Tearing down the hallway, Daniel tried to think on his feet. Focusing on the wet footprints made him realize, without any doubt, that what he had seen had been no nightmarish version of Martha, conjured up by an over-active imagination. She had stood there, a grotesque perverted distortion of the Martha he had known, but Martha nevertheless. It was real, just as Maria"s transformation had been. The acceptance curdled his blood and yet, perversely, made sense of everything. His goal now was simple, so he bounded down the stairs to reach his aunt and persuade her to flee from the house as quickly as possible.
Not waiting on politeness, he burst through her bedroom door, flicking on the light switch, to wake her more quickly.
Her room was empty.
The bed not even slept in.
It took some sec
