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  The Isolate in front of me is an adult, its clothing dark with sweat, hanging upon its emaciated body in dirty strips, stringy hair falling across its skeletal face in damp, oily strings.

  It smells of death…of the sea of Isolate corpses in its den.

  Behind it, more of them fall into the room from the chimney. They emerge from the fireplace coated in soot, the glow of their eyes like golden beacons peering through the black masks of their faces.

  Frozen like a mannequin with the pathetic little hatchet poised before me, I try to speak but my mouth is too dry to part, and all that emerges from my throat is a weak, “Meh.”

  Like ants forming a bridge in the jungle, the Isolates—perhaps six or seven of them—cluster together in a wall of strength on the other side of my desk, arms and legs interconnected as if to block my way to the bookshelf where my liquor bottles sit in their promise of temporary relief. They remain in this position, virtually unmoving save for a slight shift as they strengthen their bond with one another and stare at me: all of them, with their large, rounded eyes and golden irises filling the darkening room with a soft, muted glow.

  Here I can do nothing but wait, and wonder what happens next. I do not speak, and even hold my breath for long stretches as the passing seconds turn into the longest minute of my life.

  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see the baby Isolate. Crawling on all fours, it appears out of the dark spot alongside the window where I have a small loveseat perched. When we first moved in—not a span of ten months but feeling like a lifetime ago—I would sit in the loveseat with Jessica, reading her stories such as Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty while Page snoozed, nuzzled against her thigh.

  Now, like some evil doppelganger, Christine’s new baby jumps up onto the soft fabric cushioning of the loveseat and stares at me with an ugly, triumphant kind of glee in its beaming eyes.

  I blink, rub my eyes with my free hand, and wish it all away…but the whole nightmarish scene returns into clearer focus as I open my eyes and see the clutch of Isolates before me, banded together like some gang preparing to protect their turf. Heart racing, I press my feet against the carpet and grip the hatchet’s wooden handle more tightly, not as a means for would-be protection, but to simply see if I am still alive.

  In this moment a very solid image of the circle of stones in the woods enters my head, flashing before my eyes like a surreal backflash in an atmospheric horror movie. I see the center stone—the sacrificial altar of the Isolates—and upon it is my darling little Jessica, arms and legs spread out over the bloodstained edges, bowels eviscerated, exposed to the cold blue moonlight.

  I should have killed myself when I had the chance…

  I shudder, and that’s when I hear something behind me.

  I turn around and realize how wrong I am to think that things couldn’t get any worse.

  Here, standing in the threshold of my office, is my wife Christine.

  Chapter Seven

  Dear God, what’s happened to her?

  My mind rejects what I see standing in the entranceway leading into my office. This is not my wife! Yet I can see, here and now in the unspeakable seconds that tick by, minute indicators proving that the thing standing before me had once been my wife of eight years, Christine Cayle.

  She is still my wife!

  Is she?

  YES SHE IS!

  God help me! My mind…my…dear…crumbling…mind, it does not have the fortitude to accept what has become the hideous truth of the matter. Christine! Not only has she retained the evil hold of the Isolates, but has progressed (or should I say regressed?) even further, exhibiting now even more of their fiendish attributes in addition to the ghostly glowing eyes.

  Again my mind leaps back to the scene that’d played out in our bedroom perhaps twelve hours earlier…

  Christine crawled forward on the bed like a serpent. She was doused in blood, her face twisting and writhing, mouth panting and full of foam…her eyes were glowing gold…

  …and it all seems like child’s play now compared to what my wife has become. All I can think of is how I’d killed their iconic leader Old Lady Zellis, for it appears they’ve answered my crime by creating a Frankenstein replacement out of my wife. My wife…once a beautiful example of womanhood, her hair flowing blonde, eyes crystal blue, skin soft like a peach that’d always smelled of lavender and roses. My wife, who’d unbeknownst to me had fallen under the spell of the Isolates early on in the grand scheme, who’d been raped by their demonic parent in the woods and had given birth to its child. My wife…who now not only possesses eyes that glow gold, but walks in a stopped position with craggy, brown skin and insect-ridden hair. Whose teeth are now brown and thick and glistening. Whose fingers are longer, bonier, sporting yellow nails nearly three inches long, as sharp as talons. Whose housedress is torn to weathered strips, painted with mud and blood.

