As we passed the rows of cozy crates lining the outside wall, our seven remaining ridgies stirred, a few of the boys sniffing the air and starting to growl. All at once they went crazy, snapping at the scent on the wind and howling. When they were riled up, you could hear the hound in them.

“Quiet,” Patrick hissed. “Quiet!” Then to me, “Make them shut up before they wake Jim and Sue-Anne.”

I said, “Hush,” and the dogs fell silent, though Cassius whimpered with impatience.

Weeds grew tough and fast out here, so Uncle Jim let a few hungry goats roam the acre beyond our doorstep to keep the view. A few bleated as we passed them by and cut through the pasture. Some of the cows stirred as we drifted by. As we neared the McCafferty place, the cries got louder and my mouth dryer. The air tasted so vile I choked on it.

“You think something’s burning?”

Patrick shook his head. “No. That’s something else.”

A dot of yellow illuminated the McCafferty porch, the light glowing next to the front screen. The door was laid open, the house’s interior black as pitch.

We heard the kids clearly now through that screen door. This was no game. They weren’t squealing.

They were screaming.

A slow, steady banging echoed out at us.

Maybe Hank was drunk again, trying to kick down the kids’ door. Maybe there was an escapee from the state pen one county over. Maybe a homicidal psychopath had hitchhiked to our quiet little town and decided to have some fun.

The terrible banging continued from inside the house.

I whispered, “Should we go back and get Uncle Jim?”

“And leave JoJo and Rocky to whatever’s happening?” Patrick said.

The question required no answer. I shrank back behind Patrick. Despite the cold, I could see sweat sparkling on the nape of his neck. He quickened his pace. When we were about twenty yards away, he stopped and called out, “Whoever’s causing trouble in there, I got a shotgun!”

The banging ceased at once.

The McCafferty kids inside—JoJo and Rocky—stopped screaming, but we could still hear them sobbing. Patrick and I stood side by side, his shotgun raised, my grip growing tighter on the baling hooks.

JoJo’s wails tailed off into silence.

From inside the house came a creak. Then another. Someone descending the stairs?

The footsteps continued, maddeningly slow, growing nearer.

Then we sensed a dark form behind the mesh of the screen. Just standing there. Staring ahead. We couldn’t make out anything more than a silhouette of shoulders and a head, shadow against darkness.

Breaths clouded through the screen, quick puffs of mist in the cold night air. A sound carried out to us—shallow pants, as if from someone who had just learned to breathe.

Patrick jacked the pump of the Winchester, the shuck-shuck loud enough to make my scalp crawl.