The kug slithered towards the bed, until Simon restrained it with the deep song.

To the extent the kug was a reasoning thing, it understood, and only felt slightly cheated. The kug slid away, returning to the policeman’s corpse, and slithered down the gaping bloody hole of the man’s neck. It had broken the door getting into this plane, but there was still a small space in the corpse’s lower spine it could inch through if it wriggled.

Simon found an ice bucket and emptied it. He knelt on the carpet and began scooping up pieces of Man In Black with his hands, dumping them into the bucket. There wasn’t enough for a Curwen Process, but there were alternatives in the Agamotto Fragment or the fifth volume of the Revelations. The bucket was half-full when he began crying again, but he kept shovelling pieces of dead man into the bucket.

It was three-quarters full when Simon began to wail, a choked, inarticulate sound from deep in his being. He doubled over, face in his bloody hands, and howled.