He dreamed of another devil face. Its teeth shone bright red, as if it had been drinking blood.

Bill woke with a start.

"Wha? he said, groping around in the darkness. It took a few seconds for him to remember where he was. As he flailed his arms he nearly overbalanced in the chair. He gripped the sides of the table and righted himself.

After a moment of stillness, the kitchen resolved around him, its features dim, and the reality of the situation crashed back into his consciousness.

"Shit," he said.

Bill stumbled over to the sink. After a second, he opened the curtain on the small window.

Outside, a purple twilight blurred the trunks of the trees.

He let the curtain fall, and pumped some water onto his hands, scrubbing them in the freezing water. He splashed his face, and wiped it dry with the collar of his shirt.

"Oh, man" he said, as his sluggish brain reactivated, supplying him with an image of his wife's bloody face.

He whipped around from the sink, spilling water onto the cabin's floor, and ran to the bed alcove.

"Whew," he said out loud, after he ripped the curtain aside and saw his wife's sleeping form. She was turned against the wall, her white hair spilling out onto the dirty blankets. The pink sweatshirt moved up and down in the darkness, in time with the rhythm of her snoring.

Music to his ears.

"Sorry," he whispered, reaching out to pat her shoulder. "Glad nothing happened."

Then he saw a boxy black form in her sweatshirt pocket. For a second he was confused, then realized what it wasa"her new BlackBerry, which he himself had given to her for her birthday.

"Son of a bitch," he said. Gently, he extracted it from her pocket.

He fiddled around with it until the screen came on. The background wallpaper was a picture she'd taken at their wedding: them kissing as she held the phone out and snapped the shot. It was awful. Her cheeks were bright red, and both of his eyes were open, staring at her. Both of them had been drunk. He had a huge cowlick, and one of the daisies she'd worn in her hair dangled, broken-stemmed, at the side of her mouth.

He scrolled around the main screen for a couple of seconds. Unlike most guys his age, he'd never even owned a cell phone. Never really interested in high-tech anything. Hated talking on the damn phone, anyway. Probably that was why he hadn't considered using his wife's in the first place.

But who would he call? What would he say? That they were being held hostage in the woods by an insane seven-foot tall magician who had threatened to kill them? That they couldn't get out because they were trapped by devil faces?

"Shit," said Bill, as he tapped around the BlackBerry's screen, trying to figure out how to use it. He thought about waking up Constance, but even in this situation, pride stopped him from going that far. Bad enough he hadn't known anything about the Jeep.

Finally, he got to the call screen. He punched in his father's numbera"the only number that came to mind. What would he say?

He held the BlackBerry to his ear, and his heart raced as he heard ringing on the other end.

"Come on, Dad. Come on and pick up."

After a couple more rings, it kicked over into the answering machine.

"Hello," it said. His dad, even in the recording, sounded as self-confident as ever, his voice roughened by cigars. "You've reached the residence of Bill Wilfong, Sr. If this call is regarding a legal concern, please call Wilfong Law Officesa""

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Bill. "Come on.."

"a"and if this is a call from my son," the answering machine continued, "you're on your own, boy. I hope the dead eat your fingers off, one by one, while you watch. I hope that Terris Smitha""

Bill jerked the BlackBerry away from his face, stabbing at random buttons. For a few moments his father's voice continued to buzz through the little speaker, saying all manner of disgusting things.

Finally he silenced the BlackBerry. He chucked it onto the table.

"Fuck," he said.

Bill ran his hand through his hair, paced back and forth. Of course he couldn't get a hold of anyone. Of course either Septimus or this Terris character intercepted the phone lines. That wasn't dad. No way his father would every say anything like that. No fucking way. A scare tactic, that was all.

But an effective one.

He peered out the window. The purple twilight was fading to black, turning the trees into charcoal-dark streaks. The Jeep was like a large animal hunkering in the darkness.

He looked at his watch. It was getting near eight. He hadn't eaten anything since earlier in the day, when he and Constance had their picnic on the hood of the Jeep.

