Chapter Five: The Lambs Were Screaming

Estelle woke up with eyes in front of her face. She gasped and jolted backward. "Lucy! Don't do that!"

Flynn snapped awake at her movement and bolted up. "What's wrong?"

"I'm fine." Estelle sat up and rubbed her eyes.

Lucy stood by the side of the bed, smiling at her. "Can we play now?"

Estelle sighed. "Lucy… you need to give me time to wake up."

"Oooookaaaaay." She scuffed her feet and fiddled her hands.

Flynn tapped her shoulder, and she leaned over while Lucy was looking out the window. In her ear, he whispered, "Try to negotiate Yuri's release."

She nodded and turned back to Lucy, who was now tracing the pattern on the comforter with her finger. "Lucy, I would be happy to play with you, but you have to give Yuri back first."

Her head snapped up. "That's not what you said last night. Last night we said I'd give him back tomorrow if you play today."

"And now I'm saying that if you want to play today, you have to give him back right now."

Lucy bristled as the dead lamps by the bed rattled. "You play first! Or - or I'll hide the other one, too!"

She turned her furious gaze on Flynn, and Estelle threw out her arm and leaned in front of him. "No! You leave Flynn alone!"

"Then play now!"

Flynn started to say, "I'll be fi-"

"Ok," Estelle said. They'd already lost Yuri and there was no way she was going to let any harm come to Flynn, too. "But you gave to let me eat breakfast first."

The lamps ceased rattling as a cheerful grin took over Lucy's face. "Yay! I'll meet you downstairs!"

"You shouldn't keep caving to her demands," Flynn said after she turned to him. "She's learning that bossing you around works."

"I know." Estelle hung her head. "I've heard that the best thing to do when a child has a tantrum is to let them yell and refuse to acknowledge them or try to pacify them, but I couldn't stand to let her take her tantrum out on you." She leaned over and hugged him. "I don't want you to get hurt, too."

"Don't worry about me. I'm more worried about you. Bram doesn't want you near his daughter, and spending another day playing with her is just asking for his wrath."

"But what am I supposed to do? If I don't spend the day playing with her, she'll hurt you and Yuri."

"I don't know. It's a tricky situation. We need to get out of this house, but we can't leave without Yuri."

Estelle pulled away from the hug. "Finding Yuri is our top priority. I'll keep Lucy entertained and out of the way, and you search the house for him. He might still be here, right? Maybe he's… I don't know, under the floorboards or something."

Flynn gave a tight nod. "Now that it's daylight, I'll give his room a thorough search. Just keep Lucy out of my way and maybe all three of us can be out of here by tonight."

Estelle cooked eggs for breakfast, but it was hard to appreciate them with Lucy hovering around. She and Flynn ate silently, trying not to stare too long at the empty chair where Yuri ought to be. When they were done, Lucy grabbed Estelle's hand and pulled.

"Now we can play, right?"

"Yes," Estelle said, glancing at Flynn. They hadn't seen or heard anything from Bram since last night, but as they'd earned from Lucy, ghosts could pop up anywhere at any time. "Lucy, I don't think your daddy wants you playing with me. Do you know if there's a place we can go where he won't find us?"

"Uh… yeah! This way, come on!" She tugged again, and Estelle gave Flynn a reassuring smile and then let herself be dragged to the back door.

Lucy led Estelle onto the back porch and then twirled around. "We can play out here! Daddy never comes here. He doesn't like it."

Estelle could easily guess why Bram would avoid the site of his death, especially considering Lucy was similarly opposed to entering the front sitting room. Lucy plopped onto the worn wooden porch and said, "Sit down, I'll show you how to play the clapping game."

Estelle sat cross from her and let Lucy guide her through a simple rhythm of clapping on her knees and clapping their hands together, along with a a little rhyme about a sailor going to see. It was the sort of game Estelle had played as a little girl, and playing it now brought back a lot of memories. She would have been able to enjoy them so much more if she wasn't so worried about Yuri.

Flynn cleaned up the plates from breakfast. He watched Estelle and Lucy run off to the porch, unable to stop himself from frowning. It had been one thing to let Estelle run off with Yuri all those years ago, and he'd worried sick about her even then. Letting her run off with a potentially violent ghost was even worse.

