I don't know how long I've sat in this chair, staring blankly at the television.

I feel like I should get up, I know I should get up. There's the laundry to do, a pile of dirty dishes in the basin and goodness knows what else to be done, but I just don't have the energy. I've hardly eaten in days, and every time I've tried, the bile has bubbled up in my throat and my stomach has rolled over in great, choppy waves and it's all I can do to just chew on the food and swallow. And what's worse is that I'm still so hungry. Hungry and yet unable to eat a darn thing.

Rheemus thinks I'm sickening for something and wants to call Dr. Jacoby, but I can't bear the thought of that man here, studying me like I'm some lab rat. Watching me. I told Rheemus I'd had more than enough of that cockamamie nonsense in the hospital and I won't stand for it in my own home. And besides, doctors always have a habit of seeing more than you want them to and I don't want him here poking his sticky beak into my business.

I am sickening for something though, but it's not what Rheemus thinks. I don't even know what it is, but I'm scared, really scared, because I know it ain't nothing that can be cured by popping a couple of pills or a few days bed rest and some of Mama's chicken broth. And if the doctor knew that, I know he'd cart me right off to the nuthouse in the city and I've heard awful stories about that place, about how once they got you, you ain't never getting out of there again.

I can't even speak to Rheemus, because I don't want him looking at me any worse than he already does. He might even call Dr. Jacoby and make him take me away. And so I've said nothing. Nothing about how I hear things at night, things that move and shift in the darkness of the bedroom. Nothing about how every time I try to go to sleep, I hear someone whispering my name. Nothing about the flickering lights and definitely nothing about what happened at Barbara Arden's house. He'll think I'm pure crazy and maybe he'd be right. I feel crazy.

Brenda's making funny little sounds next to me in her basket and I want to take comfort in that, I want to be happy knowing she's happy, but it's like I've got this big ball of fear lodged right in my throat and I can't do a damn thing to cough it up. There's something wrong, something very wrong and I don't know what it is. All I know is these past few days, I'm just so afraid to even look at her.

Instead I stare at the television screen, vaguely aware that right now I should be watching Macdonald Carey and Frances Reid in Days of Our Lives, because I make sure never to miss an episode, but I'm watching static again. The screen flickers and white noise crackles out of the television speaker. I was going to get up and whack the box when it first happened, but for some reason I never did, I just carried on sitting here and now I can't seem to tear my eyes away from the screen. I don't really want to. I feel calmer when I'm watching the flickering, fuzzy screen.

Somewhere in the corner of my vision, something moves.

It's a spider, just an ordinary house spider mind, no bigger than a cotton reel, but ugly enough with a bulbous body and thick brown legs. It freezes as soon as I turn my head to look at it, almost as if it knows I'm watching it and as it waits at the edge of the rug, my eyes are drawn to it just as they were to the television screen.

When it begins to move, slowly at first, tentatively creeping onto the patterned rug, I sit up in the chair, perching on the edge of the seat and gripping the arms. The spider stops and my head jerks to one side. Suddenly it scuttles off towards the open doorway leading into the kitchen, faster than I expected, and I shriek, dropping to all fours on the rug and chase after it. I can't let it get away, I can't let it find some dark hidey-hole where I won't be able to reach it. Just before it runs out, I manage to scoop it up into my hands, gently, so not to squash it.

Sitting back on my haunches, I grin as I peek through the small gap between my linked hands. It's almost too dark to see but I can feel it wriggling against my palms. I'm breathing hard, panting almost like a dog and I wipe my mouth on my arm, leaving a smear of saliva on the sleeve of my shirt. Then, in one swift movement, so it doesn't escape, I raise my hands and open them, simultaneously releasing the spider from my grasp and pushing it into my waiting, hungry mouth. Its long legs tickle against my tongue and one still dangles from my lips as it struggles desperately, but it's too late. My teeth pierce its body as I bite down and the sweet blood bursts out instantly, coating my tongue.

As soon as the taste of it hits my senses, I know this is what I wanted. Not the spider specifically, but blood and life and the delicious crunch of its legs, the ooze as I bite into the abdomen, the texture of it against my tongue, the feel of it alive in my mouth.

I chew voraciously, frantically pushing in that last leg with my fingers so I don't miss one tasty morsel of it, smacking my lips together as I swallow it down.

My stomach grumbles appreciatively this time, but it's not enough. It's nowhere near to being enough. Still on all fours, I scuttle into the kitchen, searching everywhere, even inside the pantry, anywhere I think they might be hiding. With a screech of frustration, I crawl back into the den and begin to scrabble around the floor, peering under the couch and cabinets, looking into the darkest corners for more. I feel panicked and desperate. I need something else quick, because the taste in my mouth is fading fast and soon it will all be gone, like it was never there in the first place and all I'll be left with is this horrible, aching hunger.

My fingers twitch frantically as I sniff at the air. There's something here. I know there is.

I can smell it.

From inside the basket, Brenda lets out a small cry. It's a tiny noise, just one plaintive cry that has to do battle with the rush of white noise that is now emanating louder from the television speaker, but I hear it anyway. Cocking my head to one side, eyes-wide, I crawl sideways, crab-like along the rug, leaving a wide berth between myself and the basket like I don't know what I'll find in there. Craning my neck up, I peer over the edge and see tiny feet kicking, tiny hands grasping air and I slowly move towards the baby, clicking my tongue against my teeth as I get closer and closer. She smells good, really good, and I think about that spider and how it struggled and squirmed, I think about how it made me feel better, I think about how is tasted and how I want more. How I need more.

