A wolf howled at 2:47 a.m.
The nervous rabbits stirred in their crate in Trina’s room.
The skittish cat scampered in the upstairs hall, then ran downstairs to the living room and bolted out the kitty door in the kitchen.
The agitated dog barked and gazed through the sliding glass partition at the backyard beyond the swimming pool. Thor lifted his head with his ears perked and observed Diva leap and bound across the backyard from left to right, then disappear into a hedge of bushes. Thor barked again, bared angry-looking teeth, and growled, then barked again. He stood on his hind legs and scratched at the partition with his paws. He panted as he observed the backyard beyond the pool. Then he stood on all fours, turned, and sauntered away to Caden’s bedroom. He listened to ambient sounds as well as Caden’s breathing while the boy slept. Thor then lay down on the floor in the middle of the room and dozed off.
Yellow mist with a greenish radiance swirled on the bedroom floor around Nathan and Josslyn’s bed.
Nathan opened his eyes and blinked a few times to adjust to the darkness. Disoriented and groggy, he pivoted his head and looked around the room with walls painted black. He could see that he was in a cellar, not his bedroom.
A dim, hazy light from two stairways at opposite ends along one wall illuminated the cellar. Numerous black candles were perched on five-foot-tall wrought-iron candle stands. The flames of each candle fluttered about, and their heat made the room sultry.
Nathan lifted his head a few inches off the bed and observed silhouettes of a group of thirty-three people, both men and women, huddled close together in a semi-circle about six feet from the foot of the bed. Clad in dark robes with hoods over their heads, they stood silent and faced the bed.
Nathan noticed a strange and unusual sensation on his body and realized that he was naked except for a black cloth, which covered his groin. He saw Diva lying by his foot on the left side of the bed. The cat leered at him with two hollow pits where the eyes should have been. She emitted a sharp, angry hiss, then yawned and licked her right paw. By his right foot were Abbott and Costello, huddled together. Their noses twitched between lifeless eyes, their long ears were ragged, and their two front teeth were large and yellow. To Nathan’s immediate right, Thor sat on his haunches on the cold concrete floor. He stared at Nathan with eyes that oozed yellowish-green pus.
As Nathan peered at the robed men and women, he soon discerned that they were neighbors and passersby who had avoided his new home whenever they walked by. He also recognized his parents, Josslyn’s parents, his children, and his children’s friends. Maddie, however, lay on the bed next to him.
“Where am I?” Nathan verbalized in his own voice, which echoed throughout the warm and muggy cellar.
“Deadwood Meadows,” a man with tattooed hands said in an eerie, hollow voice.
Josslyn stepped forward, cadaverous and expressionless. She walked to the side of the bed near Thor, leaned over and looked into Nathan’s eyes. Her eyes had black pupils, but outside of them, her irises were yellow-orange with thin, red isosceles-triangular slits that circumscribed the orbs of her eyes along the inside of her lids.
“I love you,” Josslyn verbalized in a masculine, demonic tone. She grinned and exposed long, razor-sharp teeth, an inch in length and stained in shades of gray.
Nathan’s throat bulged and throbbed, as if filled with frogs.
Josslyn raised her right arm high above her head. Clenched in her fist was a fancy knife with an artistic design and a six-inch sterling-silver blade. She thrust it downward, toward Maddie’s abdomen.
Nathan awoke with a gasp. Beads of sweat rolled down his face and dripped off his jaws and chin. He lay on his back and continued to gasp for air. His heart thudded in his chest. He turned over on his side, raised himself with the support of his arm, and eyed Josslyn for a few moments.
She slept peacefully.