I AM NO T A S E RI AL KI L L E R

yard and talks and laughs and pretends that nothing is wrong, and meanwhile all our empty houses are ripe for burglary. This particular party was not about burglary, however, but serial killing—we were all gathered in a large, “safe” group, watching out for each other. There was even a little speech about safety, and locking your doors, and that kind of thing. I wanted to tell them that the safest thing they could do was to not bring everyone into Mr. Crowley's back yard, but he seemed tame enough that night. If he was capable of flipping out and murdering fifty people at once, he was at least not inclined to do it right then. I wasn't ready to attack him yet, either—I was still trying to learn more about him. How could I kill something that had already regenerated from a hail of bullets? This kind of thing takes planning, and planning takes time. More than to talk about safety, the real purpose of the party was to convince ourselves that we hadn't been beaten—that even with a killer in town, we weren't afraid, and we weren't going to collapse into a mob. Whatever. More important than any hollow declaration of bravery was the fact that we were roasting hot dogs, which meant I got to stoke a fire in the Crowleys' fire pit. I started with a massive blaze, burning huge blocks of wood from a dead tree the Watsons had cut out of their backyard over the summer. The fire was bright and warm, perfect for starting the party, and then as the safety talk dragged on, I went to work with the poker and a long pair of tongs, shaping and cultivating the fire to produce thick beds of bright-red coals. Cooking fires are different from normal fires, because you're looking for steady, even heat instead of simple light and warmth. Flames give way to low flares, and the brilliant red glow of wood burning from the inside out. I arranged the fire carefully, routing oxygen through miniature chimneys to create wide roasting ovens. Just in time, the meeting ended and the crowd turned to begin cooking. Brooke was there with her family, of course, and without making it obvious, I watched her and her brother as they skewered a pair of hot dogs and approached the pit; Brooke smiled as she crouched down next to me with her brother on the other side. They held their sticks out over the center of the blaze, where the flames still danced, and I wrestled with myself for almost thirty seconds before daring to talk to her. “Try down here,” I said, pointing with my tongs to one of the beds of coals. “They'll cook better.” “Thanks,” said Brooke, and she eagerly pointed the spot out to Ethan. They moved their hot dogs, which immediately began to darken and cook. “Wow,” she said, “that's great. You know a lot about fire.” “Four years of Cub Scouts,” I said. “It's the only organization I know that actually teaches little boys how to light things on fire,” Brooke laughed. "You must have done great on your arson

merit badge.“ I wanted to keep talking, but I didn't know what to say— I'd said way too much at the Halloween party. I probably terrified her, and I didn't want to do that again. On the other hand, I loved her laugh, and I wanted to hear it again. Anyway, I figured, if she made an arson joke, I could probably make one too without looking too creepy. ”They said I was the best student they'd ever had,“ I said. ”Most Scouts only burn down a cabin, but I burned down three cabins and an abandoned warehouse.“ ”Not bad,“ she said, smiling. ”They sent me to compete at the national level,“ I added. ”You remember that big forest fire in California last summer?“ Brooke smiled. ”Oh that was you? Nice work.“ ”Yeah, I won a prize for that one. It's a statue, like an Oscar, but it's shaped like Smokey the Bear and filled with gasoline. My mom thought it was a honey bottle and tried to make a sandwich.“ Brooke laughed out loud, almost dropped her hot dog skewer, and then laughed again at her own mistake. ”Are they done yet?“ asked Ethan, examining his hot dog. It was the fifth time he'd pulled it out, and it had barely had time to brown. ”Looks like it,“ said Brooke, looking at her own hot dog, and standing up. ”Thanks John!" I nodded, and watched as they ran back to the card table for buns and mustard. I saw her smile, and accept a ketchup bottle from Mr. Crowley, and the monster in my mind reared up and bared its fangs, growling angrily. How dare he touch her? It looked like I needed to keep an eye on Brooke, to keep her safe. I felt myself starting to snarl, and forced my mouth into a smile instead. I turned back to the fire and saw my mom smile at me mischievously from the other side. I growled inside—I didn't want to deal with whatever stupid comment she was sure to make about Brooke when we got home. I decided to stay at the party as late as possible. Brooke and Ethan didn't come back to the fire to eat, and I didn't get another chance to talk to her that night; I saw her handing out Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, and hoped she would bring one to me, but Mrs. Crowley beat her to it. I drank the chocolate, and threw the cup in the fire, watching the dregs blacken on the wood and the Styrofoam curl and bubble and disappear into the coals. Brooke's family left soon after. Soon the hot dogs were all roasted, and as people began to drift away, I fed the fire several large logs, stoking it into a column of roaring flame. It was beautiful—so hot that the reds and oranges accelerated into blinding yellows and whites, so hot that the crowd drew back and I shed my coat. It was as bright and warm as a summer day next to that fire, though it was nighttime in late December everywhere else. I walked around the edges, poking it, talking to it, laughing with it as it

