“So how do we get past them?” Susan said, staring at the trees. “Last time, they almost took your head off.”
Mark stood next to her at the front of the Explorer. He gave the trees a cursory scan. “Duck,” he said, with a mild grin. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Stay close. Stay low.”
Susan followed Mark over the bank. They crossed the sidewalk, and as they crawled between the trees, branches whipped down on them. One struck Mark in the back, driving him to the ground.
Susan dragged him forward, into the clear. “Stay low?” she said, nearly out of breath.
“Bad advice,” Mark said. “Ready for round two?”
Susan said she was, but then she doubled over. Her body slipped into a spasm.
Mark cradled her until the pain ebbed. “We’d better get you back to the truck.”
“No … I’m not leaving my son.”
Mark nodded. He peered into the storm.
“Mark?”
Mark placed a hand on his holster, waited, then pulled it back. “Just the wind.”
They proceeded slowly, for the blizzard had buried any trace of a path. Susan struggled with the blowing snow and her own fatigue, and found the ache in her breast and abdomen far more troubling than physical anguish. She feared that no matter how things worked out in the end, her fate had been sealed. She had never seen the black man, yet had horrifying preconceptions of his form. They might yet prevail and save her son, but she would end her life as a ghastly thing. A Tree Woman.
Mark stopped short. Susan came up beside him and had to hold back the churning sickness in her gut.
A doe lay in three distinct sections, each ripped violently from the other. Half-eaten entrails hung from the midsection. Bite marks the size of a double-fist carved the head. Gnawed to the bone, its legs looked like long sticks dipped in blood.
Worse still: There were tracks all about. Bear tracks. Big bear tracks.
“Mark—if Kelan’s out here—”
Mark drew his pistol.
“What did this?” Susan said. “That thing you fired at?”
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Mark said. “I don’t want to scare you, but whatever did this, there’s more than one.”
“Three.”
“At least.”
They moved on, and Susan felt the presence rising like a wall of eyes around them. She knew Mark felt it too, for more than once he slowed and gave her an anxious glance. She heard unusual sounds—wood groaning under unforgiving stress, metal yielding to unbending force—and saw in his shifting gaze that he heard them as well. Still, another sound, less intrusive, seemed to come at them from all around. It came in short whispers, a soft swish-swish-swish.
Some twenty yards before the playground, they looked up. Strange birds flew barely overhead. They were plump black-and-white things, that to Susan looked so much like penguins. They flapped their stiff wings with strong strokes, but their bulk forced them to land not ten paces beside them. A dozen of them huddled together, training a watchful eye on the intruders.
“So they can fly,” Mark said. “Still don’t believe in miracles?”
“I’m just glad you see them, too.”
They studied the unusual birds a moment longer, then Mark led them deeper inside the park, stopping before the playground. He turned and saw Susan enduring the pain. “Can you make it?”
Susan nodded, making her way up beside him. “It’s getting worse,” she admitted. “We’ve got to find him.”
“Do you hear that? A swishing sound?”
“Uh huh. I don’t have a clue what it is.”
“Come on. The playground’s just ahead.”
Susan pointed into the storm. Something, something that must have stood forty feet, hovered over them like a giant monster.
“… It’s a … it’s a dinosaur,” Mark said. His mouth fell and stayed that way.
“It’s not moving … is it?”
“No … not yet, anyway. Hurry—”
Something shot past them.
“What the hell was that?” Mark said, his voice rising.
Susan recalled an old Dr. Seuss story, the one with the two-headed antelope. She thought Pushmi-pullyu, but of course, like all of this, that was insane.
“This place—” Mark started, and she finished his sentence for him.
“—is like a child’s fantasy. Like a dream.”
They kept on, alternating disbelieving glances between each other and the looming behemoth. The sounds they were hearing, shrieking metal and screaming wood, betrayed their source. Somehow, the slide had grown, transforming into a half-metal, half-flesh monstrosity with massive black eyes. Blood dripped from its jaws, its fangs as large as a man’s leg. Swaying in the storm it seemed alive and on the prowl, and only the sight of that spindly ladder that ran the height of its enormous frame stopped them from fleeing.
Further down, the playhouse was now a sprawling cage, perhaps thirty feet long on each side. It housed a matrix of nine padded platforms, like a life-sized game of tic-tac-toe. It seemed harmless enough, but then they saw its true intent, its true horror: Jagged spikes jutted out from its ceiling and walls.
The swings and the teeter-totters were no less chilling. The things screamed in their metamorphoses. Four of the dozen riding horses turned into nightmares. The others squawked and squealed as they continued their freakish evolution. Their heads and bodies shred their metal and plastic facade, replacing them with human skin. Their handles, sharpened razors sized for small hands, made Susan look away.
Oddly, the only thing that appeared untouched was a short bench beyond the swings. Black and sickly, a dozen birds stood around it, pecking for scraps. Susan thought them repulsive things, gaunt as they were.
She looked up and Mark followed her lead. Perched atop the cage, their thin legs and thinner feet drawn in to protect them from the elements, a trio of shivering creatures eyeballed them. They were clearly anxious. One of them, the greenest of the three, munched on a yellow fruit that, had Susan not known better, appeared to have a spout.
“Green monkeys,” she said, not believing a word.
“I doubt their African cousins look much like this.”
“What’s that one eating?”
Mark shrugged. “I don’t know … hey … what’s wrong?”
Susan stepped back. Her mind was racing, a wild fever rising within her. “It’s them.”
“What—the monkeys?”
Susan staggered, her legs growing weak. The sensation filling her body nearly overwhelmed her. Mark steadied her, and she saw the sudden knowing cross his face as he stepped into the warmth.
“It’s not just Harmon’s son,” he said. “It’s something else.”
“It’s all of them, Mark. Every child the Dark ever took. They’re all here.”
“The woodsman,” he added. “He said his son was trapped. Like a lost soul.”
Susan nodded. They turned to go, and as they did, she grabbed him by the arm. Someone—a small child—ducked behind that endless tail of the dinosaur. “Kelan—”