“Really?” Charlie frowned at me. “So what would you call a man that forces boys to undress in front of him?”

What I thought was that Goodbold was just a grown-up version of Hague. A frustrated man, taking out the problems of his own miserable life on the rest of us.

“He’s a bully,” I said.

“No, he’s worse than that.”

“Maybe. But, Jesus. Even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean we can kill him.” I shook my head; this whole conversation was ridiculous. “Apart from anything else, I don’t think any of us wants to go to prison.”

“We won’t have to,” Charlie said.

“Oh yeah—of course not.”

“Because we’ll get Red Hands to do it.”

And again, I could tell from his voice and his expression that he was entirely serious. I glanced around the woods, more uneasy than ever. Who’s Mister Red Hands? Charlie had never answered my question, but deep down none of us had needed him to. It was obviously the ghost he claimed haunted these woods that he was also conjuring up in the dream world. And in a strange way, it seemed that not saying it out loud had made the whole thing more believable. When people think they’ve worked something out for themselves, they become more invested in holding on to it as truth. What I didn’t know right then was why.

I looked at James and Billy now. Neither of them seemed remotely disoriented by what Charlie had said.

And the thought came again.

I don’t know these people anymore.

“But he’s not real,” I said carefully. “They’re just dreams.”

“You’re only saying that because you’ve not seen him.”

“No, I’m saying it because it’s impossible.”

“James?”

We both turned to James, who stared down at the blackened ground, looking awkward.

“What is it?” I said.

James hesitated.

“I saw him,” he said. “I saw him with Charlie.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did—earlier this week. I had a dream I was out here in the woods, and they were both there too. Red Hands was just like Charlie described. He had on this old army coat, all frayed at the shoulders, so it looked like he’d had wings that had been ripped off him.”

“And I dreamed the same thing,” Charlie said. “Didn’t I?”

James nodded. Then he looked at me hopefully.

“His hair was wild, Paul. And his hands were bright red. But I couldn’t see his face. It was all dark. It was just a hole.”

The certainty on his face frightened me. I looked away. The spaces between the trees around us felt ominous now, as though something were listening, drawn closer by the quiet madness that was unfolding in the clearing.

“Tell him the rest,” Charlie said.

“You remember the other morning, right?” James took a step toward me. “The knocking in the night?”

Oh God.

He looked so eager. It was obvious he already believed whatever he was about to explain, and was desperate for me to believe it too. That he wanted to share it with me—to take me along on this journey he had found himself on.

“Yes,” I said. “I remember.”

“And the marks on the door in the morning?”

Blood.

“Yes.”

“Charlie showed me his dream diary. His entry for the night before. That was him. He did it in his dream.”

“No.” Charlie held out his hand. “Not me.”

Without being asked, James passed him the slingshot.

“It was him who knocked on the door,” Charlie said. “Loud and heavy. I remember the dream felt even more real than usual, like the two of us were really standing there. I looked up and saw a light come on upstairs.”

“Which is exactly what happened.” James was practically imploring me now. “My mother went downstairs, but there was nobody there. You remember, right?”

Before I could answer, Charlie shook his head.

“It was too much for me,” he said. “Too real. Just before the door opened, I woke up. It was like the dream threw me out of it.”

I closed my eyes, remembering Eileen wiping furiously at the door that morning—cleaning away the blood, if that was what it had really been. And it was obvious to me what had happened, even if the rational explanation was almost as unbelievable as what James seemed prepared to accept. Charlie had snuck out in the night and done that. Then he’d written the entry in his diary to convince James.

It was deliberate and calculated.

And it was so obvious.

But when I opened my eyes again, I saw that James believed, at least enough that he was willing to go along with it. The look on his face made me feel sick. But what could I say? I had a sudden realization of how alone I was out here, and how far the four of us were from another living soul. Charlie, standing there with the loaded slingshot. Billy, who had turned away from the tree and was watching me, the knife in his hand. And James, an innocent pawn in some game I still didn’t understand.

You need to be very careful right now, I told myself.

Very, very careful.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “So Red Hands is going to come to life and kill Goodbold for us. How does that work?”

“It will take all four of us,” Charlie said. “Between us, with his help, we can be strong enough to affect reality.”

“Please, Paul,” James said.

You’re insane, I thought. You’re all insane.

Except I wasn’t sure that was true. Charlie seemed far more in control of the situation than that. The real question was what he was hoping to achieve. Because even if he’d convinced James up until now, there was no way the experiment could go much further. Sneaking into our town at night and banging on James’s door was one thing, but I doubted even Charlie was capable of murdering Goodbold.

What matters is getting out of here, Paul.

The realization brought a shiver.

“Okay,” I said. “How do we do that?”

Charlie nudged the bag on the ground with his foot and smiled at me.

“Incubation,” he said.

EIGHTEEN

That night, I sat at the desk in my room, the house dark and silent behind me, holding the thing Charlie had given me in the woods that afternoon.

A doll.

It was handmade and about six inches long. The base was an old wooden clothespin, but Charlie had wrapped it in a patchwork of material. Scraps of old clothes; curls of string; clumps of dried paint and dabs of glue. The hair on what passed for its head was dark and wild, and the face it surrounded had been painted completely black. The body was draped in some kind of camouflage fabric, with pipe cleaner arms emerging from the sleeves. Five long tendrils of red string had been attached to the end of each one—fingers, I assumed, but they were so long that when I held the doll upright they hung all the way down to its feet.

I turned the doll around in my hand. It was physically disgusting. There was something dirty and itchy about it, like a toy that had been left under a couch or in the corner of a room that was never cleaned.

Incubation.

Why had I kept it? Back in the woods, I’d had no choice. Charlie had made four of these dolls, and the other three were just as intricate and carefully constructed as mine. As revolting as they were, it was obvious he’d put a great deal of work into them, and Billy and James had accepted theirs gratefully. For me to refuse my own had felt like it would be dangerous. Instead, I’d listened to what Charlie had told us, and I had pretended to agree, the whole time telling myself I would get rid of the hideous fucking thing as soon as I was safe.