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Going back into the house through the side door (and shuddering rather fiercely as I imagine a pair of Isolates leaping out of the woods to attack me, fury pinned on their hideous faces in retribution for my role in killing hundreds of their brothers), I race into my office and grab a box full of penicillin samples. I toss two into my mouth, then snatch the first bottle of liquor I see in the cabinet alongside the fireplace—a half empty bottle of Wild Turkey—and wash it down. Peering into the cabinet I notice that there are only two more bottles in there. At this pace, I’ll be either tapped out or dead in no time.

  As the whiskey burns its way into my stomach, I take a moment to examine the wound under my shirt. It’s still taped up, but there’s a sticky smear of blood oozing out from the bottom of the gauze. I promise myself that as soon as I’m done, I’ll have to attend to it with as much TLC as I can muster.

  Answering a vague memory, I rifle through my desk drawer and find a sample of Benzedrine. Speed. An upper. Whatever you want to call it. I take it with no heed or concern for the fact that I’ve got a heavy dose of Percocet and penicillin saturating my bloodstream. This is cause for possible convulsions, especially given my weakened state, but I’m counting on the pump of adrenaline in my system to keep things in line, at least until I can get my job done.

  My boots grind into the soot (and the Isolate clawprints) on the floor as I make my way back through the waiting room into the kitchen, where I quickly stop and shove a few more crackers into my mouth. Wasting no time, after all the deer has literally minutes to live, I go into the living room immediately set to work.

  Clutching the edge of the comforter, I slide the deer away from the door, then undo all the locks and pull it open. Ice cold breeze rushes in, reminding me that I should bundle up for the journey to Phillip’s—uh, Shea’s—house.

  There’s a closet to the right, as soon as you walk in, and in it is my red down-filled parka, its offer of luxury oddly foreign considering all the discomforts riddling my mind and body. I think about changing my wet pants but decide there’s no more time to waste. The wind continues to whip in, carrying with it chips of ice and snow. I grab the comforter and slide it outside with a series of weighty tugs, each one sending a lightning bolt of pain across my stomach that nearly paralyzes me. Once the deer is on the porch, I shut the door and lug the animal down the three front steps, one at a time until it falls on top of the waiting sled. Outside of a faint, throaty grunt, the deer might’ve been considered dead.

  You better hope it’s not dead, Michael. It’s the only saving grace you’ve got to save your little Jessica.

  The little man in my head is really starting to get on my nerves. I have it in my mind to kill him…

  You mean your CRUMBLING mind, don’t you Michael?

  Ignoring the voice in my head, and now feeling the effects of the Benzedrine, I grab the rope of the sled and pull. It’s heavy as hell, not what I expected when I bought it for my fifty-pound daughter. The new blades slice cleanly through the snow, and once I gain a bit of momentum, it’s much easier to move.

  I reach the end of the driveway, turn left and start down the hard-packed surface of Harlan Road. Seems the roads have been plowed save for the most recent snowfall which lies in a smooth and slippery surface. The sled slides back and forth a bit, but thankfully the deer remains put, and I keep at a slow, even pace so it stays that way. Down the road I go, farther away from home where the trees close in on both sides for a stretch of a quarter mile. The pure, vinegary smell of pine tickles my sinuses, drawing a sneeze out of me that echoes about the snow-covered trees. I step over broken twigs, kick some out of the way, and realize suddenly that every step I take, my terror is escalating. By the time I’m halfway to Shea’s

  (Phillip’s)

  house, it has infiltrated my bones like a fever.

  Run away! the little man in my head screams. Run far away, and never come back!

  And end my life just like Neil Farris did? I don’t think so.

  Alongside me, in the woods, I hear the same twig-snapping rustle I’d heard earlier. The Isolates. They’re right there, watching me from the darkened perimeter of the woods, their eyes doused to conceal their location. How many of them are there? One? Ten? A hundred? Now, all of a sudden, my new neighbor’s house is my only means of temporary safety. And yet…all I plan to do is leave the deer there, make some sort of commotion and slink away, back into the darkness from where I came. Back to them.

  And what good will that do you?

