Post Mortem 22373g

POST MORTEM

TABITHA SWANN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

POST MORTEM GHOST PLAYER SLASHED GHOST HOUSE HEATHER VAN HELSING THE DARK SHIFT

“Hey, Marcia. You heard?” “Heard what?” “Someone sent in a snuff tape.” Detective James Marcia looked up from his computer screen and could see his partner was almost twitching with excitement. It was all he could do to hide a grin. “Some really messed up shit,” Frank said. “For real?” James said. “You sure it’s not just kids making horror movies? You a while back we had-” Frank shook his head. “For real,” he said. “Least that’s what I heard. Captain’s holding a special briefing right now. He wants everyone there.” James raised his eyebrows. “Shit,” he said. “He gonna show it?” Frank shrugged. “That’s what I heard,” he said, before latching onto a ing officer and calling after him, “Hey, you heard about this snuff tape?” The overall crime rate in Detroit was at a ten-year low, but the murder rate showed no signs of slowing. People were good at finding reasons to kill each other, James figured, even when everything else was on the up. He was approaching the end of his first year at Homicide and, even though it had always been part of the plan, there was no way he could’ve prepared himself for the sights tucked away in Detroit’s dark corners. And it seemed to be getting worse. Everything seemed to be getting worse. James took a seat at the back of the briefing room and sipped at his coffee with four sugars. The thought of seeing someone murdered on the projection screen up front made his stomach turn, but he couldn’t skip this. It was their job to be a set of eyes that would look at the ugliest parts of humanity, so that everyone else could look away. The chatter died down as Captain Warren walked in, nodding

to an officer who was fidgeting with the computer. “It on there?” he said. “Yes, sir.” “I don’t know what you’ve heard,” Warren said, turning to the room, “so I’m going to cut to the chase. We received a video in the mail this morning. Forensics have taken a look. The M.E. has taken a look. It’s very convincing.” Some of the officers exchanged glances. Frank looked over at James, but he sipped his coffee and kept his eyes on the blank projection screen. James wasn’t ready to see someone die. His mind wasn’t straight. It hadn’t been for the last few months. He had tried to get himself together by throwing himself into the job, but it doesn’t work the same when your job is cleaning up after killers and rapists. It doesn’t give you that order and that routine that other people find when they’re trying to pull themselves out of a hole by spending a little more time at the office. Homicide work isn’t clean or predictable and working harder doesn’t always guarantee a better outcome. You can’t fix your life by throwing yourself at your work when your work is a bottomless pit of depravities and dead ends. Warren clicked a remote and a still image of a small, bare concrete room came up, lit with only a single spotlight from above. The quality was bad, as if it had been shot on VHS. In the middle of the frame stood a person facing away from the camera, naked but for a black hood over his or her head. The body was thin, a woman, but maybe not. The contrast created by the harsh light disguised the curves. The person’s hands were in front of them, facing away from the camera. I can’t tell if that’s the killer or the victim, James thought. “The timestamp in the corner, if it’s accurate, says it was taken two nights ago at around two a.m. O’ Brian and Gallagher are the primaries on this, but we’re gonna need all the bodies we can spare. This might not be related to the Midtown thing and the thing at the dockyard, but that’s what the press is going to say, so we have to look sharp here, you get me?” “We finally get a look at this asshole, Captain?” Frank called out. Warren frowned. “Fuck did I just say?” he said. “It might not be related. Different MO. No body.”

“No body?” came a voice from the front. “What the fuck are we looking for, then?” Captain Warren was two weeks in the job and had yet to earn his stripes, by the boys’ reckoning. He got in because the mayor owed him a favor. The boys, they didn’t owe him shit, and they let him know in as small a ways as they could get away with. Straightening his back, Warren said, “Watch the fucking video,” and nodded to the officer at the computer. James’s nights were difficult enough without adding witnessing a murder on top of it all. He hadn’t slept more than four hours a night in over a month. He could barely eat. When he walked away from Alicia, after two years together, he walked away from a large part of himself. All his old habits needed to be recalibrated. His coping mechanisms for being alone, they had, over the years with her, been completely eradicated, replaced with coping mechanisms, instead, for her violent temper. He fell into the relationship on the way down from another, and things were comfortable for a long time, so James became James and Alicia, and it was as if she had always been there. When the periodic panic attacks started, James realized something had to be done. He would wake up sweating and shaking in the night. Whenever he would get a moment alone, in the bathroom, when taking out the trash, all he could do was imagine life without her constant put-downs, her infantile screaming fits, and her grotesque narcissism which left James always on defense, watching his every action, policing his every word. When Alicia was kind and loving and gentle, there was not a kinder, more gentle or more loving person. And, equally, when she turned, James had rarely seen such ferocity short of actual violence, which she resorted to only twice. He needed her when she was his partner, his friend, and she was such an effective enemy that she could convince him that he was utterly worthless and drive him to near-suicide when she wasn’t. Even now that he was free of her - which took more strength than he knew he had, and a trip to the hospital after she threw a dish at his face - it took everything not to think of her. He would catch himself lying awake at three in the morning, running through old arguments, imagining new ones.

He could barely look himself in the eye. And while he dealt with bodies every few weeks, the possibility of seeing someone’s final moments on camera, when he himself had fought so hard the temptation to self-inflict his own, drew the color from his face and set his jaw tight. I won’t watch, he thought. I’m a back-up. I’m a door-to-door guy on this. I don’t need to see this. James took out his pad and pencil and set them on the small desk in front of him. The first frame of the video, showing the hooded figure standing in the spotlit room, stuttered and then moved. The camera was still, set up on a tripod. This is a performance, he thought. The audio track played only the loud reverberation of static. James kept his head facing the screen as he dipped his eyes to the pad on the desk. “Turn off the damn lights,” someone up front said, and they were dimmed. The room, buried deep in the old part of the building with no natural light, was illuminated then almost entirely by the glow of the projector. Rolling white lines moved up and down the damaged VHS image, washing the desk in front of James in short tides of light. “Who the hell shoots on video?” said one of the younger guys, before he was quietened with a punch to the arm. For the first minute of the video, there was only a still image of the hooded figure, with the low buzzing of the audio track the only way to tell it was running. No one spoke. James glanced up for a second when a shadow moved in front of the camera. Stop, he told himself. Just stay quiet and look down and it’ll be done in a second. You don’t need this right now. The sound was harsh, tinny, obviously recorded on the camera’s on-board mic. The swish of clothing and the footsteps on concrete had a sharpness to them. The shadow moved towards the masked figure. The masked figure turned as James looked up and he saw that the hands were bound. The shadow was dressed all in black, with a biker jacket of some kind on. The biker grabbed the bound figure’s hands and span them around. It was a woman.

“Please!” she screamed through her hood. “Please!” The biker forced her to her knees. James looked away as her hood was yanked off. He looked down at his pad and started pretending to take notes, scribbling without forming words. He heard the sound of a struggle, a man grunting, and he locked his eyes firmly on his pad. The noises continued, but James kept himself from looking. After a minute or so, James became aware that the man on the desk in front, a friendly old-timer he had drank with a few times, was shifting in his chair. He seemed to look back at James. The volume of the video started to increase as there was more activity. James still didn’t look. He stared at his pad, emptying his mind. There was whispering up front as presumably the video got more graphic. James felt deeply ashamed that he couldn’t look, but he knew that if he did it might break him. Not right away. Maybe not for a few days or weeks. But it would eat at him. He could feel it. He wasn’t prepared to witness something like that. “Shut the fuckin’ thing off right now!” someone at the front shouted. There was a shuffling of chairs. Someone was lunging for the computer. James looked up. Almost every other person in the room was looking right at him. The video was paused. Frank stood behind the computer, breathless, looking at James, visibly shaken. No-one spoke to James. Those who weren’t looking at him were nudging other people, asking what the fuck was going on. And then James looked at the screen. A man, the biker, whose face was just above the top of the frame, had hold of the woman by the hair. He had a knife to her exposed neck. And the hood was gone. The woman on her knees, the victim, was Alicia.

She was wide-eyed and dripping in sweat, about to scream. James jumped up from his chair, knocking it to the floor.

*

Other cities got snow, a thick carpet on the ground and an attractive sprinkling in the air, just in time for Christmas. Detroit had sleet and a layer of brown slush, and three more dead women. Four months had ed since the Alicia tape had arrived and James was doing all he could to stay on the right side of a suspension. The case had consumed him. Three more victims had appeared since. They found a body shortly after, torn apart and thrown in the river. Literally, limb from limb. The parts were blue and bloated and chewed up by whatever fish remained in the still, murky stew of the Detroit river. The woman in the video was confirmed as Alicia. Two separate IDs, including James, and she hadn’t been seen after the timestamp on the video. Her apartment was empty. Nothing was packed. Nothing was missing. It looked like she hadn’t been there for weeks. The theory was she’d been grabbed on her way home from Alvino’s, a mid-range Italian restaurant where she’d recently taken up waitressing. The woman in the video had to be Alicia. But the parts in the river didn’t belong to her. Not the arms, not the legs, not the severed, near-skinless head, and not the half-eaten remains of the torso. Neither did the body in the sewage outlet in Farmington. And neither did the headless corpse under the white forensics tent under an over in Brush Park. They had dealt with serial murders before, but this was something else. Everyone could feel it. The Alicia video was a direct communication to the police department from the killer. The only two things connecting each crime scene, besides the obvious brutality of the kills, were a particular set of marks,

almost claw marks, and the phone calls James would get on the night of the three murders after Alicia. The first yanked him out of a nightmare. He was running through a labyrinth of corridors that all looked like the top floor of his house, the house he had shared with Alicia. Somewhere, off in the distance, he could hear her screams and her death rattles, but he never reached the end of the corridor. However hard he ran, the screams never got any closer. For a minute, James assumed it was a faulty line. And then he heard it. Someone was breathing, excited. It wasn’t a faulty line. It was a faulty person. He didn’t take it seriously at the time, but when the time of death of the next victim was confirmed as being around an hour before his phone call, it made him uneasy. When happened a second time, it made him afraid. The third time, he was expecting it. And the caller hadn’t disappointed, waking James from his fitful sleep at three this morning. It has to be personal, James told himself. Alicia was the only one he filmed. Or, at least, the only tape he sent in. He might have filmed others. But he wanted James to see Alicia. Why? he thought. “This one,” Frank said, while texting and not looking James in the eye, “she’s basically mincemeat. Killed someplace else and dumped. Must’ve brought her in a fuckin’ sack. I think...” Frank looked up from his phone, waited for a medical examiner to walk by, and checked no-one else was in earshot. “I think he’s eating pieces, you know?” Frank said. “You’re... You’re sure?” James said. He took a breath and looked around the empty house, with its peeling wallpaper and broken floorboards. He itched at the Vicks rub under his nose as it began to tickle. “It would fit the pattern.” Frank nodded. James noticed how ridiculous he looked with his tiny Hitler moustache of white cream under his nose, which did almost nothing to combat the smell of decay. But it was part of the ritual.

James was off the case - he had never been on the case - but he was following it closely. It wasn’t hard to squeeze information out of Frank, who had ed as a third lead investigator. James’s own partner carried two investigations, two unsolvable gang shootings, while he pored over the files of this serial case and hounded the team responsible for the investigation. The press had picked up the story quickly enough after some asshole in the briefing room leaked that James was involved with the victim. In his description of what happened to Alicia, the guy let slip that it was brutal and total, with shreds of skin and sprays of blood thrown in the air. It was, he said anonymously, like watching a bear attack. Reporters started referring to the murders as “the bear attacks” and, with about as much imagination as James had come to expect from them, they had since dubbed the killer “The Bear.” “They find any teeth marks?” James said. “Anything like that? Those fuckers get any fingerprints yet?” Frank shook his head. “Nothing useable. For real, now,” he said, “it looks like it could’ve just been a fuckin’ bear, you know? This was Alaska, we’d be on a bear hunt, for sure.” James sighed and looked around. His hand began to shake, so he put it in his pocket. “Say, are you OK, Marcia?” Frank said. He put a hand on his shoulder. “You holding up OK?” “I’m fine.” “You know, you want to be careful right now.” James avoided his gaze. “Everyone knows you’re drinking, maybe using too.” “Look-” James started. Frank put up his hands. “Hey, man,” he said. “I been there myself. I know how it is. I ain’t fit to judge nobody.” James nodded.

“What I’m sayin’ is, people know. The chief, he’s aware. And when the newspapers stop taking an interest in this son of a bitch, he’s gonna find a way to let you go or put you out of sight. Just... think about that, OK? Think about slowing it down. This is a hard time, but hard times don’t last forever. The fuck ups you make while you’re having them? They can stick around.” “Sure thing, Frank.” On his way back to the car, James took a sip from his hip flask. He had fallen off a cliff since the Alicia tape and he knew it. There was an attempt to stay on the right side of human life, but James knew he was circling the drain. He loved her as much as he hated her, and when she was alive she was both the sweetest and the cruelest person he had ever met. But, now, all he could were the good times. When he closed his eyes, he saw her smile for a few seconds and then her death. Of course, he had to watch the tape right through. He didn’t try to prepare himself. There are no preparations that can be made for something like that. But when he saw her throat open up, he felt something inside him shutting down for good. Alicia’s neck was ripped open with a knife from ear to ear. The tape became clouded with static after that, clearing only for a moment to show her lifeless body on the ground, her bloodshot eyes near-enough bulging out of her sockets. The images would never go away, and the sounds woke him every night. Another sound caught his attention as he opened the door to his unmarked sedan. Somewhere under the low roar of traffic on the over above, James could hear crying. He closed his door and turned. Around the ing structures of the over were the remnants of a makeshift village of boxes and tents and sheets over broken down, smashed-in automobiles sat on bricks. As soon as the police showed in full force with the sunrise, after the first call from a patrolman, the village under the over emptied out. Or at least it appeared to. James moved towards the source of the sound, a 1980s Buick rusted full of holes with not a shard of glass left in its windows or lights. James placed his hand on his weapon and unbuttoned his holster. He knew that if he shot anyone in his current condition, as poisoned as he was with uppers and alcohol, that his career would be over, but other paranoias overtook that one.

As he approached, the sound of the crying stopped. His bumbling footsteps had given him away. Shit, he thought. Well, no point being quiet now. “Police,” he said. “Come on out.” The front of the Buick had lost its seats and the floors had rusted right through. Weeds grew up from the ground beneath into the car’s interior. In the back, the seats had been slashed and the stuffing pulled half out. It smelled as if the car had been used as the village bathroom. A blanket in the back foot well shifted and the gaunt, pale face of a teenage girl appeared. “Hey!” James said. “Come on out of there.” He reached in and grabbed at the girl, but she jerked back and scrambled out of the rear window. James lurched around the car and threw himself at her, grabbing her arm and dragging her to the floor. “Get the fuck-!” she started screaming. James put his hand over her mouth. “Shut the fuck up unless you want everyone else to know you were here,” he said. She calmed and he stood her up, removing his hand. “You saw something?” he said, clipping his holster shut over his weapon with one hand and gripping her arm with the other. She shook her head. “Bullshit,” he said. “Why were you hiding?” “I was- I was sleeping,” she said. James studied her face. She could be no older than fifteen, he thought. She was stick-thin and her eyes were wide and dark. Signs of prolonged drug use. He looked down at her arm and saw needle tracks like spider’s footprints up the inside.

“I didn’t see nothin’, OK?” she said, pulling away. James pulled her back. “Look,” he said, “I don’t give a fuck who you are. I don’t give a fuck where you sleep or what you do with your life. I’ve got...” He pulled out his wallet and took out all his cash. “I’ve got nearly three hundred dollars here,” he said. “Either you can talk to me and walk away three hundred dollars richer or we book in down at the station and your name gets in all the newspapers.” She said nothing, glancing down at the money. “I heard you crying,” James said. “You saw something, am I right? You can have the money even if you didn’t, as long as I believe you.” She mumbled, “I didn’t see anything.” Her hands were shaking. James stuffed the money back in his wallet. “Wait,” she said. He looked up at her and let go of her arm. He glanced around and no-one had noticed her yet. He nodded for her to follow him around the side of the column a little more. When they got there, he said, “What did you see? I’m not playing around. This fuckin’ guy, he’s done it before and he’s gonna keep doing it until we catch him or kill him.” “Which do you want to do?” the girl said, brushing her tangled, black hair from her face. James felt his jaw shut tight with anger. His eyes must have given her his answer, because she continued. “It wasn’t a guy,” she said. James took a step back. “What?” “It wasn’t a guy I saw.” “What did you see?”

She rubbed at the track marks on her arms. “It was a woman,” she said. “She drove up in a car, an old station wagon, I think. She dragged some blanket out the back seat with something in it. Thought she was just dumping some trash, you know?” “Say that again.” “That she was dumping-” “No. The first bit.” “It was a woman.” James did the calculations in his head, imagining a woman murdering the victims. The killer in the Alicia video was clearly a man. We’re dealing with an accomplice, he thought. Shit. “Did you get a good look at her?” “It was dark, but-” “Did you see her face?” “Clear as anything,” she said. “Clear as I can see you now. I was right nearby when she showed up. I think...” “What?” “I think she saw me.” The girl looked around. “Don’t worry about that,” James said. He pressed his money into her hand. “Describe her.” She pocketed the cash. “I don’t know,” she said. “She just looked kind of... normal.” “White? Black? What? How tall?” “White,” she nodded. “Not too tall.”

“Hair?” “Long, dark.” “What was she wearing?” “Dark. She was in dark clothes. All black, I think. A black jacket with a stripe on the shoulder, but not like a military thing.” “Like a biker jacket?” The girl shrugged. James pulled out his phone. He had taken pictures of frames of the video. He pulled up his photo gallery on his phone as the girl watched. The picture was a shot of the man, his face just above the frame, in his jacket, holding Alicia by the hair as he held a knife to her throat. “Oh, my god,” the girl said. She brought her hand to her mouth. “That’s it?” James said. She looked terrified. That wasn’t it. It was something else. The girl was shaking her head. “What? What’s wrong? You recognize the man?” “No,” she said. “The woman.” James looked down at the picture and back up at the girl. “That’s the woman,” she said. She pointed with a trembling finger. “She’s who I saw drop off the body.” “You serious?” James said. The girl nodded. James grabbed her hard on her arm. “You’re absolutely sure?” She nodded again. James swiped on his phone to change the picture. He hadn’t taken any photos,

other than those of Alicia’s death video, since he and Alicia had broken up. The next picture was of him and Alicia at a bar, a happy selfie. She held the camera and placed her head next to his. It had been taken after a furious row. Most photographs of them had been, but you would never tell from her smile. The girl looked up at James and tried to take a step back. “You know her?” she said. “Is it her?” James said. “Fucking look at her face and tell me. Was it her you saw?” “Yes!” the girl said. “Let me go or I’ll scream, I swear to God.” “You’re sure? You’re absolutely certain?” “I told you, I’m fucking sure!” the girl said. She kicked him in the crotch and his legs collapsed beneath him. He released her and cupped himself, lying on his side in agony. His phone lay on the floor beside him. He looked at Alicia’s smiling face with a million thoughts running through his head. One thought recurred more than any other. Oh, God, he thought. She’s not dead.

*

He didn’t sleep for two nights. He spoke to no-one. His phone rang sporadically: the station checking in on him, his partner seeing if he was OK at first, and then cursing him with later voice messages. On the third night, he fell into a deep sleep in his chair, his head dropping back into dreams that were frightening enough to wake him and came too thick and fast to recall once he awoke. He dreamed Alicia was sat in his lap, as she had done dozens of times in that very chair, in a lounge with picture hooks and no pictures and a half-filled bookshelf. He had removed every trace of her from his life. He couldn’t look at her. He could feel her stroking his hair.

The phone brought him back out again. Unknown caller. It was gone three a.m. “Hello?” James said. Silence. “Say something, you fucking coward,” he said. He heard the sound of breathing. He paused and listened closely. He closed his eyes. “Alicia?” he said. The breathing stopped. He heard a small laugh. There was a knock at the door. James jumped up. He walked through to the hall and looked at the frosted glass in the front door. The orange streetlights usually cast a faint glow through the glass, but not tonight. Someone was in the way. The knock came again. The person behind the door was taller than Alicia. James walked quietly back to the lounge and pulled his handgun from a desk drawer. When he re-entered the hallway, the shadow on the other side of the door was gone. The cool orange light of the street fell over James’s face. He chambered a bullet and then reached to open the door. As he touched the handle, there came another knock, lighter this time. He looked up. There was no shadow in the small window. He pulled the door open. Alicia stood on his doorstep, dressed in black, in a black biker jacket, playing with her hair coyly and smiling. “Hi, honey,” Alicia said.

James stumbled back away from the door. He made no effort to hide his gun. Alicia saw it and frowned. “Are you going to invite me in?” she said. He couldn’t find his voice. He looked around, studying the environment for flaws, for inconsistencies that might tell him he was still asleep. But there were none. Alicia walked inside, into the light. Her skin was white, like porcelain, and her eyes were darker than before, almost with no irises. When she smiled, her teeth looked crooked. No, James thought. Not crooked. Jagged. “I’ve been enjoying our late-night chats, Jimmy,” she said. “My little James. You look good.” “You...” James said. He hadn’t pointed his gun at anyone in three years, not since he was a uniform. He had never even raised his voice at Alicia. He raised his gun and aimed it at Alicia’s face. She ducked down and covered her head with her hands. “What are you doing?!” she screamed. James immediately lowered the weapon. “I- I’m...” She stood up and moved fast. In under a second, she had cut through his chest with one slashing motion and he dropped the gun. He fell back and turned to run. Before he reached the back door, he felt his knee explode as a bullet flew through one side and out the other. In the time it took him to scream once with all the breath he had in his lungs, he had fallen into unconsciousness.

