Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
It was desperately hard to heed this new advice from her invisible friend as Mattie stared into Amanda’s dead eyes. The severed head still had blood running from the ragged stump of its neck—dark rivulets that ran down the shelf over the mantelpiece and streaked down the wooden wall beneath. But somehow she stitched her lips together and kept the scream that rose in her throat from coming out.
No wonder I couldn’t see her head when I tripped over her legs, she thought, feeling sick. It’s because she didn’t have a head to see—because that sick bastard chopped it off and put it over his mantelpiece!
“Ah—I see you’ve noticed my latest piece of art.”
Mattie dragged her eyes away from the horrific sight and saw that Luke was standing over her. In his hand he held a long, curving machete which had dark stains on its blade.
Her heart started pounding. Was this some kind of a test? Was he waiting to see how she would react?
“Uh, y-yes,” she somehow managed to get out. “Art.”
It wasn’t much as answers go, but it seemed to satisfy Luke.
“You know, I was sure that Amanda would appreciate my collection,” he remarked, in a conversational tone, like he was discussing the weather. “She’s the one who put me on the path to finding my true self, after all.”
“She…she was?” Mattie quavered.
“Oh yes.” Luke nodded. “She was the one who suggested I take you to the Prom, you know. She was also the one who passed that note to Shonda Smith for her to meet me under the bleachers after the Homecoming game. You know?”
“No, I…I didn’t know,” Mattie somehow got out. So Amanda was the one who had set him on the path to be a rapist, back in high school. But little had she known what kind of Pandora’s box she was opening, because Luke had become so much more.
He’s a freaking serial killer, she thought, feeling sick as she tried not to look at his “art collection.” And I’m his next victim unless I can somehow get out of here!
“Yes, that was Amanda. Before her, I always knew I wasn’t quite happy, but I didn’t know why,” Luke said meditatively. “I knew there was something I wanted from women that I wasn’t getting, but I didn’t know what it was.” He shook his head. “I thought she’d be happy for me when I showed her my art—happy that she’d had a hand in sculpting me into the artist I am today.”
Oh my God, he is so crazy!
Mattie felt a scream building up in her throat again but somehow she managed to swallow it back down. The minute she acted like Amanda had and started screaming that Luke was crazy, he would chop off her head and stick it on the shelf right beside Amanda’s.
She had to keep him talking until she could find a way out of this!
FORTY-FOUR
GRATH
When Grath opened his eyes, the ship had settled neatly in a small clearing between the dense trees.
“Leave your ship and walk to the north,” the Goddess told him. “There you will see it. Go, Protector—your female needs you desperately! Use what is within you to free her!”
Grath didn’t waste an instant. He was out of his seat and leaving the ship almost before her presence faded.
The snow was still falling, but not as thickly as it had been before. He ran several steps, his boots crunching on fresh fallen snow and the dry leaves beneath it and then he saw it—an ominous red glow up ahead.
In a few more feet, he could see more. The glow was coming from the windows of a small wooden domicile up ahead. Grath’s heart jumped in his chest.
That must be what the Goddess was talking about! The aura of evil!
He ran towards it, intending on bursting through the door at once, but something told him to be cautious. So instead of ramming straight into the thick wooden panel, he ducked down and looked through the window where the red glow was strongest.
At first he couldn’t make out much, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the dim reddish light, what he saw filled him with horror and fury.
Sitting on the end of a bed with wide, frightened eyes, was Madeline. And standing over her, holding a blade was the bastard who had tried to rape her back in her formative years—Luke Hartsford. He seemed to be speaking to her and Mattie was talking back, but her eyes kept returning to a certain spot over the fireplace.
Grath followed her gaze and felt his fury turn to horror and incomprehension.
On a shelf over the fireplace was a collection of severed human heads. Female heads, he realized, as most had long hair trailing down from them. Some of them looked so old they were practically nothing but skulls, but some were fresher—if the term could be applied to the rotting things sitting on the shelf across from Madeline. And the last one was the freshest of all—the neck stump still bleeding.