devastated the wood, and annihilated the paper plates. Most fires crackle and pop, but that's not really the fire talking, it's the wood. To hear the fire itself you need a huge blaze like this one, a furnace so powerful it roars with its own wind. I crouched as close as I dared and listened to its voice, a whispered howl of joy and rage. In my biology class, we'd talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don't; trees do, plastic doesn't. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It ears everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are— brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't “get by.” Fire does. Fire is. “On what wings dare he aspire?” said a voice. I spun around and saw Mr. Crowley, sitting a few feet behind me in a camp chair, staring deeply into the fire. Everyone else had left, and I'd been too absorbed in the fire to notice. Mr. Crowley seemed distant and preoccupied; he was not talking to me, as I assumed at first, but to himself. Or maybe to the fire. Never shifting his gaze, he spoke again. “What the hand dare seize the fire?” “What?” I asked. “What?” he said, as if shaken from a dream. “Oh, John, you're still here. It was nothing, just a poem.” “Never heard it,” I said, turning back to the fire. It was smaller now, still strong, but no longer raging. I should have been terrified, alone in the night with a demon—I thought immediately that he must have found me out somehow, must have known that I knew his secrets and left him the note. But it was obvious that his mind was somewhere else—something had obviously disturbed him to put him into such a melancholy frame of mind. He was thinking about the note, perhaps, but he was not thinking about me. More than that, his thoughts were absorbed in the fire, drawn to it and soaked into it like water in a sponge. Watching the way he watched the fire, I knew that he loved it like I did. That's why he spoke—not because he suspected me, but because we were both connected to the fire, and so, in a way, to each other. “You've never heard it?” he asked. “What do they teach you in school these days? That's William Blake!” I shrugged, and after a moment he spoke again. “I memorized it once.” He drifted into reverie again. " Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, in the

forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?'“ ”It sounds kind of familiar,“ I said. I never paid much attention in English, but I figured I'd remember a poem about fire. ”The poet is asking the tiger who made him, and how,“ said Crowley, his chin buried deep under his collar. ” 'What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?'“ Only his eyes were visible, black pits reflecting the dancing fire. ”He wrote two poems like that, you know—'The Lamb' and The Tiger.' One was made of sweetness and love, and one was forged from terror and death.“ Crowley looked at me, his eyes dark and heavy. ”'When the stars threw down their spears and watered heaven with their tears—did he smile, his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?'“ The fire rustled and cracked. Our shadows danced on the wall of the house behind us. Mr. Crowley turned back to the fire. ”I'd like to think the same one made them both,“ he said, ”I'd like to think it.“ The trees beyond the fire glowed white, and the trees beyond those were lost in blackness. The air was still and dark, and smoke hung like fog. Firelight caught the haze and lit it up, overpowering the streetlamps and blotting out the stars. ”It's late,“ said Mr. Crowley, still unmoving. ”You run on home. I'll sit up with the fire 'til the coals die out.“ I stood and reached in with the poker, preparing to spread the coals around, but he put out a shaky hand to stop me. ”Let it be,“ he said. ”I never like to kill a fire. Just let it be." I set down the poker and walked across the street to my house. When I reached my room, I looked back and saw him, still sitting, still staring. I'd watched that man kill four people. I'd watched him tear out organs, rip off his own arm, and transform before my eyes into something grotesquely inhuman. Somehow, despite all of that, his words by the fire that night disturbed me more than anything he had ever done. I wondered again if he knew about me—and if he did, how long I had before he silenced me the way he silenced Ted Rask. I was safe at the party, and afterward, because there were too many witnesses. If I'd disappeared from his yard, after fifty or more people had seen me there, it would raise too much suspicion. I decided there was nothing I could do. If he didn't know, I needed to keep going with my plan, and if he did, then there wasn't much I could do to stop him. Either way, Iknew that my plan was working—my note had bothered him, maybe very deeply. I had to keep up the pressure, building more and more fear until he was terrified, because that's when I could control him. The next day I sent another note, another way, to make my intentions clear:

I AM GOING TO KILL YOU 12 Brooke woke up every morning around seven; her dad got up at six-thirty, showered and dressed, and then woke up the kids while their mom made breakfast. He went into Ethan's room and flipped on the lights, sometimes yanking the covers away playfully, sometimes singing loudly, and once actually tossing a bag of frozen broccoli into his bed when he refused to get up, Brooke, on the other hand, was more privileged— her dad simply knocked on her door and told her to wake up, leaving only when he heard her answer. She was a young woman, after all, both more responsible than her brother and more deserving of privacy. Nobody barged in, nobody peeked in, nobody saw her at all until she wanted them to. Nobody but me. Brooke's room was on the second floor of their house, in the back-left corner, which meant that she had two windows—one on the side, facing the Petermans' house, which she always kept tightly curtained, and one on l he back, facing the woods, which she kept uncovered. We lived on the edge of town, so we had no rear neighbors, no other houses behind us, and no people at all for miles in that direction. Brooke thought no one could see her. I thought she was beautiful. I watched her sit up into view, pushing aside the bedspread and stretching luxuriously before combing out her hair with her fingers. She slept in thick, gray sweats, which seemed like an oddly dull color for her. Sometimes she scratched her armpits or her butt—something no girl would ever do if she knew she were being watched. She made faces in her mirror; sometimes she danced a little. After a minute or two, she gathered up her clothes and left the room, headed for the shower. I wondered if I could offer to shovel their snow, like I did with Mr. Crowley, so I could put it where I wanted it and grant myself more access to the yard. It would probably be suspicious, though, unless I did the whole street, and I didn't have time for that. I was far too busy as it was.

