Page 112 of Bad Intentions

“Boooot-siiiiiie!”

The voice is nearer. The dim cone of the flashlight shines on me, illuminating the forest.

“I seeeeeee youuuuuuu!” the voice calls from behind.

More voices come from afar, shouts somewhere by the barn. A dog barks loudly.

I try to crawl, but the pain is too much. Help is coming, but the psycho coming for me is faster. I push myself forward, but something stabs my hand, and I yelp in pain.

“Heeeeelp!” I shout. “Heeeeelp!” I rasp with what little I have left in me.

“Too late, Bootsie!” The voice is at my feet, right behind me. “Your little escapade is over.” The flashlight shines directly on me again.

“Heeeeelp!” I shout. But I know there’s no escaping this monster. I sob, knowing that I screwed up. That I failed. Like my grandmother. Like my mother.

“You are even more pathetic than your mom,” the woman says.

“Please,” I beg, pleading for the dog barking in the distance to catch up with us, for the shouts of the police officers to get closer. “You don’t have to do this,” I say, turning around and staring at her dark silhouette as her flashlight blinds me. “I will tell you where the body is,” I lie, trying to stop her.

“Too late, Bootsie. I have to change my plan. I want to say it was a pleasure, but you ruined this for me. And now you have to go.”

I don’t beg for myself. There’s a pulsating thought in my head that if Grandma survives this and I don’t, this will kill her. Losing two children in a lifetime is an unthinkable tragedy.

“Please, don’t,” I whisper as tears spill down my face. “I can help.”

But the monster from the past has finally caught up with me.

She raises the gun at me. “Bye.”

And then she fires.

62

KAREN

ONE WEEK LATER

I’ve been to more funerals in my life than I can count on both hands. That’s age. Funerals come with the territory. Though I saw a share of those when I was still young. My parents. My husband. My daughter.

They say that, as you grow older, you grow numb to loss. I think you get numb to the idea that you are standing in line, and some people are picked out sooner than others. “It’s time” is a more relevant expression when you are in your seventies than when you are in your twenties.

Yet, this funeral is unusual. Only a handful of us are gathered here, the ones who are part of this story. The story is dark.

The sky is clearing up as we stand at the cemetery and watch the casket being lowered into the grave. It started drizzling a minute ago, then stopped suddenly, as if the weather decided to grieve but then changed its mind.

There was no service. No speeches. The casket is a simple brown one. No one claimed the body, so the state is paying for the funeral. The body stays here, in Burnville. The irony, huh?

There’s no headstone and might never be. But a handful of us will never forget the name.

James Derek Sickler.

My twenty-five-year nightmare fits in this one shabby casket. Life is, indeed, strange.

Derek’s body was found in the creek not far from the Blains’ farm. I know that’s Donna’s doing. And she couldn’t have done it without help.

Steve stands behind me, and as they start shoveling soil onto the casket, his duty belt makes a clicking sound as he moves closer to me and puts his hand on my shoulder.

There’s a mutual agreement that Derek deserved being tossed around this town like the scoundrel he was. Birdie? When Josie told me Birdie’s story, what really happened decades ago, my hair stood on end. Some of the quietest people hold the biggest secrets. Hers were evil. There’s no proof she killed my Alysha, Dougie, Sarah Holes, or even Derek, though his DNA was found in her trunk as well as in the freezer at her farm. Mallory Blain will forever go down in this town’s history as a serial killer.