The sound of people climbing the stairs came as Carol tried to understand why Jim stood frozen at the door.

Carol forced her way past Jim and entered the room as barb and Sally rose into view on the stairs, holding each other in a frightened embrace. What she saw made her breath stop and her heart pound in her chest.

The room was lit poorly by the dregs of the hallway light; a slanting beam of luminescence that cut across the room and landed on the body of a man slumped at the base of the far wall.

The damage done to the room was far more than the result of a few shotgun blasts. She threads her way into the field of broken glass that littered the floor, the wreckage of the windows leaning drunkenly into the room.

Shadows shifted as Marie appeared in the doorway and turned on the light to the camera and panned the chaos.

Carol could see her shadow shift on the wall as she neared the man. If he were alive, it would be a miracle; his body lay loose. She kneeled at his side and touched the arm atop the body. It was warm and resilient. A bruise appeared immediately on the exposed flesh.

“Marie, come over here,” she ordered. “Watch out for the broken glass.”

Wordlessly the young woman crossed the room and stood at Carol’s side with the camera pointed at the corpse. She made a muffled noise then held the light steady.

The man was dead. Blood poured from his mouth, ears, and nose to pool under the head which was twisted at an unnatural angle. Silver shards of glass protruded from his flesh and clothes, many of the pieces large. The white gleam of bone shone in a rent of his pants.

Looking up at the wall Carol could see he had hit the plaster with so much force that he had crushed the dry stone and cracked many of the lathe supports.

She did not recognize the man.

He had to be a man Turner assigned to the house, the gun that lay near the corpse told Carol the man had been hunting, and she suspected he had been looking for an alien.

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If there was any doubt in her mind that the events of the night were an elaborate hoax meant to fool the camera’s eye, a hoax that was now real, the doubt was gone. This man who had stalked the house armed with a gun, who must have been at least competent with the weapon, was dead. If this had really been a hoax, there would be no corpse.

Her hand shook as Carol reached out to grasp the gun that lay on the floor like a useless tool. The grip was still warm from the man’s hand and slick from his blood. She held back a surge of bile to her throat and stood.

Jim crossed the room and stood at one of the two ruined windows.

He leaned out of the window and looked down with a curious sense of dislocation from his body. His mind replayed the sight of the small man falling out the window, a man too small to be human with a head too large for a neck to support.

He searched the darkness and distractedly focused on the ground.

He had killed a living creature, a sentient being. Visions of hell swam in Jim’s mind. He was a murderer. He had used the gun like some kind of war hero. Worse, he had relished the feeling of the act, the power of the gun. He had stood as arbitrator of life and chosen death.

Far below, a white figure lay on the ground, unmoving.

Yep, it was dead.

Jim’s head swam, and he tilted dangerously out the window, part of his mind understanding the danger and accepting the cost.

A hand grasped Jim’s shirt collar and hauled him back into the house.

Carol pushed the boy away from the window and slapped his face. “What the hell are you doing?” The shotgun swung aimlessly towards her and she snatched the empty weapon from Jim’s hands.

Jim stumbled against the door held by Carol. “What did you see when you opened the door?” she demanded, her face inches from Jim.

His mouth worked, but no sounds emerged.

Barb broke from the embrace of Sally and entered the room. Slowly, she forced herself between Carol and Jim, placing an arm around her husband’s shoulders, and drew his head to her shoulder. Carol could have wept in frustration.

From the window came a gasp that raised the hair on Carol’s head.

Marie stood at the window; the camera focused down. She shook savagely, but seemed determined to film whatever she saw outside the house.

Carol crossed the room in a rush and pulled Marie away from the window, then held the girl. “It is all right, honey. We are all going to get out of here.”

“We can’t go outside,” Marie returned the hug.

“Why?” Carol held Marie at arm length, for the moment the camera hanging slack on the strap about the girl’s shoulder. Without the camera, the vivid blue of Marie’s eyes seemed startling in their honesty.

“The aliens are out there.”

Releasing Marie, Carol walked to the window and looked down. She grasped the combing of the window for support, slivers driving into her hand as her head swam.

In the yard below, the indistinct figure of a small man was carrying what looked to be a second man, his oversized head bobbing to the rhythm of the walker’s stride.