Davey turned and snarled and started upslope toward George, and a stone took him in the back of the neck, thrown by Freddie, who had sought cover behind a thick pine that couldn't disguise the red of his windbreaker, red as the inside of his lip, which pouted out as he considered his next toss. He was downslope, and so Drew was able to bridge the distance between them very quickly -- he was almost upon Felix when a third stone, bigger and faster than the others, took him in the back of the head with terrible speed, making a sound like a hammer missing the nail and hitting solid wood instead. It was Ernie, of course, standing on Craig's highest point, winding up for another toss. The threesome's second volley hit him all at once, from three sides, high, low, and medium. "Killed her, cut her up, buried her," Benny chanted. "Sliced her open and cut her up," he called. "SHUT UP!" Davey screamed. He was bleeding from the back of his head, the blood trickling down the knobs of his spine, and he was crying, sobbing. "KILLED HER, CUT HER UP, SLICED HER OPEN," Ed-Fred-George chanted in unison. Alan tightened his grip on the cords wound around the handle of his knife, and his knife hand bled from the puncture wounds left by Davey's teeth. Davey saw him coming and dropped to his knees, crying. Sobbing. "Please," he said, holding his hands out before him, palms together, begging. "Please," he said, as the loop of intestine he'd been holding in trailed free. "Please," he said, as Alan seized him by the hair, jerked his head back, and swiftly brought the knife across his throat. Benny took his knife, and Ed-Fred-George coaxed Clarence into a slow, deep fissuring. They dragged the body into the earthy crack and Clarence swallowed up their brother. Benny led Alan to the cave, where they'd changed his bedding and laid out a half-eaten candy bar, a shopping bag filled with bramble-berries, and a lock of Marci's hair, tied into a knot. # Alan dragged all of his suitcases up from the basement to the living room, from the tiny tin valise plastered with genuine vintage deco railway stickers to the steamer trunk that he'd always intended to refurbish as a bathroom cabinet. He hadn't been home in fifteen years. What should he bring? Clothes were the easiest. It was coming up on the cusp of July and August, and he remembered boyhood summers on the mountain's slopes abuzz with blackflies and syrupy heat. White T-shirts, lightweight trousers, high-tech hiking boots that breathed, a thin jacket for the mosquitoes at dusk. He decided to pack four changes of clothes, which made a very small pile on the sofa. Small suitcase. The little rolling carry-on? The wheels would be useless on the rough cave floor.