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  Hours have passed since they were taken from me. I can remember the very moment I’d passed out from fear upon sighting the glow of their eyes. When I woke up some indeterminate amount of time, I’d found them gone, only the blood and afterbirth from Christine’s crude delivery left behind. I’d searched the house, and at the time thought seriously about heading back out into the woods to look for them. But fatigue had had me in its grasp, and I’d resigned myself to having failed them. I can remember standing before the bathroom sink, washing my hands and face (I wonder why I never changed my blood and vomit-stained clothing) and telling myself that the game was over, that although I’d given it a helluva effort, I’d lost the battle and could do nothing about it. So I’d crawled into Jessica’s bed and slept for some ungodly amount of time. It was only after I awoke hours later that I took myself and a few days worth of food and water into the cellar with thoughts of recording the events that took place as I remembered them.

  The last four or five or six hours of my life have been spent speaking into the cassette recorder which still sits atop the table in the basement, relating every detail of my experiences with thoughts of suicide sitting like a boulder at the forefront of my mind. It had been my intent to leave this world…but not without a warning to the next owner of this house: to the next doctor brought in to clean up the mess I’ve left behind.

  But that didn’t happen.

  I’m still here, as hard as that is to believe, standing in the hallway of my home, home sweet fucking home, peering back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, armed with a small, rusted hatchet in one hand and trying to figure out whether or not I’m the only one here.

  Silence overshadows everything, falling over the house like a great quilt. Only the rhythm of the wind can be heard as it wrestles the naked boughs and drifts of snow leaning up against the eaves. Deciding not to investigate the kitchen, and then ultimately my office—a move at the moment that seems much too final—I take a step toward the living room. The wood floor creaks beneath the weight of my boots, and for a quick moment I look down at them and see flecks of blood clotting the worn leather. Never in my life have I ever imagined seeing blood on myself and not being able to truthfully determine whose it was. A pittance of a thought given the terrible nature of the situation, but one no less disconcerting.

  Raising the hatchet, I step into the living room. There’s a chill in the house that seems to echo the true horror of the situation, as though the house itself has fallen sick with fear and dread, the current events a terrible virus taking place within its walls. It’s here that I see clear indications of the sheer amount of time we’ve been suffering here: the chair by the steps tipped on its side; whorls of dust the size of rats laying corpselike against the walls; torn papers and plastic tumblers strewn about the floor. And then, Jessica’s and Christine’s luggage, two small duffle bags I’d told them to pack before they were taken from me—the closest we got to fleeing this god-forsaken place. If I were an outsider who happened to stumble upon this place, I would think this home to be abandoned, ridden with painful memories and disease. For a moment I realize that this is not far from the truth, as I am the only one who remains here. And barely.

  Taking a giant step into the living room, I plant my foot upon the rug in an effort to dampen the sound of my footstep. It seems to work and I am able to silently shuffle to the staircase.

  From the upstairs landing comes a quiet thump…and then the quick padding of footsteps racing down the length of the upstairs hallway.

  No doubt about it now.

  Someone, or something, is in the house.

  My heart begins a forceful trot in my chest, keeping pace with the pounding in my head. The rush of fear in me nearly takes my breath away, and I have to grab onto the banister to keep from falling down. Squeezing my eyes shut, I regain my fortitude—what little of it I have left—and peer up the stairs toward the second-floor landing.

  It’s only now that I can see that darkness is about to drop its veil over Ashborough. A gentle patter of snow begins to hit the wooden barricade over the window in the living room, condensation painting a gauzy layer upon the spotted panes. Beyond, the naked trees appear as ominous shadows, unmoving yet threatening in their ubiquity. They seem to close in on me, closer…closer…suffocating me like the arms of a thousand marauders reaching out to choke me.

  I begin to hyperventilate. Tears spring from my eyes, and I feel a wave of nausea clutch at my gut. Gagging, I force my free hand into my mouth to keep as silent as possible, but am unable to completely mute my sick fear.

