Chapter One

Like swarms of some winged creature, all her fears wheel around and around in her belly and a great buzzing sound fills her head, the voice of a thousand flies drowning in unison. She is running faster than she has ever run in her life, terror thundering through her, a stampede of monstrous beasts, crushing everything in its path.

A dark hallway, a maze of shadowed corridors, a rabbit warren.

Her feet are bare. Shoes make noise and she must be so quiet she passes like a shadow through the hallways, running to—

She's not running to, she's running from. Here, she will be killed. Out there where the monsters are … maybe she has a chance.

She can't think about the monsters, though, because if she does, she will lose her courage. The monsters can hear what is only whispered. They watch you everywhere, can see down from the sky, find you where you hide — can see through walls, into cars or buses or airplanes, find you hiding in the woods or a cave or …

No, she can't think about that. She will find a place to hide where the monsters can't see her, can't hear what she says only to herself. She has to. She will make it through the monsters' kingdom and go back home and warn them about the Others who steal little girls and take them to a world full of terrors where their parents can never find them.

As the young woman flies past the closed doors, she makes no sound except for her heavy breathing, and she opens her mouth, tries to make her panting softer.

Her heart hammers in her breast, but it is strong. She is young and strong and she will survive.

Her heart is young, strong … yes, it is. That's what the monsters want, the ones out there who will rip her beating heart out of her chest. That's what they do, pluck out her eyeballs and leave her blind — the monsters like blue eyes — but keep her alive so they can feast on her insides, taking her heart and then her—

No! She can't think about that now. She must only run. Escape!

Another darkened corridor leads off to the right. Should she turn down it? Is it this way? Or straight ahead?

She doesn't know.

She can't remember.

Think! What did it look like? Think!

She hears a sound behind her.

No, no, no!

There are footsteps behind her. Not soft, light footsteps like hers but lumbering, pounding footsteps.

Clump. Clump. Clump.

It's one of them!

Oh, dear God in heaven, please, oh please, no.

Clump. Clump. Hammering feet behind her. She has to run faster. The pain from the stitch in her side flashes up her body with such force she can feel it in her jaw, but still she runs.

Dark hallways. Turn here?

Another hallway. That one?

So many and she is lost now, running wildly in horrified panic, no destination in mind except away.

No longer looking for the hallway that leads to the gold archway with words on it — that's where their world begins. On the other side of the archway is where the monsters live. But she's not even looking now.

Gasping. Can't breathe. Run!

Suddenly, light blinds her. The dim shadows of the hallway vanish and she can see clearly — walls, doors. She looks back over her shoulder to see who is behind, and slams into something, hits so hard she smashes her lip and her whole body recoils. It's a person, a man, who grabs her by her left wrist, but her forward momentum swings her around him to the side. He doesn't let go, merely yanks her backward with a snapping motion and a bolt of pain shoots up her arm from her wrist that takes the little breath she has. She would scream, shriek from the pain but she has no air in her lungs even to squeak out a cry. She collapses, her knees buckling under her and he lets go of her wrist and lets her tumble to the floor in agony. She writhes there, trying to cradle her broken wrist.

It hurts so bad. Trying to gasp for breath but she is too frozen by the pain to breathe in. The world begins to gray out at the edges, the pain softens in the fog. Her face settles in slow motion down onto — carpet. It's carpet here, not cold stone. It's soft carpet. She feels it gently tickle her nose. The world grows darker. Darker.

In the dimming world, a hand reaches down for her, slowly. The stone in the ring on his finger sparkles in the bright light. The tattoo of a skull on the inside of his wrist stares menacingly at her with its black-hole eyes.

He yanks her off the floor to her knees by her hair. The world brightens. The man holding her upright is …

It is him. The Beast.

An enormous man. A beast — broad, square and massive, built like a refrigerator. He shakes her by her hair and she cries out, tries to hold her injured arm but it flops out of her grasp when he shakes her and she screams from the pain, the nauseating pain.

"Stand up or I'll drag you."