*

Where am I? James thought. Am I dead? The darkness was total. He turned his head and felt rough cloth against his skin: a hood. The hood was torn off and the bright lights blinded him. “What the fuck?” he said. He moved to stand, but his arms were tied against the back of the chair and his legs were bound together. Plastic ties cut into his flesh, drawing blood. As his vision adjusted, he could hear footsteps on gravel and the gentle hum of a cassette whirring. She’s making a video, he thought. The James Marcia death tape. He rocked back and forth in his chair to tip it, but it was bolted down. “What the fuck?!” he screamed. “Let me up, you fucking-!” “What?” Alicia moved in close to his face, blocking out the light. His vision flooded back and her face rushed into view, her eyes dried and dead, but moving, and her teeth yellowed and broken into rough, sharp edges. She smelled of decay. Her face was contorted into a snarl, but more than that. It was somehow extended, as if the underlying structure of her face had acquired new features, new s. “What am I?” she said. She stood back and that’s when the entirety of her change struck James. Her arms were elongated ever so slightly, her fingers too, which now ended with yellowed, curving nails, thick and dead and sharp. Her clothes didn’t quite fit. He could see the lower parts of her forearms and her legs, and she was thin, starvation-thin. She smiled, but not with her eyes, just with her teeth. “What do you think?” she said.

“I saw-” James stuttered. “I saw you die. I saw your dead body, on a- on a-” “On a video?” she said, walking over to a tripod in front of him and tapping on the camera atop it. “What the fuck is going on?!” James screamed, his skin being torn by the plastic ties and his knee burning as his warm blood drained out down his leg and onto the concrete floor. The room was windowless and the only light was the same spotlight that had shone down upon Alicia as her throat was torn open. “I saw you fucking die!” he screamed. He caught his breath and lowered his head. “What the fuck are you?” “I’m a changed woman,” she said. Her corny B-movie femme fatale voice dropped away. She sounded as she used to, in her kinder moments. “I wanted to see you, James. I haven’t seen you in so long.” The shift in tone took him by surprise. As she walked towards him, he thought she was almost growing smaller and her facial features seemed to soften. Her nails - her claws - retracted up into her fingers. She looked almost as she used to by the time she reached up and stroked his face. “What happened to me,” she said, “we can have that for you, too.” James tried to slow his breathing enough to be able to talk. He needed a minute longer. “The man who took me-” “Where?” James said. “Where is he?” “He’s gone,” Alicia said. “I killed him.” “You killed him?” James said. “That’s not what I saw. That’s not what anybody saw.” Alicia walked to the back of the room, speaking with her back to him. “He killed me first, James,” she said. “You have to understand what he was.”

She kneeled on the ground and walked back with something heavy in her hand that was obscured by the bright spotlight in James’s eyes. “He was a monster,” she said, lifting up in her hand the head of a large animal, gripped by the fur on top of its head. Its jaw hung open, its slack tongue lying dead over its rows of fangs. It had huge ears, free from fur, and the nose of a pig. Its eyes had rotten out of its head. James studied it as he pushed himself back in his chair to get away from it. “Is that...” James said. “Is that a bat?” Alicia tossed the head aside. James watched it roll to the corner of the room. What in the blue fuck is going on? James thought. I’ve lost it. I’ve lost it completely. When he looked back to Alicia, her facial features just finished shifting slowly into place and her face had become that of the bat. Her hand on his face had become as a long-fingered claw. “I want to be with you again, James,” the bat said, its tongue flicking over its teeth as it spoke in a bastardized version of Alicia’s voice. “We can be together forever.” “What are you?” he said, his voice quivering. He jerked his hands against the plastic ties behind his back and tried not to grimace as they ripped into his wrists. “I am all that you could be,” she said. “Just say you’ll be mine and we can live forever.” The fur on her face and her jet-black eyes brought to mind tarantulas and James was overcome with revulsion. He squirmed in his chair and shut his eyes, pulling against his bonds, and said, “Please. Please, let me go.” “Can’t you look at me?” Alicia said. “I’m still the same girl you said you loved.” James opened his eyes and looked upon the humanoid bat-creature with his exgirlfriend’s voice.

“Did you ever love me?” the bat said. “Did I ever mean anything to you?” The restraints were coming loose on his wrists. “Don’t you want to hold me again?” the grotesque bat muttered through its warped mouth. James shook his head in disbelief and kept pulling at his restraints. If he could get free, he thought, he could get to his gun. She can’t have kept it far. The Alicia-bat shifted and sat in James’s lap. It ran a long claw through his hair. “Your hair has grown,” it said. “I like it when it looks like this.” James’s control over his breathing was gone. He stared directly ahead and hoped he wouldn’t suffocate on nothing as he pulled as his restraints with all his might. “It’ll be morning soon,” the bat said. “Why don’t you me? You can stay over and it can be like old times. I just... I need you to do something first.” James tried to sound calm, but his “What?” came out high-pitched and fearful. He looked up at her face, which was inches from his own, and a faint smile revealed a row of yellowed fangs. “I need you to die,” she said. Alicia pulled her claw down from his head, away from his long hair, and draw a single fingernail across James’s throat. The sensation was as if she had run an ice cube across his skin, from ear to ear, as his flesh separated and was exposed to the air. Now, he really began to suffocate as blood poured from his veins and arteries and ran back into his windpipe, drowning him as the Alicia-bat whispered in his ear. “I loved you more than anyone ever will,” the bat whispered. “I treated you better than any girl you’d ever meet.” James’s body started to convulse as he bled out like so much cattle. Alicia

wrapped her mouth around his open neck and drank vicariously, swallowing down his blood almost as quickly as he could produce it. As his eyes transfixed on the ceiling and his vision began to fade, Alicia stood over him and clawed a hole in her wrist above James’s silently screaming mouth. Her cold, black blood rained down over his blinking, screaming face, into his mouth and down into his wound. “You’re mine, James,” the bat said. “You can’t just get rid of me. I have feelings, too.” James felt his eyes roll back into his head, into a dreamless sleep. “You’re mine again,” he heard, as he fell hard into an abyss.

*

The fire roared and kept out the winter as James and Alicia sat together. She perched in his lap, their hands entwined. She petted his hair gently. Their blood ran through one another’s bodies now. James watched Alicia’s face as she stared at the television. It was almost the same, almost as it was in the good times. They spent every waking hour together. Their lives were all she ever wanted them to be. It had been a month since James had turned. Sunlight, he thought. Sunlight is the answer. She turned and smiled at him. He thought of the joy of burning alive that was to come. “I love you,” Alicia said. James smiled back.

GHOST PLAYER

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IRENE DEWITT

Chloe was one of those who played for ghosts. As her fingers tapped out melodies on the aged keys of her piano, faceless wisps, and bodiless souls danced around her and, for this brief while, they were silent and at peace. But as her mother called her down for breakfast and the music ceased, the ghosts softly wailed, their cursed existence returning in a cold reminder. They followed her as she ate her waffles, brushed against her shoulder as she packed her school bag, loomed like a storm cloud as she walked to the bus, and hung like fragile autumn mist as the wheels turned down the road. They were all too far gone to speak to her, most barely looked human, instead manifesting as vaporous forms with little more than a cold glow distinguishing them from a common fog. Some had what resembled faces and what might be considered a voice, but it was always too muddled and too distant to hear. But to all others, her schoolmates on the bus now, she looked not only alone but unbothered. The constant moaning and wailing did not faze her, and hers was not the face or being of one who was haunted, carrying quite the uplifted brightness, despite the morbidity. She arrived at the school as was routine, getting to the tiered choir room that smelled strongly of the green, course carpet and cheap, melon scented aerosol air freshener before the old brass bell rattled through the old brick walls. She sat at the piano, the most worn and weathered thing in this room by far. Some keys only had a slim chance of striking a note when they were hit and some fell with a dull buzz instead of a resounding note. While her home piano had become more refined and elegant with age, this one was the battered result off too many people sitting on it during backstage intermissions and sticky-fingered delinquents running their fingers up and down the keys and trying to tap out some horrid rendition of Chopsticks. Even still, she managed to make it sing. The class and director came in soon after, most arrived on time but a few decidedly late with mochas in their hands. Even the director herself was a minute or two behind schedule, no doubt held up by teacher’s lounge gossip. A tiny woman in six-inch heels and fake eyelashes, she came to the front of the room to take attendance and begin that morning’s rehearsal with a look that said not only has she been sipping wine a little too quickly last night, but was eager to get

back to it. But all this was usual and the rehearsal went on as well as it usually did with Chloe effortlessly stringing together the melody from that wincing, old instrument. The singing parts had gotten much better with time and since she now knew the piano part by heart, she looked up and watched her classmates as they sang. Which was exactly when she noticed something out of the ordinary. There was a girl in the choir, one she did not recognize. Chloe had been in the choir for three years now and she knew every name and face that ed through here. But this girl, she had no memory of. She thought perhaps she was a friend of another singer, snuck in to avoid her taking an exam she hadn’t studied for. But that couldn’t be, she was off on the edge, alone and looking lost. She couldn’t be brand new either as she was singing the tune, or at least mouthing it, perfectly. Perhaps most unnerving was her grayish, hazy being as if she was slowly losing the pigment from her skin, hair, and eyes. But as she realized she had played the repeat one too many times, she snapped herself back to attention before the director could notice and decided the mysterious girl would have to wait. But approximately and an hour later the old bell rang again, mid-song in fact, and the singers quickly gathered together their things and were out to the next class and the professor tapped back to the lounge to grab a coffee and an aspirin. Chloe, who had a free period now, stayed behind. She glanced up. The girl had stayed too. She was sitting now and didn’t seem too keen on going anywhere. The ghosts, strangely, were howling louder than ever, though that was still not particularly loud. “How long have they been following you?” she asked. Chloe was taken aback, “I’m sorry?” “How long have they been following you?” she gestured to the phantoms swirling in the air.

“You- you can see them too?” She nodded, “they say they can only be seen by those who have seen death. Is that true of you?” Chloe’s mind flashed back eight years, back to a cruel memory in a dark cave lit by waxy candle light, a memory hazy yet unforgettable. “Yes. And you? You’ve seen death too?” She shook her head and blinked across the room in a swift breath of mist until she was standing across the piano, cold and somewhat transparent, “I am death.” Chloe gasped but the ghostly girl waved down a hand to calm her, “Please, I’ve been looking for so long for someone to help me.” “With what?” “I need to find the person who killed me. I don’t know why but it’s been pulling at my mind ever since I made sense of everything. I don’t know why but I need to know and I can’t do it on my own.” Chloe’s head was a mess. No ghost had been so human, no other had hardly been intelligible. But she was no investigator. She didn’t even have a car of her own, not to mention scarcely enough money to buy a cola at lunch, “I want to help you but I have no idea how I could.” “It’s okay. I know where to start, I just can’t on my own. I can’t pick up and read the library books, you see.” “Okay, could I meet you at the library after school then?” “Not the public one. The private collection in Old Towne.” “Okay.” “Do you swear?” she nodded, “you promise?” she nodded again, more hastily this time. The girl’s eyes looked desperate to hold onto this little shred of hope. She seemed satisfied, however, “Okay I will see you there.” “Wait. What is your name?”

“Olivia,” she said, a surprised smile painted across her face. “I’m Chloe.” “Chloe. That sounds so familiar...” and she vanished with hardly a trace but her frigid aura. What remained of the day was a blur of unfocused energy. Chloe had never had stellar focus in the first place, her mind always wandering to distant wonders. But today, since the encounter with Olivia, she could think of nothing else but the ghost girl’s request. Whatever lessons she was meant to learn today went unabsorbed, the due dates unrecorded, even lunch went only half eaten. She had already called her mother to tell her she would be studying at the library for the evening and had spent her free period finding the right bus route to get there. Indeed, traveling by bus anywhere in this city was a long, arduous process of waiting for a bus, fiddling in her pocket for her bus , clamoring to find out which stop was hers, and waiting again for the next connected route. The day was cold and hazy and her ears were raw even with her hood up. Hands frozen and stuffed into the thin, fleece pockets, she finally made the least three of four block walk to the old library. This place was just as much a museum as it was a library. Posters, paintings, and photographs hung on the wall, antique record players and long-exposure cameras sat on low tables, and decades old books with two-foot spines lay open on short pedestals. It was all lit by these old, yellow bulb lamps, some hanging, some sconces on the wooden walls, but all with curly metal filigree branching off of them. But perhaps most intriguing was the collection of rare books. This was on the basement floor and a lot of these were either one of a kind, artist books, or edition books long since out of print. The woman working there seemed like an overly protective mother of these books, loving them deeply but extremely hesitant to let anyone near them. But Chloe could see Olivia sat on the end of one of the long, oak tables, shocked and delighted that Chloe had come. The bookkeeper hesitantly let her in after she explained she was a student who needed to study for a report (which wasn’t entirely untrue, though she scarcely ed what it was about) and agreed she would take no pictures and would not touch the extremely delicate books which the keeper needed special

gloves to hold. There were only a couple of other people in the collection including a very old man in focused, crescent glasses, a man and a woman with business suits and tired eyes, and a strong-jawed man in a cap covering salt and pepper hair. It seemed like the dust had been gathering on him. But Chloe ed Oliva and the ghost guided her back down the narrow isle. It felt like the section of forbidden books at Hogwarts. She pointed a gray finger at one book, in particular, a collection of population records and reports from eight years ago from this county. “Open to October, I think. Look for Warren, Oliva Warren. Olivia sat perched on her chair, bare feet wrapped tensely over its edge. Chloe flipped through the musky pages, though they were very intact and legible as this was by no means an old book. There were handwritten s in ink, however. But she pointed at the entry from October 17th, the date on which Oliva Warren was declared dead. “Okay, there you are,” she spoke in a hushed tone, knowing she’d look rather conspicuous if seen appearing to talk to herself, “now what are we looking for?” “I want to see who else died that day, all of their names.” Chloe nodded. She took out a loose sheet of paper and pencil from her school bag and wrote down every other name after Olivia’s, “So what all do you .” ‘Not much, I’m afraid. I was...unconscious for most of it.” She looked deeply troubled, though somewhat numb, as if she spent a great deal of time recounting this memory, “I went to bed early, feeling woozy one night and when I woke up I was blindfolded. There were people’s voices echoing, bounding off the walls, but I heard water. We got closer and closer to what sounded like a waterfall or burst pipe. Whoever was carrying me put me in a cage, I knew from the door slamming and locking. Then people started chanting, lots of people, reciting something together.” “Do you what they said?” she looked up as she finished copying the last name.

“Not everything. I was still coming off of whatever drug they put me on. Something like ‘one by water, one by flame.’ Something shuddered in the cage and it started moving. Suddenly water starting ri from the bottom. I went lower and lower until the cage was completely underwater. Then, after a while...I just...couldn’t hold my breath anymore.” She looked colder than ever, turning one hand over in the other. Chloe couldn’t help but feel like she were describing her memory if it was that and not a dream, the blindfold, and the cave. But Olivia shook out the chill before she could speak up, “Let me see the list.” Chloe shifted the paper around showing the seven names. For such a small county, that was a lot for one day, “Any of those look familiar?” She squinted at the paper as if it were a magic eye illusion, picking her brain for answers. She shook her head, “May be if we look- hang on, we’ve got company.” The man in the cap wandered over and sat across the table from the girls, “Evening, miss. Might I ask what you’re researching?” Chloe shot him a crooked glance, “Might I ask you why it’s your business?” “I mean no offense. I was just wondering if you were looking up the Unlucky Seven.” “The Unlucky Seven? What are they?” “A few years back seven people disappeared without a trace and never came back again. Six of them were children, one an adult man, all declared dead a week since their disappearance. A real mystery that one.” “So what if I was looking them up? Why do you care?” “I love a good mystery. I’m a detective or used to be. Figured out every twist and scheme in my time, all but the Unlucky Seven. I spend most of my time in this library reading up on cold cases of decades ed, but I ain’t never seen a kid start the investigating herself before. If you really want to know, let me help you.” It all seemed a little too convenient, suspicious too. How long had he been watching? How could he know? Chloe was just about ready to snap the book

shut until the stranger left, all until she looked at Olivia. She excitedly nodded her head without hesitation. Why she didn’t say. But Chloe sighed and figured she was here for her sake. “Alright, I’ll humor you. I’m Chloe.” “Call me Jack,” he tipped his hat.” “So what do you already know?” “Well, I know a lot of what ain’t true. I was no alien abduction like I’ve heard some people say, no group suicide either. I do know that these kids didn’t know each other and they all disappeared nearly the same time of night. You want to do me a favor and look at the arrests around this time? Any for kidnapping, murder or anything else suspicious?” Chloe flipped the pages and found a few suspect ones. None from that day, but ones that definitely struck a suspicious note. She wrote the first, then the second, but the third...the third sent her worried heart pounding. She scribbled it down anyway, “We have Andrew Litchfield arrested for kidnapping and resisting arrest, James Walden for kidnapping, and, uh,” her voice got quiet and muffled, “William Vaughn for kidnapping and attempted murder.” “You know this guy?” He leaned in, reading the lines on her face like a book. “He’s my father.” He leaned back, clearly taken by surprise, “He why you’re interested in the case?” “No! At least, I didn’t think so...maybe?” “You know what happened with him? Who he tried to off?” “Yeah,” her breath went cold, “me.” Jack cocked an eyebrow and her voice turned defensive, “I thought that was all...he...he’s in jail already anyway. Charged and locked up.” “Chloe?” Oliva peeped up in a soft voice, “what did he do to you?”

“I don’t really all that well, I was just a little kid. But I woke up and he had me blindfolded and in a cave or something. He...was trying to stab me with a knife, holding it over me like I was on a butcher’s board. But something happened, someone shot a gun and he panicked. There were other people there too I think, from the voices. But right then I ran. I couldn’t see and I didn’t know where I was going. I think I ed out a few times. But eventually, I got out in the open air, out to a cabin in the forest. I told everyone what had happened and I didn’t see him again until he was cuffed up in the court. And I haven’t seen him since.” She looked lost but more confused than anything else. “You were there,” Oliva whispered. Jack nodded and gave a reassuring look, “Don’t worry, kid. We’ll figure this all out. And first things first, we need to look into these guys.” After a short breach into some more records mostly collected news snippets included in the books, they found that Litchfield seemed to be completely unrelated to the case, kidnapping a grown woman on the other side of town. Walden, however, only grew more and more sinister with each new find. He had been in local and state government since he had been a young man but never holding a major position. Yet he ended up in many books, credited in many pictures with mayors, governors, senators, and even celebrities. There was quite a lot about him, likely all things he approved as they did nothing but sing his praises, painting him as an outstanding citizen, a candidate for the people were he ever to run. Which begged the question: why would someone like that be arrested for kidnapping? There was only one shred of news that covered his arrest, a tiny blurb from the bottom of a news column. It stated only that he had pleaded guilty to the kidnapping of his nephew Liam who, interestingly, was one of the Unlucky Seven. He was charged with attempted murder since they had gone missing, but the lack of proof made conviction impossible. But perhaps the strangest thing was that both his and Chloe’s father’s trial were incredibly short, had both offenders saying absolutely nothing, and were scarcely investigated at all, as if someone wanted it over before any evidence could be found, which may have also been why the Seven were considered dead only a week after their

disappearance. Walden served only a seven-year sentence while Vaughn was in for life. All clues leading to Walden, Chloe collected a stack of books related to every major bill or project he worked on. Some were benign dead ends, mostly centered around managing prisons and sentencing, though perhaps it was how he gamed the system. But there was one project that stuck out like a sore thumb. “Hey, Jack? Have you seen this?” He leaned over from his reading to scan the page, a blurry, photocopied image of a mine entrance, Walden himself shaking hands with some member of the environmental counsel, “This seems unusual for him, doesn’t it?” “Any bigwig like that having a care for the environment it mighty strange, I agree. Does it say why he shut it down?” “Something about, let’s see, ‘corrosive substances used for mineral extraction causing a decay in the caverns natural structure and release of toxic fumes.’ But why not just stop using the chemical? Why shut down the whole mine?” Jack nodded his head toward another aisle, “See if you can find any books about the mine. There’s got to be a couple.” Chloe browsed to books and references about local landmarks and one, luckily enough about miners in decades ed. Most just recounted the mine’s opening in the 1800s and about a nasty case of black lung that killed off a dozen or so miners way back then. But the book on the miners themselves was more insightful. She flipped ed the pages on other mines and details of the gold and silver rush until she came to the mine itself. The black lung did not go undescribed, in fact, it listed the name of every fatality. But this one told of another occurrence, still decades before the Unlucky Seven wee even born, but still unnerving. She read it out to Jack, about a small strike that only a few of the miners went on. They claimed the mine was haunted, hearing a deep rumbling within the heart of the mine, hearing ominous chants deep below where any of the miners were allowed to venture. These men, grown men, were so unnerved by this presence that they begged their fellow workers to leave, not for the striking effort, but for their own safety. In the end, however, the men were brushed off has having been driven mad by the dust, fumes, darkness, and desolation, were given some

compensation money and were sent on their way. Jack brushed the silver-flecked stubble on his face, “You know what I think? I think we should go to that mine. We can only get so many answers from books.” “How am I supposed to get there, exactly?” “Historical bus tour maybe? There’s all sorts of old homesteads and things out there, they might drop nearby the mine.” “And what about my mom? Should I tell her I’ve gone spelunking?” “Don’t you have friends you could say you were meeting up with?” She gave a pensive look into nothing, “I guess so.” “Then I’ll meet you there when the sun is up.” “I will too,” whispered Olivia who had been nearly silent this whole time since Jack showed up. Chloe departed for home after returning all the books to their rightful places, got some strange looks as she left, and walked to the bus stop in the even more frigid cold. Before going to bed, she had asked her mother if she could meet up with some friends, a new friend, Olivia. She seemed too pleased with this development to ask questions apart from how she had met this Oliva, to which Chloe simply responded that she was new to the choir. So now by morning, she was ready to move and board the bus deeper into the mountains outside of the city. The nearest stop was about half a mile from the mine, half an unpaved mile no less. There was something of a path, more like an area where trees and boulders had been cleared to make way for trucks carrying ore and equipment to and from the mine, though it was terribly overgrown now. But in time, right when the sun was peaking in heat and storm clouds were gathering on the far horizon, she arrived at the mine’s great tunnel gate, Oliva and Jack sitting outside. She nodded to Oliva slightly so Jack wouldn’t notice. “Right,” said Chloe, “Any idea how we’re going to get in?” the gate was

massive and overlaid with several chains and padlocks. “Not sure. Walden did a damn fine job sealing this off. Maybe if we...” he walked in closer to examine the bars and the locks. “I do,” Oliva said. Chloe raised a brow, asking her to continue, “I was here all night looking around and there is a raw cave that way,” she pointed around a corner, entirely unpaved and unbeaten, “I’m pretty sure it leads deeper in the mine.” “You’re a ghost,” Chloe whispered almost inaudibly, “Why didn’t you just go inside?” “I was...afraid.” Chloe just nodded. “Hey, Jack, I think I something. A cave.” She pointed in the same direction Olivia did, “Follow me.” Olivia lead the way while Chloe pretended to, though thick thickets and jagged slopes. They ended up slowly shuffling down a rockslide long since tumbled until, indeed, there was a tiny cave half covered by trees leading into the mountain. “After you,” the detective ushered with his hands, and they all ducked inside. Chloe had brought a flashlight but it did little to fight back the creeping eeriness of this place. Any hint of daylight was lost within moments and cold, stagnant air filled it, “What exactly are we looking for?’ “Water, I’d imagine. Keep your ears and eyes peeled, kiddo. And , no one’s here to hurt you anymore.” They wandered into many dead ends, mostly natural as this part of the tunnel was not used by the miners. It began dry but the dank cool and humidity increased as they descended lower into the caverns. There started to be little signs of inhabitance: very old mining picks, empty bottles of booze, even a lone shoe. But all of these things were very old; hardly any of it was even manufactured after the 19th century they had guessed. It had been a good two hours of marching, looking for clues or some sort of guide before anything happened. And then...water.

