up into a very strange case involving a death by his own hand.  While under suspension and hospitalized, he had left the hospital, kidnapped one of the staff and killed the victim of a climbing accident.  That the victim was already dead, was clear from the dispatch recordings.  Kirk's vehement assertion that the man was quite alive and posing a threat to on-scene personnel was, seemingly absurd.  None of those present could agree on how long the man had been dead.  The assistant coroner said that the deceased had been exposed to the elements for two weeks or more.  Photos confirmed that, but the condition of the corpse in the aftermath strongly conflicted that evidence. 
     A man had been shot with arrows.  Kirk was in a raincoat, foul weather gear, wearing a welder's mask on a clear day.  He had a spotless record and a strong reputation as a senior officer.  His unexplainable behavior went down as stress related.  When another team was assigned to the investigation they found the site completely saturated with muriatic acid, any and all evidence burned away.  Consequently, there was a great deal of confusion about the time of death.  It was finally attributed to the inexperience of the coroner's assistant.
      Kirk and his reading material were kept at arm's length by the staff after the incident. He had somehow convinced the attending nurse to drive him to the scene. She later confessed that she just found him charming and wanted to help.   They found him to be harmless, though somewhat abrasive.       It was 1 p.m., and he was drowsy.  He plopped a new folder on his stomach and pushed his head back into the pillow.  The TV was on but muted, throwing a strobe of light throughout the room.  He found the background of silent television comforting.  If something important happened on the tube, he would know. 
     Footsteps.
     They weren't orthopedic soles.  Not corrugated rubber. 
     Slapping of shoe leather...boots...odd sound, new sound, coming down the hall.  More authority than staff members, more purpose than doctors, toes forward, less heel.  Like a soldier, in command, one of those martial arts guys, too late for visitors--has to be--
     A man entered the room.  He staggered slightly, leaned against the wall.  He looked down at the white haired old cop.  His topcoat and pants were torn.  Blood seeped through his shirt in a hundred crimson dots.  He could have easily been an escapee from the upstairs ward. 
     "You've seen our friend," Kirk said, not a question. 
     "You were right all along.  It was still out there.  You didn't kill it."
     "Wrong," Kirk corrected.  He continued leafing through his folder.  "The one that opened your kidneys is very dead, no mistake about that.  What you--from the looks of it--saw tonight was what I've been worried about.  Now, tell me what happened."
     Holtz took a deep breath and sagged.  "Okay, here it is.  At 9, I staked out the house, like you told me.  10, 10:30, nothing.  Then at 11:30, I'm freezing, electric socks and all.  The lights were on at the house all night with no movement inside.  The moon is full, so I had no trouble seeing all the way down."
     "Haven't seen it."
     "What?"
     "The moon ace.  I haven't seen it."
     "Of course not," Frank agreed.
     "Go on ace."
     "Right, so I saw some real funny prints.  Not like the one in the barn at all.  They went from small to large, fat, skinny.  Sometimes in pairs, and then for a long way only a line of singles like it was hopping on one foot.  Each one was like a...like a derivative of the next, like a series of little sculpture prints.  You know, Henry Moore?"
     "Knife edge, two piece."
     “Exactly.”
     "That was one of his works," Kirk said, "Knife Edge, Two Piece."
     "So you do know." 
     "I love Henry Moore;  "'The dean of modern sculpture'"
     Holtz continued:  "So I looped back and the tracks led to the house.  Then I started getting the turkey squirts, I can tell you.  There's a fence and a patch of trees across the field from the house about a football field away.  I saw it.  I thought it was a deer, but way too big.  It was loping along like a big cat or a gorilla.  It must have heard me, because it stopped."
    "You had the glasses?"
     Holtz pulled them from his pocket.
     "Did they work," Kirk asked.
     "Yeah, at first I was sick, then I wasn't.  Real hard to see through."
     "But you managed.  And you were protected.  That's the point."
     "Right!  I pulled the gun and I got it!"
     "You got it..."
     "Yes sir, I got it with one shot.  I wouldn't give odds on that little pop gun, but--"
     "What were you wearing?"
     "Wearing?"
     "Were you wearing what you have on now?"
     "I came right here."
     The ragged spots of blood now stood out like stars, the only light in a constellation of terror.
     "Did you leave the body up there," Kirk asked.
     "The body?"
     "Yes, for Christ's sake, the body!  Is the body of a policeman lying up there in the snow?"
     "No," Holtz replied evenly, "It just rolled away.  It went inside-out, upside-down and ran away.  But, I know it died.  It squealed like a pig and then stopped."
     "Did you track it?"
     "No Norm.  I just wanted to get out of there," Frank answered.  The old man was looking from side to side.  He was grabbing at the sheets. 
     "But the blood on your shirt.  Where did..."
     "That's my blood!  I fell on a barbed wire fence and ripped some of the stitches loose.  I know, it looks like I've been hit with buckshot."
 Kirk sighed.  "You've had a close one.  I feel like I've had a stroke.  I thought I told you to wear the rubber gear ace.  Cover up completely.  I thought you understood."
     "Man, so did I."
     "This time listen to me and you might live through the next confrontation."

