Chapter Eighteen

(Halloween Night, seven weeks earlier)

Sandi continued walking, glancing around herself in increasing fear and frustration. The cloudy sky gave little light, and streetlights were few, and for the most part, broken. She forced herself to not run, but kept a fast pace. The cold wind bit through her thin jacket. The old buildings on either side of her grew less and less, until to her surprise, the paved road stopped, ending in a dirt track winding through low trees. The wind rustled the tall uncut grass, and the dry leaves scattered on the ground.

Where am I? I'm like, so totally lost! Mom hitting me got me so, so upset that I wasn't thinking at all! Mom blamed it all on me, asked me if "I enjoyed making her hurt me!" I don't want it like this. But is she right? Boy's haven't been calling like they used to, mom was right about that. Quinn and Stacy are still as popular as they were, and Tiffany is still dating, but...

Not too many really talked to her anymore, outside of her friends in the former Fashion Club. Quinn and Stacy had expanded their social circle, but Sandi slowly realized that she hadn't. She wasn't sure about Tiffany. She was never sure about Tiffany.

I really don't know much about Tiffany, do I? She's pretty and fashionable, and I know when her birthday is, and have been in her house. But where did she come from? She's one of the three people closest to me, and I don't really know her .And do I really know me, anymore? I've heard the rumors floating around school about me. One of Quinn's followers, the Three J's, Joey, Jeffy,

and the other one, um, Jonathan? called me "Captain Bitchonaught!" Brooke couldn't wait to tell me that! Stuck up little! But I thought people liked me. I've dated all three of those boys over the last several years. But most of the senior boys at Lawndale don't ask me out anymore, at least, not the ones I want to. Even Kevin Thompson spends all his time with Jane Lane. I don't think they're making out at all though, Kevin just seems to like being with her. Do I come across like that to people? A stuck up, frigid bitch? Am I that much like Mom?

The patter of raindrops across the ground brought Sandi back to her current problem. She hurried over to a small grove of trees, to get out of the rain, but the leafless branches didn't provide much shelter. Her legs and feet ached, and she started to shiver from the rain and breeze. Glancing around for better shelter before she got soaked, Sandi spotted what looked like a rickety shed, and bracing herself against the cold rain, ran towards it, the tall grass brushing her legs as high as her knees. Her leg slammed into something hard hidden in the grass, and the slender girl went down with a cry of pain. Sandi twisted around, coming down hard on her rear. Her knee was on fire from whatever she had run into, and she nursed it for a moment, moaning in pain. Her fear, pain and frustration all come together in a hard knot, and she just screamed, "Damn it! God damn it all to Hell! What else is going to happen to me tonight!" The clouds whipping across the night sky continued their mad race against the half seen moon without giving her an answer.

Sandi reached for the half seen shape of what she had cracked her knee against, with the idea of using it to get to her feet, and hobble to the shelter of the shed. Whatever it was, it felt hard, like stone, and had a smoothly curving top. It was just out of her reach, so, favoring her aching knee, she crawled to it. The ground in front of it was oddly depressed through the uncut grass. As Sandi ran her hands up its smooth side, she could feel letters chiseled into the stone. The realization of what it had to be slammed into her already shaky mind, and she crawled away from it whimpering, only to bring herself up hard against a stone cross. She recoiled from it with a cry, only making out the phrase, "Beloved Daughter." She was crawling in an forgotten graveyard.

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Andrea Hecuba paused for a minute to catch her breath. The formerly plump Goth girl had been jogging every morning after she got off work at Payday, the discount warehouse store. Restocking on the early morning shift was rough, but it paid relatively well. Still, Andrea wanted more out of life, and jogging was part of her plan to get it. She was thinking seriously of joining

the Army, now, a idea that would have been unthinkable earlier. But for somebody without the grades to get a scholarship and go to college, there wasn't many opportunities here in Lawndale.

As she stretched her legs, ready for the second part of her run, she heard a quiet whimpering from behind the fence of the old graveyard, untended for years. She frowned. The local kids would mess up the town cemeteries on Halloween night, and then the cops always cracked down on any known Goths, on the mistaken idea that all Goths were Satanist's, holding rituals every Halloween. Several of her friends had gotten busted for stuff like that. She peeked into the tall grass, half expecting to see some dog or cat somebody tried to "sacrifice."

