At the far end of the room, amid a nest of wrappers and half-devoured plates, lay Emily. She stared back at John, her neck twisted at impossible angle, her head hanging limp upside down, her jaw broken, and rivulets of blood leaking from her mouth and down into her hair. The rest of her body had contorted into a ball, bent and broken.

There could be no doubt she was dead, and yet her corpse shifted in a small jerking pattern as that sound continued beneath. John could place it now, the sound of something eating, its teeth clacking against bone and tearing at meat, pausing as it consumed its kill, then resuming with another bite – a fresh rending.

"Nick?" He didn't want to even think it, but he couldn't help himself. He pictured his son beneath that mass, eating and eating, sating the insatiable hunger that had plagued him for months now. "Nicholas!"

"Dad."

The door shut behind John revealing his son, clutching his knees and rocking, his back to the wall. John felt a moment of relief, then flinched at the low to which he had let himself fall sunk in. How could he even have thought for a second that his son was capable of an act so grotesque? That thought would plague John for the rest of his life, and yet, no time remained for such indulgences now.

He grabbed a baseball bat from the floor and approached the broken remains of his wife. "You're dead, mother fucker!"

John heard himself scream those first words as he approached his wife's body, then the pulsing anger drowned out all sound and all rational thought. He could feel the string of obscenities unleash, the spit and rage exploding forth, but time and space, sight and sound, all became meaningless, nothing more than background to the main event.

He leapt behind Emily, ready for a man or even some wild animal, his bat swinging. It struck, the metal reverberating as it hit across something hard with a crack that John more sensed than heard, and simultaneously a soft give. That's when the world exploded in a shrill creak-scream, an otherworldly mix of raspy violin chords tinged with a guttural bubble.

John fell to his knees, his hands covering his ears, and his bat rolling away into the blood nest of discarded wrapper and meat scraps. Emily scraps?

A pale form, almost translucent, jerked back, seizing as puss erupted from a crack along what John could only conceive of as a shell. It writhed, large, lobster-like claws clacking as they ripped away from Emily, and mandibles snapping, yet all too quick for John to catch a concrete glimpse before it burrowed beneath its macabre nest.

"What the hell?" John skittered backwards across the floor, in an unsettlingly appropriate crab-walk.

"Ade, dad," Nicholas said from behind him. "Dad, Ade."

John glanced back. His son still set back to the wall by the door, but he had let go of his knees, his body slumping, legs now splayed out and his arms slack at his sides, as if a balloon deflating. And there was something more to that thought... John could still see the baby-like fat in his face, and multiple chins still consumed Nicholas's neck, and yet, he seemed smaller somehow.

"I don't understand."

"She gave him to me."

"She who?" John rose, his gaze returning to the remains of his wife, even as he spoke to his son behind him. That thing was still in there somewhere.

"I don't know." Nicholas said. "She was there when I found Matt, hiding in the mirrors. I only saw her for a moment."

"Nick, you're not making sense."

Emily's body shifted, her head tilting and the bulk of her mass shifting to one side. Somewhere below her that thing was moving. More, John had the distinct impression that it was burrowing.

"She gave him to me. She reached through the window and she touched me and told me that everything would be okay."

His son wasn't making any sense, but that was fine. He was alive. Right now life had just gone FUBAR. Sense could come later.

"Nick," John said, breaking through the crazy talk, "get the door. We have to go."

John kept his eyes on Emily's body as it shifted, nothing left but a heap of pulverized bone and meat. As long as he kept his eyes on it, as long as he could see that thing coming, he and his son had a chance. Behind him, he heard Nicholas lift himself to his feet.

"Good, son. Good. Now get the door."

"She gave him to me. 'A friend for a friend,' she said."

"Just get the door." Emily's body collapsed inward, then lay still. The wrappers and plates at the edge of the nest began to stir. "Now, Nicholas!"

"I still don't know if she meant a friend to replace Matt, or if she meant I was her friend and she was gifting me with a new friend. She didn't stick around to explain, you know?"

"Nicholas, get the damn door!"

John turned, that pulsing anger resuming, not at his son, but at the whole situation. They had to leave immediately. As he shifted his gaze, his kneecap shattered and his world burst into a red flare of pain.

John fell landing on the shattered knee and his world ruptured once more. He screamed and toppled to the floor, clutching at the broken mess of bone and flesh. As the red subsided, he caught sight of his son lifting a heavy meat tenderizer, then bringing it down with all his weight.