Prologue

It was all such a horrid mess. In all of his twenty-two years on the force, Sheriff Hank Lawrence had never seen anything so horrifying or nightmare-inducing as when he walked into the Jones' household on that Halloween night that would remain in his nightmares long after he had retired from the force and settled outside of town.

It had started off as a simple call that had come nearly half an hour before his shift was set to end, from the Jones' neighbor next door-a nosy old bitty that had claimed she had heard a lot of screaming coming from the house. Hank had agreed to take the call since his deputies had been on the run all night and his own shift was coming to a close. The fact that the house in question was only a few blocks away from his own home was a plus since he hoped that he could just slip on home after dealing with the incident. He had believed, at the time, that it was just a nighttime prank or a Halloween party that had gotten out of hand, like the other thirteen calls that had come into the office since sunset, and he hoped that he could just knock on the door, take down a damage report that he could just voice through the CB or ask the owner's of the house to quiet down under warning of citation Then he would be off and in the arms of his wife at a decent hour for the first time in a week. The regret for not sending one of his deputies in his stead would be a topic of discussion in his therapy session for years to come.

The house the neighbor had called to complain about belonged to Daron Jones, one of the few African American men in Packer's Grove. Though the sheriff didn't know the man personally, he knew that Daron was actually one of the most successful men in town. He owned half of the businesses on main street, which he bought out with a lot of hard work and not a trust fund. He had singlehandedly knocked down most of the color barriers in the town because of his kind demeanor and his hardworking ethic that even the most redneck hillbilly had to respect. He lived with his wife and daughter in one of the oldest houses in town, which was located on the “right” side of the tracks, and up to that particular moment, he had been an outstanding law abiding citizen. Daron was something of a respectable man in town, so Hank knew, therefore, that this would most likely be a case that he could just simply deal with in a matter of minutes before heading home to Noreen and the boys.

When he pulled his police cruiser into the Jones' driveway, he knew right away that this wouldn't be as simple an incident as he had thought. He had expected to see a lawn littered with plastic cups and toilet paper or a house filled with lights and shadows from a party gone out of control, but what he found instead was a tidy, neatly kept lawn and a house that was completely filled with darkness-no sign of life at all inside. He thought he could almost smell death in the air and felt a shiver run up his spine that he had not felt in a long time. Probably since he was a small boy afraid of the boogeyman underneath his bed. He could feel that something was not right in that house.

Don't be stupid, he told himself as he slowly got out of his car. They're probably just sleeping. The old lady just probably heard a little spat, but they all probably just made up and went to sleep already, he told himself as he started up the cobblestone sidewalk that lead all the way up to the front steps of the porch.

Don't kid yourself, another voice whispered inside as he reached the front door and gently pressed the doorbell. Who would be asleep this early on Halloween? it continued to whisper as he listened to the ding-dong sound inside the house and waited for someone to answer.

There was no reply.

Hank frowned and pressed the doorbell again. He silenced the eerie voice inside his head and folded his arms with a pout on his lips that made him resemble a child trying to be stubborn towards a parent who was telling him to do something that he didn't want to do. He told himself that they were probably just getting up, groggy from sleep, stumbling down the stairs towards the door, most likely grumbling to themselves about callers coming at this hour. His conviction was so strong in this that he even thought he heard the scatter of feet sound inside the house, followed by a small movement of the curtains in the window that he swore he saw out of the corner of his eye.

You see? He told that eerie voice inside. There's someone inside. The curtains just moved.

After a minute of staring at the door in expectation, Hank frowned again. Surely, it didn't take that long for someone to walk from the window to the door. It's not like Daron or his wife were old. They were in their mid-thirties as far as the sheriff knew, so they shouldn't have had difficulty getting to the door, right?

Unless they're wounded, that voice spoke out again with a hint of glee at the uncertainty that was clenching at his stomach. Or maybe it wasn't them. Maybe it was the person who killed them.

“Shut the hell up,” he mumbled to himself. “Stop being such a gosh damn psycho. It was probably just a heater that made the curtain move.”

Reaching out to press the doorbell again, he paused and decided that that tactic was obviously not working, even though he could hear the bell sounding inside each time he rang it. Hank Lawrence wasn't a man who was going to continue doing something that wasn't working, especially since five minutes had already passed since he had gotten out of his car. He could have been on his way home already, and something told him that he should go about doing just that, but twenty-two years of being on the force, however, won out along with the knowledge that he was still a man whose paychecks were paid by the people. He was going to talk to somebody, garsh darnit, and since the doorbell hadn't worked, he would knock this time around.

Balling his hand into a fist, Hank raised it up and slammed it irritably against the door only to find himself crying out a second later when the door gave way under his hand. He had not realized how much he had put his body into the pounding until he found himself stumbling right through the empty doorway, into the dark shadows beyond. When he was fresh out of the academy, Hank would have caught himself gracefully, but twenty years (and probably a thousand beer and pizza binges) later, the sheriff of Packer's Grove found himself sprawled out-belly down-on a hard wooden floor.

It took him a minute to gather his senses back together to realize how pathetic and ridiculous he probably looked to the people who had to have heard the ruckus he had just made and had finally woken up and come down to see the slightly overweight sheriff lying like a drunkard in their foyer. Scrambling quickly to his feet, he dusted himself off and turned to straighten himself with his back faced towards the rest of the house and the owner of the eyes he could now feel were resting on his back.

“I do beg your pardon,” he said quickly, gazing out at his cruiser through the open door with the urge to just run to it and leave behind this entire mess. “Your door wasn't completely closed and I was ringing yo-”

He broke off as he suddenly saw the light in the room flicker on. Turning around, he opened his mouth to utter his apology again to the person he silently prayed had missed the entire stumbling incident but instead found himself choking on his words as his eyes suddenly met those that he had felt were watching him. They were staring up at him from the lifeless, blood-covered face of a woman he would never have believed had once been the winner of a beauty pageant back in Maine where she had been born and raised. Laying before him, no more than a few inches from where he had been sprawled out moments before, was the body of Sarah Jones.

Sarah was sprawled out on the bottom of the stairs with her head twisted completely around so that her face was aligned with her back rather than her front. Though something like that could very well have happened after falling down a flight of stairs similar to the one she was lying in front of, Hank doubted that the bruises and cuts all over her face happened from just a mere tumble. The woman looked more like a victim of torture rather than the victim of a terrible fall. Either way, Hank found himself grateful that he had not had the opportunity to eat dinner because it would have been all over the floor right then and there.

Resisting the urge of scream, Hank swiftly reached for the gun in his holster with one hand, while pressing the button on his radio to request all the manpower available at the station to come as back up for him. He had already placed his back against the wall as his eyes roamed the room, searching for the person who had turned on the lights Getting a better look around him, however, he found that all the other lights had been lit up as well, meaning that the lights had probably all turned out together and had been flicked back on upon his entrance. That meant that the murderer was probably still in the house, which would have excited him before in his younger days, but now just filled his entire stomach with cold fear.

He wanted to wait for his men to come before he went further into the house, but he knew that every moment he waited, the greater the possibility that the murderer would get away, and looking at Sarah Jones again, he did not want that to happen no matter how scared he was. The anger that he felt became a beacon for his courage to find him again, and before he knew it, he was able to move his feet. They carried him towards the living room, where the smell of death only seemed to grow stronger.

He found Daron Jones in the living room, gagged with a sock and tied to a chair with his hands bound behind his back with ribbon that looked frayed. His throat had been cut, the blood making the white shirt he was wearing look like it could fit right in at a Nebraska Cornhusker pep rally The body was faced towards the entry where Sarah was laying by the stairs. From the little he remembered from the criminology class he had taken, back when he had thought that he wanted to be a Crime Scene Investigator, Hank saw that Daron's skin wasn't as pale as his wife's meaning that the man had died after his wife had taken the fall. Closing his eyes, Hank pictured a flash of what had happened- Daron had been tied to the chair and had been forced to watch while his wife was being tortured and killed right in front of him. Suddenly, the fraying of the binding ribbons made sense. The man had probably fought until the very end.

“Good God,” Hank whispered quietly as he suddenly felt his legs nearly buckle beneath him. He rubbed his free hand down his face and let out a breath that was as shaky as the hand that was still grasped tightly around his gun.

Making his way back out of the house, he found himself vomiting on the tidy lawn that had been the first sign that something was wrong. Though he hadn't eaten dinner, he still managed to retch up some of his stomach acid that burned all the way up his esophagus. He was breaking protocol by leaving the house with a possible killer still inside, but he didn't care. He told himself that he wasn't going back into that house without his back up. He told himself that the younger deputies would be able to handle the dead bodies better, but deep down, he knew that he was afraid to go back in because he was not prepared to look through the house and find the body of the Jones' small daughter, and find her to be just as mutilated as her parents. He couldn't. He wouldn't.

When the two cruisers pulled in next to his own, a few minutes later, Hank was sitting in his car, staring straight at the light-filled house. He didn't look at them when they approached him to get information about what he had found, and he still didn't look at them when he told them about the bodies. His eyes remained focused on the house in front of him when he heard the large gasp that came from the rookie that he had just hired six months back. He just continued staring out in front of him as he then told them what he wanted them to do, which was go in and make sure the house was cleared out and search for the daughter. He then watched silently as both of the men that served beneath him disappeared into the door that he had left open upon his own escape with their own guns out of their holsters while he called in to dispatch to contact the state police. He figured that extra help was going to be needed.

It was no surprise when he saw Johnny Morton-the rookie- come running out of the house a minute after he had entered only to do what Hank had just finished doing a moment before. Needless to say, the sheriff found little pleasure in the knowledge that he still had a little more gumption in him than his rookie. The reaction was to be expected.

“Well, at least I'm not the only one,” Hank muttered as he once again exited his car and slowly walked towards his deputy. The man, no more than twenty-four or -five, looked up at his approach, revealing a very pale face that only looked even paler under the naturally pale light of the full moon hanging above them.

“Did you....Did you see the...” the boy tried to question, though he couldn't even finish it before he began to retch again. It was too much, and Hank couldn't blame him. Even he thought it was too much. He suddenly felt like an ass for calling this man in. It made him feel like such a coward at the fact that he had wanted others to deal with what he could not when he was supposed to be the one with the most experience.

“It's okay, kid,” he said in a voice that he was positive wasn't very assuring. What right did he have to assure him when he had been doing the exact same thing only a moment before? “Things like this just-”

“Sheriff,” Anthony Alvarez-Hank's seasoned, yet still young, deputy-called out from the doorway, startling the sheriff so much that he actually jumped. “Sheriff, I think you should see this.”

Hank found himself trying to straighten himself up once again, hoping that neither of the men had seen his startled reaction, and looking at both men, neither of them did. Johnny was still busy trying to gather himself together again like Humpty Dumpty, and looking at Alvarez, Hank could see that though the man wasn't retching like his fellow deputy, he was just as shaken and would not have seen-or even cared- about something as trivial as a grown man nearly jumping out of his skin. They were all on the same footing at that moment and that footing was that they had to do their job without falling to pieces.

