Another gunshot. As she ducks into the tree-line, a bullet smashes into an oak by her head, coughing splinters.

Miriam crashes through the brush.

It's all shapes and shadows in the woods. Any moonlight she had is gone. A tangle of dark lines, whipped lashes of biting branches – she smashes through thorn and thicket like a spooked deer, barreling forth, almost falling forward as her escaping feet catch her.

She runs – she doesn't know for how long.

She thinks, I'm safe, it's okay, stop running, take a breath, hide in the shadows –

But another thought reaches her: You're never safe. Run, you stupid girl, run.

That's when something hits her in the face.

Her feet go out from under her, and everything spins into total darkness.

Footsteps. Crunching brush. Snapping twigs.

Miriam's eyes jolt open.

It's still dark. She feels across her head – the blood there is already crusting over. She sees a dark shape above her, a black line illuminated by the moonlight around it.

I ran into a tree branch, she thinks, still dizzy.

And now?

Someone's out here. She hears their steps. She hears them breathing.

Then they stop.

A breeze murmurs through the nighttime trees; leaves rustle against other leaves. Everything else is silent.

Sudden movement. Footsteps. Running, crashing through the brush – toward her.

Miriam clambers to her feet, grabs hold of a tree branch and launches herself forward, and now she's up and running, too. Her follower is in close pursuit; it can't be true, but Miriam imagines she can feel breath on the back of her neck, hands snatching the air just behind her heels, teeth biting into the meat of her shoulder.

It's Harriet, she thinks. It's that awful woman. I'm dead meat.

But then the sound stops. It's gone. As if it never existed.

Which is a lot weirder, and a whole lot more disturbing.

Miriam stops. Waits. Looks around. Everything is back to shape and shadow – no movement, no sound but the leaves against leaves.

Did she imagine it?

Was it some kind of waking dream?

She smells soap. A whiff of it. Hand soap, like soap from a bathroom.

Miriam turns around.

A red snow shovel catches her in the face. As she drops to the ground, she hears the laughter of Louis, which becomes the laughter of Ben Hodge, which becomes the laughter of her mother – all of them above her head, a circle of moon faces cackling. Darkness returns, singing its cricket's song.

Frankie plods around the corner from the back of the motel, holding his forearm up to a busted, bloody nose. The blood runs down his chin, his arm.

He sees Harriet sitting on the front bumper of her Oldsmobile, her dark pants made darker by an oval of blood. The butterfly knife sits in her hand, slick and red.

"Prick hit me in the face," Frankie says, though it sounds more like Prig hid bee in da vase.