In high school, they could easily manipulate teachers and other people with their looks. Some geek kid could always be counted on to write important papers for them. Teachers doled out heaps of unearned extra credit simply because the girls were so enormously popular. Unfortunately, being allowed to skate through those four years so easily left the girls ill-prepared for the more academically rigorous world of college. Both were in real danger of failing all their classes. In defiance of reality, both had persisted in painting a much sunnier picture of the situation for their parents, who now believed their little darlings were becoming true scholars. Perpetuating that fiction was becoming quite stressful. And with the specter of a semester on academic probation looming in their near future, the girls had felt a burning need to get away from it all for a while.

  The trip up to the cabin had been Candice’s idea. She had accompanied Ramona’s family up there many times over the years. Her idea was that they should invite a bunch of their friends and hang out at the lake for a few days, possibly through Halloween. This would mean blowing off the rest of their classes for the week, but at this point, what did that matter? Besides, a big blowout party could be just what they needed to take their minds off their troubles.

  After a brief initial hesitation, Ramona had agreed to pay her parents an unexpected midweek visit, ostensibly to do a few loads of laundry and help herself to some of her mother’s home cooking. She would wait for an opportune moment and snag the key to the place from her father’s key ring. With any luck, he’d never notice it was missing. Given the many similar-looking little slivers of metal dangling from the ring, Ramona figured that wouldn’t be a problem.

  As it turned out, she didn’t have to bother with the cover story she’d concocted. The clean clothes she’d stuffed into a large laundry bag never left the back seat of the jeep. She entered her childhood home quietly through the back door, planning to surprise her parents, who had not been notified of the visit in advance. It hadn’t seemed necessary. She’d shown up unannounced multiple other times and they’d never been up to anything too exciting, just standard old people stuff like reading the paper or watching the evening news on CBS.

  But this time was different. She heard the high-pitched screams as she slipped through the back door. At first she thought her mother was being assaulted by an intruder and a stab of terror went through her. But after standing rigidly still in the kitchen for a few moments, she began to realize this wasn’t the case. There was a distinctly sexual tenor to those screams. Her first instinct was to head out the door and come back for the key another time. But some strange impulse caused her to remove her shoes and creep out of the kitchen and down a carpeted hallway to her parents’ room. The door was open a tiny sliver. She peeked through the crack and saw her mother bouncing up and down on a man named Boyd Dotson. Boyd was a widower who lived in the house across the street. His arms were tied to the headboard and a pair of her mother’s panties had been shoved into his mouth. Ramona’s father was in there, too. He sat in a chair next to the bed, facing away from the door. Ramona couldn’t see much of him from that angle, but she could tell he was naked and that he was masturbating while watching his wife fuck the beer-bellied neighbor.

  Ramona watched them for several minutes before carefully creeping back down the hallway to the kitchen. She found her father’s keys in the usual place, on a hook by the laundry room. After taking care to remove the cabin key as soundlessly as possible, she grabbed her shoes and slipped back out of the house, praying her parents would remain oblivious until she was gone.

  Hours later, she was still freaked out about the incident. The fact that her sweet mommy and daddy got up to such kinkiness came as a huge shock. In all the years she’d lived at that house, not once had she walked in on them having regular sex. The freaky shit she’d seen today never would have entered her mind as a possibility for them. Almost as disturbing was the amount of time she’d spent standing there in the hallway, spying on them. Even more disturbing was the inescapable fact of how horny she’d been ever since then.

  There’s something wrong with me, she thought. Normal people don’t have this kind of reaction to that kind of messed up shit, at least when it involves parents.

  This seemed an undeniable fact. She felt dirty. Unclean.

  In need of being punished, perhaps.

  She thought about Kevin, her hunky online friend, who she’d be meeting for the first time later tonight. They’d talked on the phone numerous times. His voice was incredibly sexy, low and growly. It sent a delightfully wicked shiver through her every time she heard it. And judging from the many pictures he’d shared with her, he had the body to go with it. Maybe, if things went well, he could be talked into tying her to the bed in the cabin’s main bedroom. She imagined him dominating the shit out of her. Thinking about it made her squirm in her seat behind the wheel of the Cherokee.

  And maybe Candice could be in the room with them, watching while they did it.

  Now that would be hot.

  Ramona glanced again at Candice as they neared the Slayton exit. She doubted her friend would be down for anything like that under normal circumstances, but who knew what she might be open to once they were at the cabin and the booze had been flowing for a few hours?

  She hit the blinker switch and slowed down as she took the Slayton exit. “The guys are bringing beer, right?” she asked, after snapping off the radio. “And liquor?”

  Candice nodded. “Of course.”

  “Lots, right?”

  Candice reached over and patted Ramona’s knee. “Don’t worry. There’ll be enough booze to float a fleet of warships. Side note, you’re turning into a fucking lush, you know that?”

  Ramona smirked. “I take it you’ll be abstaining, then?”

  “Fuck, no. I plan to get smashed out of my fucking gourd.”

  Ramona smiled.

  Good. Perfect.

  Candice leaned back in her seat and propped her feet on the dash as the Cherokee slowed to a stop at the end of the ramp. “So this Kevin person’s gonna be there, huh?”

