"She escaped."

A smile lifted a corner of her mouth. Not only beautiful, but smug.

"In that case," she said, "I'll let you go."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Instead of kill you."

"What did you do with Shannon and Laura?" The smile spread to the other side of her mouth. A big smile, but a cold one. "Oh, we had a very fine time with those two." He felt himself go cold inside.

"Did you... hurt them?"

She chuckled. "Maybe a touch."

Then she must've realized something about the look on Hunter's face. Her smile died. She hurled her hatchet at him. As he tried to dodge it, she broke for the living room. The hatchet brushed the side of Hunter's arm.

It didn't stop him.

She was fast. Her sneakers pounded the floor. Her black hair streamed out behind her. Her robe fluttered.

She made it into the middle of the living room before Hunter swung his sword.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

"This is no good," Rhonda said, sinking down and sitting on the curb. She put her knees up and rested her forearms on them.

Bret sat down on the curb, too, but Mandy stayed on her feet. Though she was tired of standing, she wasn't about to sit on some dirty old curb. Not in her good poodle skirt that she'd worn for the past three Halloweens.

If you don't take care of stuff you like, you ruin it and then it's no good any more.

Down on the curb, Bret reached out and patted Rhonda on the arm. "It's okay," he said. "We'll find 'em."

"I'm starting to wonder," Rhonda muttered. She looked up at Mandy. "I read on the internet where all these kids vanish every Halloween. Like dozens of them."

"No fooling?" Bret asked.

"They just... disappear into thin air. They go out trick or treating and they don't come home. A lot of them, they're never seen again."

"Jeez."

Rhonda shrugged. "And some, their bodies gel found later. You know, like in shallow graves and stuff. What's happening, they're like getting snatched by devil worshippers and stuff. You know, for human sacrifices."

"Really?" Bret asked. He sounded impressed.

"I've never heard anything like that," Mandy said.

"I got sent an e-mail all about it. Just a few days ago. You know, to warn me. Told me I should forward it to everyone I care about so they'll be extra careful or not even go trick or treating at all."

"I guess we didn't get that one," Mandy said.

"I did. I sure wish I'd listened."

"That stuff s mostly B.S.," Mandy told her. "All those warnings they send around. I bet nine out of ten of 'em aren't even true. Like that one about the deadly spider that hides under airline toilet seats and bites you on the keester? Not true. Hardly any of 'em are true. They're like urban legends and stuff? I think a lot of people like to get their jollies starting crazy rumors. Just to scare people, you know?"

"I don't know if this one was such B.S.," Rhonda said. "I mean, something happened to..." Her voice cracked. She stopped talking and clamped her lower lip between her teeth and lowered her head.

"It's all right," Bret said, patting her arm.

"I'm sure they're okay," Mandy added.

Sure hope Dad is. He's been gone a long time.

Well, maybe not that long. Ten minutes? But she'd expected him to be back before now.

Though he'd supposedly run off to help rescue that Julie woman, Mandy couldn't exactly picture her dad taking on three attackers. He was pretty dopey in a lot of ways, but he wasn't stupid.

Not that there ever were three attackers, Mandy reminded herself.

What she pretty much expected to happen, her dad would come out of the woods with Phyllis in tow, and maybe some kind of a story about how they gave up on looking for Julie. And with any luck, maybe they'd lost the oddball in the sheet.

Mandy'd had a funny feeling about that woman from the start, Wouldn't surprise her if there wasn't any Julie in the first place, and the gal just made her up as a way to get Dad to run off into the woods.

The gal, after all, was butt-naked under her sheet. Maybe all horny.

It's kind of a horny night, Mandy thought. She'd been feeling a little that way, herself. Maybe because of the strong, warm wind and how it felt against her skin and how it blew her skirt against her legs, It would feel great to run around in nothing but a sheet, she thought. Or in nothing at all.

Not that she would do such a thing.

You'd have to be a real mental case to actually do it - to go out on the streets like that where other people are around. Maybe okay in your own backyard...

"Know what I think?" Bret asked, looking up at her.

"What?" Mandy asked.

"We oughta ring some doorbells."

"We're done trick or treating."

"I don't mean that. I mean, and ask people whether they know where Gary and Rosie and Doug are."

"I don't know."

"We're supposed to wait here for your dad," Rhonda told him.

"He just doesn't want us going away and getting lost. We can go to some houses right here." Thumb out, he raised a hand above her shoulder and pointed behind him. "Like theirs. Maybe Laura and Shannon know where they are. And even if they don't, I bet they might help us look for 'em."

"They didn't even open the door last time," Mandy reminded him.

"That's 'cause maybe they were busy, I bet they'll open it now."

Lifting her head, Rhonda said, "I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask around a little. Somebody might've noticed something."

Mandy shrugged. "Okay with me. I guess it'd be better than just waiting."

Bret grabbed his treat bag and sprang up grinning.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

The lashes seemed to be over. Finally. Shannon had lost track of the count, but she thought there'd been more than the twenty.

Done flinching and thrashing, Laura seemed limp. She didn't move much except for the gasping and sobbing.

"Now get up," Fain said.

Shannon, herself weeping quietly, didn't move fast enough.

"A lash for pokiness," Fain announced.

Shannon heard the familiar krak! Laura jerked rigid and cried out.

"Stop it!" Shannon yelled. She kneed the ground, twisted her body and rolled onto her side, taking Laura with her. Then she brought her legs toward her chest, bucked, lurched, tried to fling herself off the ground and sit up. Couldn't.

She'd managed to sit up before. Then, however, Laura'd been helping.

"You've gotta try," Shannon told her.

Laura kept crying.

"Come on."

"Incoming!" a man called out.

Fain reached down, grabbed the rope binding Shannon's upper arm to Laura's, and gives it a powerful pull. Shannon went with it, fighting Laura's weight. For a moment, ropes tore her in opposite directions. Then she was sitting up, cool grass under her buttocks.

Fain stepped back. "Now stand up."

Nodding, Shannon took a deep breath. She wasn't ready for the struggle to gain her feet, but...

Fain turned away to look at something.

Shannon glanced toward the others. They all seemed to be staring in the same direction as Fain.

Shannon looked, too.

Someone was coming.

Incoming.

One of theirs, she supposed. But maybe they weren't completely sure. With the darkness and the distance, the person striding their way was hardly more than a pale shape.

A pale, strange shape.

Carrying something over its shoulder?

Coming closer, closer. Vanishing in darkness, reappearing in moonlight, changing course to avoid trees and tombstones.

The shape became a woman.

A woman carrying someone over her shoulder.

For a confused moment, Shannon thought this might be a mother bringing her dead child into the cemetery for a secret, nighttime burial. It shocked her, saddened her.

Then she realized the burden was larger than she'd first thought. Not a small child, at all. Maybe a teenager... a brunette wearing what appeared to be a black dress.

The woman seemed to be naked.

One of them, and she's got a kid. A prisoner to join the others.

Fain glanced back at Shannon. "Stay," she said, then walked over to her group.

Nobody seemed to be speaking. While the seven captured kids remained on their knees, Fain and the robed adults walked closer to the woman.

In their midst, the woman bent forward and unloaded her burden, The kid flopped off her shoulder, fell, and landed back-first on the ground.

Shannon winced.

"What?" Laura whispered.

"They've got another kid."

The kid lay sprawled on the ground, not moving.