After tidying the kitchen, Flynn walked upstairs to Yuri's room. When he entered, he stood still for a moment and took a deep breath. Dried blood hit his nose, mixed with dust and old wallpaper glue. People couldn't just vanish into thin air. Yuri had to be somewhere. He walked across the room slowly, coming to a stop near the blood by the bed. By now it had dried, leaving a dark brown stain on the floorboards. The blood smeared under the bed, looking like something had been dragged. He'd start his search there.

The bed screeched as Flynn dragged it away from the wall and he slowed down so as not to make a ruckus. Then he paused and thought, why do I care if I make noise? Estelle and Lucy were outside, so it wasn't as if there was anyone to worry about annoying. Perhaps it was because he lived in the castle, and was accustomed to knowing there were always plenty of people around. He just wasn't used to being alone in a house, and that was why he couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't. Nevertheless, he found himself checking over his shoulder, just in case. Of course there was nothing there. Why would there be?

Flynn shook his head and returned to focusing on the task at hand. With the bed out of the way, he could see the blood more clearly. In the back of his mind, Flynn's experienced brain ran the figures for how much blood an adult could lose before it was life threatening, and what kind of wounds someone would have to receive to spill this amount of blood in the time between Yuri first shouting and the door finally opening. The results were unpleasant.

He crouched and ran his hand along the floor where the blood stopped. Dust clung to his finger tips and grime crushed into his palms as he pushed, looking for any give. Perhaps there was a hidden compartment under the floor here. The trail of blood just stopped here under the bed, so where did Yuri go from here? He dug his fingernails into the gaps between boards, but they wouldn't budge.

Flynn sighed and sat back, wiping his hands on his knees. Yuri wasn't here. Yuri had evidently been dragged under the bed, and then… well, he had no idea. Teleported somewhere? Lucy did promise to give him back eventually, so he had to still be alive somewhere. He'd search the rest of the house.

It was amazing how long children could be entertained by the simplest of things. Estelle must have gone through a dozen different clapping rhymes before Lucy finally got bored and climbed onto the bench, insisting Estelle push her.

Estelle stepped behind the bench, trying to relax. If Lucy was right, Bram wouldn't follow them out here, so they were perfectly safe. She really hoped Flynn found Yuri, or at least a lead. Yesterday Lucy promised playing would only be for that day, so Estelle had little hope that she would honour her deal to give Yuri back tomorrow. Who knew how long Lucy would insist on playing before she finally released Yuri, if ever? Estelle watched the back of Lucy's head with a frown. She didn't get the impression that Lucy was doing this to be cruel. Estelle truly believed she was just a sad, lonely little girl with more power than someone of her maturity knew how to handle, and who didn't fully comprehend the ramifications of her actions. She was, after all, only six and had been neglected for a long time. One of her parents needed to talk to her and sort things out, but Estelle had little hope that it would be Bram, who seemed to have issues of his own.

"Lucy, do you have any idea where your mommy went?"

"Hmmm, no. She just left."

"Does she have any relatives she might have gone to stay with?"

Lucy shook her head. "I dunno. I don't think I have any aunts or uncles, and Mommy said Granny and Grandpa went away a few years ago."

"Well, do you know what things she packed?" Karina couldn't have taken everything she owned when she left by herself with little warning, so if she had taken only warm-weather clothes, for example, it might indicate she was going somewhere hot, like Mantaic.

"Mommy didn't pack anything."

"Nothing? What did she take with her when she left, then?"

Lucy shrugged. "Nothing."

"She just… walked out?" But she had to have at least taken clothing, and had she really been able to carry enough money in her pockets to travel all the way to her destination?

Lucy bobbed her head. "Yeah. She ran out, and then Daddy followed her, and then Daddy came back inside but Mommy didn't come back."

Flynn searched the bedrooms, bathroom, and study for at least an hour. He left no carpet unturned in his hunt for clues, but came up empty nonetheless. He even forced himself to search the closet in his room, with made his hair prickle and palms sweat, but turned out useless. He didn't even know what he was looking for. A trap door leading to a secret passage? A hidden space in the walls were Yuri was trapped? None of it made sense. If Yuri was physically still in the house, he'd be shouting for help by now. Even if he was gagged, they'd still be able to hear something. Could he be unconscious? Flynn wasn't sure what he hoped for, because being knocked unconscious for this long was an alarming medical emergency. He felt compelled to do something to try to bring Yuri back, but he was at a total loss. At least when Yuri fell from Zaude, he'd had a physical area of water to search. He could search the house all day, but he already knew he wasn't going to find Yuri.