To her surprise, she saw a teenaged girl, curled up in front of a tombstone in a fetal position, softly crying. Her face was hidden in her hands. Her thick brown hair had grass stuck in it, and her light clothing was wet from the rain, and covered in mud and grass stains. Thinking the girl might have been attacked, she moved carefully into the thick grass to see if she could help. The girl didn't respond at all when Andrea knelt next to her, and gently shook her shoulder.

"Hey, you okay? Are you all right? Do you want me to call a cop or ambulance or something for you?"

The girl didn't answer, but Andrea's touch on her shoulder seemed to comfort her, and the crying slowly stopped. She just laid there, breathing deeply, as the sun slowly rose. Andrea stirred uncomfortably, hoping somebody would happen by to help her, unlikely as that was in this area. Had the girl fallen asleep? She moaned and rolled over on her back staring up at the sky. Andrea barely repressed a shriek. The girls eyes were wide open, but were balls of milky whiteness, with shadows flowing through them.

Andrea jumped to her feet, staring down at the tortured face. She barely recognized it as being Sandi Griffin's. Sandi muttered something very indistinctly, and Andrea jumped as she heard a answer from deep under the ground. Just a single word, that seemed to come from the core of the world.

"Agreed."

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Jane and Daria stared at Andrea's white face as she finished her story. They were sitting in the snack bar section of Payday. Andrea had taken her lunch break to talk to her two acquaintances from high school.

Daria finally said, "And then what happened?"

Andrea gulped, and sipped some water from a glass.

"After I got done biting my lip and having a heart attack? I sure as, well, I couldn't stay there, so I helped her up, and walked her away from there. I mean, I'm used to spooky things, I've got friends who are into all kinds of weird stuff, you know, psychics, vampirism and other things. But it's one thing to talk about it, and pretend to be a witch or vampire with your friends. Her eyes were the absolute real thing! And that voice, I'll remember that voice till the day I die!"

Daria said thoughtfully,"But you couldn't hear what she was saying? And you don't know the, um, who or whatever answered?"

Andrea was still visibly shaken by her retelling. "No, I couldn't, and I didn't really want to. I know, it could have been some elaborate joke, but why?"

Jane cut in. "What did Sandi have to say about all this?"

Andrea shrugged. "Not a thing. Her walking got steady, and she just walked alongside me in a daze. I thought she might have been slipped something, Rohypnol or GHB at a party, and been raped. It happened to a friend of mine. But when we got to Main Street, she just stopped and looked at me, real strange. Her eyes still had that milkiness in them, but she could see just fine. She tried to talk, but couldn't make her words come out right. Finally, she said, "You're Andrea?" When I said, "Yes." She looked real confused, and then said, "Did she send you to help me?" I said I didn't know who she was talking about, and she went real quiet, and said, "I'd like to go home now." I called a cab from a payphone for her, and she drove away. She sent me a nice thank you card a few days later. And that's all I've heard from her since."

"That voice? "Agreed" is all it said?" Daria said curiously., thinking hard.

"Yeah, it sounded like that guy from Star Wars, you know? Darth Vader. But the voice was even lower than that, and sounded very, well tired. But it was still strong, in a way. Like all it had to do was shout, and it would crack open the world. I don't know why I thought that. But it's been in my mind ever since."

"Crack open the world," Daria said slowly. "Andrea, can you tell me where that graveyard is? Or show me?"

Andrea shook her head. "Sorry, I've got to get back to work now. But you know where that French Restaurant is? Chez Pierre? It's just in those thick woods there, away from the city."

Jane added. "Daria, I hate to bring this up, but your folks must be getting worried about you. You're several hours past the time you'd said you'd be home."

"Damn it! Well, at least it's a start. Where's our driver?"

Jane looked around, not seeing Kevin anywhere, and sighed.

"Andrea? Do you have a sporting goods section in here?"

After pulling Kevin from a riveting discussion of past high school football games with the clerk in sporting goods, who looked as if he wanted to sink out of sight just to get away from there, Daria was driven home. She stared out at the blowing snow they drove through, and piled up around the house. The wind gust's seemed to compete with each other in making bizarre shapes

that almost seemed to become real, before they vanished in a swirl of flakes.

"Want me to come in?"Jane asked.

