LITMIR.BIZ

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the mat with a wet toe to make some room. She toweled herself off and grabbed up her underclothes, jeans, and a blue sweater. Padding into the bedroom, she pulled on socks and a pair of sturdy hiking boots. Without really knowing what she intended to do, she grabbed her raincoat and keys and purse and headed to her car, throwing a look toward the stand of firs on her way out.

      There was nothing there. No malevolent force. Just branches wavering in the brisk wind, emitting a sad soughing filled with regret.

      Becca climbed in the Jetta and headed away from the condo into a heavy sky that was growing blacker by the minute. She glanced at her watch. Four o’clock. Dark as sin already.

      Becca told herself she was going out to grab a coffee or a soda as she headed west from her Portland condo. But she passed every coffee shop and fast-food restaurant as night crept up on her. Her hands tightened upon the wheel, her gaze glued to the wet pavement, shimmering in the beams from her headlights. She passed cars and trucks driving in the opposite direction, turned off the main road as if pulled by an unseen force, because not once, consciously, did she admit to herself where she was headed, where she was drawn.

      She drove almost unerringly to St. Elizabeth’s campus. It was surrounded by chain-link construction fencing, and yellow signs warned interlopers to stay off the premises. But there was a gap in the fencing where vehicles came and went. An opening no one seemed to feel the need to repair. She drove through as if she owned the place and parked at the far side of the lot, closest to the maze. Behind the front building she could see where demolition was in progress. Several large machines with scoops and claws sat idle while rubble lay in untidy piles, one such pile as tall as the cab of a small crane.

      Yellow crime scene tape flapped angrily at the entrance to the maze. It had been long enough that Becca suspected the tape had just been left, that it served no purpose any longer. And even if it were still in play, she didn’t much care. She wanted to see the site where the human remains had been found.

      Jessie’s remains…

      She’d scarcely taken two steps into the maze when she was slapped in the face by a wet branch. She cried out in surprise, then cringed to hear her voice hang in the air. So much for quietly going about her business. Even with the intermittent whistle of the wind, her half scream had seemed loud.

      As if in answer to her, the clouds opened up and poured rain that quickly turned to hail, slamming down in a violent rush. Becca stumbled forward, yanking her parka hood over her head, her boots squishing into the water-saturated earth. Late February and miserable. She reached a fork in the maze and turned left, hurrying, wind gleefully tossing precipitation at her face, the ground white with hail beneath her feet.

      Three turns later and she was lost. Becca stopped cold, shivering, surprised by her mistake. In high school she would’ve known the way blindfolded. Now she was uncertain which direction to take. The weather and darkness hadn’t helped, but she’d been sure she would find the Madonna.

      Mentally she retraced her route and realized she might have erred on the second turn. Holding on to her coat from the snatching fingers of the branches and skeletal berry vines, she reversed her route at the second turn and headed back inside just as the hail stopped, turning to a thick, pelting rain.

      Jessie had been a master at the maze. Flirtatious and dangerous, in her way, she would crook her finger and invite the guys in their group to come after her. They ran like dogs with their tongues hanging out. But it had all been for Hudson’s benefit, her need to make him jealous, though it hadn’t really worked. Hudson was cool. Tolerant. Maybe disinterested. Jessie’s machinations hadn’t provoked him in the least and Becca had admired him for it. Loving him had been so easy.

      Love, she questioned now, holding back a long branch. A fifteen-year-old’s love that lingered year after year. Could you even call it that? Love? Maybe it was more like obsession. Or habit. Or…

      She heard a twig snap behind her. Like in the movies. The signal for danger. But there was no one in the maze but her. She was sure of it.

      Are you? Are you?

      She was frozen on the balls of her feet, listening. Was there someone there? Something there?

      After a few moments of listening to the wind soughing through the branches and her own rapid-fire heartbeat, Becca relaxed a bit, forging onward, ears attuned.

      Wet shoes slipping slightly, she rounded a final corner and was suddenly in the center of the maze with its ghostly white statue of the Madonna. The ground was torn up and Becca shivered at sight of the large, wet hole at Mary’s feet and the statue tipped on its side, pressed into the dirt and covered with white pellets of hail. Were the bones that had been buried here really Jessie’s?

      She gazed through a curtain of rain at the remains of the grave and shuddered inwardly to think that Jessie had been buried in this dark hole all these years. Or had she? Sometimes Becca felt sure the body discovered was that of her sometime friend; other times she wondered if she was just looking for a logical explanation to a mysterious disappearance.

      Nothing was for certain.

      “Help me,” the wind seemed to sigh.

      She froze.

      Surely she was imagining things…

      Then she felt it; that slight change in the atmosphere.

      The hair on the back of her arms lifted. She blinked against the icy rain.

      Her head pounded, as if she were about to have another vision, yet she remained awake and alert. Too alert. Anxious. As if she were about to jump out of her skin.

      A shadow fell over her and she sensed another presence, something else in the maze with her. Throat tight, she whipped around, bracing herself for another ghostly image. “Jessie?” she whispered.

      Wet laurel leaves shivered, moving.

      Not ten feet from her.

      Becca’s mouth opened on a silent scream.

      Her heart thundered.

      She felt faint and slightly sick.

      She expected Jessie to materialize in front of her.

      Readied herself for it.

      Waited for the ghost to appear.

      Moments passed and she counted her heartbeats.

      Nothing happened.

      The wind dissipated, dying.

      The slapping rain seemed to dissolve into mist.

      No one was there. Not Jessie…no one.

      And yet…

      Becca felt an undeniable presence. Something with a malevolent purpose. Crouching in the thick umbra. Something that wanted to do her harm.

      “Who’s there?” she demanded, her voice a whisper.

      A frigid drop of rain slid onto her collar and down her neck. Shaking as if from a fugue, Becca tried to concentrate on Jessie, but it was impossible. Something was breathing down her neck. Something dangerous. Something threatening.

      And then, from the corner of her eye, she saw a looming shadow. Huge. Dark. Threatening. Oh, God. She turned quickly and the beast shrank back. But she felt its eyes on her.

      With a cry stuck in her throat, Becca bolted from the maze, racing unheedingly through the shrubbery, feeling tiny branches claw and scratch her face. Feet slipping as she rounded several corners, she ran as if the devil were on her heels, her breath fogging in the air, fear spurring her on.

      Who had followed her into the maze?

      Not who: What? What had stalked her through the overgrown hedges and berry vines?

      Fumbling for her keys in her pocket, she ran on, tearing out of the maze and across the overgrown lawn and potholes of the parking lot to her little Jetta.

      She dropped the keys at the door, then scraped her fingers over the broken asphalt as she dived for

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