July 1981:

It is Jason who will remember it most vividly. Silently, he will often wonder if he can ever forget the ordeal.  As three families drop off four children, they say goodbye, and allow hopeful anticipation of a day two months in the future. An early fall day when they will return to this place, and see the improvements they all hope for.

But like always, Jason knows more. He feels the sinking sensation and rising dread, as the three cars make their way onto the dirt road leading out of the woods and away from the cabin. He is the one who knows all too well what the man in the tall boots has in store for them in that cabin. Perhaps out of his innate, base instincts, he also knows to remain silent.

It was first built during the American civil war, and had served as a sanatorium; briefly designated as the only place to house the criminally insane. It was the reason that the man known to some as Leland Quinley, when he purchased the long deserted cabin, had let out a small squeal, brushing his lip with a long, slender finger, an overgrown nail, arcing downward.

Leland had always been the type who relished to covet; appropriate from others. The children however, are a different story. The survival instincts, out of necessity, will take hold this summer. Happening for each of the four children in very unique and specific ways. For Savannah, the girl who will see it all, will see all human potential crimson red and various colors of distrust, after this summer she will become the girl who can in an instant go to her soft, deeply cerebral blue, miles away inside her head. Though she will always return to the crimson red.

Next is Jason. The peace maker. Who just like Savannah, knows all of it, all too well. Stoic and silent, he retreats inward for a time. The pain of what is to come, will ultimately prove too much for this young boy to consider. This of course, is unlike Ben, who at twelve years old is not yet aware his answer is as simple (therefore ultimately complicated), as one rare and superior genetic misfire. He doesn't know it yet, but that is exactly what is behind his visceral awareness of a deep and dark fear. The sick, groundless feeling of floating untethered, attached to nothing and no one. His fierce desire to become everyone's equally fierce protector, everyone's champion, can so easily been seen for what it is. But he has convinced himself that no one sees. Ben is, and always will be, alone. That, he thinks he knows.

But with Ben, it has been seen. Not by Savannah, instead by her sister, Serena. Serena George, the perfect girl who always, without question, finishes first. For her, mediocrity is always a hairs width from her back, a sharp and jagged blade waiting to drive through the facade of what she is convinced will ultimately reveal her as the perfect fraud. Her lines will be drawn, and her edges polished sharp, because for Serena, that is what success will require.

Today, four bright, gifted children leave their childhood behind and follow a slim man in tall boots through a cabin door. Once, may years ago, it had been called block ten, he tells the children. And though he has no reference for it now, it is Jason who will be the first to know the much darker aspect of Leland Quinley. Over the next two and a half months they will all get to know that side of the man, all too well.

Today:

The clouds in the November sky are thick and heavy, and cresting breaks can be seen on the surface of the lake, as the ancient carcass of the sick and twisted sadist, Leland Quinley, squeals. Slowly it moves its lips into a smile, slithering toward the cabin that has been deserted since that summer in 1981. There is much to prepare. His long graduated summer students, his three remaining apt pupils, will be arriving soon. Side by side on the dining room table, he lays the three masks made from pigs cloth, as the heavy sky opens, cracking thunder and pummeling the woods with sheets of rain.