“I don’t know,” Stella lied as she glanced at Needles. “He’s scared of something.”

Stella looked at David as he stared at the front door with wide, bulging eyes of fear. His mouth hung open, a little slack, his body frozen with fear.

She was about to hold on to David, try her best to comfort him, but her eyes darted down to the open notebook on the floor that David had been drawing in – she could see the open pages, she could see what he had been drawing. What she saw on the pages stopped her mind in its tracks for a moment. She stared at the drawings a little too long. That couldn’t be right, could it? her mind whispered. Those aren’t what I think they are, are they?

“Stella!” Cole yelled, snapping her momentary hypnosis.

She looked at Cole. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” she said again. She would have to figure out what she’d seen in David’s notebook later. She would have to confront David about it eventually, ask him how he knew. But for now she needed to put the brakes on her spinning mind and try to act normal – her and David’s survival depended on her not revealing too much; she knew that from experience, she had learned that down at the dig site in New Mexico.

“What’s out there, kid?” Needles asked in a quivering voice.

David didn’t answer Needles. He stared at the front door. Then David’s eyes moved away from the door, scanned past the dining room table, to the hallway that led to the two bedrooms and the bathroom.

And that’s when they all heard the noise that came from the bathroom – a loud crashing noise.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Cole ran to the bathroom door. Jose was right behind him, his gun drawn. Cole pounded on the bathroom door. “Trevor!” he called out. “You okay in there?”

No answer.

“Trevor, answer me! Are you okay?!”

Still no answer.

Cole tried the door handle. It wasn’t locked, but it seemed like the door was stuck. “Trevor! Trevor, open the door!”

Trevor wasn’t answering them.

Cole looked at Jose who stood next to him, his gun in his hand. “I’m going to break the door down. You get ready to shoot if you have to.”

Jose nodded – he was ready.

“But be careful,” Cole told Jose. “Let’s see what’s going on before you start blasting away.”

“Yeah, man. I’m not going to shoot you.”

“I don’t want any accidents,” Cole said, then he turned back to face the bathroom door. “Trevor, I’m going to break this door down!”

Cole still heard nothing from inside the bathroom. He backed up a step and slammed his shoulder into the door and it almost caved in immediately. Cole backed up another step, ready to ram it again with his shoulder. He had played high school football, strong safety position, and he knew how to hit with his shoulder. Trevor had played high school ball too, his mind whispered, but he pushed the thought away. He didn’t want to think of Trevor in the past tense, but he couldn’t help feeling a knot of dread worming its way through his body. He rammed the door again with his shoulder, and this time it flew open and slammed against the wall.

The bathroom was empty. Trevor was gone.

Cole entered the bathroom, looking around in shock. Everything looked the same in the bathroom except for two things: Trevor wasn’t there and the bathroom window was wide open and damaged around the edges. Cole walked towards the damaged window, the toilet right underneath the window. The toilet lid was up and Trevor’s gun was on the toilet tank lid.

“Look,” Jose whispered from behind Cole. “Look at the fucking window.”

The freezing air from outside invaded the bathroom through the busted and damaged window.

Cole hurried to the window.

“What the fuck?” Jose said from behind Cole as he followed him to the window. “You think Trevor went out that window?” But it didn’t seem possible, he thought. The window was too small for a man to fit through.

Cole didn’t answer Jose. He drew his gun and pointed it out the window, looking around as much as he could see. “Trevor!” he called. “You out there?!”

No answer from outside, no sound except the freezing wind.

Cole stuck his head and arm out the window; it was as much of his body as he could comfortably fit. The sleeves of his shirt brushed against the splintered wooden frame and the small bits of jagged glass that were still imbedded in the wood. He aimed his gun around outside, ready to fire if he needed to, and he tried to look everywhere at once. But there were no tracks in the snow; there was no blood in the snow, no splinters of wood or broken glass in the snow that Cole could see. He looked at the trees in the distance; there was no movement in the trees, nothing out here at all except the lonely wilderness.

“Trevor!!”

Trevor did not shout back.

“Cole, look at the window.”

Cole pulled himself back inside and studied the splintered wood around the window. The wood was cracked in many places, almost like the wood had been twisted by some unimaginable force, like something too big for the window had been pulled through quickly. But what was more disturbing were what looked like claw marks grooved into the wood at the bottom of the window sill, like fingernails had tried to hold onto the wood. And then Cole found the piece of a human fingernail stuck in the groove of the window sill where the window would have come down if it was still there. It was nearly a whole fingernail with blood and a small piece of flesh stuck to the end of it, like it had snapped off completely from a finger.

Trevor’s finger.

Cole’s mind buzzed with panic. Trevor was gone. His little brother was gone. Someone had pulled his brother out through the window. And they hadn’t heard anything in the living room except the crashing of glass and snapping of wood. No screams from Trevor. No gunshots. Trevor hadn’t even gone for his gun; it was still here on the toilet tank lid.

How was this possible?

But Cole didn’t care how, he didn’t even care why at this moment, the only thing he could think of was going outside and finding his brother. He could feel a rage building up inside of him, a rage he hadn’t felt in so long, a rage that could make him kill someone.

Cole grabbed Trevor’s gun and shoved it down in the waistband of his pants. He brushed past Jose and ran out of the bathroom.

Jose turned to follow him. “Wait a minute, Cole! Where are you going?” Jose ran after Cole who ran right past the dining room table and straight for the front door.

“Wait for me,” Jose said to Cole.

But before Cole and Jose even reached the front door, still half a dozen steps away from it, something pelted the front door from outside. Whatever hit the door sounded solid, but it also gave a wet thump when it hit the door.

Cole stopped in his tracks and stared at the door, his gun still in his hand.

Jose stopped, too. He was only a few steps behind Cole. They waited a split second, but it felt like an eternity until they heard the next sounds – it sounded like dozens of objects pelting the front door all at the same time.

“Oh God, no,” Cole whispered, and then he ran for the door. He unlocked the deadbolt with trembling fingers, still trying to hold his gun in his hand.

“Wait a minute, Cole,” Jose said from behind him.

But Cole didn’t hear Jose. He didn’t hear or see anything around him; it had all faded away into a white noise. All he could think about was getting to Trevor before it was too late.

Cole unlocked the small lock on the door handle, twisted the knob and swung the door open and stood in the doorway.

It was too late for Trevor.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Needles wouldn’t stop screaming. It was an insane scream. It was the screaming from someone whose mind had finally snapped. After seeing what was on the front porch, Needles’ grip on sanity was nearly gone.

Jose was still a few steps behind Cole who stood in the doorway staring down at the carnage littering the floorboards of the front porch. His body blocked much of what Jose could see, but he did notice the splatters of blood on the front door of the cabin. He didn’t want to see what was out there, he didn’t want to make his feet move forward, but he had to – he had to back Cole up. He moved to the side of the doorway, nearly beside Cole, but still a few steps behind him, his gun up and ready to shoot. But his gun hand dropped back down as he lost the strength in his body.