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For a moment, Caleb can’t react. He’s nine or ten again, and his friends have snuck into an art theater to watch an old horror flick. It’d been boring at the start—a bunch of guys in the Arctic who saved a dog from being shot. But then the horror started, and it didn’t stop, and this exact scene was in it, a man’s head ripping from his body, pushed up by the creature inside.

Here’s proof that he’s dreaming. He’s even had dreams like this before, except in them, the thing is inside him, taking him over, tearing him apart while he’s still alive and conscious and—

He swallows hard.

Nightmare.

Close his eyes and wait for it to be over, because whatever happens, it won’t be real.

None of this is real.

He can’t close his eyes, though. All he can do is stare at the man—at Ravi—at what he is becoming. His head atop the green tendrils, eyes rolling, mouth open in a silent scream. Something moves in Ravi’s chest. Pulses. Pushing up. Trying to escape.

Ravi’s chest bursts open. Blood gushes. Black blood. The sides of his chest part, and jagged ribs open, then shut, then open again, like a pair of giant jaws.

Run.

It’s not real. It can’t be real. It’s exactly like the movie.

Ravi’s head extends higher, then shoots toward him. Caleb stumbles back, and his foot catches on a root, and he starts to go down.

Don’t let it touch you.

If it touches you—

Caleb’s mind doesn’t need to complete the thought. He’s already twisting and scrabbling and he manages to keep his footing and run.

Get to Noemi. Warn Noemi. Protect Noemi.

Something has happened inside the bar, and Noemi can’t move, can’t flee, can’t defend herself, and the thing will touch her and she’ll—she’ll—

He tears around the front and up the porch and …

Where’s the door?

Where is the fucking door?

It’s gone. The porch is here, and the door is gone.

Caleb leaps over the railing. He hits the ground running and races along the building. Behind him, he hears the thing coming, and when he looks back, Ravi’s body has sprouted spidery legs and it’s running on them as his head stretches out toward Caleb, a long tongue unfurling.

Don’t look. Don’t think. Just run. There’s another door around the back. Get to it.

He veers around the rear corner and—

No door.

There is no door.

The window then. Get to that window.

The thing-that-was-Ravi roars, and Caleb’s foot slips, and something lashes the back of his head, but he doesn’t fall. He vaults forward and races around the corner and—

The window is gone.

It’s a solid wall.

Keep running. That’s all he can do. Run around again, and he’ll see something he can use—