“Negative, Jackie. It’s a difficult, precision piece of equipment that involves training and skill to operate.”

  “Can you come over and do it, Uncle Harry? And bring Harry Junior?”

  Jack closed her eyes in obvious pain. She wasn’t a big Harry McGlade fan.

  I found him amusing. He was the type of guest you didn’t have to entertain. He would wind himself up and you could just kick back and watch him run himself ragged.

  “You know I’d do anything for you, Stinky Fart Face. But that’s up to your mommy and daddy. Mostly your mommy because she’s a meanie alpha OCD control freak and your daddy is a weak baby little wimp boy.”

  “Mom? Dad?”

  I held my hands out in supplication. “Not my call. I’m a weak baby little wimp boy.”

  “Mom? We need to check if our house is gonna sink.”

  Jack rubbed her eyes. “Fine. Two days. Harry Junior can sleep in Sam’s room. You’re on the sofa bed, McGlade.”

  “Can we make a giant pillow fort and eat s’mores?”

  You’d think that was Sam asking. But it was Harry.

  “You can make your own s’mores.”

  “I always burn the marshmallows.”

  “I can do it, Uncle Harry.”

  “Okay, enough with all of your embarrassing begging and pleading. We’ll come. While we were talking, I booked a flight.”

  “Of course you did,” Jack said.

  “Can you bring Waddlebutt and Big Dick?” Sam asked.

  Big Dick and Waddlebutt were the names of Harry’s pet capybara and penguin, because; Harry.

  “I know everyone loves my Big Dick, but my pets have to stay at home. I can bring Harry Junior, though. He just got vaxxed.”

  “I thought kids haven’t been approved for vaccinations,” Jack said.

  “They haven’t. But I don’t follow the rules, because I’m a rebel. Also, I told the pharmacist he was 18 and had achondroplasia dwarfism. You want me to set up Sam with a fake ID so you can do the same? It also lets him drive.”

  Sam said “Yes!” at the same time Jack said “No!” They both turned to me and I remained neutral. “We’ll see.”

  “Lemme know. I got him a Class A CDL, so he can drive 18-wheelers, buses, and tractor trailers.”

  “I wanna drive a bus!” Sam declared.

  “Getting a fake ID doesn’t mean you know how to drive a bus,” Jack told her.

  “It’s just a 10 speed double clutch, Mom.”

  “You’re four feet tall.”

  “Four feet one inch. I can drive. I’ve watched YouTube videos.”

  “Phin, tell our daughter she isn’t getting a fake driver’s license and driving a bus.”

  “Sam, no driving a 10 speed double clutch until you’re at least nine and a half.”

  “Plane will arrive tonight at 8:47,” Harry declared.

  “That soon?” I smiled at Jack, who wore an expression like someone was sticking hot needles under her fingernails. “Want me to pick you up?”

  “We’ll rent a car. I like being able to come and go as I please. You guys need anything? Face masks? Toilet paper? Hand sanitizer? Lysol wipes? I’m not hoarding anything, but I could spare a gross or two.”

  “Whatever you want to bring, Harry,” I told him. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Jackie, I also got some follow-ups on those things you wanted me to research. I’ll tell you in person.”

  “Safe travels, Uncle Harry!”

  “See you tonight, Nasty Stink Breath.”

  The moment Jack hung up, the kitchen fire alarm went off.

  “That’s why I switched off the stove, Mom. The tacos were burning.”

  Jack fanned the smoke and I took the battery out of the detector. Duffy, the fearless watchdog, was afraid of the smoke alarm, and he ran into the bathroom to hide, moving faster than I’d seen him move in quite a while.

  I opened a window and gave Jack a nudge as she frowned at the blackened food. “No stress.”

  “With McGlade there’s always stress.”

  “Normally when we see Harry we’re all fighting for our lives. I bet he’s much calmer when we aren’t dealing with some maniac.”

  “I’ll take that bet.”

  I didn’t like the way Jack answered. Almost as if she wasn’t talking about Harry being calm.