They could not see it and the sound was distant, but it was something to follow. As the delved deeper the sound grew louder and the air grew thicker. Even better, there was some sort of spindly moss growing on the stone. They followed it to where it grew the thickest. After a good while of following the green trail, Chloe heard a creak underfoot. The party froze. She downturned the flashlight to see a winding staircase that looked to be built on its own personally carved the hole, “Now what’s something g like that doing in a place like this?” Jack asked. “I don’t know, but it’s as good a sign as we’ve seen.” They walked the narrow staircase and what opened before them was a vast, green chamber, a ring of water fed by an in flowing river surrounding a carved platform that stood a good twenty feet above the cavern floor. It looked on into some sort of abyssal hole in the rock that was as wide as the chamber and looked endlessly deep. Somehow, everything in here looked completely deliberate. They all split up and looked about. Chloe found dry matches beside some sort of coal. She lit it and a ring of fire lit around the room, bringing it all into glorious light. It even branched down corridors which they could now see. There were six, one on each side of the great abyss. “Wait...I’ve been here! This was the room, the one they had me in when I heard the gunshot!” She ran across the short bridge over the ring of water, up the platform, and to the top of the platform. At its top was an altar, “Yes, this is where I was!” Upon it was a sacrificial knife and a book, handmade and leather bound. Everything within was handwritten and in several different kinds of handwriting. She flipped through its pages, most cluttered and cryptic, some utterly blank until she found a pair of pages that caught her eye. On the left was a poem, on the right, a drawing. She read out: Take one by the water One by the flame A son for his ember coals to claim. Take one of the earth

One by the air A child and his many breaths to share. Take one by the poison One by the steel A pact, at last, to make him real. And take one final One by the blood A daughter’s purpose understood. “That was it,” breathed Olivia, “I was the one by the water. We were sacrifices.” “They were sacrifices,” Chloe repeated out for Jack, “They sacrificed them all...or six I suppose.” She picked up the dagger, “I guess I was supposed to be by the blood,” she twisted the blade, glinting in the firelight, and shuddered. “A sacrifice to who, though?” Jack climbed the steps to the altar. “If I were to guess, this guy,” she showed him the drawing on the opposite page, an image of a dark, unearthly creature with black, soulless eyes. “Ugly fella,” he said, though he did seem quite disturbed, “hang onto that and let’s follow that river.” She nodded and followed. It was the first chamber and the sounds of the waterfall were rattling against the cave walls. Olivia was shivering with the memories reawakened. But she marched on, determined. There was a small body of water in the center of the chamber that the river fed, one surrounded by the machinery of some kind— simple, but not terribly old. But most noticeable was a ropelike cord sticking out of the water threaded through a gear. A wheel was at the other end. With a shrug, Chloe began to turn it. It was a hard effort but slowly the gear pulled at the cord, bringing the contraption to life. Then there was a rustle in the surface of the water.

Something broke through. A cage. It looked like the sort for crab fishing, flat bars bolted together and rusted through. She kept pulling and pulling, imagining all too well what she would find. And of course, she was right. At its bottom was a small, white, frail, blindfolded body. The body of Olivia Warren. She gasped and shielded her eyes while Chloe, in shock, let go of the wheel, dropping the cage back into the water. She looked to Oliva with eyes that were desperate to be comforting. “Holy hell! You okay, kid?” Jack asked, surprised, but not stricken like the girls. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay. C’mon, there’s nothing else in this room anyway.” Shaken, they returned to the main chamber, hoping to go to the next where they expected the fire sacrifice to have taken place. That was until Olivia yelled, “The dagger’s gone!” “What?” Chloe darted back up the podium on the altar and indeed it had vanished without a trace, “What happened to it? Where did it go?” And then gunfire. The bullet had flown past her head but the shot rang out in the cavern. The whole earth seemed to tremble. From the shadowed back of the chamber walked a man, a portly, bulldog-faced man in a suede overcoat with a gun in his hand and dagger on his hip: James Walden. “I didn’t expect to find anyone down here when I came to collect my things,” he paced forward ever so slowly, “And I certainly didn’t expect to find Vaughn’s little girl. You may be eight years late, but I’m glad you finally returned to fulfill your purpose.” He gestured with the pistol, shining and antique, “on the altar then,”

She had her hands up by instinct, stepping backward as he advanced, “No, wait, please...” she was freezing up. Jack was nowhere in sight. “Wait? You want me to wait? I waited seven and a half years in a prison cell because of you, all because you couldn’t hold still. All because you had to run home. Do you have any idea how many plans you ruined that day? How many souls were wasted because of you?” She was at a loss for words, nearly frozen in her place as that short barrel stared her down. She thought, time wasting, that it was now or never if she wanted to survive this encounter. She threw the book at Walden’s head and a shot fired up to the ceiling as he tumbled backward as she leapt into the ring of water below. Enveloped in the cold, she clawed for the surface with only one word repeating in her head: run. More shots were fired but she was faster than the old man. She dove through the familiar caverns and up the narrow staircase. She knew it would be an hour’s run if she returned to where she came so she went the other direction. Without a flashlight, the barreled through the tight caverns in almost total darkness. That was until the lights came on. How these bulbs were still functioning she did not know or care, but thick, dusty wires ran across the ceiling between each light. The opportunity for hiding was compromised; she would have to keep running. This was obviously the newer part of the mines with well-defined walkways wandering ed abandoned mining carts. The exit was through one of three tunnels. Chloe guessed the third. By some miracle, she was correct, but ran across the same barred gate as before and there was no way to unlock it from this side either. Her heart pounding like boiling water, she looked for anything that might get her through; a loose pickaxe, a drill, a conveniently sized rock, anything. She did notice tracks running under the gate. Sprinting, she followed them back into a dimly lit tunnel with a miracle parked inside, an abandoned mining train, with the key in the ignition no less. The thing roared to life as she turned the key and floored it toward the gate. She clenched her eyes and braced for impact. Despite the immense clatter, however, the gate was still closed, though badly bent. Hands violently shaking,

she put it in reverse, going to the beginning of the short track before throwing it forward once again. It rattled, it shook, it clamored against the loose gravel on its tracks, and it moaned after being asleep for so long. It steamed forward seeming ready to give until finally.... Slam. The gate burst open. As chain links few and towering planks of metal fell, she kept riding the train car to the end of the track which was in an old building near the coursing river. It was bucketing rain. But despite the pouring rain and roaring train, she still heard another gunshot from behind her and she ducked into the car. It wouldn’t go any faster and she contemplated bailing out through the door every second. Yet, she held on until the machine engaged its breaks and stopped outside the old building, the control tower of the dam. She bolted, panting, ready to collapse at any moment, but knowing that once she crossed the dam she would be home free. Then she fell, shot in the leg. Her hands just barely caught her and she screamed, clutching at the wound. She looked up helplessly as Walden approached. “Can’t you see? It’s your destiny. You were born to die for our cause,” he lowered the pistol to meet her eyes and he towered over like a great, calculating beast with nothing but cold determination in his eyes, “He will rise and everyone will see and we will all get what we were promised, even your failure of a father.” He pulled the trigger. Nothing. He threw the gun away in anger and went for his belt where he had stowed the dagger, but not before Chloe had hobbled to her healthy leg, leaning on the bridge’s edge wall, overlooking the dam. He thrust the dagger forward, but Chloe caught his wrist inches short. Eyes locked, they fought this deadly tug of war between life and death.

“Whatever you were promised, it’s not worth me,” she breathed as she held him off, “It wasn’t worth Olivia and it wasn’t worth Liam,” And right then, at the mention of his nephew’s name, there was the slightest flicker of hesitation, of weakness, maybe even regret. And Chloe seized that precious moment and twisted his wrinkled wrists, bending them back far enough the yank the dagger out of his hand and thrust it into his belly. He stepped back in shock and pain and, before he could react, Chloe, still running on instinct, grappled him by the collar and thrust him off the edge of the damn. She collapsed before she saw him hit the bottom. She blacked out for a moment and her vision was blotted when she came to. She awoke to see Olivia and Jack approaching. “Chloe! You’re okay!” she looked as if she had been truly mortified and a great relief had just fallen from her shoulders. Chloe nodded. “I can’t believe it, kid, you did it.” Jack was smiling a sincere, warm smile. Chloe’s face went cold, however, “You! Where were you all this time? I could have been killed?” “C’mon, don’t get so steamed,” he offered a hand to help her to her feet. But when she took it, her red, raw fingers fazed right through his hand as if they were made of nothing more than cool mist, “You...you’re...a ghost?” he nodded and put a hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “He was the one who fired the gun and let you escape,” Olivia explained. This was obviously news to her as well, “He was the one adult of the Unlucky Seven.” “The only case I never finished, not until now.” And, despite all the pain and tears, they all sat together beside the great old dam, a girl and her company of ghosts. Until the police came, they waited in the pouring rain, the swirling mass of fading souls quiet for once. They were at

peace, redeemed and made clear. And, of course, they were thankful for the girl, the girl who played for ghosts.

SLASHED

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JESSICA BENN

Rain drummed and thrummed on the windshield. Swish, squeak. Swish, squeak. Swish, squeak. Tess felt herself becoming hypnotized by the metronome of her windshield wipers. She cranked up the AC and took a deep breath, letting her lips vibrate together on the exhale. Her leg ached, dully. It always did when it rained. Beads of water trailed down the glass trying to escape the rhythmic flick of the wipers. Her headlights reflected off of puddles as the road veered to and fro ahead of her. Wraiths of fog twisted and coiled their wispy fingers, beckoning her further. Trees rose up from the mountainsides like dark sentinels watching her as she ed. Tess looked in her rearview mirror. The faded, yellow highway marks trailed behind her and disappeared into the night. Her phone beeped, signaling the battery was almost dead. “Shit,” Tess felt around in the pile of fast food wrappers in the enger seat trying to find her car charger. Shadows shrouded everything. The GPS displayed on her phone’s screen dimmed to conserve power. She felt around blindly, glancing from the rain soaked road to the shadow-veiled seat beside her. “Ugh!” Tess frustratedly jabbed her finger into the button for the overhead light to come on and squinted as it blinded her momentarily. Through the slits of her eyes, she saw the charger sprawled in the floorboard between empty coffee cups and candy wrappers. Tess looked from the road back to the charger. Her phone beeped again. With an irritated groan, she leaned towards the enger seat and extended her hand downwards. She shifted her eyes back to the road once more before reaching further for the cord. Tess’s fingers barely grazed against the cable. She sighed and tossed an aggravated glance at her hand. Almost...almost....gotcha! Tess pulled herself back up into a sitting position. The phone charger was grasped triumphantly in her right hand. She smiled, pleased with herself, but her smile only lasted a second. Tess’s car slammed into the bumper of a vehicle that had been parked in the road with its lights off. There wasn’t enough time to swerve. There wasn’t even enough time to scream. Tess woke up to smoke rising from her airbag. Glass tinkled out of her hair as she raised her head. She blinked. Her neck was already bruised from where the seatbelt had been during the impact. She moved her neck gingerly. Her fingers fumbled as she tried to undo her safety restraint. Rain pelted against her exposed dashboard. The windshield was busted out, and the hood was crumpled. Shards of glass were tossed carelessly in the floorboard and across the highway. Tess struggled to open her door. The frame had been bent causing the door to wedge shut. The metal groaned as she forced it away from the warped door frame.

Chunks of glass spilled onto the road as she pulled herself out of the wreckage. The engine had plummeted to the ground upon impact. Her car was totaled. The vehicle in front of her had a busted fender, and the back axis was twisted away from the frame. Tess stumbled to the front driver’s side door. A knot had started to form on her leg. The other car’s front door was already flung open as she peered inside. Something warm slid down her face. She lifted her fingers to brush it away, and they came away sticky with half-dried blood. Tess leaned down to look at herself in the side mirror of the car she had hit. There was a gash and some swelling over her right eye. She touched the skin around her eyebrow gingerly. The cut stung as she kneaded it with her fingertips. Rain drenched her as she examined at her reflection. Tess turned back to face the deserted car. How long had it been sitting here? She splashed across the pavement back to her own heap of junk. Her hair was plastered to the sides of her face as she searched through the trash in the floorboards for her phone. Wrappers and soda cans clanked and rustled as she rifled through them. She paused as she heard a faint beeping noise. Tess looked around for the source of the sound. She sloshed to the other side of her car and waited a moment. Beep, beep. Tess trudged away from her car to the right-hand side of the road. Beep, beep. Rain bounced off of the asphalt and splattered onto the grass. She knelt down and rummaged through a pile of damp, fallen leaves. The screen of her phone was cracked into a spider web pattern. Tess picked it up and ran her thumb across the display. Chipped edges grabbed at her skin, but it lit up faintly in response to her touch. She typed in her code and pulled up the dial pad. She dialed 991 and heard a busy tone. She hung up and dialed again. Still busy. She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it for a second. “Oh my gosh. I’m such an idiot.” Tess said under her breath as she punched in 911 with trembling fingers. “911, what’s your emergency?” A young woman answered the line. “Hi, yes, I’ve been in a car accident,” Tess paused waiting for a response. She gently probed the contusion on her shoulder, “Hello?” Silence. She pulled the phone away again and looked at the black screen. Tess held down the power button. Her phone flashed for a second and then went black again. Dead. The last town had been about thirty minutes back. Tess kicked the front tire of her car in frustration. Shooting pains radiated from her foot to her shin. Tess

sucked in a sharp breath as the pain took her off guard. She leaned her head against the warped, metal frame and shook her head from side to side allowing it to come to rest facing the way she had been headed. A flash of lightening illuminated the mountainside. In the distance, she saw a figure through the sheets of rain pulling something into the woods. “Hey!” Tess yelled and waved her arms, but her voice was drowned out by a cacophonous crack of thunder. The figure heaved and tugged, struggling to get past the tree line. Lightening carved its way through the darkness again, and Tess focused on the shapes. Her heart skipped a beat. The figure was a man, hunched over with an unnatural gait. He was pulling a woman behind him. He paused suspiciously for a moment to make sure no one saw them before hobbling off again. The woman’s head bounced limply against her chest as he jolted through the rain, dragging her into the darkness of the forest. Tess instinctively crouched behind her car as the next crash of thunder rattled through her. Rain drops pinged against the warped metal behind her. Her heart pounded against her ribs. No phone. She couldn’t call for help. If he took that woman into the woods, there was a good chance she would never be found again. Tess pressed her hand to her chest. The metal plates of her dog tags under her shirt dug into her skin. Shit. Tess rolled her eyes and shook her head. She had to go after them. Still crouched, she moved up beside the parked car she had hit and peered around its front bumper. Her head throbbed with each heartbeat. Tess scanned the edge of the woods. No sign of them. She ran to the nearest tree on the lefthand side of the road where the two figures had disappeared. Lightening contorted the shadows around her as she peered between the tree trunks. After a few paces into the forest, she saw the pair again. She watched as the man slogged through the underbrush, towing the woman behind him. The weight of her body slowed his efforts, but he lugged her along over fallen branches and protruding rocks. Twigs cracked under her weight and leaves rustled in her wake. From this distance, Tess couldn’t tell if the woman was dead or alive. The man stopped for a moment, as if he could feel Tess’s eyes boring into him. Tess ducked back behind the tree, pressing her back flat against the rough bark. She squeezed her eyes shut. Rain dripped from her bangs along the curve of her nose as she strained to hear more than just the roar of her own pulse. Blood pounded in her ears. Her lungs seized as she held her breath. Wind sliced through the skeleton trees. Tess gasped as the chill curdled her blood and made her skin prickle into tiny bumps. Her eyes flew open with panic as her trembling

hand stifled her gasp and clutched at her mouth. Tess’s eyes darted back and forth, praying he hadn’t heard her. Her other hand pressed harder into the bark of the tree. Her finger tips wedged into the grooves, white and bloodless from the force. Leaves started to rustle again. Tess waited, listening. Her heart spasmed with fear. Slowly, the sound trailed farther away. She leaned her head to the side and peeked around the trunk. Tess could see his back retreating further into the woods. The woman stirred. He turned towards his hostage and hit her in the back of the head with something. From this far away Tess couldn’t tell what it was, but the woman went limp again. He adjusted his grip on her arms and started pulling her deeper into the darkness. Tess waited for the next rumble of thunder before she moved to another tree. She used the harshness of the storm to hide her progression as she followed the man. She looked over her shoulder. She couldn’t see the road anymore. The path back to her car was concealed in a tangle of branches. Mud gave way beneath the carpet of dead leaves. She caught herself on a fallen branch and regained her footing. Twigs pulled at her matted, wet hair and snagged on her clothing. She couldn’t see the man anymore. He and his hostage had disappeared behind a thicket of brambles up ahead. Droplets of rain splattered against the coating of leaves on the forest floor and trickled down the bark of the trees. Tess eased up to the tangle of thorns where she had last seen the man and woman. Light reflected off of the dead, wet leaves. She glanced around the twisted vines as the light scattered, obscured for a moment. Hidden behind the thorned mesh was a weather-worn cabin. The windows were cloudy with specks of dirt and nicotine stains. Smoke rose unsteadily from a cockeyed chimney. The thatched roof sagged and bristled. The knotted wood was split and splintered on the ends. Inside the cabin, a shadow ed in front of the window. Tess quickly ducked back. She slowed her breath as she peered around again. She could see a layer of concrete with a rusted door sunk into the ground near the cabin. Tess hunkered down and eased herself forward in a crouch. As she inched closer to the wooden sides of the house, she heard a noise coming from the rust-coated shelter. Tess’s heart throttled inside of her. Her breath only came in quick, shallow puffs. Adrenaline spread through her, dimming the pain in her shoulder and the right side of her head. Her leg still ached. She lay herself down in the

mud outside of the cellar doors. The grass and leaves had been scrapped away by frequent use. Part of the concrete was chipped off where the door met the cellar’s shell. Tess looked into the gap where the piece of concrete was missing. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. At first, all she could see were hunched shadows. Inside, figures moved about. Tess could hear the tinkling of metal and soft sobs. The silhouettes slowly became distinguishable. She could see bits of wrinkled clothing, a cascade of hair over slender shoulders, the slight sheen of metal cuffs as they clanked against the floor. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. From her vantage point, Tess couldn’t tell how many women were locked in the cellar. She had to get help. Tess propped herself back up on her hands and knees and scurried away from the peephole. Her legs bumped into something solid as she retreated. Tess’s breath caught in her throat. She looked behind her and saw muddy boots. The man was silhouetted against a flash of lightening. Tess flipped over and slid herself away from the abductor in front of her using her palms and heels to shove herself backwards through the mud. The man was bent over. His right shoulder jutted out at an awkward angle causing his body to tilt. His face was scarred with fingernail scratches that were too deep to heal completely. The scars shone eerily in the flickering light from the window. Tess’s lower back slammed into the cellar as she tried to back away from him. She heard a whimper from inside. The man raised a slab of wood in his left hand. Tess threw up her arms to shield her head as he swung the two by four towards her. The first blow knocked her face down into the mud. She coughed and gagged as muddy water filled her mouth and lungs, unable to pull herself up. The grit of dirt ground against her teeth as they cracked together. The second blow knocked her unconscious. Tess found herself riding in a Humvee. It was sweltering outside. Her sandcrusted helmet bounced off of the enger side window. She looked around her. Benson and Greaves were in the back. Patch was driving like always. They were leading the unit into hostile territory. In the back of her mind, she knew something wasn’t right. The sun was too bright. The colors were bleached from her surroundings. Everything looked off. They bounced through potholes while static crunched through the radio com. Her instincts screamed at her that something horrible was about to happen. That was when Patch hit the landmine. Time slowed to a crawl as the vehicle was thrown to its side. She saw Patch’s helmet sling off of his head. Benson’s body had been thrown from the Humvee on

impact. Through the smoke she could see him screaming, clutching his gut. Everything was silent around her. Greaves struggled to free himself from under the wreckage. Someone shifted something off of her. The pressure was replaced by intense pain. The world was hazy. Tess was pulled from the vehicle. A chunk of shrapnel was sticking out of her leg. All she could feel was the pain. The pain drowned out the smell of burning flesh, the sounds of men dying, the words of the medic standing over her. The pain was the only thing that existed. Tess gasped as she came to. Her body jerked away from cold darkness that surrounded her. Shackles held her arms close to the damp walls. The smell of unwashed bodies and human excrement strangled her. Stomach acid burned her throat as she retched between her legs—half from the nightmare, half from the stench surrounding her. Her shoes were missing, and the ground was rough against her bare feet. Her leg ached. Nightmares of the crash always made it hurt worse. It was like her body relived part of the trauma each time it happened. She could feel her lip swelling and the metallic taste of blood stained her tongue. A chunk of her cheek was missing where her teeth had gouged into the soft flesh. Tess spit out some blood and the remaining traces of vomit. She squinted into the darkness. Water sprayed from her hair as she tried to shake her bangs out of her eyes. She could hear others in the darkness with her. Muffled sobs were being chocked back. Chains rattled against the walls. All of the women looked to be in their mid-twenties. “Where are we?” Tess whispered to the bent figure chained closest to her. “Shh!” Another woman hissed from the wall perpendicular to where Tess was chained. “If he hears you, you’ll be next.” Her voice quavered. She glanced at the wall opposite from her. Tess followed her gaze. She could make out the shadows of steps leading up to a wooden door. There was no handle. “What does he do?” Tess strained against her chains and leaned towards the woman who had spoken. Tess could see thin lines etched into the walls. The lines started two thirds of the way up each of the walls and carved their way down to about the shoulders of the seated captives. The other woman shook her head and rocked with her knees pulled up to her chest. Her red hair splayed over her shoulders. “What does he do?” Tess’s voice was more forceful the second time she asked. “Be quiet!” The other woman whispered pleadingly. Her lips trembled and her

eyes were dilated with fear. Floorboards creaked behind the door. Heavy, uneven footsteps grew louder as they thumped against the wooden planks. All of the women recoiled from the sound. The woman who had spoken to Tess began to shake uncontrollably. On the other side of the door, metal scraped against metal. The sound was like nails on a chalkboard. It ground into Tess’s bones as she tried to cover her ears. The door busted open. The disfigured form of the man that Tess had followed into the woods was framed against the light coming from inside the house. His silhouette was jaggedly grotesque. “Eenie, meanie, miney, mo.” the man’s voice grumbled as he talked, “Pick a bitch and gut her slow.” He had a knife in his hands moving it from side to side with each word. “If she hollars, cut her throat. Eenie, meanie, miney, mo.” The tip of his blade pointed to the woman that had hushed Tess. “No, no, please,” the woman begged. Her body crumpled as low to the ground as it could, trying to shrink away from him. “Please, please.” She cried as she begged him not to take her. “Oh, God, no.” Her sobs descended into unintelligible, animalistic noises as he approached her. Tess watched as he loomed over them. The man’s twisted shadow fell over the pleading woman in front of him. He drug the tip of his roughhewn knife into the cellar wall behind her, slowly making his way down the cement until it was directly above her head. As he scraped the metal along the rock, tiny bits of cement dust fell on top of her heaving body. The knife left a shallow, grizzled path carved behind it, adding one more etching to the wall. He stuck the tip of the blade under her chin and tilted it up until she was looking directly at him. Most of the other women had turned their heads away. Only Tess and a dark haired girl kept their eyes on the scene unfolding in front of them. Tess felt herself drawn to the terror in front of her. She couldn’t make herself look away. The red headed woman’s eyes squeezed shut and her lips shook. Their captor turned the blade so that it was pointed at her jugular vein while he pulled a small key out of the left pocket of his pants. The man unlocked the heavy cuffs around his victim’s wrists as he applied more pressure with the blade. When both of her wrists were free, he shoved the key back into his pocket and grabbed a handful of her matted, red hair.

