But the party mood wilted as hours passed with no sign of Gabby. She’d called ahead to let them know she was on her way more than three hours ago, but had been out of touch ever since. They called and texted her multiple times. Each time there was no response. During that first hour of no contact, they weren’t really worried. Their friend was late, but they could easily imagine legitimate, non-scary reasons for the delay. Gabby was a bit flighty, to put it kindly, prone to wander and get distracted. Maybe she’d stopped off to see some other friends on the way.

  Another hour later, they gave up waiting for her and dove back into the cocaine. And, again, Jodi indulged more than Alysha. Gabby’s failure to show up negated their interest in a night of clubbing, but the girls decided they would have a different kind of fun instead. So they called up Tod, proposed a drug-fueled kinky threesome, and here they were.

  Only now even this wasn’t as much fun as usual.

  The whole night felt tainted.

  Jodi said, “She’s probably okay. You know how she is.”

  Alysha grabbed one of the pillows she’d pushed aside and wedged it under her head. This made it easier to look Jodi in the eye while they were talking. “I know she flakes out sometimes, but this is different. You know it is. She always eventually lets us know what’s going on, even if it’s just a simple text saying she’ll fill us in later. This whole completely off the radar thing bugs me, especially when we know for a fact she was in her car and headed our way three hours ago.” She frowned. “I’m really kind of scared, actually.”

  Jodi’s brow furrowed as she thought about it. “I guess I kind of am, too, but there’s not much we can do.”

  “We could call 911.”

  “And say what exactly? That our friend has been out of contact for a few hours? They’re not gonna take that seriously. I guess we could try calling her parents and see if they’ve heard anything.”

  Alysha grimaced. “In the dead of night? They probably wouldn’t answer. Even if they did, we’d scare the hell out of them, maybe for no good reason.”

  “Right,” Jodi said, nodding. “This is what I’m trying to tell you. The situation sucks, but like it or not, we’re stuck for anything to do about it right now. Look, we’ll wait until daylight and then if we still haven’t heard from Gabby, we’ll call her parents. They can take it from there. How’s that sound?”

  Alysha sighed. “I guess it really is all we can do.”

  Jodi smiled. She climbed atop Alysha, straddling her again. “Well, it’s not all we can do. We can play some more. Come on, it’ll take our minds off it.”

  A resumption of the roleplaying game no longer bothered Alysha. Taking a few moments to talk the situation out had eased her mind enough to focus on the moment at hand rather than on things out of her control. She was reaching for Jodi’s breasts when she glimpsed a flicker of movement from the direction of the doorway. The movement occurred at the outer periphery of her partially blocked vision. She might not have noticed it at all if she hadn’t wedged the pillow under her head.

  She raised her head off the pillow now and craned it as far she could to the left in order to see around Jodi. The man standing just inside the bedroom doorway met her gaze. His dark brown eyes were all she could see of his face, the rest of which was obscured by a ski mask. Clutched in his gloved right hand was an axe. He held it by the handle at his waist, with the head of the axe touching the carpeted floor. Her first thought was that Tod had donned his mask again and was ready to get back in the spirit of things.

  But Tod’s eyes were a piercing, brilliant blue, not brown. Nor had he been wearing a trench coat. Also, this man was thinner than Tod and taller by about a head.

  The man raised the axe off the floor and stepped toward the bed.

  Alysha screamed.

  Jodi twisted her head around and saw the stranger approaching. She chuckled when she saw him, not immediately discerning the differences between this man and their friend. “Oh, hi, Tod. Ready to play again, I see. You forgot our beers, asshole.” Her head swiveled back toward Alysha, her face twisting in a smirk. “Boy has the attention span of a magpie. Good thing he has a big dick. Otherwise he’d be useless.”

