The Sacrificial Daughter (42 page)

Straight away she turned and ran, fleeing into the garage. She then slammed through the door that led to the back yard. Immediately the wind and snow blinded her, so that she staggered forward with her bad left arm in front to her face. Behind her, she heard the door slam a second time. Jerry was coming.

The thought spurred her on and she was at the fence separating her home from the Mendel's a second later. Despite the pain raging across her body, she climbed the fence clearing it just as Jerry jumped up at her. Ahead, made blurry by the shifting snow, was her own home.

Is the back door locked?

Yes. You were too afraid of the killer to leave anything unlocked. And don't try the front either.

Right. Her keys were in her left coat pocket. It would be a gamble getting them out with her bad hand. Besides, her house was not a refuge. Jerry would get in sooner or later. With the only officer on duty dead, she couldn't call the police. Nor would calling her father help. He was a blizzard away. She'd be dead before he got close.

With a heavy heart Jesse ran around the side of her house. Going through the gate she dashed across the street and into the forest. She had no plan brewing in her fear stricken mind, other than escape. If she was lucky she would outdistance Jerry. After all he had a knife in his leg, while all she had was a spinning head from being slammed into a wall… a claw for a left hand…searing pain in her back and ribs…the lung capacity of a newborn…and an ankle that screamed out warnings with each step.

It was her ankle that scared her the most. One misstep and he would be all over her. She tried to go light on it, but the snow and uneven ground made everything a roll of the dice. Her luck held for over two hundred yards of up and down trail and then out of the blue she was pulled backwards by the neck.

"No!" she screamed. "No…No!" Struggling against what felt like hands on her neck she kicked herself over only to see that she wasn't being choked by Jerry Mendel. Her long scarf had come loose and the end had snagged on a branch. Her first impulse was to take the scarf off her neck, but the wide lops of the crocheting had caught on a button so that she was as good as leashed.

"No, no, no," she whined, feeling tears mixing with the snow on her face. Jerry was just a dark figure in the swirling chaos of white. He was at least fifty yards back, hobbling toward her but gaining every second. Frantic she ripped at the scarf until it finally gave up its hold on the branch.

She then turned and fled. The whiteout conditions were so bad that after a minute Jesse lost the path. One moment, it was there underfoot and the next she was surrounded by nothing but trees. She spun around to look for Jerry, but with the thick forest she couldn't see him.

Yet she knew he was out there, coming for her. Her panic took over the remains of her mind and forced her to run at break-neck speeds and it wasn't long before she stepped oddly on a rock hidden by the snow. There was a snapping sound; a stab of pain, and then snow blinding her as she rolled down a short hill.

Pitching up against a downed log, Jesse immediately stuffed a hand into her mouth to keep from screaming. The agony was so intense that she lost focus on the Shadow-man…the real Shadow-man, not caring where he was. She could only sit there rocking back and forth whimpering and crying into her hand.

Get up! Get up! He's coming,
her voice of reason screamed.

"Yes…right," she said through her tears. At first her right leg could hardly stand even a little weight but after a minute it didn't get better, yet she was able to go faster. Jerry Mendel came lunging out of the white only ten yards behind. Covered in snow, head to toe, it was clear he'd had his share of falls as well, yet he was driven by maniacal forces that Jesse couldn't understand. His eyes were wild and imbued with a pure desire to kill for pleasure's sake.

This horror of a man filled Jesse with such fear that the pain in her ankle became a distant scream and she was able to drive herself on despite it. Long hard minutes took their toll, but somehow Jesse was able to lengthen her lead. She never knew by how much since she refused to look away from the ground in front of her feet, but gradually his hoarse ragged breathing dropped further back.

And then she came to the pond. It stopped her in her tracks.

She hadn't come to the berm, which was somewhere off to her right. Instead she came straight up on the ice.

"Oh, no," she said shaking her head in disbelief. She had no choice but to cross. If she went left or right along the edge Jerry would have too much of an angle on her and would be able to cut her off. However, crossing the ice in a blizzard seemed like certain death. She hesitated.

Go!

"Right," she said in a tremulous voice. Stepping out onto the ice she knew that she had made a mistake. For one, her ankle couldn't get any purchase and it was forced to bear more of her weight than she could stand. She cried out with every step. But worse than that was the driving wind. After seconds on the ice, she had no idea which way up was let alone where the other side of the pond lay.

Still she had no choice but to go on…and on. The agony she was in made her wonder if it would've been easier to have been killed by Harold in the warmth of the kitchen.

Next to her something blue skipped by and she flinched back so sharply she almost fell. What was that? It reminded her of something, but what wouldn't come to her until it was almost too late. Just when the gaping four foot hole in the ice seemed to erupt at her feet, she pictured the little ice fisherman sitting on an old, blue milk-crate.

There was no stopping her forward momentum and so she threw herself forward hoping to find the other side of the hole able to hold her weight. It did, but she hadn't been close to clearing the hole.

Her lower body went into the frigid water and where she had been panicked before over Jerry Mendel, she went absolutely mad with fear now. She scratched at the ice with her gloved hands while she kicked and scrambled with her legs for everything she was worth. How long it took she had no clue, but eventually she made it out of the water and slithered to her feet again.

Only to be brought up short by the neck again. There was no branch behind her this time.

"I always thought ice-fishing was for idiots, but holy cow I caught a big one," Jerry Mendel called out into the freezing wind. "Turn around!"

Jesse was sure that if she turned around that she would not see a man but a demon. She couldn't force herself to look…not until Jerry gave another yank on the scarf and she felt herself tip precariously toward the hole. With little penguin-like steps Jesse turned, as she did she put a hand to the scarf feeling where it was caught on the button. She dug at it furiously.