Hesitating a moment, Hank finally leaned over and placed his hand on Johnny's shoulder again. “You just stay out here, Johnny,” he said quietly. “Tony and I will check out the rest of the house. You just go on and tape off the house before anyone else comes looking out here because of our cars.”

Johnny nodded before looking up at Hank with eyes filled with such gratitude that the sheriff felt awkward being on the receiving end of it. Taking out his own pistol, he nodded back to his rookie before looking up towards his reliable deputy and walking up to him.

“Did you find the girl?” he asked Alvarez quietly so that Johnny would not hear.

Alvarez shook his head. “I don't know,” he said and quickly went on when he saw the puzzled look in Hank's eyes. “I mean, I went to what I think was her bedroom, but...” he paused there and looked up at Hank somberly. “I just got a little freaked out by what I saw and I wanted you to come and see it, boss,” he finished quietly.

Hank nodded, not judging the large man in front of him one bit. He didn't even know what was being shown to him, but he was pretty sure that he didn't want to be looking at it alone, either.

“All right, let's get going then,” he said and led the way back into the house of the murdered couple.

Both men walked into the house, which now felt more and more like a tomb, and averted their eyes when they came upon the body of Sarah Jones. Hank stopped and allowed Alvarez to take the lead considering that he didn't really know where they were going. Alvarez took the lead willingly and ascended the steps speedily with this eyes focused on the stairs so that he would not have to see the body of Daron Jones, still sitting in the living room with his head bowed down over his blood-soaked chest. Hank followed suit in much the same manner and when they finally turned right around the corner where both bodies would be hidden, he was not surprised to hear Alvarez let out a heavy sigh that he echoed himself a second later.

“The girl's room's in here” the deputy said pointing to the door at the end of the hall on the left. He had stopped and stepped aside at this point, letting Hank take the lead as he should well have done before. Hank hesitated for a fraction of a second, pondering whether or not he should tell the man to keep leading, but remembering the look in Johnny's eyes, he knew that he wouldn't do it. Gathering up his courage, he continued walking on and entered the door that Alvarez had left open on his hasty retreat from whatever had “freaked him out” when he had entered.

The light in the room was on, just like all the other lights in the house, so Hank was able to see the scene that would haunt him long after the images of the dead bodies faded away, clearly. He would try and argue with himself about why it was so frightening, but he would never be able to decipher what it was about that scene that just felt so wrong-even more wrong than the bodies lying in the puddles of their own blood down below. Maybe it was a feeling that there was something more than he could physically see that his heart felt or because what he would find after that was even more disturbing than the bodies he had found below. Either way, he would carry the image to his very grave despite the years of therapy he had in the years to come.

Upon walking in, the first thing Hank saw... were the eyes. Fifty, sixty, maybe even a hundred pairs of eyes stared at him from all around the small room. Dolls. Dolls covering every inch of the room-filling every shelf to its capacity, covering the entire bed, sitting all along the walls against the floor-all of them, looking right up at him, making the hair on his neck, arms, and legs suddenly stand right on end. The feeling that he had just walked in on some kind of doll gathering crossed his mind, but he quickly pushed it away because he knew that that was ridiculous. It was just a bit startling was all. He just had never seen anything like this other than in the doll shops that his wife had dragged him to so they could buy their sons stuffed teddy bears when they were younger. It was appalling how many there were, and that was what was making him feel uneasy. It had to be.

“Sheriff?”

Hank jumped again, except that this time he was a bit angry at being startled because when he had jumped, his hand had tightened around his gun, and his finger had nearly pulled the trigger of his .45, which would have definitely caught the attention of everyone outside.

“Damn it, Tony, stop doing that!” he cried out sternly through gritted teeth as he turned around to look at his deputy.

Alvarez lifted his hands up in a warding gesture with his usually tan skin suddenly ashy and pale. “Sorry, boss, I didn't mean to startle ya,” he said quickly, slowly walking in further so that he was now standing beside him.

Sighing, Hank nodded. “it's fine. Just watch out. I nearly blew you away there,” he said shakily. He then put his gun back into his holster with trembling fingers, ignoring the voice in his head that was telling him to keep it out.

You're outnumbered, the voice whispered to him harshly.

They're just dolls, he silently shouted back stubbornly, but even then, he knew that that wasn't completely right. Though the objects all around him were all seemingly lifeless, that sense of being unwanted was strong-almost suffocating.

“Sorry again, boss. I didn't mean to scare ya. I just needed to say something. These dolls are really creeping me out,” the deputy spoke out quietly as his eyes raked across the room at all of the dolls of every shade and color who were now all staring at him as well. “The girl has more dolls than a damn toy store.”

The sheriff nodded in agreement, though he was not paying much attention to Alvarez's words. While looking back at Alvarez to scold him, his eyes had caught sight of a doll that looked completely out of place that was located by the open door, which had been behind him. Unlike all the dolls that were all neatly stacked along the walls, she was lying face up, right in front of an especially eerie looking doll-covered wall. She was different from the others. Unlike all the other dolls who all looked like they were taken cared of and neat, this one was haggard and raggedy. While the others looked like they were porcelain, this one was made of cloth and stuffed with cotton with her hair made out of bright red yarn. Dirt smudges could be found all along her face and arms. She was the only doll that had buttons for eyes rather than the glass eyes that looked so real he could swear that they were really looking at him with them. She looked like a doll that was actually played with rather than just left as a decoration, and the feeling that she was beckoning him to come to her took such a strong hold of him that he found himself walking towards her without even realizing that he had allowed his feet to move.

“Boss? What are you doing?” Alvarez questioned with uneasiness as his eyes continued roaming around the room at the others.

Hank did not reply as he bent down and picked up the tattered doll on the floor and held her in his hands. He looked at her small form with curiosity. She was not pretty like all of the other dolls around the room, and yet he felt that he would have preferred his child to have this one rather than any of the ones surrounding him, and he could sense that the Jones girl obviously felt the same because, as he had noticed before, the doll was raggedy and dirty, and when you were young, the more you loved your toys, the dirtier they would be. That was something that Hank found puzzling, considering how she had managed to collect so many beautiful dolls and yet played with the ugliest one out of the lot.

“Boss?” Alvarez spoke again, suddenly appearing behind Hank's shoulder.

Hank lifted his eyes from the doll and looked at his deputy over his shoulder with a frown on his face. “You're starting to get on my nerves, Tony. Stop acting like such a siss...” he started to scold the younger man but then dropped off when he saw the wide-eyed look on the deputy's face as he stared right past him at something that was right in front of him.

Turning his gaze back around Hank saw what his deputy was staring at and suddenly felt his own eyes widen as well. From where he had been standing before, he would never have seen it, but now that he was standing so close, it was as clear as day. Directly behind one of the dolls that sat against he wall, he saw that there were hinges and a slit underneath, meaning that there was a door there that was hidden behind the wall of dolls whose eyes were staring at him even more intensely if that was even possible.

“Is that...a door?” Alvarez asked quietly.

“Well, there's only one way to find out,” Hank replied earnestly and with the raggedy doll in one hand, he reached up with his other and made a sweeping motion that sent half of the doll wall down into a messy pile in front of what he could now clearly see was a door.

He paused as he caught sight of it, his head suddenly feeling strained as he stared at the sight before him. The object in front of him certainly was a door, but it was covered in cracks all along the wood that made it look like something had been pounding at it with immense force. Considering how the door was caved in, the pounding had come from the outside in an attempt to get to whatever was inside the door. It wasn't hard to imagine someone trying to hide something like that from view by placing all those dolls in front of it. So was it hidden a while a go or was it done recently? His head thought that it would have had to been done before the murders, but the voice in his head kept on persisting that had he come up to the door a few hours before, those cracks would never have been there.

“Are you okay, boss?” the deputy queried nervously as he came from behind and stood beside him, his eyes focused on the door as well.

“Yeah, I'm fine, but I want these dolls out of the way,” Hank responded absently as his hand tightened around the arm of the dirty doll in his hand. “I want to see what's behind this door,” he stated simply.

“Well, all right, let me help you, then,” the deputy responded like a good worker and stepped forward and made the same kind of sweeping motion that Hank had made a moment before, except this time, in addition to the dolls falling, Alvarez recoiled back as well with his arm clutched tightly to his chest with blood coursing down his sleeve.

“Damn it! I sliced my hand on one of those freaky dolls!” he cried out as he suddenly stepped away, nearly colliding with Hank, though the sheriff managed to dodge him at the last minute. “God, I think it really sliced into my arm!” Alvarez continued to shriek.

“Quiet down before you wake the entire neighborhood!” Hank ordered him through a hiss. “You're not going to die, so shut the hell up, Tony, or I'll send you down and get the rookie in here!”

Alvarez quieted down right away, too much of a macho man to let Johnny take his position at the front-line, but he continued to nurse his arm with a scowl on his lips as he glared at the single doll that remained against the door.

Hank followed his gaze and found himself staring at the remaining doll as well. She was easily the most beautiful doll that he had ever seen in all his life. She was at least two feet tall with curly black hair that fell daintily down her shoulder with pale cheeks that had rosy circles painted on the cheekbones to imitate a blush. She was dressed in a blue school girl's uniform that resembled the uniforms that a boarding school would force their children to wear. A slate was tucked under one porcelain arm and a pencil was clasped in her other hand, which based off of the drops of blood that covered the tip was the object that had inflicted the damage on Alvarez's arm. Her glass eyes were a cobalt blue that unlike the others were not focused sightlessly in front of them but were rather glancing off to the side. Also, unlike the others, she was not smiling, but rather solemn, making her appear as though she was looking to the side with disapproval. Following her gaze, Hank was startled and a great deal wary of her when he found that her eyes rested on the doll in his right hand.

He moved the haggard doll into his other hand while watching the school-girl doll closely. He half expected her eyes to follow the raggedy doll to the other hand as well, at which time he would have promptly removed his .45 from his holster and blown the thing to kingdom come. He found, however, that her eyes were still fixed on the same spot after he moved the tattered doll to the other hand, which he found himself relieved about all the same.

Still gazing at the doll tenuously, Hank slowly lifted his foot and forcefully kicked the doll aside so that she collapsed onto the pile with the others. He stared at her, now looking up at him, for a long moment, resisting the urge to just put his foot right through her face, but he finally tore his gaze away from her unmarred face to look back at the door and the newly revealed doorknob.

“Make sure you're covering me, Tony,” he commanded the deputy behind him who had finally managed to stop fussing over his arm to get back into position behind him. “We don't know what's behind here, and I want you to be ready, you here?”

“Gotcha, boss.”

“Good.”

With his hand once again squeezing the doll's arm at his side, Hank let out another shaky breath as he wrapped his fingers around the knob. He turned it slowly and found some resistance but with a little effort, he managed to twist it all the way and the door came open easily. Pulling on it gently, he opened it a little way and turned his head slightly so that he could see Alvarez and assured himself that his deputy was at the ready before he opened it the rest of the way.

The first thing he saw when he looked into the small closet that the door opened into was a pair of eyes. At first, he believed that he was looking at another doll, but suddenly the eyes blinked and the cry that had filled his throat at the discovery of another possible doll suddenly escaped as he felt himself beginning to step away from her, but before he could, he stopped himself because the rest of his senses had caught up with him, including his mental senses which told him that he had just found the girl that he had been so afraid he would find dead, and she was alive! She was alive!

