But the more serious problem was that he could not move. His arms and legs were splayed out, like he was a starfish, and secured somehow to the ground. He could feel bindings around his wrists and ankles. He was able to brush the fingers of both hands against sticks of some kind.

No, not sticks. Stakes.

Craig Pierce was staked to the ground. Minus pants.

“Hello?” His voice was raspy and panicked. “Is there someone there?”

There was no light filtering through the threads of the hood. It was nighttime, no doubt about that.

“Hello?” he said again. “What’s going on?”

Craig tried to control his breathing, which was becoming very rapid. He needed to concentrate on what was going on around him.

He sensed he was not alone.

Even with the background noise of the rushing water, he thought he heard people breathing. Someone—maybe more than one person—shifting weight from one foot to the other. Very, very close to him.

Whispering.

“I know you’re there,” he said. “What the hell is going on? What the hell is this?”

The last thing Craig could recall, before waking up staked to the snowy ground, was finishing his shift at Maria’s, a pizza takeout joint. It was midnight, and he’d come out the back door. He’d walked to his Camaro, where he found a van parked so close alongside it he wasn’t sure he could get the door open.

He heard someone say, “Craig Pierce?”

Then someone from behind put something over his face. A cloth. A very smelly cloth.

Nothing after that, until he heard the rushing of water.

“I can hear you!” he shouted. “I hear you talking! What the hell is this about?”

Pierce sensed movement on the ground. He believed someone was standing over him. Then he heard a voice, maybe the same one that had called out his name.

“Like you don’t know.”

That was when Craig Pierce had an inkling about what might be going on.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Really, really sorry. I’ve learned my lesson.”

At this point, Pierce heard other breathing, of a kind that did not sound human. More like panting, or snorting. It was the sort of sound a dog might make.

What happened next made him jump, at least as much as a man could jump while staked to the ground. Something thick and cold and wet was being poured over his body. Particularly over those parts of him that were most exposed, most vulnerable.

“Hey!” he shouted. “What are you doing? What is that?”

As if to answer his question, a few seconds later more of the substance was poured over his face. It seeped through the fabric of the hood and reached his lips and tongue, where he could not help but taste it.

It was a mixture of something. A strange combination of ingredients. Like honey, and beef. Bloody and sweet at the same time.

Then, a flash.

His picture had been taken.

Craig had the sense that whoever had done this to him—one or more, he was not sure—was walking away.