haunches beside her body. She raised her arm to him, looking for tenderness. In response, 
he cupped his hand beneath her head, and drew her up toward him. As their faces came 
within inches of each other, Julia seemed to realize that Frank's intentions were far 
from honorable. She opened her mouth to scream, but he sealed her lips with his and began 
to feed. She kicked and scratched the air. All in vain.
    Tearing her eyes from the sight of this depravity, Kirsty crawled up to the head of 
the stairs.
    The second floor offered no real hiding place, of course, nor was there any escape 
route, except to leap from one of the windows. But having seen the cold comfort Frank had 
just offered his mistress, jumping was clearly the preferable option. The fall might 
break every bone in her body, but it would at least deprive the monster of further 
sustenance.
    The fireworks were fizzling out, it seemed; the landing was in smoky darkness. She 
stumbled along it rather than walked, her fingertips moving along the wall.
    Downstairs, she heard Frank on the move again. He was finished with Julia.
    Now he spoke as he began up the stairs, the same incestuous invitation:
    "Come to Daddy. "
    It occurred to her that the Cenobites were probably viewing this chase with no little 
amusement, and would not act until there was only one player left: Frank. She was forfeit 
to their pleasure.
    "Bastards..." she breathed, and hoped they heard.
    She had almost reached the end of the landing. Ahead lay the junk room. Did it have a 
window sizable enough for her to climb through? If so, she would jump, and curse them as 
she fell-curse them all. God and the Devil and whatever lay between, curse them and as 
she dropped, hope for nothing but that the concrete be quick with her.
    Frank was calling her again, and almost at the top of the stairs. She turned the key 
in the lock, opened the junk room door, and slipped through.
    Yes, there was a window. It was uncurtained, and moonlight fell through it in shafts 
of indecent beauty, illuminating a chaos of furniture and boxes. She made her way through 
the confusion to the window. It was wedged open an inch or two to air the room. She put 
her fingers under the frame, and tried to heave it up far enough for her to climb out, 
but the sash in the window had rotted, and her arms were not the equal of the task.
    She quickly hunted for a makeshift lever, a part of her mind coolly calculating the 
number of steps it would take her pursuer to cover the length of the landing. Less than 
twenty, she concluded, as she pulled a sheet off one of the tea chests, only to find a 
dead man staring up at her from the chest, eyes wild. He was broken in a dozen places, 
arms smashed and bent back upon themselves, legs tucked up to his chin. As she went to 
cry out, she heard Frank at the door.
    "Where are you?" he inquired.
    She clamped her hand over her face to stop the cry of revulsion from coming. As she 
did so, the door handle turned. She ducked out of sight behind a felled armchair, 
swallowing her scream.
    The door opened. She heard Frank's breath, slightly labored, heard the hollow pad of 
his feet on the boards. Then the sound of the door being pulled to again. It clicked. 
Silence.
    She waited for a count of thirteen, then peeped out of hiding, half expecting him to 
still be in the room with her, waiting for her to break cover. But no, he'd gone.
    Swallowing the breath her cry had been mounting upon had brought an unwelcome side 
effect: hiccups. The first of them, so unexpected she had no time to subdue it, sounded 
gun-crack loud. But there was no returning step from the landing. Frank, it seemed, was 
already out of earshot. As she returned to the window, skirting the tea-chest coffin, a 
second hiccup startled her. She silently reprimanded her belly, but in vain. A third and 
fourth came unbidden while she wrestled once more to lift the window. That too was a 
fruitless effort; it had no intention of compliance.
    Briefly, she contemplated breaking the glass and yelling for help, but rapidly 
discarded the idea. Frank would be eating out her eyes before the neighbors had even 
shaken off sleep. Instead she retraced her steps to the door, and opened it a creaking 
fraction. There was no sign of Frank, so far as her eyes were able to interpret the 
shadows. Cautiously, she opened the door a little wider, and stepped onto the landing 
once again.
    The gloom was like a living thing; it smothered her with murky kisses. She advanced 
three paces without incident, then a fourth. On the fifth (her lucky number) her body 
took a turn for the suicidal. She hiccuped, her hand too tardy to reach her mouth before 
the din was out.
    This time it did not go unheard.
    "There you are," said a shadow, and Frank slipped from the bedroom to block her path. 
He was faster for his meal-he seemed as wide as the landing-and he stank of meat.
    With nothing to lose, she screamed blue murder as he came at her. He was unashamed by 
her terror. With inches between her flesh and his knife she threw herself sideways and 
found that the fifth step had brought her abreast of Frank's room. She stumbled through 
the open door. He was after her in a flash, crowing his delight.
    There was a window in this room, she knew; she'd broken it herself, mere hours 
before. But the darkness was so profound she might have been blindfolded, not even a 
glimmer of moonlight to feed her sight. Frank was equally lost, it seemed. He called 
after her in this pitch; the whine of his knife accompanying his call as he slit the air. 
Back and forth, back and forth. Stepping away from the sound, her foot caught in the 
tangle of the bandaging on the floor. Next moment she was toppling. It wasn't the boards 
she fell heavily upon, however, but the greasy bulk of Rory's corpse. It won a howl of 
horror from her.
    "There you are," said Frank. The knife slices were suddenly closer, inches from her 
head. But she was deaf to them. She had her arms about the body beneath her, and 
approaching death was nothing beside the pain she felt now, touching him.
    "Rory," she moaned, content that his name be on her lips when the cut came.
    "That's right," said Frank, "Rory."
    Somehow the theft of Rory's name was as unforgivable as stealing his skin; or so her 
grief told her. A skin was nothing. Pigs had skins; snakes had skins. They were knitted 
of dead cells, shed and grown and shed again. But a name? That was a spell, which 
summoned memories. She would not let Frank usurp it.
    "Rory's dead," she said. The words stung her, and with the sting, the ghost of a 
thought
    "Hush, baby..." he told her.
    - suppose the Cenobites were waiting for Frank to name himself. Hadn't the visitor in 
the hospital said something about Frank confessing?
    "You're not Rory..." she said.
    "We know that," came the reply, "but nobody else does..."
    "Who are you then?"
    "Poor baby. Losing your mind, are you? Good thing too..."
    "Who, though?"
    "...it's safer that way."
    "Who?"