Each day I found a way to give Mr. Crowley a new note— some on his car, like before, others taped to his windows or shoved into doorways, higher than Kay could reach. After the second one, none of the notes were direct threats. Instead I sent him evidence that I knew what he was doing: JEB JOLLEY-KIDNEY DAVE BIRD-ARM As I left him notes about the victims, I made sure to leave out the drifter he'd killed by the lake—partly because I didn't know his name, and partly because I was still afraid he'd seen my bike tracks in the snow, and I didn't want him to put two and two together. On the last day of school I sent him a note that said: GREG OLSON-STOMACH This was the biggie, because Greg Olson's body hadn't been found yet—as far as Crowley knew, nobody knew about the stomach. After he read it, he locked himself in the house, brooding. The next morning he went to the hardware store and bought a couple of padlocks, adding extra security to his shed and cellar door. I was a little worried that he'd become too paranoid and I'd start to lose track of him, but no sooner was he finished locking up than he came to our house and gave me a new key to the shed. “I've locked up the shed, John; can't be too careful these days.” He handed me the key. “You know where the tools are, so just keep it clean like you always do, and thanks again for all your help.” “Thanks,” I said. He still trusted me—I felt like whooping for joy. I gave him my best “surrogate grandson” smile. “I'll keep the snow shoveled.” My mom came down the stairs behind me. “Hello Mr. Crowley, is everything okay?” “I've added some new locks,” he said. “I'd recommend you do the same. That killer's still out there.” “We keep the mortuary locked up pretty tightly,” said Mom, “and there's a good alarm system in the back where we keep the chemicals. I think we're okay.” “You got a good boy,” he said, smiling. Then trouble clouded his face, and he glanced down the street suspiciously. “This town's not as safe as it used to be. I'm not trying to scare you, I just. . .” He looked back at us. “Just be careful.” He turned and trudged back across the street, his shoulders heavy. I closed the door and smiled.

I'd tricked him. “Doing anything fun today?” asked Mom. I looked at her suspiciously, and she put up her hands innocently. “Just asking.” I brushed past her and climbed the stairs. “I'm going to read for a while.” It was my standard excuse for spending hours at a time in my room, watching the Crowleys' house from my window. This time of day I couldn't get up close, so watching through the window was all I had. “You've been spending too much time in your room,” she said, following me up the stairs. “It's the first day of Christmas vacation—you should go out and do something fun.” This was new—what was she up to? I'd been out of the house almost as much as I was in it, creeping around outside Mr. Crowley's house, and Brooke's. Mom didn't know where I went or what I was doing, but she couldn't possibly think that I was spending too much time in my room. She had something else on her mind. “There's that movie we keep seeing ads for,” she said. “It finally made it to town yesterday. You could go see that.” I turned and stared at her again. What was she doing? “I'm just saying it might be fun,” she said, ducking into the kitchen to avoid my gaze. She was nervous. “If you want to go,” she called out, “I've got some money for tickets.” 'Tickets“ is plural—was that her game? There's no way I was seeing a movie with my mom. ”You can see it if you want,“ 1 said. ”I want to finish this book.“ ' ”Oh, I'm too busy right now,“ she said, emerging from the kitchen with a handful of bills. She held them out with an anxious smile. ”You can go with Max. Or Brooke.“ Aha. This was about Brooke. I felt my face turn red, and turned and stalked into my room. ”I said no!“ I slammed the door and closed my eyes. I was angry, but I didn't know why. ”Stupid Mom trying to send me to a stupid movie with stupid ...“ I couldn't say her name out loud. No one was supposed to know about Brooke—Brooke didn't even know about Brooke. I kicked my backpack and it slumped over, too full of books to fly across the room like I wanted it to. Sitting in the dark with Brooke wouldn't be so bad, I thought, no matter what movie it was. I heard her laugh in my head, and thought about witty things I could say to make her laugh again. ”This movie sucks—the director should be strangled with his own film.“ Brooke didn't laugh at that; her eyes went wide and she backed away, just like at the Halloween dance. ”You're a freak,“ she said. ”You're a sick, psycho freak.“ ”No I'm not—you know me! You know me better than anyone in the world, because I know you better than anyone in the world. I see things nobody else does. We've done homework together, we've watched TV together, we've talked on the phone to—"

Stupid phone—who was she talking to on the phone? I'd find out and I'd kill him. I cursed at the window and— I was in my room, breathing heavily. Brooke didn't know me because we hadn't shared anything, because everything we'd ever done together was really only stuff she'd done alone, while I watched through her window. I'd watched her do her homework a few nights ago, and knew that we had the same assignment, but that didn't count as doing it together because she didn't even know I was there. And then, when the phone rang and she picked it up and said hello to someone else, it was like a wedge between us. She smiled at the invader and not at me, and I wanted to scream, but I knew that no one was interrupting anything because I was the only one in the world who knew that anything was going on. I pressed my palms into my eyes. “I'm stalking her,” I muttered. It wasn't supposed to be like this; I was supposed to be watching Mr. Crowley, not Brooke. I broke my rules for him, not for anyone else, but the monster had shattered the wall and taken over before I even knew what it was doing. I barely even thought of the monster anymore, because we'd merged so completely into one. I looked up and paced across my room to the window, staring out at Mr. Crowley's house. “I can't do this.” I paced back to my bed and kicked my backpack harder this time, skidding it across the floor. “I need to see Max.” I grabbed my coat and rushed out without saying anything to Mom. She'd left the money on the edge of the kitchen counter and I grabbed it as I passed, shoving it into my pocket and slamming the door behind me. Max's house was just a few miles away, and I could get there pretty quickly on my bike. I looked away as I passed Brooke's house, and flew down the road too fast, not caring about ice or watching for cars. I saw myself putting my hands around Brooke's neck, first caressing it, then squeezing it until she screamed and kicked and choked and every thought in her entire head was focused on me, and nothing but me, and I was her whole world and— “No!” - My back wheel caught a patch of black ice and swerved out from under me, spinning me to the side. I managed to stay upright, but as soon as I was steady again I leaped off the bike, and picked it up and swung it like a club into a telephone pole. It clanged and vibrated in my hands, solid and real. I dropped it and leaned against the pole, gritting my teeth. I should be crying, I can't even cry like a human, I looked around quickly, to see who was watching. A few cars were driving by, but no one was paying me any attention. “I need to see Max,” I muttered again, and picked up my bike. I hadn't seen him outside of school in weeks—I spent all of my time alone, hiding in the shadows and sending notes to Mr. Crowley. That wasn't safe, even without my rules. Especially

