In her mind’s eye, Kristen once again witnessed Lindsay at Jake’s feet, her ice blue dress dark with the stain of Jake’s blood, her face white with fear, mascara running in black rivulets from her eyes. And then the accusation.
“Why, Kristen? Why did you kill him?”
What had possessed Lindsay that night? Why had she thought Kristen had anything to do with Jake’s death?
Lindsay had never given her a straight answer, not even the next week at school when Kristen had asked her about it.
It had been in the senior hallway, a short first-floor and locker-lined corridor that was wedged between the library and the business offices.
Kristen had found Lindsay struggling to open her locker. “Why did you accuse me of having something to do with Jake’s death?” When Lindsay didn’t immediately respond, she pressed, “Lindsay?”
Lindsay yanked on the combination lock, but the locker held fast. “I…I didn’t know what I was saying. I was in shock. Crazy.” She rattled the locker door more furiously, trying to force the combination lock to spring open. It didn’t budge. “I was upset.”
“We all were. But that doesn’t explain why you blamed me.”
“Okay, I know. I’m sorry!” She was twirling the combination wildly again, her fingers trembling. “What do you want from me? I found Jake there in the middle of the maze, an arrow though his heart. And blood everywhere. I knew…I mean, I knew he was dead. It was like”—she stopped tugging at the lock long enough to stare at Kristen with round, panicked eyes—“it was like I saw his soul leave, Kris. Swear to God, the life went out of his eyes as I got to him and…and I knew his soul had escaped, right in front of me…Oh, God…I was so freaked, so scared, so out of my damned mind and you were the next one who showed up and…and…and he was your date that night. You were supposed to be with him! At the dance. When you knew I was still in love with him!”
“You were broken up,” Kristen fought back, feeling a little niggle of guilt. “Jake and I had always been friends.”
Lindsay made a disparaging sound, then calmed a little. “Apparently you wanted more than that, but…Oh, crap, what does it matter? He’s dead, isn’t he? Nothing’s going to change that.”
“I had nothing to do with his murder.”
Lindsay sighed. Blinked back tears. “As I said, Kris, I went nuts. That’s all. I was crazy. Sorry!” Her chin trembled as she turned back to her locker and added in a whisper, “I don’t know what more I can say.”
Lindsay finally managed to work the combination, the lock sprang, and the door opened. She grabbed her English textbook, but not before Kristen got a glimpse of the inside of the locker door where pictures of Jake Marcott were plastered: snapshots, yearbook photos, his senior picture decorated with ticket stubs and red hearts cut out of shiny red paper.
Shocked, Kristen took a step backward, and the sounds of the normal noises in the hallway between classes, the clatter of shoes on the shiny floors, the clang of slamming lockers, the rumble of laughter and conversation, the buzzing of the tardy bell all were muted, as if those familiar noises came from a very long distance.
Only when Sister Clarice touched her on the shoulder, her black habit rustling with her quick strides, and told her to “get to class, chop-chop,” had Kristen snapped back to the present and hustled up the stairs at the end of the hall, hurrying to slide into her seat in the physics lab before cranky old Mrs. Crandall took roll.
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.