A few more chapters, then this will jump ahead to present day. Thanks for your patience!

"Let foolish, unsuspecting men step with care in the maze of my creation."

Christine and her father were watching My Girl. Or rather, Christine was watching, and Gus was sleeping. Erik stared at Christine, ignoring the movie as best he could, and longing to just get up and go back to his room. He had never understood how someone could lose themselves in front of a television, when they could be drawing, writing, or building. His idle hands were clenching and unclenching around the arms of his chair as he watched Christine.

Eating ice cream, straight from the carton, with her bare legs tucked up beside her on the couch.

"Dad, I don't want to upset you, but my left breast is developing at a significantly faster rate than my right. It can only mean one thing: cancer. I'm dying."

He felt his face heat at the words from the screen, and suddenly Christine began to stare at him from the corner of her eye.

"Is this bothering you?" she asked, prepared to lift the remote. "I've seen it already if you want to watch something else..."

"I don't..."

"There might be a football game on or something," Christine said uncertainly.

"I don't care for sports."

"Terminator is on..."

Erik got to his feet and moved away from the glare of the television. At least it was dark in the room, and she could not see he'd grown increasingly nervous as she continued to stare. "I don't watch television."

"Oh." Christine frowned. "Do you...have...? Never mind. I remember seeing it at your mother's apartment."

It felt as if his heart dropped a million feet to the floor. "What did you say?"

"Your...stepfather...was watching television when Detective Kohn and I went to pick up some of your things."

"My mother isn't married to him," he whispered, wondering if Christine had actually gone into his room.

Had Ethan spoken to her? Told her what a little freak he was...that there was something horrible and disgusting beneath the mask...? Had his mother been there, pathetically crying one moment, and raging drunk the next...or passed out in the floor, half dressed?

"What's wrong? Did I say something wrong?"

Erik glanced back at her, and gave a quick shake of his head. "Does your father have a garage or something?"

Christine folded her arms across her chest, and frowned. "Why? Are you going somewhere?"

"No...no. I just wanted...something to do." To get away from you...to make myself stop staring into your eyes...to stop feeling... "Does he have a lawnmower...something that needs work on?"

"That's what you do for fun?"

His eyes narrowed slightly. "What do you do? Spend the day watching boring movies and shopping?"

"I am a girl," Christine informed him unnecessarily. "And besides that...I sing."

The anger left immediately, but he resisted the urge to sit back down and press her for answers. Instead he moved further into the dark room, until he was nothing more than a shadow against the unlit fireplace. "Sing what?"

"Well...for now I take private lessons...for opera. All the best schools are on the east coast though. Papa is letting me attend a preparatory school next summer in New York, but I haven't been accepted yet."

"Why not?" he asked, wincing when the question came out as a demand.

"I haven't auditioned. Or rather...I have not been invited to audition yet. But Papa thinks I will. He still knows a lot of people in the music industry from when my mother was alive."

"Your mother?" Erik questioned, already knowing the answer.

"She was an opera singer." Christine returned her attention to the screen, her expression so openly sad that it tugged at his heart. "She was a star."

Erik stopped himself from asking what happened to her. He already knew, and he had invaded a personal part of Christine that he never should have, when he had dug through old newspaper accounts and read of the car crash that had left Gus with a broken leg, Christine with bumps and bruises but otherwise unharmed...and her mother dead. Sylvia Dally had been ejected from the car, struck her head, and never regain consciousness.

Now that his curiosity had been sated...after he had explored everything downstairs and almost everything upstairs...he was beginning to feel awkward, knowing that he knew more about these people than he would ever let on.

He knew that Christine liked horror movies but that her father preferred old black and white spy stories...they were both avid readers, and were frequent attenders of plays, operas, and live concerts. Gus Dally took Christine to fairs and let her sing. Often she won some sort of contest, and they would take the money and go out for breakfast at midnight after a performance. They lived by no set of rules but their own.

They loved each other...were warm and caring...passionate about music and life.

They were everything that he was not, and the differences between them never looked greater than now, when he was standing in the dark, brooding, and she was watching him from the safety of the sofa.

Without another word Erik walked out of the room, out of the kitchen door, and into the quiet night. He knew that he could go no more than fifty yards away from the house from all directions, and judged the little shop beside the house at no more than thirty. Moving through the darkness like the shadow that he was, Erik found the one place on the Dally's property that he could go into without fear of being bothered by Christine.

By the time Gus awoke from his brief nap and wandered cautiously outside to his tool shed, Erik had already finished rebuilding the carburetor on his three wheeler, and was replacing the ensemble back into the guts of the motor.

- -

Raoul watched the light in the little building beside the house, and the figure that moved restlessly inside of it. Had he intentionally taken Phillip's bike to come here? Or was it something else that pulled him to the source of all of his mental anguish? By now he had heard that someone had tried to kill Phillip's classmate, and he could honestly not say that he was sorry. But...what if it had been his father who had done it?

Would that affect how he felt at all, if he knew that his own father had paid to have someone murdered? At military school, he was being disciplined on two very confusing levels.

The one that stated a man, a soldier, must live with honor. And the one that said God, country, and family set moral codes that every soldier must obey.

So which was it? To live with honor, and believe that justice would prevail? Or to defend the memory of his brother, and want revenge, even if it meant murder?

As he stood there, watching, a girl came out of the house. Her face was briefly illuminated beneath the light of the porch, and Raoul could not help but stare at her.

This was Christine...the attorney's daughter. She looked pure and innocent, hesitant to go out into the night where the monster waited.

Suddenly her father and that masked killer came out of the little building together, Erik Ramsey with his head down and shoulders haunched, as he always looked in the court. Gus Dally walked beside him, a grim set to his chin.

And Christine, that sweet angel, fled back into the house before either one of them spotted her.

Raoul watched as they went inside the house, then he walked back to his bike. Standing near it, was a man, who had apparently also been watching the house. Raoul kept his head down as he climbed on, and only once the helmet was firmly in place did he bother glancing over at the strange looking person who stood near the curb.

If anyone thought Erik Ramsey looked odd in his black mask, then they ought to see this one. The person turned, his pale face reflecting moonlight, and eyes so dark it seemed they held no color, only emptiness.

"He is safe from you," the man stated, then turned back to watch the house. "Go away before something terrible happens."