“Mios Dios,” Alvarez muttered in awe from right behind him, peeking at the girl inside. “Is that Lily Jones?”

The little girl was no more than six. Her dark cheeks were streaked with tears that had fallen from large brown eyes that were now fixed fearfully at the two men standing in front of her. She was balled up in the back corner of the closet with her arms wrapped tightly around her knees which had been pulled up to her chest. Her thick, raven curls flowed all around her head, sticking to her cheeks and skin where there had been sweat or tears to hold it. She was shaking with her lips trembling as a fear-filled whimper escaped her lips, waking Hank from his momentary lapse of wonder and puzzlement.

Crouching down in the same spot that he had been standing, Hank looked down at the girl with the gentlest gaze he could muster.

“Lily? It's okay, I'm Sheriff Lawrence,” he said softly, still clutching her doll in his hands. “I'm not going to hurt you, sweetheart. You're safe now.”

She whimpered again as she slowly kicked her bare feet in an attempt to shove herself further into the corner. She shook her head and buried her face in her knees as she wrapped her arms even tighter around her legs.

“You work for them. You work for them. You work for them,” she muttered over and over again under her breath. “They're bad. They're so bad. I don't want them anymore,” she then cried.

“Lily, who are you talking about?” Hank questioned softly. “There's no one here, but you and me. I promise you that if you just come out, I'll make sure that nothing happens. I won't let anyone or anything hurt you, okay? I just need for you to come out of there first.”

Lily continued to keep her face buried in her knees as she continued to murmur. “They can't come in here. They can't. The door,” she muttered again.

“What is she saying, boss?” Alvarez interjected quietly, still standing behind him. “Has she lost it?”

“Ssh, be quiet,” Hank ordered sternly, glancing at his deputy firmly. “She's traumatized. She just went through a great-”

Plunk.

Hank looked down to find that the doll he had been holding had fallen from his grasp. She had landed inside the closet, a few feet in front of Lily. He didn't know how it was possible for her to have even dropped considering how tightly he had been squeezing her cloth arm, but those thoughts flew out the window as soon as he saw Lily lift her face up from her knees and look down at the doll on the ground.

“Anna?” she cried out with a hint of uncertainty and a hint of hope as she continued to stare at the doll in front of her. “Anna?” she questioned again.

Hank could hear Alvarez opening his mouth to comment at the oddity of the situation but he lifted his hand to shush him as he continued to watch as the fear in Lily's eyes suddenly began to fade. The next thing he knew, she was flying across the closet apparently right at him, but instead of coming to him, she reached out for the scruffy doll and snatched her up into her arms where she hugged her tightly to her chest.

“Anna, you're safe,” she cried out with fresh tears beginning to course down her already tear-stained cheeks. “You're safe!”

Allowing a little time for the girl to hold her doll, Hank finally cleared his throat, bringing Lily's attention back to him. A flash of fear filled her eyes again but with her doll in her arms, she did not seem as afraid anymore.

“She helped us find you, Lily,” he said softly, glancing at the raggedy doll in her arms. “We may not have seen the door otherwise,” he found himself forced to add.

Looking down at her doll again, Lily nodded. “Anna's a good doll,” she responded quietly, her voice filled with love and a childish innocence and adoration.

“I'm sure she is, honey, and I think that she knew that we were good, which is why she helped us find you,” he continued on with deep sincerity, ignoring Alvarez's bafflement behind him. “So, can you trust Anna by trusting me, honey?” he then questioned as he offered her his large hand.

Lily looked at his hand with another hint of fear and uncertainty, but then she suddenly spoke out loud. The only problem was that she did not speak to him but to the doll in her hands.

“Should I trust them, Anna?” she asked softly. “Are they good?”

Alvarez opened his mouth once again to utter something about the strangeness of the whole thing that Hank knew would end up sounding demeaning or ridiculing, so he once again raised his hand up and silenced him again, though this time his deputy let out a heavy breath that revealed his doubtfulness of the situation.

Hank watched solemnly as Lily suddenly brought the doll up so that Anna's red, yarn lips were pressed against her ear. He watched Lily's face and saw that she looked as though she truly was listening to something that the doll was saying that only she could hear. He felt a little awkward about the situation at the point, but when she hugged the doll back in her arms, he saw that the fear that had been in her eyes had completely faded away and had been replaced with a new solemn confidence.

“Anna says that you were the one who saw her and found the door,” she stated as though she had been there herself to see it. “She's not sure about him,” she said, glancing at Alvarez, “because he got cut by Persephone, but she knows that you're good. She says I can trust you, so I will.”

Hank was momentarily dumbfounded at the words that had come out of the little girl's mouth, and based on the silence behind him, he knew that Alvarez had been caught off guard as well. Once again, however, he didn't have time to dwindle on everything she had said because as soon as she finished, she had hugged Anna to her arm and had then walked right to him and wrapped her free arm around his neck.

Wrapping his own arms around her, Hank slowly rose to his feet and lifted her up into the air with him. He saw her look over his shoulder at the dolls behind him and heard the gasp that escaped her lips before she burrowed her face into his chest. He wrapped his arms even tighter around her to comfort her and motioned for Alvarez to follow him before walking out the door. He squeezed her tighter against him again once he approached the stairway which would reveal the bodies of her dead parents, willing her to keep her face burrowed against him so that she wouldn't see. He heard her murmuring to her doll against his chest as he started down the stairs and feared that she would lift her head, but instead, she only burrowed her face deeper into his chest with her doll still clutched tightly to her. She did not look up again until he walked out the front door, into the cool Halloween night air to find that Johnny had set up the caution tape around the house, barring the people had already begun to gather around the edges, hoping to see something...anything, from getting any closer. Hank ignored them all as he merely carried the little girl towards his patrol car and placed her into the warm back seat before going to his trunk and retrieving a blanket from his readiness kit that he then wrapped around both her and the doll.

Lily did not look up at anyone once she had situated herself in the back seat of his cruiser. She had ended up curling into a ball against the far door with Anna still firmly grasped in her arms. She did not even look up when he told her that he would be right back once he had finished looking through the house, not mentioning the fact that he needed to investigate the bodies that were her father's and mother's. He couldn't tell her yet about their deaths, even though he knew that she probably already knew, and he could sense that she probably didn't want to hear it yet form him, either. He didn't mind that thought. He needed time to recuperate and manage everything that had just happened in regards to finding her and the events surrounding all the dolls. It was all a little too much to gather in now that he was thinking back on everything in hindsight.

Alvarez was standing at the front steps of the house talking to Johnny when Hank walked back to the house. He knew that Alvarez was telling Johnny about all of the dolls and the girl's reaction to the ugly doll, and when he finally met them, he knew that he was right in his assumption because the rookie looked at him with eyes that were wide with disbelief.

“Is it true, sheriff?” he questioned as soon as Hank had stopped beside them. “Is it true about the girls and the...dolls?”

Hank frowned at Alvarez before turning his attention back to Johnny. “All little girls talk to their dolls, Johnny. It's no big deal. She's been through a lot and doesn't need you to be talking about her like she's crazy,” he said in a harsher tone than he had intended.

Johnny didn't seem the least bit daunted as he just went on. “I mean, is it true that the dolls completely hid the door she was hidden behind-like they were protecting her?”

Hank did not answer. He didn't know how. Sure, it could have possibly looked like they had been there to protect her, but the first impression he had gotten when he had seen them standing there was that they were guarding the door, more like a prison guards rather than guardians. To tell the young man as much, however, was out of the question considering that it would lead to a lot more questions concerning his own beliefs. He wasn't sure he ever would be able to answer the questions about that because he would have to reveal the fact that when he had looked at those dolls, he did not believe anything good could come from them. He had just felt a certainty that those dolls were no good, that they were evil, even. No, best to keep that to himself.

“We don't have time for the sewing circle, Johnny. You need to make sure that those people gathering around the house don't get in and make sure that the girl is okay and no one bothers her,” he said firmly. Then looking to Alvarez, he said sternly, “And if you could keep your lips sealed for the time being, I would really appreciate it if you went back in that house and secured it before the state police come in. I'll call the social worker to come in for the girl and I'll be in to help you afterward.”

He paused and saw the sullen looks on the deputies faces and let out a heavy sigh before going on. “This is the worst thing to happen to our little town, gentlemen, but we need to do our jobs efficiently still, so I want you boys to go along and do what I said. There's time for rumors and gossip later, but right now, we need to get this place quarantined off and ready for an investigation. The sooner those bodies are cleared out of here, the better.”

The two deputies nodded in agreement to the sheriff's words and departed to go about completing their orders. Then, thirty minutes later, the state police pulled into the driveway and took control, allowing Hank to send his men home. He had to stay behind to tell them everything that had happened since he had pulled into the driveway nearly two hours before, but then afterward, he was practically home free and just needed to wait for the social worker to come and retrieve Lily.

The social worker was the last to arrive, but by that time, the state police had taken over the investigation so completely that all Hank had to do was stand by the car and make sure that Lily was all right. By the time the woman had actually arrived and had received all the information that he had to give pertaining to Lily and the way she had been found, the small girl had fallen fast asleep with Anna still in her arms. He offered to carry the girl to the woman's car so that the little girl did not need to be woken up to which the woman, someone from the next town over, agreed. She then pulled her car over so that it would be closer for him to carry the small girl over. Hank made the transfer from one car to the other with ease, considering how light the small girl was in his arms. He then watched as the car pulled out of the packed driveway and drove down the street. He watched it until he could no longer see the red brake lights of the small car before returning to his own cruiser and preparing to head on home as he had intended to do a lifetime before.

It was as he was finally pulling out of the Jones' emptying driveway that Hank finally noticed the red-headed, raggedy doll staring up at him from the backseat of his car. He nearly jumped out of his skin as he openly cried out in alarm, which was soon followed by relief that all of the local look y-loos had already gone back home, which meant that no one had heard cry out like a sissy for the third time that night. Putting his car in park, he then reached back and plucked the doll up into his hand. He stared at the dirty appearance and the raggedy exterior for a long moment and let out a loud sigh. He knew that the little girl had a long road ahead of her and even though he had liked the fact that the doll had made it possible for her to trust him, he was somewhat glad that the doll had been forgotten behind.

“Let her forget,” he murmured, suddenly lifting his eyes from the doll to gaze at the road the girl had disappeared on. “Let her forget everything,” he then said, returning his eyes back to the doll, “even you.”

Chapter One – An Unexpected Visitor

"Miss Jones? Miss Jones!”

Twenty-year-old Lilian “Lily” Jones' head snapped up from the top of her desk at the sound of her name being called out loud by her Anthropology professor, whose drone tone had caused her to drift to sleep in the middle of his fifty-minute lecture. Her eyes were blurry from sleep, but she didn't need to see clearly to know that she was being glared at the by fifty- or sixty-year-old man standing behind the podium located in the front of the auditorium. She also didn't need to see clearly to know that everyone else in the auditorium was looking, or straining to look, at her as well in an attempt to see the person who would dare to fall asleep during Mad Professor Maren's lecture.

