The Sacrificial Daughter (20 page)

Jesse felt the skin parting on her throat as the knife came to rest just above her carotid artery. Her heart thumped madly and she could feel her pulse tempting the knife. The hand that held the blade was steady like a rock. Even on the verge of murder, Ky was altogether unflappable.

His other hand was in her hair and his grip was like steel. He had her head pulled way back and she panted out her fear up at the night sky.

"If you make any sound...you will die," he whispered in her ear.

This statement was beyond argument. But at the same time there were things that were outside her control. Most were little things: such as the fact that she had wet herself when she first felt the knife. Luckily, she had just gone at her father's office and only a warm trickle came out. And then there was the fact that her legs wouldn't stop shaking. They trembled like a newborn lamb standing in the snow. These were small things. Unimportant things.

What was important to Ky was that her panting was accelerating. She sounded as though she had just sprinted a mile and was getting louder.

"Quiet down!" he whispered harshly. His grip in her hair was now painfully sharp and her neck was being cranked back at a nasty angle. Though desperately she wanted to please him, the pain only added to her fear and her panting became strident.

Just then, up the trail, something—a branch or a dry twig—snapped. It was a small sound, but it could only mean one thing: someone was coming. Ky spun the both of them around and ducked in close to the tree. Another sound—a kicked pebble that hopped among its larger cousins came to the pair. Whoever it was had moved closer. Jesse's panting had practically ceased at the first sound and now she drew in a big breath. This could be her only chance. If she waited and did nothing her death was a guarantee...the killer was overdue after all.

She thought that she would take her chances and scream, however Ky had other plans. Just as she drew in her breath, he released her hair and slammed his hand over her mouth, crushing her lips against her teeth. She could taste the metal of her own blood on her tongue.

"
He
will kill you if he hears you," Ky said. Each word had come from his lips with all the power of a baby's breath. But Jesse only needed to hear the first word:
He
, before she quieted in his grip.

It was the way Ky said it, as if
He
was something powerful, something singular and extremely dangerous, something to be feared above all else. Jesse was properly afraid.
He
had to be the Shadow-man.
He
could mean no other.

And she was right. Harold Brownly came down the trail. For such a giant of a man he moved with surprising stealth. His massive shoulders were at times as wide as the path, yet he barely touched any of the grasping branches that seemed to reach out for him. Behind him, he left tracks that were too big to be believed, yet somehow his tremendous feet always found the sturdy rock or the new powdery snow to come down in. He was nearly as quiet as the shadows that he wrapped himself in.

It was difficult for Jesse to get a true grasp of the man's size. For one she had never seen anyone nearly so big and two, he wrapped himself in a flowing black cloak of some sort. Even his head was hooded against the cold, so that his features were unknowable.

Yet his great bulk was nothing compared to the aura that surrounded him. Being in his presence had opposite affects on Jesse and Ky. Her heart seemed to stop, her breath was caught in her throat, and her trembling ceased. She was for all intents and purposes, a statue— sculpted out of pure fear.

On the other hand, Ky, once unflappable, was now the one trembling. And now it was his breath beginning to sound like a pant. And it was his heart that Jesse could feel thumping into her back. Ky wasn't the terrifying person he had been, not even close. The knife was no longer at Jesse's throat. Uselessly he had it out toward Harold, and somewhere in the last few seconds the blade had changed from fearsome to pathetic. It looked tiny against the immensity of the Shadow-man and what's more Ky was no longer its master. The blade danced about in his grasp as if it was alive and trying to escape his fingers.

Just as Ky did, the Shadow-man came down the trail and paused only feet from where Jesse and Ky stood in the shadow of the gnarly tree. However, unlike Ky, Harold didn't look over and instead went on again after a brief second. Until he was out of sight, the two teens watched him, still in their odd semi-violent embrace.

"Go home," Ky whispered in her ear at the same time that he released her.

Jesse didn't know what to think. The boy had attacked her, threatened to kill her and was now letting her go? Wasn't he afraid that she would go the police?

Her hand went to her throat. It came away wet. "What...what just happened?" she asked in a tiny but incredulous sounding voice.

Ignoring her as was usual, Ky stared down the path. He was still shaking yet his teeth were clenched and she could see him nodding his head in a small way.

Jesse wasn't going to be ignored. She grabbed him by the arm. "Tell me! What's going on?"

"I saved your life. Now go home," he responded, shaking off her hand. He then turned away and began to head off down the path...toward the berm...toward the Shadow-man. Jesse rushed after him and again grabbed him.

"No..." she started to say.

He turned and shoved her to the ground. "Go. Home." He tried to appear tough, but his knife-hand still shook, sending out dancing shards of moon light.

"Are you going to try to kill him?" Jesse asked, amazed. "With that?"

Ky sighed; it was a rattling shaking sound. Her words were clearly undermining whatever courage he had left. "Somebody has to do it." He turned and walked away again.

Unmindful of her sprained ankle, of her exhaustion and even of the Shadow-man, Jesse hopped up and charged at Ky. This time she didn't grab him by the shoulder but went straight for his right hand. Before he knew exactly what was happening she had a hold of it and bit him in the fat part of his palm below the pinky.

With a grunt of pain, Ky's hand sprang open and Jesse had the knife. She would end his little adventure the quickest way she knew how. Turning, she threw the switchblade out into the forest, figuring with the dark and the thickness of the woods he would never find it. That was the plan at least. She threw the blade, but by some foul miracle it knocked off a tree and bounced back to land right at Ky's feet.

He grabbed it up quick. "If you want to die come with me. If not, go home."

