Page 114 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

Then a sound comes from behind him. Some noise I can’t make out. Austin stills and slowly turns as another object emerges from the water.

A head, lifted by a hand, as if its eyes can still see. Then the man—Bram—and his horse, rising, the headless horseman walking from the lake.

That noise comes again. From Bram? From the horse? I can’t tell, but it must be a sign to Austin, a warning, because Austin grunts and steps away and then just… shuffles off.

I stare out at the horseman, ready to flee. Then I remember I have nothing to fear from Bram. Nor does Ben.

I race toward the horse and its rider, and Bram holds out his head to see me as he slows the horse. I run until the horse has fully emerged from the lake, Bram’s head still turned toward me.

“I need help!” I say. “Please. Can you do that?”

The head stares. Up close, it is little more than pocked flesh over bone. Huge glowing eyes, a hole for a nose, a hole for a mouth. Like a jack-o’-lantern, I think, a hysterical laugh bubbling up. The headless horseman and his jack-o’-lantern head.

“Can you help me?” I say. “Can you hear me?”

No reaction. We stare at each other. Then, at a sound farther down, Bram swings his head that way.

The lake is almost still, only the faintest ripple in the water… except for one spot, farther down, where ripples are growing, and the crown of a head emerges.

A nekker.

I race past the horseman and down the shore, frantically looking for Ben.

“Stop,” a voice calls.

My head jerks up, and I follow the voice to see Smits in the moonlight. He’s dragging Ben’s bound and unconscious body toward the lake.

When I take another step, he says, in that same calm voice, “Stop, Sam. Look behind you.”

I glance over my shoulder to see Bram there, his horse sloshing through the water as he trails behind me. Bram holds his head out toward Smits.

“He’s staying close,” Smits says. “Protecting you.”

“Yes, which means you’d damned well better drop Ben and—”

“No.”

“The horseman—”

“—will kill me if I touch you. He’ll trample me. Which means he will also trample Ben, and since you’ll be here, caught in the fray, you won’t escape either. The horseman might protect you, but that horse is a mindless beast that will not understand it’s trampling you, too.”

I open my mouth to say I’m willing to take that chance. Then I shut it. Whether I’m in danger or not, Ben is.

I watch the nekkers—four dark shapes standing motionless in the water. They’re watching. Drawn in, but having no reason to come closer. Not yet.

“Watch and learn,” Smits says. “If you have any of your mother in you, you know this is the time to think about saving your own hide, Sam. Let me give Ben to the lake.” His gaze meets mine across the twenty feet between us. “Prove that you have her blood. That you can do this. Show me that, despite everything that’s happened, it’s in my best interests to let you take your mother’s place.”

Let him sacrifice Ben, he means. Smits envisioned Josie and me as the next generation of Smitses and Paynes, working together. Josie is gone but if I play my cards right, maybe we can still make this work. That’s what he’s telling me.

He starts the incantation. If asked an hour ago whether I’d remember the words from the book, I’d have said no. But as he speaks, they roll from my subconscious. An invocation to the water and the power there, to the nekkers, asking them to accept this sacrifice.

At first, Smits is watching me, but when I don’t move, he turns toward the nekkers, voice rising as he calls them, and they begin to wade closer.

The one in front is the man I saw last night. The one I’m now certain is the figure I’d seen in the shed, drawn there by my return. I kept trying to figure out how someone entered with the door latched—because it was a somethingnot a someone.

Then comes a woman I don’t recognize. Austin falls in behind her, and he looks my way, pocked lips curling as if in a hiss. Another one appears, and my stomach clenches. It’s the camper, who stops there, looking about as if confused, not knowing why he felt the need to come to the shore. Two more nekkers follow, their attention on Smits and Ben. On the caller and the sacrifice.

“Wait!” I shout.