by Nancy Bush
The boys leapt to their feet as if yanked by strings, crying, heads jerking around, searching vainly for escape, but the hedges loomed, branches sticking out like skeletal arms.
Kyle’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m on the ninth step…”
James started to worry a little. They couldn’t have these dumbasses charging off in all directions in the dark. “Sid-down!”
“I’m on the tenth step…and now I’m walking down the hall…I’m outside your door…I’m pushing it open…cree—eeaa—kkk!!!”
It sounded sorta dumb, the way Kyle did it, but it sure as hell did the trick. The kids started running around like Keystone Kops, shying from the dirty old statue of that lady, screaming and blubbering. James and Kyle started laughing. They couldn’t help themselves. That ratcheted the kids to near hysteria, and Mikey stumbled right into the statue—the idiot—and knocked the damn thing to one side. The bulldozers had been at the site. The school was being razed and they were taking down the maze as well. That’s why Kyle had come up with the idea in the first place. One last spooky hurrah where they could scare the snot out of the little kids.
“Moron, you knocked over the old lady,” James said in a long-suffering tone.
He went to pick up his younger brother while Kyle corralled Tyler and Preston, who were crying like the babies they were. Mikey had practically turned to a statue himself. He stood frozen, staring. He slowly lifted one hand as Kyle approached and pointed toward a mound of earth that had humped up when the statue tilted.
“Bloody Bones,” he whispered, his finger quivering.
James looked in the direction he was pointing. From the ground a skeletal human hand lay upturned, its bones both dirty and oddly white, its fingers reaching upward, as if for help.
James’ eyes bugged out. He started shrieking like a banshee and couldn’t quit. Little Mikey grabbed his older brother’s hand and hauled them both out of the maze, the rest of the gang thundering behind them, the touch of Bloody Bones feathering their napes as they ran for their lives.
CHAPTER ONE
“I feel it…that change in the atmosphere, subtle but strong, like the slight tremor of a gentle earthquake with its aftershocks. I know what it means.
I’m being summoned to her.
I’ve stayed here, waiting, believing the time would come again. I’ve known since the last one that my mission was not done, would never be finished. But for a long while, I’ve waited.
But tonight the waiting is over.
I can’t resist. I’m lured. Excited. My blood thrumming hot through my veins, the thought of the next kill, that exquisite moment of pure power when one life is extinguished causes my heart to race, my skin to sweat with anxious beads of eager anticipation.
I sit up and imagine the scent of her skin. Like a rain-washed beach.
Tantalizing…
I can almost smell her. Almost…
But I know where she is.
Slowly I roll from my bed. My self-imposed prison where I’ve waited for so long.
It’s time to leave.
Time, once again, to right an age-old wrong.
Time, at long last, for another sacrifice.
And I’m ready.
A frisson slid down Becca Sutcliff’s spine. She inhaled sharply and glanced behind her. The girl at the counter of Mutts & Stuff slid her a look from the corner of her eyes. “You okay?”
“Someone walking on my grave, I guess,” Becca murmured.
The girl’s brows lifted and Becca could practically read her mind: Yeah. Right. Whatever. She rang up Becca’s purchases and stuffed them in a bag. Thanking her, Becca shifted the packages she was already carrying to accommodate them. Yes, she was filling a need, shopping like it was an Olympic sport, a result of the messy, lingering aftermath of unsettled feelings that still followed from her split with Ben. And now Ben was dead. Gone, Never to come back. And it all felt…well…weird.
She headed back into the mall, slightly depressed by the cheery red and pink hearts in every store window. Valentine’s Day. The most miserable day of the year for the suddenly single.
Okay. She wasn’t completely happy. She’d known for a long time that she and Ben weren’t going to make it. They’d never been in love. Not in the way she’d wanted, hoped, planned to be. When she’d learned he was seeing someone else, she was angry. At herself, mostly. She couldn’t really even recall what had triggered their marriage in the first place. What had she wanted? What had Ben wanted? Had it just been timing? A sense that, if not Ben, then who?
Then she learned he’d died in the arms of his new love. Heart attack. Gone, gone…gone.
She was still processing. Still getting used to the fact that he’d left her for another woman. Left her…when she still believed that maybe, just maybe, there would be that chance for them. That chance to start a family. Have a child. A child of their own. A child of her own…
The window of Pink, Blue and You, a combined baby and maternity store, materialized in front of her. She’d stopped into it earlier and picked out a gift for a friend who’d just had a baby. It was a fine torture to be inside. She wanted a baby. She’d always wanted a baby. She’d lost a baby a long time ago.
Tears hovered behind her eyes. With an effort she held them back, turning her face away from the display of pastel pinks and blues and lemony yellows. Was that why she’d married Ben? To have a baby? To replace the one who’d been taken from her?
