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to drift toward sleep.
    He hadn’t even begun to snore when he was jarred awake, his eyes
growing wide. In the time he'd been at Guilford he had learned to accept most
of the noises that came to him in the dark. Even Emmett’s howls were only part
of the horrific tapestry of Guilford. But now something had changed. Hank
could sense it, but it took him a moment of listening to understand what he was
hearing.
    Emmett didn’t sound miserable anymore. He sounded terrified. His
howling had become a scream, a full scale, blood-curdling shriek. Even when
the guards got nasty with him, he didn’t sound that frantic.
    The guards , Hank thought. Teaching him a lesson .
    He would have loved to help, if only to stop the screaming, but there
wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Not from in here.
    Hank turned over on his cot, feeling the sweat of the day pull at his
clothes, and let out a small grunt of disgust that helped him hide from the
helplessness he felt. He clenched his teeth together and let his hand move
down to his pocket, where he fingered the fine chain through the fabric,
imagining a day when he would be free from Guilford and have enough money to
live comfortably in a place that didn’t make him want to curl up and die.
    A moment later, as sleep was about to catch him again, the screams from
outside stopped and left behind a silence that was somehow even worse.

Chapter Eight
     
    Gayle crawled into her bed and closed her eyes, a smile playing at her
lips. She felt too excited to sleep. Her parents had talked about the dolls
she’d found for what seemed like forever and then finally decided that she
could keep five of them.
    “It’s like an answer to a prayer, Silas. We can probably get enough to
pay ourselves up to date with the bank if we’re shrewd about it.” Her mother
had spoken in whispers, as if afraid that speaking any louder would frighten
away their sudden fortune.
    Her father had nodded his head and lit his pipe, something he only did
when he felt like celebrating. Christmas and Thanksgiving were pipe days. The
rest of the time he went without. They'd spoken about the antique stores until
the sun was down, carefully assessing each of the figures and settling them on
the sofa as if they were guests come to visit. Most of them were only
visiting, but five would be hers.
    Which ones? She wondered with all the solemn joy she
could manage, as she closed her eyes and drifted into a restful slumber. There
were so many to choose from, and each seemed more beautiful than the last. It
was not long before she was dreaming of porcelain figures.
    In her dream she was gathering the porcelain dolls in a rusty old
wheelbarrow, carefully setting each figure into its spot before reaching for
the next. That nasty scarecrow was walking beside her, one gloved hand holding
on to the stake that had been driven through its chest and the other reaching
for her dolls.
    “They’ll do you no good,” the straw man said earnestly, as wheat straw
and blood seeped from the corners of his burlap mouth. “They’ll bring you
nothing but blood and pain. They’re his toys, you know, his to do with as he
will.”
    She opened her mouth to tell him that she did not, as a rule, speak to
scarecrows and that he should be careful, because her father was nearby. But
all that came from her mouth was a scraping noise.
    Gayle opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling of her bedroom. Light
from the moon outside was her only illumination, and the familiar walls had
taken on unusual angles as the shadows hid the corners and swallowed the meager
furniture.
    A sound had awakened her from her unsettling dream, but she had no idea
what it might have been. Gayle strained to hear any sound at all beyond the
wind outside and the floorboards of the old house settling as the air cooled
down to tolerable levels.
    Out in the hallway beyond her door, something scraped softly at the
wood. Gayle squeezed her eyes shut, wondering if a rat had managed to