  The sound of my muffled choke seems to resound around the entire house, and in my imagination I can hear the beams settling restlessly in protest, as though they too have become infected with fear.

  As if in response, the footsteps upstairs continue…but for only a few moments before fading once again into intimidating silence.

  I shake my head. My mind screams, Damn my life to hell!

  Crazed laughter fills my head, reminding me that I’m already there, and that there’s no sense avoiding the inevitable.

  So I raise the hatchet and begin to climb the stairs, one painstaking step at a time. My body protests the journey, the pain and stiffness in my limbs on par with someone who’s recently been hit by a car. I’ve never been in any sort of accident myself, but as a doctor who’s spent his internship in a Manhattan emergency room, I’ve witnessed first-hand many such events and have pacified the injured complaining of terrible body aches, headaches, stiffness in the bones, sore muscles, and nausea.

  That’s exactly how I feel now.

  The steps creak as I make my ascent, one hand on the polished banister, the other gripping the hatchet white-knuckle tight, poised over my shoulder should I need to defend myself against…against whom?

  Or what…

  I remind myself that it may be Jessica or Christine, perhaps back home to reunite with me in a shower of tears and relief…or to take me away, back into the den of the Isolates to face whatever wicked music they might have planned for me. Regardless, I must control my mind from the instinctual, dread-ridden urge to protect my body from the possibility of an Isolate being here, and not swing the hatchet upon any first indication of movement.

  I reach the top of the staircase, and with a creak, step out onto the landing. Ahead is the bathroom, where just hours ago I’d washed away the bloody, muddy evils of the horrors that put me here…where some months ago I cleaned my hands of my own dog’s blood and hair: poor little Jimmy Page, my daughter’s Cocker Spaniel, whom I was forced in some hallucinatory nightmare to sacrifice—to murder!—upon the altar in their stone shrine, deep in the darkness of the woods.

  The door to the bathroom is closed.

  I decide for the moment to leave it that way and turn to the right, where I back up against the wall extending perpendicular to the hallway.

  Gripping the hatchet’s wood handle in both hands, I attempt a deep breath, but my labored lungs won’t allow me such a task. A wave of lightheadedness hits me with the force of a spray of water from a burst balloon and I stagger forward…just a half-step, and quickly regain my wits.

  Without second thought, I spin around into the hallway.

  For a fleeting moment I see a shadow darting through the gloom into my bedroom. It’d moved much too quickly for me to come to any concrete conclusion as to what or who it might be, but having spent much of the last few months face-to-face with those damn motherfuckers in the woods, I have to assume that it is, indeed, one of them.

  An Isolate.

  “Hey…I see you!”

  Damn it! Why did I just alert the thing of my presence?! I try to reason with myself, that I could not help from making such an anxious decision, because the call had been made by the little man in my head. He’d introduced himself to me at some point while I was in the cellar, and is now wholly desperate to see me out of this horrific situation, no matter what, and on no uncertain terms. Boneheaded move or not, my r
esponse to sighting the shadow was unavoidable, a nerve-driven reaction.

  And the sound of my own voice—I’d listened to it for hours on end while recording the tapes in the basement, and yet here and now it sounds so oddly foreign, almost muted, as though my ears are plugged with wax. With this notion, it comes to reason (however fucked-up my sense of ‘reason’ is at this point) that the shout I just made had sounded much louder to the thing in the bedroom than to me.

  Shit.

  I have no choice in the matter. I need to move now, and fast.

  Listening again to the little man in my head, (what is it and where did it come from?) I ignore the pain in my body and stagger down the hall, hatchet raised high and poised to come down. I pass my daughter’s room, mostly untouched by the evils saturating my home, and see, outside of the unmade bed I’d slept in and the faint streaks of blood, puke, and mud I’d left behind in it, that everything else is in order. Her oak armoire, all the drawers tightly shut, the clothes we’d unpacked nine months earlier still folded neatly within; the end table topped with her wood-carved bedside lamp, a Mother Goose picture book laying alongside it, the bright illustration on its cover an alarming contrast to the unlighted gloom stuffing the room.

