A hunched man—something like a man, anyway—in profile, stooping as if to pick up the whole wooded ledge. Only the slightest indication of a head, the hair wild. It’s the man’s hands that make me stare: squiggling, wriggling fingers like a nest of eels, each fingertip a ball of splattered, dripping paint, like the artist held the spray can in place and just blasted.

Beside it, the message again, tall, spindly letters like I’d seen on the overpass. Fear Him.

It takes me a second to find words. “Who did this?”

“Nobody knows. Nobody’s supposed to know.” The smile in Kincaid’s voice is like an electrical current, raising fine hairs on my arms and neck, unseen coils warming to orange, then red. “Guerrilla art. Make your mark and bounce, right?” As he turns, that precious sliver of him vanishes into ink. It’s nearly full dark now, and the only bright spots are the faces of the people holding phones: Sage, Trace’s arm around her shoulders again; Bree; two girls who look like identical twins in combat boots and kohl liner; and the drumsticks boy, standing in a carolers’ semicircle on the path. “It’s a signpost.” Kincaid’s voice travels behind them, and I turn slowly, tracking him. “Here there be monsters.”

“You think he lives in the marsh?”

“Some people think so. Under the bridge, or in the woods. I say he burrows in the mud like a big-ass catfish. Hibernates eleven months out of the year, then hwwwaahh”—he makes a rushing, roaring sound, a whoosh of his arms ripping the air—“comes busting out in October, hunting kid meat.”

Sage starts the song, spoken-word style, glancing at the others, and I recognize the rhyme I caught snatches of on the walk here: “Mumbler, Mumbler, in your bed.”

Bree picks it up, holding Sage’s gaze as she sings: “Mumbler, Mumbler, take your head.”

“Eat your nose—”

“Gobble your toes—”

All of them, in a chorus: “And bury you where the milkweed grows!” They laugh, whistling past the graveyard, all of them, but not Kincaid. He doesn’t laugh; he smiles. I can feel it.

The name of the game is chase. I have foggy memories of something like it from elementary school recess, boys and girls running after each other on the playground, exploring first crushes, any excuse to touch. This is that game on ’roids.

First, the boys blow past us on the trail, taking off into the dark, whooping and yelling and being so ridiculous Bree and Sage and I collapse against one another with crazy giggles, even with the foul breath of that place at our backs, and the fact that I think none of us can get out of there fast enough. Then they swoop out at us again, no faces, just hands and warmth and boy-smell, somebody tickling my side, making me yell, “Hey!” face burning in the night and wondering, Who?