Seventeen

SEVENTEEN

Amazingly, Dad didn’t wake when I screamed. In fact, I’m not sure whether or not I did scream aloud. All I really remember is jerking upright, heart banging, head pounding, sweating bullets and what sounded like a scream fading in my head.

After about fifteen minutes—during which my heart hammered like I’d just finished a marathon—no sounds came from Dad’s room next door. No stirring of bedsprings, no creaking of floor boards, nothing.

Eventually, my heart slowed down and my hyperventilating faded. I managed a shaking breath and ran a hand through my sweat-damp hair. I tried to piece together my second nightmare that week. Like last time, only blurred fragments remained. I’d been on the path in the woods heading toward that clearing, from which had come a strange and unsettling but also arousing medley of growling moans, grunting, hissing and yowling . . .

The man in yellow.

He’d been there. His face had looked different, however. Like a loose-fitting rubber mask. I reme