My course took me back up to visit the Kochaks again, for the second time that day. It seemed the easiest of the two cases to focus on. I didn't expect any trouble from them, which just goes to show how badly I had underestimated them.

Arriving at the door to their residence, I knocked upon it. There was no answer. I knocked again. Still no reply. I rattled the door handle, more out of hope than anything else. To my surprise it actually turned beneath my hand.

Slowly I opened the door and took a look inside. There was no one in there that I could see and the lights were off. I stepped inside as quiet as I could and shut the door behind me. A fumble for the switch and the illuminance globe came to life, casting its soft light throughout the sitting room.

I did not like the feel of the place. It seemed far too easy, that the door would be unlocked and the Kochaks away at just the right time for me. Nothing ever goes that easy. There was the feel that something was about to go wrong but no idea as to what that was.

I moved through the room with care, keeping an eye out for the box or any sign of trouble. If I could find it and get out before the Kochaks or trouble showed up then I would be one happy man.

I didn't see it but I saw another item on the table that made me stop in my tracks. Mr Kochaks pipe lay there, still filled with tobacco. The sight of it sent a tingle down my spine and I knew that there was something wrong. I had never seen him without it. He wouldn't have just left it behind if he had gone out either.

There was a scent in the air as well, a faint smell that I could not quite place. It was slightly musty yet had sharp hints of acidity to it. I had not smelled it on my previous visits either. It came from further back in the residence, towards the bedroom, a place I had not been into before

The stubby revolver came out of my coat pocket as I made my way down the hall from the sitting room, following the scent. I was not going to take any chances, not with the feeling of trouble that was settling upon me. The door to the bedroom hung partially open when I reached it, a faint sliver of an opening. I used the revolver to push it open further while reaching in with my free hand and groping for the light switch.

As the illuminance globe flickered into life, I pushed my way in, the revolver raised. And then I stopped, feeling sick to my stomach. It was all that I could do to hold onto the contents of them. I could feel a headache starting to take form, a result of the beating, the drink and the terror that the sight of what I had seen.

There were two objects lying on the bed. They weren't bodies, not any more. What they were made my skin crawl in revulsion. I had seen bodies before. That comes as a natural by-product of my trade. But never like this.

Two crumpled skins lay on the bed. The skins and just the skins. They had been completely hollowed out, every trace of their innards, of their flesh and bones and everything else, having, somehow, been removed, all without breaking the skins.

In their current form it wasn't easy to get an exact identity of the pair, not without a closer look, and that I did not want to do. As best as I could tell they were the Kochaks.

The scent that I had smelled early came strong from within the room. To take my mind off the skins, I turned my attention to it, trying to locate the source. I stepped forward, sniffing at the air. As I moved, I felt, and heard, something squelch beneath my shoe. It was solid enough to provide a little resistance at first before succumbing to my weight and being crushed. The scent intensified as the object burst under my shoe.

Half dreading what I would see, I looked downwards.

An object tubular and white protruded out from under my shoe. Not the body part that I had been fearing I was glad to see. I moved my shoe from it and squatted down to study whatever it is. It was perhaps the length of my hand, formed of many segments, in appearance much like a worm, if one larger and thicker than most, and a ghostly white colour. An odd thing to find in a bedroom. I poked at it with the barrel of the revolver. It didn't react to it.

It might have played some part in what had happened to the Kochaks, though as to how I could not say. If it had eaten their bodies, it would have devoured their skins too, surely.

I stood back up again, looking around the room. Nothing seemed out of place. I had seen the Kochaks just that morning. Surely nothing could have done this in the short amount of time that I had been away.

Which meant that they had been dead all this time, since before my first visit, laying in here while I had talked to whoever had masqueraded as them, getting me to recover the box for them.

Unless. A thought came to me, one that chilled me to the bone. Unless whoever it was that I had spoken to had worn the skins as part of their disguise. I felt my stomach tighten at the thought of that and a touch of bile rose up into my throat. I had not heard of any creature that could do that, but that didn't mean much. There were always new creatures arriving in Spire and it was hard to keep track of them all.

Whoever they were, they were gone now and would have taken the box with them, and would be, no doubt, rather hard to track down. Things were going from bad to worse for me. There was no point staying there anymore. It was time to get out.

I slipped the revolver back into my coat and turned to leave the room.

As I did so, I heard a slithering rustle behind me.

I turned back around, to see more worms like the one that I had stepped on. They came out from underneath the bed where they had been hidden, a writhing mass of white, boiling out, twisting and twining together. They flowed up the bed and onto it, descending upon one of the skins that lay there and swarming over it. As I watched on in a disbelief that had me rooted to the spot, they started to enter the skin, burrowing in through nose and mouth, ears and eyes. The skin began to jerk and fill out as more and more entered it.

