I picked up one of its arms, looking closer at the wound, and was surprised to feel the joint resist the movement – just like Marci’s had. Rachel’s been dead too long for rigor mortis, and Marci hadn’t been dead long enough. Why are they stiff? I moved the arm, testing the motion in the shoulder, the elbow, the wrist. It was slow, but not solid; it moved, but with just enough resistance to feel odd. I moved the legs and they felt the same, but I didn’t know what to do beyond that. I set the legs down, picked one up again, then swore and set it back down. I don’t know what to do.
I looked at the wounds again, picking up each hand in turn and peering into them, poking at them with the scalpel. They had been well-cleaned by the Coroner, and I saw nothing out of the ordinary: a long, clean cut down the length of each forearm, opening the artery in a lateral gash nearly eight inches long. It ended just past the wrists. You take someone’s pulse in their wrist, I thought. A wound like this would have bled uncontrollably, spilling out her life in seconds.
She bled to death, just like Marci. Why does Nobody kill them this way? What does she get out of it? What does it mean?
I forced myself to slow down, to consider the situation more clearly. What did the killer do that she didn’t have to do? If she wanted to kill, all she really had to do was find someone and kill them: instead she chose to focus on teenage girls, all of them fairly pretty, all of them generally well-liked. It was almost a progression, really, from the wallflower Jenny to the more active Allison and Rachel, to the social dynamo of Marci. Each victim was a step closer to me, but I wondered if it might be more than that; whether the lifestyle of the victims themselves – their looks and clothes and lives – was also a factor. What would make someone want to kill young, attractive, popular girls? Was it desire? Was it jealousy?
Then there was the wound itself to consider: why make it look like suicide? And how did she make it look like suicide? I examined the rest of Rachel’s body, looking for defensive wounds, but there was nothing: her hands were free of nicks and cuts, her arms had no bruises from an attack or a solid grip; there were no abrasions or rope burns to suggest that she was bound or tied. Everything pointed to the idea that she was a willing participant in the death. Even the wrist slits were too clean to have been done without stillness and precision. Does Nobody incapacitate them some other way? She’s a demon, so she can do anything. Does she put them to sleep, or control their minds? Yet Marci, judging by the sprays of blood around the room, had struggled. But she hadn’t struggled against anybody. It doesn’t make sense.
I picked up a comb and went through the hair, checking the scalp for any kind of bruises or wounds. Nothing. The base of the skull was clear, too – no cuts, no puncture wounds. Not even the pinprick of a hypodermic needle.
‘Help me roll it over,’ I said, waving my mom to the table. I put my hands under the shoulder, but Mom rested her hand on my arm, stopping me.
‘We’ll do it. You close your eyes.’ She nodded to Margaret, who stepped away from the wall and approached the table slowly. They positioned themselves on the body’s left and paused, watching me. I closed my eyes and listened to the rustle of clothes, the shuffle of feet, the faint click of fingernails on the metal table. ‘Open.’
I opened my eyes and saw the body lying on its face, a privacy towel draped over the buttocks. The back was dark and discoloured, but that was common as the blood settled in a corpse. I poked at the back, ran my hands over it feeling for holes or cuts, but there was nothing. I sighed, leaning heavily on the table.
‘There’s only one place left to check,’ I said, ‘and I’m gonna bet you’ll want to do it yourself.’
Mom looked at me, her eyes wet and red. ‘You think she was raped?’
‘I have no idea. Probably not.’
‘Then we refuse,’ said Mom. ‘And you’re not going to do it either.’
I looked up, calm and cold. ‘I’m giving you one chance. Do it, or I will do it for you. There’s probably nothing there, but I refuse to let any more people die because your sense of propriety made me miss a clue.’ We stared at each other, testing the other’s will, until finally she grumbled and stepped up to the table.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Anything – damage, wounds, anything at all. Anything that might tell us who killed her, or why.’
‘Fine. Close your eyes.’
I did, and listened for a few minutes as Mom and Margaret rustled the privacy towel, whispered lowly to each other, then rolled the body over and whispered further.
There’s nothing here, I thought. Maybe there really is no more evidence on the bodies; maybe it’s just pure mind control with no physical evidence. Maybe we can never catch her at all.
‘Nothing,’ said Mom. ‘There’s nothing there.’
I sighed and leaned against the wall, feeling my energy drain away. ‘Then we’ve lost. I don’t know what else to do.’ I felt a hand on my shoulder, and opened my eyes to see Mom standing next to me.
‘Just rest.’ She pushed me gently towards a chair, and I collapsed into it. ‘Your girlfriend died – your best friend – and you need to deal with it. It’s completely understandable that you don’t know how.’ She smiled – a thin, painful smile. ‘An amateur autopsy isn’t how most people would choose to do it, obviously, but I know your heart’s in the right place.’
‘My heart has nothing to do with it.’
‘Just rest,’ she said again. ‘Take a minute, then we’ll go upstairs and eat. Margaret can finish this on her own. You left without any breakfast this morning, so it’s no wonder you’re feeling weak now.’
