"We can't!" Kate bade her sister, standing up abruptly from the table. She had a dreadful sense of being caught in an endless downward spiral, that her actions were already doomed to some inescapable conclusion. She looked at the empty bowl, knowing that she hadn't taken a single spoonful between her lips, yet feeling the filling warmth of the meal inside of her. "Kitty, I..." she couldn't begin to think of the words to express her foreboding. "I don't know what's happened, but we must be away from here."<br/><br/>"I wasn't able to live out there," the crying girl looked to the sisters pleadingly, her cheeks streaked from tears. A great, groaning noise filled the room as the walls shuddered, the wind keening shrilly. In the opposite way that the three women had split apart, various objects merged together before Kate's eyes. The three stools at the table became a single chair, the hooks from which they'd hung their coats snapped together into one, dropping their clothing to the floor. "They didn't even know where they were," the girl was mumbling to herself. "It was better them than me. It was only fair, wasn't it? I'll suffer too, but not like them. Not if I acted first, I'd done it already!"<br/><br/>The strange noises from outside were getting louder and closer. Kate hurried toward the entranceway, intending to pick up her and Kitty's coats so that they could make good their escape, only to fall back as the door was thrown open. For a moment she felt relief, for a moment she believed the figure in the door wore the uniform of a police officer. And perhaps it was the outfit of a lawman, but not one she'd ever seen before, just as she'd never seen a living man like the one who entered the room.<br/><br/>He looked every bit as though he'd been burned alive, the upper layers of his skin were simply missing, the exposed muscles of his face had been partially melted together. He grinned at the occupants of the cottage from a lipless mouth, his eyes appeared too small for their sockets, peering out with an unearthly light. On the breast of his long, black coat gleamed a sort of inverted cross, which recalled to Kate a similar symbol she'd seen before... In that dark place, where she and Kitty had been strapped down onto the black stone altar.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>