     The corn was gone.  It was January, and sharp stubs rose from the black clotted earth.  A thin carpet of powdered snow lay just up to the boot tops in each furrow and a persistent wind pushed debris across the field.  Dawn had come and the first cold light came pink and gold into the trees. 
     Dead winter air flowed into the basement thorough the open cellar door.  The wedge-shaped opening, coated in gray flat paint, was connected to the side of the house.  It was a split-level frame dwelling on the edge of town.  Set apart, its owner enjoyed quiet and privacy.  The temperature inside was near freezing with the cellar door wide open and it had been open for most of the night.  A pool table sat in the middle of the floor and a bar and television filled one corner.  There were Miller Lite cans built into a pyramid on the bar, a monument to some paid holiday.  The cans were covered with dust, as was everything else in the basement.  On the wall an antique neon clock said Miller, The Champagne of Bottled Beer. A worn, cracked sign hung next to the front door. It was a crude carved plaque that said, The Rearsons.

      The TV was on.  The morning news show was into its third interview.  Bryant Gumbel was asking a doctor about the risk of breast implants.  The doctor was strongly denying any problems with the procedure or the materials.  The tube had been on for a month.  No one inside the house was interested in television or radio or Bryant Gumbel. 
      The first floor of the house was a neat combination of department store decor and mail order accessories.  A woman had been here once.  The kitchen was a tight little efficiency with glass-topped table, microwave, Formica counter, and refrigerator-freezer.  An assortment of plastic vegetable magnets held notes to the white metal door.  There were notes in crayon.  One said:

      Light slowly penetrated the kitchen.  In the far corner, along one beige wall, was a walk-in closet.  The rug was Karistan, completely out of place in such a bargain store home.  The off white rug was marred by a dark brown stain which ran like a river across the floor and splashed up the wall.  Dark spots were splattered from the door molding.  Dry and flaking, the stuff pooled in front of the basement door.  A brick red swath ran down the sink and across the tile floor. 
      In the closet, a fleshless torso, headless and shed of limbs, hung from the cross bar.  A loose bit of scalp dangled from the severed neck.  Several strands of blonde hair hung nearly to the floor.  The ribcage was tiny, almost like a toy. 
      As the day waned and the cellar darkened, the sound of sobbing filled the cinder block walls.  A man lay on a couch near the stairway.  His hands were clenched together and his head was bowed.  He could see the flesh of his fingers moving.  Tiny strands of pink skin lifted and rolled back to reveal the soft red epidermis of raw nerves.  Like an accelerated filmstrip of vines in growth, they sought each other and dug new cuts.  The man wept.  Feeling his organs squirm, his pants rotting away, he watched his legs coil out like snakes and fuse together.

