Pete’s vision swam in and out of focus, and he was feeling very light-headed now. He was so cold. The dripping sound continued. It sounded very close. He tilted his head enough to see the floor, and there was a pool of blood underneath him. Drip. A bright crimson drop fell into the pool. Drip.

A figure stepped around into his line of sight. It looked like some kind of monster carrying a hunting blade. Pete tried to look up into its face, but could not; it was as if he were peering into a distance far greater than a few feet. Peering into the abyss.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please. Don’t.”

But the knife did not falter.

And the abyss stared back.

CHAPTER TWELVE

They settled into the new house with almost uncanny ease—the quiet of the surrounding woods seemed to be an elixir for Jessie—and by the afternoon of March 3rd it felt almost like home to David, who had already decided to set up an office in the spare room downstairs and make the shed outside into one hell of a workroom, though he hadn’t yet had time to inspect it. He had always wanted one of those sparkling clean little areas with a place for everything—the hammer, screwdrivers, saws, drills, all hung in their rightful places. He knew it sounded old-fashioned, not to mention stereotypical, but he wanted a tool shed, plain and simple. And never had he wanted one more than now, out here in the depths of the woods. It seemed somehow natural for him to work with his hands.

“A regular pioneer,” Helen said, grinning, when he mentioned it. The sad thing was (and he hoped fervently to change this with practice), he was a lousy carpenter. He had the desire but none of the skills. He had spent most of his childhood in Seattle, Washington, after all, and not in the great outdoors, building tree forts.

His father had kept a workroom downstairs in the basement, where he had tried valiantly to play the man’s game, but all Neil Pierce had ended up doing was putting together a few “snap-rite” airplane models and making a mess of the place. Still, David realized that his father’s basement was probably the reason he wanted a tool shed of his own. It had something to do with childhood memories that were always larger than life. He wanted to have a great tool shed, and he wanted his father to come visit in the spring and help him build things. He didn’t at the present time know exactly what those things would be, but that didn’t matter.