"Where are you?" Brenda shouted, moving barefoot down the muddy path, shining her flashlight beam all around her, paying no attention to the wind and rain. A child was out there, in trouble! He sounded hurt.

"Help me!"

The voice was coming from the direction of the playing field, out by the archery range. She was certain of it. God, they had left a lot of tools in the storage shed, unlocked. Some little kid could have gone in there and—

"Hello?" Helloooo?" Can you hear me?" she shouted. Her eyes straining to penetrate the darkness.

She started moving faster. Suddenly, someone threw the switch on the junction box and the quartz halogen spotlights mounted on poles at the edge of the range came on, bathing her in brilliance. She turned and squinted against the glare, backing away, trying to block out the light with her hand over her eyes. She couldn't see if there was someone standing at the edge of the range or not.

"All right," she shouted angrily, "Come on out. It's not funny anymore."

She backed away from the bright lights, shielding her eyes with her hand, trying to see if anyone was there. Neddie. It had to be. Damn it. This was just too much."

"It's not funny at all!" she yelled. Now, she was sure she could see a figure at the edge of the range, just a back lit shadow. Neddie, she thought, I'm going to kill you.

Then, she saw the figure raising something, pulling back.

Oh my god, she thought, it was a bow! Has he gone completely crazy? What does he—She heard a soft hiss coming toward her, unbelievably quickly. And in the split second that she realized what it was and screamed, the arrow plunged into her stomach, sending her stumbling back against the archery target behind her. It was followed by another and another and another. The arrows making dull, wet smacking sounds as they plowed into her flesh. But after the second one, she could no longer feel a thing.

They had finished cleaning up and Alice threw another log on to the fire, then she walked over to the couch and picked up Bill's guitar. She strummed a couple of chords. There had been a time where she had wanted to learn how to play, but she'd never been able to get past C AM F and G7. You could play a lot of songs with just those four chords and she had been able to fake it a few times at parties, making people think she really knew how to play. But in the end, she had become frustrated and gave it up.

Bill was really good. He didn't just strum it—he finger picked. He was gentle with it, his fingers seemed to caress the strings. She wondered what those fingers would feel like, caressing her.