Becca gritted her teeth against emotion. She’d asked herself the same question countless times, had toiled and fretted over the answer. But it was all moot now. He was gone. And he’d left his twenty-two-year-old new lover pregnant, something he’d never wanted with Becca.
“I don’t want children,” he said. “You knew it when you married me.”
Had she? She didn’t remember that.
“It’s just you and me, Beck. You and me.”
Bastard.
Maybe she had married him to have a child. Correction. To replace a child. Maybe she’d made up the “I love you” parts. Maybe she just wanted the whole thing to be so much prettier than it was.
A lump filled her throat. She turned away from the window. No need to torture herself further. No need at all.
A food court was on her left and she glanced over as she headed the other way. But as she tried to hurry on, her vision grew blurry. Becca stopped short, her pulse suddenly rocketing. Damn. She was going to faint. She’d been this route before, more times than she’d like to admit. But it wasn’t really fainting. No. More like…falling into a spell. A wide awake dream. But it hadn’t happened in years. Not for years!
Why now? she asked herself a half-second before white-hot pain screamed through her brain. She staggered and fell to her knees, packages tumbling from her arms. Becca bent her head, instinctively hiding her face from curious onlookers, one last moment of clarity before the vision overcame her.
In a transformation that was both familiar and feared, Becca was no longer at the mall, no longer feeling the wrench of the loss of her baby. No longer in the real world but in a watery, unsubstantial one, a world that had plagued her youth yet had been curiously missing and distant for most of her adult life…until now.
In front of her, a short distance away, a teenaged girl stood on a headland above a gray and frothy sea, her long, dark brown hair teased by a stiff breeze, her shirt and jeans pressed to her skin from its force, her gaze focused across churning waves toward a small island, blurred with rain. Becca followed the girl’s gaze, staring past her to the island as well, a forlorn, rocky tor that looked as inhospitable as an alien planet. The girl shivered, and so did Becca. The cold burrowed beneath her skin, and gooseflesh rose on her arms.
The girl was familiar. So familiar….
Becca stared at her hard, putting a physical effort into it.
Is she someone I know?
Becca struggled to remember. Who was she? Where was she? Why was she pulling Becca into her world?
&
nbsp; Distantly, she felt the lightheadedness, the clammy warning that she was about to pass out. No, no, no! Caught between the two worlds, her body falling in one, her mind desperately searching for answers in the other, Becca focused on the girl.
“Who are you?” she called but the rising wind threw the words back into her throat.
The phantom girl took a step forward, the tips of her boots balanced over the edge of the cliff. Becca reached out an arm. Her mouth opened in protest.
“Stop! Stop!”
Was she going to throw herself to her death?
Becca lunged forward just as the girl turned to face her. Instead of a profile shot, Becca caught a full-on view of her face. “Jessie?” she whispered in shock, her head reeling.
Jessie just stared at Becca and Becca, powerless, stared back. The wind danced through Jessie’s hair and around her small, serious face. Becca’s heart pounded painfully.
Jessie Brentwood? Her missing friend? Gone for twenty years…
Except now, in Becca’s vision.
“Be careful!” Becca warned. “You’re too close.”
The phantom girl lifted a finger to her lips, then mouthed something at Becca.
“What?” Becca tried to clear her mind. “What?”
In the gathering mist the girl’s image began to fade. Becca pushed forward but it felt as if her feet were mired to the ground.
“Jessie!” she cried.
The girl melded with the rain and the watery world dimmed into endless gray.
Becca sensed tears on her lashes and a dull throb in her head. Somewhere a male voice said, “Hey, lady. You okay?”
With difficulty, Becca opened her eyes. She was in the mall. Sprawled on the tile floor. Packages tossed asunder. No more ocean. No more wind. No more Jessie.
Tucking her legs beneath her, Becca swallowed hard. It was difficult to come back to reality. It always was after one of her visions. The damn things. She’d thought they were behnd her. A symptom of her childhood. She hadn’t had one since high school and she was now thirty-four years old.
But she never forgot. Not completely.
“I’m fine,” she said in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own. Clearing her throat, she fought the blinding stabs of pain that flashed through her head. Another unwelcome part of the visions. “I tripped.”
“Yeah?”
The young man bending over her wasn’t buying it. A small crowd of tweenagers had gathered, small enough that Becca figured she hadn’t been out that long, maybe mere seconds. One of the girls was looking at her with huge, round eyes, and Becca could still hear the reverberations of the girl’s scream as she watched Becca go down. She was holding a soda from the nearby food court. Vaguely Becca remembered glancing their way just before she was overtaken by her vision.
