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who did his growing up in the 1980’s and 1990’s, it was a living room. The space was wide-open but stuffy, as if whoever lived here hadn’t opened a window in decades.
    And it was empty. Not one piece of furniture had been set up. No TV, no couch, no rugs or carpets; nothing. Just a cavernous shell of a room.
    Under different circumstances Earl might have found the emptiness unsettling, but not tonight. Tonight Earl Manning was suffering the early stages of a monster hangover, and smacking his head on the side of the Porsche hadn’t helped. Plus—and here was the worst part—Earl had no idea where the hell he was or what the hell he was doing here, although he had pretty much concluded by now that he wasn’t going to get laid by one of the most beautiful, sexy women he had ever seen inside the boundaries of Paskagankee, Maine. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
    In fact, although he didn’t know what was about to happen, Earl guessed it wasn’t going to be good. He reached for his cell phone. It was gone. That traitorous bitch Raven must have appropriated it while he was passed out in the car. Or maybe he had left it at the Ridge Runner; he couldn’t remember. Damn, it’s hard to think when you’re halfway between drunk and sober.
    But Earl knew one thing: he had had enough. He came here thinking he would be alone with Raven, and instead the shadowy-looking man had forced him inside this house. Looking at it now, he concluded that allowing the guy to push him around had been a mistake. He should have stood up for himself immediately.
    Well, it wasn’t too late. He could still fix their wagon. He would simply refuse to move another inch until the shadowy man or, preferably, Raven explained to his satisfaction just what the hell they thought they were doing. Not one inch.
    Earl walked roughly six feet into the living room that might have been called a parlor by his grandmother and stopped, turning to voice his objection to this whole charade, to complain about being treated like a sap by that little black-haired bitch. He spread his feet and set his shoulders, wobbling thanks to all the alcohol coursing through his system. He turned, ready to demand some answers, to know just what in the holy hell this was all about, and as he did, the shadowy man stepped up close, too close, violating his personal space.
    The man whipped his right hand over his head in a circular motion like Pete Townshend making his guitar scream during the concert by The Who Earl had seen down in Portland in ‘96, only instead of holding a guitar pick in his hand like Townshend he held a large plastic bag. The bag fluttered through the air and down over Earl’s head and Earl immediately had two thoughts: 1) It really is true that alcohol dulls your reflexes, and 2) It appeared he would be doing the screaming instead of a guitar.
    A heavy length of twine, almost but not quite a rope, had been threaded through the mouth of the plastic bag, and after yanking the bag over Earl’s head, the man pulled the ends apart like a garrote. The bag closed neatly around Earl’s neck just under his jawline. In his panic Earl drew in a deep breath to scream, knowing somewhere inside his Budweiser-addled brain that he was making a mistake, that it was the absolute worst thing he could do, but he did it anyway. He couldn’t help himself.
    The bag sucked into his open mouth and Earl gagged and coughed it back out. He shook his head violently back and forth as if registering extreme dissatisfaction with this turn of events, which, in a way, was exactly what he was doing. He struck out with his fists, not punching as much as flailing wildly, and felt a millisecond of satisfaction when he connected solidly with some part of the man’s body, although which part he hit, he had no idea and didn’t much care.
    After that tiny victory, though, things went downhill fast. Earl stopped flailing and grabbed with both hands at the twine/rope being pulled with steadily