Johnny Dovecrest hadn’t answered the door when the police knocked. He’d pretended not to be home, and since the place was completely dark anyway, they had believed it, too.
Dovecrest didn’t need the police to tell him what was going on. Another child had disappeared, this time a sixteen-year-old girl. He’d heard it on a news bulletin, and even if he hadn’t, he would have known. He had felt the girl’s fear this time. It had been strong and close. He wondered if he could have helped her. He felt guilty for not trying, but he was convinced there was nothing he could have done. The entity had a human helper now, someone who was strong and swift, and guided by a power beyond anything that could be imagined on earth.
Dovecrest knew that his power was limited. Very limited. The entity might play with him and let him live, at least for now. He could almost hear the thing taunting him in his brain, daring him to come out and try to stop things.
No, Dovecrest knew that he couldn’t stop the nightmare by himself. But he didn’t know where to turn to for help. His own people were useless. And the white man would just think he was crazy-and why wouldn’t he? The story was certainly beyond anything in modern culture-the kind of things that bad movies were made about.
The boy was the only one who would believe him. The boy knew, and Dovecrest sensed it. But what good would one little boy be against this? Unless the boy could make others believe. Maybe his father. Maybe the preacher. Maybe even the sheriff.
Dovecrest was torn. Part of him felt that he should rush out into the woods right now and confront this thing before it became more powerful-and its power was increasing each and every day. And part of him felt that he needed to wait, recruit others and develop a plan.
He feared that by the time he could do that, though, it would be too late.
Whatever he decided, he needed to do something and do it fast. He felt his window of opportunity leaving him. It was already too late to help the girl, he realized. She was gone, taken away to some place where she would be dealt with later, at a time and place of the being’s own choosing. He knew the place. The time was less certain.
Tomorrow would be the day when he would begin his recruitment efforts. He would go and see the boy and his father, and try to make the man understand the truth of what the boy had seen in the woods. He would make him understand what was happening-what had happened and how history was poised to repeat itself in a new and improved version. The man-Erik Hunter-had seemed intelligent. He could make him understand. He could make him believe.
Then he would at least have an ally. Together they could perhaps recruit others and make a plan.
Otherwise, Dovecrest feared that this sleepy little town would never be the same again.