Following this, I started day-drinking. The guys joined me, but they carried a slightly grimmer tone now as we sat again at the kitchen island with beers in hand. My escape from the attic had proven simpler than I had anticipated. Eric was big enough to simply shove my foot back up from below and strong enough that he just about rocketed me off the beam completely. From there I had scurried out of the hatch.

“Ok,” Paul said. “That didn’t go as I thought it would.”

Eric shrugged. “I was kind of expecting him to fall through the ceiling.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Paul said. With a casual apprehension, he glanced around the room. “Maybe there is something weird going on.”

Seeing someone else with that what-if look on their face was exactly what I needed. “Yes! There is. Something weird is definitely afoot.”

Eric bounced his gaze back and forth between us. “Like what?”

I paused, not wanting to say out loud what rattled around in my head. Giving a voice to a what-if could also give it substance that would cling to a person like glue. Nobody could ever say something like “I saw Bigfoot” and expect to live it down. But I was already in over my head here. “A haunting.”

“What?” Paul asked incredulously. “No. That’s not what I meant at all. You have a bigger pest problem than you thought.”

“Not anymore. They’re all torn to pieces,” I countered.

“True, but that means you now have a more serious predator.”

I immediately thought of a miniature version of the alien hunter from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. The image proved more cute than terrifying. “Like what?”

“It was probably a possum. Those things are vicious. Like furry miniature serial killers.”

Eric nodded along. “Those things are nasty. They’re the white trash of the animal world.”

My disagreeable mood refused to accept this as an answer. “You’re trying to tell me that a possum got into the attic and slaughtered all of them? Not a single one got away? Did the possum block the exit? Did it hold them hostage? That’s one super possum then.”

Paul scowled. “I’ve been listening to you prattle on about highly intelligent squirrels that have been organizing to harass you for months, but I can’t throw in Super Possum? Fine. Maybe it was a rabid raccoon. Is that better?”

It wasn’t actually. “Okay. Super Possum it is.”

We polished off our day-beers and the guys got up to leave. I didn’t want to be alone in the house, but I couldn’t expect them to babysit me in the middle of the afternoon.

As they were walking out Paul turned and said, “Call an exterminator and have him check it out. But you’re going to have to clean out those squirrel bodies. I once had a raccoon die in our crawlspace. Stunk up the house for weeks.”

With Paul and Eric gone I set to work. Despite being horrified by the situation, I was pragmatic enough to know that I couldn’t have multiple decaying animals directly above the bedroom, especially with a hole in the ceiling. As Paul had said, eventually the smell would be noticeable, not to mention what kind of diseases could be nurtured.

I assembled the rest of my Squirrel Combat Outfit. Although the name was no longer appropriate, it certainly had a better ring than Squirrel Corpse Reclamation Outfit. In addition to the knee and elbow pads, I added a pair of thick leather work gloves. A garbage bag for the body parts finished it off.

I felt defensively secure but if Paul was correct and there was a possum—of normal or super variety—then I would need some means of fighting back. There was certainly a dearth of weapons in the household. Beth refused to allow us a gun, as she believed I would inevitably accidentally shoot myself. I secretly agreed with her.

I had a baseball bat and hockey stick in the garage, but both were too unwieldy for the narrow spaces between attic rafters. The same went for all the long-handled garden tools. Kitchen knives were too short. I needed something long and sharp that I could jab with and keep a rabid, genetically enhanced, zombie, super-possum/raccoon-hybrid at bay.

I nosed around the garage and almost resorted to sawing a broom handle when I noticed my box of grilling equipment, stored for the winter. Sticking out of it was my two-pronged heavy-duty grilling fork with an extra elongated handle. It had been a present from Beth, who had eventually gotten tired of treating my burns and wanted me further away from the hot coals.

It was perfect.

