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  I tighten my grip upon the hatchet handle.

  Only now do I realize that I have been holding my breath since the moment I first saw the hideous little creature—perhaps a minute or more. I exhale, and the sound of my breath escaping my lungs alerts the creature. Damn! Seeing no prospect for hesitation, I raise the hatchet and lunge forward, taking two whole steps before bringing it down. The Isolate screeches like nothing I’d ever heard before—like an African jackal with its leg snared in a steel trap, or a Hollywood vampire caught beneath the flames of a hunter’s torch. Its eyes widen, and then like magic turn a glowing gold color, as though raging fires have ignited behind its previously dormant irises. I’ve come to conclude that not only do they utilize this feature as a means of visible communication, but they also appear to act as an indicator that their extra-sensory perceptions have been ‘turned on’, so to speak.

  The creature leaps away from the deer and skids into the bathroom, a split moment before the hatchet plunges into the deer’s hide.

  The deer bellows deeply, its agony obvious as the soul within continues to cling on. I look into the bathroom and see a streak of blood on the white tiles. I yank the handle out of the deer (and catch a nice spray of blood on my arm), and see the baby Isolate careen into the side of the bathtub with a dull thud. It is here that I notice its nakedness (most of the hundreds of adult Isolates I’ve seen have worn some sort of meager loincloth about its privates, or a burlap bag as a dress), and see that it’s a male, the penis dark and mottled and no larger than a hazelnut.

  The Isolate rights itself and I hold the bloodied hatchet out before me. I make a move toward it but slip down to my knees in the puddle of blood. The deer, miraculously alive, juts its legs out, hard enough to cause me a shock of pain as its hoof connects with my shin. I scream out. The deer makes a dreadful honking sound. The Isolate flares its nostrils, hisses at me, and immediately races through the connecting door, into the hallway. In a panic, I crawl into the bathroom, slipping and sliding in the wet matter on the tiles. Once I’ve got a dry patch of floor beneath me, I clamber to my feet and race to the door. Like a fleeing dog, I see the head of the tiny Isolate disappearing down the steps.

  Shit!

  Common sense tells me to let it go, to lock the door behind it after it flees my battered home and hope and pray that it and its brothers never return. But if I do that, then it will tell the others that I’m still here, that I didn’t kill myself in the cellar and that they better put their guard up because I’ve still got a little fight left in me.

  As always, there is no right and wrong here in Ashborough. You make a decision, you stick to it, and hope you come out of it alive.

  My decision now is to kill the little motherfucker.

  Leaving the deer behind (after all, what damage can it do other than continue to bleed and shit out onto the floor?), I stagger down the steps, tripping over the slug-like trail of moisture the little Isolate left behind. I suck in a deep breath and take the last five steps in a single leap, staggering forward as I hit the throw on the floor and slam shoulder-first into the barricaded front door.

  Pain rips through my shoulder and arm, all the way down to the wrist. Lightheaded, I spin around and see bloody Isolate footprints on the area rug, reptilian in nature with five long, pointed digits and winding patterns in the soles. Driven by fear, instinct, and adrenaline, I lurch through the living room, the tiny hatchet raised high like some madman in a grade-B slasher flick. I move into the hallway...and stop. The cellar door is shut and I wonder if I closed it after coming up; my mind tells me no, the little man in my hand screams yes you did!, probably lying to me again because he wants me to live...to survive. Can’t say I fault him.

  But the Michael Cayle in me, the guy who fought back fatigue and nausea through seven years of grad school, who spent the last nine months of his life at war with a race of supernaturally-driven critters living in the woods behind his home (and lived tell about it) insists that I continue following the footprints, which lead past the door and into the kitchen.

  I take a step toward the kitchen and place my back against the wall, alongside the cellar door. From this position I can see the kitchen table and the sink. The window above the sink—half barricaded—shows daylight quickly vanishing into a cold January night (I can only guess that January has arrived; the last date I can remember for certain was Thanksgiving, and that seems like ages ago), icy snow still tapping out a steady rhythm against the sill.

