He’d been drafted into the army, and just before he was scheduled to go into basic training, he went into town to buy a card, a sort of Don’t-Forget-Me card for Darcy Wallace, his girlfriend at the time. He returned home, and the second he walked through the door, he could smell something burning. He called out but no one answered. He thought maybe his mother had left something in the oven and forgotten about it. She’d done that before. His brother, who was already in the army, and his sisters, who were living together in an apartment in Toledo where they were both going to secretarial school, were supposed to come home for the big going-away party, and he figured his mother was making something special, a roast or a turkey.

He rushed into the kitchen, pushed open the swinging door. The entire room was filled with smoke. Black smoke that smelled like—

burnt toast.

He didn’t know what had happened at first. He shut off the oven and opened the windows and the back door. Donna was standing in the yard in her dirty shift, staring back at him, unmoving, but he didn’t have time to fool around with her, and he hurried back over to the stove.

She’d killed them and cut off their heads and put their heads in the oven.

All of them.

His parents, his brother, his sisters.

He was fanning out the smoke when he saw his father’s burned head, sitting on the middle rack. The old man’s eyes were gone and his lips were flattened and all of the fat and flesh seemed to have melted off, but Norton recognized who it was. Next to that, his mother’s head had fallen over and parts of her were sticking to the grill. His brother’s and sisters’ heads were smoldering in the back, all lumped together.

They reminded him of the burned ants.

He never saw Donna again. Just that last look through the door, through the smoke. And when he thought back on it, later, he realized that she looked the same as she had before. She hadn’t aged at all. She still looked twelve.

Now Norton sucked in a deep breath and looked up at the house, then turned back toward the plucked chicken and its pointing wing. Was this a joke or a warning? Was it meant to be threatening or welcoming? It was impossible to tell; the mind behind it was so alien to his own. Nevertheless, he got out of the car and walked purposely toward the house, up the porch. He thought he heard a child laughing.

A girl.

Donna.

He pressed down on his erection.

The front door opened even before he had a chance to knock, and their old hired hand stood there, within the dark entryway, smiling at him, looking exactly the same as he had all those years ago.