    "Remember the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms?"
     Holtz thought.  "Dinosaur gets warmed up by a nuclear blast and goes to New York."
     "You got it.  After they shot it with a grenade they had another problem.  The blood was radioactive.  Everybody started to drop."
     "Yeah, the soldiers were passing out," Frank said.
     "Well, that's what we've got here.  If it died up there, it would have gushed all over the place.  I mean like Old Faithful, one of its nasty little ways.  I think this is much more complicated, but the same type of problem.  I've had some time to think.  Can't do much else here.  You see these books all over the bed.  Well, everything about this case, which is probably my last, is totally absurd.  And yet, people are dying.  A little girl has died.  My little niece has died.  That is the bottom line.  Nothing else matters but that we put whatever it is away and we might have to be the judge and jury.  I know now in my old age, that the people can't always be relied upon for good judgement.  So, what I'm about to say will seem pretty crazy.
     "Thousands of years ago, men drew pictures of beasts.  There were creatures that melted together with humans and monsters. Where did the pictures come from.  My question is, which came first?  Were all these creatures just imagined or did they exist?  If they were real and perhaps they just became extinct, then the pictures are drawn from life.  Maybe there was something about them that needed belief in order to stay around.  As people flourished and populations grew, the beasts began to vanish.  Or perhaps they were imagined hard enough that they came into existence.  I would never say that in polite company, but look at all the evidence.  People from all over the world say they see things.  This Jersey Devil was an unbelievable creature, eight feet tall with ink black skin, covered with thick silky hair, arms like a weight lifter’s, legs like a huge dog, cloven hooves, giant bat wings covered in gray leathery membranes and the head of a collie.  Most interesting, are the countless reports that the creature's eyes were human.  That they showed pain and compassion while the thing was flying off with an eighty-five pound sheep.  A totally fantastic image, but hundreds of normal people described it. 
      "I think the belief in evil, in monsters, is so great, that one, and hopefully only one has been born. 
     "We're against something real bad here Frank.  It may be some kind of disease, or an unknown species; a missing link, but we have to stop it.  Doctors and pencil pushers will take the credit.  They always do.  That blood thing is awesome and the only reason you can remember anything is because you put on the shades."
     "So, they're like a filter," Frank said.
 "That's right.  Unless you feel this thing, you could never understand it.  By the way, what the hell are turkey squirts?"
     "Loose bowels."
     "Turkey squirts.  I like that."
     "It's a 'Nam thing."
     "Hey, what the hell is going on here?"  A white coated attendant stuck his head into the room. 
     Holtz flipped his badge.  "State Police pal," he said.
     "You can't be in here!  It's too late," the man growled.
     "I can be anywhere.  We're on police business here, so get lost," Holtz said.
     "Yeah?  Well, do me a big public service and keep it down.  My job's on the line here."
     "Right chief, you got it," Frank agreed.
     "We'll try to keep it down young man," Kirk said soothingly.

     "You'll never see it, Frank," Norman said.
     "Then what did I see up there?"
     "I don't know, but if you get a good look, you don't survive." 
     "You think it's that bad?"
     "I know it.  But that's not all.  That day on the cliff, I'll tell you what.  I heard about it on the scanner and I knew.  A hundred other things went over the band that day and that one came on like a beacon.  I knew without a doubt that it wasn't what I heard it was.  He let me know.  Maybe Iranio wanted to clear his soul.  But I can tell you, that day I knew.  It was a goddamn duck call.  And I went right to it."
     "So," Frank said, "what are you saying?  That it's going to call me?"
     "Bet on it."

     Burt Whales got up before dawn.  Fifty-eight, just going gray, his blue eyes had seen a lot of history go past.  His great chest and broad shoulders had hauled bails and wrestled calves since he was six years old.  He swung his feet to the floor and knew the clock had to be wrong. 
     His tongue was spongy, sticking to the roof of his mouth.  He had started drinking when he found out about the cancer.  The Jew prick doctor said he could fight it.  And then he could put another addition on his College Hill fucking house, is what.  There wouldn't be any Kee-Mo for him.  He figured, a real man would throw himself under the tractor before he'd let those butchers have their way. 
     College Hill fucking pricks. 
     But the clock had to be wrong.  The cows knew when it was five o'clock, and they let him know. He hadn’t needed an alarm clock for thirty-five years.  He looked out the second story window, then back at Edna.  She didn't know about the "beknighted" tumor.  The word was benign, and it wasn't. 
      He went to the chair and pulled on his pants.  The pain in his side was already tugging at him.  Rubbing the steel wool on his chin, he stared out the window again.  Back in the groggy, Jack Daniels soaked recesses of his mind, he slowly grew alarmed. 
     The Whale's farm sat on a hillside between Bougher Hill and Route 611.  The main building was a one-quarter acre, wood and cement block structure with a peaked roof.  The barn door was at the top of a stone ramp that ran up from the road.  In the cattle yard, the muck of manure and mud was frozen solid in the numbing twenty degree morning.  Water troughs, all through the building, emptied into a large square drain that channeled everything into the yard.  The whole floor was regularly hosed into the drains at the end of the milking machines.  Fifty-three cows and three stud bulls were given a bath twice a week.  Burt stood in his kitchen and started a fire in the wood stove.  The kindling caught in a merry blaze and soon warmth spread into the air.  He glimpsed a headline before he poked in a tube of yesterday's newspaper.

