Kyle was near the edge of the woods on the far end of the yard when he first saw the beasts.

He had been dreaming, yet it was the type of vivid dream young children have, where upon walking, the veil between the real and the imaginary becomes almost translucent.

Kyle Woeck, his sheets drenched in sweat and stumbled downstairs for breakfast, anything

to take his mind off the nightmare.

Ellen Grady knew something was wrong as she watched her youngest son drown his pancakes in syrup.

His eyes glazed as if they too had been coated in Vermont's own.

Is everything okay, sweetie?

She asked him.

Half hoping he would finish a fork full of buttermilk flapjacks before answering.

But her son merely nodded.

He looked pasty white, the color of his napkin, and Ellen could see that his hands trembled.

After washing his breakfast down with orange juice and avoiding his mother's gaze,

Kyle said, I had another bad dream.

This had been nothing new in the Grady household since they had moved from Philadelphia to the country.

Michael Grady, Kyle's father, had wanted to relocate to rural and Connecticut for the past five years. It'll be good for the kids, Mike had

told his wife. Not that she needed her arm twisted. The city had been fun when

they were single, but it was no place to raise children. had been

fun when they were single, but it was no place to raise children. Their car had been broken into several times,

and some of Kyle's classmates had already begun vaping,

and one of them was hospitalized.

The house they were looking at in the northwest corner of Ohio,

a rustic three-story colonial, had 10 acres, More than enough room for the vegetable

...