  God, if you’re out there, please help me…

  He seems not to hear my plea. He simply lets the game play on.

  From behind me, rough callused hands and sharp poking nails grab me. Growls ensue, piercing my ears like stabs from a hot prod. I can feel the Isolates—all of them—holding me, shots of agony stabbing my arms, my legs, my waist. My wounds from earlier bleed anew, mixing in with the blood of my fresh wounds trickling down my body. The pain from the wound in my stomach is like a series of gunshots from a machine gun.

  One of the creatures squeezes my wrist, and with a dull clunk, I hear the hatchet fall to the floor. No way to protect myself now. Not sure if I could have anyway, given the dreadful circumstances.

  Nothing I can do but stare with horror at Christine.

  A brief scuffle arises behind me. The Isolates shift their lanky bodies. Some of them cough and growl as my arms are twisted in their itching grips. The stench of death gone to rot rises from them in a nearly tangible wave and makes me heave. A thin line of bile oozes from my mouth, burning my chapped lips. Various bugs skitter from their bodies to investigate mine; there’s enough filth and stink on me to make the journey worthwhile.

  I shudder, not from the horrors of what is, but of what happens next.

  The baby Isolate, the little motherfucker (as my mind has it so intolerably tagged) tears itself from the clutch of Isolates and runs toward Christine. In a single springing move, it leaps up into her arms and nestles itself in her bosom. Christine, with nearly half her human features gone, stares at me with absolutely no emotion as the eighteen-inch Isolate plucks her right breast (which I see with utter distress has a fine coating of dark hair on it now) from the tattered remains of her housedress, clutches it with its little fiendish hands, and begins to suckle the dark nipple.

  It’s here that I can take no more. My mind seems to crumble further,

  (pieces…pieces…falling away into dust…)

  and I see no choice but to allow my fear to show itself in the form of a tortured scream. I fight against them, but their hold on me (there must be nearly twenty hands—claws!—on me) is powerful. I’m not going anywhere.

  My scream tapers down into a thin wail, and eventually weak sobs. My words fall from my mouth ungoverned, like a burst from a rusty pipe.

  “Christine…don’t…don’t…they have you. Can’t you see? It’s all smoke and mirrors. A…a hallucination. Remember the witch? She made you think you were going to a doctor. They’re controlling your mind. See through it! See through it! Please!”

  Holding her baby in one arm, she takes a step forward. The baby’s eyes are closed now, its repetitive sucking plainly setting calm into it. I can see a thin trickle of white breast milk seeping from its mouth, captured in the coils of hair on its face. The sight of it makes me want to scream again.

  She steps closer still. Her bare feet are layered in filth and leave ghostly tracks on the hardwood floor. At this proximity I can make out more of her human self beneath the cloak of Isolate genes overtaking her body.

  Isolate genes…

  A thought rips across the s
urface of my (crumbling) mind, a memory from not too long ago, when I’d looked at the Isolate blood in my microscope. I’d seen a germ, one that had mutated these people to a degree previously unheard of in any biological string. Their warped features, their withered skin and stooped posture, even their maniacal aggressiveness were all resultant of a germ. The Isolates were transfigured human beings.

  But then I was reminded again of the demon in the woods. It’d raped Christine, and in all probability had created the germ that in turn created the Isolates. Still, I wonder…

  “Michael…” Christine utters, her voice deep and gargling, as though clogged with phlegm. Her eyes seem not to look at me, but into me, perhaps reading my thoughts, touching my very soul. There’s a black wasp perched in her hair, probing the tangled mess as if surveying its potential for a nesting site.