His voice is a rumbling horror, gruff, as if there is gravel in his throat.

She tries to get her feet under her, but can't. The man holding her hair yanks hard. She wails as he pulls out a huge handful and drops her honey blonde curls on the floor in front of her.

When he grabs her hair again, he pulls her all the way up to her feet, continues to pull until she is dangling in front of him, his huge paw tangled in her hair.

Her world is only pain.

He sets her feet on the floor.

"Stand up! I said I'd drag you and I meant it."

She manages to keep her balance this time and stands swaying, cradling her left hand and forearm in her right. Blood drips down her forehead and into her eye.

"Come on!"

The Beast grabs her upper arm and marches off with her, yanking her along because she can't keep up. Her broken wrist dangles, her hand flopping at the end of her arm and every movement grates bone against bone and the pain threatens to consume her. But she doesn't have enough air to scream.

He turns on the lights as he goes and she is barely aware of passing doorways and halls leading off into darkness. When they get to the stairs, she loses her balance and stumbles into him.

"Stand up!"

He slams her into the wall face first, smashing her lip, and a new agony stabs through her from her nose. The world is spinning. He holds her up, yanks her forward and she staggers. She can't get her feet under her before he yanks again.

At the bottom of the steps he turns down a dimly lit hallway.

Yanking.

Dragging.

Blood dripping into her eye and off her lip.

Her wrist has swollen so quickly that it is like a splint. Movement doesn't grind the bones so fiercely.

When she trips and falls to her knees, he lets go of her upper arm and makes good on his threat to drag her by her hair. Grabbing a handful of her long, golden curls, he snaps her head sideways as he pulls her body along the floor.

The pain in her scalp is …

Her broken wrist drags along the floor, bouncing with each step forward.

Pain is her whole world. She can no longer tell where the stabbing agony comes from. It comes from everywhere, every part of her.

Then he drags her over a threshold and tosses her to the room. Her bedroom, clothes in a pile, the closet door ajar. Lying by the bed, the shoes she slipped off so she could run silently. Looking along the floor, she sees … Jeni!

The Beast kicks her in the hip, the pointed toe of his shoe digging into the scar left by the dog that bit her when she was five. The scar is ugly. It was once the only imperfection on her flawless body.

"Jeni," she whispers.

Then he kicks her in the face, breaking off teeth, smashing her nose, the force of the blow knocking her over onto her back. Blood gushes down her throat from her nose and mouth, so much she can't breathe. She manages to roll off her back onto her side, choking, coughing out blood, spitting out pieces of teeth.

He kicks her in the face again as she lies curled on her side. She actually hears her cheek bone snap.

"This year, you won't need a mask to go trick-or-treating."

Everywhere is only pain, such pain that she steps back away from it. Leaves herself and retreats down into some inner darkness, runs as she ran down the dark hallway. Deeper and deeper.

From a great distance, she feels blows. He is kicking her, but the pain is all one thing now, a blanket covering every inch of her so that she feels the blows like you feel pressure when you get a tooth pulled, but no pain because your mouth is numb. She is not numb, she is the opposite. So much agony that it is a kind of numbness.

A voice full of pebbles speaks from the place she left when she ran away into herself.

"I would cut you into little pieces with a chainsaw — a finger, a foot — but this is not the place to make such a mess. Too much noise. You are a lucky girl that I cannot do to you what I would like."

He laughs, a sound like rocks in a landslide.

"So I must be merciful."

He leans over her, grabs her by the neck and lifts her off the floor. With both hands around her neck, he holds her out in front of him. Then he squeezes. She takes a breath, only she doesn't. Nothing happens.

She struggles to inhale, tries to suck air in, desperate for breath.

Turning her head, she opens her ruined mouth, squirms, frantic, has to breathe!

Her eyes bulge as her diaphragm pounds into her neck. Her throat is blocked, closed. Shut.

Darkness closes in from the outside of her vision, like curtains drawing across a window.

Blackness takes the world away.

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