days—and he was breathing hard, his chest heaving as he panted.
Then he lifted his right hand to his mouth, and before he began sucking on his wounds, Charlotte could see that the skin was torn away from his knuckles.
“My God,” she breathed, her anger suddenly draining away. “Jeff, what’s happened to you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Nothing,” he mumbled, and once more started to mount the stairs.
“Nothing?” Charlotte repeated. She turned to Chuck, now standing in the door to the den, his eyes, too, fixed on their son. “Chuck, look at him. Just look at him!”
“You’d better tell us what happened, son,” Chuck said. “If you’re in some kind of trouble—”
Jeff whirled to face them, his eyes now blazing with the same anger that had frightened Linda Harris earlier that evening. “I don’t know what’s wrong!” he shouted. “Linda broke up with me tonight, okay? And it pissed me off? Okay? So I tried to smash up a tree and I went for a walk. Okay? Is that okay with you, Mom?”
“Jeff—” Charlotte began, shrinking away from her son’s sudden fury. “I didn’t mean … we only wanted to—”
But it was too late.
“Can’t you just leave me alone?” Jeff shouted.
He came off the bottom of the stairs, towering over the much smaller form of his mother. Then, with an abrupt movement, he reached out and roughly shoved Charlotte aside, as if swatting a fly. She felt a sharp pain in her shoulder as her body struck the wall, and then she collapsed to the floor. For a split-second Jeff stared blankly at his mother, as if he was puzzled about what had happened to her, and then, an anguished wail boiling up from somewhere deep within him, he turned and slammed out the front door.
Secret rituals masked in science … hidden cellars where steel cages gleam coldly against the dark … a cry of unfathomable rage and pain … In Silverdale no one is safe from … Creature.
DARKNESS
The Andersons left the town at the edge of the swamp long ago, meaning never to return. There was something not quite right about the vast cruel lowlands of Villejeune … something murky, menacing, hostile …an influence too malevolent to be natural.
Darkness wrapped around Amelie Coulton like a funeral shroud, and only the sound of her own heartbeat told her that she was still alive.
She shouldn’t have come here—she knew that now, knew it with a certainty that filled her soul with dread. She should have stayed at home, stayed alone in the tiny shack that crouched only a few feet above the dark waters of the swamp. There, at least, she would have been safe.
She would have been safe, and sp would the baby that now stirred restlessly within her body, his feet kicking her so hard she winced with pain.
But Amelie hadn’t stayed at home. Now, huddled silently in the darkness, she could feel danger all around her, danger she knew her baby could feel, too …
As Amelie watched, the Dark Man held out his arms.
“Give me what is mine!” His voice boomed across the water, the words striking Amelie like hammer blows.
Silently, Tammy-Jo placed her newborn babe in the hands of the Dark Man, who turned and laid the baby on the altar like an offering, unfolding the blanket in which it was wrapped, until its pale body was uncovered in the candlelight.
From the folds of his robes the dark man withdrew an object. Amelie couldn’t quite make it out, until the light of the tapers reflected from it as from the blade of a knife.
“Whose child is this?” the Dark Man asked, the blade held high above the baby’s naked body.
“Yours,” Tammy-Jo replied, her voice flat, her eyes fixed on the Dark Man.
Though his face was invisible, the girl in the canoe shivered as she felt the Dark Man’s cold smile.
She wanted to turn away, but knew she couldn’t. Fascinated with the black-clad image of the Dark Man, she watched unblinking as he raised the instrument in his hands high, poising it over the tiny infant on the altar. The candlelight flickered, and tiny brilliant stars flashed from the tip of the instrument.
It began to arc downward.
It hovered for a moment, just over the child’s breast.
There was a short scream from the infant as the tip of the blade entered its chest, a scream that was cut off almost as quickly as it began.
The glinting metal sank deep into the child’s body.
Involuntarily, a shriek rose in Amelie’s throat, a small howl