He jerked the woman to her feet. He wrenched her up by her hair up so that she had to stand on her tip toes to keep from having strands ripped out of her scalp. Silent tears fell down her cheeks. Her knees threatened to buckle under her as he forced her towards the door, knife still at her throat. Tess saw the blood drain out of her face with every step. The woman stumbled up the stairs, and the door slammed shut behind them. Tess could hear a bolt slide into place on the other side as the door was secured in place. Tess’s heart raced as she strained to hear what was happening behind the closed door. She expected a scream or some sound of altercation, but there was nothing. No thump, no shriek, no sound at all. After about fifteen minutes, Tess began to smell something. It was familiar and sickening. It was a smell she would never be able to forget—a smell that still haunted her. It was the smell of burning flesh. After what felt like an hour, the bolt on the other side of the door slid free. The man came back into the cellar. He had a platter of meat in his hands. He tossed chunks of seared flesh to the women like a man tossing scraps to his dogs. He scoffed at them with a snort and then made his way back into the house. Some of the women kicked the meat away, choosing to go hungry. One of them—the dark haired girl who had watched with Tess as the redhead was taken—looked at the meat and then over to the empty shackles where the other woman had been. She picked up the meat in front of her. Her hands shook as she pulled a strand of long, red hair off of the cooked flesh. Her cheeks were sunken, and Tess could see the delicate bones of her fingers and wrists through her taut skin. The woman closed her eyes as she lifted the meat to her mouth and sank her teeth into it. She chewed slowly at first, but the more she ate, the more fervently she tore into it. Bits of fat clung to her lips and cheeks. After the woman finished eating she looked down at her hands, disgusted with herself. She wiped the grease from her fingers onto her tattered clothing. She avoided Tess’s gaze and curled into herself. The other women were trying to sleep in awkward positions. Their chains kept them from finding much comfort. Tess struggled as her own eyes became heavy. The events of the day threatened to overwhelm her. Her body needed sleep. She couldn’t think clearly anymore. Tess found herself on a mock search and rescue mission. One of her men had been taken by Alpha Two. Tess positioned herself outside of the main training zone, facing the tent where the objective was held captive. She used the underbrush as cover as she scouted the area. She signaled for two of her men to

veer right and draw fire. They ran and took cover behind a stack of wooden crates. They were armed with paintball guns to simulate fire. While the Alpha team was focused on the decoys, Tess steadied her weapon, waiting for the most opportune moment. Her men took out two of the enemies. One of the men inside the tent peeked through the opening. Tess lined up her shot. Before she could pull the trigger, a sharp pain erupted between her shoulder blades. She punched the ground with her fist. Damnit! She rolled over to see Alpha Two’s commander standing over her. “Hesitation gets you killed.” He smirked as he held out his hand to help her up. Tess woke up, drenched in a cold sweat. She looked around her trying to shake away the haze of sleep. She had to do something. He was right. Hesitation was going to get her killed. Tess examined the metal cuffs on her wrist. They were a steel semicircle with a bar guarding the opening of the circle. The sweat on her wrists added a small amount of lubrication. She pulled her thumb in towards her palm, making her hand as small as possible. Tess pulled with all her strength. The metal gouged into her skin and scraped as she forced her hand to collapse into itself. One cuff clattered to the floor. The sound woke a few of the other captives who stirred and looked at her. Her knuckles bled where the skin had been rubbed off. Slivers of her skin clung to the steel. Tess opened and closed her fist. No structural damage. The woman who had eaten the flesh earlier sat up, watching intently. Tess used her free hand to grasp at the other cuff. She held the shackle with her free hand as she twisted her other hand free. Tess rubbed her wrists and pulled herself up onto her knees. She crawled over to the woman who had eaten the meat and started trying to help her get free. The dark haired woman waited until Tess was less than an arm’s length away. She looped the chain of her cuffs over Tess’s throat and pulled, tightening the links into a metal noose. The woman started screaming as loud as she could. Tess struggled and fought to get her fingers between the chain and her neck. She drove her elbow into the dark haired woman’s ribs. The bones gave way with a satisfying crack. The woman’s scream ceased in a gasp. One of the broken ribs had pierced her lung. The woman’s grip faltered, and Tess untangled herself from the metal. The door burst open, and their captor charged in. His knife was clutched in his hand as he looked from Tess to the injured woman. He growled at Tess and charged. Tess dodged his attack, scrambling away. The man sliced at the air. Tess jumped behind him and drove a kick into the back of his knee, knocking him off

balance as he stumbled and crashed into the floor. Tess connected with is kidney and liver as she pounded his lower back with punches. Her bleeding knuckles cried out in pain with every impact. She gritted her teeth. The man swung his arm back, and his elbow collided with Tess’s temple. She fell to the cold floor. Her vision was blotted with dark, pulsating spots. Everything rippled and waved. She saw the man get to his feet. Her gaze grew dark around the edges. The blackness slowly encroached and filled her full field of vision. The last thing Tess saw was the man’s boot coming towards her face as he reared back and kicked her in the head. “Miss Finch, I cannot help you unless you are willing to help yourself.” Tess was laying down on a couch in her shrink’s office. Everything was black and white. “I really think you should consider this opportunity.” He handed her a brochure for a PTSD group. The front cover had a picture of a mountain lodge on it. “We done here?” Tess stood up and shoved the brochure in her back pocket. She left before he had a chance to say anything. When she stepped through the door, the world shifted. Tess was standing in a hallway. She saw her mom crying at the dining room table with a half drained bottle of vodka in front of her, “I don’t know how to talk to her anymore. Since she came back, she’s just not the same.” Everything melted away. Tess was outside now. She shoved her bags into her car and punched the lodge’s address into her phone’s GPS. Her mom was standing on the porch watching her load the car. Suddenly everything went black, and all she could hear was Patch’s voice yelling at her to wake up. The smell of antiseptic shocked Tess out of her dream. In front of her, laying on a roughly carved wooden table was the woman who had tried to strangle her. A fire flickered in the corner fireplace. Antlers and picture frames hung on the walls. Thick, gritty rope bit into Tess’s wrists. She was tied to a wooden chair. The man was applying some type of salve to the dark haired woman’s scrapes. Between each of her ragged breaths, he dabbed the frothy blood that bubbled out her mouth with a rag. The pictures on the wall were of the man in front of her and a little girl. Tess could see the girl’s life in the photos. She glanced from birthday pictures to

middle school science fairs to high school proms. The pictures stopped after high school. Tess’s eyes grew wide as she recognized the girl in the pictures. If you added a few years and subtracted a few pounds, she was the spitting image of the woman on the table. “She’s your daughter?” Tess whispered as she looked at the pictures. The man growled like a beast as he whirled around and faced Tess as she spoke. “How could you lock up your own daughter like that?” “She was going to leave me. Wanted to go to college.” He faced his daughter again. “I would have been alone.” His voice sounded like gravel in a blender. “So you locked her up?” Tess was appalled. “She was the one good thing I had in my life. I couldn’t let her leave.” The man pounded his fist on the table, “The world is a horrible place. She needed protection. It was for her own good. When she was lonely, I brought her friends.” He gestured to the cellar. “When she was hungry, I fed her. Everything I did was for her.” He stroked the woman’s cheek as she wheezed. Tess could hear the sincerity in his voice. “She’s dying because of you.” He looked over his deformed shoulder at Tess. His fingernails scrapped along the edge of the table. The dying woman raised her hand and touched his face. Tess could see that even after all of twisted things her father had done to her, this woman still loved him. His voice softened at her touch. “Eenie, meanie, miney, mo. Stay with me, it’s not time to go.” He pleaded with the dark haired girl who managed a small smile before her hand fell back to the table and the light drained out of her eyes. Tess tried to wiggle her hands free from their bondage, but the rope was so tight that her fingers were already tinged purple. The man watched as his daughter breathed her last breath. He roared in anger and slammed his fist into the nearest wall. Rage devoured him. His eyes were crazed as he spun back to face Tess. He glared at her, anger building, and then marched to the fire. He took an iron poker that was propped against the hearth and plunged it into the heart of the flames. He stumbled out of Tess’s field of vision into another room. She could hear him throwing furniture into walls as his grief consumed him. Her mind was racing. She couldn’t feel her fingers anymore. Tess looked around for anything that could help her escape. In that instant, she ed another search and rescue mission when her team had held another soldier hostage. He

had broken the chair they had tied him to in order to free himself. Tess rocked back and forth until her bare feet landed on the planks of the floor. She leaned forward and then threw herself backwards as hard as she could. The velocity of her force propelled her towards the ground. The back of the chair landed on the hard, wood floor, shattering the chair underneath her. The arms of the chairs were still held in place against her forearms by the rope. Before she could undo the knots, the sound of shattering wood brought the man back into the room. He saw Tess on the ground. Wrath contorted his face as he grabbed the white-hot poker and charged at her. Tess struggled to her feet. She dodged as he jabbed the heated metal towards her chest. Tess crossed behind him as he over stretched on his attack. She leapt onto his back and locked her forearms around his throat, cutting off his oxygen supply. He spun around and slammed his back into the wall, knocking the wind out of her. She lost her death grip around his neck. Tess cried out as she grabbed one of the wooden planks still strapped to her arms and thrust the splintered edge into the man’s throat. He fell to his knees, clutching his neck. Tess forced the wood deeper into his throat. It gave way a little as the splinters pushed through his larynx. Blood spurted from his severed arteries, coating Tess’s arms. The man swayed slightly as he bled out and lost consciousness before falling forward. Tess slid off of his back and rolled him over. She used her trembling, free hand to untie the rope that secured her arm to the plank protruding from the dead man’s neck. Once that arm was free, she tugged on the other rope with her fingers and teeth until it released its grip. Feeling started slowly returning to her fingertips. After her arms were loose, she started searching his pockets until she found the key to the shackles. Tess held the tiny key between her slippery fingers. She leaned back and braced herself against the wall, taking a few deep breaths. Blood soaked into her pants as she sat there. She brushed a strand of hair out of her face, leaving behind a streak of blood on her forehead. Tess pulled herself up out of the sticky, red puddle and stumbled to the door that led down to the cellar. The other women watched as she walked down the stairs. They flinched away from her at first. Her bare feet left fresh, red footprints in her wake. Tess unlocked the other captives one by one. They huddled together, still not fully believing they were going to escape. Together, they climbed up the stairs into the shack. The women walked past the bloody body of their captor and out into the

forest clearing. The sky was a pale grey-blue tinged with pink and apricot. The sun was coming up. It took a few minutes for their eyes to adjust to the light after being underground for so long. They breathed in the air, free of the smell of their own filth. Tess led them through the trees back to the highway. Everything looked different in the daytime. The trees were less menacing. Twigs and small rocks jabbed into the soles of her bare feet as they walked. Tess’s adrenaline was wearing off. Her injuries started to ache and throb. The pain was getting harder to ignore. After some time, the sounds of cars zooming past grew from a faint hum into a roar. The women looked around as they stepped onto the faded asphalt. A few hundred yards down the road to the right, Tess saw the wreckage of her car. A few police cruisers were parked on either side of collision while officers examined the scene. Tess led her bedraggled group towards the policemen. Her feet scraped along the highway. “I think that’s my car.” One of the women said softly as she squinted in the light. Tess glanced at her. She must have been the woman Tess saw the man dragging into the woods. When the officers caught sight of the disheveled women, they ran to meet them. One of the policemen radioed for back up and several ambulances. “Is anyone hurt? What happened?” Tess explained everything that had gone on in the worn down cabin. Ambulances came and medics wrapped the women in blankets while policemen took their statements. A team of officers was deployed into the woods to examine the location of the tragedy. The women were taken to the local hospital, and their loved ones were called. Some newspapers told the story of a mentally unstable man torturing women for pleasure. Some told the story of a family man who simply got carried away trying to protect his daughter. Tess seemed to be the only one to realize that when it came to human beings, circumstances were never really black and white. The truth was a just jumbled shade of grey.

GHOST HOUSE

CHAPTER ONE Margie Fenton loved to dress to impress. The heavy metal crowd that is. She arrived at the halfway house with her hair teased out like an 80s rocker, her nose pierced and she wore a Black Sabbath t-shirt. She pushed the door open with the cardboard box of her belongings. “Honey, I'm home.” Margie looked down at the law enforcement ankle bracelet. It turned from red to green as she stepped inside. Hearing creaking steps, she saw Brenda, a barefoot woman wearing denim shorts and a Journey rock band t-shirt. Brenda streaked down the steps toward Margie with a butcher knife in hand, ready to strike down. Margie screamed and dropped her box. Brenda stopped her charge when she noticed the six month sobriety medallion that dangled from a chain around Margie's neck. “Sorry,” Brenda said. “I thought you were-” “You scared the shit out of me, girl. I thought I was the first one coming.” Brenda ran her hands through her hair. She looked dazed. Confused. “I'm Margie.” “Brenda. Brenda Peters.” Margie extended her hand to shake. Brenda switched the knife to her other hand and shook. “I was just,” Brenda lowered the knife. “Making lunch.” “Great,” Margie said. “I could eat a horse.”

“Yuck!” Margie turned to the door to see Gracie, a blonde bombshell wearing a designer blouse and skirt. But despite her taste in fashion the ankle bracelet was all too visible. “They're kidding, right?” Gracie asked. “No pool,” Margie said. “But at least we got someone who can cook. “Who? Emily?” Margie turned to look at Brenda. She disappeared. “No, Brenda. She was just here.” “Whatever,” Gracie said with a dismissive tone. “Do you mind helping me move my things in?” Gracie stepped back outside and her bracelet goes red. “Bring your own shit in, sister.” Margie picked up her cardboard box and headed up the stairs. CHAPTER TWO Gracie swept off imaginary dirt off a kitchen chair and sat at the table across from Margie. Margie sat stirring a cup of tea as if it were a religious custom. Brenda set a plate of cookies down and ed them. “Now what?” Margie asked. “Emily said not to do anything until she gets here,” Gracie sniffed. “So we just sit around and sing campfire songs to each other?” “How about a ghost story?” Brenda asked

Margie picked up a cookie from the table and talked through bites. “As long as you include some naked guys in it.” Gracie looked at Margie, perturbed. “How about we start our journals?” “Wonderful,” Margie said, her sarcastic tone all too obvious. CHAPTER THREE A few hours later, Gracie lounged on the sofa, legs crossed, pen in mouth as she pondered what to write in her notebook. She changed her clothes into something even more chic, long-legged khakis and a lace white blouse. Margie sat across from her and doodled in her own notebook. “What was your thing?” Gracie asked. “My what?” “What were you on?” “First rule of drug club. Never talk about the drugs.” Gracie got up and headed toward the stairwell. “I'm going to bed.” “Knock yourself out.” Margie looked at her drawing and smirked. An mutant sized penis. Then she heard the weird sound. Feint at first. She got up and tracked it to the bathroom. A strange whispering noise, almost like a Gregorian chant. She crept closer and put her ear to the door just as it flew open. Margie yelped and hopped back to see Brenda standing there. “That's twice you've gotten me!” Brenda just stared at Maggie. “I thought I heard something-” Maggie said, justifying herself.

“I was reading. Good night.” Brenda went to her room and closed the door. Margie looked back inside the bathroom. “In the dark?” She just shook her head and headed toward her own bedroom. CHAPTER FOUR The woman breathed hard as she descended the stairs. Her hand white-knuckled around the butcher knife. At the bottom of the steps she stopped and scanned through the darkness. An eerie whispering sound started up. She entered the living room and stopped in the center to survey her situation. Slivers of moonlight filtered through the thin drapes. The furnishings were old and out of date. The woman saw an open closet on the opposite wall which led to another room. She ran over to the closet, slid the door closed and whimpered. Suddenly the door yanked open and a man stood there with an ax in hand. He swung down at her and Gracie bolted up out of her sleep, hearing the screams. She tossed covers off herself and jumped out of the bed. Slipping her feet into a pair of frilly pink slippers, she charged across her room and into Brenda's. To see Brenda screaming bloody murder as she stared into the darkness of her closet. Gracie flicked the light on. “What's the matter?” Brenda continued to scream as if she didn't hear Gracie. “Brenda!” Margie rolled over to face the poster she had of John Bolton, hot singer of her

favorite band, King Cobras Cumming. She reached down and began to pleasure herself when Gracie yanked off the headphones off her head. Margie's eyes bugged out and she scrambled to put her panties back on . “What the fuck?” “It's Brenda.” Margie listened to the screaming for a moment then took back her headphones, placed them on and settled back into her pillow. “Margie!” Gracie snatched the headphones off Margie's head again. “She won't stop.” “Why is that my problem?” “She needs us. Come on.” Gracie headed for the door, dropped the headphones on a dresser and marched out of the room. Brenda screeched again. Margie grumbled in complaint and dragged herself out of bed. “She needs us,” she whispered mockingly to herself, adjusting her panties again. “Talk about a bottomless pit.” Gracie rifled through Brenda's drawers as Margie wandered in. “Where are they?” Gracie demanded. “What are you doing?” Margie asked. “She's using.” “I'm not. I swear.” “Nobody screams like that unless they're kicking. Aha!” Gracie pulled a pair of panties out of the drawer. They're wrapped around a plastic baggie filled with an assortment of pills.

“What are these then? Your secret M&M stash?” “Those aren't mine!” Brenda protested Gracie brushed past Margie as she dashed out of the room. “Gracie!” Brenda cried out as she rushed to the door. “Great hiding spot, idiot,” Margie said. Gracie turned the light on in the bathroom and lifted the lid of the toilet. Brenda sprinted in. “They're not mine. I don't know how they got there.” Gracie opened the bag and dumped all the pills into the toilet. “Then you won't care that I do this.” Margie arrived and held Brenda's arms. “No!” Brenda screamed as Gracie flushed. Brenda dropped to her knees and reached into the bowl to try and save some pills. “Brenda!” Gracie yelled. “Don't. Let them go.” Brenda sobbed and let Gracie pull her away from the toilet. “You know you can't be doing this, Brenda. We signed a pact.” Brenda looked like a lost little girl. Gracie gripped her face. “Do you hear me?” Brenda only sobbed harder. “It's not fair.” “I know it's not, sweetie, but that's why we have to do this together. All of us.” Gracie looked up at Margie. “Say something.” “I'll put on the coffee.” Margie left the bathroom. Gracie stroked Brenda's hair.

“That's a girl. Cry it out.” CHAPTER FIVE In the kitchen, Brenda and Margie sat at the table drinking coffee. Gracie scribbled notes in her journal. “You're not writing this down?” Margie asked. “We're supposed to document everything that happens.” “Come on, give her a break.” “She can get us in trouble.” “How?” “If she fails her urine test we all go back to jail.” “They're doing urine tests?” “Duh. Didn't you read the contract Emily gave you? What did you think was going to happen They'd just leave us here unsupervised for sixty days and hope we'll be on our best behavior?” Gracie looked at Brenda. “You want to go back to-wherever you came from?” “No,” Brenda answered flatly. “Then smarten up, bitch!” “It's not her fault,” Margie said. “It's-” “The house-” Brenda interrupted. Margie and Gracie looked at Brenda with quizzical looks. “There's something wrong here.” Gracie got up to get more coffee. “You're damn right something's wrong with this house. You two.”