“I-I'm sorry, professor?” she stammered as she attempted to gather her senses back together.

Professor Maren, one of the few professors at the University of Mains who didn't like Lily, frowned deeply as he folded his hands in front of him and leaned over his podium to look at her carefully.

“I don't necessarily mind that you fell asleep during my lecture, Miss Jones, considering that you do well enough on your tests and papers to show me that you actually have a decent grasp on the material of this class,” he stated sternly, ignoring the snickering that came from the back of the room from one of the other 253 people sitting in on the lecture. “What I do mind is you not being able to do it discreetly like the others of your kind who seem to think that their active night lives gives them the right to use my lectures as sleep time,” he then said coldly. “Please come and see me after class.”

“Yes, Professor Maren,” Lily answered quietly as she bowed her head to hide the blossoming redness in her cheeks from her embarrassment and mortification first at being caught sleeping and then for having to speak with him afterward.

“Very good. Now, for the rest of you who were awake, let us continue on with Darwin's theory of...”

Lily sighed as she drowned out Maren's lecturing voice again while turning her head to glare at the red-head girl sitting next to her.

“Why didn't you wake me up, Jess?” she hissed quietly. “I can't believe you let me snore in the middle of class-this class to be specific. How embarrassing!” she quietly cried out in horror, ignoring the eyes that were still glued on her from the other people sitting around her.

The red-haired, blue eyed girl on the receiving end of Lily's angry words was Jessica Norland, a fellow psychology major at the University of Maine and Lily's best friend. They had first met when they had been roommates during their freshmen year and had stayed roommates after they moved out of the dorms into an apartment just outside of campus during their sophomore year. She had been the one to persuade Lily to take Anthropology 1040 with her, and was regretting it at the moment.

“You looked like you were tired,” she whispered back softly, though her eyes were filled with regret at the fact that she had allowed Lily to get caught. “I didn't want to wake you,” she explained and then paused before leaning towards her and whispering to her, “Who's Anna, by the way?”

Lily frowned. “What are you talking about? How would I know who Anna is?” she asked in a bewildered tone.

Jessica furrowed her brows at Lily with a concerned look on her face. “You weren't snoring, Lily,” she then replied quietly. “You got caught because you were talking in your sleep. You were calling out for someone named Anna or something, That's why I asked you who Anna was. I've never heard you talk about her before,” she then remarked in a soft whisper so that she wouldn't get caught by Professor Maren for whispering.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Lily cried out loud before she could stop herself. She then immediately slapped her hands over her mouth when she realized she had just said the words loud enough for them to echo throughout the auditorium. She knew, once again, without even having to look, that Professor Maren was glaring at her once more.

“Must I have you removed from my lecture, Miss Jones?” he called out to her icily. “If you disrupt my lecture one more time, I will ask you to leave and you will receive a zero for the rest of the semester. Am I clear?”

Wishing she could just hide beneath her desk, Lily nodded and replied back quietly. “Crystal clear, sir.”

Mad Professor Maren once again continued on with his lecture on evolution while Lily slunked down in her chair with her hands grasped firmly on the pencil in front of her. She shot a glance at Jessica again who was looking at her with another regretful look, but she did not say anything to her on the large chance that the professor called her out again and really did kick her out of the class. Though it would be a relief not to listen to his boring lectures anymore, the zero would affect her GPA, which would look ridiculous on her transcripts since she was perfectly capable of getting an A in the class, regardless of whether or not she listened to the old bag.

Deciding to keep her attention focused on being quiet, Lily averted her eyes to her hands which were still grasped around the pencil. Pulling her notebook to her, she then started sketching on the empty margin above her notes. She just drew lines and circles at first while tuning in and out of the lecture, but as the minutes went on, she found herself sketching what appeared to be a face. She scribble lines all around the face as hair that did not look quite right on the paper. It's because it should be red, she suddenly thought, and quickly shook the thought out of her head and continued sketching. The eyes were circles that she colored in save for four small white dots in each circle that made it appear as though the eyes were actually buttons. Then, with the face done, she found herself making a crude looking body that ended with a badly made triangle that was supposed to be some kind of skirt or dress with little rectangles on the top, near the head that were the arms and small rectangles on the bottom of the triangle that were the legs with ovals on the bottom for shoes.

Looking down at the crude picture she had drawn of what appeared to be a fairly ugly doll, Lily found herself smiling. She had no idea why she would draw something so random as a doll when she couldn't remember ever playing with dolls even when she was little. She had been a tomboy who had enjoyed playing tag with the boys in the street in front of her aunt's house or lighting firecrackers in her neighbor's mailboxes. Dolls had been too girly for her, the closest thing she had that even resembled one being a teddy bear that had had a lace bonnet around it head. Even then, that teddy bear had lain ignored underneath her bed for years before her aunt had boxed it up with the rest of her forgotten slingshots and army men and shipped it to the Goodwill. So why was she drawing one right now, and better yet, why did she feel like she actually recognized the doll from the sketch?

As she sat there pondering that, she suddenly saw a water drop fall onto the paper, right beneath the drawing. The colorful lines of the paper and the writing from her notes that the water had fall on began to blur into a round, indecipherable smudge. A second water drop fell next to it, causing another smudge to blot out a small chunk of her notes.

Quickly shutting the cover of her notebook over her hand to save the rest of her notes, Lily immediately reached up with her free hand and touched her face, thinking that she had left some unwiped drool on her chin from her little nap. Feeling around her chin, she found nothing but her smooth skin, but reaching up to the skin above her mouth, she suddenly felt a lot of wetness on her cheeks. The drops had not been from spit but rather from tears that she had not even known she had shed.

“Lily? Are you okay?” Jessica whispered to her even though she knew that she was chancing a possible lecture from Mad Maren as well. “Why are you crying?”

Lily wiped at her eyes and cheeks with the back of her free hand as she shrugged to her friend to show that she didn't really know the reason for her crying. A deep sorrow had suddenly filled her heart from nowhere, and a few more tears fell rapidly down her cheeks. She did not even try to consider why they had fallen as she continued to wipe at them rapidly before the people around her thought she had gone crazy or soft because of a simple lecture, even though at the back of her mind she was starting to lean towards the former. Because she was so enveloped in wiping her tears, she failed to notice that the hand still closed in her notebook with the pencil still in it was moving rapidly as if writing of it own accord.

“Is something wrong, Lils?” Jessica questioned quietly. “Are you....Are you sad because you have to talk to Maren after class?” she then questioned with a tone that basically stated that she didn't believe that to be the reason even though it seemed the most plausible.

Lily paused after wiping her face to shoot her a frown that confirmed her friend's thoughts rather than her words. “I don't know why I cried, Jess. Something's wrong with my eyes or something,” she whispered back.

Jessica frowned. “Do your eyes hurt?” she queried worriedly.

Lily shook her head. “No, but...I don't know. It's just really weird,” she answered.

To both of their reliefs, the students around them began to rise and start for the door, meaning that the class had finally ended. Both waited for the students around them to leave before Jessica stood up from her desk and knelt down next to Lily's, looking up at her red eyes and the fresh tear-tracks.

“Did you stub your toe or something, because if you did, I wouldn't blame you for crying because I stubbed mine the day before yesterday and-”

“I didn't stub my toe, Jess, I just...” Lily interjected but then paused wondering if she should show her friend the picture of the doll she had just finished drawing before the waterworks had started. She decided against it before continuing on. “I was just sitting here, sketching, when I suddenly started to cry. I have no idea why I was crying, but I just suddenly feel sad right now...like someone just ran over my dog or something,” she then explained with her usual volume, the need to remain quiet no longer necessary.

Jessica shrugged her shoulders. “Well, if you're sad then maybe you just realized how hurtful Professor Maren's words were. I mean, they were a bit rude and cold, not to mention a blatant lie. You have never fallen asleep during class before, so to say that you do all the time is just-”

“Jess, just forget it. I'm not hurt by Professor Maren. The old bag has had it out for me ever since I aced the test that nearly everyone else failed. He thinks I'm just trying to be better than him,” she said irritably, once again cutting off her friend's babbling. “Just...go wait out for me by the car and I'll come out once I get done talking with Mad Maren, okay?”

Looking at her with uncertainty as if rethinking the idea of leaving her, Jessica hesitated before slowly rising. “I'll take your bag and stuff out, too, so you don't have to lug it around,” she then offered as she grabbed Lily's notebook and text book from the desk and packed it into her bag. “See you in a few.”

“Okay, see ya.”

Lily remained seated in her desk as Jessica walked up the steps leading to the nearest auditorium exit. She waited for her best friend to walk out the door before she let out a heavy sigh and slunked back in her chair. Raising both of her-now free-hands to her face, she placed her face against her palms and once again let out a deep breath that she was surprised to find was somewhat shaky. Once again trying to get herself back together before she had to face the old bag, she pushed back all of the warring thoughts in her brain to the back of her mind before gathering up her energy reserves to finally get up from the desk and start for Mad Maren's office. She had a pretty good idea of the lecture she was going to get and she needed all of her thoughts in order if she was going to build the mental wall needed to deflect him. Still, as her footsteps echoed in the now empty auditorium, the picture of the doll that she was now positive had red hair suddenly flashed in front of her head.

“Anna,” she mumbled under her breath.

As soon as that name escaped her lips, Lily quickly shook her head and pursed her lips to silence them. It was just a stupid sketch. Stop dwelling on it!, she quickly reprimanded herself, though a shiver ran down her spine all the same at the thought. Now, that the name was in her head, it would not be suppressed. Even as her hand wrapped around the doorknob that led to Maren's office, something told her that the doll would remain in her thoughts, waiting for her to remember something that had long been forgotten.



XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX



Professor Maren lectured Lily for a full fifteen minutes. Though she was fairly certain that he could very well see the redness in her eyes, he didn't seem to care. He didn't pull his mental punches from her, going so far as to call her a “waste of intellect” and a “thoughtless chauvinist.” The name calling had ended up leading to the punishment which was a partial credit reduction for that week's lecture and an additional assignment that would be due at the end of the next week, which would be the end of the term. He also stated that she would be placed on a probationary status as well during the last week of his class, meaning that if she fell asleep or interrupted his lesson again, she would get a zero for the rest of the term. Then, with that given, he dismissed her with a strong look of disappointment that was meant to make her think that she was only being punished for her own good rather than for his own sick pleasure, which Lily knew very well was not the case. He had loved that she he had finally gotten a chance to get at her, and he was taking full advantage of it while he had the chance.

Walking out of the Social Sciences building and into the cool October air, Lily found herself so frustrated and angry at Mad Maren that she completely forgot about all of the things that had caused her to get in trouble in the first place such as her falling asleep and talking in her sleep. Walking to the parking lot where she knew Jessica would be waiting, she quietly cursed Maren profusely under her breath-balling her hands into fists at her side while imagining the satisfaction she would receive if she just walked back in the building and knocked him around for a good few minutes. Though she would never even raise her voice against him in a million years, the freedom of her imagination felt like a welcome embrace that somewhat eased the anger that had filled her entire core.