  Ramona glanced both ways before turning left onto the tree-shrouded rural road. “Uh huh. That’s right.”

  Candice frowned, adjusting the position of her dark sunglasses on the bridge of her nose. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “I don’t see why it should be a problem.”

  “It’s just…some online dude? Someone you’ve never met?” She shook her head. “I just don’t understand it. It’s not your usual style. You’re hot. Guys flock to you. Tons of them. Really good-looking ones. So why would you do this?”

  Ramona shrugged and heaved an exasperated sigh. “I’ve told you before, I can’t really explain it. I just got to talking to him and, well…he’s just so interesting. Very deep. Lots of profound thoughts and shit. We’ve got a real connection.”

  Candice chortled. “Right. The beefcake pictures he sent you have nothing to do with it.”

  “Well…they have something to do with it.”

  “How do you know those pictures are even him? Maybe he’s catfishing you.”

  “Not a chance.”

  Candice removed her sunglasses and looked at Ramona, an eyebrow lifted to indicate her skepticism. “Oh, really? How can you be so sure?”

  Ramona smiled. “Because I told him I’d cut off his balls and feed them to him if he’s been lying to me about anything.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  Candice shook her head. “I don’t believe you. That doesn’t sound like you. You’re not a violent person.”

  Ramona sniffed at this. “You’d be surprised. Anyway, if he was really some ugly loser living in his mother’s basement, why would he drop everything and come out here to meet me in person? Makes no sense. No, I think he’s for real.”

  Candice sighed. “Whatever. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Ramona turned right down a secondary road. It was significantly narrower than the road they’d been on, a winding stretch of bumpy, faded asphalt that hadn’t been patched in years. The many potholes elicited several high-pitched squeals from Candice as the Cherokee’s wheels bounced in and out of them. The even narrower dirt road that led to the cabin was just a few miles away. Ramona laughed at each of her friend’s exaggerated squeals, her excitement level growing the closer they got to their destination. All her worries about school and how her parents might react once they found out how poorly she was doing seemed a million miles away. For a few wonderful days, she would just enjoy being a normal, carefree young girl, with nothing on her mind but partying, getting laid, and having the time of her life.

  28.

  Three days until Halloween

  Slayton, TN

  The first stretch of the twisting path through the woods was an easy hike for Bill Christy and his girlfriend, Laurie Palmer. A couple hundred feet in, however, relatively level ground yielded to a steeply rising hill that required more physical exertion than they’d anticipated. By the time the ground leveled out again, both were sweating and had a rosy glow to their faces. As they continued down the path, the expanse of trees to their right thinned enough to allow glimpses of the placid-looking lake and the distant opposite shore.

  Laurie clasped hands with Bill and stepped off the path, tugging at him to follow. Never a big fan of nature, Bill went along with some reluctance. He wasn’t happy about it, but what could he do? She was his girlfriend. It was a good thing she was such a hot piece of ass. A girl of lesser looks might not have coaxed him into the woods in the first place. But, along with several other friends, they’d been waiting over an hour for Ramona and Candice to show up and let them into the cabin. Laurie was often restless, even out there in the civilized world, with a vast array of diversions available to her at any given time. But out here cell reception was awful and she couldn’t reliably text or play on her phone. She became irritable and demanded he accompany her on a nature hike.

  He gave in when the other guys started giving him nasty looks. No one liked being around Laurie when she turned shrill or fussy. Being alone in the woods with her when she was in one of her moods wasn’t Bill’s idea of a good time, either, but he didn’t want his friends turning resentful on him. This was just one of those times in a guy’s life when it was necessary to make a sacrifice for the greater good. But they’d been gone nearly a half hour. Ramona and Candice might finally have arrived by now. Bill had been on the verge of suggesting they head back to check when Laurie steered them off the path.

  His mild irritation at the development faded when they emerged through the trees and stood near the edge of a small cliff overlooking the lake. At a guess, the cliff was about twenty feet above the lake’s surface. Stepping closer to the edge, he raised a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes against the glare of the afternoon sun.

  Laurie put a hand against the small of his back. “I could push you over right now. You wouldn’t be able to stop me.”

  Bill tensed. She’d let go of his hand and was behind him now. She was right. He wouldn’t be able to stop her. “Um. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  Laurie applied a little more pressure to his back. “Yeah? Why not? Can’t swim?”

  “The water’s dark. There might be rocks right under the surface there. It could kill me.”

  Laurie laughed softly and pressed herself against him. “Hmm. Maybe that’s why I brought you out here. Did you think of that? Maybe I want to get rid of you and make it look like an accident.”

  Bill turned away from the edge of the cliff and seized her by the wrists. “You’d never do that.”

  She smiled. “Oh? And why is that?”

  “Because you love me.”

  “Don’t you ever watch the news? People who love each other kill each other all the time.”

  Bill shook his head. “You are so fucking morbid sometimes.”

  She giggled. “It’s one off the things you love about me.”

  He let go of her wrists and put a hand on her chest, squeezing a breast through the flimsy fabric of her top. “Not as much as I love your boobs.”