Brenda looked at Margie but Margie concentrated on her coffee cup, too embarrassed to meet her eye. Gracie stormed out of the room with her coffee. Margie took the notebook and ripped out the page Gracie wrote on. “Don't worry about her,” Margie said. “She's all bark, no bite.” “Someone should give her a treat.” They shared a grin. “Thanks for not squealing on me,” Margie said. “I owe you one.” Brenda waved off the gratitude and sipped her coffee. “So what's your story, if you don't mind my asking?” “I was going through a rough time with my Mom being sick and my dad always cheating on her. I just needed to-escape and one thing led to another and another and another, you know? “I hear you. I've been 'escaping' since I was fourteen.” Margie sipped at her coffee. “Do you believe in ghosts?” Brenda asked. Margie choked on her coffee. “What? Ghosts?” “I wasn't kidding about the house. Something very strange has been going on since I got here.” “Like what?” “There's a presence. Like someone is watching.” Margie gestured toward the living room. “I thought that was Helga the She Wolf trying to sneak a peek at me in the shower.”

“So you felt it too?” Margie's humor faded. “Wait a sec. You're serious?” “Something bad happened in this house. Very bad.” “How do you know?” “My nightmares. I never had them until I got here.” Margie took Brenda's hand in hers. Then she squeezed it hard. “They're just bad dreams, Brenda. We all have them. And if I don't score another bag soon I'll start having some myself.” Brenda frowned at Margie. “I'm kidding.” Brenda pulled her hand back. She looked out through the back window, losing interest. “How about we try to get another couple hours of sleep and finish this chat tomorrow?” “Okay,” Brenda headed toward the doorway. “Good night.” Margie picked up her cup and drained it. “G'night.” CHAPTER SIX Margie slept peacefully with her headphones on. Her door creaked open and she awoke. She ripped off her headphones and listened. A wet, thwacking sound from somewhere out in the hall made her sit up fast. It sounded like someone slapping meat. “Gracie? Brenda?” Margie got out of bed and crossed to the door. Exiting her bedroom, she peered in the hall and saw a woman she never seen before. With disheveled brown hair and wearing a wrinkled night gown, the

woman stood outside Gracie's bedroom. “What are you doing?” the woman asked to no one in particular. “Hello?” The woman ignored Margie and flicked on the bedroom light as Margie moved closer. “Who are you?” Margie asked. Suddenly the woman screamed and charged inside the room. “Oh my God, what have you done?” Margie dashed the rest of the way in and looked inside Gracie's bedroom. The room looked like a little girl's bedroom with dolls and stuffed animals. Not a trace of Gracie. Only a man with a deranged look on his face. He stood next to a tiny bed with a bloody ax in his hands. The man looked down at the small lump of a small child beneath the bloody, slashed covers. The woman screamed in agony as she pounced on the man and beat him with her fits. “No, no, no, no.” The man stepped away from the covers and Margie looked down at his carnage. Margie screamed and the woman is distracted by her. The man planted his ax right into the woman's back and she fell to the floor. The man looked up at Margie, grinned and steamed straight ahead for her. Margie sat up in her bed, breathing hard, her eyes wide with terror. A nightmare. Just like Brenda's. “Holy shit,” Margie said as she got out of bed and crossed into the bathroom. She immediately ran cold water and splashed her face. She stared at her reflection.

“Jesus.” She turned off the water and dried her face with a towel. As she rubbed her face, she hears the same whispering noise as before. Then out of the corner of her eye, something scooted past the open doorway of the bathroom. Margie stepped out of the bathroom and listened. “Is anybody there?” She looked over at Brenda's room and saw that her light was on. Margie walked over and pushed open her friend's door. “I just had one of those weird dreams you-” She stopped talking when she realized that she had entered a room she didn't recognize. Football posters were stuck to the wall as well as a few auto racing photos. But at the bed, stood a man hacking away at a boy with his ax. Margie bolted upright, breathing hard, victim of a double nightmare. She placed her hand to her chest and managed to calm herself, just a little. Terrified, she jumped up and dashed out of the room. She pounded on Brenda's closed bedroom door. “Brenda?!” Margie pounded away. No response. And the door knob wouldn't budge. “Brenda! Please no, please no, Brenda! Brenda!” The door flung open to reveal Brenda in her shorts and t-shirt. “Thank God,” Margie said, filled with relief. “What's wrong?

“I had one of those nightmares...and you were in it and..” Gracie arrived to the door stop, half-asleep. “What's going on?” “Nothing. Go back to sleep. I just had a nightmare, that's all.” Gracie nodded and rubbed sleep rocks from her eyes. “I had one too. Some wacko with an ax was chasing-” Gracie glanced at Margie's and Brenda's shocked look. “What?” CHAPTER SEVEN Dirty dishes and empty coffee cups littered the table. Margie sat munching on a toast crust staring off at nothing while Gracie nervously tapped her fingers against a cup. “I don't think I can take another night of this,” Gracie said. “Want an Ambien?” “Gracie's eyes widened in anticipation. “Oh sorry, you flushed it all down the toilet,” Margie said. “Maybe she has some-” Gracie nodded over at Brenda. “The pills were mine.” Gracie remained silent for a beat, taking in that revelation. “What the hell was that all about with her then?” “She was just covering for me.” “I mean with her hollering and carrying on?”

“Maybe she's psycho,” Margie shrugged. “Then again, we're all having the same dreams so maybe we're all nuts.” “Jesus, God must really be punishing me to get stuck here with you two,” Grace said. The doorbell chimed in the kitchen. Gracie and Margie looked at each other in fear. “Emily,” Gracie said as she headed for the doorway. Margie got up and followed. Gracie opened the door to Emily Turner. Emily had her hair tied back, she wore a pants suit and carried a soft briefcase. “Hey,” Gracie said. Emily entered and saw Margie approach. “Margie,” Emily said. “Emily,” Margie said, her tone cold to the point of frostbite. Emily followed Gracie into the living room where they both took seats on the couch. Margie sat in the fancy chair. “How are you guys making out?” Emily asked. “Brenda isn't bad but Gracie's breath stinks,” Margie said. “Whatever,” Gracie said. “How's the house?” Gracie and Margie exchanged a knowing glance. “What?” Emily asked. “Nothing,” Gracie said. “There's just-some strange stuff happening, that's all.” “Like what?”

“The three of us have been having these weird-” “Three of us?” “Yeah, Gracie, Brenda and me.” “Who's Brenda?” Emily asked. “The other girl,” Margie said. Emily looked confused. “The other girl?” “The other pill head you shacked us up with.” Emily stood and looked around. “There's somebody else here?” Margie and Gracie gave each other weird looks. What is going on? “It's just supposed to be you two. I didn't authorize anyone else to be here.” Gracie skipped up the stairs, Emily followed then Margie. “There must have been a mix-up with the paperwork,” Emily said. “I knew there was something not right about her,” Gracie said. Gracie knocked on Brenda's bedroom door and opened it. It is empty and the bed looked like nobody has slept in it for ages. Margie looked in the bathroom. Nothing and no one there either. “When was the last time you saw her?” Emily asked. “She went to try and get some sleep about fifteen minutes ago,” Gracie said. “She's been having these attacks.” “Attacks?” “We all have.” “We're having nightmares about someone hacking people up.”

Emily seemed shaken as she led them to the stairs. “If you ask me, that girl needs some shock therapy,” Gracie said. “If you ask me, you could use a few volts yourself.” “Get stuffed.” “I wish,” Margie said. Emily looked to regain her composure as she locked the front door. “If she comes back call me,” Emily said. “And then what?” Margie asked. “And then I'll deal with it,” Emily said as she glanced at her watch. “What do you say we get our first session going?” Both girls groaned simultaneously. CHAPTER EIGHT Emily sat at the couch with a notebook in hand. Margie sat next to her while Grace lounged in the fancy chair. “Why do we have to keep going over this?” Gracie asked. “You have our court stuff.” “Because talking through it is part of your recovery regime. Gracie laughed in disbelief. “If I knew that meant having to listen to your top five psycho analyst bullshit reasons why I did it, I'd have stayed in jail.” “And how was that working out?” Gracie bit her lip to prevent going off on Emily. “As I was saying,” Margie said. “I knew stealing those cancer drugs was wrong, but I had no idea lives depended on it, you know? I just figured they'd get more.”

“And after you discovered people died because of what you did?” Emily asked. Margie gave her a dirty look. “What do you think?” “I don't know, Margie. Tell me.” “I felt like shit, okay? Happy?” “And how do you feel now?” “Just peachy.” Emily made notes into her report. “Both of you are a joke. A complete and fucking joke. But you Margie, are the biggest fucking joke ever. You have parents that did everything that could for you. Sent you to the best schools. Gave you the best clothes. From my interviews with them, they loved you to death. But you pissed it all away. Literally. Nothing, and I mean nothing will ever satisfy someone like you. You will continue to get high and fuck up and hurt people and not give a damn until you become a ward of the state. Oh, wait. You already are a ward of the state.” Emily got up to go the bathroom. “Fucking losers. My crap is worth more than you.” CHAPTER NINE Gracie entered the kitchen and found Margie pouring a glass of juice, the fridge door open beside her. “That was mean,” Gracie said. “You didn't deserve that at all.” “You either.” “Hey, all I did was mow down some stupid school kids, they'll survive. But you. That's rough.” Margie looked at Gracie with cold, lifeless eyes. “Now you know why I had the bag.” Gracie heard shuffling at the front door. She sees Emily looking to be on her way

out. Gracie skipped over and opened the door for her tormentor. “Was that necessary? Belittling us like that?” “Shocking wasn't it?” Emily said. “Almost as shocking as all the families you two ruined with your actions.” “We did our time, doc. What more do you want from us? Emily sighed and stepped out of the house. “I”ll be back tomorrow.” Gracie moved to close the door, an unseen force suddenly ripped it from her hand and slammed it shut. She spun around with a glimmer of fear in her eye. CHAPTER TEN Margie dumped chips into a bowl as Gracie cut cheese for a sandwich with a butcher knife. “I can't believe the balls on that bitch talking to us like that,” Gracie said. “I think she wanted to make me cry, but sorry lady, my well went dry faking it for that asshole judge.” Gracie laughed and ate a piece of cheese off the knife. “Just think, we only have fifty-eight more days of this.” Margie smiled and ate a chip. “I know. Fifty-eight days and we're free, baby!” “What's the first thing you're going to do?” “Before or after I get stoned enough not to feel my toenails?” Margie laughed. Gracie smirked, but isn't all in. “What?” Margie said. “Don't tell me you're buying into the twelve steps bullshit. I saw the look in your eye telling Emily how much you loved it. You still love it.”

Gracie returned her attention to making sandwiches. But they both hear a creak from the ceiling. The girls look up and then at each other. “We checked everywhere, right?” Margie asked. “It's just the house.” Margie nodded in agreement and looked at the ceiling again. Gracie had the small light on the sink on so she could clean dishes. The hall behind her was very dark. She looked down at the butcher knife on the sink as she began hearing that whispering sound again. Gracie spun around and saw a shadow cross the doorway. “Very funny, Margie.” But only silence greeted her. “Ooh, I'm scared. You got me. Now come on and help me dry.” Gracie returned to her dishes and reached for the butcher knife but its gone. Looking around, she knows she just saw it there. “Where the hell is that-” “ARE YOU SORRY?” The voice came from nowhere and everywhere. “Sorry for what?” Gracie asked. Then the whispering continued. Louder now, like a warbled Gregorian chant. “Okay, that does it.” Gracie turned around and THUNK! The butcher knife slammed into her chest to the hilt. She saw something that made her eyes open wide. Gracie screamed in both pain and horror and crumpled to the floor.

She shrieked again and again, each time getting weaker and weaker as blood pooled around her. When she drew her last breath, the kitchen light went out. CHAPTER ELEVEN Margie exited the bathroom wrapped in only a towel. She entered her bedroom and sat at the bureau, combing out her wet hair. Looking at herself closely in the make up mirror, she notices the her bedroom door in the reflection. She yelped as Brenda stepped through. “I thought you were gone for good,” Margie said. “Are you sorry?” Brenda asked. “Am I sorry? You're the one spooking the shit out of everybody.” Margie moved to her bed and fluffed the pillows, turning her back on Brenda. “Emily was here and she knows all about you, so in the morning you need to go. If she finds you I don't know what'll happen.” “Are you sorry?” “Look-” Margie turned to Brenda just as Brenda slashed at her with the butcher knife. Margie instinctively ducked to the side and Brenda missed her by inches. She plunged the knife into the pillows instead. “What the-” Blood seeped up from the pillow under the the knife. “-fuck?” Margie bolted for the door just as it started to close. “Nooooo!” Margie stuck her hand out just as it closed and the door crushed her fingers. But she prevented it from shutting.

She wailed in pain and fought with the door. Brenda pulled the knife out and moved toward Margie. As she got closer, her mouth opened and out came the whispering sound from earlier. Margie managed to get the door open wide enough to squeeze through. She ran toward Gracie's room. “Gracie! Run! Run!” As Margie neared the room, the door glided open and she saw that the room became a little girl's bedroom with dolls and stuffed animals. Just like in her dream. On the bed laid the lump of a small child beneath bloody, slashed covers and a woman in a nightgown lay down on the floor, blood all over her. Margie hesitated at the horror she's saw, then continued to the stairs and sailed down them. She looked back up the stairwell to see if Brenda was following her but stumbled and fell the rest of the way down . Margie groaned in pain as she got up and limped to the door. She unlocked it as fast as she could. She unlocks the door and pulled the knob. It won't open. “No!” Margie screamed, pulling on the door but it won't give an inch. “Open! Open you son of a bitch!” She looks up the stairs and saw Brenda coming down, clutching the knife. Margie knew she couldn't get away in time. She cowered, closed her eyes and waited but Brenda sailed past her into the living room. “What the hell?” Margie looked around from the doorway and watched Brenda dash across the room and enter the close. Then close the door.

“This can't be happening,” Margie said. “I have to be dreaming again.” She began slapping herself. “Wake up, Margie. Wake up.” Margie got up to her feet and slowly entered the room. The man with the ax brushed past her and continued on to the closet. He whipped open the door. Margie's mouth dropped open in shock as she saw the man swing the ax into the closet. There was a horrifying scream then Brenda charged out brandishing the knife. Brenda stuck the knife into the man's gut as he hit her with the ax again. She slashed his neck and he fell. Margie put a hand to her mouth and looked at Brenda as she took a wobbly step back and collapsed. Brenda and the men laid there, bleeding. Dying. Margie tried to fathom what she just saw. Was this a nightmare? Did this all just happen? The whispering noise started up again behind Margie. “Are you sorry?” the voice resonated through the house. Margie spun around and saw Brenda standing a few feet away with butcher knife in hand. “Wait a minute, you-” Margie looked back at the man and –they're gone. No bodies, no blood. She turned back to Brenda. “Are you sorry? “I don't know what you want,” Margie began to cry. “Sorry for what? What did I

do? I never hurt you.” “Are you sorry for what you did?” Margie glanced at the kitchen and debated on whether she could make it. “Did what?” “My father was sorry. He was sorry he lost his job. Sorry he treated my mother like shit,” Brenda took another step. Margie backed up one. “Sorry he beat the crap out of us whenever we got in his way,” Brenda's steps were getting slower. Margie's steps backwards faster. “But you know what he wasn't sorry for? He was never sorry he got high every night. Nope. He lived to get high. And died for it.” Brenda closed in on Margie. “Are you sorry?” Margie stole one more glance at the kitchen. “Fuck you bitch!” Margie bolted for the kitchen. She entered on the run and caught her foot on Gracie's body. She tripped over over and landed by the counter. The light flicked on. Brenda enters and Margie saw what she tripped over. “Oh my God! No! No! No!” Brenda took a step over Gracie's body. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, okay?!” “You're not.” Brenda struck with the knife. Margie screamed, putting up her hands.

CHAPTER TWELVE Emily entered the house carrying a large box. “Hello?” she called out as she turned around and shut the door. Emily spun around and screamed at the sight of Brenda in her shorts and t-shirt. Brenda tossed the two security bracelets at Emily's feet. They're both glowing green. They're both bloody. “They're in the kitchen,” Brenda said. Emily nodded and picked up the bracelets. She placed them in the box, her hand shaking. She's terrified of Brenda. “How long do I have to keep doing this for you?” Emily asked. “Until they're all sorry.” Emily watched as Brenda crossed the room and went up the stairs. She heads toward the kitchen and puts the box down. She took out the large trash bags from the box and began to unroll them. Emily exited the house dragging a large, stuffed bag. She glanced up at the window and hurried to her car in the driveway. The trunk was open and she struggled to place the body inside. Looking up, she saw Brenda watching from the window, waiting for the next visitors.

HeatherVan Helsing : Vampire Slayer

––––––––

Ray Duran

Abraham Van Helsing had gotten old. He thumbed the dragon head handle of his cane and stretched out his legs across to the empty seat in front of him. His knees creaked and his ankles felt sore after he fell in the kitchen yesterday. He wouldn't tell Heather. She would lecture him about taking it easy and letting the maid do all of the heavy lifting. But Van Helsing remained a prideful man and tried to stave off old age as long as he could. He saw his own reflection in the train glass window. A dry gray face with sunken cheeks and pursed lips, eyes that sparkled like toy marbles. Old in body but young in mind. He looked around and scrutinized the body language of the subway engers around him. Middle of the afternoon, he marveled. And everyone looked like they were about to doze off. “Shit,” he muttered to himself. “I'm eighty-three fucking years old and could probably kick everyone's ass.” But old age had prevented him from doing slayer work. Van Helsing did not want to do something if he could not be the best. Plus he could get killed. So he ed the torch down to his granddaughter. Heather Van Helsing, Vampire Slayer. He taught her from scratch. Teaching the girl from infancy how to battle the undead, the tricks and tips on how to defeat them. He had to get her when she was still young. When they get too old, all the convincing in the world doesn't get them to believe in vampires. Until one bites them in the ass. Van Helsing battled them for decades and finally felt a drainage of spirit, an emptiness not caused by shock, not by trauma, not even by seeing his friends and

family killed. But by simply giving away a little piece of his soul day by day, night by night, to people who didn't give a damn. People who didn't know that there was a war going on. Like the people on this commuter train. They didn't believe in the undead. How an army of vampires could come in and consume them at a moment's notice but for the work of Abraham Van Helsing. “Embarcadero, Embarcadero,” the BART train conductor intoned on the overhead. Van Helsing got up out of his seat and headed toward the door. At eighty-three years of age he did not know how much time he had left to enjoy trips like this so he just took it in while he can. He would go for a walk along the San Francisco pier then stop in at a local cafe and meet his granddaughter for pastry. Not that she knew what good pastry was. He preferred the bakeries of Berlin or Amsterdam. But he pretended that he liked it. Van Helsing exited the train and saw the man coming from the corner of his eye. He wore an Oakland Raiders jacket and if that wasn't enough proof of his stupidity he nodded at his friend who was coming from the opposite side. His friend was huge, six foot four at least and about two hundred fifty pounds of low body fat muscle. But the preoccupied look in the eyes are a dead giveaway Van Helsing thought. Amateur hour at one o'clock in the afternoon. The train platform was sparse with people which was to Van Helsing's relief. The more people, the less room he had to maneuver. Van Helsing swung the cane across his body and hit the man with the Oakland Raiders jacket straight in the eye. The man dropped his gun and screamed, clutching his eye injury with both hands.

The gun hit the ground and fired. People screamed and ran. Melodramatic mother fuckers, Van Helsing thought. The would-be robber's friend proved to be a lot less subtle. A lot larger than his Raider friend, this one actually looked like a football player. He sprinted forward and looked to tackle the old man by the waist. Van Helsing side-stepped the wannabe linebacker like a matador and stuck his foot out. The man tripped over Van Helsing's shoes and careened onto the tracks just as a train arrived. Van Helsing turned his attention back to the Oakland Raider fan and rammed his cane up into the man's crotch. “How much are they paying your sorry ass?” The man grabbed his nuts and rolled over in pain. Then he sprang up and hobbled away toward the opposite escalator. Van Helsing noticed one young man filming the action on his cell phone. He walked up to him, snatched the phone out of his hand and threw it to the ground. “Hey!” the man screamed as Van Helsing's foot stomped down on the phone. “Amateurs,” Van Helsing said as he stepped onto the escalator. Van Helsing exited the street and was impressed that the police arrived in such short order. They ran right by him, however, none the wiser that this feeble looking old man had caused such chaos. Why bother? He thought. They started it. He finished it.

Who were those idiots? Could have been Corpheus' men. Or maybe Rebius. Fuck 'em both. Or they could have been common thugs looking for low-hanging fruit. Van Helsing's gut told him that those men had specifically targeted him. And he always went with his gut instinct. He felt inside his coat pocket for his concealed weapons. He fingered the thin wooden stake, sharpened to a razor point, and felt assured that he had that handy. But he liked using the good old-fashioned cross to the forehead. He liked how it burned the shit out of them. He used to carry around a vial of holy water as well but they would invariably break and it would look like he pissed himself. Van Helsing turned the corner and headed down Montgomery Street, blending in with the corporate crowd. And then he right smack dab into a police officer. This guy was good, whoever he was, Van Helsing thought. Not too many people can come up on him by surprise. The man wore a police officer's uniform but Van Helsing immediately noticed the black leather belt in the shape of a grinning skull. Black boots with steel pointed tips. “You're no damn cop,” Van Helsing said. The man smirked And he was big. At least six-feet five with about fifty pounds more muscle than the earlier hired help. Van Helsing swung his cane but the officer grabbed it and swept his legs. The old man fell to the concrete like a heavy sack of potatoes. He felt an excruciating spasm of pain that extended from his hip up to his spine. He groaned as if he had been electrocuted. The officer rolled him over and got him into an arm bar, grabbing his wrist and wrenching it backward toward his head.