  It sounded like she was referring to the fact that whenever we see McGlade, it usually coincides with some maniac trying to kill us.

  LARRY

  I think I should kill them, Rita.”

  Larry finished spraying the gallon of deodorizing enzyme on the floor of the walk-in freezer, then went to the closet to fetch another gallon. The smell was mostly under control, but since the sinkhole appeared in his neighbor’s yard, a foul stench had come up through invisible cracks.

  Larry was 89% sure it wasn’t his imagination.

  He was only 63% sure that murdering his neighbors would solve his problems.

  On one hand, the previous owners of their house disappeared, and another disappearance so soon would certainly raise some eyebrows.

  On the other hand, the police were preoccupied with the pandemic, and didn’t have the manpower to devote to missing persons.

  On the other hand, Jack and Phin seemed fit and formidable.

  On the other hand, appetites needed to be sated.

  On the other hand, they seemed like such a cute family.

  On the other hand, if they kept probing that sinkhole, they could unearth some buried secrets.

  “OOOOOOOOOD!”

  On the final other hand, the Sickness demanded attention.

  Larry knew full well that he lived in a house of cards. One wrong move and it all came tumbling down.

  But inaction could be even more dangerous than action.

  Decisions, decisions.

  After he emptied the second jug in the seasoning room, and reset the autoclave, he went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet, his eyes drifting upwards to the beartrap on the ceiling.

  “Still need to replace that broken board.”

  Yet another unsavory chore. One he kept forgetting to do.

  Today, for sure. He had a 2x4 in the shed.

  Blood taught him that trick.

  Good trick. But more work.

  Larry rubbed his eyes, exhaustion creeping into the marrow of his bones and threatening to metastasize everywhere.

  He was tired of killing.

  But really, what did it matter? Three more dead people were insignificant, compared to the four hundred and ninety-two he’d already killed.

  Could it really be that many?

  He did the math.

  Twelve murders per year, give or take.

  For forty-one years.

  Quite a total. Far too many to remember.

  But he remembered the first.

  You never forget your first…

  LAROLD

  Pretense, Pennsylvania

  February 10, 1973

  The world was bigger than Larold Ezekiel Goodall expected.

  Big enough to get away with anything.

  Growing up in a small farming community, everyone knew everyone else’s business. Papa said that God saw all, but Larold hadn’t believed in God since his sister got the Sickness.

  No Almighty Ruler of Heaven and Earth would have allowed that to happen to a little girl.

  For a nosy Amish settlement, it was surprising that no one knew of the Sickness, except for Larold and Papa.

  Papa had tried to beat the Sickness out of poor Rita, proclaiming Gottes Wille.

  When that didn’t work, and the robbing had been discovered, Rita had been shunned.

  Larold took her away from their family. To start someplace fresh.

  But there could be no fresh start when the Sickness controlled them both.

  They’d found a homeless shelter in Pretense, a big suburb of Pittsburgh. Built to house fifty, the county packed it with triple that amount.

  “This place isn’t clean,” Rita told him. “And some of the people seem… disreputable.”

  “We have a bed. Clean water. Free food. It will do until we find jobs. There’s nothing to worry about,” he assured her.

  Larold had been wrong.

  One of the disenfranchised, a filthy addict by the name of Clarsen, had groped his sister while she slept. Groped her so hard he broke her maidenhead.

  Larold had wanted to go to the authorities.

  Rita had other ideas.

  “You need a doctor,” he insisted. “That animal should be in jail.”

  “You know I can’t see a doctor, Larold. They’ll lock me up. Because of the Sickness.”

  “Maybe they can help you, Rita. Pretense has a big hospital. They have specialists. It isn’t folk medicine and superstition. It’s science.”

  “Science won’t help me. I’m cursed.”

  “You aren’t cursed. You’re… afflicted.”

  Rita buried her face in her hands. “I pretended to be asleep.”

  “What?”

  “When Clarsen assaulted me. I was awake. I kept my eyes closed.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me? Why didn’t you tell him to stop?”

  Rita’s eyes were glassy when she looked at Larold again. But beneath the pain and shame, there was something else.