  Arching my head, I slowly peer around the corner.

  The pinkish clawprints circle aimlessly about the laminated tiles, but seem to go nowhere.

  Where the hell did it go…?

  As quietly as my sneakers will allow, I step into the kitchen and see more clearly the cluster of clawprints in the center of the floor…and then a single print between it and the cabinets.

  On the countertop, a thin line of blood trickles over the edge of Formica, and down the wooden cabinetry.

  I spin around nervously. Look. See nothing.

  The little man in my head shouts: it’s in here somewhere! It has to be!

  Surely it does. The only other exit from the kitchen is twelve feet away at the opposite end of the room: the hallway leading into my office. Although the door is open, the pink-smattered clawprints do not vanish into the darkness beyond.

  Unless, in some play to divert me, to stall me, it’d jumped into the hallway and sped away. If so, then its little plan worked.

  I step across the kitchen, fully intent on racing down the dark hall, through the waiting room, and then into my office to hunt the fucker down before it crawls through a broken window or escapes up the chimney, back to the hell where its mother awaits.

  Christine…

  Its mother. My wife. The woman who all my life I’ve worshipped, for better and for worse, for richer and poorer. A fleeting moment passes where I realize that this very moment has never seen poorer, more worse days. I tell myself that Christine needs me now more than ever, for although her mind may be telling her at this moment that her place and purpose is in the woods alongside the Isolates, awaiting her newborn to return, her very soul is in jeopardy, and I am the only one that can help her and my darling little Jessica.

  I stop at the threshold of the hallway door and peer into the darkness beyond, then lower the hatchet and with the back of my hand feel out the light switch on the wall.

  Without hesitation, I flick it on.

  In the very moment the hall is bathed in pallid light, my heart skips a beat. In the bloodless silence that forms in my head, a scratching creeps up from behind me. I can feel my eyes bulging from my head as I spin around and come face to face with…with nothing.

  My eyes pin the trickle of blood on the edge of the countertop…and then the faint clawprint on its surface. Above that, I fix my pained gaze upon the cabinet door…and see on the molding beneath the cabinet a single droplet of diluted blood, pink and lucent.

  Shit! my mind screams as the door bursts open and the baby Isolate leaps out, all four sets of claws bared, aimed for my face. It sails through the air like a monkey leaping from one tree limb to another in the jungle. I can see its eyes, wide like cue balls, as gold as a firefly’s ass, the brow above downcast in a clear expression of innate anger. I bring both hands up, not in any effort to fight back—a stroke of pure luck it would be should the hatchet’s blade catch it as it lands on me—but to merely protect myself.

  The thing lands on me, hind claws ripping into my shirt and painfully digging out a few layers of skin; fingernails groping at my face which I’ve duly protected with my own flailing hands. With my free hand I manage to grasp the thing tightly around its small neck, my fingertips and thumb nearly meeting as they circle its throat. I could feel the thing’s breaths, hot and rapid, forcing what feels like an Adam’s apple pistoning up and down beneath my grip.

  Its tiny hands, no bigger than half-dollars, grope for my eyes and cut into my forehead. Warm blood trickles down the bridge
of my nose. My lungs exhale a thunderous gasp of pain, my mouth now dry and sour, nearly unable to part as my breath escapes me. The baby Isolate (the term ‘baby’ seems such a mute designation given the ferocity of the creature) throws its head back, and despite my fingers tightening their grip around its throat, it still finds a way to give off an ear-splitting screech of its own. It grasps handfuls of my hair and shakes my head. My neck cracks, sending a hot and painful ball of fire into my ears. A loud firecracker popping sound rips through the kitchen, the result of its jaws snapping together as it leans forward and attempts to bite my face.

  A hideous stench assaults me, that of its breath, and I can feel my stomach roil as it threatens to send up a stream of bile and bitter acids. It lets go of my hair and flails its arms relentlessly, cutting into my shoulders, my head. Its hindquarters jut and lunge, taking out strips of my shirt and the skin of my stomach beneath.