Disheartened, he stomped downstairs. In the foyer, his eyes landed on the doors to the front sitting room. They'd avoided that room since the first day, since it had a disconcerting smell and Lucy flipped out when they tried to enter. It was the most mysterious room in the house, so he may as well give it a peek.

The first thing Flynn noticed when he stepped inside was that the smell had gotten worse. They'd initially thought they were smelling the tail end of a rat dying in the walls, but how could it have gotten worse? Beyond that, it no longer smelled like something rotting, anyway. Flynn walked slowly into the room, sniffing the air. For a moment, he considered that he'd been in Yuri's room recently and the smell was lingering on his nose. After rubbing his face on his sleeve and holding his breath for a few seconds, he confirmed that wasn't it. He really was smelling fresh blood in this room.

Flynn shivered and fought the urge to turn around and leave the room alone again. If he smelled fresh blood, maybe Yuri was somewhere nearby. The question, now, was to pinpoint the source of the scent. Damn, he wished Repede were here. Flynn closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and then turned his head and did the same. He got the vague impression that it was in front of him, which wasn't helpful because he stood in the doorway.

It was silly to be afraid of a room, and yet he found the pale blue walls and white-upholstered furniture vaguely threatening. The curtains were open, so even though the power was still out a swath of daylight made the wooden coffee table gleam. The deer on the tapestry across from him stared at him with blank thread eyes, silently judging him for thinking an ordinary sitting room was scary. I'm the commandant of the Imperial Knights. I can handle this. Flynn strode into the room, hating that awful tapestry with the staring deer for making him feel like he was being watched.

"Yuri?" He kept his voice low, though he couldn't explain why. "Yuri, if you can hear me, make a sound."

Unsurprisingly, there was no answer. Maybe Yuri wasn't still nearby - or still conscious - but the blood he smelled had to come from somewhere. Flynn made his way through the room slowly, sniffing every few feet. He reached the far wall. It seemed to be coming from somewhere around here, but he couldn't see any blood. On his knees, he checked under the couch but found nothing. Flynn was getting frustrated, partly because he was eager to get out of this uncannily unnerving room as soon as possible.

Standing upright, he scanned the wall. There was a grandfather clock, a painting of a lighthouse, and the tapestry. A tapestry which, he now considered, seemed rather out of place. The decor of this room - throughout the entire house - was nautical themed. Everywhere he looked, he saw seascapes and ships, lighthouses and fishermen. But here, there was an inexplicable forested scene with not a drop of water in sight. A tapestry was an odd design choice for a family home in the first place. He saw plenty of them at the castle, but in a small, modern home? That tapestry was put there for a reason, and most likely in a rush because time wasn't taken to find something that matched the decor better.

What reason would someone have to hastily slap some art on a wall? Once, Yuri insisted he knew how to throw a boomerang inside a house, which had ended in him chucking a heavy piece of wood at the wall and leaving a crack in the wood. He'd tried to cover it up with a poster before anyone saw. So, what was someone trying to cover up here, and who had done the covering?

Flynn ripped the tapestry from the wall and his stomach turned at what he found.

Estelle's fingers tightened around the old wooden back of the bench and she stopped pushing. "What? Your mommy left before your daddy died?"

"Yeah." Lucy pulled her legs on the bench and picked at her skirt "I dunno where she went."

Estelle's mind raced. She'd been acting under the assumption that Karina left to escape the grief of her deceased family, but if Bram had still been alive, and he followed her out…. Horrible thoughts filled her head. There were not many innocent explanations for two people going somewhere and only one coming back while the other vanished mysteriously. "Lucy, when did you… die?"

Lucy froze. "I… I - uh - it's… I don't…" She buried her face in her hands. "N-no. That's - that's bad. That's scary. We - we shouldn't talk about it."

"I'm sorry," Estelle rushed to say. "I didn't mean to make you think about scary things. Can you just tell me, did your mommy leave the house before or after you died?"

Lucy curled into a tight ball and whispered, "After."