     "Shame," said Burt.  He stood in the front door and pushed open the rusty screen.  It screeched on ancient hinges.  The sound was unpleasant to him and he swore he would oil it.  He slipped into his rubber boots and plaid hunting jacket.  Edna Whales rolled over upstairs, still asleep.  Burt stared and the ceiling and smiled as he heard the bedsprings squeak. 
     He listened.  There was something so odd. 
     Never heard that before.  Never...
     "Goddamn it," he shouted.  He quickly turned and went to the gun cabinet.  Reaching into the glass door, he yanked a box of deer shot from the shelf.  The shells rolled across the floor.  He slid his Ithica pump from the soft deer feet that made up the rack and rammed two rounds into the slide.  Burt headed for the barn.
     Each morning he awoke to the same concert.  The cows were hungry, and they let him know.  They loved Top 40 radio and when they woke they made so much noise they drowned out the boom box.  But on this morning, the music was all he heard.  The last of the top-of-the-hour news segued into Johnny B. Good.  Chuck Berry sang... Way down in Loozeeanna... 
     Burt crossed the road and walked down to the East Side of the barn.  He saw the drain.
     ...was a log cabin made of earth and wood...
 He said it again.  "Goddamn it."  The pump gun felt good.  With  the end of the barrel, he nudged the latch off its hook.  Steam rose in waves from the stockyard, from the cement drain pipe.  The ozone-copper smell rolled across his palate.  There was never steam.  A crimson fan spread in a thirty foot diameter from the square pipe.  It was ankle-deep in the narrow hallway leading to the stalls, sloshing around his black rubber boots.  He moved along through the dark slush.   They might have just gotten out.  Cows were stupid animals and they did stupid things.  But at feeding time, they stayed put. 
     "What the hell happened here," he whispered.
     He approached the door to the main stalls.  Just recently he had gotten lucky and bagged a woodcock with the gun he now held.  The engraving had cost him $500. It was the talk of the hunt club.  The gutted little bird had stank.  This smelled the same, but a hundred times worse. 
     Through the arched doorway, protruded the head of a black-and-white heifer.  The throat lay open like the gill of a deep-sea fish.  Its eyes were still glossy, fresh.  The tongue hung between yellow teeth, sheened with blood.  Whales moved closer.  He jerked back the pump, chambering a round,  wincing at the familiar sound.  The cow's head broke free and rolled down the step with a plop.  Suddenly the carcass was dragged from sight.
 