  And then on the bureau beneath the window, her dolls. I hesitate as I pass the doorway and catch the twinkling eyes of the some twenty-odd plastic and ceramic babies, all of them looking straight at me, their unmoving cherubic parts a harsh inequity to the horrors of their imaginary accusation: Where is Jessica, Michael? What have you done to her? You’ve killed her, haven’t you Michael? You let them take her, and now they’re sacrificing her on the stone altar, just as you did to her dog…

  No!... I tear my eyes away, again moist with tears. Using the back of my free hand, I quickly wipe the dampness away and continue down the hall, trying to persuade what little strength I have left to step up to the plate and help me reach the bedroom safely.

  There’s a linen closet at the end of the hall, the door shut. For a moment I consider opening it and hiding behind it. But the thin wood door would prove little or no protection against an Isolate. So instead, I raise the hatchet high and just lunge into the bedroom, and…and immediately come face-to-face with something I’d never in a million years would have ever expected.

  Chapter Four

  Jesus Christ!

  I shake my head back and forth, half out of incredulity, half out of fear, my mind immediately challenging what my eyes are seeing. There is no way! But here it is right before my tortured eyes: a young doe perhaps half the size of a fully matured female, laying on its side upon the wooden floor next to my bed.

  It had experienced some sort of grave misfortune, its recent injuries telling of a vicious attack: its flank deeply sliced into with a knife or…or a claw!, a smattering of blood pooling out onto the floor beneath it.

  It makes a weak attempt to move and two of its legs smack against the bed frame, producing the pattering noise I’d been hearing all along.

  Lowering the axe, I step toward it.

  It opens its mouth and makes a weak blurting sound, eyes bulging and rolling towards me, seemingly desperate for help. The wet intensity of its gaze startles me and I flinch back as my mind demands me to grab hold of my thoughts and figure out how the hell it got here. You know how it got here, Michael. The Isolates. They put it here. Just like your neighbor Phillip Deighton did, when he put that injured deer into your tool shed. You remember Phillip, don’t you? The man you murdered?

  No!

  Yes, yes, yes, I murdered my neighbor Phillip Deighton. I am a murderer! But…dear God, forgive me. I had no choice. They made me do it to save my family!

  Again tears well in my eyes, and I shake them and my weak thoughts away with a quick jerk of my head. There is no time for regrets. There is only time for looking ahead to what will be. And if I have anything to do with it, I will find Christine and Jessica and leave Ashborough once and for all.

  And here before me is the first of what I feel will be many hurdles in my attempt to do just that.

  My body begins to tremble, infected with the same cold chill the day I opened the shed in the back yard all those months ago and found the near-dead deer inside. But this feeling, albeit similar to what I felt that day, is different. It is borne out of pure fear…a fear not of the unexpected, but of what has happened. Of what I know is happening, both here in my bedroom, and inside my head.

  You’re a doctor Michael. You know the prognosis. They call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

  A sick stench rises from the injured animal, that of its fear and the running bowels released on my bedroom floor. Flies buzz about it in a shower of exhilaration, seemingly dispatching reports of newly discovered treasure. The deer again shifts its bulk, stirring a few inches in silence before chucking its head back and forcing out a weak bleat of anguish.

  Hatchet in hand, I consider taking it out of its misery. Is this what the Isolates want? Or do they want me to drag the deer out into the woods, a third of a mile back to the circle of stones and the bloodstained altar at its heart, place the deer upon the altar and kill it in a sacrifice to the Isolates. I did this once with our dog, Jessica’s dog, in exchange for my family’s protection…and at the time, it’d worked. But I’d been a hostage to their supernatural influence at the time. What about now? Will they return my family to me if I give them the sacrifice they seem to be asking for?

  I have to do it.

