"Guys, come on..."

"Why don't you take some time to pray?" Larry asked. "That's what they do when they're about to die, right? They pray. Go on, Toby, pray."

"Out loud," said Nick. "We want to hear it."

Toby hesitated, then spoke in a whisper. "Dear God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, please let these assholes realize the error of their ways..."

"Oh, now, see, you messed up a perfectly good prayer," said Larry. "Now we want you to beg."

"No."

"Beg for your life."

"I'm not doing that."

"I bet you will," said Larry, pressing the barrel of his gun against Toby's forehead. Toby felt like he was going to throw up but choked down the urge. "Beg me not to kill you."

"No."

"Do it." Larry raised his voice to a falsetto. "'Oh, please, Larry, don't shoot me in the head.' Say it."

Toby remained defiantly silent.

"Then how about 'Oh, please, Larry, don't shoot me in the stomach, because that would hurt a lot worse.' I bet you can say that."

"No."

"No. No. No. You sound like a broken record. If you don't want to say anything, that's fine. Just close your eyes. Close your eyes and count to ten."

"No."

"Stop saying that!" Larry shouted with enough ferocity that Toby nearly lost his balance. "I've got a goddamn gun to your head, and you need to start taking this seriously! Now close your eyes Now close your eyes!"

Toby didn't close his eyes. He just couldn't.

"On the count of ten, you're going to die," said Larry. "Are you ready?"

"Let's do it on five," Nick suggested.

"Okay, five. Five seconds left to live. That's got to be scary."

"Five..." Nick began.

"Four..."

"Threetwoone!" Nick shouted. Both of them pulled the triggers at the same time. Both guns clicked.

Both of the bullies howled with laughter. Larry placed his foot on Toby's shoulder and shoved him onto his back. "I can't believe you fell for that! You actually thought we were going to blow your head off! How stupid can one person be?"

Toby was so relieved not to be dead that he was having trouble being furious. But as they continued laughing, Toby felt his relief fading and his rage rising. He sat up.

"I'm going to the cops," he said.

That made Larry and Nick laugh even harder, if such a thing were possible.

"I mean it."

"Yeah? Will that be before or after you run home crying to Mommy?"

Nick, who was practically doubled over, cackled as if that was the most hilarious insult ever to pass somebody's lips. Toby couldn't remember ever having felt such rage. He wanted to gouge his thumbs into Larry's eyes and rip his head right off his body.

Instead, he settled for tackling Larry. He didn't care if it meant he was going to get beat up again. He needed to get in one punch. Just one good punch.

"Hey, whoa," said Larry, still laughing as they crashed to the ground. "Kind of violent there, aren't you?"

Toby punched him.

It wasn't that hard of a punch, and it got Larry in the shoulder instead of the face, but it definitely made Toby feel better even as his fist exploded with pain.

Larry's return punch got him right in the nose. The crunch crunch and immediate gush of blood proved that Larry's punch had done a lot more damage than Toby's. The pain was so intense that Toby's vision blurred. and immediate gush of blood proved that Larry's punch had done a lot more damage than Toby's. The pain was so intense that Toby's vision blurred.

He slammed his fists down upon Larry, as hard and quickly as he could. Larry seemed far more amused than hurt, and deflected the countless blows with minimal effort. Nick apparently thought this was the funniest part yet, and even Larry continued to chuckle.

Larry grabbed Toby's nose and gave it a pinch.

The laughter suddenly stopped.

Toby didn't remember taking out the hunting knife, or pulling it out of its leather sheath. But Larry now looked really frightened.

Gripping the handle with both hands, Toby slammed the blade deep into Larry's chest.

For a fraction of a second, it felt almost euphoric. Then the reality of what he'd just done struck him, and he cried out in horror. "Oh God, I'm sorry...I didn't...oh God..."

Larry lay there, eyes wide open in shock, body twitching. Toby wasn't a doctor, but he knew exactly where he'd plunged the blade, and you didn't survive when you had an eight-inch hunting knife protruding from your heart.

"Oh God...oh Jesus..."

He looked up at Nick, as if for help. Nick had his hand over his mouth and looked as if he were hyperventilating. There was no more scorn in the bully's eyes-just pure panic. Toby knew his own panic was even worse. He just wanted to curl up into a tight little ball and scream and scream and scream.

But he couldn't do that.

Larry was dying. He couldn't be saved. Maybe not even if there were an ambulance parked ten feet away, and definitely not all the way out here in the woods. No matter what he did to try to fix things, he'd murdered murdered somebody. There was a bloody corpse on the ground next to him and somebody. There was a bloody corpse on the ground next to him and he'd he'd made it. made it.

Nick was the only one who knew what he'd done.

If he let Nick leave this forest alive, Toby was going to jail.

He couldn't spend the rest of his life in prison. Not for somebody as cruel and worthless as Larry.

Toby wrenched the knife out of Larry's chest. He couldn't look at the blade, couldn't see the blood or he'd go insane and not be able to do this.

There was no time for apologies or explanations. He had to move fast, get Nick while he was still in a state of shock. Toby rushed at the larger boy, feeling his rage return, rage at Nick for making this happen, for destroying his life. The rage felt a lot better than the fear, the helplessness.

