“Fuck!”

“I knew it,” he croaked. “All of you, so weak.” He pressed one gnarled hand to the wound turning his shirt black. “Why … do I even … waste … my time?”

“I can’t …” Heather glanced at the knife, then back to the old man. “I’m not —”

From the shadowy stairwell behind him, an arm reached out of the dark and circled his neck. The old man was yanked backwards, and this time he did scream, just before something shiny and lethal ripped his throat into a giant gaping mouth. There was a brief struggle, Bert’s arms flapping at nothing, and then he fell back to the floor in a rapidly expanding pool of blood. Heather had a glimpse of the figure on the stairs—he wore her face, though his eyes were not human, not human at all—and then Lyle was gone. His footsteps were light scuffles on the steps, and there was the crash of a door opening and closing. Gone.

With some difficulty, Heather reached down and plucked the knife from the floor, then staggered back to Nikki and the woman called Cathy. She tugged away her friend’s gag, then used the last of her strength to cut the bonds around her hands.

“Hev? Are you all right? Christ, you’re bleeding all over.”

Heather nodded dumbly. She sat down, and she now had the distinct feeling she couldn’t get back up. Nikki was still looking at her even as she untied the other woman.

Heather looked slowly around the room. It was growing darker. “Hey, where’s the dog? I didn’t see where the dog went.”

“What dog?” Nikki took her arm then and shook it. “Stay awake, Hev. What dog? There wasn’t any dog. Hev?”

CHAPTER

46

BEFORE

THE NIGHTMARE OF Fiddler’s Mill retreated for Colleen, but only so far. The creatures she had left behind in the woods didn’t forget about her, after all—and all her life, she felt them watching.

There was the summer fête, where she had seen the Oak Leaf symbol on an awning, where small children were queuing to pick up their prizes. It was his company, his way of keeping track, and although he wasn’t there, it was as though she could smell his fetid old man breath on the back of her neck. In a blind panic, she had scooped Heather up into her arms and turned toward the carpark.

There was the card, left outside their front door. When she thought how close they had come then to finding out the truth, it had knocked all the strength from her.

And then, eventually, there came the Bickerstaff sisters, creeping around her door and pushing their way inside. All of Colleen’s careful defenses, built up over so many years, were tattered into pieces over that long, horrific afternoon. She learned the fate of her long-lost child, of the harvest that was coming, and still they kept her pinned in place with the worst threat of all: tell anyone, and we’ll come for your daughter, too.