It wouldn't come loose; the loops of the crocheted material had entangled themselves too deeply. It wasn't coming off, not right there, not right then, perhaps not ever.

The scarf, long to begin with, now stretched across the hole. At the other end of it stood the Shadow-man in the fullest of his vile terror. His eyes were inhuman, wild and black, so black they seemed to shine in the white madness around them. No smile was ever so full of dread and woe, Jesse felt stricken by it. She feared that he would eat her with those white teeth...that he would take her into some hole in the world and chew on her until the cold turned the remains of her flesh to wood.

"Holy crap!" he exclaimed as she finally made it all the way around. "This fish isn't just big, it's huge. It's the great Jesse Clarke! The girl who thinks the world revolves around her." He capered in delight on the slick ice, seemingly unaffected by the cold. "Look how scared you are. All your talk of faith, yet you shiver with fear. Why so afraid? Don't you have angels who will catch you if you fall?"

For an answer, Jesse only shivered the greater. She had no clue what he was talking about.

"I didn't think that it would be you," he shouted, winding his end of the scarf around his arm, pulling gently on Jesse's neck as he did. She tried to grab the scarf to pull back on it, but her gloves, wet from when she fell, were now turning stiff with ice. She looped her arm around the scarf just as Jerry had. This little move almost toppled her.

Jerry smiled with glee over this. "I thought it would be someone else, but you kept showing up…only to be saved time and again. Where are your guardian angels now?" He waved his arm gesturing to the white wilderness. Foolishly she looked. There could be no one out there. It was impossible. And even if someone was out there, would they dare come on the ice?

"I'll be your angel, Jesse," Mr. Mendel said, giving the scarf another little tug. "I'll save you…just tell me who I should kill instead of you. Name someone and we'll go together. I'll teach things you won't learn up at that high school."

"No," Jesse croaked out. The sound of her voice was a bit of surprise and only then did she realize just how tight the scarf was about her throat.

"Don't you want to live? Aren't you craving life? I could just walk this leash around the hole and we would be back inside in a few minutes…just give me a name."

She had been tempted by Harold in the same manner yet despite her pain and her fear, denying Jerry was far easier. His words were less substantial than the wind. "You're nothing but a liar!"

"No, I'm a god!" Jerry roared, giving the scarf another tug. "Worship me!" Again he yanked, but this one was far sharper and Jesse fell to her knees at the lip of the hole. Her death lay in front of her, deep and dark.

You wanted to be sacrificed,
her voice of reason said
.

Not like this!

Pain is pain. Death is death. Every way would be equally as bad. Your love could not be hidden and sometimes…unfortunately…this is the price of love.

"No, please," she begged the voice of reason.

The killer answered instead: "What's wrong? Did you think this was going to be easy? Let me tell you, I was never going to make it easy for you. Not when I saw how you strutted around this morning preaching to the people acting as though you were better than them. And then I had to stand there and watch how you made John Osterman whine and debase himself before you; begging for forgiveness as if you were a queen. But worst of all was when you spoke about sacrifice!

"How brave you were up there in your Father's chamber where it was safe and warm. Look at you now, cringing and begging. You are no better than the rest of them, in fact you're worse. You're like a snake-oil salesman trying to peddle paradise to the people of Ashton. You don't know the first thing about this town. If you did, then you'd know that I hold this town in the palm of my hand.

"Ashton goes to bed and I haunt their dreams. They wake up wondering where I've been, whom I've visited while they slept. All day they worry about me… all day they fear me. And for good reason, I have the power of life and death over them."

He ended this by giving Jesse another yank and she felt something come loose at her neck. She ran a hand over the scarf and discovered that the scarf hadn't come off the button, but the button had come of the jacket. Now the scarf was only looped once tight around her neck and then wrapped around her arm.

She could escape, popping the scarf over her head, if only he would look away for a second.

"You….you d-don't have the p-power over life," she stammered through numbing lips. "I do. You only have power over death. You're a murderer, remember? But I have power over life." The conviction of her words had him pausing and she went on, "If I die here it will mean someone else will live." This made him laugh, but it was a cold sound that matched the wind. He didn't look away.

"You still think your death is some sort of sacrifice?" Jerry asked in amazement. "You've been dragged to edge of your life against your will. You didn't step forward voluntarily. You ran, remember? Some sacrifice you are…and now you are going to claim some sort of nobility in your actions?" He paused shaking his head at Jesse. "Your death isn't going to be noble. You'll die with ice water pouring down your throat and no one will find your rotted corpse for months. The only thing your death will do is make my legend even greater."

"But Harold…and Ky? People will know who did this," Jesse said, watching him, preparing to move, thinking incorrectly that she was about to escape.

Jerry sighed, a sound matched by the wind. "Harold will have to die of course. His death will make me a hero. And I'm afraid Kyle will have to die too. It had to happen sooner or later, I always knew that it would. I will find someone else to act as a beacon, don't worry."

The breath went out of her. Ky dead? That couldn't be. That couldn't happen. Right then, with her body core temperature dropping to dangerous levels and her pains fading into numbness, Jesse realized that she was beyond caring about herself. She knelt one inch from a death that up until that very moment, she had feared more than anything. Now she feared something else more: the death of her love.

The very thought made her soul ache. Jesse knew there was only one way to keep Ky safe and it wasn't by escaping. It was by taking the very hardest path.

You know what you have to do.

"I have to truly sacrifice myself," Jesse said.

You talked about sacrifice. Now you must live sacrifice. You can't run from it.

"If I do, Ky dies," Jesse said, nodding, understanding. If she ran and lost Jerry, he would go back and kill Ky. She would do anything to keep that from happening.