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Jacker chuckled and shook his head. “No, not
at all. Come on, we’re leaving.”

Paul grabbed Jacker’s shoulder. “Come here,
man.” They embraced, and Paul placed his sobriety token back in
Jacker’s hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. Be
careful out there. I love you, man. I need you safe and sound, and
sober.”

“Thanks brother,” said Jacker. “I’ll be
fine.”

Aubrey took Jacker’s hand as they headed up
the hill, away from the cabin. Jacker saw Paul going back inside,
and felt sorry for him. As much as he wanted Paul safe, he knew
that his friend would never leave Alma. He’d worked too hard to get
her back, and loved her too much, to leave her here.

Aubrey and Jacker ran back toward the
elementary school. Aubrey said that she knew a different way out,
through a sewer on the south side of town, but they would have to
get past the middle school and the high school to get here.

They stayed quiet as they went, and reached
the middle school quickly. They weren’t worried about the figures
in the building now that they knew someone had set up mannequins
around town. They stayed close to the school to use it as cover as
they snuck toward the park on the other side of the high school. A
few security trucks passed, still blaring the warning to Hank
Waxman about involving the police, and about how they knew he was a
wanted man.

“This is it,” said Aubrey as they reached
the park. There was a small playground that was now dilapidated,
the once colorful plastic slides weathered and dingy. Past the
playground stretched a wide, grassy park.

“It’s on the other side of the park,” said
Aubrey. “There’s a ditch that runs up to the fence. We’ll have to
crawl through the drainage pipe, but then we’ll be out. The grass
is pretty tall out there. If the security trucks come, we can just
lay down to stay out of sight.”

They stayed low as they ran across the
playground and into the grassy park. They had to lay down once as a
truck drove along the road near them, but it passed without
incident and they quickened their pace through the field.

“This is it,” said Aubrey as they got closer
to the fence. “I can’t believe we made it.” She pulled Jacker down
so that she could kiss his cheek. “Let’s get the fuck out of this
cursed town.”

Someone pumped a shotgun.

“Thought you might try to get out this way,”
said a man’s voice. Three men rose up from the weeds near the
ditch, each holding a gun.

“Oh fuck,” said Aubrey as she put her hands
in the air.

“Turn around and get on your knees,” said
the tallest of the three men. He had a grey beard and a barrel
chest. His gruff voice sounded tortured by a lifetime of
smoking.

“Fuck you,” said Jacker. “Go ahead and call
the cops. You can’t threaten us.”

“Son, I’m ten seconds away from shutting you
up for good,” said the guard. “You found your way onto private
property, boy. By law, I can put a bullet in you. Hell, kid, that’s
my fucking job. Now do as I say and get on your knees.”

Jacker and Aubrey obeyed and the guards
swiftly patted them down. After convinced that they weren’t armed,
the older guard put a pistol to the back of Aubrey’s head. The girl
cringed and started to weep as she pleaded for her life.

“If you hurt her, I swear to God…”

“What?” asked the guard. “You’ll try to
fight me? Who do you think’s going to win that little scuffle? Huh,
Mr. Waxman?”

“
So you know who I am? Big
deal. Call the cops and get this over with,” said
Jacker.

“Not yet. First, I want to talk about your
friends. Where are they?”

“It’s just us,” said Jacker. “We came
alone.”

“Now you’re just pissing me off,” said the
guard. “We found you’re van, and the motorcycle. We know there’re
more of you here. We’ve got everyone’s luggage. Unless you’re
trying to tell me you wear a lot of lady’s underwear.”

Jacker sneered back at the guard. “What can
I say? I’m a freak.”

“Aw fuck it,” said the guard as he put his
pistol to the back of Jacker’s head. “Say good night, fat ass.”

“I’ll tell you where they are,” said Aubrey.
“Just don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt any of us.”

“Aubrey, shut up,” said Jacker.

“No! This isn’t worth dying over. Don’t be
crazy.”

“All right,” said the guard as he lowered
his gun. “You should thank your little girlfriend. She just saved
your life. Now get up. We’re going to go get your friends.”

Widowsfield

March 14th, 1996

“Why are they coming back?” asked The
Skeleton Man.

“Who?” asked Raymond.

“The fat one and his whore. They’re coming
back.”

