Human beings are animals too, so...

Hope was only ten centimeters from the note. He could reach out and touch it, and putting it back in his pocket would take less than three seconds.

If Wilbur had not been standing right beside him.

"Is this yours?" Wilbur asked.

"No, of course not." Hope replied, "How could I have something like that?"

God knew where Number Four Hope had gotten that newspaper.

"This looks like the Arkham GG-Man." Lavinia crouched down as well. "Hope, I brought you this kind of newspaper the day before yesterday."

Ah... ah... was that so... You gave it to me.

What now?

Tell Wilbur he had amnesia and had forgotten about it, then casually put the note back into his pocket as though it were perfectly ordinary.

That sounded good, as long as Wilbur did not force him to hand over the note... Well, he could say it was his privacy, but did Hope even have a right to privacy in Whateley House?

While Hope hesitated, Wilbur crouched down. His black-furred hand reached for the note, intending to pick it up.

Hope bit his fingernail... Ptoo, ptoo. Filthy.

There was no time to think. No matter what was written inside, Wilbur absolutely could not see it.

He would take a gamble. Gamble that Wilbur did not care about this.

"Wait—"

Wait a second, I just remembered, this might be mine. It was in my pocket just now.

Hope had barely opened his mouth when he was cut off by a harsher voice forcing its way in. "Take your filthy hands off it, Wilbur!"

Wilbur looked up in surprise.

It was Paul. Other than Hope, he was the closest person to the note. "That's mine! Don't touch it with your hands!"

Paul's friends, who had scattered earlier, gathered around again. They stared at Wilbur with hostile expressions.

Wilbur looked at Hope.

"What I meant was, wait, it might be Paul's," Hope said.

Wilbur nodded and raised both hands to show that he meant no harm and had not touched the paper.

"All the better. We've wasted enough time already," Wilbur said, then practically dragged Lavinia and Hope back.

Hope saw Paul and the others waving at him as if saying goodbye. Paul waved the most enthusiastically, and Hope suspected he had the note clutched in his hand.

Hope could not see clearly, but he guessed Paul winked at him.

Just one eye. The silent signal children used when they were up to no good.

They arrived at the third residence. It was the first single-story house, making it seem rather low.

It was dilapidated. Half of it was made entirely of wood, while the other half had cracked brick walls reinforced with sheet metal in several places. It was also tiny, not even half the size of the houses they had seen before.

But it was beautiful. It stood in a garden, where gold, crimson, and ivory white bloomed behind a low, battered fence.

Hope crouched down. They were roses of every color.

"This is the Williams house. Old Williams lived here alone, but he's dead now. He died of old age just a couple days ago... There's someone in the house, but I don't know her. You don't need to care about her either."

"Probably the old man's relative," Hope said, crouching to stroke a petal. "It's beautiful here. The old man must have been a very good person while he was alive."

"No, he had no relatives, and he had a terrible temper. Nobody around here liked him. You're always strange, just like that Old Williams. These flowers are useless. Even as herbs, there are better ones." Wilbur replied, "Come on. Let's go to the next house."

"Wait."

Hope stopped him.

"What is it? You'd better not waste time."

Hope asked, "What exactly are we going to do?"

"What are we going to do? I thought I already told you. We're going to see your pets."

"But we're just visiting the different houses. We wouldn't have passed those last two homes on the way here from the house, and the direction we're going next is another huge detour."

Wilbur looked at him. Under that gaze, Hope suddenly had a premonition: all the leisure and comfort of tonight was about to end here.

"Oh, really?" Wilbur's tone carried a trace of mockery. "I thought you could figure it out without me telling you."

Figure it out?

Figure out what?

Figure out that they were not going to see pets at all?

No...

He really had shown me some things. He had even carefully introduced them because he was afraid I would not recognize them...

At every place, he made sure I saw everyone inside before leaving...

Hope looked at Wilbur. "You..."

"Has Hope lost his memory again?" Lavinia's eyes widened. "You can't be blamed for not knowing, then. Wilbur likes to call these people your pets, so you've been looking at your pets all along."

Fuck!

"That isn't funny at all," Hope said. "That name is in terrible taste."

Wilbur grinned. Hope had thought he could not smile. "I have no need to respect people who won't live long."

Hope frowned. "What do you mean? They're all healthy."

Wilbur did not answer. "Aren't you curious why they are your pets? Not anyone else's. Yours."

"Why?"

It was Lavinia again, eager to show herself off. "Because they're under your protection, Hope. You used your own life to force Father's hand, and only then did Father change the plan."

Lavinia's father... that sick old man Hope had still never met... Both Lavinia and Wilbur respected him deeply...

A plan... What plan did he have...

"I don't understand," Hope said.

Wilbur clenched both hands into fists and held them beside his temples.

Lavinia made the same gesture.

This mother and son could actually be so in sync.

They spoke in unison:

"Praise the great King of Kings!"

"Hope," Wilbur said, "the residents of Dunwich were supposed to become nourishment for the great King of Kings."

The surroundings were filled with those damned birdcalls, shrill and piercing, as though they were echoing Wilbur's words.

The great... King of Kings?

Hope felt his head begin to ache.

"You're cultists?"

"Cultists? If that's what you like to call us, then yes." Wilbur was utterly unconcerned.

Hope bit his fingernail.

Nourishment... They wanted to sacrifice every resident here to the Evil God?

So when he had told the children, "They don't know anything yet," he meant they did not know they had already been made into sacrifices?

This "Grandfather" had wanted to sacrifice this place long ago, but Number One Hope had stopped him.

Threatening them with his life...

But how could they do it? So many people lived here, while Whateley House was practically empty.

Were there many people who believed in that so-called King of Kings? Enough that Old Whateley could decide whether the people here lived or died?

Or...

An ominous thought gradually surfaced.

Could that great King of Kings really exist?

"So what does 'seeing my pets' mean?" Hope asked.

"You requested it yourself. Every month, you come out to make sure they're still alive."

"My standing in the family isn't low, then?"

Wilbur did not deny it. "But right now, you can neither run nor die."

Neither run nor die...

"What are the consequences?"

"Then your pets will have no reason to continue existing."

Fuck!

Madman!

How do I know whether he's telling the truth? Maybe he's taking advantage of my "amnesia" and making up an excuse to stop me from escaping?

As if he had guessed Hope's thoughts, Wilbur crouched beside him and pinched the rose Hope had been touching.

"Do you know?" he said. "Once, you tried to escape while you were out seeing your pets. Do you know what happened afterward?"

He spat out several syllables in succession with strange pronunciation. They did not sound like any language Hope knew, or even something a human could produce.

Hope saw Wilbur's numbers change: 0.98, 1.65, 1.21, 2.99.

The fourth number had been 3.01 just moments ago.

The petal in Hope's hand suddenly went limp.

The entire rosebush before him was withering at a visible speed.

"This is a spell," Wilbur said. "I commanded it to die with a spell."

Hope shuddered.

"Ah!" A brief scream suddenly came from within the rosebushes.

Wilbur and Hope stood up at the same time and saw someone crouching on the path behind the flowers, though neither knew when he had gotten there.

The person's mouth hung open. "Mon... monster... monster..."

It was Little Brick. Hope had been waiting for his parents to give him a proper scolding.

Those strange syllables came from Wilbur's mouth again.

2.98.