without my rules. My bike looked okay—scratched, maybe, but not dented. The handlebars were skewed to the side, too tight for me to straighten without my tools, but I was able to compensate for it by holding them crooked. I rode straight for Max's house and forced myself to think about nothing but him. He was my friend. Friends were normal. I couldn't be a psycho if I had a friend. Max lived in a duplex by the wood plant, in a neighborhood that always smelled like sawdust and smoke. Most of the people in town worked at the plant, including Max's mom. His dad drove a truck, usually hauling wood from the plant, and was gone as often as he was home. I didn't like Max's dad, and anytime I went to his house, the big diesel cab was the first thing I looked for. Today it was gone, so Max was probably home alone. I dropped my bike in their front yard and rang the bell. I rang a second time. Max opened it with a dull expression, but his eyes lit up when he saw me. “Check it out, man—come see what my dad got me!” He threw himself onto the couch, picking up an Xbox 360 controller and holding it up like a prize. “He can't be here for Christmas so he gave it to me early. It's awesome.” I closed the door and took off my jacket. “Cool.” He was playing some racing game, and I breathed a sigh of relief— this was exactly the kind of mindless time sink I needed. “Do you have two controllers?” “You can use Dad's,” he said, pointing at the TV. A second controller was sitting next to it, the cord neatly rolled up. “Just make sure you don't wreck it, because when he comes back he's going to bring Madden, and we're going to play a whole football season together. He'll be pissed if you wreck his controller.” “I'm not going to hit it with a hammer,” I said, plugging it in and retreating to the couch. “Let's play.” “In a minute,” he said, “I've got to finish this first.” He unpaused the game and did a couple of races, assuring me between each one that it was just a tourney thing and it would be over soon but he didn't know how to save until he got to the end. Eventually, he set up a head-to-head race and we played for an hour or two. He beat me every time, but I didn't care—I was acting like a normal kid, and I didn't have to kill anybody. “You suck,” he said eventually. “And I'm hungry. You wani some chicken?” “Sure.” “We have some from last night. It was our early Christmas party for Dad.” He went into the kitchen and brought back a half-empty bucket of fried chicken, and we sat on the couch watching TV and throwing the bones back in the bucket as we finished each piece. His little sister wandered in, took a piece, and quietly wandered back to her room. “You going anywhere for Christmas?” he asked.

“Nowhere to go,” I said. “Us neither.” He wiped his hands on the couch and rooted through the bones for another drumstick. “What you been doing?” “Nothing,” I said. “Stuff. You?” “You've been doing something,” he said, eyeing me. “I've barely seen you in two weeks, which means you've been doing something on your own. But what could it be? What does the psychotic young John Wayne Cleaver do in his spare time?” “You caught me,” I said, “I'm the Clayton Killer.” “That was my first guess, too,” he said, “but he's only killed, what, six people? You'd do way better than that.” “More isn't automatically better,” I said, turning back to the TV. “Quality's got to count for something.” “I bet I know what you've been doing,” he said, pointing at me with his drumstick. “You've been mackin' on Brooke.” “'Mackin'?'”Iasked. “Making out,” said Max, puckering his lips. “Getting it on. Busting a move.” “I think 'busting a move' means dancing,” I said. “And I think you are a fat liar,” said Max. “Do you mean phat with a P-H or fat with an F?” I asked. “I can never tell with you.” “You are so totally into Brooke,” he said, taking a bite of chicken and laughing with his mouth wide open. “You haven't even said no yet.” “I didn't think I had to deny something that nobody could possibly believe,” I said. “Still haven't said no.” “Why would I be after Brooke.” I asked. “It doesn't even know I'm—dammit!” “Whoa,” said Max. “What's going on?” I had called Brooke “it.” That was stupid—that was. . . horrifying. I was better than that. “Did I hit a little too close to the target?” asked Max, relaxing again. I ignored him, staring straight ahead. Calling human beings “it” was a common trait of serial killers—they didn't think of other people as human, only as objects, because that made them easier to torture and kill. It was hard to hurt “him” or “her,” but “it” was easy. “It” didn't have any feelings. “It” didn't have any rights. “It” was just a thing, and you could do whatever you wanted with “it.” “Hello,” said Max. “Earth to John.” I'd always called corpses “it,” even though Mom and Margaret made me stop if they heard me. But I'd never called a person “it,” ever. I was losing control. That was why I came to see Max, to get in control again, and it wasn't working. “You want to see a movie?” I asked. “You want to tell me what the crap is going on?” asked Max.

