After what they'd seen in that house, it wasn't just that Carl and Tommy felt sick — it was as if someone had dragged their faces across the edge of the abyss itself.
Poor Tommy bent double right there on the porch, retching onto the wet gravel. His cough tore through his throat, rough and helpless — too young, too alive to look at something like that and not fall apart.
Carl stood beside him, still gulping air like he'd just run a mile. Only the pallor of his face and the tremor in his hands betrayed that he was just as broken.
What they'd expected was another ugly find — one more grisly totem or doll like the ones paranoid lunatics leave behind when they think they hear voices. But this was no totem. Not for Carl.