Estelle tried to piece together a timeline. Everything that happened had gone down during the time the Adephagos was in the sky. It gave them a window to work with, and the pieces were starting to fall together. Lucy had died first. Estelle didn't know the exact cause, but she was starting to get a horrible feeling about the situation. The death of a child was always tragic, but she was beginning to suspect foul play. After Lucy died, at some point Karina had left the house, presumably intending to come right back inside since she hadn't brought anything. Bram followed her, and then he returned and she didn't. There was nothing else around, nowhere for her to go. What other conclusion could Estelle draw from this? She knew the story must end in Bram committing suicide, which she had attributed to grief. But, what if it wasn't grief that drove Bram to take his own life, but guilt? And if Bram had been responsible for the death of Karina, then the person who'd killed Lucy….

On a few occasions, Flynn had nicked himself shaving. He was always amazed at how much blood such a tiny cut could produce. He'd dab it with a tissue, but if he wasn't careful, all he'd manage to do was smear the blood around and within seconds of pulling the tissue away, more blood bubbled to the surface. Heaven help him if he managed to nick himself in multiple places, which he'd admittedly done a few times as a teenager when he was still figuring out how shaving worked. On those mornings, he'd have a constellation of pinpricks on his cheek, which was stained with a sheen of blood he'd hastily tried to clean and conceal before Yuri found out and laughed at him.

That was what the wall looked like now. A hundred tiny dots of blood splattered across the wall, and the tapestry had smudged it together like his tissues. Why in the world would someone cover a bloodstain with a tapestry instead of just wash it off? As he stared, highlights popped up across the surface. He wasn't just now noticing them - they actually were forming as beads of fresh blood oozed out of the wall.

On a hunch, on licked his thumb and cleaned a patch. Underneath, he saw something dark below a layer of blue paint. Someone had tried to paint over the blood, and then it continued bleeding straight through. On the plus side, this meant it couldn't possibly be Yuri's blood, because the walls had been painted long before they arrived. On the negative, if it wasn't Yuri's blood he still had no leads to find his friend and a new mystery of whose it was.

Flynn stepped back. His specialty was in commanding regiments and military tactics, but he did have a passing familiarity with the local crime-solving aspects of Knighthood. What he was looking at, if he ignored the smears caused by the tapestry, was s splatter pattern. Blood had sprayed onto the wall here, which meant someone had suffered a grievous injury to a major artery not far away. There would be more blood on the ground, most likely.

He pushed the sofa toward the front window and moved the coffee table so he could roll back the rug. It covered almost the entire room, leaving only a border of hardwood floor, except for this side where it came right up to the edge of the wall. He now realized it must have been set up that way on purpose, likely by the same person who put up the tapestry. When he pushed the rug back, he instantly found what he was looking for. This bloodstain was several years old at least, soaked into the wood so it looked like a dark brown dye. There were splats and smears, drips and pools. The conclusion was obvious. Someone had been attacked in this place, most likely stabbed to account for all the bleeding, enough to make the blood splatter on the wall beside him. Thoughts of how much blood a person could lose ran through his head again; this didn't look like a necessarily lethal amount. It was probably naive thinking, but a person could potentially survive an attack like this, as long as they reached a healer in time.

He spotted drips of blood leading away from the scene of the attack, and pushed the carpet back further. Small drops, spaced every few feet, headed toward the exit. Had the victim walked or crawled for help? There should be foot or hand prints in that case, though. No, they must have been carried. Clearly not dragged, or blood would streak behind the body in a trail. The victim would have to be quite light for the rescuer to carry them.

Flynn already knew exactly why the victim was so light and why the amount of blood didn't look like the lethal amount for an adult, but he wasn't ready to imagine it yet. He sped to the door and pushed the carpet back here, too. Sure enough, more spots of blood hidden under the carpet. The victim had been carried out of the room, but then where? He stood in the foyer (hastily closing the doors behind him as if there was a tangible presence to contain) and searched for the trail. It had been washed in here, where there was no carpet to hide it under. He'd have to guess which direction they went from here, and he glanced to the front door. The logical thing would be to carry the victim outside, to take them to Capua Nor for treatment.

But then he remembered something else; a drip of brown under the sofa by the fireplace, which he'd mistaken as furniture polish when his eyes glanced over it the other day. Back then, he hadn't been entirely sure that was what he was looking at, but no other solution presented itself and it seemed unimportant, so he pushed it from his mind. Now, he hurried to the living room. Through the back windows, he spotted Estelle standing behind the bench, talking to Lucy with an intense expression. He considered going out there to make sure she was ok, but if she was getting information out of Lucy, his presence might shut her down. He'd keep on eye on her but stay away for now.

