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I think—hope—he’s dead, and then he starts to thrash, head knocking from side to side as he makes a gurgling noise that sounds exactly like the creature’s. His lips move, and blood bubbles on them.

Noemi drops beside him, talking to him, and uses her shirt to wipe blood from his eyes and then falls back with a yelp because his eyes aren’t covered in blood. They’re gone.

His mouth keeps working, and that gurgle becomes words.

“Noemi, Noemi, Noemi,” as his head thrashes from side to side.

“Caleb,” she whimpers.

Caleb starts to convulse, his torso bucking from the ground as he screams. Henry falls back, and I stagger away and stare and I want to help Caleb, and by help him, I mean kill him, and that is such a horrible, horrible thought, but in an instant, I’m five again. My dad hit a dog on the road—it ran out in front of us—and a man races over with an empty leash, and I’m looking down at this dog, this mangled, whimpering thing out of a horror movie, and I hear my dad and the man whispering about getting a gun, and I know I should be horrified, but all I can think is “Quickly.”

Please hurry. Please put it out of its misery.

That’s what I want to do now. This boy—this poor, brave boy—is in unimaginable agony, and he will not survive it and it’s my fault for helping him, pulling him from that writhing blackness, and now I want to help again by ending his pain.

Henry looks over, his eyes meeting mine, and he’s shaking, and I know he’s thinking the same thing.

How can I help?

By ending it.

Caleb continues to scream, the sound wet and gurgling as if his throat is tearing open.

“Help him,” Noemi says, tears streaming down her face. “Please help him.”

Henry backs up, as if saying no, which isn’t like him, and then I follow his gaze to the stump of Caleb’s severed arm. Something is twitching inside it. Something dark. It pokes out from the mangled flesh and it’s like a dark worm. Then the end rears up and opens, and there’s an eye.

Noemi screams louder, backing up until she falls and then scrabbling. The wormlike thing keeps growing, until it’s a leg, with a hoof at one end and the eye near the fetlock, opening and closing.

Fur sprouts from the tears in Caleb’s flesh. Black fur, shooting up along each rip and then peeling back and covering his torso.

And still he screams. Louder and louder he screams, animal shrieks of agony.

“Do something!” Noemi shouts. “Do something!”

I grab a rock. I’m tripping as I run for Caleb and raise the rock over my head, but at the last second the stone disappears from my hands. Henry has it. He swings it down, lips moving in a silent apology, tears welling in his eyes as he smashes the rock into Caleb’s temple.

Caleb’s body falls backward, and those horrible screams fall away with him. Noemi sobs and runs to drop beside him, her hands on his shoulder, now misshapen and covered in fur.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m so sorry.” She looks up at Henry, and I brace for rage and fury and a scream that this is not what she meant, but she only says, “Thank you. I couldn’t— Thank you both.”

Then she’s bending over Caleb, sobbing, her whole body racked with them. I hesitate, and then creep toward her, preparing to offer comfort. Caleb’s body shivers, and I stop, but it’s only the vibrations from Noemi’s sobs.

I walk up beside Noemi and start bending, but Caleb’s body quivers, and that is not vibrations. Something ripples under his furred skin. A crack, like a bone.

“Ellie!” Henry lunges for me, but I already have Noemi’s shoulders, and I’m dragging her from Caleb’s body.

She doesn’t fight me. She starts scrabbling along with me and then Henry is pulling us both back, massive arms wrapping around us. Caleb’s body bucks and twists and then his face throbs and blackens and a snout erupts, not from his mouth but from the middle of his forehead, and then his lower face is gone, as if sinking into his body, and those two empty eye sockets blink on either side of the deformed muzzle.

Caleb’s entire body convulses, bone cracking, body re-forming, but not into anything recognizable, just a horrible misshapen thing with fangs and empty eyes and blinking eyes where there should never be eyes and one hoof and one taloned hand and legs that end in hands, human hands.

It’s like some alien being gathered DNA from every Earth creature it could find and shoved it into a lab experiment.

And all we can do is stare. Then the creature’s side pulses, something shoving through. It’s pale and naked skin and—

Caleb’s face appears on the creature’s side. His eyes—whole again—blink, and he looks around as if confused. His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Then he sees Noemi and he smiles.

He smiles, and that is the most terrible thing of all, because it’s a normal smile, as if he woke up in a strange place and he finally spotted something familiar. The most familiar—and welcome—face of all.