  “Christine!” I shout. “Listen to me. Listen to my voice. They have you under their control. Fight it. You beat it once, you can beat it again…” My voice tails away as I consider her not being able to cut loose from their terrible hold.

  It hits my mind like a bullet to the brain: Jessica!

  “Jesus, Chris, where’s Jessica?”

  Christine takes another step forward, catatonic as she approaches me. A thin line of spit rolls off her bottom lip and wavers in the dead air like a drawstring.

  “Our daughter, for Christssakes! Where is she? Christine, WHERE IS OUR FUCKING DAUGHTER!”

  My voice reverberates about the room. It unsettles the Isolates that have taken hold of me, and in an aggressive shuffle they pull me to the floor. Once down, they wrench my arms back. Sharps jolts of pain shoot down my spine into my tailbone, and I see no choice but to lay on my back. Once I’m prone to their demands, two of the creatures leap over my body and grab hold of my feet, while the others grasp handfuls of my clothing. There must be a dozen of them on me now, crawling over me like cockroaches, hissing like snakes, growling like dogs, their eyes afire with anger and vigor and determination.

  Christine stands over me. She is still clutching her baby, which is now asleep, its lips fallen from the black nipple on her hairy chest. She shouts something foreign, the tone of her voice as alien as her language.

  “Pahtah! Pahtah! Keft meh pah!”

  The Isolates sitting on top of me leap away, tearing into the wound on my stomach as if getting in their last, purposeful licks. A soot-covered Isolate steps in alongside Christine and takes the sleeping baby from her, oddly gentle considering the ferociousness of their nature.

  She twists her head sideways and looks down at me with the curiousness of a child gazing at a dead bird, and for the slightest and moment I think there’s a flicker of recognition in her alien gaze.

  I whisper, “Christine…don’t do this…”

  And that’s when she hurls the weight of her body down on top of me, growling and spitting into my face, her hands with their malformed fingernails—claws!—punching down around my neck, grasping me and squeezing so that very little precious air can make its way in or out of my throat.

  A terrible sense of heat consumes in my head. A wash of grayness fills my vision. I can do nothing but gaze up at the thing that used to be my wife and pray for it to make my death a quick and painless one, for the sake of what used to be our family.

  She leans down, her new face close to mine. I am appalled at what I see up close. Her skin, littered with gray and brown splotches, is cut in various places, and I can only imagine the duress her body must be going through as her mind tells it to ignore all that is painful. I can feel the heat of her breath, saturated now with something rotten, hot and profuse as it veils my head like a shroud.

  I move to whisper, but fear has me dumb, her chokehold on me nearly breathless. I am a hostage to her terms.

  Just like your marriage before all this happened, the little man in my head mindlessly adds.

  Her lips part, and in a voice totally unrecognizable as hers, utters: "Do…as…Phillip…once…did."

  And then, with an inkling of promise that somehow this all might turn out all right in the end, she presses her dry, scabby lips against my cheek and kisses me.

  She leaps up from me with the same agile rapidity as the Isolates (a truly disconcerting prospect spectacle considering Christine’s prior lack of interest in physical exercise), her one hairy breast lunging free from her torn housedress, cloudy milk squirting from the nipple. The Isolates release their vice-like grips on me and quickly follow Christine’s aggressive lead through the office door.

  She never looks back. In the gloom, I watch as their shadows skitter and bounce from the room like giant spiders, leaving me alone in the darkness, one hand caressing the cheek that still itches from my wife’s dry, bitter kiss goodbye.

  Chapter Eight

  Do…as…Phillip…once…did…

  Her parting words make utter sense, given the hard truth of the situation. Phillip Deighton, my neighbor, whom I met the day we moved in to 17 Harlan Way—he’d showed up on my doorstep with Page nestled in his arms moments after Jessica puked and I stepped on a rusty nail; what an omen that’d turned out to be—had been the be-all and do-all for the Isolates in my life. He’d told me all about them the day he brought me to see the circle of stones. Had hinted upon their sacrificial demands. And put the near-dead deer in my shed.