Reaching the car, she was relieved to see that Jess had already turned it on, and felt a smile touch her lips when she opened the door and felt the delightful warmth of the heater rise up to greet her. Getting in and closing the door quickly behind her to seal in the heat, she looked to her best friend with a shaky smile on her face that she knew her friend needed to see in order for her not to blame herself for not waking her after she had fallen asleep. Sure enough, she saw Jessica relax a little at the smile she was given, not knowing the severe punishment that had been imparted to her by the old bag.

“Are you okay?” Jess asked worriedly with the corner of her bottom lip pulled between her lips. “He didn't yell at you, did he? Because if he did, I'll go right in there and give him a piece of my mind,” she then said, puffing out her chest in an attempt to show that she had courage even though Lily knew, after two years of living with her, that she was incapable of doing such a thing.

Giving her a more genuine smile, Lily shook her head and waved her hand in a gesture that said it was no big deal. “He just gave me an extra paper to hand in before the final. He was actually pretty cool about it,” she then lied with a small shrug of her shoulders.

Most likely sensing that she was lying, Jessica shot her a look that called her out on the lie. “Everyone knows that Maren is an asshole, Lils. He really ripped into you, didn't he?”

Letting out a heavy breath, Lily turned her head to look at the redhead solemnly. “It's nothing big, Jess. I mean, I knew what I was going to be getting as soon as he told me I had to stay after. I was perfectly prepared for his words, and I'm just glad that it's all over, so don't make a big deal about it.”

Jessica pouted her lips and narrowed her eyes as if thinking of saying some other jibe about the man, but looking at Lily's pleading eyes decided against it. She instead, let out her own breath and looked to Lily with eyes filled with sympathy.

“I'll write half your paper for you,” she offered. “I mean, it was my fault for not waking you up when you drifted off, even though I really did think that you needed it. I heard you walking around the apartment early this morning, so I knew that you didn't sleep very well last night. I'm really sorry,” she said with sincere guilt in her voice.

Lily rolled her eyes but gave her a reassuring smile as well as a gentle squeeze on her forearm. “Don't worry about it. It was my fault for falling asleep, and I shouldn't have blamed you for not waking me. You don't have to help me with the paper. It'll be easy enough to write anyway.”

“No, I'm helping whether you like it or not, even if it means just proofing it after you're done,” she said in a serious tone as she looked away to put the car in reverse. “Don't even bother trying to protest because I'll break into your room to help you if I have to, so...yeah,” she finished as she then looked behind her before pulling the car out of their parking spot and pulled out of the parking lot.

Grinning wide, now, Lily slowly shook her head slowly before reaching in the back seat for her bag where she had left her phone earlier before class had started. She pulled it out of the front pouch of her bag and looked to see if she had missed any calls or messages. She was a little surprised to find that she had missed 3 calls from her Aunt Laura, but she didn't think it was too serious since Laura usually called her every other day to check in on her and make sure that she was staying on top of her school. Looking through the rest of her messages, she saw that there were a few text messages from some of her friends on campus, but the one message that caught her attention the most was a voice mail from an unknown number that apparently looked like it was from out of state. Going to it, she then put the phone to her ear to listen.

The message was filled with too much static for her to hear too much, but she swore she heard the person say “don't”, “sheriff” and “packer's” somewhere amongst all the garbled mix. She tried replaying it to try and see if she could decipher it a little better, but the second go around only seemed to make her doubt her previous guesses. The only thing that seemed certain about it was that the person on the phone had sounded like a girl...a little girl.

“What're you listening to?” Jess asked curiously as she turned down the street that their apartment was located. They actually lived in a house that belonged to an friendly older woman who was allowing them rent the third floor together for a very cheap rate. Four other college students lived on the second and first floor, but Lily and Jess were the only students who were still undergrads out of all of them.

Lily looked up from her phone, where she was staring at the strange number, and shook her head with her brows furrowed. “Someone left me a voice mail but I can't understand any of it. It's all staticky.”

Jess furrowed her own brows and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, if it's anything important, I'm sure they'll call you back,” she offered. “Or it could just be a wrong number or a crank call. I get a million of those, and it's annoying,” she then remarked with an annoyed roll of her blue eyes.

Lily giggled and shut her phone. “I guess you're right,” she agreed quietly, but that didn't change the fact that there was an uneasy feeling in her stomach that had been set off by the message. Something was telling her that the message was important and that it shouldn't be ignored, but with so little decipherable from it, there was nothing to do but push it aside and, like Jessica had suggested, wait for them to call back if it was important.

They pulled in front of the house a few seconds later, and Lily could feel a deep relief set in at the fact that she was home. She unbuckled her seat belt and reached for the handle to her door to get out with her bag in her other hand, but before she could pull on the handle, Jessica's hand suddenly grabbed a hold of her harm, making her stop. Lily looked up at her with a frown on her face, silently demanding why she was grabbing at her, but Jessica wasn't looking at her. Her eyes were focused on something outside Lily's window.

“What are you looking...” Lily began but drowned off when she followed her best friend's gaze.

Jessica was staring at a car that was parked in the driveway of the house that, based on the on the shadowy movements from within, was still occupied by the people who had driven it there. Normally that wouldn't be cause for pause since there were other people that lived in the house, but this car had police lights on it, meaning that the person (there was only one shadow, so she could only guess that there was just one person) was a police officer.

“Why do you think the police are here?” Jessica whispered quietly to Lily as if the person inside the other car had the ability to hear them. “Do you think that those people beneath us finally got caught for their drugs?” she whispered as she strained her head to try and see if she could catch a look at the person inside. “And why are they still in their car? Why haven't they gotten out?”

Lily sighed and spoke out loud rather than in a whisper. “I don't know, Jess, but I think I know a way to find out,” she said softly, and then reached out and opened her door and stepped right back out into the colder evening air.

She shut the car door behind her as she slid one of her bag straps around her shoulder and made her way up the path that would take her right past the car in the driveway. She turned and made a small detour off the path so that instead of walking right up to the house, she went to the driveway where she could now feel the eyes of the person inside the car watching her approach. Though she had been able to see the shadow from the car, she couldn't see his face from this particular distance because of the tint in the windows that hid the person's face from view. She did, however, see that on the side of the car was the “Sheriff” print with the police emblem right underneath it. The only thing she found puzzling about it all, was the fact that the license plates were Pennsylvania, which was quite a ways from Maine, meaning this cop was from out of town.

She approached the driver's side of the car slowly, now, feeling the uneasy feeling rising up in her stomach again. The urge to just turn and run into the house was fairly strong, but instead of turning away, she remained rooted next to the car with her body now bent down so that she would be face-to-face with the sheriff behind the glass.

Lily thought she would have to knock on the window to get him to show himself but before she could raise her fist up, the window began to roll down itself, revealing a surprisingly young man dressed in a plaid sheriff's uniform with the emblem on his sleeve. He looked directly up at her with eyes that were the palest gray she had ever seen before that were almost hidden behind a scruffy mop of light brown hair. He was very attractive, gorgeous even, but the solemn frown on his face kind of put her off, which was good since she didn't really want to get bum chummy with anyway.

“Is there some kind of problem...sheriff?” she asked, once again glancing at the patch on his arm to try and verify if it was real or not. She didn't have a clue how she would be able to tell, but she was hoping that he wouldn't know that she didn't know so that he would prove it. “Is there something going on here that a Pennsylvania policeman would need to be here?” she then asked as she stood up straight and folded her arms to ward herself against a cool breeze that had just blown by, ruffling her dark curls.

The man looked up at her with that same solemn expression and just looked at her for a long moment as if trying to read whether or not she was a threat or not.

“There's nothing wrong, Miss, and even if there were, I don't have the jurisdiction to really do anything about it,” he replied coolly, still studying her face closely. “I'm actually here to speak to someone who may have information pertaining to a crime that took place in Packer's Grove where I do have jurisdiction,” he then explained in the same cool tone.

Lily nodded. “Well, I would be happy to help you find who you need to speak to, sheriff, but I think it would be best if you showed me your badge first.”

The man looked at Lily with a sudden hint of amusement in his eyes and a slight twitch of his lips before he reached down with one hand and plucked out a beaten, brown leather wallet. He flipped it open with a flick of his wrist and revealed the silver badge that resembled the ones she had seen in the cop movies that she used to watch with her Aunt Laura on TV. Bending down to get a better look, she saw his picture ID underneath and saw that the name SETH LAWRENCE was the same on the ID and the badge, though the badge had the title “Sheriff” preceding it.

“Okay, Sheriff, you've convinced me that you are who you say you are,” she declared as she stood up straight again. “Now, who exactly are you here to speak to?

He closed the wallet with another flick of his wrist and placed it back in his pocket, next to his gun, which he could have very well have gone for instead of the wallet if he had not truly been who he had said he was. Lily felt her mouth go dry at the sight of the gun and tried to avert her eyes away from it but found it difficult to do so. She failed to realize that he could see her looking at it and probably knew what she was thinking as she stared at it.

The sheriff suddenly grinned and held both of his hands up with his palms out to show that he wasn't going to grab for it. “I already showed you my badge, so you don't need to worry about me pulling it out,” he said in a surprisingly gentle tone that made Lily's cheeks suddenly warm up for no good reason she could think of other than that she was staring to get a sudden crush on the guy. “You'd probably be surprised to know that I haven't even taken it out of the holster ever since I became sheriff. It's more like an ornament rather than a weapon,” he then commented.

“That's not a very smart thing to confess to someone you don't know, Sheriff,” she said, enunciating the title with a flare that she knew made her sound really girlish. “I could be dangerous, and yet you just revealed something that I could use to my advantage,” she then stated before she could stop herself, knowing that she was trying to flirt with him.

“I'm just going to have to trust that you won't, Miss...” he paused to let her finish, going right along with the flirtation.

Lily grinned and blushed. “Jones. Lily Jones,” she responded.

The smile on the mans face suddenly wavered at the sound of her name. Lily, no longer grinning, knew why that was and felt her stomach drop. She was the one he had come to talk to.

“Lily?” Jessica's voice suddenly called out to her. “Is anything wrong?”

Turning her head to look at the redhead who had finally gotten out of her car, Lily shook her head before returning her glance to the man in the car. “No, everything's all right,” she said, though she no longer believed it. “I was just helping Sheriff Lawrence here find someone he needs to question,” she then said, still addressing Jessica though her eyes were fixed on his. “Go on inside and I'll be there in a minute.”

Jessica didn't object at all, most likely because she thought that Lily was trying to get her flirt on with the man she could now clearly see was quite a good looking piece of law enforcement. Her assumption would have been right a few minutes before, but things had changed so quickly in a matter of seconds due to the mere uttering of a name...Lily's name. Flirting was now the furthest thing from dark girl's mind now, and looking at Sheriff Seth Lawrence, she was pretty sure it was the last thing on his mind as well.

When Jessica entered the front door and closed it behind her, there was complete silence between the two people still outside. After a moment, however, the sheriff suddenly opened the car door and slid out before standing straight up, not once breaking his gaze from Lily's face as if afraid that she was going to disappear if he so much as blinked.

“You are Lilian Jones?” he questioned softly, almost sounding like he was in awe of her.

