I kicked the car and put a massive dent in the door, then I threw the cell as far as I could toward the woods surrounding the town. I hoped I fucking hit one of them.

Without backup I walked to the house with the smoke coming from the hole in the roof. The front door was wide open, and from the dirt and blood all over the front porch, it looked like there had been a lot of traffic in and out of the house during recent events. I couldn’t hear anything from inside, but a strange heat emitted that put me on edge.

I entered the house slowly, with shotgun barrels out in front. Inside was dark, and the blood on the porch continued inside as well. In fact, the foyer floor was so blood-covered that it would have looked like a paint job if not for the spatters on the wall and the drag marks and footprints. To my right was a staircase, not so bloody, but I went up since that’s where the hole originated.

The place had kind of a Victorian/Psycho thing going on. Lots of dark wood on the floors and walls. I plodded up the stairs to a hallway and started checking rooms. It was clear until I hit the master bedroom.

It was there I found the hole in the ceiling.

But the hole, about the size of a large pizza, didn’t stop at the ceiling. Whatever came down through the roof had kept right on falling. I walked to the edge of the hole and leaned over. From the looks of it, the hole went clear down through the ground floor and into some sort of basement or wine cellar. It was dark, and from this height I couldn’t see much more than the smoke that rose toward my face, twirling and winding like a transparent snake toward my nose.

I avoided the smoke, covering my nose, and made sure I didn’t inhale. Call it a hunch, but I suspected the smoke was a part of this mess. Up close it had a green tint to it, and it moved slower than normal smoke, like milk diluting water. Like it had purpose.

I backtracked down the stairs to the main floor and searched quickly for a basement door. There wasn’t one, so I walked to the back of the house, through the kitchen where it looked like someone had been baking when whatever fell through, fell through. There were pots and pans out, measuring cups, the works.

I passed through the kitchen and outside through a wood- framed screen door. The yard was fenced in: white picket, of course. There were also clothes hanging on a line. The scene was beginning to remind me of a Norman Rockwell painting. Well, a Rockwell painting with the living dead tearing grandpa’s gut out.