The colors in the photograph had faded over the years, but you could tell that at one time they’d been bright. The five stood in front of a brick building and all smiled widely. They all wore the same tie-dyed T-shirts with a bizarre emblem on the chest. At first I thought it was some sort of peace sign. But no, that wasn’t it. I looked closer, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. The emblem looked like, I don’t know, a messed-up butterfly maybe. I read once about Rorschach blots, where different people see different things in the same vague images. It was a little like that, except the blots were black while this design had a host of colors. I looked again. Yes, I could clearly make out a butterfly. Near the bottom tips of the wings, there were two round… eyes, I guess. Animal eyes maybe. They seemed to glow.

Seriously creepy.

My gaze kept being drawn back to the girl in the center of the picture. She stood a little forward, as though she were the leader. She had waist-length blond hair lassoed with a purple headband. Her T-shirt was, uh, snug, if you know what I mean, tight across a rather curvy figure. Just as I was thinking that this particular hippie chick was kind of hot, a horrible realization hit me:

It was Bat Lady.

Ugh!

When my phone vibrated, I jumped again. I quickly pulled it into view and looked at the message. It was from Ema. The text was all in screaming caps: CAR COMING! GET OUT!

I put the photograph on the mantel and headed back toward the kitchen. I kept low, nearly commando-crawling on the dirty linoleum. When I reached the wall, I rose slowly and peeked out the window into the backyard. In the woods, the cloud of dirt settled.

I could see the car now.

It was pure black with tinted windows. A limousine or town car or something. It had stopped in front of Bat Lady’s garage. I waited, not sure what to do. Then the passenger door opened.