Mick turns over on his back, can’t grasp the horror of it.

He’ll kill me if he catches me, he’ll kill me too, he thinks. Tears are running down his cheeks, he’s frightened to death. He puts both hands over his face. Presses them firmly to his eyes. Tries to control his breathing, which is coming out of him in ragged gasps. Eyes closed, he lies there. But the madman down below doesn’t hear him. Blind to everything in his frenzy, he strikes again and again.

How long Mick lies like that he doesn’t know. One after another, they fall into the butcher’s hands below him. First old Danner, then his granddaughter, too. They all step out of the light and into the dark. Even before they can notice or even guess at the danger, they are struck down.

As they lie on the floor of the barn the murderer brings the pickax down again and again on his victims, frenzied, raging.

Lying on his back Mick doesn’t have to watch the crime with his own eyes. He just hears it, hears the footsteps of the victims, hears them call for their family, hears the little girl call for her mother. Hears the pickax coming down, coming down again and again.

After an eternity there is silence. The silence of death.

It is another eternity before Mick notices the silence. He works his way slowly, almost soundlessly, over toward the steps down from the loft on his stomach.

The barn beneath him is empty. The murderer must have gone through the cowshed and into the farmhouse.

Mick has just this one chance of getting away unseen and saving his own life. He takes a deep breath and climbs down the steps. Down the steps, out into the open air.

He runs breathlessly, runs on and on. His legs can hardly carry him. The cold night air burns his lungs. Every breath he takes burns them. He runs until he falls over and stays lying there on the bare ground. Gasping. The darkness has caught him. He doesn’t know where he is. He has lost all sense of direction. He runs on from the house in wild panic. He wants to get farther and farther away from the house, the farm, the horror.