Lily folded her arms even tighter across her belly. “Yes, I'm Lilian, but everyone just calls me Lily,” she answered, and then continued on. “I take it that I was the one who you needed to speak to, then?”

He didn't even need to say yes or nod to say that she was right because his eyes said it clearly enough. Still, he nodded wordlessly as he shut the door of the cruiser behind him.

Lily frowned. “I can save you a lot of time, right now, Sheriff,” she stated solemnly, suddenly wanting to get as far away from the man in front of her as fast as she could, though she didn't know why. “I've never been to Packer's Grove or even Pennsylvania before in my life. I'm not even sure if I even know anyone from there, either, so I don't really know why you want to speak to me.”

“If we could just step inside, Miss Jones,” he said, suddenly going into professional mode, “I would be happy to discuss with you the events of the crimes I'm trying to investigate.”

Lily opened her mouth to say that she thought it best if they just spoke outside, since she didn't think they would be talking for much longer, but before she could utter a single word, she was cut off by the sound of screeching tires that seemingly belonged to a car that was speeding down the street, right towards her house. She thought it looked familiar, though it was difficult to see it clearly in the dim twilight, but when it stopped right in front of them, she swore that she knew who the car belonged to. Seeing the alarmed look on Seth's face, she once again opened her mouth to tell him who she thought it was, but the next thing she knew, the sheriff was grabbing her arm, forcing her down to a crouching position with the vehicle-both of his arms grasped tightly around her to keep her down.

“Stay down!” he yelled as he let go of her with one arm while still clutching her tightly against him with the other. He was reaching for the gun in his holster with the hand he had just released her with, which immediately woke Lily up from her dazed state that she had somehow fallen into after nearly being tackled to the ground.

“No, don't!' she cried, reaching out and placing a restricting hand on the arm that was reaching for his gun. “It's not a drive by,” she explained further at the doubtful look he was now giving her.

“What are you talking about?” he cried. “The person behind the wheel of that car could be-”

“Lily? Lily!” a familiar feminine voice suddenly called out from the direction of the newly parked car. “Lily, are you here?” it called out in an almost crazed tone.

Seth put a finger to his lips in a gesture that stated he wanted Lily to remain silent, but Lily merely frowned and chose to ignore him and she tore herself from his grasp and stood up. She walked right out from behind the car, choosing to tune out Seth's hisses to get down as she walked, or rather jogged, to the owner of the voice. Seth stood up as well just in time to see Lily walk right into the open arms of a fairly round, middle-aged black woman whose arms circled around Lily in a tight, relief-filled embrace.

“Oh, honey, I was so scared that I hadn't gotten here in time,” the woman, Laura Sanders, Lily's aunt, cried out as she continued to hold her niece tightly to her bosom. She was stroking Lily's short, spirally curls with a large, dark hand as she went on to voice her relief that Lily was safe and well.

“I'm fine, Aunt Laura,” Lily replied softly as she pulled away enough to look up into the older woman's face. “I can't believe you drove all the way from Portland. I didn't know you were coming.”

Laura gently shushed her by placing a slightly wrinkled finger to Lily's lips. “We can talk about it later, but first, I want to know where that blasted, thick-headed cop is!' she cried out sternly, looking towards the car and frowning once her eyes rested on Seth who was still standing dumbfounded behind his cruiser.

“You're one thick-headed, thoughtless boy!” she cried out angrily to Seth. “What right do you think you have to come out here when I specifically told you to stay away from her? I should sue you or have your badge taken away or have it stuck down your throat right now...” She went on spouting out a long list of curse words at him that Lily was astonished to hear from the woman who had once washed her mouth out wish soap for once saying the word 'damn' when she was ten. If she thought to return the favor right then and there, she was sure she would have to use more than one bar of soap to clean out that mouth, though to even think of doing such a thing to the woman who had raised her was out of the question. Still, she felt she needed to stop her aunt before she get herself arrested.

“Auntie, what is going on? How do you know Sheriff Lawrence?” Lily questioned, confused as she looked from her aunt to the sheriff still standing behind his cruiser. “Why did you come here? Is something wrong? Does it have to deal with Jimby?” she then cried out, growing fearful for her fourteen-year-old cousin, Laura'a only child, James. It seemed like a likely reason considering how she had heard only bad things from Laura about the kids Jimby hung out with. She hoped against it, however, considering how she thought of him more as her younger brother than her cousin.

“Jimby's fine, sweetheart,” Laura quickly replied in a reassuring tone, reading the frightened look in Lily's eyes. “I just came before that man,” she said, glaring once again at Seth, “talked to you and got you fussed up, love. He hasn't asked you anything, has he? He hasn't told you anything?” she then questioned with desperation in her voice.

Lily shook her head with her brows furrowed even deeper with confusion. “He hasn't told me anything...yet, but he said he was just going to ask me questions about-”

“Never you mind about any of that, Lily. You just go on inside and let me deal with-”

“Ma'am, you are hindering a police investigation!” Seth suddenly cried out, gaining enough courage to come out from behind his car, though he still kept a good ten feet in between him and Laura. “To do so is a federal offensive that could result in you serving time,” he then said, looking firmly at Laura, though his hands were placed out in front of him in a gesture that basically stated that he wanted her to stay calm. “I have a right to question Miss Jones about-”

“Don't you dare say it!” Laura suddenly cried out, starting to advance towards him, though Lily stopped her by placing her hand against her aunt's chest. “She doesn't know anything about what you're trying to ask, so you had better just stop right there!” the woman went on in a warning tone.

Lily looked between the two with frustration just as she caught sight of Jessica opening the door and peering out at all of them with a confused expression of her own on her pale face. Lily thought she had probably just heard the commotion and had come out to see what was going on.

“Mrs. Sanders?” Jessica called out from the open doorway as she caught sight of Lily's aunt standing on the front lawn next to Lily.

“Oh, hello, Jessica. How are you, honey?” Laura called out to the redhead, her voice suddenly cheerful and kind unlike the tone she had used just a mere moment before with Seth. It was such a large and quick change that Lily almost feared that her aunt was bipolar.

Jessica slowly descended the front step as she cautiously glanced from Lilly to Seth and finally Laura with a puzzled look on her face. “Um...I'm fine, Mrs. Sanders,” she finally spoke out, replying to Laura's previous inquiry. “I didn't know that you were going to visit us. I would have gotten more yarn so that you and I could knit those scarves we promised to make a few months ago,” she then said, trying to keep her voice cheerful even though Lily could see complete bafflement in her friend's eyes.

“What's going on?” Jessica then questioned to anyone of the three who could answer. “It kinda sounds like a Fourth of July celebration out here. Is everyone okay?”

“We're fine, dear,” Laura replied quickly. “If you would just take Lily inside the house, I'll be in shortly.”

“No, Auntie Laura, I'm not going anywhere,” Lily objected firmly as she turned to face her aunt. “I want to know what's going on and why you're refusing to let the sheriff ask me a few measly questions,” she stated firmly as she looked between her aunt and the sheriff once again. “I just got done telling him that I've never been to Packer's Grove or even Pennsylvania before in my life before you came. I had already told him that he was wasting his time, so what are you so upset about?”

Laura frowned as the sheriff suddenly approached the two African American women with a puzzled expression on his own face. He was looking at Laura sternly.

“Why would she believe that she has never been to Pennsylvania?” he questioned firmly. “She lived there for nearly seven years. Surely, she should remember some of it,” he stated solemnly, glancing to Lily who was now looking at him like he had a second head on his shoulders. “And I highly doubt that she would be able to forget that her parents died there, either.”

The older woman sighed heavily as she reached out and took Lily's hand into her own. “You're just going to make her upset, young man. She doesn't remember any of her time in Pennsylvania, let alone what you're trying to dig into,” she said coldly to Seth.

“How could anyone possibly forget something like that?” he questioned doubtfully.

“She's blocked it out. She forced herself to forget,” Laura explained quietly, looking with gentle eyes at her niece who was still looking at Seth with complete perplexity in her eyes. Jessica merely remained silent as she just watched the whole dramatic event unfold before her.

Lily looked at her aunt with the same puzzled expression on her face. “What are you talking about? Why are you saying that I blocked something out? What is he trying to find out that I can't remember anymore?” she demanded quietly, her voice quivering. “What are you hiding from me?” she then cried out with tears suddenly building up in her yes as a cold fear began to grasp at her heart. “You're scaring me, Auntie Laura,” she then cried out in a voice that made her feel like she was seven again rather than twenty.

Laura shook her head solemnly. “It's best to just let it alone, sweetie. That's why I'm here. I wanted to protect you from the memories,” she said softly, reaching out to rub the back of Lily's hand that was still grasped in her own.

Lily shook her head and bowed her head as a single tear coursed down her mocha cheek. “What memories?” she whispered softly.

Unable to remain quiet any longer, Seth gazed at Laura with a pleading look in his own eyes. “I know you're trying to protect her, but I need for her to remember. Something like that night is happening again, and she could help us find out who's doing it.”

Lily looked up again. “Remember what?”

Seth turned his gaze to her and looked deeply into her eyes. He hesitated for a long moment, almost hesitating before replying with, “I need you to remember your parents' murder.”

Jessica spoke up for the first time in a while with her own frown on her lips. “Why would you possibly want her to remember something like that?” she asked with her own disbelief in her voice as she looked at the sheriff angrily as well.

“Because we believe that the person who killed her parents has killed another family, except there aren't any survivors, this time,” he replied sullenly, his eyes still glued to Lily's. “You're the only one who can help us find them...” he then paused and let out another heavy sigh. “Basically, you're our last hope.”

Chapter Two – An Unwelcome Message

 

Silence. There was a great deal of it following Sheriff Seth Lawrence's words. The three women standing around him who had been quite avid in their attempts to retrieve information before, suddenly did not know what could be said in response to such a statement. Laura opened her mouth and looked as though she was preparing to let out a good line of curse words at him again, but after looking to her niece at her side, she thought better of it and closed her mouth instead. Jessica had opened her mouth as well, around the same time that Laura had closed hers, ready to ask for some more information concerning the apparent murders of a family in Packer's Grove, Pennsylvania that had been similar the murders of her best friend's parents(a piece of knowledge that she had been completely oblivious to a moment before), but she also ended up just shutting her mouth with the sudden lack of courage to break the thickened silence. The only one who didn't really want the silence to end was Lily.

Seth, who had yet to take his eyes off of Lily's face since the silence had begun, waited-hoped-for anything from the girl, any kind of reaction: crying, shaking, even screaming. To get such a reaction could very well mean the beginning of an inevitable trip down memory lane, a trip that he desperately needed for her to take. He needed answers to the millions of questions that had yet to be answered concerning her parents' murders. She had been spared the interrogation fourteen years before because of how traumatizing the events had been for her, but Seth could not spare her that now, especially since the murders appeared as though they were going to be repeated again. Unfortunately, Lily Jones was not reacting at all the way he hoped. She wasn't crying anymore like she had been a moment before when she had been waiting for the answers that only he held. Now that she knew them...she didn't seem to be reacting at all.