  Alysha screamed again. She tried to push Jodi away from her, but the bigger woman once again failed to budge. The masked man had reached the bed. He raised the axe higher and in a moment swung it around in a lethally smooth, powerful arc. An oblivious Jodi was still smiling when the blade punched into the side of her neck and took her head right off her shoulders. The blow was delivered with enough force to send the severed head flying through the air until it smacked against a window blind and fell with a heavy thump to the floor. It left a bloody smear on the blind, but Alysha didn’t see this because of the massive amount of blood erupting from Jodi’s neck stump. The first geyser of gore leapt high enough to spatter the ceiling. Much more of it hit Alysha right in the face as Jodi’s now headless torso toppled toward. She spluttered as blood filled her mouth and was temporarily blinded as more of it coated her eyes.

  She coughed several times to clear her throat and mewled in terror as she felt the man haul Jodi’s corpse away from her and fling it to the floor. Still blind from the gore in her eyes, she rolled to her right, narrowly escaping impalement as the heavy head of the axe slammed into the mattress. She rolled over the side of the bed and dropped painfully to the floor as the axe-wielding maniac shrieked in frustration and ripped his weapon from the perforated mattress.

  Alysha swiped furiously at her eyes, partially restoring a level of blurry vision that allowed her to scuttle away from the bed on her hands and knees. Even in the grip of gut-twisting terror, she knew this wouldn’t be an effective way out of her predicament. She needed to get to her feet and start running. When she got to the door, she reached up and grabbed the doorknob, intending to haul herself up and do just that. Once again, however, she was saved by primitive instinct. There was no conscious thought involved, just an overpowering sense of imminent death bearing down on her from behind. She ducked her head just in time to avoid decapitation. The blade of the axe slammed into the door, punching all the way through the wood.

  Another scream of murderous frustration rang out as Alysha finally regained her feet and took off running down the hallway. The house wasn’t a large one and she made it to the kitchen within seconds. Tod was on the floor near the open back door. He was flat on his back, his dead eyes open and staring blankly at the ceiling above. A big carving knife had been rammed into his open mouth up to the hilt. The tip of it had exited through the back of his neck and was embedded in the wood floor.

  Alysha heard a crack of splintering wood as the madman tore the axe free of the door. Then his footsteps came thundering down the hallway.

  Still naked, Alysha leapt over Tod’s body and ran for the door. In another moment, she was outside and headed for the street. Hope bloomed inside her and she began to laugh in hysterical relief at her narrow escape. She would be okay now. This was the city. Even in the wee hours, there were people and cars around. Headlights, multiple sets of them, were headed this way. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she walked out into the middle of the street and awaited salvation.

  I’m saved, she thought. Saved. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you.

  She was still thinking this when the blade of the axe ripped into her spine, severing it as the force of the blow briefly lifted her off the ground. Alysha felt nothing from the waist down as the killer guided her body to the pavement, planted a booted foot on her ass, and wrenched the head of the axe out of her back.

  The last thing Alysha heard before she died was the sound of the axe blade scraping across asphalt as the winded killer retreated from the scene, dragging his weapon with him.

  14.

  Nine years ago

  Willow Springs, TN

  The season he dreaded had come around again. This time the anxiety it always triggered was worse than ever. He was tired all the time from sleepless nights and his job performance was suffering. Just the other day he’d received a reprimand for falling asleep at his desk. He was told a repeat of the incident would result in his immediate termination. This scared him badly. He had no savings and needed the weekly income just to keep a roof over his head, but these practical concerns were overshadowed by his mental health issues. And what little sleep he was getting was plagued by disconcertingly vivid bad dreams.

  In most of the dreams, he was back in the woods on that long ago night, alone in the dark after the departure of the bullies. He was crying, a result of his extreme level of physical discomfort and the humiliation he’d endured. The knotted ropes binding him to the tree were too tight, cutting off his circulation. Stinky dog shit was smeared all over his torso. His eyes were still stinging from the many squirts of vinegar-laced water. Slimy earthworms were crawling around in his underwear. He could still taste the worms he’d been forced to eat. And then there was the pumpkin shoved down over his head. He felt like he was suffocating inside it. It all felt so real, like it was still happening. But there were some differences. In the dreams, Chuck Everly never returned to set him free.

