The Killer drove into a dirt parking lot at the middle of a forest clearing, braking to a stop before an abandoned church. The silence that followed after shutting off the engine became a mute testament to the remoteness of the location.
Despite the solitude, the Killer slid out of the van and cast a wary gaze toward the church. In the past, the humble one-room sanctuary accommodated some sixty people under its wood-shingled roof and steeple. Now, deserted by its parishioners and weathered by neglect, the edifice once built for divine purpose appeared like any other earthly object subject to degeneration. Even the day’s bright sunshine did little to alleviate its dreary look of decay. On the contrary, the light intensified the darkness peeking between the cracks of each boarded-over window and deepened the shadows dwelling within the empty loft of the crumbling bell tower.
Noisy cicadas singing in the nearby brush silenced their buzzing when the Killer rounded the van and opened the back doors. There, sprawled in the cargo space behind the rear seats, lay the Andersons’ bloody bodies.
The Killer seized them by the hair and heaved them out of the van, slamming their corpses to the dirt.
Their untimely deaths only made things more difficult.
Now the Killer needed to find another to aid in the tasks ahead.
Like the girl from this morning.
Mallory they had called her.
“Maa-lll-oo-reee.”
The Killer knew her arrival at this pivotal moment couldn’t be by chance. Not at all. She was a gift, a boon delivered by the unseen forces of the cosmos in favor of the nearing holocaust. Properly slain, her death would be the catalyst for the start of a new age.
The mere thought of her demise sent a tremor of excitement throughout the Killer’s being, lessening the disappointment of the Andersons’ rejection. But before Mallory could die, preparations needed to be made, strength gathered, and for that the Killer needed others. Tonight, the Killer must hunt.
A crow cawed.
The Killer peered around the van’s open door, at the plot of land to the left of the church.
The cemetery.
Bordered by a four-foot-high wrought iron fence, the graveyard held several dozen former residents of the surrounding area, most long forgotten.
The Killer strolled to the fence and stared at the maze of slabs. Dry grass surrounded every tombstone, accompanied by brittle skeletons of parsnip and thistle.
Another crow shrieked from a canted cross not far away.
Dozens more perched amongst the headstones and along the church’s roof and steeple, hundreds of them. They stared at the Killer with dark, seditious eyes.
Below the birds the grass fluttered with the movement of numerous other animals that had congregated in the churchyard: mice, squirrels, woodchuck, garter snakes. A mother raccoon and her two cubs hurried out of sight as the Killer moved along the fence, and a stray cat hissed from its perch atop a tombstone. The killer faced it, causing the beast to retreat into the grass. It fled to the far end of the graveyard, where a trio of deer paced back and forth, flashing the whites of their tails.
Ignoring the animals, the Killer fixed on a specific headstone within the assemblage of graves, the newest addition to the lot.
No dates marked the stone’s surface. No heartfelt words of memory.
Just a name.
Kale Kane.