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"This meeting of the Pineville town council, will now come to order! Mayor Del Woodzi now presiding."

Pat Humboldt pounded the gavel, as best one could on a folding card table. He was a very officious parliamentarian, having once been tri-county debate champ, reserve, in his junior year of high school.

"Yep, if Peter Shaw's Grampa hadn't got that old Chevy started in time to get him over to Stotts Turnout in time to meet that bus, it would have been me at the state capitol, and Pineville would have been put on the map," Pat was found of saying.

It wasn't as grandiose as it sounds, the debate topic for the day was, Resolved, Pinesville should be added to the official state atlas. Peter Shaw had lost miserably, to a girl, no less, and the town had never let him live it down.

There were fort-two folding chairs in the largest bay of the Pineville fire house, borrowed from the Family Center in the basement of The First United Church of God in Christ.

It would probably have been easier to just hold meetings there, since the townhall had been condemned for nearly a decade, but Les Bridgewater, resident secular atheist, had threatened to sue what was left of the city out of existence if they mixed church and state.

"Les, you're the only one not in a pew on Sundays out of all of us, so I don't guess I see how keeping the meeting in this drafty old garage, even in the dead of winter changes a damn thing," Dorothea Hodges had told him.

She'd said it right there in the middle of Pineville Eats Here, the local diner, which, in Pineville, was the equivalent of a story on CBS news. Les had just smiled and wiped the rest of his gravy off the plate with a biscuit. But, that was before.

Tonight, other than the gavel, the room was silent, although nearly every eye in the building was rimmed in red from lack of sleep and crying. It was clear the town was in crisis.

"We're here tonight to talk about the missing kids," Mayor Woodzi, who spent most of his time running Woodzi's Feed and Things, spat tobacco in a styrofoam cup and cleared his throat. "We been working on a plan to catch whatever it is been snatching them kids."

"Can't catch death," Elmer McCurdy, a scrawny, ninety year old in the back row said. "It's just like 1918, he said he'd be back, and back he come."

There were nods around the room and more than one set of eyes narrowed, knowingly, general consensus held that Elmer McCurdy, whose eldest brother was taken the last time, before Elmer was born, was right.

"They need to move that girl over to Oriole, before it's too late," someone said.

The voice was unfamiliar. Heads turned. Pineville was a town of 300 people, strangers were an oddity. No one could remember the last time one had wandered into a town meeting.

The man stood up.

"No one," he said,"From outside the town boundaries has lost a single child. Meanwhile, every night since since June 3rd, you fine people have lost two, right out of their beds."

They all knew what he was talking about. Although they'd taken it in turns to provide around the clock patrols, and nearly every man in town had been sleeping through the day and nearly drowning themselves in coffee to stay awake guarding their children, they'd been unsuccessful, until last night.

Bob Barker sat bolt upright. Something had awakened him. His back ground roughly against the panels of his own front door. His hips were numb, from the cold, hard oak floors. His sleepy fingers, wrapped tightly around the worn wooden stock of his shotgun.

It was a scream.

"Bob! Bob!"

Bob staggered to his feet and stumbled up the stairs where his wife Martha met him trembling, she pointed to their daughter's room, where a dim light glowed around the door.

"Why did you leave her alone?" he growled.

"Bob, I'm, I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I just stepped into the bathroom, but the door slammed tight and won't open!"

Bob tried the handle."Penny!" he roared. "Penny Barker, answer me!"

There was no answer, Bob pounded on the door. He threw his shoulder into the door, the wall rocking as he did so, it didn't budge. He alternated kicking and charging it.

"Whoever you are, in there, I've got a double barrel load of deer slugs in this gun and as soon as I get this door open, I'm going to blow a hole through you! Do you hear me! You won't have my daughter!"

Without pausing in his attack against the door, Bob called to his wife. "Martha, grab the pistol and get out to the yard, if anyone but Penny tries to come out her window, put a hole in them, aim for the body!"

Martha hesitated.

"Now, woman! There's no time to be sorry, or you'll end up like every other mother in this town! NOW!"

The shock did the trick. Bob was normally a soft spoken man, especially where Martha was concerned. She ran down the stairs, slid the hidden drawer under the dining table out and checked the cylinder of the heavy 45 revolver. She was a dead aim, and she'd had to shoot under stress before. The heavy steel calmed her nerves.

By the time Martha hit the lawn, she was no longer afraid. Her defensive instincts had kicked in. She ignored the sharp stubble of their sparse lawn and swung wide around the side of the house, looking up for Penny's single window.

She pointed the pistol toward it and cocked the hammer, careful to keep her finger off the trigger until she had a target. A greenish glow filled the glass, Martha could see shadows moving across the ceiling.

