Her beginning and her end.

“Leave,” she ordered, holding up the knife.

He kept walking.

“I swear I’ll kill you.”

A slow, self-satisfied smile slid across his face. You think you invited me here, whore, when it was I who found you, who hunted you, who will do the killing. He didn’t say a word, yet his voice reverberated through her brain.

“I’m not kidding,” she warned, brandishing her small blade, the jackknife she’d stolen from her father’s drawer.

Nor am I.

She lunged. Driving the knife downward, intending to slice into his abdomen.

Quick as a snake, he coiled strong fingers around her wrist.

“Ah!”

Stupid cunt.

He bent her hand backward.

Pain screamed up her forearm. She cried out and fell to her knees.

Her gaze clashed with his.

Strong fingers bent her wrist back.

“Stop!” she yelled.

Breath hissed through his teeth. With a sharp twist he snapped the bones in her wrist.

She cried out softly. The knife fell from her nerveless fingers. His dark eyes were lasers as he snatched it up and drove forward, jamming it between her ribs. “No more,” he rasped.

She clawed at him but it was no use. Meeting his gaze, she whispered, “This is just the beginning…” and saw his face contort with rage as he shook his head violently, thrusting the knife deeper.

The night swirled around her. She crumpled to the ground at the base of the statue, aware that her attacker was staring down at her, his teeth bared, his breath visible in short puffs that dissipated as she gazed upward, the lifeblood pooling out of her.

Then she lay still as death beneath the Madonna. He backed out of her ever-narrowing vision. Clouds shrouded the moon. Few stars were visible. The Madonna’s arms stretched upward to the heavens. Somewhere, far in the distance, it seemed a bell tolled.

I am a sacrifice, she thought.

Then darkness descended.

St. Elizabeth’s campus

February 2009

Midnight…

Kyle Baskin held the flashlight under his chin, beaming its illumination upward, highlighting the planes and hollows of his face.

“Bloody Bones entered the house,” he whispered in his deepest, most ghoulish voice. His eyes darted around the circle of boys seated on the ground at his feet, their scared faces turned up earnestly. “Bloody Bones crossed to the stairs. Bloody Bones looked up and could see the children through the walls.”

“Like X-ray vision?” Mikey Ferguson squeaked.

“Shut up.” James, his older brother, threw him a harsh look.

The branches overhead shivered. There was a moon but it wasn’t visible over the height of the maze’s hedge. Only the faintest trickle of light wavered through the leaves.

“I’m on the first step,” Kyle intoned, hesitating for maximum effect. He gazed across the beam of the flashlight at the kids he and James had brought to the center of the maze. They were supposed to be babysitting, but that was boring as hell. “I’m on the second step.” He drew a shaking breath and said slowly, “I’m on…the…third step…”

Mikey shot a look of terror over his shoulder and edged closer to James, whose smirk was fully visible to Kyle.

Tyler, that little pissant, started to snivel.

“I’m on…the…fourth…step…”

“How many steps are there?” Mikey cried, clutching at James’s arm.

“Shut the fuck up.” James tried to shake him off.

“I wanna go home!” Tyler wailed.

“I’m on…the fifth step!”

“I’m calling my dad.” Preston, the overweight prick, clambered to his feet, his normally toneless voice quaking a bit.

“The phone’s in the car, moron.”

“I’m on the sixth step, I’m on the seventh step, I’m on the eighth step!” Kyle declared in a rush.

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. “Siddown!”

“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, James thought, the way Kyle did it, but it sure as hell did the trick. The kids started scattering like cockroaches, shying away from the dirty old statue of that lady, screaming and blubbering. James and Kyle started laughing. They couldn’t help themselves. That ratcheted the boys 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 James approached, pointing 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’s eyes bugged out. He started shrieking like a banshee and couldn’t quit.

Kyle gazed on in raw fear. “Shit,” he quavered.

Little Mikey grabbed James’s hand and hauled them both out of the maze. The rest of the gang thundered behind them. They all ran for their lives, the cold touch of Bloody Bones feathering their napes all the way.

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 knew it would happen.

Was waiting.

Flinging off the covers of the old bed, I listen to the howl of the wind as it rushes from the west, driving inland, churning up the water. I don’t bother with clothes as I open the door from the old keeper’s quarters that lead into the lighthouse itself. Quickly I take the circular stairs, running up their rusted steps, ignoring the metal as it groans against my weight.

Faster! Faster!

My heart is pumping and all the restlessness I’ve tried to contain, the impulses I’ve kept at bay, are now set free.

The stairs curl more tightly as I ascend to the landing where the once-vibrant beacon lies dormant, its huge lens giving off no illumination, warning no sailors of the impending shoals.

I fling the door open and step onto the weathered grating. Rain spits from clouds roiling in the heavens, wind tears at my hair, and the night is dark and thick with winter. A hundred and thirty feet below the surf churns and boils in whitecapped fury around this small, craggy island that has been abandoned for half a century.

No one inhabits the island.

The lighthouse is off-limits to the public, guarded judiciously by the Coast Guard and a tired, twisted chain-link fence as well as the dangerous surf itself.

A few have dared to trespass.

And they have died in the treacherous currents that surround this sorry bit of rock.

Even in the darkness, I turn and view the mainland. I know they’re there. I’ve taken as many as I can. Their fortress can be breached, though I bear the scars of battle and I must be careful.

Tonight, no lights glow from their windows. The forest covers them.

As I face the sea, I tilt my head, lift my nose to the wind, but I smell nothing other than the briny scent of the Pacific crashing a hundred feet below. I close my eyes and concentrate. As the wind tosses my hair into my eyes and my skin chills with the frigid air, the blood in my veins runs hot.