  In the dreams, he knew he would never leave those woods. He was in hell, a sinner condemned to spend all eternity tied to that tree, forever re-experiencing all the worst things about the most miserable night of his life.

  Elliot decided he couldn’t take much more of the nightly torture. A trip to his therapist became a necessity. He’d made the appointment the day of the work reprimand and now here he was, feeling awkward in a waiting room at the building where his shrink had her office. He sat slumped down in an uncomfortable chair in a corner of the room, lanky legs stretched out in front of him, hands shoved into the pockets of his trench coat. He kept his head down and refused to look at anyone else in the room. Interacting with strangers was something he avoided whenever possible.

  His therapist shared a floor in this building with several partners. An unavoidable consequence of this was that the waiting room was always a crowded place. Several people waiting with him were kindred spirits of a sort, psychologically damaged misfits desperately seeking some kind of relief from the things that troubled them. He didn’t have to look them in the eye to know that. Most arrived alone, kept to themselves, and didn’t say anything. Just like him.

  But then there were the others, a disparate assortment of people from all walks of life. Men in expensive-looking business suits and their blue collar counterparts, harried young mothers with obnoxious children in tow, elderly people with canes and walkers, and virtually every other type in between. They were black, white, brown, whatever. Mental health issues crossed all cultural borders, it seemed. The worst were the garrulous types, the perpetually grinning, overbearing assholes who couldn’t resist chatting up strangers. Elliot Parker resolutely ignored them all, even on the rare occasions when they tried to engage him.

  He got called rude a lot.

  He didn’t care. They didn’t—and never could—understand.

  But on this day, as he waited, he sensed someone staring at him intently. Against his better judgment, he looked up from the floor and saw a moderately attractive young woman seated directly across from him. She had long, curly blonde hair and blue eyes. She was dressed somewhat frumpily, in loose sweatpants and a black hoodie too big for her. Elliot guessed it belonged to a boyfriend. If she had a boyfriend, though, he was elsewhere today. She was alone.

  When he met her gaze, she smiled.

  The smile had an immediately damaging effect on him, melting a bit of the permafrost around his heart. He felt his cheeks flush and a rare smile trembled at the edges of his mouth.

  Then she put the ball of a thumb against the tip of her nose and pushed it upward.

  Elliot quickly looked away, his cheeks flushing redder.

  I get it, he thought. I’m a pig. You bitch. This is what I get for daring to believe someone might be nice to me.

  The woman made a barely audible oinking sound.

  A nearly overpowering urge to flee the waiting room and skip his appointment came over Elliot. He was on the verge of getting to his feet to do just that when the door to the right of the receptionist’s desk opened and a woman with a clipboard appeared in the doorway.

  “Elliot Parker?”

  There was another moment during which Elliot hovered on the brink of making a run for the exit, but in the end he got up and headed in for his appointment. What swayed him was a combination of the direness of his seasonal depression and a desire not to give the hateful young woman the satisfaction of seeing him run.

  He heard her make another of those oinking sounds as he followed the woman with the clipboard through the open door. This time she raised her voice enough for everyone to hear. Elliot’s hands clenched into fists in the pockets of his trench coat as he trailed the assistant down the hallway. He imagined stabbing the bitch in the waiting room with a big knife, some kind of hunting knife or kitchen carving knife.

  Moments later, he was seated in a chair opposite the desk in his therapist’s small office, a place he’d visited so often over the last few years it was nearly as familiar to him as his own apartment. Nothing of significance in it had ever changed. The muted beige color of the walls, the diplomas and pictures mounted on the wall behind the desk, and the bland furnishings and art prints had all been the same since day one. Elliot figured this was to avoid upsetting her more fragile clients, the ones terrified or intimidated by change of any kind.

