Maybe the town did just have bad luck. Either that or there was a sick bastard out there copying the initial crimes.
Her food had stopped steaming and she was about to dig in when the hairs on the back of her neck went up. She turned and saw a man standing out in the side yard.
He was about ten feet away. He approached the house. She couldn’t get a good look at his face. A hood obscured his features.
Maria took off for the office. She punched in the code to the safe, whipped open the door, and took out her Glock.
On the way out of the office, she saw Tim emerge from the bedroom, hair rumpled.
“What’s going on?”
“Stay put. There’s someone outside.”
He took one look at the Glock and realized she meant business.
“I’m getting the baseball bat,” he said.
“You’re staying where you are,” Maria said.
She slipped out the back door, crossed the patio, and crept up on the side yard, where they had a fire pit and chairs set up.
Maria swept the Glock back and forth. “Police officer. Come out. Show me your hands. Now.”
But there was no one in the yard. Whoever he was, the fucker was quick.
She spotted the mark on the house, just below the window. Smeared in gaudy strokes. Maria took a closer look at it. Two parallel splashes. One perpendicular under those. Another vertical slash of paint. Not paint. That was goddamned blood.
Someone had painted a crude number four on her house.
Once again, the hairs on her neck stood up. She couldn’t deny the icy lump forming in her belly.
She went back inside, took out her cell, and called the station.
1968 – Heidi
Heidi went down an unfamiliar path. They’d played in the woods near the picnic grounds a hundred times, but this path wasn’t familiar. It was dark and cool in here, despite the heat. She thought she’d turned right, then left a few times. God, she never should have gone ahead of her sisters. But she’d been annoyed by them talking about Paul and George and the rest of the Beatles.
Now, she was on a dark path covered by pine needles. She looked back and didn’t see Sara or Emily. In another minute she was about to call out to them. She didn’t want to be called a little shit for being scared, though.
She continued down the winding path, wondering how the woods got dark so fast. The sun didn’t penetrate here. It was like every deep, dark forest she’d read about in books. She was in Mirkwood.
When she turned around to look for her sisters, she saw a man standing on the path. And he started towards her.
The man wore a ragged army jacket a shade between gray and green. He was so tall that the top of his head touched the lowest branch on the nearest pine tree. She’d never been so scared in her life.
He was dangerous. All those strange men her parents warned her about. This guy was one of them.
The wind shifted, carrying with it the man’s rotten stink. It reminded her of the stench from the slaughterhouse in the summer. Blood and manure and burning hair.
She looked back down the path, the way she came. It only led to more woods.
Deeper into Mirkwood.
Why couldn’t she be at home reading The Hobbit, curled up in the reading nook by the upstairs window? It had a musty old cushion and Turbo, their cat, would sometimes join her, stretched out in a sunbeam. It was the place where she’d fallen in love with Bilbo, Gandalf, and Middle Earth, which seemed so much better than their crumbling house.
Now she had to deal with something worse than Tolkien could conjure up. She backed up and the man seemed to glide towards her.
She took a deep breath, expanded her ribs, and let loose a terrific scream.
Sarah figured she’d take a whipping for losing sight of Heidi. Even though her little sister was a huge pain in the ass sometimes, she wanted no harm to come to Heidi. In fact, she’d never admit that she admired Heidi’s love of reading, a love fostered by Sarah reading her hundreds of bedtime stories. She even had a surprise copy of The Fellowship of the Ring tucked away as a birthday present for Heidi.
First she had to find the little shit, and then she was going to murder her for running off.
Emily said, “She turned right up there.”
“Dad’s gonna give us the belt for sure. We have to find her. C’mon,” Sara said, and bounded up the trail.
They hit the spot where Heidi had turned. Sarah followed the new path. A high, piercing scream filled the air.
Heidi.
There was a network of caves on the other side of the park. Sara feared a bear had come down and gotten her sister.
She broke into a run.
The path sloped downward and Sarah had to sidestep in order to avoid slipping. As she went, rocks slid under her feet and a few times she nearly went ass over heels
