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looked in over the crack in the window. And then he started to move back from the car really slowly. The window rolled down a little more and a hand with gloves on it stuck five dollars out. Danny didn’t take it so the man let the money drop on the grass. He rolled up his window and drove away.
I asked Danny who it was but he told me that we shouldn’t play out in the front yard anymore. Told me to pick up my army men. We’d finish playing in my room. He told me not to tell mom and dad about the man in the car. He wouldn’t tell me why.
The night before school I couldn’t sleep so I got up to use the bathroom. From the window in the hallway I could see across through the dark to the house at the end of the street. The garage was all the way open, and there was a light leaking out from the top window across the grass. And there were things moving behind it and all of a sudden the lights went out.
At school all the seventh graders were talking about the TV. How it said that they found another body. It had its eyes scooped out and its tongue cut off. The fingers on its hands were gone and nails had been pushed through its feet.
Just like all the others.
