Crept around to a gable.
Peered through the window.
Saw Jared Woods asleep in his bed.
A moment later, though Jared had left no window open, and locked his bedroom door, the cat named Houdini was inside the room.
In his dream, Jared Woods was once again in the forest near Black Creek Crossing, barely able to contain his laughter as he heard Chad Jackson hooting softly in an almost perfect imitation of an owl.
Perfect enough to send Angel Sullivan veering back across the road to the other side, where Zack Fletcher was waiting to crack twigs again.
As he watched Angel hurry her step and veer first one way and then another to escape the ominous sounds coming out of the darkness, Jared felt the same thrill that always came over him when he saw the frightened look in Seth Baker’s eyes whenever he and Chad were about to subject him to some new humiliation.
Terrifying Angel was even better, because she had no idea what was happening or who was hidden in the darkness.
Now, as she veered away from the fear of Zack’s cracking sticks and started back toward him, he readied himself, his lungs filled with air, his mouth opening.
Just when he was certain she would come no closer, Jared unleashed the scream.
Which lasted only a split second before something slammed into him.
As the scream abruptly died, Jared jerked awake, still feeling the sickening sensation of something having struck him in the stomach, knocking the breath out of him.
For a moment a wave of panic washed over him as he realized he couldn’t breathe, then his diaphragm began to function again and his lungs filled with air.
And then he felt a searing pain in his stomach, as if someone had just plunged a knife into him and was twisting it in his guts. Howling as a second stab slashed at his belly, he tried to reach for the lamp on the table beside his bed, but as a third stab struck him, his whole body went into a spasm and he tumbled from the bed, dragging the bedclothes with him.
Screaming, he thrashed at the sheet and blanket that were tangled around him, but even as he tried to free himself, he knew there was something else in the jumbled mass too.
Something that was twisting and writhing as frantically as he, but not because it wanted to escape.
It was thrashing and twisting and writhing because it wanted to kill him, and as another scream built in his throat, he felt it tear at his belly yet again.
Panic erupted inside Jared as he felt teeth and claws sinking deeper into his flesh.
He was going to die!
He was going to die right now on the floor of his own room.
Now, he could feel his limbs starting to go numb, and a strange kind of darkness — far blacker than the night — was starting to gather around him.
A nightmare!
That was it — he was having a terrible nightmare, and in a moment he would wake up.
But the nightmare went on and on, and the darkness was closing in on him, and he knew that if it finally gathered him in its folds, he would never see again.
Never breathe again.
He rolled over, still flailing to free himself from the tangle of bedding.
Then he heard a voice.
“Jared? Jared — what’s going on in there?”
His father!
The jaws at his throat were suddenly gone, and Jared sucked in a huge gulp of air. He rolled over once more and tried to stand up.
“Jared?” his father called out again.
It was as if his father’s voice had freed him from the bedding, and he pulled himself to the bed table, reached up, and switched on the lamp.
The room filled with light, and a cat — the black cat he’d seen before, weaving around Angel Sullivan’s feet and rubbing against her legs — sprang to its feet. As Jared managed to stand and started toward the door, the cat’s back arched, and it hissed menacingly and tensed as if it were about to leap at him again.
“I’m coming,” Jared called back to his father, but the pain in his torn belly was so bad he could barely get the words out. His eyes never leaving the cat, Jared backed toward the door, reaching behind him and groping for the key. His fingers closed on it, but it wouldn’t turn.
He struggled with it for a moment, terrified that if he turned his back, the cat would strike, but when the key still wouldn’t turn, he knew he had no choice. Spinning around, he twisted at the key frantically, and this time it clicked open. A second later he flung the door open.
“It’s a cat!” he cried. “It tried to kill me!”
Jared’s face was pasty white, and Steve Woods could see the terror in his son’s eyes. But as he scanned the room, he saw no sign of a cat, though the covers were pulled half off the bed, and the rag rug Steve’s grandmother had made for him when he was about Jared’s age was rumpled up the way it used to get when Steve and his friends used it for a wrestling mat. Steve scanned the room once more, then looked again at his son. “A cat? What are you talking about?” “Over there—” Jared began as he turned to point at the spot where the cat had been crouched. But the cat had vanished.
He looked around the room, searching for the cat.
Nothing.
“There was a cat!” he insisted. “It attacked me! Look! Look at my stomach — it almost killed me!” Steve Woods cocked his head, and a small smile played around the corners of his mouth. “Sounds to me like you had one hell of a nightmare,” he said. He began straightening out the rug with his foot. “I’m not sure I ever had one so bad I was fighting on the floor, but—” “It wasn’t a nightmare!” Jared cried. “It was a cat!”
His father’s smile faded. “Jared, take a look around. Do you see a cat?”
Again Jared scanned the room, searching for someplace the cat might be hiding. But the closet door was closed, as was the one to the hall.
The window was closed tight as well.
Crouching down, he looked under the bed, and under his desk, and behind the chair, and anyplace else the cat might be hiding.
It had vanished so completely it might as well never have been there at all.
Then, as he rose to his feet again, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on his closet door.
There wasn’t a mark on his stomach, or anywhere else.
It was as if none of it had happened.
But it had.
He knew it had.
And he knew whose cat it was that had attacked him…
Chapter 26
HE TERROR ANGEL HAD FELT AS SHE WALKED HOME from the library the night before gave way to anger in the morning sunlight, with the shadows of the forest washed away and Houdini frolicking around her feet, dashing away every now and then to chase a squirrel or a rabbit, but always coming back before more than a minute or two had passed.
How could she have been so stupid last night?
How could she not have figured out that the sounds she’d heard weren’t made by some kind of dangerous animal stalking her? In the full light of day, even the memory of the strange hooting she’d heard didn’t sound like