Onlookers backed off and circled the fracas. “Go easy on him,” an older woman said, clearly sympathizing with Van Helsing's age. “10-4, I got him,” the officer said into his walkie-talkie before he placed plastic cuffs on Van Helsing's wrists. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you.” A dark blue Cadillac Escalade screeched up onto the sidewalk. The back door flew open and the officer tossed Van Helsing inside and slammed the door shut. The wheels screeched as the car sped away. The man's large presence took up the entire back seat. Van Helsing could see the driver was female but couldn't make out her face. The man smelled of stale urine, like someone who spent a lot of time in rest homes. “Time to meet your fate, old man. But you had to have known this was coming. You can't stave off the biters forever. You're finite. They're immortal. Crusty old turds like you are like a fart in the wind. But those vampires. Holy fuck! Pure evil. Pure and cold.” “Fuck off,” the old man said. “Yeah, they said you were crusty.” The man backhanded him across the face. Van Helsing turned away then the man punched him in the stomach. Van Helsing never felt such hideous pain in his life. He coughed and coughed then spat out blood. “You're fucking up my carpet,” the man said. “Name's Hugo, by the way. I was really looking forward to meeting you. And your granddaughter. She is ready for some loving. Good God, I can't wait-” “You so much as look at her I'll-” “What? I'll rip off your dick and shove it up her snatch. But ideally I have

something else in mind. I've seen her. God, I've seen her. Her lush brown hair. Green eyes. Not just green, but emerald green. She doesn't smile much. But for what I have planned she won't be doing much of that anyway.” The man's voice was rough and low-pitched, like a sewer pipe being dragged across gravel. Van Helsing looked out the window at the foggy streets of San Francisco. He strained his ears to pick up the warbled strains of a distant siren. A siren that he hoped was coming closer. But was instead fading away. And then he felt a hood go over his head. The old man felt like the trip took a total of thirty minutes. The car stopped and he heard the door open. Hugo grabbed him by the arms and ripped him out of his seat. He dragged him across what he felt was a gravel lot then he heard a door open. He felt his felt scrape across a lush carpet. Another door opened and he was thrown into a room where he landed on hard cement. Van Helsing rolled up to his knees then Hugo took the hood off his head. The old man's eyes had a hard time adjusting to the dark. Then a small light flicked on. He looked up and saw charcoal drawings of different men and women on the wall. “Recognize any of them?” Hugo mocked. Van Helsing struggled to his feet. Scrutinizing the photos now, he recognized them. Vampires. Victims of a stake to the heart courtesy of his own hands. “Who are you with?” Van Helsing demanded. “Corpheus? Rebius?”

Hugo laughed and shook his head. “No,” he said. “The one I worship is much more powerful than either of those.” Two more men entered the room. They looked like local thugs, another one with a Raiders jacket. The other wore a Motley Crew t-shirt. The one with the Raiders coat handed Hugo a toolbox. “Hold him down,” Hugo commanded as he rummaged through the tool box. Still woozy, Van Helsing could not put up much of a fight. “See vampires and sadists are a lot a like. I'd say we compliment each other very well. She helps me think of ways to hurt people that you wouldn't believe. Even scares me sometimes.” The two young men picked up Van Helsing. Then one held his arm up and pressed his hand against the wall. Van Helsing saw Hugo come toward him with a nine inch nail and a hammer. “You like to drive stakes through their hearts,” he said. “Here's what that feels like.” Hugo pressed the nail against the palm of Van Helsing's hand and slammed the hammer against it. Van Helsing cried out in pain, his hand now impaled in the wooden wall. Hugo took out another nail. “Look at the size of this thing.” Hugo waved the nail in front of the old man's face. “Nothing is too good for you.” The young man held up Van Helsing's left hand as Hugo drove the nail into his palm. Hugo tossed the hammer to the floor then stood back iring his work. “The great Van Helsing nailed to the wall,” he laughed. “I can't help it. I try not to laugh but I can't. I've killed politicians. Cops. Judges. And now I'm serving up

the great vampire slayer. Doesn't matter how vain or pompous or important a person thinks they are. When they meet me, they become a corpse.” The three men chuckled as they left the room and shut it behind them, leaving the old man in total dark He couldn't wait to get his hands on Hugo. He would rip him to shreds. Maybe even torture him first. But he thought of his granddaughter. He knew Heather could take care of herself. But something about this smelled like a trap. He knew she would come looking for him. He struggled against the nails in his hands. The pain had convulsed his muscles and he peed on himself. He screamed and grinded his teeth so hard that he crushed one of his ceramic crowns. The nails that had been driven too deeply into the wall and they immobilized him. The blood had already begun to congeal around the entry wounds, rivulets of crimson dripped to the floor. The pain was too much. And he was too old. His spirit as frail as a dried-up leaf. Then everything went black. It took a couple of years, but Heather Van Helsing finally found her “dream team.” Her grandfather stated constantly that she could not do the slayings alone. That she needed to surround herself with good hunters. She had Vera and Constance. And Josie. They all lost friends and family in vampire attacks. Now they dedicated their lives to the cause of exterminating them from the earth. And her final recruit had to be a real police officer. Penny, still in uniform, met her and Josie inside the BART subway station. “He has no cell phone?” Penny asked incredulously.

Heather just shook her head. “He's old school, what can I say?” Penny shook her head. “This looks like a professional job.” “Why?” “Because we had a witness that said a uniformed police officer picked him. Then threw him into a blue SUV.” Heather stood on the BART subway platform and scrutinized the patrons. Then she looked across at the dark tunnel and saw the approaching lights of an oncoming train. She ed how one of the vampire cults had made their way underground through these tunnels and lived there for years. “He always said this would happen,” Heather said. “Always warned us that they would try and hit him.” “We'll find him,” Penny said although there could be some false reassurance detected in her voice. “We've found missing children. Hell, even missing dogs. We can damn sure find your grandfather.” A police officer came up to the women. His name tag read “Mancini”. “The surveillance footage is ready,” he said. The women were led inside the BART satellite police station. A row of dimly lit monitors stood to one side. “Here's where we see two guys jump him,” Mancini said as the footage played. “Your grandfather is quite a rough customer. He trips one of the punks and he falls straight into the path of the train. The other one he just slaps up a little bit but let's him go.” “Anything else?” Penny asked. “The footage goes as far as his exit from the station. He goes down Montgomery Street and we see him get arrested.” “Stop the tape!” Heather said.

The officer complies and they examine the video still. The police officer standing above Van Helsing is quite large. “Does he look like anyone we know?” Mancini shook his head. “Nope.” “How could they have known that he was on the train?” “Could have been followed,” Penny offered. Heather shook her head. “Grampa knew how to shake a tail. It looks like someone knew exactly where he was headed and where he would be.” “And they didn't mind that they were being filmed,” Penny said. “They're trying to play up the fear factor,” Heather said. “ vampire gangs play upon fear. The emotional fears people feel when they encounter the vampire are like food for them.” “But these guys weren't vampires.” “They're hired help,” Heather said. “Who they're bringing my grandfather to is what I'm worried about.” “Who do you think it is?” Josie asked. “I don't think this is any cult we've run into before. Rebius' team dresses like French aristocrats and wouldn't deign to hire thugs. Corpheus well, he's unpredictable but more of a loner and really doesn't work with humans. This is someone new.” “Are we sure that it is vampires?” Penny asked. “What else?” “Could be a group operating independently.” Heather trusted Penny's instinct. She was almost always right when it came to street-level crimes. But this was someone with some old school skill sets. There was no other way they could sneak up on old Van Helsing without some kind of

preternatural skill. “What could they want?” Penny asked. “If they wanted to kill him, they would have done so at the point of attack. Or maybe they want to kill him later. Vampires are like that. They want to see the person that has done them wrong suffer.” “They won't kill him quick,” Penny said. “They'll take him and make him die slow,” Heather said. “We have no time to waste.” Heather headed out of the substation and caught her own reflection in the BART train windows. She became sad that, only hours earlier, her grandfather had probably stared out of the same window. She looked like Snow White, poisoned by the heritage of her surname, waiting for some relief from terror-filled nights, cross-bows under her pillow and the endless anxiety that comes when one is fated to both slay and be stalked by, vampires. When stalking a vampire Heather was always able to take that inspirational leap and place herself into the undead's mind. What were his typical victims? One guy only targeted crack dealers. Another targeted prostitutes. But this group were specifically targeting her grandfather. Heather entertained the thought that there could be a mole inside her group of slayers. But who? Only four other people knew that her grandfather would stop by and visit. And still, the old man refused to be escorted and live anything but a normal life. “Vampires don't come out during the day,” he said. But the old man had grown so ancient in his thinking that he didn't realize that the vampires had sophisticated ways of dealing with slayers now. They acquired wealth and s. Human s that they could employ to kill off their natural predators. She took a head count of her slayer team. Josie's husband and daughter were

attacked by vampires over a year ago. Her husband was turned and exterminated. The daughter was never found. Penny's own father was a police officer killed in the line of duty by a vampire. Vera and Constance were two rich girls who were orphaned by the age of fifteen. Her parents were killed by vampires as they vacationed in Hungary. They wanted revenge. But also liked to party. And they were now hurting for cash. She had texted Constance and Vera earlier but they didn't respond. Could they have been paid off by this rogue vampire group. Or perhaps they were the rogues themselves? The fog refused to lift. Heather texted Constance and Vera again to meet her outside her home. Her gray painted house looked like an abandoned prison. There were vines climbing up the walls and bars on the windows. “Sorry we're late,” Constance said as they pulled up in a convertible Porsche. The girls were identical twins and the only way you can differentiate between the two was in their jewelry. Constance always wore a cross necklace with lowcut blouses that showed off her cleavage. Vera, on the other hand, wore a rabbit's foot around both wrists. “Why didn't you text me back?” Heather demanded. “Sorry,” Vera said. “We were out.” “Out where?” “Making friends and influencing people, shit, what's with the attitude?” Vera asked. Heather grabbed the girl by the collar. “My fucking grandfather is missing that's what's with the attitude.” “Heather!” Constance said. “Heather stop!” “There was only four people who knew my grandfather was going to be on that

train.” “Come on, Heather!” Josie said. “You can't be serious.” “Heather, no” Constance said. “We're not your enemy, girl.” Vera said. “No secrets,” Heather said. “When we say we're going to be someplace, we show up. We text back.” “It ran out of juice okay?” Constance held up her cell phone. “That's the truth.” A flood of thoughts gushed through Heather's mind. Both girls were used to the high life and now were pressed for cash. She had to entertain all possibilities. They may have wanted quick cash because they never really dedicated themselves to being slayers. Vera pushed Heather's hands off her. Then she twisted Heather's hand over, palm up, and began reading it like a gypsy. “Strong lines you have here, Heather,” Vera said. “Unusual lines. Not exactly what I would call the get married and settle down with two kids type. But your heart line is broken. And that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don't start trusting people.” “We're sorry,” Constance said. “I can't believe you would think we could turn on you. We are all haunted by the ghosts of are parents' murders. All of us. We would never up or help those blood sucking mother fuckers. No matter what!” The guilelessness in her voice made Heather soften. “I'm sorry,” Heather said. “I don't know why I thought that.” Vera let go of Heather's hand. “The vampires want us to be paranoid,” Josie said. “ you taught us that.”

“We're here to help,” Constance said. “Both of us.” Heather nodded her head. Penny got a heads-up on the whereabouts of Van Helsing's first attacker on the subway platform. The surveillance footage matched the mug shot of Marvin Maxell. A small-time hood whose only priors had been drug trafficking. She gave his address to Heather and they staked out the home. Sure enough, they found a late model GTO with an Oakland Raider insignia painted on both of the doors. Marvin stepped out of the vehicle and leapfrogged up his front steps. He looked both directions before he opened the door and then slammed it shut. “What's the play?” Josie asked. “I'll have you and Constance come through the back door. Vera and I will take the front. But we need him alive. No matter what he does we spare him until we find out where grampa is.” The girls opened their doors to exit the vehicle until they saw an elderly woman head up the steps. It was difficult for them to see as the night fog rolled in. They could see that the woman walked with a heavy gait and wore a black dress and gloves, as if returning from a funeral. When she reached the front door she looked right and left to make sure no one was looking just like Marvin did. She knocked hard. “Yeah?” Marvin opened the door. “Can I come in?” the woman asked. Marvin looked to the street again to make sure they weren't being watched then nodded his head. The old woman grabbed Marvin by the throat and lifted him up, his feet off the

ground, then she threw him inside. Calm and cool, she entered the home and closed the door. “What the shit!” Josie yelled. Heather and the rest of the team sprinted toward the house. She took out a stake from her coat pocket. “No time for subtleties,” Heather said as they reached the front door. She kicked it down and found the old woman laying on top of a prone Marvin, slurping blood from a gaping wound on his neck. She looked up and snarled at the girls as they stormed in. Josie shuddered at the ugliness of the woman's face, she had a hooked nose and reminded her of a crow pecking at a dead rat. Her eyes were a diseased yellow. Heather kicked the woman in the head and she rolled backwards. Josie drove a stake through Marvin's heart. “Here's one recruit you won't get tonight.” The old woman got up and snarled, her spit and blood hit Heather's face. “Fucking cunts!” Heather thrusted forward with the wooden stake. The old woman anticipated the blow and side-stepped the slayer like a matador. But Constance, coming up from the rear, kicked the old vampire in the back of her knees while Heather followed up her miss with a spin-kick to the old woman's face. “Teamwork, baby,” Constance said. The old woman fell to her back as Heather stood above her, shoving a wooden cross in her face. The vampire hissed and spat. “Cunts! All of you!” “What coven are you from?” Heather demanded.

“Fuck you all!” the vampire snarled and jolted up, only to be greeted by Heather pressing the cross against her forehead, leaving a smoking welt. Josie and Constance held the now screaming woman down on the ground by her arms. Heather hunkered down in front of the old lady, her voice mockingly warm and reassuring. “That's a lovely fragrance you're wearing,” Heather said. “What is it, dried piss?” The vampire spat at Heather. “Get the fuck off me you cunty ass, cum drinking, cock sucking little whores!” Heather held the stake over the old vampire's heart. “I won't ask nice again. Where is your coven?” Hugo opened the door and walked in with a purpose. Abraham knew better than to bitch out and ask the man what he planned to do with him. Besides, if they wanted him dead, he would have been offed by now. But he wondered if what they had in store for him could be a fate worse than death. “Look at you,” Hugo said. “All dressed up with no place to go.” Nailed to the wall, Van Helsing tried to pry his hands free but could not get any leverage. Hugo depressed a button on the far wall and a door lifted up. He entered the space and lit a candle inside. Skeins of cobwebs and dust marked the smaller chamber which had a coffin housed in the center. Hugo wheeled the coffin out, placing it a few feet in front of the old man. He knocked on top of the coffin three times. “She will be our queen,” Hugo said, rubbing his acne scarred nose. The coldness

of his voice chilled Van Helsing's spine. “Whoever she is,” Van Helsing said, licking his dry lips. “She can bite my ass.” Hugo moved toward the door, shaking his head as if deeply amused. “You'll be the sacrifice for her. Just the way it was meant to be. Consider it your long awaited destiny. But it is her destiny that trumps yours. The great Van Helsing will be no more. After she tastes your suffering blood she will only grow stronger. We will grow stronger.” Without looking back at the old man, he left the room and closed the door behind himself. Van Helsing could see the coffin ran about eight feet long. Then the top started to rise. Slowly at first, the dry oak wood creaking until he could make out the little arms that pushed the cover up and over. The girl looked no more than ten years old. She wore a purple dress and had skin that looked as if it had not seen sunlight in years. “What's your name little girl?” Van Helsing asked. The girl hissed like a rattlesnake and bared her fangs. She slithered out of the coffin and walked slowly toward the old man. He saw her face up close. A smiling evil that came from a place of his darkest dreams. Her rancid breath curdled his stomach. It smelled like burned flesh. She stepped in front of him and looked him straight in the eye as if she wanted to see him suffer. To give her a facial expression that begged for mercy. Van Helsing simply looked down on her with a curled upper lip. Unblinking. Then she scratched his chest, digging her ragged nails deep as she sliced down. Van Helsing could only close his eyes as her tongue tasted his blood. Heather and the slayers arrived at the dilapidated bar. There were no windows just dull brown paint and a long faded sign that read “The Hideout.”

“Kinda ironic, eh?” Josie pointed at the sign. Heather didn't respond. She nodded her head toward the rear and the girls knew what to do. Josie and Vera would take the rear door. Heather and Penny would enter through the front. They were trained for situations like this. Only this time, this was personal. Heather tried the knob but found it locked. So she smashed her foot through the wood. Penny did the rest of the work as she barreled her shoulder into the door and forced it open. In the center of the room, Hugo greeted them with a smirk. Then he charged at them without fear. Heather side-stepped his tackle and watched the man barrel into the wall. Spinning around, Hugo kicked the gun out of Penny's hand. Then he tackled her, rolling the cop onto the floor. Hugo proved to be way too strong as he quickly constricted his arms around Penny's neck. “All it takes is a little squeeze,” he whispered. “A little squeeze to my right and your vertebrae is snapped.” Heather stood over the man, her cross-bow aimed at his head. “Don't even think about it,” Hugo said, strengthening his hold on Penny. “I don't think,” Heather shot the arrow straight into his eye. “I do.” Penny slipped out of Hugo's eased grip as he writhed and rolled on the ground. Until Heather relieved his agony with an arrow to his throat. “Heather!” The scream sounded like it came from beneath the floor.

“Vera,” Heather whispered as she ran toward the back of the club. They found a spiral stairwell which led them down into the cellar. “Heather!” the voice cried out again. They saw the prone Vera first. Their comrade laid on the ground, a pool of blood trailing from a bite her neck. A little girl in a purple dress wiping the red stains from her mouth. Then Heather saw her grandfather, standing on wobbly legs as blood spewed out of his palms. And Josie had a gun to his head. “Weapons on the ground,” Josie demanded. Heather and Penny hesitated. “Now!” Josie pressed the muzzle of the gun against Van Helsing's temple. The old man nodded his head for the women to comply. With agonizing slowness, the slayers placed their weapons on the ground. “Now kick them over to me,” Josie said. “You know the drill. Come on.” The slayers complied. “What the fuck, Josie?” Penny asked. “My daughter,” she said, nodding over at the little girl now getting seconds on Vera's neck. “You wouldn't understand. I had to find her. I figured sooner or later we would get to her.” “You can't-” Heather moved as if she were about to pick up her cross bow. Van Helsing held up his arms as if to tell Heather don't do it. “Sorry about Vera,” Josie said. “But I never liked her. And my girl has to eat. Now move to your right please. Turn your backs and place your hands against

the wall. Now!” The slayers had no choice to comply. Josie moved toward the stairwell with the gun pressed against Van Helsing's head. “I just want my daughter. That's it. You can't kill her. No one will.” Josie reached the bottom of the stairwell. “Come on, Carly,” she said. “Time to go with, Mommy.” The little girl looked up from her meal and snarled. “Mommy said come,” Josie said. “Now!” The little girl appraised her mother for a beat then got up and walked toward her. “Go up the stairs and wait for mommy there.” Carly climbed up the steps, humming to herself and wiping her mouth with her arm. “You come after us, I'll kill you. I'll kill you all. I will keep her under wraps. She will harm no one. You leave us alone. Now and forever.” Josie pushed the old man toward the women and ran up the steps. Heather and Penny reached down for their weapons but heard the door slam shut and the lock turn. Then the entire room went black.

THE DARK SHIFT

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SARAH LOWEY

It was innocent enough, to begin with when Bridie, Maddy, and Camila posted an ad on Craigslist for a new roommate. It was a simple act, as easy as the click of the mouse; yet, that simple act set in motion a dark string of events that would not only become a battle for survival but would test the mettle of their characters to the extreme. It didn’t take long to get a response for the ad, albeit just one response. Camila took the call. “She sounds great,” Camila had gushed afterward. “She seems like a no-fuss kind of person; she should fit in really well.” And when she’d turned up for the interview, Bridie and Maddy couldn’t help but agree. Their first impression of the girl could be summed up in one word – wholesome. Ever heard the phrase ‘wholesome as apple pie?’ Well, that was Faith. She was petite with soft, dark blonde hair and large, gray eyes in a heartshaped face of peaches and cream. The only thing that marred the purity of her face was a faded bruise on her left cheek. Apart from that, she was perfect. She seemed cheerful and relaxed, just the right combination of friendliness and restraint. This girl, they thought, would be fun while still respecting boundaries. She also, had a month’s rent to pay upfront which pretty much clinched the deal. “How soon can you move in?” Bridie had asked. “Today, if you’ll have me?” It didn’t take her long to move in. In fact, everything she owned was in one black duffle bag, which seemed a little odd to the girls but they didn’t like to pry. In a couple of hours, she was set up in the back room with the view onto the park that aded the rear of the apartment block. She was standing at the window a couple of hours later, gazing at that view with a faraway expression when Bridie knocked on her door holding a glass of Coke and a sandwich. “I bet you could use something to eat,” said Bridie. Faith started in surprise. “Oh, sorry, I was daydreaming.” She took the sandwich gratefully. “Thanks for this. I could eat a horse.” Bridie sat down on the end of the bed and watched Faith who was trying not to wolf the food down too fast. How long had it been since her last meal? She shifted on the bed making herself comfortable.

“So, where do you come from?” “Iowa,” Faith answered between bites. “I’m from a small town called Barnaby’s Creek which you’ve probably never heard of. My parents run an old-fashioned General Mercantile there,” she paused and turned her face to the window, “I really miss them... I miss home.” Her face took on the faraway look again and her voice cracked with emotion. Bridie’s heart went out to her. “I miss my family too,” she confided, thinking of her own tousle-haired twin brothers, her burly big-hearted father, and her funny, strong minded mother. “You don’t really understand what your family means to you until they aren’t around anymore – but it does get easier, it really does.” Faith shook her head. “That’s what I used to think. But I don’t anymore. You never get over being away from the people you love.” Her words seemed loaded with meaning and Bridie wondered if there was more to Faith than her simple country-girl exterior suggested. Had she dealt with the death of a loved one? Was she a survivor of divorce? But before Bridie could ask her, they were interrupted by Maddy who exploded through the bedroom door with excitement. “Party at Brad and Josh’s tonight - 8 o’clock – everyone’s going to be there!” Camila poked her head over Maddy’s shoulder. “What she means is that the cute redhead from French Lit class is going to be there.” Maddy grinned, nodding. “Hey, are you going to come too, Faith? It will give you a chance to get to know people and there will be plenty of cute guys to go around.” “No!” Maddy, Camila, and Bridie stopped in surprise at Faith’s outburst, sharing surreptitious glances with each other. Faith seemed to gather herself and mumbled apologetically. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. It’s just that I have panic attacks in new situations like that. If you don’t mind, I’ll take my time to get to know everyone. Besides, I’m tired and really need an early night...”

