Somebody was running toward them.

"Quickly," said Septimus. "This is it!"

Bill focused on the runner. Impossible at this distance to tell if it was a man or a woman. It had broken rank from the other line, and had passed the cabin. Its footfalls thumped the ground like a horse's as it travelled through the forest with inhuman speed. Its hair flapped like a dirty sheet.

"Come on," said Septimus. "Send your answer."

And Bill felt his arm lifted to the shoulder of Mr. Fancy. Whether Septimus had seized it or he'd performed the action unconsciously, he didn't know.

His hand brushed the dead man's suit.

And he knew everything about him.

Bill didn't have time to sort through the hundreds of thousands of memories that crashed through his brain, like a photo album of a life tipped over and dumped into a garbage can. He did catch a name: Peter Michael Puckett. And he caught the fact that the man hated his name, and had wanted to change it when he was eighteen years old, but his father had forbidden it, and threatening to withhold inheritance money. That scarcely mattered, though, because Peter's father had disowned him a mere three years later when Peter brought home a boyfriend.

Peter had been killed on Ocean Beach in San Francisco, where he had lived for the last twenty-three years. He'd been attending a costume party, hence the orange tie. Peter worked as a graphic designera*

a*and that was all Bill could absorb before Peter ran away from him, howling, babbling, flailing his arms above his head like he was swatting hornets.

"Go go go!" shouted Septimus, like a man at the racetrack urging on his favorite horse. "Get that motherfucker."

Bill stumbled backward. His hand stung, like he'd just slapped a hard surface.

In front of him, Peter ran toward the approaching figure. The runner was female, Bill saw, with a tattered dress that shone emerald-green in the morning light. Must have been killed during a formal dance, or something. The woman had worked her hands into her hair, and yanked at it as she ran.

Peter ran with shuffling steps, spraying up dry leaves and other forest-floor matter before him. His gut bounced free from his shirt. His tie flopped over his shoulder like a long tongue.

"Getting great!" said Septimus. "Watch!"

Then, right before the combatants collided, they stopped.

The woman gave her hair a vicious yank. This seemed to kill all her momentum, and after some tottering she fell to the ground with a thud.

The big man had skidded to a stop and now hovered over the body of the woman, like he was going to fall into her lap.

This tableau was frozen for a moment, as Peter hovered and the woman stared at him. The woman's eyes bugged. Peter's tie brushed against one of her breasts.

Then the woman screamed.

Bill slapped his hands over his ears.

The noise was like the screech of a saw cutting through a sheet of aluminum. The forest filled with the sound, and it echoed through the trees as if nature itself were possessed.

Then the woman put both of her hands into her hair, simultaneously scrabbling with her feet, pushing herself away from Peter. She gave her hair another yank and she was on her feet.

"Come on!" said Septimus. "Make him move! You've got a frozen Peter, Bill! Ha ha ha!" Septimus slapped him on the back, like he was just a buddy sharing a dirty joke.

Bill could only watch.

The woman took several staggering backward steps. She screamed again, and the pain in Bill's ears was like two knives jabbed into his eardrums, twisting until they found his brain. For an absurd second Bill focused on the woman's elbows, which were scuffed and scabbed and running with blood.

Then the screaming stopped.

The woman yanked at her hair until her arms trembled.

Another sound came through the forest. It was a wet ripping, accompanied by a snap like a green sapling breaking.

"Sick!" squealed Septimus, delighted.

As Bill watched the woman sprouted a necklace of blood, which flowed over her bodice, through her cleavage, and to the ground.

And then she pulled off her head.

Though his hearing had been dulled by the strident volume of the woman's scream, Bill could hear himself laughing. Why, he couldn't tell; perhaps it was just the patent absurdity of the situation, which was like something out of Constance's beloved horror movies. Like something you'd see on basic cable at one o' clock in the morning on a Tuesday, in a movie that had zero budget and more enthusiasm for it subject matter than actual technical merit.

"That's it!" shouted Septimus. "Have a good time! Laugh!"

The woman held her head in both hands, like it was some kind of cup. That would complete the imagea*the woman taking a sip from her own brains. Chugging down that gray-matter goodness.

Bill tried to stifle another laugh.

The woman's mouth was still working, and her eyelids fluttered as if she was having some kind of post-mortem orgasm.

"This is so very creative!" shouted Septimus. "Your wife has quite the mind for this!"

The woman held her own head by the hair, like she was a medieval warrior holding a ball and chain.

Bill wiped his eyes. Maybe the laughter was his mind's built-in pressure valves letting off steam, before stress made his head explode. Then he noticed his guy standing motionless, staring slack-jawed at the headless woman.

"Why isn't Peter moving?" he asked Septimus.

The woman's head opened its mouth, releasing a sound like a clogged drain. Bill wondered where it got the air to make any noise at all. That was one problem he'd always had with some of Constance's horror movies, like Re-Animator or The Brain that Wouldn't Die. Both featured severed heads that could speak, and Bill could only wonder how they had been able to do it without lungs. Even horror stories needed to follow some kind of logic, or else they were lost on Bill.

Then the woman's head screamed again. It had the same circular-saw-through-metal quality but thankfully it came with less force. The woman pumped her fist.