“I need to see a movie,” I said, “or something. I need to be normal—we need to do normal stuff.” “Like sitting on the couch and talking about how normal we are?” asked Max. “Us normal people do that all the time.” “Come on, Max, I'm serious! This whole thing is serious! Why do you think I even came here!” His eyes narrowed. “I don't know,” he said, “why did you come here?” “Because I'm . . . something's happening,” I said. “I'm not... I don't know! I'm losing it.” “Losing what?” “Everything,” I said, “I'm losing it all. I broke all the rules, and now the monster's out, and I'm not even me anymore. Can't you see?” “What rules?” asked Max. “You're freakin' me out, man.” “I have rules to keep me normal,” I said. “To keep me . . . safe. To keep everyone safe. One of them is that I have to hang out with you because you help me stay normal, and I haven't been doing that. Serial killers don't have friends, and they don't have partners, they're just alone. So if I'm with you I'm safe, and I'm not going to do anything. Don't you get it?” Max’s face grew clouded. I'd known him long enough to learn his moods—what he did when he was happy, what he did when he was mad. Right now he was squinting, and kind of frowning, and that meant he was sad. It caught me by surprise, and I stared back in shock. “Is that why you came here?” he asked. I nodded, desperate for some kind of connection. I felt like I was drowning. “And that's why we've been friends for three years,” he said. “Because you force yourself, because you think it makes you normal.” See who I am. Please. “Well, congratulations, John,” he said. “You're normal. You're the big freakin' king of normal, with your stupid rules, and your fake friends. Is anything you do real?” “Yeah,” I said. “I. . .” Right there, with him staring at me, I couldn't think of a thing. “If you're just pretending to be my friend, then you don't actually need me at all,” he said, standing up. “You can do that all by yourself. I'll see you around.” “Come on, Max,” “Get out of here,” he said. I didn't move. “Get out!” he shouted. “You don't know what you're doing,” I said, “I need to—” “Don't you dare blame me for you being a freak!” he shouted. “Nothing you do is my fault! Now get of my house!” I stood up and grabbed my coat. “Put it on outside,” said Max, throwing open the door. "Dangit, John, everyone in school hates me. Now I don't even

have my freak friend anymore." I walked out into the cold and he slammed the door behind me. That night Crowley killed again, and I missed it. His car was gone when I got back from Max's, and Mrs. Crowley said he'd gone to watch the game. There wasn't a game that night foi any of his teams, but I drove downtown anyway to see if I could find him. His car wasn't at his favorite sports bar, or any of the others, and I even drove out to the Flying J to see if I could find him there. He was nowhere. I got home long patil dark and he still hadn't come back. I was so mad I wanted to scream. I threw my bike again and sat down on the driveway to think. I wanted to go see what Brooke was doing—I was desperate to see what she was doing—but I didn't. I bit my tongue, daring myself to draw blood, but stopped and instead stood up and punched the wall. I couldn't let the monster take over. I had a job to do, and a demon to kill. I couldn't let myself lose control before I did what I needed to do—no, that wasn't right. I couldn't let myself lose control at all. I had to stay focused. I had to get Crowley. If I couldn't find him, at least I could send him a note. I'd gotten so distracted today, I hadn't prepared one yet, and I needed to let him know that even though I couldn't see it, I knew what he was doing. I racked my brain for something I could write with without incriminating myself. The mortuary stationery was out, of course, and I didn't dare go upstairs looking for paper in case Mom was still awake. I ran over to Mr. Crowley's yard, nearly invisible in the darkness, and looked for something else. Eventually I found a bag of snow salt on his porch; he kept it there to salt his stairs and sidewalks for ice. It gave me an idea, and I came up with a plan. At one in the morning when Crowley pulled in, his car swung around and stopped suddenly, half in and half out of his driveway. There in the headlights was a word written in salt crystals, each letter three feet long on the asphalt and shining brilliantly in the headlights: DEMON After a moment, Mr. Crowley drove forward and smeared the words with his car, then got out and swept away the remnants with his foot. I watched him from the darkness of my bedroom, pricking myself with a pin and grimacing at the pain.

13 “Merry Christmas!” Margaret bustled in the door with an armful of presents, and Mom kissed her on the cheek. “Merry Christmas to you,” said Mom, taking a few of the presents and stacking them by the tree. “Do you have anything else in the car?” “Just the salad, but Lauren's bringing it up.” Mom's jaw dropped, and Margaret grinned slyly. “She's really here?” Mom asked quietly, poking her head out the door to look down the stairs. Margaret nodded. “How did you do it?” asked Mom. “I've invited her five times and couldn't get a yes out of her.” “We had a really good talk last night,” said Margaret. “Also, I think her boyfriend dumped her.” Mom looked around the room frantically. “We're not ready for four—John, run down and get another chair for the table; I'll set another place. Margaret, you're wonderful.” “I know,” said Margaret, pulling off her coat. “What would you do without me?” I was sitting by the window, staring intently at Mr. Crowley's house across the street. Mom asked me two more times for a chair before I stood up, took her key, and headed out the door. It was only in the past few days that she'd let me touch the key again, and then only because she'd bought too much food for Christmas and we'd had to store the extra in the mortuary freezer. I passed Lauren on the stairs. “Hey, John,” she said. “Hey, Lauren.” Lauren glanced up at the door. “Is she in a good mood?” “She almost blew streamers out her ears when Margaret said you were here,” I said. “She's probably killing a goat in your honor right now.” Lauren rolled her eyes. “We'll see how long that lasts.” She glanced up the stairs. “Stick close, okay? I might need backup.” “Yeah, me, too.” I took another step downstairs, then stopped and looked up at her. “You got something from Dad.” “No way.” “They got here yesterday—one box for each of us.” I'd shaken mine, poked it, and held it up to the light, but I still couldn't tell what it was. All I really wanted was a card—it would be the first news we'd had from him since last Christmas. I got an extra chair from the mortuary chapel and brought it upstairs. Mom was flitting from room to room, talking out

