I can’t live in a cage.
I won’t.
But . . . I don’t know how to escape the cage when everything outside is the Ruin. Out there, everything wants to kill you. Everyone says that.
Still . . . if I have to live my whole life in a cage, then I know I’ll go crazy.
There has to be a way out.
There has to be.
Sunset Hollow
Tom Imura’s Story
(This story takes place on First Night,
fourteen years before Rot & Ruin)
1
The kid kept crying.
Crying.
Crying.
Blood all over him. Their blood. Not his.
Not Benny’s.
Theirs.
He stood on the lawn and stared at the house.
Watching as the fallen lamp inside the room threw goblin shadows on the curtains. Listening to the screams as they filled the night. Filled the room. Spilled out onto the lawn. Punched him in the face and belly and over the heart. Screams that sounded less and less like her. Like Mom.
Less like her.
More like Dad.
Like whatever he was. Whatever this was.
Tom Imura stood there, holding the kid. Benny was eighteen months. He could say a few words. “Mom.” “Dog.” “Foot.”
Now all he could do was wail. One long, inarticulate wail that tore into Tom’s head. It hit him as hard as Mom’s screams.
As hard. But differently.
The front door was open, standing ajar. The back door was unlocked. He’d left through the window, though. The downstairs bedroom on the side of the house. Mom had pushed him out. She’d shoved Benny into his hands and pushed him out.
Into the night.
Into the sound of sirens, of screams, of weeping and praying people, of gunfire and helicopters.
Out here on the lawn.
While she stayed inside.