The girls rushed to console her. It was fine; there was no rush. There were parties every other week to attend. They left Faith to herself and got ready for the party which turned out to be particularly fun. In fact, they were having so much fun that Bridie didn’t even think about Faith again until they pulled up around 2: a.m. at the front of their apartment block in Camila’s beat up old 95 Honda Civic. Bridie and Camila were cackling with laughter at something stupid Maddy had said as they spilled out of the car. On the way down the garden path, Bridie slipped on something, falling flat on her behind with her legs flying up in the air. She lay on her back laughing helplessly while Camila and Maddy leaned on each other, laughing noiselessly at her misfortune. “What the hell did I trip over?” hissed Bridie from the ground. “Quit laughing you guys!” Bridie, rolled clumsily onto her stomach taking the opportunity while she was still on the ground to flick on her phone light and scan the pathway. Something glinted in the grass. “What’s this?” she murmured, reaching over to pick it up. “Shhh! Will you guys be quiet?” Maddy and Camila were still giggling as Bridie picked up the object and examined it. It was a pearl stud earring. There was something familiar about the earring which she kept it clutched in her hand as she scrambled to her feet. “Shhh,” Bridie repeated, as she pushed Camila and Maddy towards the front door. The stairwell was dark as a tomb making Bridie curse the Building superintendent for not fixing the broken light which had been broken for nearly a month. She stood huddled with Maddy and Camila at the bottom of the stairs. Their laughter had died out as soon as the front door had shut heavily behind them with an echoing blam, blanketing them in darkness. Bridie found herself clutching the back of Camila’s dress. It was so deadly quiet. Most of the other tenants in the apartment block were elderly and would almost certainly be asleep at this hour which normally, wouldn’t have bothered her. It was nice to live near people who didn’t get drunk and pee in the stairwell; nevertheless, right now it would’ve been nice to hear someone’s television blaring or to be able to make out the glow of friendly light under someone’s door. Maddy, the least skittish of the three, began to climb the stairs ahead of Bridie and Camila but came to an abrupt stop at the top. She seemed frozen, statue-like

on the landing. “What is it?” Camila had slowed down, hesitant to take another step. Maddy looked down at them with wide eyes. “Our front door is open.” Bridie froze in suspended animation, but Camila was already backing down the staircase towards her. “I’m not going in there,” she stammered. “We should call the police.” Bridie stopped her in her tracks. “Wait, it should be okay. Faith is in there, ? She probably just went out and was careless.” Camila’s expression cleared. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot about Faith.” Immediately, her face darkened again. “But that’s irresponsible of her,” she said turning and heading back up the stairs. At the top, Maddy waited for them before stepping cautiously towards their apartment door. It was wide open and the living room was in darkness. A dim light coming from the back of the apartment spilled into the hallway. Bridie moved to enter the apartment. “Wait!” hissed Maddy, pulling her back. “I have a can of mace.” She rummaged in her bag and produced a small black canister. “I’ve never had to use this thing before,” she whispered, holding it out in front of her. Together, as a group, they took one step through the doorway. Bridie reached out her hand in the darkness, sliding it up and down the wall until her palm ran over the switch. Light flooded the living room. Every cushion had been pulled off the sofa and ripped up; stuffing was lying all over the floor; the lampstand lay on its side, and magazines had been shredded and flung all over the room. Bridie staggered back, clutching the wall for , Maddy swore under her breath and Camila crossed herself. “The little thief,” she spat. “She burgled us!” “We don’t know that for sure, Camila,” said Bridie, ignoring her friend’s accusation. She took a step toward the hallway. “Faith, are you here?” There was silence except for the second hand on the clock slotting into place, tick – tick – tick. Camila sidled back toward the open door. “There is no way I’m going any further. I’m calling the police.” She fumbled with her phone and

began dialing. Maddy and Bridie took each other by the arm and started to take tentative steps down the hall towards Faith’s room. Switching on the lights as they went, they could see that whoever had been there had ransacked their rooms as well. At the end of the hall, Faith’s bedroom door was ajar a couple of inches. Dim lamplight glowed from within. “Bridie, maybe we should wait for the police to get here before we look in Faith’s room?” Bridie, swallowed, she was scared too, but something compelled her to keep going. She didn’t answer, Maddy, but allowed her feet to propel her forward. Maddy’s breath was hot on her neck as Bridie reached out her hand and tapped the door with her fingers. Silently, the door swung open, revealing the bedroom turned upside down and inside out. Maddy and Bridie let out involuntary cries of anticipation. But their cries turned to gasps as they realized that the room was empty. No Faith. No serial killer lurking in the corner. Bridie and Maddy fell into each other’s arms with relief which was short-lived. If Faith wasn’t here, where was she? What had she taken? Why did she ransack her own room? Was she the culprit or was there something more sinister going on? Out of the corner of her eye, Bridie saw something glinting on the floor near the curtain. It looked like an earring. She recognized it immediately because its twin was still clutched tightly in her hand. A pearl stud earring. Faith’s earring. She showed Maddy. “Looks like someone was in a hurry to get out of here,” she muttered. They made their way back to the living room waiting for the arrival of the police. Within ten minutes a pair of officers arrived. The ruckus had finally roused some of their elderly neighbors and a few sleepy, silver-haired heads peered between cracks in curtains and narrowly opened doors. After a quick search, it was established, oddly enough, that despite the effort taken to ransack the place, nothing had been taken. The girls sat in a tight huddle on the sofa. While one police officer continued to collect evidence the other sat opposite the girls taking their statement. Her sharp black eyes taking everything in at once, her voice business-like and efficient. Officer Carol Blackthorne had twenty years’ experience in the force under her

belt. “So, you say that before today you never met this girl?” “Well, I spoke to her on the phone yesterday,” answered, Camila. “But we met her in person for the first time today.” “Was there anything unusual about her behavior or appearance?” “She’s a really good actor,” stated Maddy contemptuously. “She acted really nice and we got sucked in hook, line, and sinker.” “I noticed something.” It was Bridie. “Yes?” Officer Blackthorne’s attention shifted to Bridie, pen poised in her hand. Bridie shifted in her seat. “She had a faded bruise on her left cheek under her eye. As though she had been punched a while back. But she just didn’t seem the type to get herself in trouble, you know? I just pushed the thought out of my mind.” Officer Blackthorne’s stare was unwavering. “That’s interesting you should say that. We put her name through a check and Faith Bellamy has come back as a missing person. She was reported missing by her family six months ago; did she say anything to indicate to you that might be the case?” Bridie shrugged. “She told me she was from Iowa and she missed her family.” At that information, Officer Blackthorne’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly. “Thank you, that will be all for now. We’ll let you know if we find anything out. In the meantime, I’d suggest you get new locks for your door. Although I don’t think this girl will be coming back, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.” When the officers left half an hour later, the girls sat drinking hot chocolate on the sofa. Everyone was too shocked to sleep, nor did anyone feel like going to sleep in their messed-up rooms. The thought of a stranger touching their things was too unnerving to be conducive to peaceful dreaming. Eventually, blankets and pillows were pulled out to make simple beds in the living room where they talked in quiet tones before slipping into exhausted oblivion.

Bridie was woken by the sound of the Mherson’s radio blaring. They were both deaf so they always turned the volume to max. It was so loud she could hear the talkback show they were listening to. Someone was calling up for advice on how to get rid of Aphids from their rose bushes. “Shut up, nobody cares about your stupid roses,” she mumbled grumpily into her pillow. It was a few seconds before the events of the previous night came flooding back and she sat up abruptly, blinking and yawning. Maddy was snoring like a lawn mower and Camila was invisible except for a tuft of black hair just visible under her blankets. Bridie allowed herself to slump back on her pillow, shutting her eyes against the light streaming through the curtains. With her eyes still closed, she felt for her phone and flicked it on. Flashing on her screen was an unread text. Realizing she must have had her volume switched off, she quickly adjusted her settings and checked the text. It was from Faith. Curious, she rubbed her still gluggy eyes so she could see it better. The text was time coded at 11:18 p.m. the night before. Bridie’s blood ran cold as the words, typed in hurried desperation, materialized before her eyes. Shes comng for me Akuma Im dead. Tell my mom and d The text ended abruptly. Bridie felt the blood drain from her face as she imagined Faith lying dead somewhere or on the run from something or someone evil. Akuma? Who or what was that? Sleep suddenly the farthest thing from her mind. Bridie scrambled over the floor to wake Maddy. She showed her the text. Maddy snatched the phone from her, understanding dawning instantly on her face. “Oh no, that poor girl!” “We’ve got to let the police know. Maybe we’re not too late.” “Let the police know what?” It was Camila, stirring from her bed. Maddy showed her the text. “Bridie found this on her phone this morning. While we were at the party, poor Faith was running for her life from this... Akuma person.”

Camila’s eyes were as big as saucers. “You know what this means don’t you? It means that some freaky dangerous person or people were in our house last night! We could be next! I wish we’d never laid eyes on that girl.” She threw the phone into Bridie’s lap in disgust. “No, we’ll tell the cops. They’ll know what to do.” Maddy stood up and was feverishly pacing the room, every now and then, checking out of the window as if she expected to see someone pulling up to the curb. “If we’re in any danger they’ll let us know.” Bridie’s eyes went from Maddy’s to Camila’s. “Do you think we should try to call her?” Maddy flopped down beside Bridie on the floor. “Are you crazy? If she’s captured or dead, her killer might have her phone. Do you want her killer to know that we know something?” Camila shuffled up closer to them so that they were sitting in a tight triangle on the floor. “They may have already seen Faith’s text to you. They might already know that we know.” As the girls sat contemplating this unpleasant thought, there was a knock on the door. Nobody dared move. The door lock was still intact but the safety latch had been torn off its hinges the night before. Nobody was willing to pull the door open to see who was on the other side of the door. Bridie gestured with her hands, indicating that she was going to look through the spy hole in the door. As she crept towards the door, the knock came again, this time more urgently. A quavering voice broke the silence from the other side. “Yoohoo! Hello, anybody home?” Another knock. “Hello, girls. It’s Edna from next door.” Bridie, Maddy, and Camila almost burst into tears with relief and Bridie quickly opened the door to reveal their 86-year-old, 4 foot nothing, neighbor. “Hi honey,” she beamed, craning her neck over Bridie’s shoulder to try to get a look inside. “I sure hope everyone’s o.k. I couldn’t help but notice those nice police officers in your apartment last night.” Her scant eyebrows were raised in question at Bridie.

“Thank you, Edna. We are all fine.” Bridie didn’t know how much or what to say. She certainly didn’t want Edna to see the disarray behind her so she stepped forward half closing the door behind her. Edna looked up at her waiting hopefully for a titbit of gossip. Sighing, Bridie decided to go with a version of the truth. “Actually, the police were here to help us find a friend that seems to have gone missing.” Edna’s bright button eyes perked up. “Oh, you must mean that dear little thing that came by my place about eleven o’clock last night. She was just darling and in such a rush! She gave me something to keep for you; said I was to give it to you first thing in the morning.” At that, Edna stepped aside, pointing at something on the ground. Bridie’s breath caught in her throat. There, lying on the ground at Edna’s feet, was Faith’s black duffle bag. She picked it up. There was something substantial inside by its weight. “Thank you, so much, Edna,” she said as she moved to go inside. “It was my pleasure, honey,” Edna smiled, hovering by the door, obviously in hope of being invited in. “If there’s anything else I can help you with, you just let me know.” “I will.” There was a brief, awkward silence at the end of which, Edna dolefully turned in the direction of her apartment. Bridie watched for a respectable amount of time as Edna moved off slowly down the hall before closing the door behind her. With the duffle bag, still, in her grasp, she turned to see Maddy’s and Camila’s wide-eyed faces staring at the bag in a mixture of fear and curiosity. They’d obviously heard everything. Without speaking, Bridie set the bag down on the floor between them. “I’m too scared to open it.” She whispered. “I’m not.” Maddy pulled the bag towards her and examined the bag. It had a zip with two heavy buckles. Each buckle was locked with a padlock. Undeterred, Maddy padded quickly to her bedroom. “I’ve got just the thing we need,” she said over her shoulder. In a few minutes, she returned with a small black triangular object. “It’s a padlock shim,” she announced. “Nobody should be without one.” Bridie and Camila stared at Maddy in wonderment. They weren’t about to question her on why she kept an implement for picking padlocks. Maddy’s

fingers trembled as she fitted the thin wedge around the shank of the first padlock and twisted. The shank popped open effortlessly. She moved to the second lock and did the same. Now all that was left between the girls and the contents of the bag was a zipper which was secured with a plastic zip-tie. Maddy used the shim to cut the tie. “There,” said Maddy with a tremor in her voice. “Who’s going to open it?” “You.” Bridie and Camila said at once. “Right then.” Maddy took the zipper and dragged it open in one swift movement. The three girls let out a collective “Ohh,” as the contents, bundles, and bundles of hundred dollar bills, spilled out of the bag. “Money!” “There must be at least a hundred grand here!” “But why would she leave this with us?” “This is what they must have been looking for last night.” They sat looking at one another, a hundred thoughts going through their heads. Maddy pulled the bundles of money off the top of the pile. Underneath, there was clothing and a notepad. “Look, there’s some of Faith’s personal stuff here and a note.” Bridie opened the note scrawled in hurried writing. Dear friends, This money was made through evil means for an evil purpose. It was my intention to try to reverse the evil by using it for good. But I’m too late. Akuma has found me. Please find my parents and tell them I love them and I did everything I could to find my way home. Perhaps it’s better I didn’t. At least if I’m dead she won’t be able to trace me back to the people I love.

This money is in your care now. Do what you want with it. Faith Camila began to cry softly. “This is tragic. I can’t bear it. What did this poor girl go through?” Bridie’s eyes roamed over the note. Although it was obviously written in a hurry, it was still measured in its message. “She must have written this before she sent the text. The text is much more desperate than this note.” “She wrote it while she was still here, obviously,” continued Maddy. “Does it give any clue to where she would have been going?” Bridie shook her head. A single tear slid down her cheek. All she could think of was Faith, terrified, frantic and alone against an enemy that she clearly believed she wouldn’t be able to outrun. Akuma, whatever that was. “Who or what the hell is Akuma?” Bridie asked the room at large. “Maybe it’s some kind of gang or crime organization?” “It sounds Japanese to me,” said Maddy, typing the word in on a search engine on her phone. “Let’s see if it means anything.” “You don’t have to,” interrupted Camila. “I’ve already found it.” She turned the screen of her phone to face Maddy and Bridie. “This is what it means.” Her face was pale and she looked ill. Maddy and Bridie leaned forward to read the tiny writing on the English to Japanese translator. Japanese AKUMA = English DEMON. “That’s it!” Camila raised her palms in one emphatic movement. “I am not hanging around to find out what comes next in this saga. I don’t want any of this dirty money and I don’t want some psycho murderer to come chasing after me for it either!” She was starting to break down in tears again. Maddy moved close and tried to calm her, wrapping her arms around her soothingly. “But that’s just it, don’t you see? Whoever Akuma is, they have already been here. They’ve already checked and found nothing. We aren’t important enough to bother with and anyway, why would they come back here when, as far as they

know, the money is with Faith?” “But what if they’ve found Faith? It was Bridie who spoke. “What if they’ve found Faith and the money wasn’t on her? What if they forced her to tell? Maddy frowned. “You read that note, Bridie. Faith wanted to get Akuma where it hurts – right in the hip pocket. She wanted to undo what was done to her. This was personal. I don’t think anything they did to her would make her tell. I also think,” and here she paused for a moment to choose her words. “I think we should keep the money.” Bridie felt sick. Her head was swimming. Morally, she felt repulsed at the idea of keeping the money, but secretly, she was ashamed to it, she too had been contemplating the idea of keeping the money. Her family had never been rich. She wasn’t going to come by another windfall like this in a hurry. It could mean paying off most of her college debt or maybe even taking a trip overseas. The possibilities were endless. “Do you really think we could pull it off?” she asked Maddy. Camila stared open mouthed at Maddy and Bridie. “I can’t believe you two are even entertaining the thought of doing this!” “Why not, Camila?” Maddy stood suddenly. It’s not like this belonged to some innocent person. This Akuma person deserves to never get their money back!” “Look, I understand where you’re coming from, Camila,” said Bridie. I feel guilty at the thought of keeping it, but Maddy is right. We wouldn’t be hurting anyone good.” She looked appealingly at Camila. If we used it for good, wouldn’t it be like Robin Hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor?” “Yeah, but what about the danger factor? I can’t believe it won’t come back to bite us in the ass somehow.” “Well,” said Bridie, scrambling for a solution, “What if we got new locks for the door and went home for a couple of weeks before school starts? We could leave the bag here, money and all, while we stay safe at home with our families. If after two weeks, there’s no news of Faith, and the apartment hasn’t been broken into, that would suggest that the trail has gone cold and we’re in the clear.”

“I like the sound of going home,” Camila responded in a cold voice. “That’s what I’m going to do. You two can do what you like with the money.” She left in angry silence, shutting her bedroom door behind her. By that evening, a locksmith had changed the locks and the three girls were on their way to their respective homes. Nobody had said much on departure. Everything had already been said in the frequent discussions they’d had throughout the day. The decision had been made. The duffle bag had been placed on the coffee table in the living room. The bait had been set. Now it was just a matter of time to see what happened next. Bridie was glad to be away from the apartment and in the bosom of her own loving family, although her happiness was marred by the ugly secret she was keeping from her parents. Several times a day she would flip-flop in her resolve to keep the money. One minute she would determine to call Maddy and tell her the deal was off. The next minute she’d be dreaming of what she could buy with her share of the cash. It was on the eighth day, while she was setting the table for dinner, that she got a call from Maddy. “I went back to the apartment today. The bag is still there.” “What? Maddy, are you crazy? That was a reckless thing to do, you could have been watched.” Once again, Bridie’s good sense, the good sense that had always served her well up until this point in her life, told her to wash her hands of the situation. “I’m starting to think this whole thing is a bad idea, Maddy. Let’s take the bag to the police and forget about it.” “And how would that look? Taking the bag back a week after we got it? Wouldn’t that implicate us in the whole Faith disappearance in some way? They’d want to know why we hung on to the money all this time. Do you want to explain that to the cops?” “No, I guess not. But I wish I never listened to you in the first place.” Bridie hung up, fighting back tears. She felt a mixture of confusion and resignation, as though she was getting swept along in a current that she was too weak to swim against. After the phone call, it became increasingly difficult to behave naturally around her family, and by the end of the visit, she was surprised to find that she was actually relieved to be going back to the apartment. On the day, they were to go back, Bridie said an especially emotional farewell to

her family. Her mother had stroked her hair and wiped her tears. “What’s all this for?” She had said. “We’ll be seeing you in November for Thanksgiving.” Bridie hoped it was true. The bus was crowded with commuters making the two-hour trip into the city from Bridie’s hometown. She had arranged to meet Maddy and Camila at the bus depot before going to the apartment, but as the bus pulled into the bay, it was only Maddy who stood waiting with folded arms and an annoyed expression on her usually cheerful face. “Hi!” She waved as she stepped off the bus. “Maddy! What’s the matter? What’s with the long face?” “Camila just called. She said she isn’t coming. She isn’t coming back to the apartment at all – the coward. But, hey, that means more money for you and me, right?” Maddy’s expression brightened at the thought. “We won’t even need another roommate to help with the rent now. Providing the bag is still there, of course.” Bridie found herself wishing fervently that she had Camila’s courage. Nevertheless, she found herself following Maddy to their connecting bus, listening to her cheerful chatter. She was starting to wonder if she had ever really known Maddy, who seemed irritatingly comfortable with the whole situation. Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that she owned a padlock shim at all. The duffle bag was still there. A fine layer of dust was proof that nobody had touched it, not even Maddy on her brief visit. The girls wandered through the apartment. Everything was neat, tidy and quiet, except for the Mherson’s radio next door. “Umm, it doesn’t look like anyone was here,” said Maddy returning from her bedroom. “I’d say this has all been a storm in a teacup. Faith has probably made it back home by now. The Akuma has no reason to suspect that the money is with us, so I think you and I just became two very lucky, and very rich, young ladies!” Bridie watched Maddy dance around the apartment, whooping in delight. Could it be possible that they were safe? Could she allow herself to finally get excited about the money? The stress from the previous two weeks seemed to drain away in a matter of minutes. Maddy threw her arms around Bridie in an exuberant

hug. “So, what shall we do first, my little partner in crime?” “Well... perhaps we should count it and divide it, and then...I think we should go SHOPPING!” The girls screamed in jubilation, throwing any previous fears aside. What followed were weeks of unfettered spending. Gone from their minds were any thoughts of altruism. Maddy and Bridie were filled with a kind of reckless abandon. Like that of a person who finds themselves in the middle of a snake pit and it is just as far to retreat as it is to advance. And so, the girls made the most of it, being careful not to buy anything so expensive that they would have to explain where they got the money. Except for a few sharp-eyed girls at school who noticed an upgrade in their wardrobe and jewelry, nobody really seemed to notice anything unusual. Camila knew what was going on, but she maintained a reserved silence on the subject. Bridie and Maddy rarely spoke with her anymore, except for the occasional “hello” in class. For Camila, it was an uncomfortable silence. There was nothing she would have liked to do more than going to the police. She still believed that they were in danger and wished fervently to be truly excised from the situation. But she said nothing, resorting instead to daily prayer for protection. It was in October when things changed. The ground outside was carpeted in a blaze of orange, yellow and brown leaves, the trees reaching their black fingered branches up to a steel gray sky. Bridie loved the Fall, it was perfect weather for baking. It was a Saturday and she had spent the whole afternoon making homemade bread. The aroma wafted mouth-wateringly into the hall, making her neighbor’s stomachs rumble in appreciation. Maddy was in the living room watching TV. The phone rang. It was Camila. “Are you watching the news?” “No, what...” “Switch it on, right now. Channel 6, news.”

