"Then her skin tightened into bumps. She felt it again, the sense of someone close by. That presence she’d imagined—no, I didn’t imagine it—beyond the boarded-up window. Its malevolence, its pure and shining hatred.

That presence was standing behind her. Giving off an overpowering desire to perform acts of cruelty. To mutilate, to desecrate, to inhale the agony of others."