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The man in black asked, "Do you see it?" Falconer's eyebrows came together, trying to think his way through the impossible. Again. Falconer was seeing her hand. I know, because, I can do it whenever I want. It's not easy, it takes concentration. Like choosing to see water spots on your windshield instead of the road outside. I tried it now, and in seconds I saw Amy with two perfect hands. I blinked, and the left disappeared again. I could see it, for the same reason I could see the shadow people, or those strange creatures from the other side. The man in black said, "The ghost in the machine, detective." Falconer slowly shook his head, back and forth. But said nothing. His mouth never did close all the way. I said to the man in black, "The bug thing, it showed up in my bed. Did it come for me? If so, why?" "It didn't come for you. It came because of you." "I don't understand." "You don't want to. Haven't you ever wondered why these events seem to follow you? You're fond of saying this town is haunted. And it is. By you." Falconer turned to me, something clicking into place in his brain. He said, "It's you, isn't it? You're the one doing all this." "No, no. No. It's not like that." "You're one of them, whatever they are." I didn't answer. John and Amy stayed silent as well. The man in black said, "It's not his fault. By the way, you never answered my other question." "I'm sorry, I've lost track," Falconer said. "What question is that?" "When's the last time you've eaten?" "I... what? I don't know. I'll get drivethrough on the way back from the school. I... I gotta get outta this fucking house..." "Think about it, detective. This isn't an idle question." The man in black took a step toward him and again asked, "When's the last time you've eaten? Think." Falconer started to dismiss him, started to leave, then stopped himself. The man in black said, "It's been more than 24 hours, hasn't it?" "I... I haven't been hungry. Too much going-" "-Maybe you should go look in a mirror, detective." And there, with that phrase, came fear in the detective's face. The first time I had seen it, through all this. "Why?" "How's your finger? Where the creature bit you?" "What?" "Why don't you go look in a mirror. You'll be surprised what you can see now." Falconer stood there, maybe feeling the same falling sensation I felt earlier, my hand on the closet door. Finally he said, "Go to Hell." He turned and went to the front door and went out into the day. He slammed the door behind him. I heard his car door open a moment later. I said to the man in black, "You came to me in a dream, right? You showed me Franky's body. Is it in the school?" The man in black put up one hand, to silence me. I stopped talking. We all stood like that for a moment, as if anticipating a sound. From outside, we heard a single gunshot. We all froze, the moment when we had to decide whether a gunshot meant "run away" or "run to." As usual, John made the decision. Amy was next out the front door, I went last. We ran to the Porsche. From outside the car we could see Falconer was slumped over, sideways. John circled around to the driver's side door and yanked it open. Amy gasped. Blood ran down the leather headrest of the driver's seat. Falconer had shot himself. In the mouth, it looked like. John made a show of checking the man's pulse but it was pretty obvious he was done. Amy said, "Why? Why would he do that? David, why would he do that?" "Maybe they... did something to him. Made him do it. I don't know. John, what are you-" John was leaning into the car. He leaned over Falconer's body. The dead man's eyes were open. John leaned over, face just inches from Falconer's, bracing himself with one hand against the armrest of the passenger door. "John, don't do that..." "Oh, shit. Dave, look at this." "I'm most definitely not looking at that." John pushed himself back out of the car. He looked up into the morning sky. It looked like rain. "He had one of those mouth bugs in him." "What? No. No, we would have seen it." "Go look." I had a better idea, which was to go inside and punch the man in black several times. I turned and crossed the yard and charged in my front door. Nobody home. Not that I could see, anyway. John and Amy came in behind me. John said, "What an asshole." Amy said, "So... he left us here with the severed head of a dead cop in the bath tub and a whole dead cop in a car in the front yard?" "This is what you get for skipping class." John said, "We're clear on both of them though. I think. As far as going to jail you know..." I said, "Either way, we got to get to the school before the cops show up here." "I agree." John turned to Amy and said, "We'll need you to open the box for us." I put a hand on his chest. "NO." "Dave, we got no choice." "No, John." "I'll take full responsibility. Come on, somebody probably called in the gunshot already." He strode off toward the kitchen, plucked the tool shed key off my wall, and went out my back door. Amy gave me an uncertain look, then followed him. I followed them out. John had the shed open already, dragging the green cooler-sized box onto the lawn. I glanced around for witnesses. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I said before that there was no visible latch or lock on the box. That was true. But there was an invisible one. I stared at the front of the box, and focused. A simple lever swam into view. Just like with Amy's missing hand. I sighed and said, "Okay. Do it." Amy leaned over and, to an outside observer, held the stump of her left wrist a few inches from the box. To my eyes, her hand grasped the hidden lever and pulled. The lid rose slowly, on its own. Inside the box was what looked like a gray lump of fur the size of a football. It was actually metal, and the "fur" was thousands of rigid metal strands, thinner than needles, standing straight up. I said the thing looked like a steel porcupine, John said it looked like a wig for a robot. The only part of the device not covered by the metallic fur was the simple metal grip at the end, where it could be picked up. On the handle, was a trigger. John had told Franky the other day that we found the box in the woods. Actually, somebody else had found it in the woods, near their house, and drove here to give it to me and John. The guy who found it was a fan, and thought we would know what to do with it. He couldn't open it, of course. All he had was the strange markings on the front to creep him out. We had the box for several days before we figured out the ghost latch. We had looked at the thing, which John labeled the "furgun" because it had a trigger and we decided it was some kind of weapon. Later, John and I got good and drunk and had taken the furgun out to a field late at night to test it. John set up three green Heineken beer bottles on a log. We stood about 50 feet back. John had pointed the furry gun thing and squeezed the trigger. The thing made a sort of honking sound, like some people can make when they blow their nose. There was a strange ripple in the air, like the heat-warped space above a fire. The beer bottle on the far right was suddenly five times bigger than it was before. John had cheered and whooped and declared the device to be an enlarging ray. He said he'd point it at corn fields and use it to cure world hunger. We decided to test it again, shooting at the next bottle. It stayed the same size, only turned white. When we approached it we realized the bottle had been turned into a bottle-shaped pile of mashed potatoes. John stated that he would still use it to cure world hunger. We fired it at the third bottle and it immediately turned into a double-ended dildo. A black one. John shot at the first bottle again, the one that had been made huge, and it turned it back into normal size. Only instead of Heineken it was now Old Milwaukee. He handed the furgun to me, and I fired at the first bottle. The bottle, and the other two bottles, and the log, were consumed in a fire so bright it looked like a miniature sun had landed in the middle of the field. The light was so intense that John and I were blinded for half an hour and saw blue-white spots in front of our eyes for most of a day. When it ended, there was a twenty-foot circle of earth in front of us that had been scorched into black glass. The papers said the light was reported by witnesses six miles away. We declared the furgun to be both useless and dangerous. We put it back in the box and never spoke of it again. Until today. John reached in and took the furgun by the handle. He hefted it, aiming it at the sky. "I don't know about this, John." "Let's go."  
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