computer-generated poster everywhere he could think of and, as expected, no one had seen any sign of his cat. He really didn’t think the posters would do any good, but he felt like he should do something. And hanging the posters did keep his mind off of his real fears.

He supposed that Faith had wandered off into the woods in search of mice or birds-and after that, he didn’t want to think of what might have happened. The cat could still be out there, of course. But he didn’t believe that, not for a minute. Most likely, Faith had run into trouble of some sort. It had either become hopelessly lost-after all, she was a city cat-or had fallen victim to a larger predator in the woods. She might have been hit by a car, but he had been keeping an eye out on the side of the road in both directions, and hadn’t seen a dead cat. Or, the other possibility-that some weird cult had gotten hold of her. It was just too unsettling to even consider.

He supposed he’d have to go and find Dovecrest and ask the man to go with him to search for the cat. He couldn’t very well go off into the woods again on his own. The idea chilled him to the bone, even now, in the noontime heat of a summer day. That wasn’t to say that Dovecrest didn’t unnerve him nearly as much. But at least the Indian was a known quantity, while the woods were totally alien. The whole thing was probably a product of his own imagination. He had gotten after Todd for letting his imagination run wild, and now he, a grown man, was doing the same thing.

Slowly, he stepped out of the car, stalling for as long as he could as he walked towards the house. He wasn’t looking forward to coming back home without any news about the cat. Todd and Vickie probably expected him to have found Faith at the plaza, or wandering by the side of the road, and he knew his returning without her would be disappointing.

Moving into the new house had not gone according to plan, he realized. First the incident with Todd, and now the cat. There were plenty of things to be unnerved about, as well. The radio talk show host and his story about the devil worshipper. Dovecrest. Then the lady at the antique store and her story about the graveyard. She had upset him more than he cared to admit.

He would explore that graveyard for himself as soon as he had the chance, and follow up by doing a bit of research of his own. Finding out the real story would put an end to the wild speculations that were whirling about in his mind-speculations that weren’t doing him any good right now. Right now, he had an ominous feeling about that graveyard, without having even seen it. He could almost feel something wrong, now that he knew it was there across from the plaza.

“I’ve been watching too many horror movies,” he mumbled.

Suddenly, a voice called his name, startling him and embarrassing him at the same time.

It was Dovecrest, who had appeared out of nowhere. Erik flushed, wondering if he had heard him talking to himself.

“Sorry to startle you, Mr. Hunter,” the Indian said.

“No…it’s nothing. You just sort of surprised me, that’s all.”

Dovecrest shrugged and Erik almost imagined that the man was telling him he had every reason to be frightened.

“I saw the posters about your missing cat. I think I might have found her.”

“Oh, thank God. My son’s been….”

But he could tell from Dovecrest’s expression that something wasn’t right.

“What’s the matter?”

Dovecrest winced like a doctor about to deliver bad news to a patient, and Erik immediately knew that Faith was dead.

“I think it’s your pet. You’ll have to check it out for yourself. It is difficult for me to tell.”

“What happened?”

Dovecrest shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, and Erik knew he wasn’t telling the truth. “It looked like an animal got ahold of her. Maybe a fox. Sometimes a wolf or even a bear wanders into these woods.”

He held out his hand in a gesture of helplessness.

“Like I said the other night, these woods are dangerous. It might seem like you’re just a few minutes away from the city, but it’s a whole different world out there. Your little boy was lucky. Your cat wasn’t.”

“Where is she?” he asked.

He had no doubt now that the cat was his and he just wanted to get this over with now.

“I’ve got her at my place. I didn’t want your boy to see.”

Erik nodded. “Then let’s go.”

It only took a couple of minutes to walk to Dovecrest’s place, a small log cabin that had existed long before the new road connected it to the rest of civilization. It was probably four rooms, Erik guessed, and a still-standing outhouse suggested that the place had only recently been connected to indoor plumbing, probably when the road was cut through.

The house looked out of place in the neighborhood of green manicured lawns. It stood right in the middle of a wooded area, as if it had been built within the forest. Then Erik realized that this house had stood here long before this new suburbia had intruded into these parts. The place had no driveway; and Dovecrest didn’t seem to need an automobile. Erik guessed that, until the new road and the plaza, the man must have lived out here by himself, a hermit living off the land of the reservation.

Dovecrest led him around to the back of the house to where a modern oak picnic table stood like an anachronism beside this frontier cabin, breaking the illusion that they had traveled back in time to the 1700s. Dovecrest further broke the illusion by opening a green plastic garbage bag and peeling it back to show its grisly contents.

“I found her in the woods,” Dovecrest explained.

It was Faith all right. Erik knew immediately when he saw the red collar around the cat’s twisted neck. His stomach churned as he looked at what remained of his pet. The head and neck had been bent backwards at an impossible angle and the animal’s chest and belly had been opened up like that of a specimen in a sadistic lab experiment. Organs and entrails spilled out like spaghetti and the cat’s eyes remained open-even in death the cat seemed to silently scream of unspeakable horror.

“It’s her,” Erik said. “God help me. How am I going to explain this to my kid?”

Dovecrest shrugged. “I would suggest you just bury her as quickly as you can and say a fox caught her.”

Erik shook his head sadly. It was just a cat, but he felt like crying. Faith had been part of their family.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can’t let him see her like that. It’s not right. How’d…her neck get twisted like that?”

“That’s how a fox makes its kill. It goes for the throat and breaks its prey’s neck. At least it’s a quick death.”

Erik nodded and wrapped the remains back up.

Only later, after he had buried the cat in the corner of the back yard did he stop to wonder why whatever had killed Faith hadn’t bothered to eat its prey. But by then, Dovecrest was already gone.

2

Todd watched from his bedroom window as his father placed the plastic trash bag in the hole and covered it over with the freshly dug dirt. Todd knew he should cry about this. He’d cried over things that were far less important and much less sad. Like the time his Little League team had lost its first game. And the time his cousin had ripped one of his baseball cards by accident.

But when he thought about Faith being gone, the tears just wouldn’t come, even though he wanted them to. He felt sad, all right. Terribly sad and lonely and let down, as if a part of him had been torn out and thrown into that garbage bag to be buried with his cat. Yes, there was an emptiness like he had never felt before since this was his first experience with death.

But another, stronger emotion drowned out his grief, engulfing him in a bottomless fear that choked away at his very breath. This terror lived with him always now, had, in fact, been his constant companion and bedfellow ever since that awful night in the woods.

His Dad had told him that Faith had been killed by a fox and he wouldn’t let him see his cat because it would bother him even more. But Todd was already beyond being “upset” as his mother called it. Not because Faith was

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