  I squeeze harder into its throat with my left hand…and then make an attempt to hit it with the hatchet. At a bad angle and unable to strike out with the business end of the makeshift weapon, I’m still able to clunk it on its skull with the ball-peen side. The thing screeches and shakes its body, flailing its arms wildly in a frantic do-or-die move.

  Then one of its hind claws rips deeply into my stomach, taking out a thick hunk of skin. Pain tears through my body and into my hands, forcing me to loosen my grip on the creature. The Isolate, seeing an opportunity to strike back, swipes both hands at me and I find no choice but to let it go, fearing that I’ll find my face buried beneath its long fingernails. It hits the floor with a dull thud, immediately rights itself, and skitters off into the dark hallway leading into my office.

  Chapter Six

  Warm blood seeps from me in many places: my forehead, my face, my arms, and flows rapidly from my stomach which has suffered the brunt of the attack. Lowering the hatchet, I careen sideways into the counter and use my left arm to keep myself from falling down. My breathing is quick and shallow, mouth and tongue dry like talc. The lightheadedness I’ve been suffering all along gives way to dizziness, and it takes a good ten seconds for me to gather my wits and keep myself from passing out.

  I consider for a moment to end the chase right here, to let the baby Isolate escape back into the woods and leave me be. Thoughts of moving on with my miserable life enter my head, and for the first time in God knows how long I see a pinpoint of light at the end of the deep, dark tunnel that has closed in on me since the day I moved here; the very thought of leaving all the horrors behind and formulating some master plan to retrieve my wife and daughter from the Isolates gives me hope and the will to carry on.

  I can do it…

  But then I wonder: what if the little motherfucker doesn’t leave here? What if its goal is to spend its first days on earth saturating my life with havoc and pain? To stop me from going out there and rescuing Christine and Jessica…

  That must be it! It’d probably stayed here so it could put an end to me, once and for all. With me—their only threat—gone, they could begin to replenish their strength in numbers…replace those that I so unmercifully killed in their den. I wonder for a quick moment how they could go about doing this, and the answer lies within the little creature that just fled into my office: they are a resilient race, able to make do in the world mere seconds after birth. They could mate in an orgy of filth and decadence and provide to the pregnant mothers the same nutritive concoction they fed my wife, allowing a few months of silence to pass until their new members are born. And then I realize…just as Sam Huxtable mentioned to me as I threatened his life in my office, that there are many more of them burrowing in underground hubs throughout the miles of woodland surrounding Ashborough.

  Somehow, I know: they will band together, all of them, and feast upon on the immeasurable supply of flesh I provided for them a few days ago. They will grow strong. By now the hantaan virus in the blood of the corpses is as dead as…

  …as dead as Phillip Deighton, the man you clubbed to death with a baseball bat…

  Shaking off the sickening memory, I push away from the counter and stagger down the dimly lit hall into which the baby Isolate escaped. The hallway runs ten feet, segregated only by an adjoining laundry room and adjacent linen closet. The fresh scent of fabric softener sneaks into my nose, a tearful reminder of the simple life I once led back in Manhattan, a place I considered dangerous before I experienced the hidden horrors of Ashborough. I pass beneath the single bulb above and reach the threshold that crosses into the waiting room.

  Here on the floor are faint patches of wetness: the fading clawprints of the baby Isolate. I raise the hatchet, take a deep breath—as much stale air that my burning lungs will allow—and enter the waiting room.

  Sweat masks my face as I glance over the small space. There’s another door here on the side of the house (the only way in that’d never had a board nailed over it), the entrance where Ashborough’s ready and willing patients once greeted me upon arriving for their appointments. Little did I know at the time that they were all in on the grand scheme, playing their part in covering up the hellstorm about to crash down on the new doctor in town. Facing the doorway is the reception area, the desk having remained forever empty, as Christine’s intended position as my receptionist had been terminated due to her unexpected pregnancy. Immediately behind the vestibule wall is the examination room, still filled with Neil Farris’s equipment; it’s my guess that the white paper on top of the examination table inside is still stained from the dead Isolate I rested on it a few days ago.

