The windows were still locked and Cole didn’t see anything moving out there in the snow. But he wanted to check. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Stella and David by themselves in the bedroom, but he didn’t want David in the living room watching him and Jose take out Needles’ eyeballs. And Cole had a feeling that nothing was going to happen to any of them as long as they were following the instructions, as long as they were giving it what it wanted. Cole couldn’t dwell on the idea of what was out there making them do this for too long or that darkness would begin to creep in from all around him, that darkness that invited him to just close his eyes and float away from all of this. “We’ll be okay,” Stella said as she stared at Cole. “It won’t come for us right now,” she told him, confirming what he had just been thinking. “I don’t know how long this will take,” he told her.
