Ch. 17 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask
Skirting the western edge of the peninsula, Bob and the Mask walked north until dawn. In the hours and miles they traveled, they passed little. Northwest of the mansion, they came upon the border of the old Asher farmstead. Every nine yards, a crucified scarecrow held sentry at the perimeter. Bob and the Mask didn’t like the feel of them. When a strange wind whistled around them and bristled through some of the husks staring down from above, they left.
North of the farm, an ancient slaughterhouse, more than twenty years shuttered, rusted and rotted as treetrunks speared it apart. Bones and rubble littered the overgrowth. Bob and the Mask passed the dead place and continued on.
Across US Highway-1, they found more wilderness. They decided to walk east along the highway. A green sign pointed them in the direction of a local dairy. As the sun burst its yolk over the horizon, oozing light, they followed the highway exit down to a beaten, laneless roadway.
A chest-high wooden fence barricaded the pastures. At the edge of the broadest emerald field, a stout, roofed structure groaned at the coming day. As they followed the property’s boundary, Bob and the Mask watched two men enter the building. One drove up in a pickup truck, the other came from a small house abutting a silo. Once they’d vanished inside, Bob and the Mask climbed over the fence. Besides the house, silo, and stalls, another building invited attention near the front of the property. ‘Tours!’ one sign announced. ‘Closed,’ another said.
Knife in hand, Bob and the Mask moved into the building of stalls. Black, glassy eyes followed them along an aisle of cells. They heard liquid splashing into a pail nearby. Slipping through an open gate, they found one of the men at work. By the time he’d looked up and noticed them, it was far too late to scream.
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