He only had so much information, but he did know a few things. When he got too far out of range the creature—

The Puller, the little voice said.

“I’ll call it whatever I want,” he said, cradling his head with both hands and brushing his sweaty hair back.

He knew that when he went too far, he’d get that pressure on his chest and start choking. If he could somehow test the allowed roaming space by carefully pushing the boundaries, he could figure out how much room he had to work with. There was a slight chance he may not be stuck in the shack after all.

The biggie, the WHOPPER question was why was he pulled back onto the shack property twice and then freed? Why didn’t the thing just kill him then and there?

Matt spit into the paper bag, grimacing at the bitter taste of bile.

One thing was certain: He’d been given space, and he had to see exactly how much he had. Either that or sit in the shack, scared as shit and growing weaker and weaker. And with no one around for miles, he couldn’t expect a savior. He didn’t want to cower in fear and grow weak. Oh no, he didn’t want that at all. If he was going to die, it was going to be out in the sunlight. His blood would be spilled in the orchard grass, not inside the shack. He was sure of it. The problem was not being sure about anything else. There were many questions, but few answers. How big was the creature? Pretty freaking big. But how big is big? There’s Sears Tower big, and then Grand Teton big.

Anything that can pull a truck like that is strong, not to mention fast. He could file that into the Known Category in the vanilla folder labeled Piece of Shit That Was Holding Him Hostage. Fast and strong? Check. Invisible? Check. Was the creature solid or gaseous? Unknown.

And maybe the visibility is also unknown , he thought.

Certainly it was invisible to him, but perhaps it was a trick of light, a distortion capable of fooling the human eye. There was quite a difference between invisible and using smoke and mirrors. Smoke and mirrors can be exposed. If that was the case he just needed to find a device that reveals the trick.

Darkness began to soften the shack’s rough edges, and the boarded windows didn’t help. Matt slumped onto the bottom bunk, sore as an NFL running back on an October Monday.

Matt angled and twisted out of his flannel, shaking his head at the scrapes and cuts across his arms. The bump on his eye had receded, and his vision in both eyes was okay.

The gash on his arm was not.