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The scissors pressed up against the soft doughy skin of the larger boy’s throat. Mucus and blood poured from his nose and dripped onto Henry’s hand, but the smaller boy seemed not to notice. Billy, beaten and exhausted, slumped awkwardly on the ground, legs splayed and head twisted upward. He had stopped crying and now whimpered in steady intervals. Henry crouched behind him with his pale and thin left arm wrapped around Billy’s neck just above the scissor points. The playground smelled of wet wood chips and rubber tires. Behind them, faces peered out of the elementary school windows, students staring in wide-eyed fascination at the tense scene outside. Some had begun to cry.

“Henry?” Dr. Heath, the school principal, inched forward, her manicured hands extended in an unthreatening manner. “Henry? Listen to me. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Let go of Billy.”

“Please, honey,” Miss Richards, Henry’s third grade teacher, pleaded. “You don’t want to hurt anyone. You’re a good boy.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Henry!” Reggie shouted as she raced across the thick lawn toward her brother. “Let him go!”

“I told you to leave me alone,” Henry said again, this time in a whisper audible only to Billy. “Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”

“Henry.” Reggie stopped ten yards away and just stared. Was this really happening, or was it another vision? “What are you doing?”

Henry’s hand trembled; the scissor points quivered against Billy’s exposed skin. He looked pleadingly at his sister.

“What am I, Reggie?”

Reggie approached him slowly and knelt on the ground a few feet away. Billy wailed and clutched Henry’s red cap tightly in his fist. Henry’s deformed ear, almost lost completely from frostbite the night on the lake, was exposed for everyone to see.

“You’re my brother. You’re Henry.” She inched forward on her knees. “You’re just my Henry.”

“I see things, Reggie.” The scissors shook in his small hand. “I close my eyes and I see awful things.”

Tears welled in Reggie’s eyes. She fought to keep them back. “I know. I see them, too.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Can you make them stop?”

The principal took small and cautious steps toward them.

“I’m going to try.” Slowly, Reggie reached out her hand and laid it gently on Henry’s arm. “I know you don’t want to hurt anyone. Now let him go.”

Henry sobbed and dropped the scissors. Billy jerked his head free and scrambled across the wood chips on hands and knees. Dr. Heath scooped him up like an infant and raced him into the building, just as a patrol car zoomed onto the grass with lights flashing and spinning. Thom Halloway’s old pickup followed. Miss Richards ran to address the first police officer as he jumped out of his car, a hand on his holstered sidearm.

Reggie ignored the noise and hugged Henry tightly. He whimpered into her shoulder.

“What happened to me?”

“I’m so sorry, Hen. This is my fault. I should have told you.”

“Told me what?”

Thom Halloway raced across the playground but stopped several feet short of his two children.

“Reggie?”

“Take us home, Dad.”

“What the hell is going on? Henry—?”

“Dad. Please. Take us home.”

But the Halloway family didn’t pull into their driveway for another several hours. After such a disturbing incident, the Cutter’s Wedge police chief, the emergency medical team on the scene, and the school district’s superintendent demanded that Henry be evaluated before being released to his father’s care.

Dr. Heath sent the rest of the students home for the day, and Dr. Unger, the child psychologist from the Thornwood Psychiatric Hospital who had been treating Henry for the past two months, was summoned to the elementary school. It was near dark before he cleared Henry to go home with his father and sister—provided that the entire family commit to immediate and intense group sessions together starting the following day. Even so, the police chief said the DA’s office would be deciding over the next few days whether to officially charge Henry with criminal assault and battery.

And though there was now less than a week left before summer vacation, the superintendent had little choice but to expel Henry. The boy would need a clean psychological evaluation before the district board could consider reinstating him in the town public school system.

The adults did not discuss the wider and possibly more damaging repercussions of the day. Nobody spoke aloud of lawsuits, but Reggie suspected her father would contact his attorney first thing in the morning. He had already announced they’d be leaving at 9:30 to go to Thornwood for their first family therapy session.

On the silent and tense drive home, she fought off thoughts of all the distress that Henry’s violent attack on Billy Persons would bring to her family, especially in light of the events from December and her own breakdown in the middle of class the same day. The high school would probably be phoning Dad tomorrow to report that incident. Wonderful.

