The Laughing Corpse Read Online Free PDF Page B

door. It must have made a hell of a lot of noise. This much glass breaking even with the air-conditioning on . . . You’d hear it.”
    â€œYou think so?” he asked.
    â€œDid any of the neighbors hear anything?” I asked.
    â€œNo one will admit to it,” he said.
    I nodded. “Glass breaks, someone comes to check it out, probably the man. Some sexist stereotypes die hard.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Dolph asked.
    â€œThe brave hunter protecting his family,” I said.
    â€œOkay, say it was the man, what next?”
    â€œMan comes in, sees whatever crashed through the window, yells for his wife. Probably tells her to get out. Take the kid and run.”
    â€œWhy not call the police?” he asked.
    â€œI didn’t see a phone in the master bedroom.” I nodded towards the phone on the kitchen wall. “This is probably the only phone. You have to get past the bogeyman to reach the phone.”
    â€œGo on.”
    I glanced behind me into the living room. The sheet-covered couch was just visible. “The thing, whatever it was, took out the man. Quick, disabled him, knocked him out, but didn’t kill him.”
    â€œWhy not kill?”
    â€œDon’t test me, Dolph. There isn’t enough blood in the kitchen. He was eaten in the bedroom. Whatever did it wouldn’t have dragged a dead man off to the bedroom. It chased the man into the bedroom and killed him there.”
    â€œNot bad, want to take a shot at the living room next?”
    Not really, but I didn’t say it out loud. There was more left of the woman. Her upper body was almost intact. Paper bags enveloped her hands. We had samples of something under her fingernails. I hoped it helped. Her wide brown eyes stared up at the ceiling. The pajama top clung wetly to where her waist used to be. I swallowed hard and used my index finger and thumb to raise the pajama top.
    Her spine glistened in the hard sunshine, wet and white and dangling, like a cord that had been ripped out of its socket.
    Okay. “Something tore her apart, just like the . . . man in the bedroom.”
    â€œHow do you know it’s a man?”
    â€œUnless they had company, it has to be the man. They didn’t have a visitor, did they?”
    Dolph shook his head. “Not as far as we know.”
    â€œThen it has to be the man. Because she still has all her ribs, and both arms.” I tried to swallow the anger in my voice. It wasn’t Dolph’s fault. “I’m not one of your cops. I wish you’d stop asking me questions that you already have the answers to.”
    He nodded. “Fair enough. Sometimes I forget you’re not one of the boys.”
    â€œThank you for that.”
    â€œYou know what I mean.”
    â€œI do, and I even know you mean it as a compliment, but can we finish discussing this outside, please?”
    â€œSure.” He slipped off his bloody gloves and put them in a garbage sack that was sitting open in the kitchen. I did the same.
    The heat fastened round me like melting plastic, but it felt good, clean somehow. I breathed in great lungfuls of hot, sweating air. Ah, summer.
    â€œI was right though, it wasn’t human?” he asked.
    There were two uniformed police officers keeping the crowd off the lawn and in the street. Children, parents, kids on bikes. It looked like a freaking circus.
    â€œNo, it wasn’t human. There was no blood on the glass that it came through.”
    â€œI noticed. What’s the significance?”
    â€œMost dead don’t bleed, except for vampires.”
    â€œMost?”
    â€œFreshly dead zombies can bleed, but vampires bleed almost like a person.”
    â€œYou don’t think it was a vampire then?”
    â€œIf it was, then it ate human flesh. Vampires can’t digest solid food.”
    â€œGhoul?”
    â€œToo far from a cemetery, and there’d be more destruction of the house. Ghouls