Now, years later, standing in the rain, staring at the tree, she felt chilled to the bone. Alone. With no more answers than she had twenty years earlier. She walked to the tree and shined a light on the gnarled trunk.
“Oh, Jake,” she whispered when she found the mark in the rough bark and ran her fingers in the groove. “Who did this to you?”
And why?
She closed her eyes, sent up a prayer, and sighed.
Over the drip of the rain she heard a foreign sound, a rustle of leaves in the wind.
She turned and shined her flashlight onto the hedge behind her. Wet, shiny leaves quivered.
She froze. Felt a frisson of fear. Who else was out here? Had someone followed her? Watched her?
Her heart pounded.
It was probably just a raccoon or possum or skunk…
The branches stilled.
No tiny bright eyes were caught in the flashlight’s beam.
Her pulse pounding in her ears, Kristen moved her small swath of illumination across the wide expanse of greenery, a weak beam of light that seemed to be dimming in the rain. She saw nothing. No movement. Heard no sound other than her own rapid heartbeat and the steady drip of the rain.
No one was here. She was alone. Scared, feeling like she was trespassing, standing in the heavy drizzle in the middle of the night.
Like an idiot.
Quickly, she scanned the area one last time, then turned and made her way out of the labyrinth. She made only one wrong turn, righted herself, and sprinted across the parking lot and over the blemished tarmac of the alley until she found her car parked where she’d left it.
She’d never been so glad to see her little Honda in her life. She unlocked the car with her remote and the Honda’s lights flashed. After tossing the flashlight and her purse into the backseat, she slid behind the wheel and flipped off her coat hood.
Rain slid down her neck. She switched on the ignition and the radio came on…but she hadn’t been listening to it on the way over to the school…what the devil? She glanced down at the illuminated dash and realized it wasn’t the radio at all, but a cassette, stuffed into its slot in the dash. She heard garbled sounds and laughter and music…familiar sounds…oh…my…God…The hairs on the back of Kristen’s neck raised as she listened. The song was a Springsteen classic. “Dancing in the Dark.”
A shudder slid down her spine, and she glanced through the fogging windshield where the wipers were already moving, scraping a pink piece of paper back and forth.
Glancing around, she opened the window and snagged the soggy piece of paper from the glass. The letters on the pink page were faded, the paper nearly torn to shreds, but she recognized it for what it was: the photograph of her and Jake taken at the Valentine’s dance two decades earlier. A picture she’d hidden far away in a school scrapbook that she hadn’t looked at in years. Her stomach knotted as she stared at their faces, smiling, carefree, innocently unaware of what the horrid night would bring. Worse yet, scrawled across their smiles was a jagged red slash, the color of blood.
Kristen nearly screamed.
But she didn’t have to.
Because as Bruce Springsteen’s voice faded and the sounds of the dance so long ago disappeared into the night, there was a second of silence, a click, and then the tape issued a scream of pure, unadulterated terror.
Kristen ejected the cassette, stepped on the accelerator, and tore out of the parking lot.
Her entire body shaking, her heart jackhammering in fear, she glanced in the rearview mirror and thought she saw an image, a quicksilver glimpse of a dark figure, running past the darkened windows of the chapel.
She blinked.
The figure was gone.
Just a figment of your imagination.
No way! Someone knew she’d be at the school that night. Someone had either followed her or been waiting.
She glanced at the passenger seat where the wet, garish picture lay beside the damning cassette.
She’d thought the nightmare was over.
Now she realized it was just beginning.
Chapter 5
Run, Kristen. Run as far and as fast as you can. But it won’t help. I’ll find you. I’ve waited this long and I’m not going to let you get away now.
Jake Marcott’s killer stood in the shadows of the overhang of the school, watching the Honda’s retreating taillights as the rain dripped from the overflowing gutters of the portico that was the entrance to good ol’ St. Lizzy’s.
How many times had she stood right in this spot, eyeing the others, wishing she fit in, listening to all of them talking about Jake Marcott as if he were a god, as if they all owned a piece of him?
Little did they know that Jake had never loved any of them.
Never had…never would.
Jesus, they were all such idiots. Kristen, the valedictorian, for God’s sake, was the worst. She was supposed to be smart, but in truth, she was as dumb as a stone. And predictable. So damned predictable. Even if she hadn’t followed her, she would have guessed that Kristen would return to St. Lizzy’s.
All the planning of the reunion would bring back memories of the night of the Valentine’s dance and would drive Kristen here, to literally the scene of the crime. She had known it intuitively.
Which all fit into her plans perfectly. She wondered, watching the taillights disappear in the rain, what Kristen had thought when she’d seen the picture the killer had left on the car. Had she understood the message? Did she know what was coming? Did she feel a scratch of fear along her spine as she’d heard the tape of the dance and Lindsay’s howling, bone-chilling scream?
Oh, just you wait, Kristen.
It’s only going to get worse.
Remember the night Jake was killed? How you found Lindsay? And Jake?
That night had been perfect. From her hiding spot at the end of one hedgerow in the maze, hearing the music and whisper of voices, the killer, still holding the heavy crossbow, had heard frantic footsteps and pulled farther into the shadows. Then, clicking her pocket recorder on again, she’d witnessed Lindsay, her shimmering blue dress catching the moonlight, running into the heart of the maze. The killer had followed a few steps so that she could watch and tape the tall girl’s reaction.
And it had been worth it.
Lindsay, murmuring, “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no!” had run to the tree where Jake was slumped. She’d tried to revive him, to hold him, to force some life into his already-dead body. “Jake, oh, God, no…Jake! Jake!” His blood had run down the bodice of the icy-blue gown, staining and smearing the expensive garment as she’d tried to revive him. “Oh, no, oh, no…oh…” Then, as if she’d finally understood that this was real, not some dream, Lindsay had let out a high-pitched, bloodcurdling scream that had keened mournfully off the West Hills.
The killer had ducked back and started running, not along the maze’s intricate paths but through three slits she’d made earlier, tiny spots where she’d folded the branches back and slipped through, cutting across the north side of the maze and down a hillock and around the edge of the property until she could slip into her hiding space in the basement of the school, change quickly into her dress again, then return to the group of kids who, smoking dope and drinking, had never really noticed how long she’d been in “the ladies’ room.”
It had all worked so smoothly.
She’d even been clustered with the others when she’d seen Lindsay, her face white, her dark hair falling in disarray, her silk dress stained with the purple-red of Jake Marcott’s blood, stumbling out of the maze. Lindsay had been zombie-like and sobbing out of control. Kristen Daniels had been ashen faced and starting to shake. Rachel Alsace had been horrified and stunned, but already moving into action. She’d immediately demanded that a stricken-faced Sister Clarice call the police and her father immediately.