surge of adrenaline race through him.
For he knew what they wanted from him.
They wanted what was theirs.
They wanted the youth he’d taken from them.
Tonight, they intended to have it.
Fred Childress’s fear grew into abject terror as he felt the shadow of death begin to pass over his soul.
He felt them reaching out to him with their minds, boring into him, as if examining every corner of his being. And then grasping something deep within him.
Grasping it, and tearing it loose.
Fred screamed as a searing pain passed through his chest. The agony grew, as if a hot knife had been plunged into him, and he could feel its heat radiating through his body, slowly destroying him.
He raised his hands to his face and felt a rough scaliness on the folds of his skin.
The folds that had not been there only a few seconds ago, before he’d opened the door to face the children.
The children moved closer, and though Fred Childress tried to back away, tried to retreat into the shelter of his house, his body refused to obey his mind.
He felt the hands of the children on him now, pulling him off his porch, clutching at him, tearing at him.
They lifted him up, his quickly weakening body no longer able to resist at all, and carried him off into the night.
They came at last to the edge of the swamp, where they hurled the dying man to the ground.
Quint Millard threw himself on the twitching ruin of the undertaker, his strong hands tearing at the old man’s chest, ripping it open to seize the shrunken vestige of a gland that was all but lost within the desiccating tissues of Childress’s lungs.
Ripping a fragment of it away, Quint passed the small mass of tissue to the waiting hands of the other children.
As Fred Childress’s body finally died, the five children felt an unfamiliar warmth pass into their bodies.
And felt tears form in their eyes.
Tammy-Jo Millard, her eyes glistening, put her arms around Quint. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “I ain’t never been so scared in my life. I feel like maybe I be dyin’!”
Quint held his wife close. “Not dyin’,” he whispered. “Not dyin’ at all. We’re alive. We’re alive, and we’re free.”
• • •
On the island where Clarey Lambert waited, five of the candles on the altar were suddenly snuffed out, though not a breath of air had moved in the night.
And the eyes of five of the dolls overflowed with tears.
• • •
“Nothing,” Marty Templar said as he stepped out of the boat into the knot of people clustered on the dock at the tour headquarters. “All I could find was a bunch of swamp rats, and you know how they are — they’d as soon spit at you as give you the time of day.”
Tim Kitteridge nodded grimly, wondering why the swamp rats clung so tenaciously to their own ignorance. But if they wouldn’t talk, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. “What about Judd Duval?” he asked. “Did you see him?”
Templar shook his head. “Not a trace. I even swung by his house a while ago, but no one’s there. You ask me, we’ve got one more person to start lookin’ for.”
A muted howl erupted out of the darkness, then began to build into a chorus of fury that chilled Kitteridge’s blood. The hair on the back of his neck rising, he spoke to Marty Templar, though his eyes searched the night for the source of the baleful din. “Jesus,” he whispered. “What the hell is that?”
Templar said nothing, his own skin prickling with goose bumps.
“Hounds,” Ted Anderson breathed. “It sounds like the hounds of Hell, baying.”
As quickly as it had come, the clamor died away, and for a moment there was a deathly silence over the wilderness.
Then another scream rose, this one driven by pain and agony, cutting through the night like a ripping blade.
As the screams built, the swamp came alive with the wingbeats of birds bursting out of the trees into the air and insects swarming up from the water’s surface.
The water itself began to roil as the basking alligators and crocodiles caught the first faint scent of blood spreading through the channels and drifting on the wind. Coming fully awake, they slid off the muddy banks, their tails lashing furiously as they raced toward the source of the pungent aroma.
More screams filled the night.
“Dear God,” Barbara Sheffield breathed. “What is it? What’s happening out there?”
But there was no answer as everyone on the dock listened to the still-mounting cries of anguish.
• • •
Judd Duval no longer knew where he was nor what time it was, for since darkness had gathered around him and he’d fled toward the shelter of his cabin, something had happened to him.
Something he didn’t understand.
His mind had played tricks on him.
He’d moved through the waterways, certain that just around the next bend he would find his shack and refuge from the fear that was engulfing him.
Yet as he rounded each familiar landmark, the swamp seemed to change before his very eyes, and instead of seeing the shelter of his house, he saw only another of the children — the empty-eyed, silently staring children of the swamp — gazing steadily at him.
Watching him, as if they were expecting him.
At first, each time he saw one of them he brought his boat to a stop, staring back at the child, challenging it.
But each time the child — never blinking — moved toward him, and Judd’s nerve broke. Gunning his engine, he steered into one of the narrow channels, heedless of where he was going, determined only to get away from those dead, hypnotic eyes.
At last, though, he came to his cabin, and the fear began to ebb out of him as he hurried toward the safety of his home. But as he drew closer, he felt the children’s presence yet again, felt their cold eyes reaching out to him, felt his skin crawling with their unseen gaze.
Then the howling began, the eerie baying that shattered what was left of his courage. The sound seemed to come from everywhere, and now, as his eyes searched the darkness, he could see them once more.
Everywhere he turned, the wailing furies stood.
He froze, watching the children, his eyes darting from one of them to another, panic growing inside him like a wild beast, gnawing at him, sapping his strength.
Then, coming toward him out of the darkness, he recognized Jonas Cox. The boy’s face seemed to hang in front of Judd, staring at him, looming just beyond his reach.
But Jonas’s eyes had changed. Their empty gaze had taken on a glowing fury, and they bored into him, accusing him, condemning him.
Judd tried to look away, but it made no difference where he turned; Jonas seemed to be everywhere, surrounding him.
Finally Judd closed his eyes, determined to face the vision no more, but Jonas’s image stayed with him.
And then, as Judd’s skin crawled with an icy chill of terror, Jonas reached out to him, touching him.
Judd tried to shrink away from the boy’s touch, but Jonas’s fingers somehow reached inside him, penetrating him, twisting and turning within him, as if searching for something.
And finally, in the center of his chest, he felt a burst of blinding pain, a pain that shot outward, paralyzing him, then twisting his muscles into knots that threatened to snap every bone in his body.
A moment later he felt the rest of the children falling upon him, tearing at him, and his mind began to close down so that all he was aware of was the pain, an agony that crept into every cell of his body.
