Jessica stood rooted to the floor in the center of the three-walled, wooden room. The far wall where the madman peered through the open doorway had once again dissolved into that sparkling sheet of glass, and the doorway itself was shrouded in shadow that seemed to swallow all light. From the center of the blackness protruded a hairy, muscled arm that seemed cut off just before the shoulder, and in the hand…She tried to peel herself away from it, but her eyes refused to leave the head in his grasp. Slowly, more of the man began to appear as he moved forward out of the shadow. Another scream caught in her throat as she saw his legs and torso, then his other arm. He wore blue overalls. The blue man. It was as if the darkness was giving birth to his form, vomiting it up from the depths.

It was his face that she saw last, as he had his head bowed against his chest, and when he lifted it to stare at her with icy gray eyes she saw with horror the remnants of his mother’s cruelty. His lips and cheeks were twisted and traced with ugly white scars, one eyebrow pink and hairless where it had been neatly sliced off many years ago by the razor.

He grinned at her.

Then he tossed the head in his grasp into the room and it hit with a soft thump, rolling over and over until it came to rest at her feet. For a second she could swear she saw blood on Johnny Bear’s neck. Oh Johnny not you not you oh please.

She whimpered and pressed herself back against the wall as hard as she could, feeling the rough splintered wood through the numbing cold. The bad man stepped back outside and closed the door softly behind him, and then the wall around it was whole again. She knew he had gone to meet Daddy. She had done enough, all that the bad man wanted.

She had screamed and brought him running.

The foreign thing was probing at her again, kneading with its claws like a cat. It sank deeper now, through the last barrier of her mind and into her very soul, claiming her as its own and at the same time showing her everything.

She sent one last message to her father, and it went tearing through her head like a thunderbolt:

WATCH OUT DADDY HE’S COMING.

David Pierce ignored Hank’s hoarse shout. That sounded like Jessie. Dear God, that sounded like my daughter. He heard Hank’s muffled patter of footsteps behind him, and knew with a blooming gratitude that the man was following him even now.