A few minutes later, the storm ceased.

Wrapped in the warmth of the children’s cumulative essence, Mr. Hands closed his eyes and slept the sleep of the just.

Chapter Two

Lucy did not so much wake up the following morning (a task that, though simple enough on the surface, proved far too complicated for someone in her condition) as she did lurch into consciousness.

Most mornings now there was no greeting the day for her, only a knee-jerk response to its threat: Don’t make me come in there.

And so she sat up, rubbed her eyes, and took stock of her surroundings.

Eric’s old desk. The computer monitor and keyboard. The office chair. The lamp attached to the cubby above the desk’s surface, turned on, its circle of light illuminating a section of the Walls of Madness.

She was on the couch in the study.

She rose unsteadily to her feet—marveling once again how she never had a classic hangover but instead just a case of cotton-mouth compounded by the Dreadful Dizzies—and made her way to the light switch, flipped it, and flooded the room with brightness.

That’s when she got a good look at the state of her clothes.

Torn hose, caked mud and vomit over nearly every inch of her skirt and blouse, dried leaves stuck here and there for aesthetic effect, small cuts and abrasions on her hands, arms, legs...

Jesus, what had happened last night?

It wasn’t until she was pouring a small shot of Bailey’s Irish Creme into her coffee that she remembered the police officer shaking her awake and asking what was wrong. She remembered that he didn’t seem to notice the smell of liquor on her, and so she told him that she was driving home when she suddenly got sick, pulled over to get out of her car and threw up, then slipped in the mud while getting back inside. The officer bought it, then asked if she was okay to drive herself home. It took some Academy Award-worthy acting on her part, but she at last convinced him that she was sound enough in mind and body to operate an automobile. The officer and his partner followed her, anyway, their cruiser idling right outside as she slipped the key into the front door, waved her thanks to them, then stumbled inside and to the couch in Eric’s study.

She stood in the doorway now—freshly showered with wounds cleanly dressed—in her terrycloth bathrobe, sipping her Irish coffee and getting her bearings.

Staring at the Walls of Madness—Eric’s moniker, that.

Nearly every available inch of space on three of the four walls was covered with newspaper clippings, each one detailing the disappearance, rape, murder, torture, exploitation, or mutilation of a child. Many had pictures of the crime scene. Some of them in color.

There were at least forty grainy black-and-white photographs of small, sheet-covered bodies.

Lucy knew the name and age of each pictured body, as well as those of which there were no photographs.