Raymond looked down the road, in the
direction that The Skeleton Man pointed, and saw nothing but fog.
“I don’t see anyone.”

“We have to do something. We have to save my
sister.”

Raymond looked in through the window at the
crying girl in the kitchen of the cabin. He suddenly understood who
it was that he’d been watching. “That girl is your sister? Then, is
the boy you?”

The Skeleton Man was crying, the tears
seeping through the mess of blood and sagging flesh that decorated
his skull – skin pulled from past victims that the demon had put
over his face.

“If they take her, I’ll never be free.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

“I have to find the one that loves her. He’s
here, I can feel how much he cares for her. He’s the only one that
can stop this.” The Skeleton Man took Raymond’s hand. “We’re going
to have to go inside. You’re going to have to find your sister
while I talk to the one that loves Alma. You have to keep your
sister away from me.”

The door of the cabin creaked as the fog
pressed into it. Then the wood warped and the door blew backward as
the children inside screamed. The Skeleton Man went in first, and
then disappeared within the surging fog. Raymond ran in after,
still unsure what he was supposed to do.

“Raymond?” asked Ben when he saw the boy
enter. “What are you doing here?”

“Where’s my sister?” asked Raymond.

Alma was sobbing as she pointed up the
stairs. “I’m so sorry, Raymond. Our dad made Ben do it. Please
don’t be mad. Don’t be mad at us.”

“What? Why?” asked Raymond.

Ben had on a pair of oven mitts and was
holding a steaming pot of boiling water.

“What’s going on down there?” asked a man’s
voice. Raymond recognized the hateful voice, but it had been a long
time since he’d heard it.

A gaunt man, soaking wet with sweat,
appeared on the stairs. His beady eyes caught sight of Raymond and
he froze.

“What are you doing here?”

“Run, Raymond!” Alma screamed.

Her father was faster and Raymond collapsed
onto the concrete as the man tackled him. Michael Harper had
grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter and started to cut at
Raymond with it. Raymond felt himself being turned, and then an
intense pressure in his gut. The knife entering his stomach was a
surprise, but no worse than the pain Raymond had experienced any of
the other times he died. He felt his hands grow cold as Alma’s
father dragged his body back into the cabin.

“Shut up, Alma!” he screamed as he dragged
Raymond inside.

That’s when the altered past dissipated, and
Raymond saw The Skeleton Man again. He was standing near another
man, who was tall and had a shaved head. The Skeleton Man had his
hands on the stranger’s shoulders and was whispering in his ear.
There was a tattoo of a snake on the side of the man’s head, right
beside where The Skeleton Man was whispering.

A woman’s voice screamed from upstairs and
Raymond shifted his head to look. He recognized his sister’s pained
cries. “Terry?” asked Raymond as he looked up the stairs. “Did he
kill you too?”

“Keep her away from me,” said The Skeleton
Man.

The fog thickened, and the electricity
zapped the walls. Raymond was living in two times at once, and saw
both visions independently. He could see Alma as a child, and as an
adult, and he knew that his sister was dying upstairs, while at the
same time existing as a tortured soul, just like everyone else in
the town. He looked up the stairs and saw his sister’s mangled
corpse begin to crawl down.

She was nude, and she was soaked with water
and blood. Her innards slid down the wooden steps, slopping across
each step as she descended on her belly. Her face was shredded, and
her hair was falling out in clumps of gooey blood, revealing her
white skull beneath. Her left eye was falling from its socket, and
her face looked like it was melting. She wailed, and continued down
the stairs, focused on The Skeleton Man.

“Terry!” Raymond was no longer trapped
inside his body, but was a member of the mist, swirling and
experiencing every emotion that existed in every mind among those
gathered in the cabin. He could look down at his corpse and the
children that cried as their father murdered another person, and he
could see his sister’s wailing spirit sliding down the stairs. “You
have to stop, Terry.”

“Murderer!” Her teeth were loose in her
gums, as if someone had been trying to pry them free. “I’ll
slaughter them, all of them. I found them again!”

Raymond wrapped himself around Terry to keep
her from going down the stairs any further. He was able to hold her
back, but her skin was sliding off her bones. He had to hook the
mist through her rib cage to restrain her.

