Sam got to his feet. His hands were shaking. His heart was a trapped bird against his ribs. He looked at the thing—at the empty face wearing his father’s clothes—and then he looked at the woods.
The thing in the chair had his father’s plaid shirt, the one with the torn pocket where he used to keep his Skoal. It had his father’s hands—knuckles like walnuts, the left pinkie bent sideways from a long-ago fight with a hay baler. But the face was wrong. The face was a smooth, gray expanse of skin where features should have been. No eyes. No mouth. Just two small slits where a nose might have been, flaring slightly with each of the house’s breaths. He-s Out There
“You can fix it,” the thing said softly. “You can go out there and find him. Bring him home. Bury him proper. And then you can stop running.” Sam got to his feet
The chair creaked.
While playing outside, the girls discover a long red string leading to a tea party set up in the forest with mysterious cupcakes. Maddie eats one and becomes ill, leading Laura to realize they are not alone. He looked at the thing—at the empty face
“He would have what? Hit you? Screamed at you?” The thing was close now. Sam could smell it—not rot, not decay, but something worse. The smell of a basement after a flood. The smell of things that should have stayed buried. “He was your father, Sam. And you left him out there. You let the woods take him.”
When the daughters find a trail of red string leading into the forest, they discover a tea party set for "John, Paul, George, and Ringo." This eerie discovery marks the beginning of a calculated psychological game. The daughters soon fall ill after eating cupcakes left by an unknown figure, and Laura realizes that a masked predator—known simply as "John"—is watching their every move. The Antagonist: Who is John?