Wiping her flour-covered hands on a tea towel, Bridie hurried into the living room. “Sorry,” she said snatching the remote from Maddy’s hand. This is an emergency.” “Hey! I was enjoying Ryan Gosling, here!” “Sorry, but Camila called. There’s something important on the news.” Bridie flicked the channel to six. She and Maddy watched as an aerial shot of a wooded parkland flickered onto the screen. Police were swarming the area, like ants. A coroner’s van was parked nearby and what looked like a covered stretcher lay on the ground. In the corner of the screen was a picture of Faith’s face, a smiling schoolgirl with her hair in a ponytail. Across the bottom of the screen read the words; BODY OF MISSING IOWA GIRL, FAITH BELLAMY FOUND. “Oh, no.” Bridie’s voice was a whisper as her legs buckled under her and she sank to the floor. “Turn it up!” Maddy barked, grabbing the remote back from Bridie. “They’re saying something interesting.” “...the young woman from Barnaby’s Creek was a student at Sanderson Community College and had been missing for over six months. There is evidence to suggest that she was groomed and seduced online by the sphinx-like Madam known only as Akuma or ‘Demon’, so named for her penchant for torturing her victims into submission before putting them on the street. Investigating police believe the young woman’s death may be connected to her links with prostitution...” At this point an image of a man and a woman, presumably Faith’s parents, hollow-eyed and grief-stricken appeared on screen ready to take questions from reporters. Maddy clicked Mute and turned to Bridie who was shaking uncontrollably on the floor. “O.K. Bridie, this is not the time to lose it. We must think this through logically. Stop crying, Bridie! That isn’t going to help us at all!’

“It’s over. We’ll be next, now. You just watch.” “We don’t know that for sure. It really all depends on how long ago, Faith died. Think, Bridie. If she was killed early on, then it means that this crazy cow, Akuma does not suspect us or she would have made her move by now. If Faith died recently, then there is still a chance that Akuma got the information about the money from her before she was killed. Bridie glared at Maddy angrily. “And how do you propose to find out that little snippet of information, Maddy? Do we just sit here like sitting ducks and find out the hard way?” “We have money, don’t we? We just get away from here for a while. Take a room at a motel and lie low while the police investigate.” They were interrupted by a serendipitous knock on the door. A quick peep through the spy hole showed the calm exterior of Officer Blackthorne and her partner. “It’s the cops,” hissed Maddy. Leave the talking to me. We’ve just found out about Faith, so it’s alright to be a bit emotional.” She opened the door. Officer Blackthorne said nothing, taking in the scene in a couple of seconds. “Ah. I see you’ve heard the news?” “Yes.” We need to ask you some more questions, Miss Fletcher,” she said talking to Maddy, “and you too, Miss O’Keefe” she added, motioning to Bridie. “Is Miss, Ramirez here?” “She doesn’t live here anymore,” sniffed Bridie. “Very well.” Blackthorne’s sharp eyes took in the room, missing nothing. “That’s a very nice and very big TV you have there. Did someone win the lottery?” “It was my father’s,” said Maddy without skipping a beat. “He’s upgrading.” “Lucky, you.” Blackthorne sat on the sofa without being invited. Her companion, Officer Jane Pataki, remained standing. So far, she had never uttered a word in

front of the girls. It was effectively intimidating. Bridie ventured a question. “How did she die? They said on the television she was linked with prostitution. Has she been dead all this time?” “We have reason to believe that Miss Bellamy has been on the run since the night your apartment was broken into. Forensics tell us that she died within the last 24 hours.” Blackthorne’s eyes met Bridie’s. She was tortured. A jogger found her hanging in a tree.” Bridie felt her face flush hot and cold. Bile rose in her throat. It was all she could do to stop herself from throwing up. She could feel Maddy trembling beside her, although she was putting up a fierce attempt to hide her fear. It wouldn’t be good to show their panic, but, thought Bridie, she could allow herself grief for Faith. Friend for one day, someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, hunted down, tormented and discarded like rubbish. Bridie let the tears flow hot and angry. “Did they catch the one who did it?” Maddy’s voice was husky with emotion. “The Akuma or devil people, or whatever they are?” Here, Officer Pataki spoke for the first time. “The authorities know of Akuma by reputation and her impact in the crime world, but that is all. They believe it is a woman, but don’t know for sure, possibly military trained and works alone. There is a link with prostitution but it doesn’t seem to be her only motivation. Which begs the question, why did she feel it necessary to torture Miss Bellamy before her death? What did Miss Bellamy have or know?” Officer Pataki’s eyes bored searchingly into first Maddy’s and then Bridies eyes. “Does a psycho need a reason to act like a psycho?” asked Maddy, scathingly. She folded her arms. “Thank you for telling us about Faith. Was there anything else you needed? Because we’d like to get back to our day if you don’t mind.” Officer Blackthorne stood. “No, we were just here to inform you and to see if you’d had any with the victim in the last month or... if you’d noticed any suspicious activity in that time?” She raised one eyebrow. Bridie roused herself. “No, no we haven’t. It has been very quiet. We were with our families for a few weeks after the break-in and since then, nothing. Thank you for coming to tell us about Faith.” She followed the officers to the door and watched them descend the stairs before closing the door behind her. She rounded

on Maddy. “Now what?” “We don’t panic, that’s what.” Maddy approached Bridie swiftly, placing her hands on her shoulders. “If we panic, we’re liable to do something stupid. We’ve got to be calm and we’ve got to think smart.” “Akuma could be on her way to us as we speak. She could be here already, watching us!” “If she is watching us and we start to act like there’s something to panic about, she’ll know that we know where the money is. Trust me on this, Bridie. We’ll sit tight for another day, maybe two. We’ll be careful. Then we’ll get out of here.” “What about school? They’re going to notice that we’re missing.” “Bridie, we’ll worry about that when the time comes – okay?” Bridie said nothing. She didn’t really have anything to say to Maddy anymore who she felt was to blame for the whole sorry mess. But you had a choice, a still small voice whispered on her shoulder. You and only you are responsible for your actions. “Oh, shut up,” she muttered to herself as she went back to the kitchen. The rest of the day dragged on, each second like a slow dripping tap. Maddy sat on the sofa like a poised cat, pretending to watch T.V. but ready to spring into action while Bridie who was listless, paced back and forth in the apartment, checking the window every ten minutes and testing the locks on the door. As the day slipped into the evening they continued their vigil, taking it in turns to sleep while the other one watched, but there was no movement outside, no strange cars or strange sounds to give them cause to worry. When Bridie next opened her eyes, a blustery wind blew outside smacking fat raindrops against the window and Maddy was asleep sitting upright on a kitchen chair with her chin on her chest. The Mherson’s radio spluttering into life as regular as clockwork jolted Maddy from her sleep. “Must be eight o’clock,” she said with a yawn.

Bridie laughed despite herself. She held her hand up against the cold autumn light. She was still alive. The events of the previous day seemed surreal. It was decided between the two of them that living each day like the previous day was unsustainable. Nor would it go unnoticed to their neighbors or anyone watching, so they relaxed a little, even venturing out to the supermarket for supplies and meeting a few friends to play basketball at the park. All the while, counting the hours till the evening when they planned to make their move. By nine o’clock they had packed a small bag each and taken a cab to the mall where they spent an hour or two shopping before catching a midnight screening of a movie. No one looked at them suspiciously or seemed to be following them. But when the movie was over and they filed out of the cinema, they found that it was almost deserted, with only a handful of cars in the carpark. The bus services were done for the night. The girls felt vulnerable and exposed. Thankfully, there was still one cab waiting at the taxi rank. The driver watched them under hooded eyes as they approached his window. “Where to, ladies?” “Do you know this address?” Maddy handed him a print out from the website of a previously selected motel about fifty miles away. The cab driver leaned over and scrutinized the girls, taking in their appearance and clothes. “That’s a big fare. You sure you can pay?” Maddy opened her wallet and peeled off two, one hundred dollar bills. “Will this cover it?” “Whaddya waiting for? Jump in.” The two girls sat quietly in the back seat while the driver tried in vain to draw them into some friendly conversation. After several attempts, he gave up and drove the rest of the way in silence, occasionally assessing them through his review mirror. They had all the signs of being runaways. Runaways from what? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. If he had a dollar for every suspect person he transported in his cab, he’d be a rich man. He glanced at the girls

again in the mirror and memorized their general appearance, just in case he needed to know, and then he settled down for the long drive. By the time the cab drew up to the motel it said 4: a.m. on the dashboard clock. The girls climbed out wearily, thanking the driver and telling him to keep the change. As the cab pulled away into the night, they trudged up to the reception window which was softly lit with a night light. Obviously, there was no one on duty at this hour. The girls shivered. It would mean sitting in the carpark until the first member of staff came on duty. They found a wooden bench out of the wind and huddled together, grateful for their warm coats. In that way, they dozed fitfully waiting for daylight. The room was old-fashioned, its décor harking back to the eighties, shabby but comfortable and functional enough. It would have to do for now. After hot showers and some breakfast, they slept, long into the day. They planned to lie low for a few days before deciding what to do next. They had argued with the person at the desk when they wanted to pay with cash and she insisted they use a credit card. Now they had left another electronic trail for Akuma to follow. It would mean moving on. They spoke in hushed tones as they lay in their beds that night, while a wild storm thrashed the windows outside. “How long are we doing to do this, Maddy? Sooner or later, someone is going to report us missing.” For the first time since the break-in, Maddy didn’t have an answer. She was always so confident and assured. Bridie looked across the room at the dark form on the bed. “Maddy?” “I don’t know anymore, Bridie. I just don’t know.” She shifted on her bed and said no more. Bridie felt a chill of loneliness and fear. They were in way over their heads with this. They were truly alone. The next day, they found their way to a second-hand car dealership, paying cash for a 2002 Ford Explorer. Having their own source of transport lifted their mood and gave them a greater sense of confidence. They wanted to be able to run at a moment’s notice.

Their first stop was a beauty salon where they both had their long hair cropped short. Bridie had her blonde hair dyed auburn. Maddy had her dark hair bleached blonde. They watched each other’s reflections in the salon mirrors and grinned. This might put some space between them and Akuma for a short while. By noon, they were back at the motel. The Explorer’s breaks squeaked as they pulled up in the carpark. Bridie pulled up the handbrake. “I’ll go to reception and pay for another night,” Bridie told Maddy. “Can you make us a couple of sandwiches for lunch?” “Sure.” Maddy, slid out of the car, wrestling with several shopping bags while fumbling with the keys to their room. The wind was starting to get icy, whipping her hair back from her face and numbing her nose. She slid the fob over the electronic lock and the door popped open. She noticed the smell, the minute she entered the room. It was a delicate floral smell. It reminded her of ing a florist’s shop. Fleeting, but pleasant. Pleasant, yes, welcome, no. Maddy knew what was coming. In a frantic bid for freedom, she threw herself backward towards the door but it was too late. A black shroud fell over her face and she found herself trapped by a delicate arm, vicelike in strength. She fought wildly, choking as the feminine arm tightened like a Boa constrictor. Then a sharp sting in her arm. Her head began to swim. “Relax, my dear,” came a woman’s voice in a soft monotone – then blackness. It took fifteen minutes at the reception desk. Ten minutes to make the payment and five minutes to get away from the overly chatty receptionist. Her stomach rumbled as she made her way back to the motel room. She was starving and looking forward to some simple food after days of takeaway and room service. As she approached, she cursed Maddy under her breath. Why would she leave the door open in weather like this? It was freezing out here. From the open doorway, an empty plastic shopping bag was sucked out by the wind as though suddenly liberated from its contents. That’s when Bridie saw the fob and car keys on the doorstep and her blood ran cold. Running, she threw herself through the door. “Maddy? MADDY!” She scanned the room quickly. The abandoned shopping bags were slumped on

the ground. One dining chair lay on its side. Bridie ran through to the bathroom – nothing. Heart thumping, she turned, to look for Maddy outside, then froze in her tracks. Slowly, pivoting on the spot, she glanced back down at the dining table. There was something new on the table next to the complimentary tea and sugar sachets. A driver’s license lay face down. It felt like it was someone else’s hand reaching down in slow motion to turn it over. But Bridie recognized her own nail polish and class ring as the hand picked up the license and turned over. It was an Iowa state license. A serious young woman’s face stared back at her. Dark blonde hair and large gray eyes. Faith Bellamy was back from the dead. Bridie dropped the license in horror staggering forward through the door and out to the car. Now she knew where Maddy was - Akuma. Grabbing her purse, but leaving everything else behind, she ran to the car in a blind panic. Bridie jumped into the driver’s seat and the engine burst into life, the tires screeching as she pulled out of the parking lot and headed back onto the freeway. Whimpering, she pushed the accelerator to the floor, weaving in and out of traffic, not knowing where she was going. Her gut instinct told her to go home. Maybe that’s where she was headed? As she drove she dialed the only other person she knew she could confide in. Camila’s voice answered curious and concerned. “Bridie?” “Camila!” Bridie was sobbing. “She found us. Akuma found us. She has Maddy! I’m on the freeway and I don’t know what to do! Can I come to your place?” “No! Bridie, go to the police now! Maddy’s life depends on it.” “But I’ll be in so much trouble if I go to the police. I won’t be able to face my family.” “You won’t be able to face your family if you’re dead. Go to the police. You can’t do this on your own.” Suddenly, Bridie felt a kind of calm wash over her. It was what she had wanted to do from the start. The thought of handing it all over to someone bigger,

smarter and stronger was so comforting. “Hang on, Maddy,” she prayed. “We’re coming for you.” Bridie arrived in their hometown an hour and a half later. She had called on the way to report everything to Officers Blackthorne and Pataki who had ordered her to come to the precinct the minute she arrived in town. It was getting dark, downtown, but she still had difficulty finding a park close to the Police headquarters. Parking a couple of blocks away, she put a few coins in the parking meter and made her way up the street, nervously looking over her shoulder. About fifty yards ahead on her side of the street, a man was approaching. He was powerfully built and wore a long black coat. His hair which was also long and dark covered his face. He kept his face down and his hands in his pockets, moving at a steady pace toward her. The hairs on the back of Bridie’s neck stood on end. Her intuition told her that something was terribly wrong. Glancing across the street, she saw an elderly lady, tiny in stature, in a brown coat and a headscarf, trundling along at a snail’s pace. Making a lightning decision, Bridie quickly trotted across the street, making a beeline for the old lady. There was safety in numbers. On the other side of the road, Bridie felt a bit better, keeping a sharp eye on the man. He didn’t look up but strode on steadily. For a moment, Bridie was confused. Maybe she was wrong. He didn’t seem suspicious anymore. But her gut had sent a strong message to watch out. The old lady was only a few yards away now. Her face was also directed at the ground as she carefully picked her way along the footpath. Bridie smiled, ready to say hello to her as they ed. As the old lady came up side by side with her, she glanced up. A pair of black, fathomless eyes met Bridie’s. In a split second of regret, Bridie watched the old lady suddenly move with swift agility, throwing a black shroud over her head. She tried to scream, but she was held in an iron grip, cutting off her breath, threatening to crush her larynx. “Struggling is futile,” came the monotone voice, as Bridie was dragged down a side alley. Akuma slid a needle into Bridie’s thigh. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered. When Bridie opened her eyes, she was in complete darkness. She had no concept

of how much time had ed. Was it hours or days? It felt like days. Her tongue was fat and dry in her mouth and felt alien, like it didn’t belong there. She tried to produce some saliva to lubricate her tongue but it was stuck fast. A moan bubbled up inside her unable to escape. Breathing through her nose, she attempted to calm herself. ing Maddy’s approach to most crisis’. What was it she said? “If we panic we’re liable to do something stupid.” Well, she’d already done that. Now she had to keep her wits about her if she wanted any hope of escaping. She listened to the room. She could hear dripping pipes. Very faint in the distance she could hear cars, but too far away to be of any help. It was like an ice box. The stone or cement floor penetrated cold through her jeans. And there was a slight smell of something rotten. “I’m in a basement of some kind,” she thought. She went to stand up. Her head throbbed at the movement making her pause while the pain settled. Her stomach growled. She could have been here for days for all she knew. Slowly, she began a painstaking exploration of the room with her hands, carefully sliding them over every inch of the walls which were mostly bare. Suddenly, her fingers fluttered over the end of an exposed pipe. It was wet! The source of the dripping sound! Not waiting or caring to find out if it was safe to drink, Bridie shoved her mouth up to the pipe allowing the delicious liquid to hydrate her swollen tongue. Slowly, she was able to open her mouth enough to take a drink. Revived somewhat, Bridie continued her search, inching along the perimeter of the room. Suddenly, she bumped her foot into something heavy. Leaning down, her hand brushed against something soft. Hair! She pulled back her hand in horror. Was it an animal? In her panic, the heavy something slid down the wall and fell with a whump. A loud gasping moan cut the silence like a knife. It was a person! Maddy, maybe injured? Bridie reached down grasping wildly in the dark. Her hands met with something cold. A face. The eyes closed – the mouth open. “Maddy? Can you hear me? It’s me! Wake up!” As her hands explored the body, the face, the neck, the shoulders, and arms, she suddenly found where there should have been an elbow a wet stump. Her fingers

sank into the wet mess and slid off a nub of bone. Suddenly the rotten smell made sense. It was a corpse. Bridie started to gag. Common sense cast aside. She threw herself wildly across the room, frantic to find a door or a light switch, banging on the walls, screaming at the top of her lungs. All at once the room was flooded with light from a window in the door, rendering her temporarily blind. A voice came crackling over an intercom. The same monotone she had heard under the black shroud. “Ah, I see you are awake.” The first image that materialized as Bridie’s eyes adjusted to the light was that of Maddy’s brutalized body lying open-mouthed on the other side of the room. Bridie, sobbed softly, impotent rage bubbling up inside her at the killer on the other side of the door. “I am about to open the door. Please move to the other side of the room and do not attempt to escape. I have a gun you see, and I’d rather not use it yet,” she said in a soft Japanese accent. “Your friend found out the hard way.” Bridie complied. Her mind racing for ways to escape. The door opened. A woman of petite stature dressed in an elegant pantsuit stood silhouetted against the light at the bottom of a staircase. Bridie stared at her with undisguised hatred. “What do you want from me?” she snarled. “All kinds of things.” Akuma laughed mirthlessly. “But firstly, I would like my money. Faith was very naughty to have given it to you.” “It’s back at our apartment. Go and get it. I don’t care. We spent some, but I can get the rest for you. Just let me go, please?” “Oh, no. That would be no fun at all.” She pointed the gun at Bridie, stepping into the basement room so that she could by. “After you,” she said, indicating up the stairs. Bridie obeyed, climbing the steep stairs. At the top, she found herself in a laboratory with an examination table of sorts in the center, the kind you might find in a doctor’s surgery, only this one sported leather straps and shackles. Bridie stopped short, terror coursing through her veins. She began to cry again,

this time in humiliation as she felt a warm trickle of urine running down her leg. How would she ever be able to endure what was coming? “Oh, dear. I thought you would have been braver than this. It’s Bridie, isn’t it? Your friend was very stoic, I must say. Now lie down, there’s a good girl.” Bridie didn’t move. She couldn’t move. Her feet felt glued to the floor. She felt the cold steel of the gun against her back. “I said lie down.” Bridie lay down on the table, praying silently. Fast as a snake, Akuma was beside her, sinking another syringe into her arm. Bridie felt herself go limp expecting to go to sleep. At least I’ll be asleep when she does it, she thought gratefully. But as the minutes ticked by, her mind remained alert. Akuma, busied herself, strapping Bridie into the restraints, then smiled knowingly at Bridie, leaning close to her face. “Yes,” she murmured thickly. “You’ll be able to feel everything.” She pulled a nearby trolley close covered in shining instruments. Bridie could smell disinfectant as Akuma picked up what looked like a heavy set of pliers and brandished them in front of her face. “I don’t want to disfigure you too badly. You won’t get many customers if I do that.” she paused to pull on some gloves. “But I do want to teach you to be obedient, my dear.” With that, Akuma picked up a circlet of plastic which Bridie recognized immediately as a mouth prop used by dentists to hold their patient's mouths open. She began to shriek and struggle wildly as Akuma fitted the prop into her mouth, but the shrieking and struggling were all in her mind. Her body remained as limp as a blanket. Akuma picked up the pliers again. “Now if you’ll just hold still.” Bridie felt the cold steel on her lips. She braced herself as she felt the pliers clasp one of her molars in a vice-like grip. Akuma grunted with effort, wrenching Bridie’s tooth from her jaw in a savage twist. Bridie’s brain exploded in shuddering, psychedelic agony. Again, and again the pain came in torturous

waves. Then as she felt herself beginning to black out, there was a sudden loud bang in the next room and the door to the lab was knocked off its hinges and a SWAT team appeared in the doorway, bellowing commands with their weapons drawn. “GET YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND GET ON THE GROUND, NOW!” The team poured into the tiny lab. Akuma drew her gun and let off a volley of shots at the officers. They returned fire riddling her body with bullets and sending her flying backward down the stairs where she lay crumpled and lifeless at the basement door. Bridie drifted in and out of consciousness. Officer Blackthorne was by her side and so was Camila. What was Camila doing here? She was vaguely aware of sirens and the inside of an ambulance and Camila sitting by her side crying and holding her hand. Bridie’s voice was hoarse. “Camila, Maddy’s dead. She’s dead.” “I know. I’m so sorry. I should have gone to the police earlier. I was too late!” “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have listened to you.” But then the morphine had started to kick in and she’d drifted blissfully on a cloud wanting to forget everything for a while. She wanted to enjoy it while it lasted. There would be plenty of time later to face the music.