The cabin lay dark and hushed beneath the pale silvery light of the moon. Jake Cumberland's hound was perfectly still, flattened against the ground beneath the cabin's floor. He'd neither moved nor made a single sound since he'd first scented the two figures stealing through the darkness toward the house. Had the chain not restrained him, he would have fled away through the covering darkness rather than slunk into the meager shelter provided by his master's house.

The night prowlers had gone silent; neither owls nor bats swooped and flitted in search of prey, for every creature they might have sought had vanished into burrows beneath the ground or hollows inside the trees.

No fish jumped in the lake, no frogs croaked along its bank; even the insects they hunted had ceased their nightly feeding and mating.

The quiet of death had fallen over the night. A dark cloud scudded over the moon as if to protect even it from bearing witness to the ceremony taking place within the cabin's walls, where five flickering candles on the table struggled to hold back the descending darkness.

Luke Roberts stood next to Jared Conway, his unblinking eyes fixed on the object that lay on the table in the center of the pentagram formed by the candles.

In his right hand, Jared held a knife-its cutting edge honed to razor sharpness by Jake Cumberland's own whetstone and strop. As he clutched its leather-bound haft, the instrument itself seemed to speak to him, whispering of the creatures it had disemboweled, the hides it had slit, the flesh it had slashed. Jared lowered the knife toward the offering on the table, but just before he drove the blade into the creature's breast, he gazed one last time into its eyes.

"Don't," he heard his sister's voice whisper inside his head. "Oh, God, Jared, please don't."

Jared hesitated as Kim's voice, only dimly heard, tugged at him, tried to restrain him. It was as if he stood on the edge of a dark and fathomless abyss, feeling inexorably drawn to it. Every fiber of his being wanted to step over the edge, to drop into the darkness below, plunge deep into whatever lay within the blackness that beckoned to him.

And only Kim's dimly heard voice held him back.

"Don't," her voice whispered again. "Please, Jared. Don't."

Jared's eyes moved from the body of the creature to its head.

Scout lay on his back, his legs splayed wide as if to expose his belly in submission to some far stronger creature than he. His head lolled to one side. His mouth lay open, his tongue hung out.

And one of his eyes-his soft, trusting brown eyes-seemed to gaze up at Jared, as if joining in Kim's whispered plea.

But it was already too late. He plunged the knife into the dog's heart and Scout's life ended with a silent spasm.

Now all that remained was to carry out the ceremony, to offer his pet to his new master.

Pulling the knife from the dog's corpse, he lowered its point until it just grazed the skin of Scout's belly.

Yet still he hesitated, looking one last time into Scout's eyes, hesitating as, fleetingly, a brief, flickering doubt entered his mind, as though something within was telling him to step back-step back from the edge of the abyss.

Too late. With Kim's pleading voice fading away, he felt himself slide into the darkness. As Luke watched, Jared slipped the point of the knife through the retriever's hide and ran its edge up the center of its belly and chest to its throat. Four more slits ran up each leg, and then he began peeling the skin away from the flesh below. He worked quickly, the blade seeming to guide his hands as if the knife itself had performed the work so often, it needed no aid from him.

Deftly, he sliced through the abdominal muscles, then cut away the creature's entrails.

He cut through the rib cage and laid open the animal's chest, exposing the lungs and heart.

Raising the knife high, Jared muttered a dedication of the blood offering he was about to make, then plunged the knife deep into the heart. Dropping the knife, he plunged his hands into the blood that oozed from the punctured heart into the chest cavity. With reddened fingers he anointed Luke's forehead.

Plunging his hands again into the gore within the slaughtered dog, he moved away from the table and began tracing patterns on the cabin's wall, intricate designs that rose out of some hidden place in his subconscious, flowing from his bloodied fingertips onto the ancient wood. And as he etched the design in blood, muttered imprecations-unintelligible curses condemning the man who had lived his entire life within the cabin's shelter-flowed from his lips.

Jake Cumberland's eyes flicked open in the darkness of his cell. He felt disoriented for a moment, but slowly his mind cleared and he remembered where he was. And why.

He wasn't going to get out of jail-he already knew that. His mama had explained it to him when he was small: "Don't ever do nothin' that'll let 'em put you in jail," she'd told him. "'Cause once they gets you in, they ain't gonna be lettin' you out again. Not around here. Onliest way they ever gonna let you out is at the end of a rope. That's what they did to my daddy, Jake, when I was no bigger'n you. They came for him one night, and took him down and tied a rope around his neck, and after that I didn't have a daddy no more. So you watch yourself, hear?"

Now, in the blackness of the Halloween midnight, he heard another voice. An evil voice, whispering inside his head.

Do it yourself, Jake, the voice said. Don't wait, Jake. Don't wait for morning. Do it now.

At first Jake tried to ignore the voice, but it wouldn't be put off, and as the seconds ticked by and turned into minutes, it grew stronger, more insistent.

Do it, Jake. You know you want to. Come on, Jake. Now, Jake. Now!

The voice took on a mesmerizing rhythm. Without thinking about it, Jake rose from the cot on which he lay and took off his pants. He began ripping at the denim, tearing the legs into strips.

You know what to do, Jake, the voice whispered. Just do it. Do it now.

Jake began braiding the strips of denim together, his fingers working the material as easily as they knotted together the twine for his snares. Soon he was done.

The rope was nearly six feet long, plenty long enough to do what had to be done.

Now, Jake, the voice whispered. Do it now.

Jake tied one end of the braided rope around his neck, then stood on the cot and reached up to the sprinkler pipe that ran across the cell's width.

He tied the free end of the rope around it and tested the knot. It was solid; it would hold.

Die! the voice commanded. Die right now!

Without another thought, Jake Cumberland stepped off the edge of the cot. He dropped a foot, and then the rope jerked tight.

His neck did not break, but the loop around his neck dug deep, closing his windpipe.

His body twitched, his feet kicked out.

Then, in the darkness, he saw his mama. She was at the end of a tunnel, and her hand was held out to him. As Jake began hurrying through the darkness toward his mother, the voice faded away. Jake Cumberland was dead.

His incantations done, the inscriptions on the walls complete, Jared Conway severed the dog's head from the carcass and placed it inside the trunk where the night before he had hidden the head of the cat.

He cleaned the hide of the last remnants of flesh, rolled it tight, and slipped it into a plastic sack. As Luke carried the flesh, bones, and entrails outside, Jared blew the candles out, one by one. As the last candle flickered out, the room plunged into utter blackness.

Taking the skin of the slaughtered dog with him, Jared left the cabin, and as he and Luke disappeared into the darkness, the life of the night began again.