So familiar.

“Mommy,” said Paper-Flesh Sarah. “Mommy, what’cha gonna do?”

“I don’t know, honey,” replied Lucy from her prison of chronos.

“He didn’t mean to. It was a accident. Did’ya tell Misserhands?”

“Yes. He doesn’t care.”

“Can I help?”

Lucy smiled sadly. “I don’t know how, babe.”

“I gotta do something, Mommy.”

“I know how you feel.”

“Mommy?”

“What is it, honey?”

“Are you a monster now?”

Lucy had no answer. She downed the rest of her drink and when she looked again, Paper-Flesh Sarah was gone, and in her place were the usual occupants of the Walls of Madness.

“Please don’t hate me for this, honey,” Lucy whispered.

Then: “You don’t hate me, do you?”

No reply.

“I’ll make this right, somehow,” Lucy swore to her daughter. “I promise.”

Then, very quietly: “Please forgive me?”

Silence.

Chapter Seven

At the same moment Lucy stood before the Walls of Madness asking her daughter to forgive her, Randy Patterson—sleeping off one of the mild sedatives prescribed for him—came violently awake in his bed, crying loudly and calling for his parents. When they came rushing into the room he threw himself into their arms, shuddering and coughing. “I had a dream ‘bout this little girl, she s-s-said that a monster was coming to get me b-b-because of what I d-d-did to Kylie...”

“Shhh, honey,” whispered his mother, refusing to cry in front of him, wanting to be strong for her remaining child. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I d-didn’t mean it,” he cried.

“We know, hon, we know...”

“I’m scared.” His voice was loud and raw and ragged with fear. “Don’t let Mr. Hands get me, please?”

His parents looked into one another’s eyes, both their gazes asking the same question: Mr. Hands?

* * *

Lucy stopped by the Children’s Services offices Monday morning under the pretense that she’d left something there last week. The director and three case workers were there, all of them busy.

She made a show of looking around for her lost something-or-other until everyone else filed into the conference room for the morning meeting. Moving quickly and quietly, Lucy went into the director’s office and took the woman’s purse from under her desk, opened it, and removed the small wallet that contained her CS identification and badge. Slipping the wallet into her pocket and replacing the purse where she’d found it, she stopped by the conference room to say good-bye, telling everyone she’d be back on Wednesday.

She would never see any of them again.

* * *

The rest of her busy day: A stop at the bank to close one of her three accounts, this one to the tune of five thousand dollars, one-third of which was spent over the next several hours: two hardware stores, an electronics “warehouse,” a sporting goods clearance center, Toys ‘R’ Us, and the grocery store.

Back at the house, she packed all the food into the coolers she’d bought. That done, she picked up the medium-sized duffel bag (another new purchase), went into the middle room, and unlocked the gun cabinet.