Thusly armed I headed up the ladder, popped the hatch, and climbed in. I went quickly, trying not to give my imagination time to plot against me. I moved along the beam, going as fast as I could without compromising my balance. The first pile of squirrel was just a few feet from the hatch.

Or at least, it had been.

Now there was nothing there but a maroon stain on the pink insulation. Not a shred of squirrel remained. I swallowed hard and tried to quell my heavy breathing enough to listen to the shadows. If there was an angry super possum in there with me, it was certainly being discreet.

I moved further along the beam, scanning my headlamp from side to side, searching for the earlier evidence of slaughter. It proved futile. Nothing remained but bloodstains. I pressed on, intent on searching the entire space so that I didn’t have to make a repeat trip. Eventually, I found them.

The squirrel heads had been moved. They were now arranged—lined up in a neat row on one of the cross beams. Tilted back so that their chisel teeth were bared, their open eyes reflected the light like dark marbles.

Something had been in the attic since my earlier visit.

And no way it was a possum.

Icy fear knifed through my chest and only my previous experience kept me from stumbling off the beam again. I gritted my teeth and kept going. It wasn’t bravery that kept me moving forward with the plan, but the anticipation of avoiding future fear. I had no intention of ever coming back into this attic. Best just to get the job done now and worry about the insanity of it later.

Gingerly, I picked up the first head, pinching it with my index finger and thumb for minimal contact. I also kept clear of its teeth. The laws of nature seemed fairly mutable lately and I figured I was the kind of guy who would get fatally bitten by a zombie rodent. The dried blood made the head come away from the wood with a sticky tug that churned my stomach.

And then an almond fell out and I almost went through the ceiling again.

The nut bounced off the beam and landed on the insulation. Stained dark crimson but completely intact, it had no bite marks at all. It must have been stuffed into the severed neck post-mortem, not chewed and swallowed.

Suddenly the attic felt hot and claustrophobic. I was panting, breathing too fast through my mouth. “Just get it done. Get it done,” I whispered and then berated myself for making more noise.

I bagged the head and lifted the next. Another almond was there but this one stuck to the bloody fur and I had to pry it off. The rest were the same and I had five more almonds once I got all the heads wrapped up.

Something moved to my left—a flash of brown just at the edge of the light beam. Perched precariously on the narrow wooden beam I wasn’t able to spin and track it. I had to carefully shift one foot at a time while holding a rafter for balance, lest I go through the insulation again. Unbidden images pushed into my brain of being stuck once more with a leg through the ceiling (with no Eric to push me back up) while some beast circled me. It took agonizing seconds—a lifetime knowing that some kind of killer possibly lurked behind me in the dark—to turn completely around.

Having completed my 180-degree turn, I panned my light back and forth, my grilling fork at the ready. But there was nothing there. Just a sea of pink insulation and more shadows my light couldn’t reach.

That was it. I was frigging done. I tight-roped back to the hatch and dropped my bag o’ heads through, which was a mistake, as it hit the ladder with a crunchy splat and then proceeded to flop down the rungs like a grotesque Slinky. Despite my revulsion, it wasn’t lost on me that, in a way, I had just won the second Battle of Five Steps, even though I hadn’t fired a shot.

Fueled now by the proximity of my escape I quickly swung my legs through the hole and tapped my feet on the ladder until I found solid footing. Then I was out, back into the glorious bright light of the hallway. Reaching up I pulled the hatch into place as if sealing a rapidly submerging submarine.

With the attic closed off, I let out a long sigh of relief.

Then came the noise. A slow scratching sound—right above my head. Something sharp dragged across the attic-side of the wooden hatch. I froze, clinging to the top of the ladder, ready to grab the hatch if something tried to wrench it up. But nothing else happened.

I inched down a step.

A voice emanated down. It was airy, child-like, almost a coo. Barely a whisper but it nestled into my ears with clarity. One word, repeated.

“All. All. All. All...”

It was still speaking when I fell off the ladder and lost the third Battle of Five Steps.