  Do…as…Phillip…once…did…

  A million thoughts race through my head as I lean up and survey the utter filth of my office: the mud and soot fouling everything from the fireplace to my desk to the floor leading out into the waiting room, messy streaks of it everywhere, even on the walls. My head spins and my breathing is shallow as I quickly stand, tottering as I contemplate my next move.

  Do…as…Phillip…once…did…

  Am I now to force someone else to make the sacrifice upon the stones? And if I do, will they return my wife and daughter to me? Phillip lived on for many years here, staying mostly unharmed despite at some point his daughter having been taken from him, his wife Rosie earning a fair share of disfigurements on her face and body. Would this be the path my own life would soon travel?

  The little man in my head says, If you continue to play their horrific game, they will return Jessica and Christine to you.

  From the woods, a blood-curdling scream.

  Jessica!

  My heart leaps into my throat, my blood pounds in my head, the dizziness toying with me instantly diluted by the adrenaline now tearing through my veins. My daughter is out there!

  With a trembling gasp, I grab the hatchet and race out of the office, following the multitude of sooty streaks left on the floor by the Isolates. Charging through the door on the side of the house, I plunge out onto the snowy lawn and throw my harried gaze back and forth over the perimeter of the surrounding woods. When nothing immediately meets my eyes, I stagger through the storm into the backyard, hatchet raised only slightly, and see in the dark distance flashes of golden light bobbing and weaving through the network of trees, reflecting off the sheet of wet snow falling from the hard gray sky.

  Running awkwardly through the snow, I enter the woods, screaming, "Jessica! Jessica! It’s Daddy! I’m coming for you!"

  A lethargic terror steals through my veins. I stop, hearing nothing…nothing but the static patter of the icy snow as it encircles me like a giant’s veil.

  Pacing slowly, my footsteps crunch through the ice and frozen woodland. Ahead, the lights have disappeared. The Isolates are now farther back, making their agile ascent over the hills, deeper into the woods to the circle of stones. Where the entrance to their subterranean den is.

  I trip over a buried log and fall face-first into the snow. The hatchet falls from my grasp, from my line of sight. Despite the surge of adrenaline rushing through my body, I cannot avoid the frigid conditions blocking me from advancing any farther. Windswept pellets of ice and snow sting my exposed skin. The wound in my midsection still bleeds, out onto the forest floor now, leaving a disturbingly dark patch on the stark-whit
e ground. My strength soon follows suit, pouring out of me like water from a sieve. The world turns into a winding haziness, the gray tones blurring into a void-like vista. All that remains of me is the little man in my head, telling me: if you do not get out of here now, you will pass out and freeze to death.

  I gaze ahead into the dark, lifeless woods.

  They have Christine.

  They have Jessica.

  And now, they have me.

  Chapter Nine

  I barely make it back to the edge of the woods, where I collapse from exhaustion. The only thing keeping me warm is the blood oozing from the large wound in my stomach. I catch a mouthful of snow, and in spite of the numbing coldness, it feels good against my parched and bleeding lips. Lying on my stomach, I kick as furiously as I can, but my feet slip against a flat patch of ice.

  With difficulty, I grab onto a small shrub, which aids me in pulling myself up through an icy-cold puddle. Shivering like mad, I begin to crawl through the snow, feeling a wet and painfully cold hunk of snow slip down the back of my pants. The snow itself seemed to be trying to hold me back, sucking me down into the wet earth to keep me there forever.

  Once I clear the perimeter of the woods, I stand and immediately fall off-balance, careening sideways into the front of the shed. I never replaced the lock on it and the door nearly collapses inward as my weight presses against it. My feet slip in the snowy hard earth and I gasp for air. Thick plumes of frozen air unfurl from my mouth. Near-icy tears fill my eyes, and through them I see bloodstains on the shed’s rotting doorframe, a remnant from the deer Phillip had left inside for me.