This time, she took a step back. And caught movement again out of the corner of her eye—a quick flash of blue between the trees that was gone before she could even turn her head and follow it to wherever it was going.

Johnny Bear I wish I had Johnny, she thought, imagining his furry arms on her shoulders. Now she realized just how far she was from the porch. If there was a big wolf after me and I was running as hard as I could I couldn’t make it, he would catch me and eat me up. She didn’t like that idea at all, in fact it started to make her feel a lot more scared than before. She thought that there could be monsters out here, after all, and that monsters weren’t always big purple creatures with giant teeth and sharp claws, sometimes they were wolves or bears or even people.

The sun was so bright and it lit up the snow into tiny sparkling bits of white that hurt her eyes. She squinted, feeling the tears well up. She wished she had never come out here, because now she was so scared she could hardly move. Daddy had been right. The woods were so close she could smell the sweetness of the pine trees, and she could see the branches moving deep within the darkness like there was something in there watching her.

Now she remembered clearly the blackness of her dream, the terror of that freezing room and the shadow on the wall of the head with little glass eyes and the huge muscled arm and rough shoulders as they moved against the wood.

And then it hit her like a bolt of lightning, the picture of a monstrous blue man holding a head JOHNNY’S HEAD and it was clearer and more intense than anything she had ever felt before, it was like she was right there with him.

Dimly she felt herself falling, but by the time her body hit the snow with a soft thump she didn’t feel anything else.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was the beginning of March, and the latest tests from the last batch of samples had finally come in.