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Or, roith a stick and a scoas a long, horsey face under another floppy hat The owner of the face stopped a yard off, taking in the burning forest, the flailing roots, the naked warvamps And me, sprawled over the partner I really hoped I hadn’t just killed For a long tihed

"Just like your mother," he told me "You really kno to make an entrance"

Chapter Nine

The drizzle condensed into a driving rain on the way to the house, so conversation was kept to a h I did protest when thean unconscious Pritkin over one shoulder, like a sack of potatoes And then again when Pritkin’s head, now soaking wet and dripping, was allowed to bang against the creature’s backside when it stood up

"That thing will kill hi to er--didn’t seeer, since no as I calling hie They’re almost impossible to kill" He scowled "Even on purpose"

He took off into the underbrush And since Big Red followed, I had no choice but to go, too Thankfully, we one most of the distance on our crazy ride, because a few minutes later, our host shoved open a side door on a pretty, pale blue cottage

And Big Red slah to rattle the surrounding shelves

"I thought you said you weren’t trying to kill hi out of his wet coat

He shot runtled look "Didn’t look like you needed the help" And then he disappeared up a flight of stairs

I bent over Pritkin, my heart into be hard enough Maybe today, since it was oozing so all over the tabletop

I couldn’t tell what, because Roger hadn’t turned on a light, and the roo down the stairs, but it wasn’t enough to see by Until ht switch on the wall, and a s to life

And showed me a puddle of dirty water, not blood

I sat down abruptly, feeling faint

A quick check showed me a lot of cuts and scrapes on the too-still body, but nothing that looked life-threatening I took off the hoodie and wrapped it around him to preserve whatever modesty either of us had left, and noticed thathad spread throughoutup difficult

I wasn’t sure whether that was fro hit with a dozen or so little "toys" all at the sa an entire forest attack me But my head suddenly seeht now

I flopped over, and then just stayed there,demonstration on why I was not cut out for this crap

For a fewand a clock ticking so the s, because apparently I only visited Tony’s in lousy weather And so a tiny scrape, scrape, scrape sound

So close

My head jerked up, andto feel like its new home, just behind my tonsils But all I saas dark Maybe because thelunged at looes of a typical kitchen, circa the 1960s, which I guess was the last tiular space was a lie, and sink, a squarefra into an adjacent roo itself in the eye

I froze

It was the one with acid green potion boue victiht noas very, very clear on one thing: I did not want to find out what those bo what itwooden cuckoo by the door, continued to tick The rain continued to beat against the s And the robot continued to scratch at its eye, only I couldn’t figure out what it was--

Oh

Like the Tin Man with his floppy garden sack, and Big Red, whose shoulders ter but a small knob, this one didn’t have a proper head As if whoever had designed them had just lost interest above the collar But somebody else had decided that wouldn’t do, and had stuffed a white plastic bucket partly down the neck hole

That ht not have been so bad, since at least it had been forht shape And its cheerful, prosaic surface was less Children of the Corn than Tin Man’s But then so a pair of false eyelashes to the front

For a moment, I just stared

They were thick and black and droopy, like two dispirited spiders, and one had slid halfway dohat I guess you’d have to call the cheek, ned to stick to other eyelashes, not to shiny plastic This seemed to bother thewhatever it waswhich kept poking at it, trying to slide it back into place But despite having nice, robotic-looking hands instead of gardening shears, it didn’t appear to be ress