set, and the hint of a slow damp that would later rise from the ground could be smelled like distant cookstoves and the still prevalent atmosphere of the previous night’s questionable repast. With all the purchased and donated booty, they went inside the residential part of the shop front to reunite with their idiosyncratic and previously debilitated hosts—and then had an even greater shock.
Rapture, when she had been able to get past the family’s trials of the day, had thought it not out of the question that the older couple might remain in bed all day, and that perhaps their behavior of the morning had its explanation not in inebriation but in some illness, perhaps even some emerging disease of the mind—a mutual senility, for that was what it had so resembled.
When she courteously knocked on the humble door that separated the shop front and business premises from the living area in the rear of the building, it gave her a queasy reminder of Mr. Clutter manically tapping on his coffin lids. There was still the strong presence of last night’s dinner oozing under the door, but there was something else, too. A scent of premonition. When she got no response, she eventually opened the door—and then the horror was there for all the family to see.
The kitchen, which Rapture had left so neat and tidy, was a shambles of destruction, as if raccoons had broken in and torn the place apart. Pots and pans had been flung everywhere, the hearth piled with smashed crockery. What was more, every single music box had not just been swept from its resting place on the shelves but slammed to the floor and cracked open, their inner workings gouged out. The Sitturds croaked as one—and then discovered the couple.
“Dear God!” Hephaestus cried.
Mr. and Mrs. Clutter had indeed managed to rise from bed, and apparently had done much more. Inside what passed for their little bedroom, the bed had been demolished, their simple nightstands collapsed, candles snapped, pillows ripped to shreds. The devastation could not have been more complete, except for one old stick-back chair, which the couple still occupied. Both bodies were naked and entwined together in an obscene contortion. Any fear the Sitturds had that the couple had been the victims of some intruder’s violence was incontrovertibly dispelled by the fact that the Clutters—still sexually connected, or so it seemed—both had their teeth and jaws locked deep in the blood-soaked throat of the other. The frozen expression on their dead, stained faces was beyond all words.
The Sitturd adults were so stricken with sickness and terror that they forgot to try to cover Lloyd’s eyes. It was just as well, for Lloyd alone remained cool enough to examine the scene. That was what Hattie would have done.
Hephaestus, as hardened as he was to normal farm life and the facts of death that presented themselves in slaughtering and butchering, felt the food that Petrie had offered him earlier in the day roar up his pipes and onto the floor. Rapture, meanwhile, was certain the room was rife with evil “sperits” and flittered about like a wounded animal.
Lloyd, on the other hand, as revolted as he was, and as agitated as he was, was also enlivened, his senses brought to full attention. Beat him, beat him. Release your hatred.
There was something very important about this scene, he knew. Although the natural first thought was to shudder and look if not run away, his instincts told him to look more deeply, to savor and consider every detail that presented itself. There was a meaning to all this, and perhaps he was the only one to discover it.
The obvious fact that the Clutters had been the cause of each other’s death suggested that there had not been any dread invasion. There were no signs of forced entry. The back door remained secure. The front shop was undisturbed and all the Sitturds’ possessions were unmolested. Whatever had happened, it seemed, had been confined to the back area of the premises and had, at least to the eye, involved the old people alone. Who else had been present, if no one else had arrived?
While his parents comforted each other and tried to regain control of themselves, and rein in their mixed distaste and grief for their hosts and their now runaway panic about what this catastrophe might mean for them, Lloyd circulated through the establishment searching for clues. There was no mud at the entry to the shop, and