  His therapist looked relaxed in the leather chair behind the desk, smiling and leaning back with her hands steepled above her bosom. Her name was Lillian Rosewater. She was a stylish and attractive woman in early middle age. As always, her hair, nails, and makeup looked perfect. He couldn’t see her legs behind the desk, but he thought there was a good chance she was wearing the shiny high-heeled red boots he liked. She always wore them with this particular outfit.

  Elliot always rushed home to masturbate after his sessions with Lillian. He often wondered if she was aware of the effect she had on her male clients.

  Probably.

  “What’s troubling you, Elliot?”

  He sighed and shifted in his seat. “The usual. Halloween’s almost here and--”

  “I don’t mean that,” she said, shaking her head as she cut him off. “There’s something else bothering you. Am I right? Something more…immediate.”

  Elliot hesitated only a moment before telling her about the woman in the waiting room. He didn’t want to talk about the incident. It was embarrassing. It made him feel small and worthless, the way things like that always did. But Lillian was the one person in the world with whom he’d always been completely honest.

  Well…almost completely honest.

  Lillian let out a sad-sounding sigh as he finished relating the story. “How did this make you feel?”

  Elliot scowled. “How do you think? Bad. It made me feel really fucking bad.”

  Lillian nodded. “You understand that this young woman is not representative of all women, correct?”

  Elliot shrugged. “I guess.”

  “You do understand that, I hope.”

  Elliot sighed. “Sure.”

  “What you experienced just now had nothing to do with you. Not really. I don’t know the young lady in question. From your description, I don’t believe she’s a client of mine. But I’d hazard a guess that what she did is a manifestation of her own issues and insecurities. She’s projecting, turning some of her own hurt outward. Again, it had nothing to do with you.” She smiled. “Say it for me, Elliot.”

  “It had nothing to do with me.”

  Elliot thought it was just as likely the girl was simply a mean person who derived pleasure from hurting other people. He’d encountered more than his fair share of similar individuals throughout the course of his lonely and troubled existence. It was nothing more complicated than cruelty perpetrated for the sake of it. But Elliot had no interest in arguing the point with his therapist and thus had managed to fake a believable level of sincerity when parroting her assertion.

  Lillian nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Excellent. Now then, back to the reason for your visit today. I believe you were saying the seasonal issues have recurred.”

  “Yeah.”

  She stared at him a long moment before replying. He knew what she was doing. She was taking stock of him, assessing his mood based on the palpable despondency in his voice, his haggard expression, and even his posture. Lillian Rosewater wasn’t his first therapist. He’d seen many in the years since his brother’s death. Long experience had taught him much about their techniques, enough that he’d long ago become cynical about the whole process. But a good therapist—a really sensitive and intuitive one—could sometimes pull him out of the darkness. And Lillian was a good therapist, maybe the best he’d ever had. She might well be the only person capable of pulling him back from the brink this time.

  “Are you having bad dreams?”

  Elliot nodded. “Yes.”

  “How often?”

  “Often. Whenever I sleep.” He grunted. “Mostly I try not to sleep.”

  Lillian frowned. “That’s not good. Tell me about the dreams. And about any other adverse effects the season is having on you.”

  Elliot sat up straighter in his chair, took a deep breath, and launched into a detailed description of the dreams, taking care to emphasize how achingly vivid they were. He told her he felt like a part of him was still trapped in those woods and would never get out. Tears came as he said this. He hated himself for it, feeling ashamed at the display of weakness, but he was incapable of holding them back. The feelings had been contained too long. Tears gave way to sobs and at times he lapsed into silence as he struggled to regain his composure. Lillian passed him tissues. Her features conveyed only sympathy and concern. Seeing it made him feel worse. There was no one else in his life to whom he could say these painful things. The only person who would listen to him he paid for the privilege. As usual, recognizing this made him feel even worse.