  Guided solely by instinct, I assume the baby Isolate went into the study on the left, and not the examining room to the right.

  Passing through the foyer, I turn left and enter my study.

  The study is a huge room, with vaulted ceilings, a stone fireplace, and bookshelves that line almost every inch of wall. I can remember seeing this room for the first time when the widow Farris showed me the house, thinking how it was a physician’s dream-come-true. I’d imagined at the time getting lost in here after dinner, gazing out the windows at the dark expanse of woods in the backyard to a glass of warm brandy.

  There are plenty of nooks and crannies here for an eighteen-inch fiend to hide. And, considering that here was the first place I’d ever laid eyes on the Isolates, I just knew…just knew that the thing was in here somewhere.

  Watching me. Waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.

  For the millionth time, I raise the hatchet. This time I promise myself I’m going to kill it, chop it up into a hundred tiny little pieces and feed it to the woodland creatures.

  Dear God…I am truly losing my mind…I can feel it crumbling away, piece by piece…

  I step farther into the study, peering through the floor-to-ceiling bay window looking out into the backyard. The wood planks I’d nailed over them have since fallen free, enabling me to see the shed in the back where I encountered my first injured deer (compliments of Phillip Deighton), a mere outline in the moon’s strengthening beams and veil of hazy snowfall.

  And beyond that, the woods.

  I see them immediately. Golden eyes. A dozen, maybe more, all of them peering in at me.

  It is such a surreal moment, once again seeing the eyes floating lazily at the perimeter of the woods, like great fireflies from a children’s tale. They shift about each other, as though the Isolates are climbing over each other as they stealthily approach the house. I wonder if Christine and Jessica are with them, held there against their will to be used perhaps as hostages in some sort of barter for their wilding baby.

  Problem is that I don’t know where the little motherfucker is.

  I keep the hatchet raised high, now twisting and jerking my gaze around the room, looking for the missing fiend. Where is it? Despite the sweat on my face, a cold shiver rips through me, blanketing my body in gooseflesh. My heart leaps up into my throat, nearly suffocating me with nervous anticipation. For a moment I grieve over the condition of my study, the floor littere
d with papers and rotten food scraps, an oak end table turned over, a shattered bottle of bourbon on the stone hearth, the fragrance of its contents still lingering in the air.

  These thoughts quickly pass as I hear the grainy shuffle of it, of them, coming down the chimney.

  They’ve done it once before like this. I can remember it all so clearly—it had been the first time I’d come face-to-face with them. Keeping this memory at the front of my mind, I stagger over to the far end of my cherry desk and lean hard against the smooth finish. Hatchet held out before like some token offering, I train my eyes upon the fireplace, and the stone hearth that rises up through the vaulted ceiling.

  And I listen…their claws scraping the soot coated inner walls of the chimney, their thin and hairy bodies sliding down…and then, the muted glow of their golden eyes as it splays out before them upon their entrance into my home.

  At first I see a hand, one nearly twice the size of the baby, but still able to fit into the palm of an adult male. It grips the stone edge of the hearth at the top of the fireplace, covered in black soot. A second hand appears, six inches away from the first. I hold my breath in a vain attempt to keep my body from trembling, and think for a wholly irrational moment of leaping forward with the hatchet and cutting its ugly head off as it makes its entrance into the room. But I am too late. Like a dismounting gymnast, the creature hurls itself out of the fireplace and lands on its legs, skidding across the wood floor and tripping only slightly before righting itself at the other side of the desk.

  Our eyes lock, mine brown and filled with bitter tears and its golden, glowing only slightly along the fringes of its dusty gray irises. It spreads its cracked lips wide and glowers at me, much like a guard dog might a robber in the middle of the night. A few seconds pass and I am reminded of the first time I saw an Isolate up close. I can remember my body doing things it had never done before—how my insides had churned, and I’d wished at the time that I’d had a Valium and a shot of bourbon to chase it. I can remember shuttering my eyes in an effort to calm my slamming heart…but the image of its fiery eyes had stayed with me, burning the dark vista painted on the inside of my lids, and later, the surface of my brain.