...in her car, Lucy’s thrashing began to subside...

…and the mortal remains of Ronald James Williamson, now over a decade under the mud and rot and wetness of the season, buried so far down that not even the small animals could dig far enough to get to his meat, these remains gave themselves over to the figure above, offering bones and remaining flesh and tissue and sinew and cartilage and what veins remained as Mr. Hands drank in the blood that Ronnie had allowed to soak the ground around him…

…and in her car, Lucy shuddered once more, for an instant remembering the face of a young man who’d grabbed her shoulders and asked nearly in tears if Sarah had been found yet…

...and Mr. Hands felt his limbs growing, unfurling to life, accepting all that Ronnie had to offer him, all the strength, all the power, all the sight of the Hurting, and Mr. Hands took in his first sentient breath, sucking in the pain and anger and grief like a vacuum taking in dust, moving, yes, he was moving now, growing, he could feel the sensations of existence as he began to move his body, intermingling his being with the essence and blood of what the dead once carried with them, tasting the pain still so strong in those who were left behind, and he turned his head and opened his cold, black eyes to gaze upon the beauty of his form, the glory of his hideousness, and something more fluttered to life in his center as he absorbed the remains of every once-living thing that shared the wet pit with him...

...Lucy’s body began to relax, the shudders growing less constant, the jerking gone...

...and in the orgy of his terrible birth Mr. Hands let forth a scream that was the cry of a million babies doused in gasoline and set aflame, and then, as the storm was reaching its peak, he thrust up one of his huge hands, its tree limb-sized fingers grabbing the upper edge of the rim around the pit…

…and in a series of rain-soaked, exploding-light flashes, Mr. Hands pulled himself upward and out of the pit: one hand shot upward, covered in vines and dripping weeds that looked more like veins, then the next hand, pulling upward toward the strobing light, its fingers unfurling in glory like the wings of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, followed by his massive, skull-like head, wreathed in worms and dead spiders, and finally his wide, rounded torso arose and he burst fully from his place of birth and stood upon his hands, towering nearly three feet over the sculpture, and sloughed the water and soaked earth from his leg-stumps like a snake shedding its skin.

His long, lethal fingers rhythmically clawed the wet ground as they gained strength.

He smelled the storm and the sky; it was pure ether to his awakening senses, filling him with life, making him sick with pleasure.

His limbs pumped with blood, juicing with exhilaration.