I touch the side of the basket and Brenda opens her mouth and screams. And screams. And the noise seems to come from everywhere like white noise, like static, like the furious buzzing of horseflies. I stagger backwards, clapping my hand over my mouth, trying to scramble away because I know what I want and I can't... I just can't...

***

Everything comes at me like a thunderbolt.

The starlit sky above. The cold of the ground seeping into my back. The sound of the cicadas in the tall grasses. The fact I'm wearing my nightshirt and I'm outside.

The tangy taste of something so sweet in my mouth.

I sit upright with a strangled gasp and the first thing I see is my house, looking like a ghostly apparition in the moonlight, and Rheemus' barn casting a shadow over the back yard. The second is that my white nightshirt is stained with a thick river of something dark and wet that streams from the curved neckline all the way down to the hem at my ankles. My hair hangs down in stringy wet knots and stinks like pond water, my bare feet are stained and dirty, as are my hands. Trembling, I touch my chin where the skin feels strange, flinching as my fingertips find some dark, sticky liquid that coats my face, from my nose downwards.

I whimper, a thin reedy noise that sounds like a wounded animal, only I instinctively know I'm not the one who's wounded. All this blood, on my nightshirt, on my hands, in my mouth – it's not mine and I'm seized by a panic that's on the cusp of pain. A tightness spreads across my chest, my throat constricts and my heart beats louder than the night song of the cicadas.

Rising onto my hands and knees, I begin to scrabble around in the dirt, searching. I follow the path halfway across the yard, finding nothing. Turning full circle, I frantically scan the yard, because I know it will be here somewhere, and as my eyes follow the line of the white perimeter fence that separates our yard from Bitter Creek, the five thousand acres of twisted and gnarled woodland that runs all the way to the state line, it's then that I see it.

A dark bloodied handprint, glistening in the moonlight, is smeared along the top rut of the fence.

"No,' I whisper, grabbing handfuls of my hair. "No, no, no."

I break into a run, ignoring the harsh cut of stones in the soles of my feet, ignoring the scuttle of beetles and other many-legged creatures that flee out of my path. Reaching the fence, I lift my blood-drenched nightshirt above my knees and clamber over and as soon as I do, I spot more blood on the other side, blood that trails into the gloom of the Creek.

I've never liked the Creek. Rheemus, on the other hand, loves the Creek and often comes down here to fish, but I can't say I've ever cared for it much. There's always been something about this place that gives me the shivers. Some places are so dark that it's always made me wonder what could be lurking. There's too many hidey-holes. Too many places where the sun barely touches. Strange noises always emanate from between the trees. Rheemus says that's just how the woodland sounds, because it wants to scare people away so they don't go in there with their axes and their fire. He says some things are made for nature's benefit only and unless you're going to respect that and be sure not to outstay your welcome, the woodland will do what it can to keep you out.

But I can't keep out. Not this time.

As I make my way down the path that Rheemus has made trudging up and down here, my eyes adjust to the gloom far quicker than I expect them to and I don't want to think about what that means. I don't want to think about how I don't feel so scared about the Creek no more, how somewhere deep inside it feels right to be here, but I am scared to find out why I'm drenched in blood. I remember the hunger so clearly, I remember what I hungered for and the thought of that is just too much to bear.

As I venture further into the woods, following the scent of the blood that glistens here and there along the way, I wish with all my heart that I could turn and run away but I know I can't. I have to know what I've done, I have to see it, yet while every step forward leads me to the answers, it also feels like I'm walking deeper and deeper into a nightmare that I know I will never be able to escape from. A nightmare in which I'm the monster.

I'm almost there now, I can sense it, I can smell it and as I break through a thick copse of knotted trees, I hear the soft, babbling voice of the Creek itself and I stop instantly, holding onto a branch to stop my legs from giving way beneath me.

There's something lying on the bank of the gurgling stream, something small and still, something that oozes blood which is now trickling sluggishly into the dark waters. Cloudy patterns of blood swirl on the surface, thin tendrils drifting out across the water. It stinks down here, a putrid stench of death and rotten things.

A sob bubbles up in my throat. "Brenda, oh God, Brenda."

I stagger towards the edge of the Creek, slipping and sliding down into the mud that sucks on my bare feet and squelches between my toes. My eyes are so blurred with tears, my vision hazy with panic, that I don't see it until I'm almost right there, until I'm on my knees beside it.

The thing that now lays half-submerged in the water so that its dead eyes stare back at me from under the surface is not my daughter. The thing that lays there with its belly torn open, stringy intestines trailing from the bloodied hole is not Brenda. It's a dog. Our neighbor's dog. A scruffy little yapper that was always escaping from their yard and digging holes in ours.

I reach out a shaking hand to touch it, I don't even though why because it's dead and I don't want to touch no dead animal, but as soon as my fingers sink into its sodden fur, I'm bombarded by so many awful images – no, not images – memories. Memories of what I did.

I'm on my hands and knees in the back yard, shoving beetles into my mouth, spitting out hard, pieces of black shell onto the ground. I'm hungry, so hungry that I claw at my own stomach, desperate to be free from the pain. A scrabbling, scratching noise makes me whip my head around and I see the dog, scrambling through the gap under the fence. I'm chasing the dog into the woods and as it yelps, I'm squealing with excitement, stomping through the mud after it. It's struggling in my hands, trying to bite me, but I'm holding it down, ripping, tearing. I'm burying my face in the hole where its stomach once was and it tastes so damn good.

So. Damn. Good.

I did this. I killed the dog. I tore open its belly, down here in the bowels of Bitter Creek, and then I fed from the ravaged, open wound. And even now, even as I sit here, staring wildly at the dead animal, a horrible thought creeps into my head, a horrible, terrible thought that repulses me and excites me all at the same time.

I'm still hungry.