I obeyed like someone hypnotized, stepped into the room and closed the door. Czarnecki grabbed the man’s legs and ordered me to help move the body into the bathroom. I took hold of the Mexican under his arms, and we lifted him off the bed. After we’d laid him in the tub, Czarnecki got a hacksaw from his bag of tricks and held it out to me.

“Cut off his head,” he said.

I finally found my voice. “No.”

“You’re here for proof what I’ve told you is true,” he said. “Cut off his head, and you’ll have it.”

I’d already crossed a line. If I left at that moment, the only thing I’d know for certain was that I was an accessory to murder. My sole hope of redemption was that the old man was telling the truth about the rovers, and one way to verify that was to do what he’d ordered.

Beating back fear and revulsion, I grabbed the saw and bent over the tub. I pressed the blade against the neck of the corpse, closed my eyes, and went to work. The sound of the saw’s teeth chewing through flesh and bone brought bile gushing into my mouth. I peeked through slitted lids to check my progress, caught a flash of bloody muscle and tendon, and nearly fainted.

The moment I was sure I couldn’t continue, the head came loose. I dropped it, backed away, and forced my eyes open in time to see both the head and body collapse into dust. One instant they were there, and the next nothing was left of the Mexican but his underwear and a mound of feathery gray ash.

Czarnecki’s monsters were real. While I grappled with the enormity of this, the old man turned on the water and washed the ashes down the drain, using the dead man’s skivvies to wipe the tub clean. I didn’t react when he said let’s go, so he grabbed me by the arm, and we hurried to the truck and made our getaway along empty early-morning streets.