“What?”
“I just said I’m not dead. And that poor woman…Oh, God, Ro—we met her when she came in the store. She was just here having a good old time, and now…she’s dead.”
“Dan told me he’d seen her, too.”
“She was nice, just like Mary…. She came in and bought some jewelry.” Eve hesitated for a moment, looking unhappy, then shook her head. “She said she lived in Boston and hadn’t been up this way in ages. She came here to see the leaves and then…then she died here.”
Eve looked stricken, ready to cry.
Rowenna gave her a hug. There was nothing to say.
Eve drew away. “Hey, hurry up. Go meet your guy.”
“Are you all right?”
“Of course,” Eve said.
“All right, then, go back in, close up,” Rowenna told her.
Eve still looked anxious.
“Eve, is something else wrong?” Rowenna asked, worried. She didn’t want to get to the bar late and send Jeremy into a panic, but she didn’t want to leave her friend standing there, looking so lost.
“Nothing.”
“Eve?”
Eve laughed. “Nothing. Really.” She looked away, as if trying to hide her feelings. “Nothing you can fix, anyway. So go meet Jeremy, and don’t stop along the way to talk to strangers.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Eve took a deep, steadying breath, then nodded and ducked back into the store. Rowenna waved and walked on along the pedestrian mall.
The other shops had closed. It seemed impossible, but in a matter of minutes, the streets had cleared.
The chilly autumn breeze suddenly blew. A scattering of leaves whirled up from the pavement, then settled again at her feet. She quickened her pace.
A strange buzzing sound reached her ears, and she glanced up. A streetlamp was flickering, and as she watched, it buzzed again, burned brightly for a moment, then went out.
A perfectly natural occurrence, she told herself.
There was still plenty of light.
But where there was light, there was also shadow.
Moving quickly now, she looked at the bricks beneath her feet and nearly jumped at the sight of a shadow on the ground.
Of course there was! Her own.
She listened to her own footsteps and wondered if she was hearing a slight echo to each one, as if someone were following and trying to match his footsteps to hers.
The breeze stirred again, and the leaves were swept into a minor cyclone, dancing wildly through the air before falling at her feet with a dry rustle that sounded just like an insinuating whisper.
The shadow was growing, as if she were getting taller, larger. Broader. As if a mountain was looming behind her, massive and dark.
No, it wasn’t a mountain, it had a shape.
Like a man, a man in a cape, rising from the bowels of the earth.
Her imagination was taking charge, and even though she knew she was being ridiculous, she quickened her pace even more.
The echo of her footsteps seemed to come a beat too late.
Like a pulse, a heartbeat out of sync.
Fear suddenly swept through her. Somehow whatever was creating the shadow was no longer behind her, but had moved in front of her.
She turned and ran, fleeing the mall along the nearest side street, knowing she was being forced away from the business district and toward the less populated side of town.
No longer did her pursuer make a pretense of stealth. She was being followed.
Every shop, every restaurant she passed was closed and dark.
The footsteps following her now were loud and fast and all too real. She knew they had to belong to a human being, yet it felt as if she were being followed by something more than human, something that whispered of evil.
Where was everyone?
This was leaf season, for God’s sake.
A pair of Pilgrim salt-and-pepper shakers smiled benignly from a shop window as she passed. A historic building, closed to the public, was next. The witch memorial was across the street.
And the cemetery.
Bizarrely, the gate was standing open, but why question fate?
It was insane, given what had happened there, but she knew the cemetery so well that she could streak across it, hoping her pursuer would get confused in the dark, maybe even trip on one of the old headstones, while she raced out the other side.
With nowhere else to go and her stalker coming closer, she raced through the gate and past the old tombs and broken stones to the other side, where she came to an abrupt halt.
The evil was no longer behind her.
It was in front of her.
She stood dead still, the pitiful stones marking the little children’s graves to her right, broken stones to her left, an aboveground tomb before her.
And she was aware that someone, something, had somehow herded her to this spot, then managed to circle past her again to block her path and keep her here.
Words whispered through her mind.
“Come closer, closer, bow down before me, come…”
It was in her head. It beckoned. It made her think of a hill, where power and vengeance, life and death, were all to be found.