  Again, the question I have no answer to is posed. How am I able to get the girl, or the father, or the mother, or…didn’t she say she had a brother? How am I supposed to get them a quarter mile up into the woods to the altar of the Isolates and sacrifice a near-dead deer upon the center stone? Suddenly all my efforts tonight seem futile.

  But what other choice is there? I curse myself now for not having the sense to bring a weapon with me, a knife or some other tool of threat to help me command the new family up into the woods.

  Oh God, what am I thinking? That’s not what I want to do! I do not wish them any harm! I only want to save my little girl, and if chance allows, my wife.

  And yet, I continue to stagger on. I consider what I must look like now, a madman, doused in blood, pulling his shrouded victim to some unseen, diabolical locale. Words could never properly describe what the casual observer might see of me, and I pray that no one passes me on the road. The trees on either side of me crowd together, their branches like steepled fingers. In the moon’s intermittent light, the gaps between the trees look like elongated faces screaming in agony. I begin to imagine the winking eyes of the Isolates in those gaps, dimly glowing, their broomstick arms reaching out to pull me into the shady woods like rapists on prey.

  There’s a bend in the road up ahead, and beyond it, the house.

  The next few moments pass where nothing but sour blackness fills my head. It bleeds away from me as soon as I reach the head of the driveway. The hour is not too late, and yet the windows in the house are dark. It occurs to me that the family may have gone into town for a late dinner…or that they are tucked away in their beds, exhausted from a week of settling into their new home.

  The driveway is nearly devoid of snow, so I pull the sled to the left of it, away from the house. This strip of land leads into the back yard, and farther on, the woods. Halfway to the house, and I can see a number of dark shapes on the porch, items that hadn’t been there when Phillip lived here. Shuddering with the sudden thought that one of these shapes might be a family member outside for a smoke (and this wouldn’t surprise me, given the rebellious nature of Shea’s appearance), I crane my neck to look as I pass by, but find only wicker chairs and a large snow shovel perched against the house’s siding.

  For a transitory moment I wonder who’d sold the new family the house? Is there a real estate agent here in Ashborough, working under the tight demand of the Isolates in exchange for freedom within the town’s line of demarcation? And again I question how it is that a family from Seattle had been lured here to assume an unsuspecting role in Ashborough’s dark secret. I wonder if I’ll live to find out.

  I pass along the side of the house…and in the small cellar window at the foot of the house, I see a bright light. There’s an aluminum well there—a ridged semicircle in the moonlight—blocking my view.

  Pulling the sled with me, I take five steps to the well and hunker down in the snow. Icy chips spatter my bare calves, causing me to shiver in pain. But it is oddly secondary to what I see in the unfinished basement of the new neighbor’s home.

  The girl Shea is there. She is wearing loose-knit pants and a black leather bikini top that stretches across her upper torso and flattens her young breasts. I can see a variety of tattoos on her upper body—on her shoulders, across her upper back, circling her navel—and a disconcerting collection of purple-yellow bruises. She is coated in a fine sheen of sweat, her hair a dampened mess and falling across her face as she slides a wooden crate from the center
of the room to the far corner. As my eyes follow her, I can see two knobby scars in her upper back, their equidistant location just between and above the shoulder blades indicating to me their purposeful intent.

  Another person comes into view, stepping in beside Shea. It’s a young man perhaps two years her junior—her brother. He’s got long, greasy hair and a patchwork of facial hair too thin to be called a beard. Grease-spotted overalls and a black T-shirt cover his body, the sleeves cut off to show a pair of muscular arms.

  He turns and I see what appears to be two deep-sea fishing hooks in his hands. He leans down and places on the floor alongside the crate. Shea opens the crate and points inside. The boy nods, and then she reaches inside and pulls out an odd looking contraption: a polished strip of hardwood with a series of steel eyelets running along one side. As she turns the piece in her grasp, pointing now toward the ceiling, I see a bundle of tightly wound rope tucked in against one side of the wood, with a second pair of huge steel hooks jutting out on either ends.