Dad carried a sleepy Henry into the house, and Reggie followed, locking up behind them. Dad turned to her.

“I want you to stay here while I take Henry up to bed.”

“I’ll take him, Dad.”

“No, I want you to—”

“Dad?” Henry lifted his head off his father’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about today. I know you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad at you, little man.”

“If I’m the one who caused all the trouble, why are you upset with Reggie?”

“I’m not…” Dad scratched his scruffy chin. “It’s complicated, Henry. Reggie and I just need to talk.”

Henry twisted his body and held his arms out to Reggie. Dad reluctantly let her take him.

“Holy cow, you’re heavy.”

Dad kissed Henry on the forehead, then put his hand on Reggie’s shoulder.

“Come down right after.”

“Yes, sir.”

Reggie carried Henry up to his room and lowered him onto his bed. He slid under the sheets and pulled them up over his chest. Reggie sat down next to him.

“Henry, what happened today?”

Henry lowered his head onto the pillow and closed his eyes. He took a slow, deep breath and opened them again.

“I’m starting to remember things. Terrible things.”

Henry’s eyes seemed to sink back a little in his head, and they took on a faraway gaze. Reggie noticed how old and dark they appeared now. No longer young and innocent.

“A carnival. And a shooting game with heads. And a clown. The one from that movie I watched, the one with the hatchet for a hand.”

“Yes.”

“And a hospital with demon babies and ghosts of dead children.”

“Yes.”

“And Mom.”

“No, Henry. That wasn’t really Mom.”

“But it looked like her. And it talked like her.”

“But it wasn’t her.”

“It was the monster. The monster inside me.”

“Yes.” Reggie brushed Henry’s mussed hair from his face. “But the monster is gone now.”

“You killed it.”

“No, you did.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“But you were there with me.”

“Yes.”

“And you helped me.”

“All I did was help you find the strength you had all along. You had all the power you ever needed to destroy the monster inside you. I just reminded you of that.”

Henry glanced across the room at the empty hamster cage.

“During our spelling quiz today, Otto, our class hamster, was running on his wheel. And I was concentrating so hard, and the wheel was squeaking and squeaking, and then I just remembered.” He blinked. “General Squeak. He didn’t run away like you said, did he?”

“No. He didn’t run away.”

“I killed him.” Henry held his hands in front of his face and stared at them. “It feels like a dream because I was in that other place. But I remember. I can see it happening. I killed him with my own hands. I heard his bones snap.”

Reggie took her brother’s hands in her own. “No. The monster did it. It did it because it was cruel, because it hated the things you loved.” Reggie took a breath. “The monster that was inside you—it was a Vour. Like from the book I read you. They were real, and I was stupid enough to let one get to you. I’m so sorry, Henry, so sorry.”

They both cried, and seeing Henry’s tears relieved Reggie. She was sad, but heartened. Tears were human and a Vour could never cry.

“I didn’t want to hurt him. Billy.”

“I know.”

“I had all these awful things in my head, and then on the playground he said I was weird and creepy, and everyone was scared of me, and he called me a freak. And then, it was like, I knew he was right. I am a freak—a monster. I just wanted him to stop, I didn’t want him to tell anyone.”

“But it wasn’t you!”

Henry had stopped crying, and now he stared straight ahead, thoughtful and unseeing.

“Sometimes I feel it. Like it’s in me. It isn’t in my mind anymore, but still…”

“The monster is gone. I watched it die.” Reggie wiped her eyes. “You loved Squeak,” she said. “You love Dad. And you love Mom, even though she hurt us and left us to grow up without her. You love, Henry. That is something a Vour can’t ever do.”

Henry’s eyes closed, and his breathing became quiet and calm. Reggie stayed close to him and listened as he drifted off to sleep.

“I love you, Reggie.”

“I love you, too.”

She kissed his forehead, then walked to the door and shut off the light. As she looked back at him lying peacefully in bed, she thought of her vision from the morning and began to tremble. Yes, she had watched the monster die, or so she thought, but she was still afraid that the Vour was somewhere inside her brother, lurking, waiting to take him back.