  Glee.

  “I wanted him, Larold.”

  “Carnally?”

  His sister didn’t answer. But Larold knew.

  “That’s not you, Rita. That’s your affliction.”

  “I want you to get him for me, Larold.”

  It was Larold’s turn to look away. The Bible might not be the Divine Word of God. But some of the Ten Commandments were still laws, and breaking them could mean prison.

  He loved his sister. But love only went so far. There were deeper truths to humanity. Rules that civilization shouldn’t ever break.

  But Rita seemed so sad. So weak. So needy.

  And Clarsen needed to be punished.

  And Larold…

  Larold was kind of curious.

  “Okay, Rita,” he told her. “I’ll help you.”

  JACK

  It felt weird to have a family game night when the whole house could get sucked into the ground. But nothing lately had been normal, and we all really needed a bit of normalcy.

  Besides, Phin had checked the outside foundation, and everything seemed okay. And it’s not like we had anywhere else we could go. I’d searched online and tried to find a hotel or motel within a hundred miles, and nothing was available. Though I had discovered that some hotels in big cities were being used to quarantine COVID patients, those in my area were either closed or overbooked.

  This lovely pandemic just kept giving.

  Too bad you couldn’t return years like you could return unwanted gifts, because the world really needed a full refund for 2020.

  We voted on what game to play. Phin wanted Monopoly, which Sam and I vetoed because he acted like a ruthless robber baron once he started buying houses. Sam pushed for Risk, which Phin and I vetoed because even the shortened version of that game lasted four hundred million hours. We decided upon Clue, which was short enough to play a few times, and we all were evenly matched, though we employed different strategies.

  Sam was pure deductive reasoning, eliminating suspects one by one with careful accusations.

  I was all about observation, paying attention to what my opponents were doing and making logical assumptions on the questions they asked, allowing me three times the data I could gather on my own.

  Phin didn’t follow the rules. Which, I suppose, was a strategy. Albeit an unorthodox one.

  “It was done in the Library, with the wrench, by Colonel Mustard,” Sam stated.

  Phin showed Sam a card, which I deduced was the wrench because Sam had been using Colonel Mustard for every accusation meaning she owned that card, and I owned the Library.

  I rolled. Moved three. Miss Scarlet was still five spaces away from entering the Kitchen.

  Phin rolled a twelve. His third twelve of the game. He was almost definitely cheating, but Sam and I couldn’t figure out how.

  “Done in the sinkhole, by Dr. Pink, with a chainsaw.”

  Sam giggled.

  Caring dads were sexy. Dad jokes, not so much.

  “Is that your real suggestion?” I asked.

  “Maybe it is. Maybe I’m goofing off. What’s the point of games?”

  “To win,” I told him.

  “I thought the point was to have fun,” Phin countered.

  “It’s both,” Sam decided. “Dad, I don’t have any of those cards. Do you, Mom?”

  “Let me double-check to see if I have the chainsaw.” I didn’t bother looking at my cards. “Nope. What a surprise for the entire table.”

  Phin nodded knowingly, then pretended to write something down on his Clue sheet.

  “I’ll stay in the Library. I suggest it was done in the Library, with the knife, by Colonel Mustard.”

  Sam knew Phin had the wrench, and wanted to cross Library off, guessing I had it. I did, and showed her, but that meant she had the knife.

  Which meant I was almost 100% sure I had the solution.

  “I accuse,” I announced, watching Sam’s face become a pout. “It was done in the Lounge, with a rope, by Mr. Green.”

  I checked the envelope in the center of the board—

  —and was off by one card.

  “Well. Shit.” Who had the rope?

  “Sorry, babe.” Phin reached out and held my hand. “Sometimes even super cops can mess up the clues.”

  “Nice try, Mom.” Sam rolled a seven, and headed for the Kitchen.

  Phin rolled a twelve.

  “Let me see those dice,” I said.

  He handed them over, and as I examined them, I realized he’d taken my cards when he reached for my hand.

  “I accuse,” he said.