Nick turned and ran.

In a voice that sounded muffled, as if he were speaking from inside a casket, Toby reassured him, promised him that everything was going to be okay, that he wasn't going to hurt him, that Larry was fine. As Nick got farther away, Toby pleaded with him, did the begging he'd refused to do at gunpoint, said things that made no sense.

Nick fell to the ground.

Had Toby thrown the knife? No, it was still in his hand. Nick had just tripped, that's all.

Toby couldn't even feel his foot as he ran over to the fallen boy. He swung down at him, jabbing the blade into the open palm Nick held up to defend himself. Toby stabbed again and again, the blade slashing Nick's arms, his chest, his face. It took Toby a long time to stop.

He was covered with blood. Dripping with it. If he watched this scene from the outside, he'd be filled with revulsion at the boy with the knife. The deranged boy. The ghoulish boy. The psycho boy, drenched with red, the murderous little animal that should be shot in the head and dragged away, so that the sight of him wouldn't horrify onlookers.

Finally he crawled away from Nick, leaving the knife in the bully's throat, and vomited.

What had he done?

It hadn't happened. There weren't two dead kids lying in the woods with him. There was no possible reality where that could be true.

He was a killer.

He'd murdered Larry and Nick. It wasn't even self-defense.

Toby looked back at Nick's body, waiting for Nick to sit up, wipe the fake blood off his chin, and let out a shrill laugh at the uproarious practical joke they'd played. "Stop being so gullible, Floren! We aren't really dead! A little runt like you could never kill us!"

Nick remained dead on the ground.

Toby rubbed his hands in the dirt, trying to get the blood off. He scooped up a handful of dirt and rubbed it on his arms and on his face, desperate to hide the red. He wiped off the mud but a crimson stain remained on his skin.

Why had he brought the knife? Why had he even brought the fucking thing in the first place?

He bit down on his wrist to keep from screaming. Screaming was bad. Screaming brought people.

He just wanted to die.

No. No, he didn't. He'd get through this.

Larry and Nick were horrible people. They deserved to die. Even worse than the way they had. A slow, lingering, agonizing death was the way they should have gone, so Toby was doing them a favor. The world was better off without them. They contributed nothing but misery. It was their own fault. Stalking him through the woods-you take a huge risk when you do something like that. You put your life in danger. It wasn't his fault.

And they deserved it. They completely deserved it.

He was a murderer. A cold-blooded murderer. A criminal.

He took a deep breath. He had to calm down. Had to figure this out. It was done-he couldn't take it back, so now he just had to figure out how to get away with it.

The blood-splattered boy. The crazy-eyed boy. The cackling, maniacal, don't-let-your-children-get-too-close boy.

Think.

Did anybody know where they were? If you were following some kid into the forest with a gun, unloaded or not, would you tell your parents where you were headed? Unlikely. They'd want to be able to deny it later. So they'd either not told anybody, or they lied. This was good.

His nose was still bleeding, but he just let the blood flow.

The boy they should put in a cage, so people could poke him with sticks.

Had anybody seen them go into the forest? No way to know. If they cut through his yard and his mom was in the living room, she might have seen them, but only if she happened to be facing the window. She knew what Larry and Nick looked like and what they'd done-she wouldn't let them just wander into the woods without saying something.

So there was a very good chance that nobody knew where they were.

The demonic boy. The hell-bound boy.

Stop it!

If he hid the bodies well enough, he might be okay.

This was a vast forest. Millions of places to hide a body.

But could he hide it well enough to keep it from the police and their dogs? If he buried them deep enough, maybe, but...

What if he fed them to Owen? Owen would probably pick the bones clean, if he didn't eat those as well. And, worst-case scenario, if the bones were found, the authorities would think that Larry and Nick met their ghastly fate at the claws and jaws of a never-before-seen monster.

You can't let Owen take the blame for this. He's your friend.

Jesus Christ, what was he thinking? Of course he could let Owen take the blame for this! He was a wild animal.

Anyway, the remains would never be found. He'd make sure of it. It was far from a foolproof plan, but it was the best he had for the moment, save for marching over to the police station and confessing everything. That wouldn't end well.

If he had time to sit around, mulling his options in a leisurely fashion, he'd probably come up with something better, but right now he had to move quickly. He couldn't do this in the dark, and he couldn't risk leaving the bodies out overnight. Larry and Nick would be missed by bedtime. So the best course of action was to feed the corpses to Owen.

Could he even bring himself to do such a thing?

Yeah. If he could stab them to death, he could feed them to an animal.

There was a problem with the plan, though. Well, there were lots of problems, but one particularly big one: he couldn't drag their bodies out to the cave. Not even one of them by sundown, much less both. So he had to bring Owen to them.

He needed bait.

Toby walked down the path. He held the bottom of his shirt out in front of him, like a little girl carrying blueberries that she'd picked. Piled in the makeshift sack were twenty severed fingers.

The fingers had been difficult to cut off until he got into the proper rhythm, and he'd originally wanted to use simple strips of flesh, which were easier to slice away. But the first strip leaked badly and came apart in his hands. He needed something firmer, to avoid leaving traces along the path to the cave. So he went with fingers.

Bite-size, he thought, but was unable to amuse himself.