“Sure.” Fox gathered up scraps, trash, began to cart them out the back, across the narrow yard to the Dumpster the Larsons had rented for the duration of the remodel.

He glanced toward the adjoining yard and the sound of kids playing. And the armload he carried thumped and bounced on the ground as his body went numb.

The little boys played with trucks and shovels and pails in a bright blue sandbox. But it wasn’t filled with sand. Blood covered their bare arms as they pushed their Tonka trucks through the muck inside the box. He stumbled back as the boys made engine sounds, as red lapped over the bright blue sides and dripped onto the green grass.

On the fence between the yards, where hydrangeas headed up toward bloom, crouched a boy that wasn’t a boy. It bared its teeth in a grin as Fox backed toward the house.

“Dad! Dad!”

The tone, the breathless fear had Brian rushing outside. “What? What is it?”

“Don’t you-can’t you see?” But even as he said it, as he pointed, something inside Fox knew. It wasn’t real.

“What?” Firmly now, Brian took his son’s shoulders. “What do you see?”

The boy that wasn’t a boy danced along the top of the chain-link fence while flames spurted up below and burned the hydrangeas to cinders.

“I have to go. I have to go see Cal and Gage. Right now, Dad. I have to-”

“Go.” Brian released his hold on Fox, stepped back. He didn’t question. “Go.”

He all but flew through the house and out again, up the sidewalk to the Square. The town no longer looked as it usually did to him. In his mind’s eye Fox could see it as it had been that horrible week in July seven years before.

Fire and blood, he remembered, thinking of the dream.

He burst into the Bowl-a-Rama where the summer afternoon leagues were in full swing. The thunder of balls, the crash of pins pounded in his head as he ran straight to the front desk where Cal worked.

“Where’s Gage?” Fox demanded.

“Jesus, what’s up with you?”

“Where’s Gage?” Fox repeated, and Cal’s amused gray eyes sobered. “Working the arcade. He’s… he’s coming out now.”

At Cal’s quick signal, Gage sauntered over. “Hello, ladies. What…” The smirk died after one look at Fox’s face. “What happened?”

“It’s back,” Fox said. “It’s come back.”

Hawkins Hollow

March 2008

FOX REMEMBERED MANY DETAILS OF THAT LONG-AGO day in June. The tear in the left knee in his father’s Levi’s, the smell of coffee and onions in Ma’s Pantry, the crackle of the wrappers as he and his father opened Slim Jims in Mrs. Larson’s kitchen.

But what he remembered most, even beyond the shock and the fear of what he’d seen in the yard, was that his father had trusted him.

He’d trusted him on the morning of Fox’s tenth birthday, too, when Fox had come home, bringing Gage with him, both of them filthy, exhausted, and terrified, with a story no adult would believe.

There’d been worry, Fox reflected. He could still see the way his parents had looked at each other as he told them the story of something black and powerful and wrong erupting out of the clearing where the Pagan Stone stood.

They hadn’t brushed it off as overactive imagination, hadn’t even come down on him for lying about spending the night at Cal’s and instead trooping off with his friends to spend the night of their tenth birthday in the woods west of town.

Instead they’d listened. And when Cal’s parents had come over, they’d listened, too.

Fox glanced down at the thin scar across his wrist. That mark, one made when Cal had used his Boy Scout knife nearly twenty-one years before to make him, Cal, and Gage blood brothers, was the only scar on his body. He’d had others before that night, before that ritual-what active boy of ten didn’t? Yet all of them but this one had healed smooth- as he’d healed from any injury since. Without a trace.

It was that mark, that mixing of blood, that had freed the thing trapped centuries before. For seven nights it had stormed through Hawkins Hollow.

They thought they’d beaten it, three ten-year-old boys against the unholy that infected the town. But it came back, seven years later, for seven more nights of hell. Then returned again, the week they’d turned twenty-four.

It would come back again this summer. It was already making itself known.

But things were different now. They were better prepared, had more knowledge. Only it wasn’t just him, Cal, and Gage this time. They were six with the three women who’d come to the Hollow, who were connected by ancestry to the demon, just as he, Cal, and Gage were connected to the force that had trapped it.

Not kids anymore, Fox thought as he pulled up to park in front of the townhouse on Main Street that held his office and his apartment. And if what their little band of six had been able to pull off a couple weeks before at the Pagan Stone was any indication, the demon who’d once called himself Lazarus Twisse was in for a few surprises.

After grabbing his briefcase, he crossed the sidewalk. It had taken a lot of sweat and considerable financial juggling for Fox to buy the old stone townhouse. The first couple of years had been lean-hell, they’d been emaciated, he thought now. But they’d been worth the struggle, the endless meals of PB and J, because every inch of the place was his-and the Hawkins Hollow Bank and Trust’s.

The plaque at the door read FOX B. O’DELL, ATTORNEY AT LAW. It could still surprise him that it had been the law he’d wanted-more that it had been small-town law.

He supposed it shouldn’t. The law wasn’t just about right and wrong, but all the shades between. He liked figuring out which shade worked best in each situation.

He stepped inside, and got a jolt when he saw Layla Darnell, one of that little band of six, behind the desk in his reception area. His mind went blank for a moment, as it often did if he saw her unexpectedly. He said, “Um…”

“Hi.” Her smile was cautious. “You’re back sooner than expected.”

Was he? He couldn’t remember. How was he supposed to concentrate with the hot-looking brunette and her mermaid green eyes behind the desk instead of his grandmotherly Mrs. Hawbaker? “I-we-won. The jury deliberated less than an hour.”

“That’s great.” Her smile boosted up several degrees. “Congratulations. That was the personal injury case? The car accident. Mr. and Mrs. Pullman?”

“Yeah.” He shifted his briefcase to his other shoulder and kept most of the pretty parlorlike reception area between them. “Where’s Mrs. H?”

“Dentist appointment. It’s on your calendar.”

Of course it was. “Right. I’ll just be in my office.”

“Shelley Kholer called. Twice. She’s decided she wants to sue her sister for alienation of affection and for… Wait.” Layla picked up a message pad. “For being a ‘skanky, no-good ho’-she actually said ‘ho.’ And the second call involved her wanting to know if, as part of her divorce settlement, she’d get her cheating butt-monkey of a soon-to-be-ex-husband’s points for some sort of online NASCAR contest because she picked the jerkwad’s drivers for him. I honestly don’t know what that last part means except for jerkwad.”

“Uh-huh. Well, interesting. I’ll call her.”

“Then she cried.”

“Shit.” He still had a soft spot for animals, and had a spot equally soft for unhappy women. “I’ll call her now.”

“No, you’ll want to wait about an hour,” Layla said with a glance at her watch. “Right about now she’s getting hair therapy. She’s going red. She can’t actually sue her skanky, no-good ho of a sister for alienation of affection, can she?”

“You can sue for any damn thing, but I’ll talk her down from it. Maybe you could remind me in an hour to call her. Are you okay out here?” he added. “Do you need anything?”