  Laurie laughed. “They are nice boobs. You’re a lucky guy.”

  Bill craned his head around, peering in the general direction of the cabin. It wasn’t visible from this vantage point, obscured by the curvature of the land and more jutting cliff faces. And there were no boats in the vicinity at present. Laurie was right. This was a perfect spot to kill someone and make it look like an accident. If you waited for the right moment—a moment like this one, for example—you could do it completely unobserved. But Bill didn’t have any real enemies. No one he knew was loathsome enough to inspire murderous thoughts.

  However, the cliff’s relative isolation also made it an ideal spot for activities of a more amorous nature. Sensing his thoughts, Laurie leaned into him and kissed him, thrusting her tongue into his mouth. She angled a thigh between his legs and pressed it against the bulge at his crotch. Bill grabbed her ass and pushed against her. There were gasps and sighs from both of them as the foreplay quickly became more heated. As it continued, they moved away from the edge of the cliff and closer to the line of trees. Within a few more moments, they were shedding their clothes, and then they were naked on the ground together. Bill mounted Laurie as she spread her legs wide, groaning in ecstasy as he penetrated the hot wetness at her center.

  He’d only thrust into her a few times when he felt the stab of agony at the center of his back.

  The dark presence looming over them belatedly registered. A disconnected part of Laurie had sensed movement from the direction of the trees before Bill’s face contorted in pain and his shrieks of agony began. But the rest of her had been too focused on the intensely pleasurable sensations lighting up seemingly every nerve-ending in her body. She had never banged anyone as well-endowed as Bill and she had orgasmed with that first deep thrust. Even without this distraction, though, she might not have sensed the danger until it was too late. If anything, she likely would have attributed the rustling of leaves to harmless forest creatures. Squirrels and rabbits or whatever. Maybe a deer.

  That changed when Bill started screaming.

  A jolt of terror ripped through Laurie when she looked up and saw the tall, black-clad man standing above them. He was wearing a black trench coat over a black shirt and jeans. His face was hidden by a black ski mask. His gloved hands clutched the black handle of a long silver shaft. A length of rope attached to the shaft was coiled around the man’s wrist. A blade or sharp point at the opposite end of the shaft was embedded in her boyfriend’s back. Laurie felt something wet trickle down her thighs and realized it was blood.

  A spear, she thought. That’s what that is. Or a harpoon. Something like that.

  Bill screamed again as the masked man ripped the sharp end of the weapon from his back. A steady patter of blood dripped from the crimson-soaked tip. The assailant raised the spear—or whatever it was—high over his head, face contorting beneath the mask as he prepared to thrust it down again. This time when it came down it went most of the way through Bill’s body. The thrust penetrated so deeply the tip of the spear distended his stomach. Laurie felt it press against her soft belly. Panic engulfed her as she realized that probably less than inch of flesh separated her from impalement. Bill spluttered and his eyes jittered in their sockets as blood bubbled from the corners of his mouth.

  The masked man had a harder time ripping the spear free this time. He roared in frustration as he tugged hard at the handle and shaft. Laurie felt trapped. The only thing she cared about by then was escape. Bill was dead or dying. There was nothing to be done for him. But she was pinned to the ground by his body and the pressure of the spear. When the masked man was finally able to tear the spear free again, she gathered every ounce of strength she had and shoved Bill’s corpse away from her. She managed to roll away just in time to avoid impalement. The killer grunted in frustration as the tip of the spear scraped against the ground instead.

  Instinct brought Laurie quickly to her feet. Her flesh felt sore and her heart was pounding from the terror coursing through her, but she knew this was no time to treat herself gently. Any hope of survival hinged on pushing herself to her absolute limits. Despite knowing this, she couldn’t help stumbling when the tender soles of her bare feet scraped against sharp rocks and prickly undergrowth. She fell to her knees more than once as the killer followed her into the woods, but each time she managed to quickly grab on to a low-hanging branch, haul herself upright again, and get moving. She had no choice. The trampling of the killer’s booted feet through the undergrowth told her he was right behind her, maybe only a few feet away, too close to even risk a glance back. It wouldn’t be long before he got within striking range with that spear. She worried he might even throw it at her, bringing her down regardless of distance.

  But then she emerged from the woods and onto the path. She turned to her left and took off running in the direction of the cabin. Salvation lay in that direction. Once they understood what was happening, the guys would protect her. The killer wouldn’t dare attack a larger group of people with just a spear. She felt her first real flicker of hope at this thought, which was so all-consuming that she neglected to account for the steep hill she and Bill had climbed on the way up to this godforsaken place. She stumbled as she encountered the slope and went tumbling down the path, crying out at the various impacts her body absorbed. By the time she reached the bottom of the slope, she was momentarily incapable of movement, even though her mind kept urging her to get up and start running again.

  At least a full minute elapsed before she was able to lift herself up off the ground and cast a glance back up the hill. The killer, apparently more sure-footed than she, was making his way down at an alarmingly fast rate. He’d discarded the spear. In its place was a machete with a long, curved blade, which was covered in a dark substance Laurie guessed was probably dried blood.