loud to herself as she took coats, and set the table and checked the food. It was her trademark style of indirect attention— not talking to Lauren or giving her any special treatment, but showing that she cared by making herself busy on Lauren's account. It was sweet, I guess, but it was also the embryonic stage of an “I do so much for you and you don't even care” yelling match. I gave it three hours before Lauren stormed out. At least we'd have time to eat first. Christmas lunch was ham and potatoes, though Mom had learned her lesson from Thanksgiving and did not attempt to cook it herself—we bought the ham precooked, stored it in the embalming room freezer for a few days, and then heated it up Christmas morning. We ate in silence for nearly ten minutes. “This place needs some Christmas cheer,” said Margaret abruptly, setting down her fork. “Carols?” We stared at her. “Didn't think so,” she said. “Jokes then. We'll each tell one, and the best wins a prize. I'll start. Have you done geometry yet, John?” “Yeah, why?” “Nothing,” said Margaret. “So there once was an Indian chief with three daughters, or squaws. All the braves in the tribe wanted to marry them, so he decided to hold a contest—all the braves would go out hunting, and the three who brought back the best hides would get to marry his squaws.” “Everyone knows this one,” said Lauren, rolling her eyes. “I don't,” said Mom. I didn't either. “Then I'll keep going,” said Margaret, smiling, “and don't you dare give it away. So anyway, all the braves went out, and after a long time they started to come back with wolf hides and rabbit hides and things like that. The chief was unim- pressed. Then one day, a brave came back with a hide from a grizzly bear, which is pretty amazing, so the chief let him marry his youngest daughter. Then the next guy came back with a hide from a polar bear, which is even more amazing, so the chief let him marry his middle daughter. They waited and waited, and finally the last brave came back with the hide from a hippopotamus.” “A hippopotamus?” asked Mom. “I thought this was in North America.” “It is,” said Margaret, “that's why a hippopotamus hide was so great. It was the most amazing hide the tribe had ever seen, and the chief let that brave marry his oldest and most beautiful daughter.” “She's two minutes older than I am,” said Mom, glancing at me with a mock sneer. “Never lets me forget it.” “Stop interrupting,” said Margaret, “this is the best part. The squaws and the braves got married, and a year later they all had children—the youngest squaw had one son, the middle squaw had one son, and the oldest squaw had two sons.”

She paused dramatically, and we stared at her for a moment, waiting. Lauren laughed. “Is there a punchline?” I asked. Lauren and Margaret said it in unison: “The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.” I smiled. Mom laughed, shaking her head. “That's the punchline? Why is that even funny?” “It's the Pythagorean theorem,” said Lauren. “It's a math formula for ... something.” “Right triangles,” I said, and looked pointedly at Margaret, “I told you I'd already done geometry.” Mom thought a bit, and then laughed again when she finally got it. “That's the dumbest joke I've ever heard. And I think the word 'squaw' is offensive.” “Then you'd better think of something better,” said Margaret. “Lauren's turn.” “I helped with yours,” she said, stabbing a bite of salad, “That counts.” “You then,” said Margaret to Mom. “I know you've got something funny in that head of yours.” “Oh, boy,” said Mom, leaning her chin on her fist. “Joke, joke, joke. Oh, I've got one.” “Let's hear it,” said Margaret. “Two women walked into a bar,” said Mom. “The first one looked at the other one and said, 'I didn't see it either.'” Mom and Margaret burst out laughing, and Lauren groaned. “A little short,” said Margaret, “but I'll let it slide. All right then, John, it's up to you. What have you got?” “I don't really know any jokes,” I said. “You've got to have something,” said Lauren. “Where's that old joke book we used to have?” “I really don't know one,” I said. I pictured Brooke laughing when we talked about the arson merit badge, but I couldn't really turn that into a joke. Did I know any jokes at all? “Wait, um, Max told me a joke once, but you're going to hate it.” “No matter,” said Margaret, “lay it on us.” “You're really going to hate it,” I said. “Get on with it,” said Lauren. “As long as it's clean,” said Mom. “That's funny,” I said, “because it's about cleaning.” “I'm intrigued,” said Margaret, leaning on the table. “What do you do when your dishwasher stops working?” Nobody offered an answer. I took a deep breath. “You slap her.” “You're right,” said Mom with a frown, “I hate it. But the good news is, you just volunteered to clear the table. Let's head into the living room, ladies.” “I say I won,” said Margaret, standing up. “My joke was funniest.” “I think I won,” said Lauren, “because I got away without telling one.”

They shuffled into the other room and I gathered up the dishes, Usually I hated clearing the table, but I didn't mind today—everyone was happy and no one was fighting. We might last longer than three hours after all. When I finished stacking dishes in the sink, I joined them in the living room, and we handed out presents. I had gotten hand lotion for everyone. Mom gave me a reading lamp. “You spend so much time reading,” she said, “and sometimes so late at night, I figured you could use it.” “Thanks, Mom,” I said. Thanks for believing my lies. Margaret got me a new backpack—one of those big mountaineer packs with a water bottle and a drinking tube built into it. I always laughed at the kids who wore them. “The pack you've got is falling apart,” said Margaret, “I'm amazed those straps are still attached.” “There's a couple of threads still hanging on,” I said. “This one will carry all your books without breaking.” “Thanks, Margaret.” I put it to the side with a resolve to try to remove that dopey water tube later. “I've never read this, so it might suck,” said Lauren, handing me a book-shaped present. “But I know there was a movie, and the title seemed kind of appropriate, if nothing else.” '. I opened it up and found a thick comic book—a graphic novel, or whatever the big ones are called. The title was Hellboy. I held it up and pointed at the title, and Lauren grinned. “It's two presents in one,” she laughed, “a comic book, and a nickname.” “Yay,” I said flatly. “The first person to call him 'Hellboy' has to open her presents outside,” said Mom, shaking her head. “Thanks, though,” I said to Lauren, and she smiled. “Time to open your father's,” said Mom, and Lauren and I each took our boxes. They were simple brown shipping boxes—we'd left them that way just in case the gift inside wasn't wrapped. You never knew with Dad. Mine was small, about the size of a textbook, but considerably lighter. I used my house key to cut open the packing tape. Inside was a card and an iPod. I tore open the card, slowly and deliberately, trying not to look excited. It had a goofy cartoon cat and one of those horrible poems about what a great son I was. Dad had written a note at the bottom, and I read it silently. Hey Tiger—Merry Christmas! Hope you had a great year. Enjoy ninth grade while you can, because next year is High School and it's a whole new ballgame. The girls are going to be all over you! You're gonna love this iPod—I filled it up with all of my favorite music, all the stuff we used to sing together. It's like having your Dad in your pocket! See you around!