  The boy nods, a thin smile on his face as he motions about the scars on her back with a wave of his hand. Then, like Shea, he points to ceiling.

  I shift my body sideways so that the portion of the ceiling they’re pointing to is in my line of sight. It’s here that I see what appears to be some sort of pulley system, two six-inch wheels and steel saddles anchored into the ceiling.

  What the hell is this?

  There’s a motion beside me. I startle, wanting to scream, wanting to jump up and run away from this place. But before I can do either, a tiny figure comes darting out of the gloom at me, shrieking.

  I fall into a sitting position, gasping like mad, huge puffs of frozen breath unfurling from my scowling mouth. From the corner of my eye I see Shea and her brother throw quick glances toward the window before disappearing in a quick dart, presumably up the steps to investigate the sudden movement outside.

  I scramble and slide away from the window well, the soft bulk of my coat and twisting pain of my wound making it difficult for me to gain my footing. There’s another shriek, and I see a large rabbit scooting alongside me in a quick blur, nearly knocking me back into the snow as it makes a bid for escape from the Bonzo the cat.

  “Shit!” I mutter behind cinched lips, pulling myself to my feet. A fresh flow of warmth seeps down my stomach, down my thighs. I grab the rope connected to the sled and pull as hard as I can…but a wave of extreme dizziness pulverizes me like a sucker punch from out of nowhere, and I careen sideways toward the house, a swirl of grayness filling my eyes.

  Oh shit… my inner voice laments, and like a hockey player checked into the boards, I slam into the side of the house. I fall into a drift of snow, grasping blindly in the air as I make an impossible attempt to retrieve the sled’s rope, now four or five feet away.

  From the corner of the house, a pair of yellow floodlights comes on. I hear the sliding doors in the back of the house open. Footsteps crunch on the snow, and just as I wonder how the hell I’m going to get out of this predicament (and into my intended plan of action), a man circles around the corner of the house, pointing a hunter’s rifle at me.

  “Don’t move, asshole!”

  Chapter Twenty

  Oh my God.

  The scene is a snowy freeze frame, and if not for the unfurling plumes of breath escaping my lungs, I might’ve considered everything somehow frozen in time.

  I keep still, much like the partially covered deer on the sled, staring up at the man whose face reads utter disbelief at the scene before him: a tattered and bloodied stranger shivering alongside a child’s sled with what appears to be a dead animal on it (or as I still hoped, a near-dead animal). Additional footsteps sound out from the rear of the house and the man shouts, “Don’t come back here.” His eyes are like two bullets, no different from the ones he’s fixing to shoot me with.

  From the back of the house, a girl’s voice: “What is it, pops?”

  "Pops" seems not much different from his daughter, and the old "apple falling from the tree" adage comes into mind. The guy is no older than me, forty at most, wearing torn jeans and a sherpa-lined flannel jacket. A scruffy beard coats his pocked face like sheep’s wool, and a dangling cross earring pokes out from under the bandana tied over his skull. He steps forward, the barrel of the gun unwavering as he makes a slow approach.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he utters, voice low and demanding. I flinch, unable to speak, praying that the girl Shea peers around the corner and recognizes the doctor that lives next door.

  “Speak up, asshole,” he adds, gun now poised two feet from my face. His eyes trigger back and forth between me and the sled. Finally, after a tense moment of silence, he pulls the gun away, steps to his right, and uses it to peel back a portion of the comforter.

  “What…the…fuck…” he says, and that’s when Shea and her brother appear. Despite a plain look of recognition on Shea’s face, both her and her brother keep a safe distance. Staring at her, I silently plead for her assistance.

  The man, her father, points the gun back at me, and it comes to mind that if it weren’t for the deer, he might’ve found it in himself to help me, instead of wanting to kill me.

  I keep my fixed eyes on the girl, widen them, then bring my gaze up to the man and speak: “I live next door. Please, I’m a doctor. I…lost my way in the darkness. Please…don’t hurt me.”

  “Bullshit,” Shea’s father says, clearly nobody’s fool. But then Shea steps forward and speaks out.

  “Pops, it’s true.”

