new personal strength with this recognition and, without any sense of humbling himself or taking an order from his own son, he did just as the boy instructed. He rose and respectfully but firmly wrenched the two rigor forms apart, laying them down on the floor beside the chair for further investigation. That pieces of the bodies burst apart at this maneuver was not pleasant to observe, but still he kept his tongue, even as the Clutters lost theirs.
Then something happened that even Lloyd was not prepared for. Portions of flesh peeled away to reveal not only organ and bone—not even organ and bone—but something truly unexpected. The inner anatomy the separation of the corpses revealed was not human. It was not animal. It was not organic. Nor was it mechanical—or like any machine he had ever seen.
If the Sitturds had gasped before, they swooned together now, for what they beheld was absolutely alien to everything they knew and counted on. The dithery older couple they had met the previous night, who seemed incapable of normal conversation and had such unusual notions about food—who had, in the time the family was gone, undergone such a dramatic transformation, becoming both mindlessly violent and lustful—were not people at all.
Rapture cawed. Hephaestus reached up to seize locks of hair on his head that were fifteen years gone. Even Lloyd’s mouth dropped.
“They’re … some kind of …” his father tried.
“They’re music boxes,” Lloyd replied, after a moment’s aching silence. “They looked like people. They acted like people—to a point. But they were really music boxes in disguise.”
“Music boxes!” his mother moaned. “How ya bee speaken that?”
“I don’t mean like the others.” Lloyd waved, indicating the mess of combs and needles pouring forth from the ruptured boxes on the floor. “I mean more like the one that so confused us last night.”
“Which one was that?” his father huffed.
Lloyd’s right eyebrow rose at this.
“The one it may be fortunate that you don’t remember. What I mean is that they were—or are—machines. Not like machines we have ever seen. But not human. See those fibers there? What are they? Glass, spun very fine? And what of that there? That’s no organ that we know. It’s not quite meat and it’s not quite metal. It’s something in between. And that’s what they were. Something in between.”
“But how can it be?” Hephaestus gurgled, clasping his head in his hands for comfort.
“I don’t know,” Lloyd conceded. “But I am certain these … folk … were not born. They were made. Made to look like people and pass for people.”
“B-but Petrie!” Hephaestus stammered. “They’re his kin!”
“He may have had kin. He may think these are still his kin. But they aren’t,” Lloyd answered. “Unless he’s like this, too.”
“No!” his father insisted. “I worked with the man all day. He was straight, he was quick. He was—”
“Normal?”
“Y-yes.” Hephaestus nodded, working through in his own mind a host of associations and perceptions. “N-normal.”
“Then that raises the proposition that he doesn’t know about this,” Lloyd reasoned. “Which is supported by the fact that he recommended we try to stay here. Did he say anything about them? Anything that might hint at a change in them and their lives?”
Hephaestus had to turn and stroke his chin at this.
“Well, now that you mention it … he did let on something. Once he saw I could do a good day’s work for him, honest and expert-like, he did say something at the end. What was it? Ah … he said he was glad that we were about to keep a fresh eye on them. That’s what he said—a fresh eye.”
“What did you take that to mean?” Lloyd asked.
“I’m not sure,” his father mused. “He’d said earlier that there’d been a change in them—the both of them. But he didn’t say how or what.”
“Did he say when?”
“Hmm. Not directly. At least I don’t think. I was busy working then. I got the impression it was about a year or so ago. I don’t know why.”
“That would put it sometime around when the man with the music boxes and the child he wanted embalmed came past,” Lloyd put forth.
“What that mean ya be speaken now?” his mother demanded.
“I don’t know,” Lloyd admitted, shaking his young head. “But I know we must leave here as soon as we can. Within the hour. Whatever the Clutters were, they weren’t done in by men with masks and cudgels. But they were attacked, whether from without or within.” He deeply regretted that there