Wind whistled through the shack’s bleached and broken clapboard walls, chilling to the bone. The lamp’s hissing flame, the only source of light, flared and guttered behind its dirty glass, an erratic dance of shadows leaping across the darkened walls.
All in black, sharp face pale in the weak light, a crouching insect of a man sat hunched over a table. With a low grunt of pleasure he leant back and smiled, lifting a small object up into the light. He turned it over and over with his long, bony fingers, silently admiring his own workmanship. It was ready.
Now the game could begin again.
The doll of roughly carved pinewood stared blankly back at him, its eyes, scratched hollows, gouged across the grain. Its wood felt warm in his icy fingers and, as he turned it over, he heard its voice whispering to him,
“Come and catch me. I’m waiting.”
The man gasped with pleasure. His black eyes glittered and his thin face creased into a grotesque grimace of greedy anticipation.