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And she saw the little boy, Justin, crawl ahead of her into the darkness

Dekka lay sobbing in the darkness She could barely see her hands in front of her face

She didn’t knohat had happened to her Just that in an instant she had been frozen, completely immobile Paralyzed

She’d been covered in a translucent white goo, like clay or Silly Putty And it had coated every single inch of her body It had pushed its way into her ears Like invisible fingers were poking it in there, filling her right up to the eardru of her own heart

So that she could hear the gristle in her neck as she squirmed helplessly

The white putty was pushed into her nose So deep, up into her sinuses She had to breathe through her mouth, but as soon as she opened her mouth the white stuff filled her mouth and pushed its way into the space between her teeth and her cheeks, under her tongue, then down her throat She gagged but it didn’t matter; the stuff filled her mouth and throat and she could feel it cold and dense and heavy in her lungs

She screamed but no sound came out

In some panic-free corner of her mind, some small remnant of Dekka knew this wasn’t real It couldn’t be real She kneas Penny who had done this, who had filled her mind with this vision

But she could not breathe Could Not

She was buried alive in it, buried alive, and her brain screaer could

Had to be an illusion Had to be a trick But did it really? Was she so sure it wasn’t real in this nightmare world?

She couldn’t breathe, but she realized, too, that she wasn’t dying Her heart still beat She was covered and filled with the white stuff, and she should be dying but she wasn’t

Then she felt the white stuff harden It wasn’t putty any as hard as porcelain

Then the bugs were inside of her

The bugs

Not real--she knew that in so corner of her s had been eliminated They’d been made nonexistent So there was no way they could be inside her again, no way they could be swaruts and no Sam to cut them out and let them out; she was trapped inside this porcelain toain

She screaone

She was on dirt Air was in her nose Her eyes opened

A girl had stood there and said, "That’s a new one forlike a leaf ready to fall, said nothing Just breathed Breathed

"Don’t come after me," Penny had said