  “I said to stay back!” It’s here that I smell the alcohol on his breath, carried by a thick plume of frozen air. It scares me, despite the fact my own breath probably smells pretty much the same.

  “He’s the guy I met earlier. The doctor. Bonzo had gotten into his house. I told you about him.”

  The man looks at her daughter, then looks back at me, lips as thin as razors. He nods, then slowly lowers the gun.

  “So then what the fuck is he doing here…with a fucking dead deer on a sled?”

  Shea’s brother steps forward, muscles flexing in the cold. He looks at the deer with a cocky grin on his face that makes the patch of freckles on his cheeks and nose waver across his scruffy skin. “Good question, pops.” I could tell, right off the bat, that he was a chip off the old block. And that ain’t a good thing. Not at all.

  The cold is now making its way though me, freezing the adrenaline I had pumping through my veins as I made my way down here. Now my senses are numb, the drugs in my system taking their full effect on my mind and body. I can barely speak, much less stand.

  “Please…let me explain.” Shit. My words are slurred.

  There’s a moment of tentative silence, and it’s here my foggy mind makes its last lucid contemplation: that the man is still deciding whether or not to shoot me. Luckily, he nods and says, “Go ahead.”

  I attempt to speak, but my tongue is caught in the swoon threatening to take me down. I peer up at Shea, who despite not knowing me from a hole in the wall, nods compassionately, as if to say, You’d better speak now, because my old man here is knitting with only one needle, and he won't hesitate in protecting his land from anything that trespasses on it.

  “Okay, okay,” I say, and with my life (and the lives of Jessica and Christine) in peril, I nod furiously, hands held high. “Please…I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

  “Then let’s hear it. What the hell are you up to…doc?”

  A moment earlier, when the gun was pointed in my face, I’d tried hard to drum up a believable story—something I could divulge when the moment of truth came. But my mind—(my crumbling mind)—hadn’t been in any sort of position to multitask, and all I could do was try not to get shot.

  Now that I’ve dodged that bullet (yeah, pun intended, I suppose), I could begin to fabricate a tall tale and pray the guy believed me.

  “I’d left for a walk…and I heard a noise, and when I looked into the woods I saw this deer. It’d gotten
hit by a car. It was laying at the side of the road, so I…so I went home and got my kid’s sled and brought it back to my office…tried to fix it up, but I couldn’t, it was too messed up. So I decided to do put it back where I found it. But then I thought maybe…”

  I look at Shea and widen my eyes, as if to say, please don’t say anything.

  “…I thought maybe I could just leave it up in the woods behind your house, away from the road, where it could die in peace...”

  It’s here a sudden thought occurs to me, one so obvious that I hope it isn’t too late. Before anyone could say anything—they all look so damn stupefied at what’s happening—I say, “See…there’s this clearing in the woods, (an altar), where I know some folks bring their dead pets, a pet cemetery (a center stone stained in blood), and I figured I’d just bring it up there. It’s right up that way, behind your house (where the Isolates live).”

  My heart begins to pound furiously. Shit, this may just work—the father and son look rebellious enough (and quite stupid enough) that they just might believe me. If I’m really lucky, they’ll help me take the animal up there.

  And then all I’ll have to do is get them to kill it on the center stone.

  That is, doc, if the animal is still alive.

  Endless seconds pass. I wait, gazing back and forth between father, son and daughter. The son seems mostly interested in the deer—an expression of morbid curiosity painted over his face—and is the first to move. He steps to the deer and rips the comforter off.

  The deer is motionless…but I can see its damaged belly rising, and the faint puffs of frozen breath geysering from its wet nostrils.

  Oh God YES! It’s still alive!

  The man steps in next to his son, nudges the deer with his boot. The animal’s lips wrinkle back, exposing bloody gums. He points to the bandages, now half off, revealing my crude job.

  “That your work?” he asks, pointing to the bandages with the rifle.

  I nod in silence, glancing up at Shea for a quick moment. She’s got an inquisitive look on her face: eyes narrow, full lips pursed into the faintest grin. No bones about it—she doesn’t believe a word of what I just said. But she isn’t saying anything either, thank goodness.