I stared at the body on the table, dull and lifeless, nearly bloodless, the embalming tubes hanging limply from its shoulder.
Nearly bloodless . . . Yet its back is just as bruised and blackened as any other corpse.
I stood up abruptly. ‘Plug in the pump.’ I crossed to the wall and pulled down the drain tube.
‘It’s okay,’ said Mom, ‘it can wait.’
‘No, it can’t.’ I attached the drain pipe to the tube in Rachel’s neck. ‘The back is too bruised for the amount of blood she lost, and her limbs are stiff. There’s something inside, and we need to get it out.’ We normally dropped the tube down to a drain in the floor, but this time I put it in a bucket. I wanted to catch whatever dripped out.
‘It’s just rigor mortis,’ said Margaret gently.
‘It’s been dead five days,’ I said. ‘It’s not rigor mortis.’ The two women looked at each other, and I walked to the shelf with the embalming chemicals. ‘You can stand there or you can help; either way I’m embalming her right now.’
They hesitated a moment longer, then moved slowly into action: connecting the pump, mixing the coagulants and dyes, measuring out the formaldehyde. We attached everything, sealed off the wrist wounds with tight bandages, then turned on the pump. It was designed to use the body’s own circulatory system, filling it with our chemical cocktail while pushing all the ichor out the other side. Mom adjusted it carefully, looking for a good rhythm to approximate the beating of a heart; she fiddled with it much longer than normal.
‘There’s something wrong,’ she said. ‘I can’t get it to push through.’
‘The arteries are mostly empty after this much blood loss,’ said Margaret. ‘They’ve probably collapsed.’
‘There’s something blocking them,’ I said, my eyes fixed on the bucket. ‘Just raise the pressure.’ Mom twisted the dial and the pump hummed more loudly, its artificial heartbeats closer together. Soon the drain tube moved, twisting slightly to the side as it filled and pressurised, and then a thick, dark sludge began to drip out into the bucket.
Ashy and black, just like Crowley and Forman.
Mom gasped.
‘What on earth is that?’ muttered Margaret, leaning over the bucket with her jaw hanging open.
I looked up at Mom. She looked back silently, eyes wide. I breathed heavily, feeling suddenly exhausted. ‘We were right.’
> She stared a moment longer, then said feebly, ‘What do we do?’
Margaret scooped up a fingerful with her gloved hand; the sludge was burned and greasy, like the charred residue from an uncleaned grill. ‘How did Ron not notice that her body was filled with this crap?’
‘Because they assumed it was a suicide, and they never looked any deeper. You didn’t notice it with the other girls because you pumped it all straight into the sewer drain.’
‘It looks like the stuff they used to find at all the Clayton Killer crime scenes,’ said Margaret.
‘Exactly,’ I said.
She looked at me, then at Mom. ‘What’s going on?’
I reached down with my glove and dipped my finger in the muck, pulling it up and looking closer. Exactly like Crowley and Forman. ‘It’s a demon,’ I said softly. ‘Or the remains of one. It was living inside of her. It was controlling her.’
‘A demon?’ echoed Margaret. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. A moment later she spoke again. ‘What do we do?’
‘We call the police,’ said Mom, turning off the pump. ‘We call Agent Ostler -’
‘We can’t,’ I said.
‘- and we get her over here,’ she continued firmly, ‘and we show her everything.’
‘We can’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve told you before, we can’t trust anyone in the FBI. If Forman was a demon, who’s to say Ostler’s not?’
‘We have to warn them.’
‘Who?’ asked Margaret.
‘Everyone,’ said Mom. ‘If we can’t go to the police we go to the news.’
‘And get laughed out of town,’ I said.
‘We can’t just sit here!’ Mom shouted.
I looked at the sludge again, imagining it inside of Marci’s veins, controlling her movements, cutting her own wrists while Marci tried in vain to fight it off. How did it get in there? And why? Forman’s confession rang in my mind: ‘We are defined by what we lack.’ What does Nobody lack? A face, a name, an identity. A boyfriend. Cute clothes. She wants a normal life so she takes theirs, just like Crowley used to do, only Nobody doesn’t kill them – she takes them over mind, body and soul.
I searched back through my memories of the last few weeks, trying to remember any clues about what the demon did or said. How long had it been there? What was really Marci, and what was the demon? Was the kiss real? Was the dance? But Rachel hadn’t died until a few hours after the dance, so it hadn’t gotten to Marci until the next morning, at the earliest. And Rachel had been acting so weird that night, anyway, talking about . . . about Marci. She had talked about Marci all night, now that I thought about it, praising her and fawning over her. The last words I ever heard her speak were something about how she wanted to be – what? To be like Marci? To be Marci?
I froze. Marci had said the same thing just hours ago, before she died: ‘I wish I could be . . .’
She’d been talking about Brooke.
Chapter 24
I ran for the door.
‘John!’
‘I have to go.’
‘Look at yourself!’
I looked down – my finger was still covered in sludge, my gloves and apron pink with blood. I stripped everything off and threw it in the trash.
