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longer.” Rachael turns and stomps toward the house.
     
    Obsidian eyes, watching.
     
    “I’m not suggesting anything,” he says later, trying to make amends. “It’s just odd, that’s all, don’t you think?”
    She looks pensively at him. “What’s odd is that you’re making some kind of twisted connection between the disappearing children and that stupid nest.”
    “There are five now, Rachael. Count them!” He thrusts his hand out, emphasizing his five fingers. “All from this town. No one else is losing children. I’m just looking for a logical explanation.”
    “Logical?”
    “I’m going over there, tonight.”
    “You’re what?”
    “I want to see for myself.”
    “You’re insane.”
    “Maybe, but at least we’ll know, won’t we?”
    “You’re going to climb that tree at night.”
    “It has to be done.”
    “No it doesn’t, Alden!”
    “Yes it does!”
    Rachael runs an exasperated hand through her hair. “If you ever breathe a word of what you’re about to do to anyone, I swear, I’ll deny any knowledge of it. Do you know why? Because they’ll lock you up and throw away the key. And I never want Billie to know what a screwball his father is.”
    “So, what do you believe, Rachael?”
    “I told you. I believe a sick, perverted human being is taking those children, period!”
     
    The night: scudding clouds. Moon. Canoe on river; paddle rippling; calm water.
    He climbs the familiar branches of the familiar tree, the mewing bundle strapped to his side.
    The nest: tiny bleached skulls, bones, the new offering.
    “I was trying to tell you, Rachael,” he whispers, as he places the child in the nest. “But you wouldn’t listen. Now it’s too late. He twists his body, falling forward, arms outstretched; a perfect swan dive toward the dark forest floor. Eagles pounce, shrieking.
     
    Rachael exits the house on a run, screams echoing across calm water: “BILLY! Dear God, somebody help me! BILLLLLY . . . !” 
     

Darkness
     
    It’s all yours now. You own it. . .
    The man did not know what that phrase meant any more than he had four days ago when he had come awake in the woods injured and afraid with it cycling through his head.
    It’s all yours now. You own it. . .
    He raised his head up and sniffed the air. For one brief moment of pure exaltation he thought he smelled smoke. He tried to scream into the forest but he was weak and the sound that it made choked in his throat and died there.
    He sagged down onto the old railroad bed and sobbed. It had been too good to be true. The wonderfully sweet aroma of wood smoke was now gone, if it had ever been there in the first place.
    The wind was moving in the trees and the sound that it made was like a rushing stream. Another of nature’s tricks. The wilderness was rife with them. There was no reason to anything here. He was lost in a lost world where rationality had taken a permanent vacation. He would most likely die out here in this great chameleon forest where unspeakable shapes roamed, where the unimaginable could materialize at any moment and become tangible, where creatures of wickedness and dread would swiftly rip the flesh from ones bones, feast on it, and leave the rotted remains for vultures and worms. There was no discrimination out here, no distinction between man and beast, good and evil. It was the ultimate class system. The fit survived, the weak simply did not. It would be easier to put a gun to one’s own head and pull the trigger. Certainly more humane. If only he had a gun.
    He limped his way along an abandoned railroad spur, giant trees towering above him, his right hand plastered over the infected wound in his side.
    He stole uneasy glances over his shoulder.
    Nightfall was imminent.
    The prospect terrified him.
    He feared the night even more than he feared death.
    He had no idea how long he’d been in the wilderness or how he’d gotten here. He did not know his name, where he had come from or where he was going.