He quickly found the spot of blood under the couch. Why had the victim been carried in here? He needed more clues. Flynn crawled around the couch to the rug between the couch and the mantle and pulled it back. Sure enough, another spot on the wooden floors. Where next?

An awful though gripped him, and he almost didn't look because the thought was too disgusting to contemplate. But Flynn didn't get his job by being squeamish, so he slowly turned his eyes to the bricks of the hearth. The next piece of the trail was so inconspicuous he would have thought it was just a dark colouration on the red bricks if he wasn't specifically looking. Unlike the others, this wasn't a plain, perfectly round drop. It had smudged, like it hadn't dripped so much as smeared off. Like a bloody limb dragged across the brick. And why would a bleeding person (who could have still been alive… this could still be a story with a happy ending…) be carried to a fireplace? A fireplace large enough that he remembered thinking an entire person would fit inside?

It couldn't have been Bram. If Karina really was dead, why was her spirit nowhere to be found? And from what Flynn said of the letters and what Lucy said of her father, Bram seemed to have earnestly loved his family. Why would he do such a thing? It didn't add up. She put together another scenario.

Lucy caught an illness. She slept on the couch in the front sitting room, deathly ill, while her parents tried to find a cure. There was nothing to be done, especially with everyone so busy worrying about the Adephagos. This put stress on her parents, so after Lucy died, Bram and Karina began fighting. Eventually, an argument led to Karina storming out of the house. Bram went after her to continue the argument, but it went nowhere and he told her she'd better not come back until she was ready to forgive him. Karina walked to Capua Nor and decided to leave her husband because her grief over Lucy clouded her thinking, and she ran away from her life. Bram was so devastated at the loss of both his wife and daughter that he hanged himself on the back porch. It made sense. It was tragic, but not so awful she had difficulty believing a person could behave like that. She really wanted to believe it.

Estelle wanted to ask Lucy, but the topic obviously bothered her. It would be hard to get any information out of her directly. "Lucy, can you tell me more about your parents?"

"I love them!" she blurted. "I do!"

"I believe you." She seemed so adamant about this fact. Who was she trying to convince - Estelle, or herself? "Have you ever been… frightened of your father?"

"W-well… he's…" The bench swung as Lucy rocked herself. In a tiny whisper, she said, "That night was really scary. I didn't know what was going on and they were both yelling a lot."

Estelle circled the bench so she could sit next to Lucy and put her arm around her shoulders. "What made it scary?"

"I -I don't know. I d-don't understand. I-it… it hurt. And it was really scary. But daddy loves me, and so does mommy. Why?" She hugged Estelle and buried her face in her chest. "W-w-why did that happen?"

Estelle's heart ached. "Lucy… I don't know what happened with your father, but I do believe that he loved you in his way. I think he still loved you very much, but maybe… maybe he has trouble expressing it." 'Trouble expressing it', what a laughable understatement. Estelle felt sick defending this man after what she was now near-certain he had done to his own daughter, but she didn't want to upset Lucy. She was too young to understand such topics. All she knew was that she loved her father very much, and then he hurt her. There was no way she was old enough to come to grips with such a betrayal, especially when she was left with no one but the angry spirit of her abuser for company.

Flynn's hands trembled as they raked through the ash. Grey powder clung to his fingers, and he desperately hoped it was all he would find. He did not want confirmation of his hunch, but he had to search to be thorough. He shoved a half-burned log to the back of the hearth and scooped handfuls of ash out of the way. He knew what he was looking for, but he didn't want to find it.

And then he did. Flynn's fingers rested on something small and smooth, like a worn river rock. He pulled it out slowly and struggled to breathe through his tight chest. It might have been a piece of charred wood, no more than an inch long. He knew it wasn't, though. Wood this small and this low in the fire would have burned away. He reached in again and found another piece, close to where he'd found the first. This time it was a cylinder a bit under an inch long, with flared ends.

Bones. These were bones from a human hand. A very small human hand. Flynn recalled thinking he smelled bacon last night when they lit the fire, but it hadn't been fat from a pig that splattered the hearth with grease.

"Stop!"