I was frozen, unable to react, unable to move. The horror of what I was saw filled me. My skin prickled as if it would burst and in the back of my skull my thoughts were screaming.

The body sat up. It looked just like Mrs Kochak, no longer hollowed out. It appeared, to all intents and purposes, as a living, breathing person. If I had not seen what had just happened, had not known what was inside of her, I would never have believed it if anyone had told me. She was indistinguishable from the real person. There had to be some magic at work there to complete so effective a ruse.

"Hello dear," came a voice from Mrs Kochak. "Do you not think it inappropriate that you are in a lady's room alone?"

My mouth opened to make some reply but no words came out. My heart pounded so hard I could hear it throbbing in my ears.

Mrs Kochak, or the thing that had assumed her form, swung her legs off the side of the bed and stood up. "Would you like a cup of tea, dear? I am a tad parched myself."

I looked from Mrs Kochak to the hollowed-out skin of Mr Kochak that still lay on the bed and back to Mrs Kochak. She followed my gaze.

"I am afraid that Mister Kochak will not be joining us today," she told me. "He is indisposed I am sorry to say."

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"Who are you?" I managed to stammer out, finding my voice at last.

She tilted her head to one side to observe me. "Mrs Kochak."

"No, you aren't. You are wearing her skin," I told her, feeling revulsion at the thought of it, "But you aren't her."

Mrs Kochak held up a hand, turning it around to study both side of it. "I have all of her memories." She lowered the hand and started to walk towards me. I backed off, out into the hall, leaving the bedroom. She continued to follow. "I feel what she felt, think as she thought. How can I not be her?"

"What did you to do her?" I demanded. I dragged the revolver back out of my pocket and pointed it towards her. My hand was not entirely steady but the weight of the revolver gave me a little comfort. Not a lot, but some.

"I devoured her. Not simply her body, but who she was, her very essence. Such a dear, sweet old lady."

"Where is the other one?"

"Who?"

"The one who is Mister Kochak."

"My progenitor? He is out and about, no doubt seeking out a new host to assume. I stayed behind to tidy up any loose ends. Like yourself."

The revolver roared in the tight confines of the hallway. I had not meant to shoot. Not consciously. My finger had squeezed on the trigger by itself, driven by the fear that flooded through me. What she - it - would try to do to me I couldn't say. Nothing pleasant no doubt.

The shot slammed into Mrs Kochak's chest and punched on through, the slug embedding itself in the wall behind her. She looked down at the hole in her chest, one that oozed white and not blood, then back up at me.

"Now dear, that was totally uncalled for."

As I watched the hole mended, drawing shut. The dress she wore knitted itself back into pristine condition too. She stepped forward towards me and the revolver roared again, the chamber spinning as I fired off all five remaining rounds. Even after it was empty I kept on pulling on the trigger, the hammer striking the empty slots in the chamber. I can't say that I was in the best frame of mind to really notice.

The five shots took her in the head, blasting holes in it. I might as well have just thrown them at her, for all the good it did. She staggered for a moment, more from the impact than the damage it seemed. From out of one of the holes, the pale, segmented length of one of the worms emerged while the skin of the face rippled as more of them moved beneath it. The worm squirmed about then withdrew back into the head and the holes started to close up behind it.

The creature gave me a positively old-fashioned look, one that was in parts disappointed, offended and saddened. It was a look that I had seen many times before on the faces of my school teachers, one designed to shame an ill behaving child. It hadn't really worked back then.

A sigh came from Mrs Kochak. "They always try to fight it but it never does them any good. Do you not realise that you can't defeat me?" She tilted her head to one side and observed me studiously. "What to do with you, that is the question. Perhaps I should devour you as well? Yes, that would be the thing. I could have fun being you, the investigator who blunders around in things that they do not know or understand, blind to everything." I took some exception to that. Blundering around? Certainly things had not gone as I had planned, or expected, on this occasion, but I wasn't one to just blunder around.

Mrs Kochak sniffed slowly at the air, her eyes lidding closed. "I will enjoy that. And there is the scent of fear upon you, a delicious scent."

She was not wrong about the fear. The icy fingers of it gripped me and cold sweat stood out on my brow. I had seen many things in my time, but none of them compared to this nightmare. If only it had been a nightmare.

I turned and dashed back through the hallway, out into the sitting room. Mrs Kochak followed at a more sedate pace She obviously felt there was no need to hurry.

"Where do you think you are going, dear?" she called out after me. "Running will do you no good. We know who you are. We know where your offices are, where your home is. You cannot escape us. Running will simply prolong the suffering."

They had me there. How could I escape such a thing? How could I fight it? And yet fight it I must. If I did not then all was lost, and more than lost.