—Sam Cleaver I'd already started high school, so he was a year off, but I was too intrigued by the music thing to care. I didn't even know where Dad was living—he hadn't put a return address on the package—but I could remember riding in the car and singing along to his favorite bands: The Eagles, Journey, Fleetwood Mac, and others. It surprised me, for some reason, that he remembered that, too. Now I could pull out my iPod, pick a song, and be closer to my father than I'd been in five years. The iPod box was still in shrink-wrap. I tore the plastic off, confused, and ripped open the box; the iPod was untouched, and the library was completely empty. He'd forgotten. “Dammit, Sam,” said Mom. I turned and saw that she had read the card—she'd seen the screwed-up school year and the broken promise, and she was hanging her head wearily, rubbing her temples. “I'm so sorry, John.” “That looks cool,” said Lauren, glancing over. “I got a portable DVD player and a DVD of the Apple Dumpling Gang—apparently we used to watch it together, and he thought it was special or something. I don't remember it.” “He makes me so mad,” said Mom, standing up and walking into the kitchen. “He can't even buy your love without screwing it up.” “An iPod seems pretty cool to me, too,” said Margaret. “Is there something wrong with it?” She read the card and sighed. “I'm sure he just forgot, John.” “That's the whole problem!” shouted Mom from the kitchen, She was banging dishes around noisily, venting her anger on them, as she clattered them through the sink and into the clisliwasher. “Still, though,” said Margaret, “it's better to have an empty one anyway—you can fill it with whatever you want. Can I look at it?” “Go ahead,” I said, standing up. “I'm going out.” “Wait, John,” said Mom, rushing in from the kitchen, “let's have dessert now—I bought two different pies, and some whip cream, and—” I ignored her, grabbing my coat from the hall closet and walking to the door. She called me again, but I slammed the door shut, stomping down the stairs and slamming the outside door as well. I got on my bike and rode away, never looking back to see if they had followed me out, never looking up to see if they were watching through the window. I didn't look at Mr. Crowley's house, I didn't look at Brooke's house, I just pedaled my bike and watched the lines in the sidewalk fly by and hoped to God on every street I crossed that a truck would slam into me and wipe me across the pavement. Twenty minutes later, I was downtown, and I realized that I'd ridden almost directly to Dr. Neblin's office. It was closed, naturally, locked and hollow and dark. I stopped pedaling and

just sat there, maybe for ten minutes, watching the wind whip curls of snow into the air, twirl them around and fling them into brick walls. I didn't have anything to do, anywhere to go, or anyone to talk to. I didn't have one single reason to exist. All I had was Mr. Crowley. There was a pay phone at the end of the street; the same one I'd used to call 911 a month before. Without knowing why, I propped my bike against it, dropped in a quarter, and dialed Mr. Crowley's cell phone. While it rang, I pulled up the tail of my T-shirt and wrapped it over the end of the phone to hide my voice, praying that would actually work. After three rings, he answered. “Hello?” “Hello,” I said. I didn't know what to say. “Who is this?” I paused. “I'm the one who's been sending you notes.” He hung up. I swore, pulled out another quarter, and dialed again. “Hello?” “Don't hang up.” Click. I only had two quarters left. I dialed again. “Leave me alone,” he said. “If you know so much about me, then you know what I'll do if I find you.” Click. I had to think of something to keep him on the line; I needed to talk to someone, to anyone, demon or not. I dropped in my last quarter and dialed again. “I said—!” “Does it hurt?” I asked, interrupting him. I could hear him breathing heavily, hot and angry, but he didn't hang up. “You ripped off your own arm,” I said, “and cut open your own belly. I just want to know if it hurts.” He waited, saying nothing. “Nothing you do makes sense,” I said. “You hide some bodies and you don't hide others. You smile at a guy one minute and rip his heart out the next. I don't even know what you—” “It hurts like hell.” He stayed silent a moment. “It hurts every time.” He answered me. There was something in his voice—some emotion I couldn't identify. Not quite happiness, not quite fatigue. It was something in the middle. Relief? Months of curiosity poured out in a flood. “Do you have to wait for something to break down before you replace it?” I asked. “Do you have to steal parts from people? And what about that guy in Arizona—Ernmett Openshaw? What did you steal from him?” Silence. “I stole his life.” “You killed him,” I said. “I didn't just kill him,” said Crowley, "I stole his life. He