“I love you, Terry,” said Raymond. “Dad and
I loved you so much. It hurt us so bad to watch you do this to
yourself. We never stopped loving you.”

“Let me go!” Terry’s bones cracked as she
continued to try and crawl down the stairs.

“Stay with me, Terry.”

“I hate them!”

“I love you.”

“Hate…”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Ben’s Secret

March 12th, 2012

Paul saw the security truck first and warned
the others to get down. The yellow lights illuminated the living
room, casting their eerie shadows throughout the cabin, but didn’t
pass this time. The truck had parked in front of the cabin.

“Oh shit,” said Stephen. “They must’ve found
Jacker and Aubrey.”

A loud, gruff voice crackled to life
outside, amplified by a loudspeaker on the security truck. “Alma,
Paul, Stephen, and Rachel, please exit the house. We know you’re in
there. We don’t want any trouble. If you come out, we’ll escort you
off the premises. No harm no foul. Okay?”

“Game’s up,” said Rachel. “We don’t have a
choice.”

“I need to stay,” said Alma. “I need to find
out what happened to Ben.”

“Alma, we don’t have a choice,” said Paul.
“They caught us.”

“No!” Alma pushed her way out of Paul’s arms
and ran to the kitchen. She pulled a steak knife out of a butcher’s
block. It was old and rusted, but she placed it against her palm
and cut herself.

“Alma, stop it!” Paul tried to run to her,
but she swiped the blade at him.

“No, you’re not stopping me from doing this.
No one is!” She fell to her knees as her palm gushed blood, and
pressed her hand against the white tile. Alma scrawled 314 in blood
on the floor and then sat back as she stared at it. “I don’t care
if it’s too soon. I have to try.”

“Holy shit,” said Stephen. “What is she
doing?”

“Alma, stop it,” said Paul.

“Get away from me! Leave me alone.” She
stared down at the number and started to hum in an attempt to
focus. She rocked back and forth on her knees as her hand bled in
her lap.

Paul was going to try and stop her. He
reached out, but then stopped. He caught sight of the number on the
floor and his body froze. He felt a bone-chilling cold on both
shoulders. Something had its hands on him, and he could feel the
fingers wrap around his clavicles. Then the chattering began, a
sound so distinctive that Paul could almost sense the teeth hitting
one another.

“
I’m going to show you,”
said the voice beyond the chattering teeth.

The world around him was silenced, although
he could see the chaos happening without him. He saw Alma on the
floor, rocking as she stared at the number, and felt Stephen try to
pull at his arm as he headed outside with Rachel. Paul turned to
watch Stephen leave, and then saw the flash of gunfire.

Stephen fell dead as Rachel screamed, though
Paul heard nothing but the chattering teeth as time slowed to a
crawl. “I’m going to let you see the truth. You’ll know why we have
to protect Alma,” said the voice behind the teeth.

Widowsfield

March 14th, 1996

Ben got up to answer the door as his sister
stayed on the couch. Terry’s dog, the mangy, one-eyed creature that
she insisted was a good dog but just hated kids, was in his cage in
the kitchen. The dog barked and growled as someone knocked on the
front door.

“Shush, Killer,” said Ben as went to the
door, but his command seemed to incite the dog rather than calm
it.

“Hello?” he asked as he opened the door.

“Hello there little man,” said the chubby
stranger. He was older, with a buzzcut and beady eyes. His lower
jaw jut forth and when he talked his lower teeth stuck out like a
cartoon of a dumb dog. “My name’s Desmond, and this is Raymond.” He
put his hand on the back of a boy that was standing slightly behind
him.

“Hi,” said Raymond, who looked remarkably
similar to his father.

“I’m looking for my daughter, Terry. Is she
here?”

“Who is it?” asked Ben’s father as he
descended the stairs. He saw Desmond at the door and exhaled as if
disappointed. “Oh.”

“Hello, Michael,” said Desmond, his tone
darker.

“What do you want?” asked Ben’s father.

“I need to talk to Terry.”

“Well, she’s busy.”

“I’m not trying to pester her, or you. If
you two want to rot away in this place, I just don’t have the
energy to care anymore. I just need the keys to our cabin in
Forsythe. I’m taking my boy out there for a fishing trip.”