Lily was staring at the ground, seemingly studying the dark green bag she had been carrying with her ever since she had gotten out of Jessica's car, but in reality, she was staring past the dark green material at the red notebook she had been doodling in during class. The doll sketch that had been forgotten ever since she had walked out of Professor Maren's office had suddenly came back into her mind, though it seemingly had nothing to do with the new revelation that had come from Sheriff Lawrence. Deep down, however, Lily knew that the doll had everything to do with what had been said.

“Sweetheart?” Laura gently called out to her, most likely uneasy at her long silence. “Sweetheart, I think you should go inside. You look pale,” she then whispered as she squeezed Lily's hand.

Lily finally looked up from the green bag at her feet and shook her head. “No, I want...” she began but then faltered as she came to realize that she really didn't know what she wanted. If she could have what she wanted, she would have preferred to have never met the man before her or heard anything he had said. She wanted the new information that had come from his lips to disappear from her head and from her heart, and she wanted to get back to the life she had been living once more. She wanted to forget again.

Again? She asked herself, suddenly pausing. Is it true? Did I force myself to forget my own parents' death? She paused again and felt a twinge of pain right behind her eye that had suddenly started to throb. Obviously, if you can't even remember the fact that your parents didn't just die but were murdered, she then thought to herself while pressing her thumb and pointer-finger to the bridge her nose to try and relieve the throbbing in her head.

After trying to get the pain under control, she slowly dropped her hand from her face and looked up again. Looking around at the three faces that were still looking at her expectantly, Lily came to realize that they were still waiting for her to finish. It appeared as though she would be the one in charge of the future decisions. It only seemed right since it was she who had to make the decision of whether or not she was going to help the sheriff. It was her decision whether or not she would try to remember or to keep on forgetting.

No, she cried out silently. Forgetting is not an option, and you very well know that.

“I want to help,” she finally spoke out firmly to all of them, though her words were directed more to Seth than to the women standing beside him. “Let's go inside and see if we can figure this out,” she then stated quietly and then turned, heading into the house without so much as a glance back to ensure that they were following her. She didn't need to look back to know that they would follow her-each of them for own reasons: Seth, because he was possibly going to get the answers he had driven from Pennsylvania to get, Laura, because she was going to try and protect Lily from getting hurt or falling back into a past that was so dark, she had forced herself to forget before, and Jessica because she was her best friend and knew that Lily was going to need her.

She felt like a zombie as she entered the house and hurried up the two flights of stairs that led to the floor that she and Jessica shared. She had unlocked the door and had already shed her bag with her sweater in her room by the time the others finally caught up with her-Jessica with her arm entwined through Laura's who looked a little winded from the walk.

“Oh...Oh, dear, I forgot how high the two of you live up,” the older woman commented as she slowly caught her breath again, sitting down on the only piece of real furniture in the living room, which was a purple leather loveseat.

Jessica had seated herself next to her while the sheriff, whom Lily could not help but notice looked a great deal better in the bright light emitted from the girls' lamp, pulled up the chair from the computer desk and faced it towards them with his back facing the door. Lily, the only one left without a proper seat, was left with the beanbag chair that she and Jessica had chose to buy instead of a more traditional recliner.

“We can trade,” Jessica suggested, preparing to rise from the chair.

Lily shook her head. “No, it's fine,” she said quietly and sat down on the large bean bag before the red-head could object.

With everyone seated, a silence once again fell amongst them, though this time it was filled with intensity due to the fact that everyone knew what was going to be discussed now. Jessica, Laura, and Seth all found themselves looking to Lily without really noticing it, considering that once again, they had left it up to her to decide where things should be headed.

Understanding the role that had been silently bestowed upon her, Lily let out a heavy sigh as she raised her eyes to look upon the sheriff whose eyes were still focused on her.

“You...” she began but once again faltered as she gathered up her courage again. “You said that there were murders that you were fairly certain resembled my parents' Sheriff Lawrence,” she stated quietly. “How exactly are you sure that they were done by the same person?”

Seth looked down at the girl sitting surprisingly rigid in the beanbag chair in front of him and saw the determined look in her eyes. He could see that she wanted information, but he could also see that she didn't really want to know it at the same time. Considering what her aunt had said about her forcing herself to forget, he suddenly became uncertain of whether or not he wanted to reopen that up for her again-case or no case. Seeing her face made him remember the look in his own father's eyes the days, even months, following the murder of the Jones couple. He suddenly remembered seeing the haunted, haggard face of his father, who, to this day, still went to therapy sessions on Thursdays because of the nightmares that he still had concerning the events that the girl before him had blocked from her own mind. Did he have a right to force those memories to resurface?

The sudden image of the Abbot girl, whom had been found by his deputy two days before, popped into his head, and he knew that he would ask Lily to try and remember. Even if she didn't want to, or even couldn't, he needed for her to try because as he had said before, she was their only hope in finding the people who they were more than 50% certain was responsible for the death of her parents and the Abbot family in Packer's Grove.

“I'm unable to give any information away concerning the murders, considering how we have yet to even find a suspect, but based on the files concerning your own parents' murders-that was left unsolved after fourteen years-we found that the bodies and the wounds inflicted upon each individual, save for the daughter, corresponded perfectly with your own parents' murders. Our certainty that it was not a copycat became apparent after we found consistencies with the murders that were never made known to the public or even a good number of the people who were part of the previous investigation team. The reason we came to you was because you would have been the only other person who could have possibly known all the details of the murders considering that you survived the first one without so much as a scratch,” he explained somberly. “So any insight or details that you may have remembered would be appreciated more than you could know.”

Jessica furrowed her brows and folded her arms in front of her chest. “But Laura just told you that Lily doesn't even remember,” she remarked uneasily. “And I know that she isn't lying because Lily hasn't even told me about her parents' being murdered, and I'm her bset friend.”

Seth nodded solemnly. “I am aware of the fact that Miss Jones has seemingly forgotten the events,” he stated quietly. “But the fact remains that she is the only one who may have seen the murderer. If she could possibly remember, she would be capable of pulling him out of a lineup or even finding him so that we can bring him to justice. It's a lot to ask, but we need her to remember whether she likes it or not,” he finished quietly.

Jessica's and Laura's mouths fell open at the same time, and Lily could just feel the temperature suddenly rise in the room as she felt the heated anger come off of both women. She knew both women well enough to know that they were outraged and knew that she needed to intervene before physical action was actually taken against the sheriff.

“I understand your reasoning, Sheriff, but up until a few moments ago, I was completely unaware of the fact that my parents were murdered,” she stated softly as she looked solemnly up into his face. “I know that it would be too much to ask for your trust me, considering that the lives of three people have been taken away, but I truly don't remember anything concerning their deaths...I can't even remember living in Packer's Grove, let alone being there during my parents' murders,” she then stated, forcing her voice to remain steady even though her heart felt like it was shriveling up in her chest as she spoke.

Seth nodded gravely. “I will say, right now, that I do think that you are sincere when you say that you have amnesia, but right now, I am desperate for any information you may have locked inside your brain. Like I said before, you are the only hope for this investigation, and I stick to those words because I still believe that you may have the details of those murders somewhere, Miss Jones. I'm just asking that you allow yourself to try and remember them for the sake of the investigation.”

Lily nodded slowly as she folded her arms across her chest and averted her eyes to the ground. “I promise you that I'll try, Sheriff Lawrence, but...I can't really promise you that it'll come. If I've suppressed it for so long, I don't really know what I can do that would just make them come back,” she stated quietly.

“If...If I showed you some pictures from your old house...do you possibly think that something might come up? From what I've heard of amnesia patients, the best thing that helps them, other than actually being in a familiar place, would be to see things from the past that was forgotten,” he said, though she could tell he was trying to restrict the hope that had started to rise within him. “Would you be willing to look at those pictures? I wouldn't show you any of the actual murder scenes, but I could show you pictures of your old room and the other rooms of the house. I'm sure that if you could just look at them, you would...”

He had started babbling on at this point, which caused Laura frown at him sternly, making him to drown off. He had been so caught up in the hopes of actually catching the murderer that he had failed to notice the sudden haggard look on Lily's face.

Laura turned to look at her niece with pleading eyes. “Are you sure that you want to do this, Lilian?” she whispered to her quietly.

Lily nodded her head slowly even though her head was filled with everything but certainty that she wanted to remember. “Obviously, I do, Aunt Laura. I want the person who killed Dad and Mom to pay for what they did to them....and what they did to me, too,” she then said solemnly, her voice now filled with a stronger conviction than before.

Laura shook her head solemnly. “God may have made you forget for a reason, Lily,” she commented forebodingly. “I mean, it wasn't just the murder you forgot when you were little, dear. You also forgot everything before the murder...and the few weeks that followed it as well.”

Lily shook her head in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

Laura sighed before going on. “I still remember those days clearly, so I can tell you right now that they weren't good days at all,” Laura explained-her eyes taking on a faraway look as she suddenly became lost in her memories. “You wouldn't eat, you wouldn't sleep, you wouldn't even cry those first few weeks after the murders. You just...You just acted like a rock, doing nothing but stare out the window of your room from your bed like a statue. The only thing you would say was that you wanted your doll. You wanted Anna or something like that, and when I told you that I didn't know what you were talking about, you just went back to being like a rock again, but unlike a rock, you were just getting weaker and weaker,” she finished sorrowfully.

“Anna?” Lily cried out softly. “You said that I asked...for Anna?”

Jessica's mouth had fallen open at this point as she stared at Lily with disbelief. “You were calling out for Anna in your sleep,” she said softly. “You said that you didn't remember saying it, but you did call that name out, I can remember it clearly.”

Laura frowned at Jessica and then at Lily. “What are you talking about, darling?” she demanded with that protective tone so strong in her voice that Jessica involuntarily leaned away from her.

Lily shook her head. “It was nothing, Aunt Laura,” she lied, knowing full well that she should tell her, but she didn't want that brought up now and shot Jessica a look that conveyed just that. “I just fell asleep in class and was mumbling a bunch of stuff,” she then explained, not knowing whether or not Laura would believe her.

“You said that I was getting weaker,” she said, trying to get her back on the topic at hand. “Is that when I finally forgot?”

Laura looked at her sternly as if she knew what Lily was doing, but she then looked down at her feet as she began to wring her hands in her lap. She was getting fidgety and Lily could see it clearly, which only meant one thing - something had to have happened back then that had made Laura uneasy because it was clearly expressed on her face now, and it was obviously concerning how she had suddenly forgotten the horrid fact that her parents had been murdered.

“Aunt Laura?” Lily prodded her gently.

Laura continued staring at her feet as more tears suddenly began to course down her face.

"We really thought that we were going to lose you. You had gotten so weak you eventually collapsed, so we rushed you to the hospital. The doctors said that you were so weak and they would have hook you up to an IV to keep you hydrated and fed. They thought that it was a psychological problem that was making you so weak. They thought that the outlook looked bleak,” she cried, her voice choking up as tears continued to course down her dark brown cheeks. “I don't think I ever cried so much as I did that night. I cried even harder for you than I did when I found out that I had lost my only sister. I truly thought that my heart would break right there and then.”

