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dread.  They were everything the creatures were: monstrous and inexplicable.
    So she sat in her alcove and cried and looked at her photo album.  When she couldn’t do that anymore, she went to the entry room and cried where she could torture herself with the dark hole of the chimney at her feet, knowing she didn’t dare to crawl down.  What would it bring, but only the first stumbling step into a subterranean labyrinth filled with monsters she would have to evade until her candle burned out and plunged her into blackness?  There was no escape.  She could remember last night well enough to recall that the only way in came with a seemingly endless climb down that sheer vertical shaft, and she could remember gym class well enough to know she couldn’t even do a damn chin-up, so no, there was no escape. 
    She left the entry room before her owner could come back and find her there and wandered the twisting halls and echoing rooms of her new home, crying when she thought of it, but mostly just staring into space.  She read one or two of the magazines.  She polished the hubcap with the loose sleeve of her t-shirt.  She added a log to the fire when the coals began to die out (it wasn’t a wooden log, but a very heavy, densely-compacted mass that seemed more like dried muddy moss, maybe peat, she didn’t know). In a dark corner of the storeroom, she discovered a host of curious treasures packed away in a Coleman cooler: a ball of string, a Rubik’s cube, an empty whisky bottle, an Etch-a-sketch, and several primitive toys, including a wooden board carved into a rounded triangle-shape, into which fifteen shallow holes had been bored in a pyramid arrangement.  A small leather bag next to this board held fourteen dull river rocks, just the perfect size to sit in those holes.
    Olivia sat down by the cooler and puzzled the game out in a fugue of unhappiness. She began at one corner, using one stone to jump over another into the hole, removing the stones as she jumped them, attempting to leave only a single stone on the board.  When, eventually, she managed to accomplish this, she tried to jump stones so as to leave one in each corner.  She was still working at solving this when she heard her name being called.
    “I’m in here,” she called, resetting the game.
    He came in, carrying an old wine jug. He set it down and hunkered beside her, watching her play.  After a moment, he placed one finger deliberately on the board and spoke in his language.
    She repeated his words, but distractedly, slurring them together.
    He corrected her, tapping at the board to draw her attention, and when that earned him another half-hearted effort, he took the game away.
    He looked at her, the wooden board in his clawed hand, and waited.
    She tried.  The low, rumbling speech of the monsters did not want to work in her mouth, but she tried, and he very patiently and implacably corrected her again and again until she got it right.  At last, he nodded.  His lips moved on his snout in a small but clearly recognizable smile, but it had very little true humor or happiness in it.  He gave the game back and left her.
    She didn’t want to play anymore, but after several minutes of sitting there, she found herself looking at the stones anyway, picking them up, moving them.  The world just kept turning and there was nothing else to do.
     
    4
     
    Her watch kept faithful track of time.  It was just past ten at night when her captor returned.  He found her in the sleeping room, sitting in her alcove with the last of the sweet tea and the Rubik’s cube.  She’d had one once, years ago, and had never been able to solve it.  She didn’t think she was going to solve this one either, but it passed the time.  The monster with no name stood in the doorway, watching her twist blocks of color this way and that without expression.  He looked tired.
    “Olivia,” he said at last.
    She pretended not to hear him, working harder at her