I came to a sudden halt in the sitting room. Spinning about, I grabbed up one of the chairs at the table there. As the thing that was Mrs Kochak stepped out of the hallway into the sitting room, I swung the chair at her with all my might, slamming it into her. It shattered on impact, leaving me holding onto a pair of broken legs. The blow knocked the creature from its feet, sending it bouncing off the door frame before spinning about and landing heavily upon the carpeted floor.

A soft laugh came from it, almost sweet in nature, the laugh of a middle aged and kindly woman amused by some matter. "A nice try, dear." She rolled over and sat back up. The blow had not been without effect. Her left arm was out of alignment. It didn't seem to trouble her though. Beneath the surface of her skin I could see writhing movement as the worms within wriggled about back into position, resetting the arm. She stood back up. "What is your next plan, I wonder?" she asked, sounding genuinely amused. It was all a game to her, I realised. She knew that I couldn't beat her and so was relishing my feeble attempts to stop her. Only when she had grown bored with the game would she end it.

She stepped towards me again and I moved around the other side of the table from her. As she moved one way, I moved the other, seeking to keep the table between us. It was only a short-term solution though, a mere delaying action against the inevitable. Unless I came up with an idea fast then I was doomed.

On a sudden impulse, I changed tactics. Rather than circling around the table, I drove against it, shoving it forward as hard as I could. It caught the creature in Mrs Kochak's skin by surprise. The table slammed into her and drove her back, across the room and into a bookcase that stood against the wall, pinning her between the two. The bookcase shuddered at the impact and a pair of books tumbled off the shelf, while a vase fell from off the top of it, shattering on Mrs Kochak's head.

I pulled the table back and then drove it hard into her again. This time the bookcase wobbled and began to tilt from the collision. I wrenched the table away. The bookcase overbalanced and fell forward, taking Mrs Kochak with it. It crashed to the floor in a tangle of books and limbs, crushing the creature beneath it. Parts of Mrs Kochak protruded out from under it. The fall had obviously done some damage as one of her arms had torn free. Out of the gaping hole poured a mass of squirming, writhing white worms.

A muffled voice came from beneath the bookcase, one less human than before. It sounded much like the murmur of numerous voices, and they were not happy. "That you will pay for," it promised. "And yet for your efforts I still live."

I had not stopped it. At least I had bought myself a moment of time, enough to come up with a plan I hoped. The writhing worms were converging on the fallen bookcase and already it was rocking as the creature beneath it sought to get free. I didn't have a lot of time it would seem. How to destroy the creature, now that was the question. I looked around the room, seeking desperately for anything that could give me some hope.

My eyes lit upon Mr Kochak's liquor cabinet. There were a number of half-filled bottles in there, some of which were flammable. I ran across to it, tore open the door, grabbed the nearest bottle of spirits and hurled it at the bookcase. It shattered and the liquid spilled all over it. Two more bottles followed. A puddle of liquid began to form around the bookcase. I was not thinking all that clearly, given my plan, but it was the best I could come up with at short notice. I could see no other options.

From a coat pocket I took out a box of matches. Trembling fingers pried it open and I pulled out a match. It tumbled from my fingers as I tried to light it I took a deep breath, trying to calm nerves by the whole ordeal. A second match followed. It struck, flared and lit. For a moment I felt like I should say something, make some pithy comment. Nothing came to mind. Instead I simply flicked the match into the puddle of spirits.

There was a dull whumph and the puddle burst into flames.

A screech came from beneath the bookcase as the first flames danced over it, greedy for the taste of spirits that had soaked into it. The bookcase began to rock harder as the creature fought to get out. I started to snatch up the rest of the bottles, flinging them one after the other at the bookcase, each one smashing open and causing the hunger of the flames to grow brighter and stronger. Flames began to lick at the wallpaper of the room and it started to curl and burn. Books smouldered and smoke twisted in the air.

The flames could not be stopped now. They had taken a hold and a crackle and roar came from them as they continued to grow.

The screeches of the creature grew louder yet. From beneath the burning bookcase I saw a head emerge; Mrs Kochak's head. A scream came from it, a very human scream. I could not help but shudder at the sound of it and a part of me was sickened by it, desiring to douse the flames and rescue her. Yet I could not. Mrs Kochak was gone. All that remained was the creature that had taken her. I had to let the flames take their course. Already I could see individual worms trying to escape the flames, squirming across the floor. It was too late for them. They shrivelled up in the heat and popped. The smell of burning flesh mingled with the smoke and I gagged on it.

"This is not the end, dear," the creature promised me even as it burned. Then the head burst open and a mass of worms spilled out, to be devoured in the flames.

I couldn't watch after that. The heat of the flames had grown to intense and I felt sickened to the core. Part of me knew that it had to happen but it battled with the part of me that struggled with what I had seen, that still believed that there was a real person in there, suffering in the flames, and not the creature that had taken it over.

Turning my back, I left the building, condemning it to the flames.