He slid to a halt as the trail suddenly veered to the left through a briar patch and led straight to the boundary wall itself. The blood, now little more than a trickle, went to the wall and up it, smearing the stone and discoloring the autumn brown of the ivy there. Stiles wiped a finger along the top of the wall. It came away red. They made it, he sighed. At least one of them. And Danner couldn’t have followed him over.

Now, if only he could find whoever got away.

Stiles picked his way through the stickers and vines and climbed to the top of the wall. He was almost a mile down Sykes Road from where he’d left the van, nearly halfway to the main gate of the Danner estate. The roadway on the other side was deserted. A shallow stream, nearly dried up, ran along the shoulder and beneath the road through a concrete culvert. There was no sign of the boys.

He dropped to his feet, shielding his eyes from the sudden rush of sunlight, and started looking for the blood trail. There was no sign of it . . . no, wait. There was a droplet, on a rock along the stream. Another, further along. A smear on the concrete. He looked at the culvert tube. There was no water coming through it.

If only he’d brought his flashlight. He patted himself down and thanked God he hadn’t thrown out his lighter with his cigarettes. He tested the flint, then, brandishing it in one hand and the bali-song in the other, he bent and peered into the culvert.

There was an obstruction in the cramped darkness of the concrete tube, an amorphous shape blacker than the rest of the blackness. Except for one spot. That stood out, even to his un­adjusted eyes. Almost glowing.

It was a face—he didn’t need light to see that—but one strangely disproportionate. Larger than normal. The eyes and nose were too close together, and the mouth too low and too wide and grinning madly from ear to ear. And it didn’t move. Hesitantly, he reached in as close as he dared and thumbed the lighter in front of it. The flame danced and reflected red in a dead man’s eyes. Doug Baugh’s paint-stained face stared back at him, but it was not larger than normal as he’d thought at first glance. The boy’s mouth was not even open; his lips were still tightly pursed in an agonized grimace. It was his throat that grinned. The flesh there gaped raggedly, like the teeth of a smiling jack-o’-lantern. It had been torn from one jaw hinge to the other. There was no more blood; the flesh looked like bread dough. There was a bouquet of arms framing that face, his and others, twisted and warped at horrid angles, ever reaching, but not far enough.

There was barely enough room in the culvert for a child to crawl through. It must have taken some ingenuity, and not a little strength, to stuff three bodies into it at once.