And the darkness was closing in – he could feel his mind slowing, his chest heaving, his muscles weakening.

He was very close to passing out.

Trevor took a step forward and the pieces of his legs that had been stuck back together shifted and moved, and there was not only the creaking sound of stiff muscles trying to work together, but the wet pulpy sound of meat squishing against meat.

This isn’t possible, Cole’s mind whispered. There’s no way this thing should be able to move.

Trevor’s mouth hung open impossibly wide like the jaw had been dislocated and then shoved back into his face, and now it was off-center. His mouth opened and then snapped shut again and then opened once more, like he was trying to say something else. “Cole …”

Cole couldn’t listen to anything else this thing had to say.

This wasn’t his brother anymore.

This wasn’t Trevor.

This thing that used to be his brother stumbled forward and reached for Cole.

Cole aimed his gun at the monstrosity and he pulled the trigger over and over again; five shots into the head and torso of this thing. The bullets knocked the reanimated thing back a few steps and tore large chunks out of what used to be Trevor.

Cole screamed again as he kicked the door shut and lunged for the door; he locked the door handle with trembling fingers, and then the deadbolt. He backed away from the door, staring at it.

Needles was still screaming. “It can get inside! It can get inside anytime it wants to! It can do anything it wants to us!”

Cole turned and stared at Needles with dead eyes – eyes that had seen too much horror and now those eyes were dead calm. “Shut up,” he told Needles in a soft voice.

Needles snapped his mouth shut as he stared at Cole from the side of the recliner where he cowered.

Jose still stood right next to the counter, he hadn’t moved an inch the whole time. He watched Cole. “That wasn’t Trevor anymore, Cole.”

Cole walked towards Jose with slow, deliberate steps.

“You know that, right, Cole? That wasn’t Trevor anymore, just like that’s not Frank anymore out there.”

Cole walked right up to Jose, his gun still gripped in his right hand.

“Cole, put the gun away,” Jose said in a low voice. He reached behind him and grabbed the bottle of whiskey from off the counter. He handed the bottle to Cole with a trembling hand. “Here, take a sip, man.”

Cole stood very still for a second, his eyes still dead, his breathing still shallow, his face slack with shock. Then he shoved his gun down into his waistband and took the bottle of whiskey from Jose. He took two long swallows of the fiery liquid.

Jose glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall, and then he looked back at Cole who still gripped the whiskey bottle by the neck. “It’s getting late. Maybe only a few hours before sundown.”

Cole just nodded – Jose didn’t need to explain what he meant. They only had a short amount of time to decide what they were going to do. He glanced over at Stella and David who sat on the couch, both sitting up ramrod straight, like they might bolt any second. But where would they go? Where could they go?

Stella stared at Cole, and she slowly nodded her head. “It will keep coming back,” she said in a low voice.

Cole took one more swig of the whiskey, and then screwed the lid back on. He handed the bottle back to Jose as he stared at Stella. “I want you and David to go into Tom Gordon’s bedroom. I don’t want David out here when we do this.”

Needles pushed himself away from the recliner, his eyes were bugging out. He shook his head no, his arms struggling behind his back, trying to wriggle out of his bonds, but they were tied too tightly.

“No, Cole, please.”

Cole ignored Needles. He’d made his decision. It had to be Needles. He’d killed the old man at the bank which was the reason they were here. And he’d tried to kill David. If they had to take someone’s eyeballs, then it had to be Needles.

Needles kicked his legs wildly on the floor, beginning to cry and scream. “Please, Cole. We don’t have to do this! We can think of something else!”

Cole didn’t look at Needles. He looked at Stella and David and nodded at them, gesturing at them to go to the bedroom.

Stella stood up and took David’s hand. David had the notebook tucked under his arm. They walked across the living room and gave Needles a wide berth. Stella glanced at Needles who had thrashed his way away from the recliner and more towards the middle of the living room, onto the Native American rug that he stared at for such long periods of time. His face was wet with tears, his skin red from the exertion of thrashing, his eyes wild with fear as he looked around at the cabin like this would be the last thing in the world that he’d ever see.

Stella and David walked to the bedroom. They would be alone in the bedroom and this was going to be her chance to talk to David about what she’d seen in his notebook.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Cole checked the windows of Tom Gordon’s bedroom as Stella and David made themselves comfortable on the lumpy, unmade bed. The windows were still locked and Cole didn’t see anything moving out there in the snow. But he wanted to check. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Stella and David by themselves in the bedroom, but he didn’t want David in the living room watching him and Jose take out Needles’ eyeballs.

And Cole had a feeling that nothing was going to happen to any of them as long as they were following the instructions, as long as they were giving it what it wanted.

Cole couldn’t dwell on the idea of what was out there making them do this for too long or that darkness would begin to creep in from all around him, that darkness that invited him to just close his eyes and float away from all of this.

“We’ll be okay,” Stella said as she stared at Cole. “It won’t come for us right now,” she told him, confirming what he had just been thinking.

“I don’t know how long this will take,” he told her. “We have to find some rope or tape and get him … get him ready.”

“As long as it’s done by sundown,” Stella reminded him.

Cole nodded as a wave of nausea wormed its way through his guts. He could feel bile at the back of his throat. This couldn’t be happening, he thought. But it was happening and they needed to hurry.

He left the room in a hurry. He closed the door and Stella could hear him stomping down the hall.

Stella turned to David who watched the door for a moment, clutching his spiral notebook which had become a little tattered at the edges now from him sleeping with it and protecting it the whole time.

But Stella had seen what he’d been drawing, and she needed to confront him about it.

“David,” she said in a soft voice.

David turned to her and looked at her with his dark eyes.

“What have you been drawing in your notebook?” she asked him, seeing if he would just tell her.

He stared at her for a long moment, and then he spoke. “You said we could run. You said it wouldn’t follow us. You said it wouldn’t find us. You promised.”

Stella felt a pang of guilt twist through her. “David, I know I told you that. And I tried.” She could feel tears threatening.

David just stared at her.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m doing the best I can.”

Finally, he nodded and gave her a small smile.

“When we found you at the dig site, David, you had blood all over you. But you weren’t hurt.”

David only nodded, staring at her with his dark eyes.

“It wasn’t your blood.”

He shook his head no slowly.

“Was the blood from your parents?”

David didn’t answer; he didn’t nod or shake his head no.

“Did that thing out there kill your parents? Did it kill your family?”

David looked away and now Stella could see tears beginning to well up in his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about it, she could tell. He didn’t want to remember.