Unbidden, the memory of the night Kim had sworn she'd seen rats in the bathroom came to her, and Janet shuddered as she thought of what might be lurking in the dark corners of the house. There's nothing, she silently repeated. Nothing. But she hurried her step as she went up the short flight to the mezzanine.
As she came to Molly's door, she felt it.
It was as if a cold hand had been laid on her back, stopping her short. The chill intensified, wrapping around her like a shawl knitted of ice.
It had to be nothing more than a draft. But the door was shut tight, and even the crack beneath it wasn't wide enough to permit the kind of cold she was feeling to seep through.
Janet reached out, her hand closing on the glass knob of the nursery door. It was like holding an ice crystal in her hand.
She turned the knob and pushed the door open. It creaked softly, and she heard Molly stir.
She stepped inside the room, and the chill lost its edge. Hurrying to the crib, she bent over and peered down at her sleeping child. Molly's eyes opened a crack, glinting in the soft moonlight that filled the room, then she went back to sleep. Tucking the child's blanket close around her, Janet bent lower, her lips brushing Molly's forehead.
Molly sighed contentedly, then curled on her side, her right thumb sliding into her mouth.
Satisfied that her youngest child was sleeping peacefully, Janet tiptoed out of the room.
The chill had vanished as quickly as it came.
In the master bedroom she undressed, put on a nightgown and robe, and slid into bed. Switching on the lamp on the bedside table, she picked up a magazine. Maybe reading would keep her worries about Jared at bay, she thought, at least until Ted came home.
And then she heard it.
A sobbing sound, muffled and indistinct.
At first she thought she'd imagined it, but then she heard it again.
Molly?
Throwing the light cover aside, Janet got out of bed and went to the door that joined the master bedroom to Molly's room. She listened, heard nothing, and opened the door a crack.
Silence.
She closed the door again, and went to the other door-the one that led to the mezzanine-and listened.
There it was again, but louder now.
Janet's pulse quickened, but she steeled herself and pulled the door open.
The sobbing increased, swelling into an anguished moan.
A knot of fear formed in her stomach, but she pulled the robe tight around her, tied the belt, and stepped out onto the mezzanine.
Then she heard the cry: "No!"
The single word died away as quickly as it had come, but in the instant it hung in the air, Janet recognized Kim's voice. Racing to the far end of the hall, she twisted the knob of Kim's door, threw it open, and flicked on the lights. She was blinded by the sudden glare for a second, then saw Kim huddled on her bed, sobbing. Her arms went around her daughter, pulling her close.
"It's all right, Kimmie," she whispered, using the nickname her older daughter had shed five years ago, on her tenth birthday. "It was only a bad dream. I'm here."
"It was Jared," Kim cried. "Mom, it was awful! He-He killed Scout!"
"No," Janet soothed. "It was just a dream, Kim. It didn't really happen."
"What's doing it, Mom?" Kim sobbed. "What's making me have these terrible dreams about Jared?"
"What dreams?'' Janet asked. Settling herself onto the bed next to Kim, she gently eased her daughter's head onto her lap. "Honey, what have you been dreaming?"
Kim hesitated, recalling images from her nightmares. Then, slowly, she began talking, telling her mother about the strange things she'd seen in her dreams, the terrible things she'd witnessed Jared doing. "But they weren't like real dreams at all, Mom," she finished. "They were so real, it seemed like it was all really happening! But it couldn't have happened, could it?"
"No, of course not," Janet soothed, stroking Kim's hair. "I know dreams can seem real, but they aren't. And you mustn't let them frighten you."
Sniffling, Kim sat up and wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown. "It's just that Jared's changed," she said. "He isn't anything like he used to be." She looked bleakly at her mother. "You know how I used to know what Jared was thinking? What he was feeling?"
Janet smiled. "The Twin Thing."
Kim nodded. "It was like that tonight. It was like I knew exactly what he was doing. I could see it as clearly as if I were standing right next to him. He-He had a knife, and Scout was lying on a table, and-" Her voice broke into a choking sob.
"But it wasn't real," Janet assured her once again. She got off the bed and gently pulled Kim to her feet. "Come on. "I'll show you. We'll go down to the kitchen and get Scout, and he can come up and sleep with you tonight. Okay?"
Nodding, Kim let Janet lead her out of her room, down the stairs, and into the kitchen.
"Scout?" Janet called out softly.
There was no welcoming thump of the big dog's tail banging against the wall as he wagged it. There was only silence.
Janet switched on the light.
Scout's bed was empty.
She frowned, trying to remember when she'd last seen the dog.
She wasn't sure. "He has to be here somewhere," she said. "Come on."
But fifteen minutes later, Janet and Kim both knew that Scout was gone. Nor did he come when they opened the back door and called him.
"It doesn't mean anything," Janet insisted as she and Kim climbed the stairs back up to the second floor. "He might have gone off with Jared this afternoon."
"He doesn't even like Jared anymore," Kim said, her voice wavering. "That's why he sleeps in the kitchen now!"
"Then maybe he went with your father," Janet said. But she'd watched Ted leave, and hadn't seen the dog go with him.
But there was something else that could have happened, something that she could see had already occurred to Kim: If Scout had vanished into the woods the same way Muffin had on the night they'd moved into the house, would he be found the same way the cat had?
Just the thought of it made Janet shudder, and as if by mutual consent, neither she nor Kim even mentioned that possibility.
The cabin lay dark and hushed beneath the pale silvery light of the moon. Jake Cumberland's hound was perfectly still, flattened against the ground beneath the cabin's floor. He'd neither moved nor made a single sound since he'd first scented the two figures stealing through the darkness toward the house. Had the chain not restrained him, he would have fled away through the covering darkness rather than slunk into the meager shelter provided by his master's house.
The night prowlers had gone silent; neither owls nor bats swooped and flitted in search of prey, for every creature they might have sought had vanished into burrows beneath the ground or hollows inside the trees.
No fish jumped in the lake, no frogs croaked along its bank; even the insects they hunted had ceased their nightly feeding and mating.
The quiet of death had fallen over the night. A dark cloud scudded over the moon as if to protect even it from bearing witness to the ceremony taking place within the cabin's walls, where five flickering candles on the table struggled to hold back the descending darkness.
Luke Roberts stood next to Jared Conway, his unblinking eyes fixed on the object that lay on the table in the center of the pentagram formed by the candles.
In his right hand, Jared held a knife-its cutting edge honed to razor sharpness by Jake Cumberland's own whetstone and strop. As he clutched its leather-bound haft, the instrument itself seemed to speak to him, whispering of the creatures it had disemboweled, the hides it had slit, the flesh it had slashed. Jared lowered the knife toward the offering on the table, but just before he drove the blade into the creature's breast, he gazed one last time into its eyes.