"Oh God," said Bill, again wiping his eyes. "I think I know what happens next."

The woman had backed up a couple of paces away from Peter. She raised her head, holding it at a level with the stump of her neck. There was no arterial spray.

She began to spin.

After a couple of revolutions, her head was standing out from her body, its hair taut. The screams had turned into some kind of babbling, like a deranged infant swollen to huge size.

As she spun closer to Peter.

Four, five, six spins, counted Bill, each one faster than the previous. And then, in the middle of a perfectly-timed revolution, her head smashed into Peter's.

The sound was wet but sharp. Peter threw up his hands and grunted as the woman's head latched itself to his neck.

The dead man staggered backward. The woman followed, holding her hair as if she were holding the leash of a psychotic dog. The head grunted and snarled.

Then the woman gave her hair a mighty pull, yanking her head away from Peter's neck. Peter fell, clutching at his throat, which had been mostly torn away. The dead man rolled across the forest floor and crashed into the narrow trunk of a birch.

The woman had pushed her head back onto her neck, and held it there with both her hands. Her eyes rolled, and a smile or a spasm crossed her features.

She turned toward the cabin, took a few faltering steps, and collapsed.

Her head rolled off, winding itself in a tangle of matted hair. The woman's body sprawled out nearby, motionless, her skirt pulled up over her thighs and all of her flesh covered in blood and sticks and leaves.

Bill stared at the two motionless bodies.

Septimus giggled.

Bill looked down the ranks of their deada*their soldiers, he supposed. Every one of them stared out into the forest, oblivious of the scene that had just played out before them.

Likewise with the line of the dead on the other side of the cabin. In the brightening morning, he could discern more detail. All of the dead, at least the ones he could see in the massive queue, were dressed formally. There were a couple of women, both short and chubby, dressed in a larger version of the emerald-green dress with white faux jewels on the bodice. Next to them, leaning against the tree, was a man in a tuxedo. One of the sleeves had been torn away from the jacket, and a stump of an arm jutted out from its side, resembling nothing more than a giant broken stick.

Bill shuddered. Tuxedos and gowns. The people's dress reminded him of his wedding. It had been important to Constance that all of the guests dressed up.

Where had Terris gotten these people? Had he gone on some kind of country-wide raid like Septimus? Or had he preferred a kind of one-stop-shopping, and killed them all in one spot?

Bill stared at the bodies of Pete and the woman. Part of him wanted to go down to them, drag them off into the woods, give them a decent funeral. They were still people, he supposed, and deserved a little bit of dignity.

"Up here," called someone.

Bill looked in the direction of the voice. He squinted against the rising sun, raised his hand to block it.

"It begins!" shouted Septimus.

"Indeed," said Terris.

Through the solar glare, Bill made out Terris on the roof of the cabin. The relatively bright light didn't flatter the short man: dark stains criss-crossed his suit, and the wrinkles and loose skin on his face were like dirty fabric draped over his skull.

But his smile was unmistakable.

And Constance stood next to him.

"Wonderful!" shouted Terris. "See what she did?"

Constance stood with her arms folded and her pink hood pulled up. Even next to the short man she looked small, vulnerable. Her white hair streamed out of the hood, floating around her face.

"Constance!" Bill called. "Are you all right?" His guts twisted into knots. What had his wife seen? What had she endured over the night? What had she done?

"She hasn't been talking much, since last night," said Terris. "She had a lot to do. She was magnificent."

Immediately, a vivid image blazed into Bill's mind: his wife underneath Terris, her skinny legs spread, the magician thrustinga*

"Fucker!" yelled Bill. "If you did anything to hera*"

"I'm all right, darling," said Constance.

Bill shaded his eyes, stumbled a few steps toward the cabin. He couldn't see Constance's eyes, but felt them burning out from underneath the pink hood. A bloodstain crossed her chest like a bandolier.

"Are you all right?" Bill cried, hearing his voice break. He wanted to leap onto the roof, take her in his arms, and leap away into the forest and to safety.

"I'm fine, fine," she said. Her voice was quiet, scarcely above a whisper, but it carried across the forest floor. "Bill, darling, you don't have to worry."

"Bullshit! Come on, let's go!"

"No," she said.

"What?"

"Can't get out, Bill. We're here 'til the end."

"No!" he shouted. "Have to go! Now!"

Terris put his stumpy arm around Constance's shoulders. "She's right," he said. "In this until the end."

Then Terris looked to Septimus. The two psychos grinned at each other. Bill sensed something passing between them. They were communicating, he knew, and wished he could intercept the signal. What kind of evil bullshit was passing between them? And how the hell were they doing it? Wireless communication of the damned?

"All right," said Septimus, after a few moments of intense silence.

Then he turned to Bill. "Son, come here to my side."

"No," said Bill.

"But I have good news. You and your wife can sit this one out," said Septimus. "Would you like to go and see her? I've arranged for it. There's...a lot she needs to tell you."

"Yes!" shouted Bill. "Yes, let's geta""

"Get inside the cabin," said Septimus. "Before things start, and you have to wade through blood."

Nineteen.