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Hart didn’t stop walking until he was through the circular stone entrance of the Rose Garden.

He’d brought Rose here the first time she’d ever visited the garden. Night wasn’t the best time to show off flowers, but he’d been desperate to impress her with his rare varieties of roses. To show her that he’d been able to help keep this species of rambling rose from going extinct. That he could make a rose live.

But as he sat down on the wooden bench in the center of the garden, triggering the lamppost to splash the area with a warm golden glow, Hart saw that he wasn’t the only one in here. Just beyond the pool of light, where his legs caught some of it but the rest of him stayed shadowed, a man stood in the bushes. There was no telling who it was, only that he didn’t belong here.

“Hey,” Hart said. He stood. “This garden is off-limits.”

But the man, staring at the brittle roses, kept still as a statue, as if he hadn’t heard a word.

Hart often felt a slew of emotions when he was surrounded by the beauty in this garden. Love. Hope. Pride. But being alone in this garden with this person made the hair on his forearms rise. “Excuse me,” Hart said.

Finally, the man moved. He didn’t say anything, just wrapped meaty hands around the rose stems, yanking until a spray of flowers ripped free from their bush.

“Hey!” Hart shouted, lurching forward, reaching him, pulling on the intruder’s shoulder. Then Hart saw that it wasn’t a man, but a boy his age. No, a boy whom Hart knew to be younger than him. “Lowell?”

The question wasn’t, Lowell, what are you doing? or even, Where have you been? It was, Lowell, is that really you? Because Hart couldn’t be sure, not entirely. He stood over a head taller than Hart. Where he wasn’t balding, he had sparse patches of white hair. His face was deformed by a jutting cleft chin, a jaw that fanned impossibly out, cheekbones so plump they crested like waves in a storm, nearly blotting out the moons of his eyes. The rest of his body wasn’t any better. He was all muscle, but they were the kind of muscles that looked like clay balls mashed into the shape of a person, with no regard for realism. Lowell’s neck strained to the width of a thigh, pulsing with dark veins that snaked out of the choking collar of his T-shirt. And his hands, still gripping the rose stems, oozed—between knuckles, under his fleshy palm, over the web of skin between his thumbs and forefingers—with streams of blood from where they dug into the roses’ thorns.

“Lowell,” Hart whispered again. Not a question this time, the name coming out as a sound of astonishment.

Lowell’s eyes couldn’t seem to focus on Hart, and in a dizzy spin he shouldered past him, ducking through the stone archway. Hart followed him, though he didn’t know that he could stop him even if he wanted to. Lowell trekked wordlessly down the golden path and then off it, through the tangle of wood that led to Hemlock Pond. Though the trees made the night darker, and every step he took was an unsteady one, Lowell stormed through the grounds like he knew the place all too well. When he emerged from the trees, he was greeted like a grenade tossed through an air vent. For a moment, everyone stared. Then just the look of him caused enough alarm for them to step back and scatter.

But Lowell trudged on, his long legs making quick work of getting to the middle of the crowd. And without warning or a word of preamble, he let out a desperate noise before dragging the thorny stems he still clutched down the front of his face.

People screamed when the blood began to flow. And Hart stood frozen, stunned sober by the spectacle.

“Why are you screaming?” Lowell asked. His voice was alien, far too deep for someone so young. There was no sign that anyone recognized him as their missing classmate, and how could they? Fresh blood painted his deformed face.

“Take this,” Lowell said to the nearest boy, handing him the bloody rose bouquet. “And tear your face off.”

The boy whimpered, but he did not hesitate. He took the thorny bunch from Lowell and scraped it along his cheeks, wailing as he did so.

Pandemonium broke out then. Some people tripped over each other trying to get out of the garden, seeing something so strange that it overrode any euphoric hold the garden had on them, and they fled. But some people stayed to watch, horrified yet unable to look away.

Hart rushed over to the boy scratching his face off and pulled on his arms, trying to break him from Lowell’s vile hex. But although the boy sobbed, he wouldn’t quit sloughing his skin off.

“Tell him to stop!” Hart shouted over the cacophony. When Lowell ignored him, Hart turned his attention to everyone else. “Go!” he shouted at the horrified faces. “Get out!” He kept pulling on the boy’s forearms, trying to hold them down, when he spotted Heather. “Get everyone out of here!” he told her. He turned back to Lowell, knowing full well what was happening by now. He’d made the kind of wish that Heather usually made at these parties. “Tell him to stop!” Hart shouted again.

Lowell laughed. Blood dribbled down his face, slick with sweat and dirt, painting him in morbid colors. “Okay,” he finally said. “You can stop.”

The boy in Hart’s arms finally ceased fighting him and dropped the roses, breaking into a run. Hart rounded up as many people as he could. When he spun back around, he found that Lowell had gone.