  “You looked at my cards!” I said, unable to hide my grin.

  “There are no rules against peeking.”

  I dropped his dice on the board, and rolled a twelve. “And you’re using loaded dice!”

  “Nothing in the rules says we have to use fair dice.”

  Sam giggled. “Daddy! You’re cheating!”

  “Important life lesson, Sam. Your mother tried using fair play and deductive reasoning, and she failed big-time. Look where playing fair got her. Sometimes you have to be sneaky and underhanded to win. And if that doesn’t work—” He reached over and pulled Sam’s cards from her hand. “You can use brute force.”

  “C’mon, Dad!”

  Phin shrugged. “Whatever it takes, kiddo. It was done in the Lounge, by Mr. Green, with the lead pipe.”

  Phin opened the envelope and revealed the answer.

  “That’s bullshit, Dad,” Sam said, obviously amused.

  “All is fair in love and Clue. Besides, this is an important life lesson.”

  “That you can win if you lie, cheat, steal, and overpower?”

  “Technically, I didn’t lie. But in certain circumstances, anything goes. Read the rules. I didn’t break any of them.”

  Sam grabbed the rules sheet. “Okay, for the next game, we’ll adjust the rules.” With her pencil she wrote in the margins. “No lying. No cheating. No loaded dice. No peeking. What else, Mom?”

  “No brute force,” I added. “And no stealing.”

  Phin folded his arms across his chest. “Well this just got a lot less fun.”

  “And Dad only gets one card,” Sam said.

  “Hey! No fair!”

  Sam pointed to the sheet. “It’s in the rules, Dad.”

  Phin looked at me. I shrugged. “You just told her to do whatever it takes. Looks like your eight-year-old daughter has shut down your reign of terror.”

  “Deal me my one card,” Phin boasted, spreading his arms wide and grinning. “I’ll still win.”

  We played three more games.

  Phin did not win.

  I won two, Sam won one. There was a lot of joking and laughing and ribbing, and for over an hour we shut out the entire ugly world and lived in a perfect, safe bubble.

  Something I’d always thought could never happen for me.

  After the games, we streamed a nature documentary, which Sam had in her queue. It concerned a terrifying little arachnid known as the ant-mimicking spider. There were over three hundred known species. They lived in ant colonies, using pheromones to smell like ants, perfectly imitating the behavior of ants, and remarkably resembling the appearance of ants, except for one vital difference; their heads were actually a giant set of mandibles that split open to gobble up their unsuspecting victims.

  Sam was delighted by this.

  “It’s like a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” she said. “That’s when someone looks harmless, but secretly they’re bad.”

  “Like most politicians,” Phin said.

  Then my cell phone chimed.

  I checked my screen, looking at the video doorbell camera.

  Harry McGlade stood at the door with Harry Junior. They dressed identically: beige fedoras, tan trench coats with the collars up, grey three piece suits with purple shirts, black wing tips. Harry had a five-day beard. Harry Junior had makeup on to look like a five-day beard.

  I got the door, and McGlade immediately pointed a gun at my head, which startled me until I realized it was one of those laser thermometers with a trigger.

  “Ninety-eight point six. Right on the money, Jackie. Embrace me.”

  He threw his arms around me before I could push him back. Harry Jr. grabbed my legs.

  After enduring a five second double-hug, Sam came to the door with Duffy the Wonder Dog.

  “Hold it!” McGlade pointed the thermometer. “Hmm. Ninety-nine point one. You feeling okay, Sam?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I felt her forehead. “Are you sure, honey?”

  “I’m sure. Hi, Uncle Harry! Hi, Harry Junior!”

  McGlade offered Sam a fist bump. His son did the same.

  “That’s quite a good-looking outfit, Harry Junior.”

  “Many thanks, Auntie Jackie. You lookin’ quite proper youself.”

  The boy sounded like he’d been watching too many Monty Python movies.

  “He slipped and banged his head on that big, naked marble statue of me in the second indoor pool,” Harry explained. “The doctors call it foreign accent syndrome. Now he talks like he’s from the East End of London.”