Chapter 1
Amber heard someone call her name in the night and rose to answer it. She was still somewhere between dream and reality, and in her mind it was her daughter’s voice.
When she saw the man’s familiar face standing before her in the near perfect darkness, a grinning caricature, all teeth and glaring eyes, every suppressed terror and forgotten childhood nightmare she had ever known came back to her. She had forgotten this face, the face of the Bogeyman, but here it was again, and now she remembered.
“My sweet little Amber,” he said. “My precious, precious thing. How you’ve grown.”
She tried to run, but the power of his gaze kept her where she stood. She wanted to scream, but he cupped his hand over her mouth, cutting off her breath. As hard as she tried, she could not make a sound.
Then she saw his other hand and the wicked thing he held. A pair of stainless steel scissors, polished to a spotless mirror shine. They opened with a metallic hiss, making an X shape. He gripped them at the crux with his bare hand, fingers wrapped around handle and blade. They should have cut him, but did not. Weak light from outside lit the razor edges like lines of fire.
He punched through her with one extended blade and yanked upward, opening her up from navel to sternum.
She felt the freezing sweat on her brow, cheeks, and chest, the odd sensation of parting skin and flesh as it hung in flaps from her midriff. Cold fire filled her to the core, its intensity growing with each application of his weapon. There were hot, meaty splashes against her legs and feet as he gutted her.
Then, finally, her struggle for breath ended. The grinning face faded to black and she felt nothing.
He knew she was gone. He could see the horrible understanding in her eyes die, leaving the dumb, empty gaze of a stuffed animal. He released her and she folded inward like a noiseless accordion, coming to rest at his feet.
He was drenched with her blood, painted with it, but that was fine. Just fine. He put the scissors away and rubbed his palms together in a slow, circular motion, relishing the tacky wetness between them. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, savoring her smell.
“Mommy.” It was a small, fear-choked cry from down the hallway. The voice of the child he had come for. “Mommy, I’m scared!”
He opened his eyes, his smile widening, and laced the fingers of his bloodied hands together in a prayerful gesture.
“Ah,” he intoned in a slow out-rush of breath. His lips parted in an impossible grin.
Huge teeth, sharks teeth, shining in a shadow face.
He went to her, sat on the edge of her bed.
“Why are you crying, Charity?”
She ignored him, continued to watch the door, waiting for her mother. She gave him an occasional nervous, twitching glance. He was a stranger to her, though she knew his face from dreams.
She was not a stranger to him. He knew her, had come for her as he had so many others.
He asked her again, “Why are you crying, my precious little angel? It breaks my heart to see you crying.”
Again, she ignored him. The third time he took her gently by the face, the V between his thumb and forefinger gripping her chin while his fingers caressed her cheeks. The blood on his fingers painted them, red streaks like the war paint on one of Peter Pan’s little Indians. He eased her into a sitting position and leaned closer.
Her eyes darted, left and right, up and down. They rolled in their sockets in an effort to avoid his gaze. She was the strongest child he had ever encountered, but the force of his will was too powerful to resist.
“I had a bad dream,” she said at last.
“My dear, Charity,” his voice was soothing, offering cold comfort. “A bad dream, was it?”
“Uh huh,” she said, then closed her eyes, forcing back the panic and tears. She opened them again and glanced back toward the door. She knew her mother wasn’t coming. She did not cry then though, she stayed in control.
“I dreamed about the Bogeyman,” she said when she had managed to kill the sobs.
He patted her head, smoothed the dark tangle of hair from her high forehead.
“There, there,” he said. “Don’t cry now. Close your eyes and sleep.”
She nodded and slouched back against her pillow, all fear put away by the force of his suggestion. Thoughts of her mother, at least for then, were swept aside.
He smiled and held her as her eyes slipped shut. “You weren’t dreaming.”
He picked her up. She lay limp as a rag doll in his arms, and he had held her like that for a long time before leaving. Instead of devouring her, as he had come to do, he took her with him.
Looking into her eyes that night, he found something unexpected. Something he had never seen, or thought he would ever see, in any of these sheep-like creatures. He saw something in her that would always separate her from the rest of the flock. Something strong. Something wild.
Something that would set him free.