      Edna Whales was no longer on the intensive care list.  She was still roomed in the intensive ward.  It was a row of rooms close to Emergency with complex equipment lining the walls.  Here and there, fluid twirled though miles of clear plastic tubing and stainless steel.  Gauges ticked off the lives of heart attacks, auto accidents and cancer victims.  Stone-faced doctors and nurses hurried along the hall, pulling an obese, unconscious man. 
     Frank Holtz backed up against the wall to allow them passage. 
Mrs. Whales had hovered close to death for more than three days.  In pajamas, propped up with several pillows, she was pale and trembling; quite annoyed by the four intravenous locks strapped to her hands. 
     Most of the personnel knew him.  An intern nodded.  Pulling his wallet, Frank headed toward the door at the end of the hall.  "Mrs. Whales," he said softly.  "We just need to ask a few questions."  Inside, he leaned over, closed the door, and went back to the bed.  She was pushing a wad of white sheets to her nose. 
     "Please," Holtz said, "I know how painful this must be, but there are things we have to know."
     "No," she said, "I don't want to."  It was an anguished moan.  Her head was turned to the wall. 
     "I promise to be brief.  May I call you Edna?  Please, tell me about the barn."
      Edna Whale's teeth were in a glass on the night table.  Her mouth was a shriveled clam.  She began to tremble again uncontrollably as she spoke.  "I woke up real late--around 7."
     Frank had been there the day before and the woman was almost dead.  The doctors had given her a slim chance.   In what was becoming a familiar scenario, she was the only witness to whatever had happened. 
     "Go on," he said.
     "Well, I couldn't hear anything.  Like they was all gone--the cows.  That's why I slept so late."
     "Like they were gone..."
     "I never heard them quiet my whole life," she insisted.
     "Just take a deep breath," Frank said, trying to comfort her.
     "Burton hadn't come back to the house, so I didn't wake up.  My stomach was real nervous and I had to throw up.  There was a little throw up on the kitchen floor and I knew Burton had got sick."
     "Then you went across the road--to the barn."
     "The yard was frozen and it should've been just white, it having snowed, but it was like, black."
     "Did you see anyone?  Anything unusual."
     "I just yelled to Burton.  I seen the shotgun shells on the floor and I thought we had a dog in the barn.  Now and then we get a dog in the barn.  They scare the cows."
     "And what did you see...when you went inside," Holtz asked.
     "No," she wailed.  "No more.  No more."
     "Where was Burt when you saw him?  We have to know more about what happened in there if we want to catch the man that--"
     "You can't catch nobody that done that!  You can't catch what done that!"
     "Try," Frank said calmly.  "Just try."
     "My Burt was just hanging...upside down..."  Edna Whales began to stammer.  She paused, taking a deep breath, her lips drew back and she exhaled, screaming a primal, tremulous howl, like an infant.  "And he didn't have--any--any--sk-i-i-i-nnnn!"  She took another huge breath and cried,    "He--had--no--skin."
     Out in the corridor, a nurse saw the door close.  She listened for a moment, but heard nothing.  Edna was done. 

    "Look at this shit."
     "I just want to get out of here.  Man, look around.  There's nobody in the world that could do this."
     The two state cops huddled in a corner of the barn.  They smoked to keep from breathing the air.  There seemed to be nowhere to lean, nowhere to stand that was clean.  Their world had been reduced to a butcher's dream, the floor of a packing plant. 
     A man in white shirt and tie, looking tidy and out of place stopped and frowned.  "We're not happy to be here either.  But this is the job," he said.  He was taking pictures with an expensive Instamatic camera. 
     There were fifteen officers in the Whales' barn.  The floor was slippery, sticky.  They had doors and windows wide open because the air was impossible to breathe.  A young rookie knew that he would never have a career in law enforcement.  He stood in the middle of the carnage, surrounded by fellow officers, pieces of cows, legs, heads, strewn about the floor, in the stalls, and hanging from the rafters in impossible locations, tied with rope. 
     His name was Tim Brodski.
     Tim Brodski stood in the middle of the floor, with his wallet open to a snapshot of his two young children, a pair of girls.  He thought about his shoes.  They would never be the same after this.  How could he ever wear them in his house, with his wife?  Should he take them off before he came in, or throw them away now?  What would he wear?  He knew now that crime could stick to the shoes.  He walked backward toward the door where he knew that sunlight and fresh air and a ride home were waiting.  He fell over a red calf that had been torn in two.  They called another ambulance for Tim Brodski. 

    Edna Whales had been a matronly, hard working woman of 48 years.  She was a mother of five, now all grown and gone away.  The stunning terror of seeing her husband had blown a whole the size of a quarter in the side of her heart.  She lay suspended in the aftermath of a coronary by-pass.  It was a miracle that she lived at all.  As long as they had her on the table, they took care of that too.  Most of her functions, responses and basic needs were measured and monitored by blue, green, and red lines on a computer screen.  Her hands and wrists were banded with wires running to a shrine of electronic machines.  This was now the life of Edna Whales. 
     Then in one moment, the lights went out.  Several beepers sounded and were silent.  First three, then four, then they all went out.  They jumped and fluttered one last time, calling to doctors or nurses; anyone who would help, but no one heard.  When they did, it was too late to save Edna Whales.

    On the north side of the hospital, visitors saw a police car.  It wasn't one of the local cars.  It swerved on and off the double yellow line.  Then it disappeared into the blue-black New Jersey night.