Flynn whipped around when Lucy abruptly appeared behind him. Her eyes were wide with shock and she leapt at him, smacking his hand and causing the bones to clatter to the bricks of the hearth.

"Don't! Leave it alone!"

"Lucy, I'm sorry, I-"

She let out a wail and shimmering tears dripped down her ethereal face.

The back door slammed open and Estelle rushed in. "Flynn! Are you ok? What happened?"

"Fine." Lucy stood before him, sobbing her eyes out. Flynn kneeled, paralyzed, ash still clinging to his hands. Seeing children cry was his weakness, but he had no idea how to help a sobbing ghost, especially one that didn't like him in the first place.

"Lucy, shhh." Estelle crouched and wrapped her arms around the little girl. "It's ok." Estelle was so much better at this than he was. Flynn preferred to stop crying by fixing the problem causing it, but he couldn't fix this. This little girl had been murdered, right here in this house, and he couldn't go back in time to make it better. Estelle held her close, whispering soothing words and rubbing her shoulders until Lucy had cried herself out.

"I was playing," Lucy murmured, staring into the hearth. Estelle let go of her, but Lucy barely seemed to notice. "I was in my bedroom with my toys. Daddy came home and I heard him talking to Mommy downstairs. He was really mad but I don't know why. I heard footsteps coming upstairs. I was excited, because when Daddy comes home it means he's gonna tuck me in, but it wasn't…" She sniffled. "I don't really r-remember. It was so scary. I c-c-couldn't breathe because there was a pillow on my face."

"It's ok," Estelle said, rested her arm on Lucy's shoulders. "You don't have to tell us."

Lucy breathed faster and she couldn't stop the words tumbling out of her mouth. "But then Mommy and Daddy were both there and they were shouting at each other and I ran away. It's my fault, isn't it? I - It's because I ran away when I wasn't supposed to." She hugged herself and hung her head. "If I'd've stayed like I was told then that night wouldn't have been scary."

"No, no, no," Estelle said quickly. "Lucy, you did nothing wrong!"

"Everything's really blurry. I c-can't remember. I was running and I heard lots of shouting. Mommy was screaming for me and Daddy kept yelling at her. I was told to hide s-so I ran into the front room 'cause I had a fort behind the couch and I was gonna hide in there." She sniffled and rubbed snot and tears on her arm. "I had my eyes closed really tight 'cause I was really scared. Then the door opened and I heard Daddy say to come out but I didn't I - I should have. I kept not listening and being bad."

"You did the right thing, Lucy," Estelle said.

Flynn noticed how shiny Estelle's eyes were, and he couldn't blame her. Listening to Lucy's story made anger burn through him so brightly he wished he could travel through time, so he could go back to when Bram was still alive and give him a piece of his mind.

"And then I was just really scared and I was screaming and it - it hurt real bad - and - and-"

"I know," Estelle said, hugging her tightly. "You don't have to say it."

"It's my fault!" Lucy sobbed. "I didn't listen!"

"What happened was not your fault," Flynn said firmly. "Your father had already decided what he was going to do when he first entered your room, and even if your actions influenced him - which I am positive they did not - it still would not be your fault because no parent ever has a right to hurt their children."

"B-but…"

"Flynn is right. Your daddy did a very bad thing and none of it was your fault."

Lucy stared in confusion. "D-Daddy was bad?"

Estelle nodded firmly. "Yes, Lucy. Your daddy was very bad and you didn't deserve any of what happened."

Lucy hugged Estelle, burying her head in Estelle's shoulder. "Then - then why did it happen?"

"I don't know." Estelle rubbed Lucy's back. "Sometimes people do terrible things and we don't understand why, and there's nothing we can do to stop them."

Flynn watched Estelle hug Lucy with a dour expression. He was angry with Lucy for what she'd done to Yuri, but that didn't stop him from having sympathy for what she'd gone through. What Bram had done to her would be traumatizing to an adult, let alone a child - practically still a baby. And then he'd tried to cover it up by cremating her body. He must have fished the larger bones out of the fire and buried them somewhere. With a sudden though, Flynn looked down at his ashy hands. Bile rose in his throat as it suddenly occurred to him that the ash clinging to his skin had not come from a log. His chest throbbed with revulsion - he had the remains of a human child on his hands. He stood up so quickly his head spun.

That was when he saw the apparition of a man staring at them, carving knife held tightly in his hand.