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in the 100-yard dash.
    He saw her disappear around a corner ahead and, damn, she did not break stride at all. She leaned into it and zipped around it with incredible grace. The sort of grace that would have put Creep himself right on his ass and twisted an ankle to boot.
    He made the corner finally, but he had to slow way down and even so, Christ, he nearly tripped over his own feet like a geriatric monkey. But there she was. Just ahead and pouring on the speed again.
    He followed her, hearing Lex and Soo-Lee gaining on him.
    He had a feeling they would overtake him any second.
    He saw Danielle round another corner and by that point he was starting to think she wasn’t even fucking human. He was ready to give up, call it a day and hang up his cleats, but something pushed him on. He was not the bravest guy in the world—outside of X-box 360, where he was nearly a legend—but he knew that if he didn’t stop her, something really bad would happen to her. Something that might have already happened to Chazz and, gulp , Ramona.
    He came around the corner at the precise moment that Danielle skidded to a halt like a sprinting wildebeest that had just run smack dab into a hungry lion.
    Only, in this case, a lion would have been preferable.
    Creep saw the doll man standing there and he stopped, too. This guy— thing, whatever it was—was a huge form that towered above her like a graveyard angel. It wore a huge dark coat that looked like a moldering tarp. It hobbled closer to her with a see-sawing side to side gait, dragging one leg behind it. Its face was like a fright mask made of burlap or pale gray sackcloth, but yet it was flesh because as it spoke, the thin-lipped, crooked mouth moved as if muscles beneath were in motion.
    Creep heard what it said: “Is that you, doll-face?”
    Then it swung what it held in one narrow, long-fingered hand…a hatchet. The blade caught Danielle right at the crown of her skull, splitting her head like moist green wood. The sound it made reminded Creep of a cleaved gourd. He was hit by a wet spray of blood and brains and went right down to his knees with a broken cry.
    The hulking thing began to drag itself in his direction, stepping over the still-shuddering corpse of Danielle.
    Creep just waited for it.
    He was speechless and stunned, his mouth hanging open, fingers numbly pawing at the blood and gray matter on his face, which had the consistency of greasy gelatin from a canned ham. He was struck dumb and motionless. It felt like his own blood had drained down into his feet and he was in danger of pitching over face-first to the sidewalk.
    The moonlight made the hatchet man’s face look almost luminous.
    There were tufts of white hair jutting from his malformed head, the face itself seamed and sutured, one empty eye socket set lower than the other, both filled with the formless blackness of endless nighted catacombs. He had no nose and his mouth was distorted from the stitching that held it together.
    Again, Creep was struck by the impression that it was a mask…but as the thing approached him, it grinned with a lopsided, mocking smile. “Is that you, doll-face?” it asked, raising its hatchet to strike. Gore dropped from the blade. Tissue and hair were clotted on it.
    Creep waited for it, but then Lex grabbed him and pulled him away, half dragging him and half carrying him out of range of the monster.
    “Run!” Soo-Lee said. “Run!”
    She was leading them and Creep found his feet and ran at Lex’s side, feeling suddenly that he could have run ten miles if that’s what it took. His fear and horror became vigor and he put it to work.
    Behind them, the hatchet man followed.

 
     
     
    15
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    In the brooding silence, Ramona moved up the sidewalk, doing her best to keep out of the direct moonlight and beneath the shadows thrown by the awnings positioned over the storefronts. Each one was striped. Each one antique. Each one out of place and time like the whole