We were nearly there, the trees were beginning to clear so I said, “I think we lost them—“

Just then I heard the sound of crunching metal and Dennis screaming. I whirled around to see one of them on the hood of the car; he looked like the boy’s big brother with an enormous, grotesque head of his own, and I had only time to see two things before he began to bash the windshield with both fists: he was grinning, and he was wearing corduroys.

Dennis turned the wheel wildly from side to side, trying to shake the man off the hood, but it was no use – he was incredibly strong and well-planted, using his ropy muscled arms to smash again and again, causing the glass to splinter and crack beneath him.

Suddenly I felt my whole body seize forward. A bolt of pain went through my neck like nothing I’d ever felt before and, in the midst of Dennis and Barb’s screams, everything went black.

I don’t know how long I was out. When I woke up it was still dark; my entire body ached unbearably.

When I could force myself to sit forward, wiping the dried blood from my eyes, I saw what had happened. I remembered everything all at once: Bubblehead Road, the dead peacock, the little boy. Mark, that idiot, going back for the camera.

The car had crashed headlong into the trunk of a huge old tree. In the front seat, Dennis and Barb were unnervingly still.

Before I could lean forward to check on them further, I heard a rustling in the woods outside the shattered passenger window. Gingerly, I turned my head to see what it was, fearing more of the brothers.

It was the little boy, creeping along in his corduroy pants. The look on his face, his tiny face, the miserable eyes beneath the bulging head… I’ll never forget it.

He didn’t speak but I could almost hear him saying, “This is what happens.”

Not an accusation. Not a threat. Just a sad, simple statement: this is what happens.

Suddenly his face was awash with lights of red and blue. His eyes widened and he began to scamper away, then thought better of it. He hurried to the car and dropped something in my lap through the devastated remains of the passenger window.

Then he was gone, scuttling away into the woods, back to his mother’s house where his dead bird waited to be buried.

I tucked what he’d given me into my pocket as the lights got brighter and I started to lose consciousness. When the darkness crept into the corners of my vision I had enough time to hear “Stay calm, miss, don’t move—“ And then I was gone again.

I spent three weeks in the hospital, first for the car crash injuries, then because I’d been babbling after my surgery about monsters in the woods. They kept me for psychiatric evaluation, but by then I’d learned to keep my mouth shut and was soon approved for release.

There was a memorial at school for Dennis, Barb, and Mark. I didn’t go. I couldn’t bear the talking, the rumors, the classmates whispering about how when they found Mark’s body it was little more than shredded meat and bone. Attacked by a mountain lion, some said, but others said much worse because it was the truth and they didn’t even know it.

As for what the boy gave me, I don’t know where it went. Maybe when they stripped me in the ambulance someone saw it and threw it out. Maybe they thought it was a prank. Or when they saw it, they couldn’t reconcile with themselves what it really was, so it had to be destroyed.

Maybe the government has it. I don’t know.

But I wish I still had it, because the boy meant for me to. It was meant as a warning. A permanent reminder of what monstrous things we can do when we don’t know how our actions can hurt others, set in motion a terrible domino effect that leaves the lives of those involved forever damaged beyond repair.