"Fhhh mmmuuu," Miriam screams through the tape just as her fingers find the handle.

"Lock the door!" Hairless cries out – but it's too late.

The door flies open, and Miriam flies backward.

She knows it's going to suck. Hitting asphalt? At sixty? It'll be a like a bug jumping on a belt sander. Gravel will eat the back of her skull. It's suicide, probably.

The idea doesn't make her uncomfortable.

But her head doesn't hit the passing blacktop.

A pair of hands has her by the calves. Hairless Her head dangles out the car door, her hair brushing the highway zooming by beneath her. The rush of wind fills her ears. She can smell saltwater, car fumes, pine trees, the cloying chemical curdle that is the state scent of New Jersey. It's freedom she smells and hears, and it isn't long for her world–

–which reverses, like a tape rewinding.

Hairless drags her back into the car. His face floats above her.

She thinks to head-butt it, but it's like he knows what she's thinking, because he presses a blood-slick hand against her forehead.

The other hand pulls a syringe.

Miriam struggles. A bead of clear fluid oozes from the tip of the needle, and caught in the wind from the still-open door, it trembles and dances away toward oblivion.

"We'll talk soon," Hairless says.

He jams the needle into her neck.

"Nnnngh!" she shouts against the tape gag.

The world shudders and breaks apart. Its pieces float toward an uncertain darkness.

THIRTY

The Barrens

The world oozes. Everything is wet paint on a canvas, clumps of color sliding down.

Miriam feels hands under her armpits. Her feet drag along sand. Bleary late afternoon light pokes through the gray above. Mosquitoes fly. Pale pines cast long shadows, shadows that seem to have fingers, that seem to want to pluck her skin from her bones.

Ahead of her, Hairless walks. His white blazer is peppered with red.

Ashley's blood.

Ashley's severed foot sloshes along in a clear zip-top freezer baggy in the Hairless Fucker's hand, swinging this way and that.

Time dilates. Then expands.

They're nowhere. More trees. An overturned claw-foot tub leans against a mound of moss, the lower half given over to some kind of black mold.

A tire swing rotates on a heavy gauge chain. Atop the tire, a big black crow sits, turning with the swing as if he's enjoying the ride.

She steps on seashells. Brittle. They break under foot.

Miriam tries to say something. Her mouth is still taped. It comes out a soggy mumble. She breathes through her nose: a low, dry whistle.

Ahead, a small cabin. White siding, the bottom fringed with moss.

At least it's not another motel, she thinks.

She fades out.

Rip.

Miriam's eyes jolt open. The world rushes in with a windy whoosh: a river of blood in her ears, an undertow pulling her back toward full-bore consciousness.

Miriam finds herself hanging in a shower with faded tiles the color of sea-foam.