The Burning

monster of some kind, though not one that Skylar recognized or could identify.

And he was not himself. He was a puppet. He had somehow been transformed into a marionette, and the corpse thing was transporting him through some sort of tunnel deep underground to ... where?

He didn't know, was afraid to even wonder.

'/ have so much to show you,' the monster said sibilantly, and though he was speaking an unfamiliar language, Skylar understood him perfectly. The monster jerked on his strings, and Skylar was pulled into a sitting position in the crook of skeletal arms. He saw, in hollows within the surrounding dirt, a little boy who'd had his head, hands and feet chopped off, a man and woman who'd been buried alive, an old man who'd been strangled, a teenage girl who'd been cut in half.

They all appeared to be relatives of the monster carrying him. Skylar saw similarities in the cast of features, in the color of skin.

'They want revenge,' the thing whispered in his ear, and at that, the severed head of an old hag opened its opaque white eyes and shrieked.

Skylar awoke clutching his mom's midsection. More than a dream, what he had experienced was a memory, a re-creation of actual events. His heart was pounding, but he hadn't awakened crying or screaming, and for that, he was grateful. Ms. Finch was here and his grandma was, too, and he didn't want to embarrass himself in front of them.

Although, looking around, he could tell instantly that they were just as scared as he was. Maybe more. They'd been talking about something while he'd been asleep, something spooky, and while he was curious about it, he didn't really want to know.

He let go of his mom, sat up.

'Are you okay, hon?' she asked.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He had never been less okay in his life. Even being back with his dad would be a picnic compared with this.

Why did the monster let me go? he wondered.

He had no idea. He'd sensed the creature's rage and hate, knew that behind that terrible grin was a furious evil that wanted nothing more than to tear him limb from limb and laugh as the blood flowed. He was one of those the monster wanted to take revenge against. But it had held back for some strange reason he did not understand, and he realized that it was not the one calling the shots. It was as much a puppet as he himself was. There was another force behind the monster, an entity far more powerful that was using it to communicate with him. He had the feeling that it had something to do with all of those dead bodies he'd been shown, although how or why he couldn't figure out.

He looked at his mom. 'Are we staying here tonight?' he asked.

'Yes,' she said but did not elaborate. He was sure it was because of that face at the window, and he was glad not to be going back to his grandma's.

The old lady stood up. 'I'll take him to bed,' she said. 'I'm tired myself. We can both get a little shut- eye.'

He didn't want to sleep with his grandma-he wanted to sleep with his mom-but he didn't say anything as his mom said, 'Okay.' She gave him a big kiss and a long hug, and he squeezed her back, grateful that she was here. 'Night night,' she told him.

He pulled away. 'Night night.'

He followed his grandma to the bedroom door but would not go in until she'd turned on the light. Out in the front room, his mom and Ms. Finch were talking. He hummed a song as he kicked off his shoes and crawled into bed, not wanting to hear what they said, not wanting to know what they were discussing. He gave his grandma a cursory 'Good night,' then rolled over and plugged his ears as he tried to fall asleep.

He hoped he would not dream.

There were more.

A lot more.

Leslie had barely made a dent in the diary by the time Skylar awoke just before midnight, but already she'd encountered more murders than the Manson family could have dreamed of. The language was arcane and formal, the setting far enough in the past to be emotionally distant, but still the horror came through, and the trivialization of death that usually accompanied history was nowhere in evidence. Even through the filters, she knew this Chester Williams had been an evil, psychotic son of a bitch.

He had stabbed men and shot them, hanged children and flayed women, eviscerated the corpses of those he had killed, and all, apparently, with the tacit knowledge and blessing of the community.

Leslie felt sickened, as much by the dispassionate tone of Williams' writing as by the horrific events his words described.

The strange thing was, his victims were all Chinese. Or seemed to be. References were made to other earlier killings, to wars and to a great project that took many lives and that Chester Williams was apparently instrumental in getting off the ground, but those were beyond the scope of this diary, and Leslie wondered if there was an earlier journal or perhaps a series of them still hidden in the Williams mansion.

All of the murders he wrote about, however, were of Chinese people. He seemed to have some special sort of hatred toward them, and while prejudice was probably fairly common back then, the extent of his animosity was definitely extreme.

Leslie looked at the book in her hands. She still had three-fourths of the diary to go. What was going to happen in the later years?

Major revelations, Anna May had said. Murder!

She hadn't been lying.

Leslie explained to Jolene about the killings, speaking quietly so as not to disturb Skylar and his grandmother.

'I wish Anna May was here,' Jolene sighed. 'She might be able to put this in context.'

'Your mom might know-'

She waved Leslie away. 'Don't even.'

'Anyway, what context? Let's be honest. The guy was a psycho. Period.'

'And his son after him, and his son after him.'

'If Anna May had really known anything, she would have been a little more cautious, you know what I'm saying? But you saw her. She was like a kid in a candy store. She had no clue anything would or could happen to her.'

'What I want to know is who-or what-kidnapped Skylar. It's like it was all ... planned, you know? That's the scary part. He was probably abducted when I was on my way to see you, before we'd even thought about going to see Anna May, and he was probably locked up down there in the cellar when we were just starting to talk about heading over there. It dropped him off so I could find him. It knew what we were going to do before we did it.'

'Maybe we weren't meant to find him. Not us specifically.'

'That's the thing,' Jolene said. 'I think we were.'

'Why?'

'I don't know.'

Leslie thought for a moment. 'I'll bet those voices from the graves were speaking Chinese.'

'But what were they saying?' Jolene ran an exasperated hand through her hair. Her voice was still low so her mother and son could not hear, but there was an intensity there that Leslie had not seen before. 'I feel like we're on the Titanic or something here and we can just see this little bitty piece of ice, but there's this big giant iceberg underneath it and it's going to rip our boat to shreds.'

It was an apt metaphor and Leslie realized that it perfectly captured the way she felt, too. 'But what can we do?'

'Sit tight and wait for it to hit.'

'Or read as much as we can and prepare ourselves.' Leslie moved onto the couch, scooted close to Jolene and opened the diary so they could both read.

Twenty-two