I saw the Gentlemen’s campfire burning far off in the night like some last beacon of hope, and I ran toward it, I ran with all my heart. The stars fell around me in long silver arcs, the sky slashed with color and light. Something was happening, something was changing in this world, and I was afraid.

With the last bit of my strength I made it to the fire, and I fell facedown into the dirt. I couldn’t run anymore, I could hardly move. The three Gentlemen watched me, their faces passive, like they weren’t surprised to see me here, like they’d been waiting on this moment for a very long time.

The first Gentleman, the one with the eyes so perfect and blue, spoke.

“It has already happened,” he said, “and it will happen again.”

The second Gentleman, the one with the smile, spoke.

“He was kept separate for years and years,” he said, “but you are the door.”

The third Gentleman, the comforter, stretched his hand toward me, granting me peace, granting me serenity.

“In the woods the secret is spoken,” he said, “and it is made flesh.”

He gazed past me, a sadness in his eyes.

I turned my head to look over my shoulder.

Behind me stood the monster.

I knew that now I would die. I knew that now I would be ripped to shreds by the monster, my limbs would be separated, my bones broken, my organs scattered. I could hear it clomp up to me, the sucking gasping sound of its throat.

The monster had come for me. It was time.

But it stepped past me, limping around the fire to where the Gentlemen sat.

The monster grabbed the first Gentleman, the one with the perfect blue eyes, and lifted him to his feet. It jabbed its fingers into the first Gentleman’s eye sockets and gouged his eyes out. It held them, bloody and quivering, the nerves dangling from each eyeball like a comet’s tail. The first Gentleman’s body slumped over into the dirt, blood flowing from his empty sockets.

The monster crammed the first Gentleman’s eyes into his own sockets, and they burned beautiful and blue as stars.

The monster stepped over to the second Gentleman, who sat smiling peacefully into the flames, though his eyes seemed sad. The monster grabbed his jaw in both hands, bracing his foot on the Gentleman’s shoulder, and yanked. The jaw ripped off the second Gentleman, a horrible tearing sound like the snapping of tree limbs in a storm. It hung bloody and gangling in the monster’s fist, and I watched in terror as it fixed the jaw to its face, strange and snarling as a Halloween mask.