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Prologue

One Month Before Halloween This Year

I have wrought great use out of evil tools Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwe-​Lytton, first Baron Lytton, Richelieu

Every evil in the bud is easily crushed; as it grows older, it becoot to keepdown like hail, blues falling down like hail M down like hail And the day keeps on remindin’ me, there’s a hellhound on my trail Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail Robert Johnson, "Hellhound on My Trail"

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The last thing Billy said was, "Oh, co out there"

And then two sets of bone-​white hands arched over the slat rails on the wagon and seized hi into the darkness He tried to fight the the rail, feet flailing and hands scrabbling for soures closed in and he was dragged away

Claire screas Everyone else screa the tractor screamed

Billy screamed louder than all of them

Claire launched herself forward froo holding Billy’s hand; she leaned out into the darkness beyond the rails, her fingers clawing the air as if that could soures had forced Billy down to the ground and were hunched over hi down to tear at hiers, their black er, their bottomless dead eyes as vacant as the eyes of dolls

"Billy!" she screa at their sleeves, slapping at the hands that tried to pull her back She wheeled on theh school, all cringing back against the wooden rails of the flatbed, or trying to hide behind bales of hay--she begged them to help A few shook their heads Most just screaht be a jock--irlfriend and his buddies dragged him back

Claire spat at the fros She looked up at thethe tractor, but he hite-​faced with shock and was frozen in a posture of near flight, half out of his seat

Then one of the white-​faced things bent loard hile Claire could not see what he was doing, but Billy gave a single high, piercing shriek of absolute agony and then his legs and arround and lay still

The moment froze

Slowly, the creature raised its head from Billy’s body and turned toward the tractor with its towed flatbed of schoolkids It snarled at theive when another animal came close to its food The creature’s white skin peeled back froht between those yellow teeth, was a drooping tube of purple meat that trailed back to the red ruin that was Billy’s stomach

Claire’s scream rose up above the darkened road, above the vast seas of whispering corn on either side, far up into the swirling blackness that spread like a shroud frohtbirds cried out and took to the air The driver stauttural roar as the flatbed was jerked forward

Three of the creatures rose at the sound and turned to face the tractor, their faces painted with cri as they chewed As the tractor inched forward, the wheels still churning in the o, the creatures beganflesh

Everyone screaain and they shouted and cursed at the driver to move, move, reat sucking sound the wheels tore free of the mud and the wholeup speed with every second The white-​faced ghouls staggered out into the road and began to follow Slowly, aardly at first, and then faster as they saw their prey gaining ground

"Move!" the jock roared, and others shouted with hiait beco

Up ahead, the road bent around past a stand of old weeping s and the driver shifted gears and kept kicking the gas pedal

"They’re co faster and faster now, the cold air whipping past the faces of the kids The ghouls were thirty yards back Twenty-​five

Twenty

The jock was …" over and over again as he clung to his girlfriend