would have had a long one, I think. As long as this, at least. He would have gotten married and had kids.“ That didn't sound right. ”How old was he?“ I asked. ”Thirty, I think. I tell people I'm seventy-two.“ I had assumed Openshaw was older, like the recent victims. ”You hid his body—well enough that no one ever found it— so why didn't you hide Jeb Jolley's? Or the two after that?“ Silence. A door closed. ”You still don't know, do you?“ ”You're acting like a first-time killer,“ I said, trying to puzzle through it. ”You've gotten better with each one, and you've started hiding the bodies, which makes sense if you've never done this before, but you have. Is it all an act? But why would you pretend to be inexperienced if you could just keep it completely quiet instead?“ ”Hang on,“ he said, and coughed. He muffled the phone, but I could still hear loud coughs. Fake coughs, it sounded like, and something else behind them. A rumble. He unmuffled the phone, but it was harder to hear than before—there was static on the line, or white noise. What was he doing? ”I acted inexperienced because I was,“ he said. ”I've taken more lives than you can guess, but Jeb was the first one I . . . didn't keep.“ ”You didn't keep? But—“ Could he keep souls? Could he absorb lives as well as body parts? Or could he take lives instead of body parts? ”You took Emmett's whole body,“ I said, ”and his shape. And you took someone else's body before that, and someone else's before that. It makes sense. You never had to hide the bodies before because you took everything, and left your old body behind. That's why there was so much sludge in Emmett's house—you discarded an entire body there, not just a part, and you—“ Ding . . . ding . . . ding. . . . ”What's that?“ I asked. ”What's what?“ he said. ”That noise. It sounded like a . . . " I slammed down the phone and grabbed my bike, looking wildly down the road. It was a turn signal. Crowley was in his car, and he was looking for me. There was no one on Main Street. I jumped on my bike and shot down to the corner, swerving around it too quickly and sliding on the ice. He wasn't on this street either. I righted myself and pedaled as hard as I could to the next corner and spun around that as well, in the other direction, away from his house and the route he was probably following. That's why he said so much. Mr. Crowley was on a cell phone, and he had caller ID—he must have figured out I was on a pay phone, so he kept me talking while he went outside, started his car, and went to look for me. There were only two or three pay phones in town, and he was probably checking

them all—the Flying J, the gas station by the wood plant, and the gas station where I'd been on Main. It had been closed for Christmas, thank goodness—there would be no clerks to describe me when kindly old Mr. Crowley showed up asking questions. But Christmas was also a problem—every building downtown was closed, every door locked, and every store empty. There was nowhere for me to hide. What would be open on Christmas in a tiny town like Clayton? The hospital—but no, there was probably a pay phone there as well, and Crowley might drop by to check it. I heard a car and turned straight off the sidewalk onto a snow-covered lawn, forcing my way along the side of an apartment building. There was a gap between two buildings, and halfway down a gas meter; I squeezed around it and crouched down on the other side, eyeing the street at the end of a long, brick canyon. The car I heard didn't pass by—I didn't know who it had been, or where it had been going, only that I needed to hide. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening there, shivering in the snow. I could feel my body reacting, shutting down from cold, but I didn't dare move. I imagined a fire-eyed Mr. Crowley driving back and forth across the town, weaving a net tighter and tighter around me. When it had been dark nearly an hour, I dragged my bike back out, my limbs stiff and my hands and Feet burning with cold. I made my'way home, saw that Crowley's car was parked neatly in his driveway, and went upstairs. The house was empty and quiet; everyone had left. 14 My phone conversation with Mr. Crowley ran through my head over and over for the next three days, to the exclusion of all else. Mom came home Christmas night crying and shouting that they'd spent the whole day looking for me, and where had I gone, and she was so glad I was safe, and a thousand other things that I didn't listen to because I was too busy thinking about Mr. Crowley. The day after Christmas, Margaret came back and the three of us went out to a steakhouse, but I ignored them and my food, deep in thought. I'm sure they thought I was despondent because of Dad's Christmas present, but I'd practically forgotten about that—all I could think about were Mr. Crowley's hints and confessions, and there was no room in my head

for anything else. By Wednesday, Mom had stopped trying to cheer me up, though I sometimes caught her staring at me from across the room. I was grateful to finally have some peace and quiet. Mr. Crowley had all but admitted to me that he used to steal entire bodies, but that now he was only stealing pieces. It made sense in some ways—it explained why the DNA from the sludge kept showing up as the same person, because the whole body had come from Emmett Openshaw. It also explained why he was so good at killing, but so poor at hiding the evidence. He probably killed Jeb Jolley out of desperation, dying for lack of a good kidney, and simply didn't think ahead about what to do with the body—he'd never had to do anything with it before. As the year went on and he killed more people, he got better at it, and even started looking for anonymous victims, like the lone drifter he took to Freak Lake. Even now, a month, later, nobody knew that man was missing, and that the Clayton Killer had claimed another victim just before Thanksgiving. Nobody knew about the one he'd killed just before Christmas, either—the one I'd missed— so I assumed that was a drifter as well. There could be others that even I didn't know about. It also gave me a pretty good idea of why he never took more than one piece of each victim. If taking the whole body also gave him that body's appearance, he was probably worried that talcing too many pieces from one corpse would start to overwhelm the appearance he was trying to maintain. His body could deal with an arm here and a kidney there, but if too much of that victim started to creep in, he might lose the Bill Crowley identity he was fighting so hard to keep. So yes, he was getting better at killing this way, instead of the old way, but the question remained: why had he changed? And why was there a forty-year gap with no killing at all? I tried to put myself into his place—a demon, wandering the Earth, killing someone and stealing his body and starting n new life. If I could do anything I wanted, why would I be here in Clayton County? If I could be as young and as strong as I wanted, why would I be old—so old I was falling apart? If I could kill one person and disappear without a trace, why would I hang around, killing a dozen people, and leaving more and more evidence that the cops could use to find me? ". I tried to build another psychological profile, starting with the same key question: what did the killer do that he didn't have to do? He stayed in one place. He maintained one identity. He got old. And he killed, over and over—that had to mean something. Did he enjoy it? He didn't seem to. But if I'd managed to figure out how he worked, then killing this many people was definitely something he didn't have to do. He had another option. So why was he doing it? If he didn't have to do something, that meant he wanted to do it. Why did he want to get old? Why did he want to stay in