Chapter V

Tyler entered his home, seeing his seventeen-year-old son, Michael, sitting in front of the living room television playing some game with guns, taking no notice of his father's entrance. Tyler threw down his hat and started taking off various items from his uniform, and proceeded to his bedroom. He couldn't get what he had seen earlier in the day out of his mind. He would talk about it with Dr. Peterson the next day, but he was very tired. It had been sweltering hot all day, being as July was just starting. He was off the next day, which meant labor at home at the farm. The wheat had been cut without him, but the cattle still needed tending to. He threw himself into the shower to clean the sweat-soaked feeling from his body.

After his shower, he immediately climbed into bed, even though it was only about eight-thirty. Sleep was the only other thing in his mind besides the transparent foot he had seen. His eyelids grew heavy immediately after resting his head on the pillow and he drifted to sleep.

*  *  *

Tyler awoke in bed, to see blood soaking the covers on top of him. He quickly got up and saw he was uninjured, but he did not know the source of the blood. He saw a trail of small, dark red drops going across the hardwood floor of his bedroom.

He followed the blood into his bathroom, and what he saw made fear course through his veins like a poison. His wife, Sandy, was lying dead in the bathtub. And over her body was an invisible form…

*  *  *

Joe Tyler awoke again to see no blood, and to his great relief, that his wife was sleeping right next to him. His forehead dripped with sweat. He quietly got up and went to the bathroom. He ran the cold water from the sink and splashed it onto his face, giving a soothing feeling to his overheated, adrenaline-high body. He checked the clock; it was only eleven o'clock.

He leaned against the counter of his bathroom, straining his tired shoulder muscles by holding all his weight up with them. He breathed deeply, in and out, in and out. Just a dream, he thought, just a dream. He did several stretches in order to loosen his muscles. First he let his upper torso hang limp at his waist, in a bent over position, and then slowly brought himself back up. Then he did some squats and rolled his arms.

He placed his hand on his bare chest, right where his heart was. He slowly breathed in and calmed himself. He looked in the medicine cabinet behind the bathroom mirror and grabbed a sleep aid. Once his heart came to its normal pace, he headed back for his bed, intent on sleeping again. He was about to swallow the sleeping pills when the phone rang. Who the hell is calling at this time? Tyler asked himself. He ran over to the phone on the nightstand and saw his wife stirring, lifting her head slowly and opening her eyes.

Tyler got to the phone by the third time it rang. "Tyler residence," he said, "This is Joe."

"Joe," started the voice of one of the deputies, Carl Willis, "This is Deputy Willis. We have a major problem."

Tyler breathed in deeply, "I'll be right there," he started. Then a thought occurred to him, "Where are you?"

"Down by the Snider Farm, on the river," Willis replied.

That's where Pete saw the thing, Tyler thought.

"Be right there," he told him.

"What is it, Joe?" asked Sandy Tyler.

"Something, I dunno."

*  *  *

Tyler parked the Ram on the dirt road next to the river, and trudged down through the weeds to the bank. He was still in his pajama pants, but had thrown on a shirt and picked up his badge and gun. What the hell is going on? Joe kept asking himself.

But it didn't take him long to get an idea. Within twenty feet of the riverbank, he smelled the scent of a dead animal. He couldn't see the source of the stench, because of the trees and the plants, but he did catch sight of several of the men on the force, one of them was Willis. A couple of them were standing with their hands on their hips, looking down, and shaking their heads. Tyler also caught sight of the top of James Larry's, the county coroner, head. As Tyler got out onto the bank, he was horrified.

A man's body was lying on the ground, slightly decomposed. But it was only the body, there was no head. A gaping hole ran along the back of the body. No fishing equipment was present, but a rifle was sitting next to the body.

"Holy God," Tyler muttered. He looked at Larry, "What the hell happened? Who? How?"

Larry shook his head and looked up at Tyler with a tear I his eye. "It's Pete, Joe. It's Pete."

"It's Pete?"

But as Tyler examined the clothing, it matched what Pete had been wearing the last time he saw him. Willis handed him a wallet. Tyler opened it and saw a matching driver's license, credit card, social security card, and American Legion membership card.

"Bud Morris found him," explained Willis, "Said that he was just trying to find another spot to fish from and found him." He nodded to the decapitated corpse.

"What happened to him?"

Dr. James Larry stood up and looked Tyler in the eye. He took a few deep breaths; Pete had been a friend of Larry's father, and like a second father to the coroner. The large, black man looked incredibly vulnerable at the moment. He sobbed a couple times, but brought up his composure. "I've never seen anything like this," he began, "It looks like someone stabbed his back, reached into the wound, and tore out the spine and skull with it."

Tyler's legs gave out and he fell to the ground. He had seen some brutal murders in his time, but he had never seen anything like this.

"Tore it out?" Tyler grimly asked.

Larry nodded, "Yeah." He trailed off and looked into the clear, starry night sky. "I just don't get it," he said, frustrated, " I've never seen anything like this. I mean, when I got into the business, I knew I would see some grizzly stuff. But this?"

Tyler labored to slow his heartbeat. He closed his eyes and tried not to inhale the stench of Pete's decaying flesh. Just then he heard rapid footsteps, he looked in the direction of the source and saw another one of the deputies running towards him. The deputy stopped and took a few breaths; apparently the run had taken some of his energy.

"They just," he started, still breathing heavily. He bent his knees and placed his hands upon them. "They just found his face."

"His face?" Tyler asked; his face contorted in a disgusted look.

"Yeah, it looks like someone skinned his skull and just left the leftovers," replied the deputy.

Tyler got up and brushed himself off, "I'm going to the station. Clean this up and get the remains to the morgue. Don't talk about this to anyone yet. The knowledge of someone in this town that's capable of this kind of murder would send the people into a panic." He thought for a second. "Just tell everyone that he died of a heart attack and some animals got at him. It'll be a closed casket funeral for sure."