But all the food was in the truck.

After a few moments, he made a decision.

He rooted around in the backpack until he found one of the flashlights, a small blue Maglite he'd had since he was thirteen years old. He twisted it on, playing the beam through the room. Would have to get the fluorescent lantern out of the Jeep, too, if they expected to have any kind of substantial light through the night.

"All right," he said to the darkness.

He looked in on his wife. She was still turned on her side, fast asleep.

"Be right back," he said.

Bill hesitated at her bedside. Leaving her alone, even for less than a minute, seemed like a pretty poor idea.

"Gotta eat," he told her, and himself. "Be right back."

Bill swallowed his heart and walked to the cabin's door. After an unnecessarily long pause, in which he listened for any kind of noise from the forest to justify him staying inside, he pushed it open and stepped out into the night.

The beam from the little Maglite played out around the forest floor as Bill hustled to the Jeep. A wind picked up, blowing junk around his feet like a swarm of insects, and rattling branches on the half-bare trees.

"Shit," said Bill. "Shit shit shit." He picked up the pace, his footsteps sounding way too loud and conspicuous to anything that might be listening for them.

He got around to the back of the Jeep and tore open the trunk. He hauled out the big Coleman cooler and dug out the fluorescent lantern. The sleeping bags were in the back seat, and he considered grabbing them...

...but he already felt the itching between his shoulder blades, like every pair of eyes in the forest, either animal or human, were boring through him.

"Okay," he said, slamming the trunk shut. "Okay, gonna be fine."

He fought the urge to turn around, and confront whatever he thought was behind him. But it would undoubtedly be a phantom; a creation of the overstressed primitive parts of his brain.

Septimus Smith's words tumbled through his mind: In the next three days, you're going to die.

"Bullshit," he said. "Bullshit."

The first noise he heard, the first one that proved he wasn't alone, was a muttering voice somewhere off to the right of the cabin. ((((more here, about how he knows now is the time his life is going to change forever, and he might as well accept it. about another paragraph.)))) "Oh God," said Bill, as he froze in his tracks. "Oh, no."

Then the voice came again, this time more distinct.

"I'm so hungry," it said. "So, so hungry. What's in the bag?"

Bill swallowed, and trembled so violently that the cooler nearly slipped out of his hand.

What in the hell was going on?

He tensed his hand, and pointed the flashlight into the forest.

The beam wasn't very powerful, only illuminating about ten yards ahead of him with any effectiveness. But a little light was preferable to none. He scanned it over the trunks of the trees, casting shadows over the rough bark. All the while the pulse slamming in his wrists made the light shake, and parts of his brain screamed at him to get the hell back into the cabin, back with his wife, to defend her from whatever was out here.

But then the light went between two birch trees, and he saw the source of the voice.

"Do you have hamburgers in there?" asked the man.

Bill stood stock still. Part of him expected to see Septimus, with his head gleaming in the flashlight beam and his smile in place.

But it wasn't Septimus.

Not by a long shot.

The man had a scraggly beard, full of leaves, as if he'd been rolling on the forest floor. The flesh around his beard was sallow and sunken, and his eyes were white with cataracts.

"Do you have chicken salad in there?" asked the man. "God, I could use some fuckin' chicken salad. Especially Willow Tree chicken salad. Best. Shit. Ever. Bucketfuls of that shit. Just leave it at the door."

The man laughed, then coughed.

Bill, despite his confusion, decided to do...something. "Stay right the fuck there," he said, trying to make his voice sound authoritative and failing utterly. "Not another step."

"Oh, fuck shit, am I hungry," said the guy.

Despite Bill's warning, the man took another step forward. His foot landed heavy and awkward on the forest floor, making a sound like a boulder crashing down on a mulch pile. Bill wondered crazily how he didn't hear this guy coming, stomping through the woods like this.

Then the light shone on the man's chest, and Bill had to catch his breath.

"God damn," he wheezed.

