Wicked Lies

by Lisa Jackson

  Catherine hurried on. Squinting against a lowering sun, she noticed that Mary’s garden, usually so perfect, was untended. Beach grass had taken over, and the tea roses were leggy, the blooms dried and dying. “Mary?” she called as she walked to the door and saw the boxes of supplies on the porch. The cardboard was sun bleached, the fruit and vegetables gone bad, the stink of rotting meat overpowering.

  What the devil?

  “Mary!” she called again and pushed on the door. How long had it been since she’d been here?

  It was unlatched and from within the stench was worse. It hit Catherine with the force of a malodorous tidal wave. The buzzing of swarming flies competed with the sound of the surf. Catherine’s stomach revolted as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkened interior. On the bed was a corpse, what was left of her sister, little more than dried, rotting flesh and exposed bones. Mary’s face was unrecognizable, her eyes gone, two dark exposed sockets where those beautiful blue orbs had once been. Her hair was long and splayed around a skull of darkened, dried skin, her teeth exposed as she had no lips, her cheeks gone. She looked like a zombie with a ghoulish, wicked grin.

  The hilt of the knife rose from her chest. The skeletal fingers of Mary’s right hand surrounded it, as if she’d tried to yank the blade out and failed. Hanks of old flesh hung from her fingers and arm.

  A scream boiled to the heavens. A wild shriek of pure fear.

  It took Catherine a moment to realize it came from her own lips.

  “Holy mother of God!” she whispered, retching, backing away.

  But the vision of Mary was burned in her brain as she scrambled backward, nearly tripping over her own skirts. Trying not to scream, she turned and ran for the door.

  What in God’s good name had happened to her sister?

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  Copyright © 2011 by Lisa Jackson LLC and Nancy Bush

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  ISBN: 978-1-4201-0339-7