"Bob! There's something in there!" she screamed. "I'm going up there!"

Martha tied the belt of her terry cloth robe tighter, carefully uncocking the pistol, she slipped it into the back of the belt and leaped onto the rose trellis, only wincing once, as the long thorns raked her bare legs and the tops of her feet.

She scrambled across the slick, slightly damp shingles to the window and strained against it.

Normally, on a nice, early summer night like this one, the window would be open, saving the AC for when it was truly needed, but now it seemed locked. She peered through the slit in the draperies.

Her heart throbbed in her throat. Just that morning, she'd seen Carol Rombard coming out of Dr Martin, the town shrink's office, her face puffy and swollen. Her son, Brant had been one of the last two children to disappear from the sleepy little town of Pineville.

Whatever empathy Martha had felt for Carol, she was determined she would not be the target of it tomorrow.

Martha snatched the pistol from her belt, pulled the right sleeve of her robe over her hand and shielded her face with her left arm. She grasped the barrel of the gun and brought the heavy wooden grip down hard, shattering the glass.

There was a ghostly groan from inside the room. Penny screamed.

"I'm coming Penny, hold on!" Martha said, through gritted teeth.

She reached through the broken pane and twisted the latch, throwing the lower sash up hard with a bang. As she pushed through the drapes into the frigidly cold room, she stopped.

There, hovering over her bed by a good two feet, blankets trailing from her petrified form, was Penny, but what was above her nearly caused Penny Barker, a woman who could gut a deer in under ten minutes, to vomit.

A ghostly, hideous form, clung, seemingly from the ceiling, one arm gripped the center of Penny's night gown, holding her there. The creature's face turned toward Martha as she came through the drapes, a maggot eaten, bloody pulp of a face, eyeballs glowing with a blueish light, hung crazily in their sockets, the flesh around the ragged teeth, ripped back in jagged strips.

"You. Let. Her. Down." Martha Said, her voice a low dangerous purr.

"Does your wife have a temper?" Del Woodzi had once asked Bob.

Bob had laughed, "What woman worth anything doesn't a bit? But, with Martha, it's when she gets dead calm you need to worry."

She was dead calm now. Her hands worked smoothly, swinging the pistol into position, raking the hammer back in one, smooth, fluid motion. She found the center of the bloody thing's head and fired.

Penny dropped to the bed. The thing, whatever it was, gave a vicious scream, evaporating like so much smoke. And within seconds, Bob was through the door, which seemed to release in the instant the shot was fired.

That is why when Martha Barker stood up in the firehouse, not one sound was heard.

"I appreciate your concern, Mr, I don't believe I caught your name. But,I haven't left this town, except for two weeks every summer, since I was born. And if you think some monster can make me abandon my neighbors, when they need me most, you're sadly mistaken." She said. "What we need is the guts to track this thing down, and get the rest of those kids back."

"It's too late, Martha Barker, and while I appreciate your enthusiasm, surely you can't expect me to be enthused about losing Teddie, then sending my Bill on a fool's errand after that thing," Lottie Millwood said. "And no offense, but you've still got your daughter, so why don't you stick to protecting her, and let us figure out what to do about getting our kids back!"

Pat banged the gavel.

"Order! Order! Can we please follow procedure here?"

The room devolved into grumbling, which grew to a dull roar. Finally, the mayor stepped onto his folding chair.

"People! Pinveville! Hey!" he whistled and clapped.

Then the room exploded with noise. Captain Reynolds of the volunteer fire department hung from the driver's door of a small pumper truck in the next bay, where he'd bumped the siren into action.

"Thanks, Jim," Del said. He held up his hands, as people returned to their seats, alternately glowering at Reynolds and wagging their jaws to readjust their inner ears.

"Mr. Price, could you come on up here?" the mayor asked.

The man who'd suggested moving Penny to safety stepped forward.

"This, ladies and gentlemen, is the closest thing we've got to an expert on this. The state police have come, and gone. They've seen what we're dealing with, but frankly, don't want the publicity. We're on our own, and we've got," here he paused and looked at this watch, "seventeen minutes until it happens again to decide on a plan. So, can we listen to Mr. Price."

Don Price was a tall man. He looked confident. He was tall, with a square jaw and a distinct limp, his face was crisscrossed with fine scars. He'd survived something, that much was clear.

"Thank you sir. People of Pineville, I won't lie to you. I'm not happy to be here. I'm never happy when people have to call me in. Mrs. Barker, I meant no disrespect, and I'm sure you know best for your daughter," Price said. His voice had a soothing effect. "Here is what I suggest we do."

He laid out a plan and with 13 minutes to spare, the town went into action.

READ PART TWO