‘Where are you going?’ Mom asked, but I ignored her and bolted out the door in a sprint to Brooke’s house.
Marci had been talking about Brooke ever since the dance: how brave she was, how strong she was, how close she was to me. When we’d seen her at Friendly Burger she’d almost fumed with jealousy; when I called her this morning and warned her about the demon, the first thing she’d thought of was Brooke.
How does it travel without being seen? How fast can it move? It’s been four hours, maybe five, since Marci died. Am I too late?
I leaped up the steps to Brooke’s porch and hammered on the door. ‘Open up!’ I heard footsteps inside, and banged again. Brooke’s mom opened the door.
‘Hello, John—’
‘Did Brooke go to school this morning?’
‘I . . .’ She stopped in surprise. ‘Um, no, no; she said she felt sick—’
I shoved her out of the way and ran through the door, charging down the hall and up the stairs to the first floor. The layout was different from the Crowleys’ house, but it was easy enough to guess which door led to the back corner room. I swung around the edge of the banister, Brooke’s mom shouting after me, and slammed my fist on the bedroom door. ‘Brooke! Brooke, open up, it’s John.’
‘I don’t want to see anybody today.’ Her voice was weak.
No, please no. I jiggled the knob, but it was locked. ‘This is important, you have to let me in.’ I don’t know how to save you if it’s already inside.
‘John Cleaver!’ shouted her mother, pounding up the stairs after me. ‘What do you think you’re doing!’
‘Please, Brooke, there might still be time – you’ve got to open the door.’ I slammed my hand on it, nearly breaking it. ‘Open the door!’
Brooke’s mom grabbed me from behind, pulling me back, and I fought to push her away. ‘You don’t understand,’ I shouted. ‘She’s in danger!’
The lock clicked, and the door cracked open. I lunged forward, dragging her mom with me. Brooke’s voice leaked through the open gap. ‘It’s okay, Mom.’ The door swung wide, and there she was; the skin under her eyes was dark, like she hadn’t slept in days, and she moved slowly, stiffly, like a zombie back from the dead. I stopped struggling and stared, mouth hanging open.
‘No.’ I’m too late.
‘You look horrible,’ said her mom, letting go and pushing past me to Brooke. ‘Are you okay? I should call the doctor.’
‘It’s nothing, Mom, I’m just tired. I’ll be fine in a few hours.’
‘No,’ I said again, stumbling against the banister. ‘Please, no.’
‘What’s going on?’ asked her mother.
‘It’s nothing, Mom,’ said Brooke. ‘He just heard I was sick and came to check on me. I must look pretty terrible to get this kind of reaction out of him.’ She smiled, stiff and weak.
Her mom frowned. ‘Whatever his problem is, I want him out of the house right now. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, John, but I have half a mind to call the police, the way you barged in here like that.’
I stared at Brooke, my mind numb. What do I do? How can I stop her? If it’s already inside, there’s nothing I can do at all.
‘I’ll go,’ I said. Her mom let go of me, and I took a step back towards the stairs. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m fine, John,’ said Brooke. ‘Really. Things were bad before, but now I feel . . . perfect.’
It’s over.
I locked my bedroom door and flopped onto my bed, covering my eyes and gritting my teeth until my jaw hurt with the pain.
Nobody’s inside Brooke now. Nobody is Brooke. I can’t kill one without killing the other.
The phone rang, but I ignored it; Mom could check the messages when she came upstairs later. I worked backwards through my memory, tracing Nobody’s path from girl to girl. There’s got to be something I’m missing; some key piece that will unlock it and make it all work. The demon started in . . . I didn’t know. A body no one had found yet. From there she took over Jenny Zeller, spent some time in there, then in June she killed her and jumped to Allison Hill. She stayed in Allison for two months before jumping over to Rachel. What had Rachel said the morning Allison died? ‘She called me five times last night.’ Then it was the same with Rachel, obsessing over Marci all night at the dance; now Marci had grown obsessed with Brooke. I pulled a notebook from my backpack and wrote it down:
Intense focus on a new host right before killing the current one.
What prompted the obsession? Was it simply a slow hunt, with me as the prey? But that didn’t make sense; if the demon knew who I was, it didn’t have to spend months jumping from one girl to the next – it could have just come straight for me. And in the morning, when I’d told Marci about
the demons, I was really talking to Nobody: I was telling the demon herself that I was the one she was looking for. The hunt was over, and all she had to do was kill me, but instead she killed her host and jumped into Brooke. If I wasn’t her target, it had to be something else.
The phone rang again, loud and insistent. I let it ring. What did I say to Marci this morning? I thought. What happened in our conversation that made Nobody want to leave Marci and take over Brooke? I’d warned Marci about the killer; I’d told her I’d come over; I’d told her she’d be safe if she wasn’t alone. Was that it? Maybe Nobody got spooked, and thought that if she didn’t leave Marci right then, that she’d never get the chance, since Marci would never be alone again. Now that I’d visited Brooke, did Nobody know that I’d figured her out? Had I just put Brooke into danger?