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As I take two steps closer to the bed and line up the first of what I hope will be six head shots, steadying my hands and my aim with considerable effort, Hiskott throws his last trick at me, and it is his best yet I don’t kno he learned my real name, how he discovered ound of o online, to search for the truth of me as did Jolie’s new friend Ed He does not try to crawl into my head as before but with tremendous mental power casts into my mind the most beautiful face I’ve ever known, Stormy Llewellyn as she lived and breathed

I airl flaring through my mind’s eye It seems a desecration of herhole, but round two of his assault is worse He iht have looked a few days after death, with the lividity and bloat of a corpse, and he throws that picture at me, which almost drops ht be dead even as ht of Storlike sloth, and he es at rievous and dispiriting that they jolt me to the realization that Stormy was cremated within a day of death She was pure, and she was purified by fire, and nothing that feeds on the dead ever fed on her or ever will

Six hollow-point copper-jacketed cartridges froon’s head with finality, especially when each is fired froe than the one before it, the last with the ainst the hateful skull

That would have been the end of it, if I had but remembered that due to the fact that its nerves will fire for a while after death, a beheaded snake can still thrash as vigorously as one that is alive

TWENTY-SEVEN

As anyone knoho has seen a headless snake lash away the ghost of life that still inhabits its mortal coils, the decapitated body seems to whip more dramatically than it ever could have done when it was part of a complete creature The same is true of the Hiskott-alien hybrid In bed, he was a flaccidas lazily as worms in cold earth; but with his brains blown out, he is the crazed colossal squid froues Under the Sea, and he seeth of scalyin a destructive frenzy

The transforunshot, when his iy that ht have been stored in it for the past five years I ah not in a romantic sense, and thrown all the way back to the door by which I entered I crash just short of the threshold, rapping my head on the hardwood floor, a blow that no doubt does h for adouble for a couple of seconds, but whenroo pieces of its shattered head to puzzle back together and live again Great h they are made of balsa wood Lamps fly and shatter, red brocade draperies are torn from s to flare and fan as if the decapitated serpent is both bullfighter and bull, and those cascades of bones that slope to the ceiling in soes of skeletal fraght be knocked unconscious by a ham bone, which seems so apt as to be inevitable, I scramble across the threshold, into the upstairs hall, and thrust to my feet

To be certain beyond a doubt that this extraterrestrial anaconda will eventually spasm into a final stillness, as would any snake of this world, I need to bear witness But I can do that safely fro of the stairs and return for visual confir ceases

As I turn toward the stairs, I am more than dismayed to see the third of Hiskott’s caped and horned servants ascending after having escaped the cellar It is as quick and agile as the beast in the library, springing toward un

Just then, the headless stues out of the bedroo that Francisco Goya, Hieronyht have painted in collaboration after eating tooThe questing hands seize the servant thing The serpent uncoils into the hallway and coils again around the creature it has snared, crushing the life out of it as the greedy hands tear off its head

I retreat to the farther end of the hallway to watch the death throes of Harmony Corner’s tyrannical ruler After a reat thick length of the serpent ravels down upon itself in pale folds, like a deflated fire hose, and lies shuddering, twitching, until no trace current remains in its neural pathways

When the creature has been coh to approach it, although not foolish enough toremark about my vanquished enemy Modern movies don’t contain a lot of truth But this one lesson I’ve learned fro in my curious life: When you stand over the dead monster and, full of bravado, make a wisecrack, the monster will rise up, not dead after all, and make a last furious assault In half of thosesurvivors As I ale wisecrack cuts in halfout of this house alive If I am the equivalent of Tom Cruise, I will surely exit unscathed If I am the equivalent of Harry Dean Stanton or Paul Reiser or Wayne Knight, which I figure is far closer to the truth, then I’htly

I try to find places to step between the coils, but sometimes I have to step on theue, keep my balance, and leave behind pale iant bird of Arabian s The way events have been unfolding in the Corner, there’s every reason to suppose a roc--or a flock of thehborhood

As I’m pretty sure that the Jeep Grand Cherokee is not in any condition to be driven out of the house, I leave by the front door In the distance, the sh the haze, I can see the fire trucks, strea

In the front yard stand Jolie’s parents, Bill and Ardys Harmony, and three other people whom I don’t know but who must be, I assume, members of the family From their hopeful yet wary expressions, I can only conclude that they have felt Hiskott disconnect his open line to their minds

As I reach the head of the steps, soorously, and I cry out in alarm, because baby snakes can be as venomous as adults Those on the lawn cry out, as well, and take a step backward Fishing the thing from my pocket, I smile sheepishly and say, "Just the cell phone"

I take the call It’s Ed

TWENTY-EIGHT

Soray ashes, but no buildings have been lost to the fire I set When the wind bloay the last lingering wisps of ss is less sour than I expect, rather like a campfire smell