He screamed and screamed, but not with those lungs. Not with that voice. Those things, each physical part, no longer belonged to him. They existed around him. He existed within. Disconnected from control but still connected to every single nerve and sensory organ. He felt it all. From the scrape of teeth on jawbone and vertebrae to the sluggish movement of half-chewed meat sliding down his throat. He felt it all. He was spared nothing.
His screams echoed in the empty darkness. If anything, any part of his cries, escaped, it was only as the faintest of whispers. Merely a low and plaintive moan.
Hartnup tried to pull back. He tried to throw away the ragged red thing that he held in his hands … and even though he could feel the flex of muscles in hand, wrist, biceps, shoulders, and chest, he could control nothing. He owned nothing except a terrible awareness.
God, he begged, let me die.
But his own voice whispered to him, I’m already dead.
The teeth bit and tore and chewed.
This is impossible. How can my body do these dreadful, disgusting things?
No voice, inside or out, offered an answer.
He hung trapped in darkness, an unwilling passenger, unable to move so much as a finger or a nostril. Nothing.
His body dropped to its knees, shaking its head to worry a chunk of flesh from the corpse.
I am in hell.
The body bent over its feast, biting and tearing.
I am a monster.
I am a hollow man.
In his sensate darkness, Doc Hartnup screamed and screamed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DOLL FACTORY ROAD
STEBBINS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
“So, what’s the plan?” asked Goat. “Do we just roll up on Doc Hartnup and say, ‘Dude, we hear you got a dead serial killer in the fridge. Can we take his picture?’”
Trout snorted. “Ambush journalism? Sure. ”
“You serious?”
“No. We have to finesse him or he’ll clam up, throw us the hell out, and call Aunt Selma to tell her to raise the drawbridge. ”
“So what’s our evil master plan?”
“We hit him with a cover story. We tell him we’re doing a story about the death business. You know, the coroner’s office, old folks’ homes, cemeteries, mortuaries, that sort of thing. We’ll tell him it’s going to be a series. Sober and compassionate stuff about the process of dying and the various stages of caregiving before and after death. Respect for life even in death, shit like that. ”
“Yeah,” agreed Goat. “He’s kind of New Agey. … He might buy it. ”
They drove for a few seconds.
“On any other day,” Goat said, “it’d be an okay story, too. ”
“I know,” agreed Trout. “I was thinking that while I was saying it. ”
“How’s that get us to Gibbon and Aunt Selma?”
“Not sure yet. If the cover story gets us in the door then we work him a bit, try to get him on our side. Maybe even cut him in on it. Feed him the Hollywood angle. The best-seller angle, too. If he can’t see the marketing advantages of that … then, well that leaves bribes and threats. ”