“You were, like, having an attack,” a different girl said. This one wore a hat that smashed her bangs to her forehead and she peeked out between the strands of blond hair. They all looked ready to jump and run. Briefly, Becca thought about yelling, “Boo!” and sending them stumbling over themselves, away from the crazy lady.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
Becca heard the snap of a cell phone being shut. One of the guys had clicked off a series of pictures of her fainting spell. That did it. Becca climbed unsteadily to her feet and gave the kid the evil eye. He looked torn between bravado and fear. Becca was about to give him a piece of her mind, but was saved the effort when a heavy-set woman in a dusty blue uniform steamed toward them.
“Back off,” she bit out at the boy who attempted to swagger toward his friends, even though he was boiling to escape. They all half-ran, half-loped toward the food court and an exit door.
“You all right, ma’am?” the security woman asked.
Flushing with embarrassment, Becca nodded, collecting her packages. She was definitely not all right.
“You look kinda pale. Maybe you should sit down.”
“This happens to me. Not enough air getting in. Vagus nerve, you know. Shuts down the whole system sometimes.”
It was clearly mumbo-jumbo to the security guard, and it was a flat out lie to boot. Doctors had once rubbed their jaws, speculating what caused Becca to faint and have visions. They ignored the visions, concentrating on the cause of her fainting. They had postulated and supposed and theorized to Becca’s parents, Barbara and Jim Ryan, but there had never been any satisfactory explanations.
“I’m fine,” she reassured the guard one more time, hanging on to the shreds of her dignity with an effort. Before she could be questioned further, Becca headed toward the mall exit and her car, a blue Volkswagen Jetta. She tossed the packages onto the passenger seat, feeling a twinge in one shoulder from the fall. Her body was still tingling, too, as if her muscles had been asleep. Sliding behind the wheel, she dropped her forehead to the steering wheel and took several deep breaths. This vision had been different. Almost touchable.
She’d actually reached for the girl. That had never happened before.
Was it Jessie? Was it?
Becca swallowed and lifted her head, gazing blankly through the windshield at the mall’s cream stucco walls. Not since that last year of high school. Not once. She’d managed to convince herself over the years that she wasn’t odd. Some kind of freak. That she wasn’t losing her mind.
But this vision of Jessie had been stronger than anything she’d experienced before. And a helluva lot more frightening.
What did it mean?
Shaken, Becca drove from the parking lot, aware that the sky had darkened, night dropping quickly. One of her packages dumped over and the baby gift she’d purchased spilled onto the seat. It was a bright, whimsical mermaid puppet sewn in silver lamé and pink and green sequins.
Sadness filled her again. Pulling her eyes away from the puppet with an effort, she headed purposely for the little condo she’d once shared with Ben but which was now all hers.
It had been a hell of a day already, and she wasn’t going to dwell on “what could have been” any more.
By the time she pulled in to her designated slot, Becca had pushed the vision and her own sadness aside…at least for the moment. Rain spattered in shivery waves as she headed for the front door, fumbling for her key. The evening paper was in a plastic sleeve on the stoop and she reached down and grabbed it, juggling it with her packages. Becca practically spilled herself inside, dumping everything on the dropleaf table that stood by the door. She shrugged out of her dampened coat and hung it in the closet as the ticky-tick of Ringo’s nails across her oak floors heralded her dog’s arrival.
“Hey, bud,” she said as the curly-haired black and white mutt furiously waved his tail, gazing at her expectantly. “Look what I got you.”
She held up the blue collar with its little white dog bone motif, but Ringo kept his eyes on hers. If it wasn’t food, he simply wasn’t interested.
“Okay,” Becca relented, pulling out a jar of small, dog-shaped treats. Ringo barked twice, happily, as Becca unscrewed the lid and fished out a couple, tossing them to the dog, who leaped up and caught them in his jaws, one by one, then raced back to his bed and snuffled and chewed them.
“We’ll go for a walk in a minute,” she said, adding some of his regular dog food to his bowl. Ringo quickly finished his treat and hurried to the bowl, munching on his meal with the same enthusiasm as his treats. He was not a picky dog.
She gazed out the kitchen window, which faced the back of another condo across an expanse of grass. She could see right inside to the other kitchen, which was festooned with red and pink foil hearts. A young girl was seated at the table, licking the icing off a cupcake which was decorated with candy hearts.
She recalled last year’s Valentine’s Day. She’d been waiting for Ben. Though she’d sensed—known, really—that their marriage was in its death throes, she’d spontaneously bought a cake and a bottle of champagne. The cake had been heart shaped with white icing and in red gel script, it read: BE MINE.
Ben nev
er came home that night. Becca opened the champagne alone, drank half a glass, and poured the rest out. Later that week, Ben broke the news that he was in love with someone else, and that that someone else was pregnant. Becca had tried not to be shocked, hurt and upset, but she’d failed on all counts.
“You told me you never wanted kids,” Becca reminded him, trying to keep from yelling.
“I guess I changed my mind,” he responded, turning away from her accusing face.
“You guess?”
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“If you didn’t mean for it to happen, you should have used a condom.”