  I step toward the deer, hatchet still raised not with a promise to kill, but to protect myself from the Isolate that’d dragged it into my house. Having spent all those hours in the cellar relating my story on the tapes, I can only assume—hope, really—that the deer had been injured outside and dragged up here while I was down there, wholly wrapped up in the telling of the horrors that have become of my life.

  Still, I have to be careful. The Isolates are smart, cunning, violent creatures with an ability to control one’s thoughts, one’s actions, through an unexplainable and terrifying form of hallucinatory influence. They can make you see things and hear things that aren’t there. It is how they were able to make Christine think she’d been visiting a doctor’s office for pregnancy checkups, when in fact she’d been visiting the home of the now dead Old Lady Zellis all along.

  I take another step toward the deer…and stop.

  Something strikes me as odd.

  If the deer had been injured outside, then the wound on its side, the one leaving a dark pool of blood on the floor, would have left a trail throughout the house.

  The steps had been free of blood.

  The hallway had been free of blood.

  Which means…

  Oh, God, no…

  Chapter Five

  My heart begins to beat harder, a previously unimaginable occurrence as it collides with my ribcage like a distraught prisoner against a set of iron bars. From the connecting door into the bathroom I hear a quick scrape upon the tile floors…

  …and then, like a lightning strike, something races through the open door, into the bedroom.

  The thing, at first indefinable due to its speed and small size, leaves a trail of wet fluid and sodden hair behind as it leaps upon the deer. Only as it digs its clawed feet into the open wound on the deer’s side do I realize exactly what it is.

  Christine’s baby. The hideous result of her being raped by the great ghostly demon in the woods…the result of a pregnancy I’d been fooled to think was created from my seed…my seed, presumably slipped free from a condom during one of our infrequent lovemaking sessions.

  Damn my foolishness!

  Quickly I tell myself not to focus on the horrors of the past, and concentrate on the present. Here and now, face to face with the baby Isolate I’d witnessed racing across my bedroom floor not minutes after its birth, the thing only eighteen inches high but able like some animal on the plains in Africa to walk alongside its mother and fend for itself unassisted in the cruel world.

  And fend for itself
it has done, my jeans showing tears below the knee where it had dug its nails and attempted to bite me just moments after its birth. Clearly it possesses a powerful instinct to hunt, to survive, having earlier relinquished its first opportunity—me—and chosen the woods in an effort to fulfill its innate desires. And I can only come to assume now that the baby Isolate, having been born here in my bedroom, had deduced that this was its den, its home, the place where it would live out its years. The absence of its brethren seemed not to distract it from its more dominating, primordial urges, and it has decidedly brought back its first conquest here.

  Where it now begins to revel in its accomplishment.

  Seemingly unaware of my presence, it sinks its clawed hands (which are oddly human-like, possessing four fingers and a thumb) into the young doe’s neck. The parting flesh makes a tearing sound that delivers a ripple of horrible gooseflesh down my back. I can see the muscles and tendons flexing through its thin, hairy skin (which is, I feel compelled to add, still wet of its own afterbirth) as it yanks upon the flesh of the deer’s neck, while gaining purchase with its hind claws in its flank. The deer shifts and bucks, slamming the floor with its hooves. But the baby Isolate, like a rodeo cowboy on a bull, hangs on and continues its aggressive assault on the animal.

  A hunk of flesh on the deer’s neck tears free into the Isolate’s claws. Without further hesitation, the creature feeds itself, ripping into the flesh with its tiny, stumplike teeth. Blood gushes from the deer’s neck. Its tongue uncurls from its mouth and gyrates like a worm out of earth. Labored breaths wheeze from its wound.

  The baby Isolate shifts its position atop the deer, fingernails dripping blood. Its eyes are the size of an adult human’s, dark brown that would undoubtedly turn gold should it become aware of my presence. Thankfully—and quite oddly, I think, as it must not possess a sharp sense of acuity at this very young age—it continues to focus on the raw meat, and I continue to focus with horror upon the blood and saliva mixing into the thick swirl of hair on its chin.