Lily reached out her hand and placed it on top of Laura's. Wrapping her fingers around those of her aunt's, she looked up into her face with so much love and adoration, the other two people in the room averted their eyes, suddenly feeling like they were intruding on such a personal family moment.

“I'm so sorry I caused you so much trouble, Aunt Laura,” Lily whispered. “I...I still don't remember any of it, but I know that I would never want to hurt you. I understand, now, why you don't want me to know,” she then said softly.

' Laura wiped the tears from her face with the side of her free hand and sighed. “You don't need to apologize, darling. I know full well that you didn't mean to do that to yourself. You just acted the way any child would when placed in such a horrible situation.”

“But how did I make it, then?” Lily asked softly, uncertain whether or not she should continue pushing for information. She could see the wariness and tiredness in Laura's eyes and did not want to push her any further if it hurt too much for her.

Laura continued wiping at her eyes but looked at Lily solemnly when she finally dropped it into her lap. “I...I don't really know what happened to change things, Lily. All I know is that it was so very fast that even the doctors were left stumped by it all. One night we thought that we were going to lose you and then the very next morning, I walked into your room and saw you sitting up with color in your cheeks and a smile on your face, asking me for breakfast,” she answered with a small shrug of her fairly broad shoulders. “Your uncle and I were just so happy that you were making a recovery that we really didn't care much of how it came to be. We thought that it was a blessing and we left it at that.”

Lily nodded as she slowly released her aunt's hand and folded both of her hands in her lap. “So...you don't know how I forgot my memories,” she stated rather than inquired, sullenly.

She knew that Laura was lying, and she knew that something else had happened, but she had seen in the older woman's eyes that the secret she was hiding from her was one that she was unprepared to voice to her alone, let alone to a small group of people-one of them being a near complete stranger.

“I'm sorry I can't tell you more,” Laura lied, the regret evident in her voice that only Lily could read after years of living with her. “I just wanted you to know what things were like before you tried to remember everything again, case or no case.”

Lily nodded again. “I understand, Aunt Laura,” she lied back. “And...I think that you're right. Maybe it would be best to keep those memories hidden,” she then remarked.

Laura beamed with such a relieved look in her face that Lily felt a tinge of her own regret at the fact that she was lying to the woman who had gone through so much for her. “I'm so happy to hear that, sweetheart,” she said and then looked to Seth. “But I am sorry about your case, Sheriff Lawrence. I do hope that you can find the person who did this, and I hope that you make them pay for what they did to my sister and her husband.”

Seth's face had fallen at this point, his face completely haggard and wary, aging a good five years in a matter of minutes. “I understand your position and yours as well, Miss Jones,” he said to Laura and Lily, taking his turn to bat at the lying game. “I just wish that I could try and convince the two of you how dire the situation sits, right now. Though, I had figured that this was a long shot to begin with, I will just say that I....I hope the best for you all,” he started but then finished with an unconvincing remark.

Lily looked up into his eyes and sighed. “I am sorry, Sheriff,” she responded solemnly. “If, by any chance, I do remember anything, is there a number where I can contact you?” she asked softly.

Seth nodded tiredly as he reached into the back of his plaid uniform slacks and pulled out a small square matchbook. “I'm staying at a nearby hotel for the night before I head on back to Packer's Grove, tomorrow morning. If you do have any information or wish to possibly reconsider,” he said this with a small glint of hope as well as pleading in his voice, “then you can call me here. I'm in room number 32A.”

“I just want to say I'm sorry again, Sheriff,” Laura chimed in at this point, with her voice slightly more cheerful and a great deal more civil now that she believed her niece was going to remain oblivious to her previous memories. “I wish you the safest drive to your hotel and the safest journey back to your home, tomorrow.”

He nodded at this and gave Lily another quick pleading look before he turned and walked out the door, leaving the three women alone in the room with the giant elephant that had filled it up a moment before.

Jessica was looking at Lily thoughtfully while Laura struggled to rise from her own chair, preparing for her own departure.

“Well...” she said with a small huff as she finally stood up, though she was a little short of breath from the exertion. “I think that it has been an extremely long day, and I'm sure that the two of you will want to get ready for bed as you should be,” she said with the smile still plastered to her round face. “I think I'll be heading back to Oxford before your uncle starts to worry about me.”

Lily rose to her own feet as well and wrapped an arm around her aunt in a half hug. “You should stay the night,” she offered softly. “I don't like the idea of you driving forty minutes by yourself on the highway at night. You can call Uncle Henry and say that you're heading home tomorrow morning and then you can sleep on my bed tonight.”

Laura waved her hand in a dismissing gesture. “I'll be fine, darling,” she said softly, though she voiced it with that same adoring tone she had used when she had found out that Lily wasn't going to try and remember. “Your uncle can't sleep without me with him, and I have to be there to wake James' lazy bones tomorrow or he'll sleep right through school,” she then remarked gently as she wrapped her own arm around Lily's shoulders.

Wrapping her other arm around her aunt, Lily embraced her aunt tightly. “Please drive safely, then,” she said softly as she hugged her firmly. “And call me when you get home no matter how late it gets so I know that you made it back safely,” she then ordered her firmly.

Laura grinned and turned to look at Jessica with a playfully wary look. “You wouldn't think that I was the one who raised her, would you?” she asked the redhead jokingly. “Such a caring girl I have, don't I?”

Jessica giggled lightly with a small shrug. She waited for Lily to disentangle herself from Laura before she then, too, hugged the woman tightly as well.

“You'll have to answer me, too, if you don't drive safely,” the redhead whispered as she, too, finally stepped back from the woman.

Laura made another waving gesture with her hand. “The two of you are such sweethearts,” she remarked as she beamed at the both of them. “I love you, both, and expect both of you to be over this weekend for Sunday dinner, you hear?”

Both girls nodded their acceptance and then waved together as Laura Sanders finally turned and made her way out their door, making her way back out to her car that she had hastily exited a little over an hour before. She stopped and waved at both girls who were watching for her at their window as she stepped out onto their front lawn. Blowing both of them kisses, she then walked the rest of the way to her car and got in. Both girls continued to watch her from the window until the car had finally disappeared down the road that it had made such a noisy entrance in before finally retreating into their apartment.

As soon as they had walked back into the living room, Jessica looked at Lily with open doubtfulness in her eyes.

“You lied, didn't you?” she cried out accusingly. “You remembered something before. Why else would you have called out your old doll's name? You're just hiding it from her because you're planning on doing something about it, aren't you?”

Lily plopped down on the loveseat and looked up at her roommate solemnly. “I have no idea what you're talking about,” she then answered with feigned ignorance, knowing that Jessica could read her like a book.

“You are so full of crap,” the redhead called her out coolly.

Lily shrugged. “If you don't believe me, then what do you think that I could possibly be planning, then?”

Jessica folded her arms in front of her chest stubbornly. “You're going to try to remember everything and you're going to call the hot cop so that he can solve the case and come and thank you in a very creative way,” she said with a suggestive wave of her brows.

Lily rolled her eyes, though a telling smile had suddenly crossed her lips. “Fine, you got me, but not completely,” she relented. “I did lie to Aunt Laura, but only because I know she would probably have a heart attack if she found out what I was really planning on doing,” she said conspiratorially.

The redhead brightened up immediately as she sat down right next to Lily. “What are you planning on doing?” she asked pleadingly. “You have to count me in, whatever you do.”

Lily leaned in so that her face was right in front of Jessica's and glanced at the door as if to make sure that no one would interrupt her before she whispered quietly to her, “I'm going to Packer's Grove, tomorrow, and I'm going to force myself to remember the murders,” she whispered with a sudden seriousness.

Jessica, still grinning, smiled even wider. “So you do want to help hot sheriff!” she said excitedly. “I'm so going with you.”

Lily shook her head with her face still solemn. “I'm not going to remember for him, Jess,” she remarked with a sudden coldness in her voice that caused her best friend's smile to vanish from her lips. “I want to remember because I have the weirdest feeling that I'm the only one who can find out who killed my parents and that family,” she finished quietly and looked at her best friend worriedly. “Does that sound crazy to you?”

Jessica shook her head, but the look in her blue eyes told a completely different story.

The dark girl sighed as she brought her knees to her chest and propped her chin on top of them. “I still don't know how or why I forgot that my parents were murdered,” she said with her eyes suddenly growing distant. “All I know is that it bugs me that the person who did it was never caught or brought to justice, and there's a nagging feeling that the reason they didn't pay was because I forgot everything.”

Reaching out and wrapping a comforting arm around her, Jessica frowned. “You were six, Lily. You did the only thing that would keep you sane,” she whispered gently.

Shaking her head again, Lily wiped at the tear that had slipped down the side of her face. “I'm furious, Jess. I'm furious at myself for forgetting and I'm pissed at the one who did this. The only thing I can think of, right now, is how badly I want to catch them and make them pay,” she cried out through clenched teeth.

Jessica rubbed Lily's shoulder in another attempt to soothe her. “No one blames you, Lils. Anyone would feel the same way as you in this situation...if something like this ever really happened outside of a thriller novel,” she then said, surprisingly bringing a smile to both girls' faces.

“Are you still with me?” Lily questioned quietly as she looked up into the blue eyes of her best friend.

Jessica frowned. “Well, If I really understand what you're trying to say, which I'm not sure I do, I take it that you're wanting to go to the small town where you were raised but forgot, where your parents died-or were rather killed, so that you can remember the person who did it so that you can possibly make them suffer or even...kill them,” she itemized with a furrow of her eyebrows. “Did I get that right?”

Lily squinted her eyes bashfully and slowly nodded. “Yeah, I sound crazy, now, don't I?”

Jessica squeezed Lily gently as she grinned and nodded her head. “You do...but I guess that just makes me extra crazy because...I'm in.”

 

 

 

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As soon as Lily verified that Jessica was serious about her plan, she told the redhead to go and pack her things for the trip while she went into her room and called Seth to tell him that they were going to be accompanying him to Packer's Grove. She wasn't going to tell him what her true intentions were for going, of course, but she had figured that she would need his help along the way in order for her to be able to have access to the information that would trigger her memories and help her remember that night that she had managed to block out all those years before. She just hoped that he would still be willing to help after the charade she had put on in front of her aunt.

Reaching into her bag, for her phone, Lily suddenly felt the plastic cover of her notebook and quickly pulled her hand back out as if she had been burned by it. The sudden flash of memory of the doll and the sudden revelation from her aunt that had revealed the strange doll's part in her past came back to her mind and sent a shiver up her spine as she once again reached into her bag and pulled out the notebook from inside, laying it on top of her desk. Her fingers were trembling on the cover as she felt herself hesitant to look upon the face of the creation she had made in class. Somehow, she knew that the doll had its part to play, and yet the ridiculousness of such a thing happening made her think that she was just being childish and silly, which made it easier for her to open the notebook completely.

As soon as she had flipped to the page where she had sketched the doll, Lily suddenly felt her like her heart was about to explode out of her chest and felt a cry come up her throat that she just managed to keep in. Her eyes, however, remained glued to the crude drawing she had made in class or rather the blank space in the margin that she had sworn was empty when she had closed it before. Written on the page in a foreign, child-like handwriting that her hand had somehow written without her knowledge was a message that was addressed to her.