"I'll call the police...I have a cell phone." She started to reach into her bag, but he put out a warm hand to stop her.

"The police get thirty calls a day about Harold this time of year. And if you do call, he'll come for you...and there'll be no stopping him. Just please, go home."

This was the end of the conversation for Ky. This time he didn't walk away, he jogged down the path away from her. She knew there would be no catching him, not with her ankle. She watched him until the dark had him all to itself. With an ache in her chest she went home.

It was a long quarter mile. She took pains to move as quietly as possible, not out of fear of Harold Brownly, but because she was desperately anxious to hear Ky's screams. The night was quiet for her all the way home.

Was this a good thing or bad thing?

Her voice of reason was quiet in regards to the question. In fact it had been quiet since she had run into Ky.

After letting herself in through her front door, Jesse limped around the house making sure that every window and every door was locked up tight. She then made sure that every light was on...except her bedroom light. This was purposely kept dark so that she could have the best view of Harold's house as possible.

With a fresh ace bandage on her ankle and her foot propped up, Jesse ate her dinner sitting in the dark of her bedroom. She kept a watch on the killer's house until eight o'clock when something else grabbed her attention. The killer's house was catty-corner to her own. But who owned the house
directly
behind hers, Jesse had no idea...right up until Ky turned on his bedroom light.

"Holy crap!" she spewed.

Her mind was straight up boggled by this. No wonder the boy was all messed up in the head. How do you live next door to a known killer like Harold Brownly your whole life? And Ky's father! She had new respect for him. It must have been a nightmare trying to raise a family under those circumstances. Yes, he might be a bit over-protective, always running about after Ky, but she couldn't blame him one bit. In fact, Jerry Mendel made her own father look
less than
.

For the next couple of hours, Jesse took turns simmering with anger at the way her own parents behaved, worrying about what tomorrow would hold, and secretly watching Ky. There was also time allotted to fantasizing about Ky as well.

The boy was devilishly cute
and
had saved her after all. Perhaps the rescue was not in a manner that would ever find its way into a romance book. But it was something...in Jesse's world it was a very big something.

Near ten, Ky took off his shirt, which was very nice and then turned out his light, which wasn't. A little while later Harold Brownly came home. Jesse slunk back even further in the shadows of her room. There wasn't much to see, that is other than his large shadow which always seemed to be on the move, as if he were a chronic pacer. It was creepy to watch a killer like that.

"I bet he talks to himself," Jesse said.

She couldn't tell from her angle, not even if she borrowed her father's binoculars, something that she was definitely planning on for the next night. A close-up image of Ky shirtless came to mind.

"Jesse?" Her father called out suddenly, making the girl jump. "We're home."

"Ok," Jesse replied, trying to repress the moment of guilt she'd had when her father had broken in on her little fantasy. A moment later, she could hear his heavy tread on the stairs and she steeled herself for what was coming. When he opened her door he didn't look happy. Yet his look was nothing compared to hers—she was worlds beyond unhappy.

"Where were you today?" she demanded as if she were the parent and he the wayward child. "I needed you!"

Her father was silent for a moment. He seemed unsure whether to answer her or yell back. James decided to answer in a quiet conversational voice, "I was in a meeting. I was trying to talk two different manufacturers into moving their operations to Ashton. There's a die casting plant in town that is vacant and it would be perfect for either of the two companies. Does my alibi pass your approval?"

She sighed. "Why do you even care about this town? These aren't good people."

"You don't care about them?" He gave her a very skeptical look and she dropped her eyes. "I chose this town and these people. I made a promise to help. That should be good enough for you. Now it's my turn for questions," James said.

"Let me guess," she shot out quickly. "You got a call from Principal Peterson?" He nodded, made to reply, but she broke in again. "And you are
very
disappointed in me, I know."

James sat down on her bed and leaned back as if he were going to stay a while. "Keep going. You're not done yet."

"Sure...what else did Jesse do today?" She got up to pace but her ankle sent her the message that it was better just to sit for the rest of the night. "Jesse was...flippant, disrespectful...and oh yes, she also lied to a teacher. She told him that the only reason that she was advocating her father's policies was out of love, which clearly isn't the case."

He'd been frowning before, but now he practically glowered. Jesse didn't care. "I can promise you, Dad that it won't happen again tomorrow. I'll be a perfect angel."

"And this is because..."

"I won't be going to school tomorrow."

"Really?" James said.

"Yes, really!" Jesse couldn't help herself and got up to hobble back and forth in her room. "What would be the point? I've been there for two days and I already know that I'm going to fail five of my classes." For emphasis she held up her hand with the fingers splayed. "Oh, and of course everybody hates me. I'm not talking about a few of the students...I'm talking
everyone
."

"I think you're probably exaggerating."

Jesse had to laugh at that. "I'm not. For once, trust me on this. You should see my bike. It's not just a little destroyed, it's completely destroyed. They even took the time to bend the fork. Who does that? And the limerick..." Jesse stopped quickly. The limerick was just too painful. She couldn't tell her father about that.

"There's a limerick?" For the first time during one of their little fights, he seemed sad.

What would he do if he heard the limerick? Jesse got the feeling it wouldn't be good. Her father rarely lost his cool, but when he did it could get apocalyptic.

"Yeah, but it's just stupid kids stuff," Jesse replied, leaving off how Mrs. Jerryman had set the whole thing in motion and then had done nothing to stop it.

"I hope, for your sake, that you can get it together and go to school tomorrow. You know there'll be consequences if you don't." Jesse flopped back down on the far side of her bed and nodded in a small way. Her father continued, "You don't want to be grounded over Christmas break, do you? And then there's the dance on Friday."