Lizzie Borden took an ax. She gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ...

Rena Davenport's feet hit the pavement rhythmically as she skipped over the white rope spun by two other girls. They sang the rhyme in haunting unison. They took turns jumping, trying to beat out each other's number. She gave her father 41.

Three witches casting a spell, he thought as he watched them from across the street. The tale of Lizzie Borden hadn't been unfamiliar to Paul Morlock, who was perched upon the cement curb in front of his house. Not that anyone in the New England area was unfamiliar with Lizzie Borden.

He sat with a stick in hand; he hadn't many toys anymore, not since ... not since things fell apart. Lizzie Borden had a toy though. She had the toy of all toys, Paul thought. Lizzie Borden had an ax.

She gave her mother 40 whacks.

Though if Paul ever had that toy, he'd spare his mother. If he had an ax he'd spare his mother.

When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.

Yeah, he'd give his father a couple. That bitter, wretched man deserved a couple of whacks. However, it was Mr. Morlock who had been the one to give them from time to time, and it was Paul who was to endure them when they came. Perhaps it made him feel more like a man after the market crashed, and the economy faltered, and Mr. Morlock couldn't support his wife and kid anymore. It was a good thing they had just the one, had they had more kids they might not have been able to keep the house.

Or maybe his father wouldn't deserve it; maybe Paul was just a bad boy thinking bad thoughts - a sick boy as he'd later be told by Dr. Gottreich. He pushed back the thoughts of whacking his father and mindlessly shoved the stick into the metal sewer grate beneath his feet. He did that continuously to each hole that had leaves clogging it.

He looked into the now cleared sewer grate and saw something yellow floating up towards him. It looked like a balloon.

We float. We all float down here. Don't you want to float, Paul?

Paul would float later ... in a tank filled with saline in Gottreich Hospital. When he died, he would be floating. He tucked his bony, childish legs under him on the curb and leaned over to look again into the sewer. The yellow balloon floated against the metal grate. He took his stick and poked at it, trying to see what was below it because that seemed colorful too. He kept poking but it kept floating back up each time he pushed it down, and then finally ... POP!

The balloon exploded beneath the stick but something else had grabbed on to it. From Paul's stand point he couldn't see a thing, including what his stick was caught on, but whatever it was pulled the damned thing right out of his slim hand. It seemingly devoured it.

Paul stood up over the grate. Had he known what was down there he would have thought twice. Other kids that had done the same had lost their legs if they were lucky, or their lives if they weren't. Paul hadn't had much luck, but he was spared that day in early April. Peering into the sewer below, he thought he saw ... no ... he did see an ax laying below him. Beneath the ax was an oily reflective surface where he could see himself in the sewer. From that angle it appeared he was holding the ax.

Who would he whack with it? His father? Butch Bowers, perhaps?

Dontcha want it?

Sure, he wanted it alright - the toy of all toys. Hell if he could find a way he'd venture into the sewers to get it. And when he did, Butch Bowers would be scared, he thought. Then he'd be scared. They'd all be scared of Paul Morlock if he had an ax.

Butch Bowers was the town bully, much like his son would be years later. Karma and bad parenting would pay him back fully in 1958. Paul Morlock would be dead almost twenty years by the time Henry Bowers would stab his father in the neck with a switchblade, ending his life and his bad reputation. Henry Bowers had seen the deadlights and lost his mind in '58. He later met his own brutal end in May of 1985. Paul wasn't one to mess with Butch. He avoided him as best as he could. Their mothers were friends, however, and when they'd talk in public the boys were forced into contact.

Most of Paul's childhood nightmares stemmed from stories Butch would tell. Butch's ability to play on the younger boy's fears made Paul feel weak, and that weakness later turned to anger. But Butch had a lot of stories, which mostly fascinated Paul even if they kept him up at night. He'd tell stories of an evil clown named Pennywise who ate children, stories that had to do with a certain house on Neibolt Street, and the story that Paul feared the most, which was that of Bloody Mary.

He'd heard the story before from kids in school; he heard a lot of different versions from the kids in school. They said her name was Mary Worth. Hell, some of the older kids even went into the cemetery at night to look for her grave. Some even claimed they found it, but not Butch, he didn't believe in Mary Worth. Butch was always setting the record straight, even if it took bashing a few heads in to get the point across.

Paul first heard of Mary Worth in the Barrens. Rena Davenport was there too, along with some other neighborhood kids. It was a dark October night and they had all met there after school to tell scary stories. The kids were all between the ages of eight and twelve, Paul being one of the younger ones. A kid named Harris told the story, he was about eleven, or perhaps a bit younger.

"What happens is this," he said matter-of-factly, standing and getting the audience's attention. "You have to have a mirror in a dark room with all the lights off. That's when she comes, when you call her by saying 'I believe in Mary Worth' thirteen times while spinning around in circles."

"Then what happens?" A girl with sandy blonde hair asked.

"Then she appears in the mirror and scratches out your eyes to replace her own."

"That's not the story, moron," Bowers chimed in, standing up. "Her name isn't Mary Worth, it's Mary Jensen."

Harris opened his mouth to protest but Butch cut him off before the words began to form.

"She's a girl our age from Lewiston that disappeared during the fire at the Gates Falls Mill way back when. They never found her or her body after the fire. They say she made a deal with the devil and now she's damned to live by taking souls. So when you go into the dark room with the mirror you have to call her by saying 'Bloody Mary' thirteen times while spinning and she'll appear. They say she has a bell and if you don't turn on the lights fast enough she'll ring it and you'll die instantly."

Paul looked incredulous but the idea of it bothered him. It bothered him so much he couldn't sleep that night or the next. At night, when it got dark he covered the mirror in his room with a large white sheet. This worked for a while, just until he started imagining shapes in the dark. That was when things got worse.