A voice from behind them cut through everything.

"I told you not to come here I did. But you didn't listen."

It was the old man. What was he doing here?

The man was only surprised but his new companion looked shook and slumped to the ground.

This can't be good.

"I told you both. Over and over" he said, before turning to him. "I told you at the road, didn't?"

He then turned to Jen, his face filled with a stern disappointment.

"And how many times did I tell you, honey? Hmmm? Always into trouble. Always runnin' round with some boy. I see nothing his changed."

Jen stuttered and clawed backwards until she was against a sweet gum tree, the dead husks of its pods on the ground stuck into her legs but it seemed she didn't even realize it.

The old man stepped closer, not taking his eyes off her.

"You remember what happens when you're a bad girl, don't ya darlin'? You awake the beast."

The old man played with the clasp of his belt like he was going to remove it and grinned.

"What the hell do you want?" the man shouted at him. The old man turned and looked at him with eyes of anger.

"...and you... you should no matter too, shouldn't ya?"

He stepped closer and the man backed up.

"...or don't you remember me?"

The man looked at him puzzled but as their gazes meant there was a spark somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind. A memory.

He was a kid laying in his childhood bed in Indiana on Maple Street. It was the middle of the night and it had awoke him. The melted blacked eyes of the stuffed toy on top of a high shelf -- where his dad made him keep it -- where looking at him. His dad had given it to him a "present." "Don't ever say I didn't... give you anything" he had said, slurring his words with Old Crowe breath.

He hated the stuffed toy. It was a toy called a My Pet Monster, but this one had been purchased at a yard sale for a quarter. It had been in a fire. Half its face has burned off. There has been a lackluster attempt by someone to save it that had failed. His dad had made him put it on the high shelf. He hated it.

Sudden screaming from below.

"Stop it! Stop it Richard!" came a woman's scream. It was his mother. Hard angry foot steps followed and then the screaming and crying of a young child from another room.

It stopped and then his mother's blood curdling scream: "OH MY GOD RICHARD WHAT DID YOU DO!?"

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Then the foot steps came for him. A shadow under the crack of the door. The door slammed open so hard the knob ripped a hole in the dry wall. A figure stood there in the shadows but he could still see that outstretched finger wagging, his signature move.

"No! Leave Daniel alone!" his mother pleaded. He heard her receive a backhanded slap and then there was a thud -- followed by another and another as she tumbled down the stairs.

The man shook himself back to reality. The old man grinned at him.

"So you do remember some, I see."

The man had blocked it out. All of it. There had been a coma when he was a kid. He'd been under it for nearly a year. They told him the beating was so bad he was lucky to be alive. He had trouble remembering, but what he could he spent years trying to block out with therapy. When someone had tried to tell him about it, he had immediately shut them down.

When they told him his mother had been killed by his father that night, he had told them stop. They never went any further. He didn't let them. Foster care was awful, but it was always better than that nightmare he had escaped.

The old man stepped forward and his face contorted. His eyes blacked and seemed to melt. Fur grew on his face. His teeth turned to fangs.

For the first time the man realized what the beast that had called Great Xir had resembled.

"You're... you're the beast..." the man stammered. "You're that... that.... stuffed..."

"I'm whatever I need to be, Daniel" the old man said, stopping him. "Your bitch mother couldn't understand that. You could never understand that and as for your slut..."

As he turned to Jen she jumped to her feet.

"Leave him alone dad!! Leave him the fuck alone!!"

She stumbled back to the ground. She sounded defiant, but she was clearly terrified and weak. Her knees slammed onto the dead sweet gum husks so hard they bled.

The old man grinned, stretched out his left hand and wagged the finger back and forth. Daniel's eyes grew wide but suddenly the old man was flanked by the naked members of the congregation, holding chained blood thirsty hounds in place. Each looked like a K9 version of his childhood toy tormentor.

The old man's face oozed together like grains of sand in an hourglass and the smiling priest appeared and then returned back to the half beast, half man form.

It was enough to shake him out of his shocked daze. He grabbed Jen and pulled her up. This time it was his turn to make her run and that's what he did. They ran, and ran and ran...