The man wore a puffy vest, the kind that were so fashionable with hipsters now, but which had originated in the backwoods. It was a light khaki, and the man wore it with no shirt underneath. The vest's buttons were open and its lapels turned away from the man's sternum.

"Hungry," said the guy.

He'd been hollowed out.

Where his stomach should have beena"a hairy potbelly or a six-pack or whatevera"there was a glistening red and black cave, which gave Bill the immediate nauseating impression of a raw steak. No guts, no intestines or liver or stomach or anything. Bill saw the spinal column going up the man's back, the individual vertebrae like the molars of a large animal.

Bill took a couple of steps back. The cooler slipped out of his hand. His glands, his guts, and his brains told him to run, to book it off into the forest, and leave this monstrosity to its hunger.

"Is that for me?" the thing asked. "Food for me?" Its milky eyes darted to the cooler.

Bill stared at its chest. He supposed that the gray flaps dangling in his chest cavity were its lungs. The leathery things get larger and smaller, and he supposed the fucked-up guy was breathing in and out.

"I think I smell Willow Tree chicken salad," said the guy. "Oh, shit, I think I can smell it. Come on, and let me get it."

Bill backed away from the cooler. In order to keep himself together, he had to ignore the gaping, unreal wound. He kept shining the Maglite in the guy's face, which compared to the body was almost normal.

"Uh," said Bill. "Oh...um..."

"Fucking awesome," said the guy. "You're a bro, man. I am so hungry I could eat my own fucking feet. Awesome."

Bill staggered back farther from the cooler as the guy lurched forward. He wore one boot, Bill saw in the light of the flashlight, and his bare foot had no toes. The line where they'd been cut off was neat, like they'd been sliced off by a laser.

The guy fell to his knees next to the cooler. He was panting, and Bill watched his lungs swell and deflate like balloons. The stench was incredible; like a thousand dead rats stuffed into a backed-up sewer pipe.

Bill covered his mouth. Nausea rolled in his stomach like a rotten softball.

"Nice," said the guy, who had torn off the cooler's lid, and now stuck his filthy hand into the box. "I knew that you had some chicken salad in there. Holy fucking shit, this looks awesome."

He pulled out a sandwich, ripped off the plastic bag, and bit into it. His eyes rolled and he groaned. "Oh, man," he said. "That's some kind of shit there. Hits the fucking spot."

Then the man swallowed noisily.

As he took another bite, the portion he'd swallowed dropped into his empty abdominal cavity. There was an audible splat, and the chewed-up piece of sandwich tumbled down the guy's pants and back into the cooler.

"This is so good," said the guy, as the second bite followed the first.

Bill leaned over and threw up. The contents of his stomacha"mostly Coke-flavored stomach acida"splashed over his shoes as he staggered backward.

The man with the hollowed-out guts didn't seem to notice. He was busy with his sandwich, which was half-eaten already. They guy licked his fingers and smacked his lips.

Bill wiped his mouth. He felt like he was going to pass out, maybe face-plant into his own vomit. He took the flashlight beam off of the gutted guy and shined it toward the cabin. Thank God the door was still closed; he didn't want Constance seeing this.

Bill wiped his mouth again. He didn't take his eyes off the guy, who was now enjoying his second sandwich.

"Shit," Bill heard himself saying. "Shit shit shit." He'd never sworn so much in one day.

He reached the cabin door, and had his hand on the latch, when a familiar voice cut through the night.

"Travis Edward Beatty!" said Septimus. His tone was mildly reproving, as if addressing a poorly-behaved but entertaining child. "Not your food!"

"Shit," said the guy, who Bill supposed was Travis Edward Beatty, either in this life or another one. "Come on, Mr. Smith. I ain't been so hungry ever...."

"Don't need it," said Septimus.

Bill forced himself to turn around.

In the flashlight beam, he saw Travis standing up, brushing his hands against his pantlegs. Bits of the chewed sandwich covered his fingers, and made white-and-brown smears over his pants. Another wave of nausea crashed over Bill, and he coughed and pounded on his chest rather than throw up again.