Daria hesitated, then shook her head.

"No, Mom and I are going to be busy with Dad, and talking about what happened today. I'm not sure how much of this other thing, with you and Andrea to tell her about. She's already really shook up about Quinn and the other girls missing, and the supernatural element is something she's going to have trouble with, no matter what she saw today."

"I'm having trouble with it, and I only heard some dreams." Jane said quietly. "If Sandi did make a bargain, what did she make it with?"

"Not to mention, what is she paying with?" Daria replied.

"Oh, wow!" Kevin spoke up for the first time. "You don't think that Sandi might give her friends to that voice? Like human sacrifice?"

Jane and Daria glanced at him in surprise. Unlike his former loud self, this Kevin was very quiet.

But he had touched the heart of Daria's fears. The idea had been slowly growing in Daria's mind for a while. Daria was a voracious reader, and vivid accounts of the ancient practice of human sacrifice flashed through her minds eyes.

Jane stared at Kevin like she had never seen him before.

"How on earth do you know anything about that, Kevin?"

He shrugged. "Brittany liked to go to really bad horror movies. She'd really get scared, and afterwards, she'd be so hot, she'd..."

"Whoa, fella!" Jane said quickly, watching Daria's face turn from a chalky white to a beet red. "Too much information. Way too much information there! Remember what I said about really personal stuff?"

"To keep it personal?"

"Right!"

"Oops, sorree!"

Daria sighed. "That's okay, Kevin, I know you were just trying to help, in your own way, and I was starting to think of it. But Jane's right, too, personal information should be personal. If you want a really good girlfriend, she wouldn't like it if you said all kinds of stuff about what you did when you were alone with each other. Remember how Mack would look when you started to talk about what you and Brittany did together?"

Kevin thought hard. "He, uh, didn't want to know about it?"

"Right!" Daria said. My sister's missing, I'm dreaming about ghosts, might have seen one, and I'm counseling an ex-jock on how to keep a girlfriend! And not to mention my round table chat with the current candidate for the Betty Davis mother of the year award, Linda Griffin! How much more bizarre is my life going to get?

Correctly interpreting the conflicting emotions racing across Daria's normally stoic face, Jane quickly said, "Kevin, lets let Daria go home and get some rest. Remember, Daria, you need any help, just call me."

After letting Daria climb out, Jane got back in the jeep, and she and Kevin drove away. Daria stood alone on the snow-covered driveway for several minutes staring at the disappearing taillights. Helen stood in the doorway behind her, too relieved at seeing Daria home to be very angry with her. Daria turned and trudged through the snow up to the door, staring down at the high drifts as if seeing them for the first time. Mother and daughter hugged tightly at the door, and closed it behind them.

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Sandi's mind was a leaf, blowing in the winter wind. All was darkness around her. Shrill cries filled the darkness, in languages known and unknown to her. Pleadings for help, cries of terror, the deep voices of men, the lighter voices of women, and the crying of children. None seemed to pay attention to each other, only to their own dialogues.

(It's not fair. It's not fair! Why me!) (Momma, where are you! It's scary here! I'm so cold, Momma!) (I was only away for a minute just a minute, and she was gone. Just gone!) (The rope broke! It wasn't my fault, you hear me, it wasn't my fault!) (Almighty God, preserve thy lamb!)

(Our Father, who art . . . ) (Help me, I don't belong here, I'm a good person, I really am!)

The pleadings faded away, becoming the howling of the storm, an eternal storm, that caused the sun itself to gutter like a candle, the planets to falter in their courses. Sandi's mind numbly took it all in.

Slowly, and so very far off, a point of light seemed to grow, a tiny picture, but perfectly clear. Sandi was looking down at the cabin she knew her body was in. She saw Quinn tossing in the grip of her nightmare, knew what that nightmare was. She saw Stacy walking through the snow outside like a sleepwalker, moving toward a strangely familiar figure. She saw Tiffany sitting next to her own comatose form. She tasted Tiffany's own flesh in her own mouth, bloody little pieces that she savored, chewing them slowly in her sharp white teeth.

Sandi saw her body open its eyes, staring mindlessly at the softly crying Tiffany. It sat silently up, moving with difficulty, but still unnoticed. Its jaw gaped open, and Sandi saw her teeth sink deeply into Tiffany's bare neck.