Someone lives in that room, probably one of the old nuns. She was just walking past the window, lingering there with her Bible and rosary in hand, for crying out loud!
Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to freak yourself out?
She had no answer to that one, but she cut the beam of her flashlight and looked up at the window where the shadow passed and the lights were suddenly extinguished.
Either the person inside was going to bed, had left the room, or had decided to use the darkness to hide him or herself.
Now you’re really getting paranoid. Turn around and go home. Sit by the fire, have a glass of wine or decaf coffee with a shot of Kahlua and a dollop of whipped cream. Treat yourself, you’re alone tonight. No motherly responsibilities.
And still she walked forward, switching the flashlight back on, heading through the entrance to the maze where the walls of shrubbery closed in more tightly, the untended branches brushing against her shoulders, the oddly shaped topiary untrimmed and grotesque. The beam of her flashlight bobbed ahead, offering weak illumination.
What’re you doing out here? she asked herself, understanding subconsciously that this was simply something she had to do, an urge she couldn’t ignore, a driving force that made her squint against the rain and darkness. She caught sight of an old bench, then a fountain, and with each step in the squishy grass, she felt another drip of fear in her blood, an eerie feeling she tried to ignore.
You’re just on edge because you know you’re trespassing, that someone at the convent could see your light and put in a call to the police. What would you tell them, hmm? That you wanted to visit the place where the boy you loved in high school was murdered?
Turning one corner, she stopped short, a wall of branches cutting off her progress.
Odd, she thought, wondering at her misstep. She was certain she’d followed the correct path. A cold blast of wind cut through the heavy shrubbery and touched the back of her neck.
Turn around and go back to the car. For God’s sake, what’re you trying to prove?
Her skin was chilled, but she was going to finish this, whatever the hell it was. Shining the light on the ground, she did an about-face, following her own footprints where the grass was mashed down until she came to another forty-five-degree corner that she didn’t expect. Walking briskly, she found another dead end, another wall of foliage.
“Crap.” She must be more tense than she realized, and now she was more determined than ever. She backtracked again, retracing her steps. At the entrance, she shined her light on the edge of the maze and, seeing slightly smaller, less dense bushes interspersed with the older arborvitae and laurel, realized that the hedge had changed. The maze she’d known by heart had been restructured, and in the darkness, the newer shrubs changing the pathway were already nearly twenty years old and hard to distinguish from the older vegetation.
Perhaps the old tree where Jake had been killed had been cut down. There had been talk of making it a memorial, but Mother Superior had refused the suggestion, not wanting the tragic incident to mar the reputation of the campus or become a destination for the morbidly curious.
“We need to downplay this painful situation and pray for God’s understanding,” Mother Superior had told the student body on the Monday after Jake’s death. “The police have finished their investigation of the grounds and there is no need to sensationalize what happened, nor should we encourage those who are obsessed or curious about the tragedy. Those who want to pay their respects to the poor boy can do so at his grave site…”
It all came back to Kristen now as she walked along the hedgerows, trying to second-guess the new pathways. It took her nearly half an hour before she made the right succession of turns. Suddenly, she was in the center of the maze, the old oak tree still standing, branches naked and spreading in the gloomy night.
Kristen’s heart squeezed as she shined her light over the ground littered by branches. The statue of the Madonna was unscathed, bleached white as ever, hands lifted as if in supplication to God.
An unworldly chill ran through Kristen’s blood as clouds blocked the moon and rain peppered the ground. “Dear God,” she whispered, her hands clenching tight. Her throat closed and she felt hot tears mingle with the cold rain sliding down her cheeks. She imagined Jake as she’d last seen him, slumped and dead, dressed in his rented tuxedo, shot through the heart with an arrow, for God’s sake.
Cupid’s Killer. The newspapers had run that one into the ground.
In her mind’s eye, Kristen once again witnessed Lindsay at Jake’s feet, her ice blue dress dark with the stain of Jake’s blood, her face white with fear, mascara running in black rivulets from her eyes. And then the accusation.
“Why, Kristen? Why did you kill him?”
What had possessed Lindsay that night? Why had she thought Kristen had anything to do with Jake’s death?
Lindsay had never given her a straight answer, not even the next week at school when Kristen had asked her about it.
It had been in the senior hallway, a short first-floor and locker-lined corridor that was wedged between the library and the business offices.
Kristen had found Lindsay struggling to open her locker. “Why did you accuse me of having something to do with Jake’s death?” When Lindsay didn’t immediately respond, she pressed, “Lindsay?”
Lindsay yanked on the combination lock, but the locker held fast. “I…I didn’t know what I was saying. I was in shock. Crazy.” She rattled the locker door more furiously, trying to force the combination lock to spring open. It didn’t budge. “I was upset.”
“We all were. But that doesn’t explain why you blamed me.”
“Okay, I know. I’m sorry!” She was twirling the combination wildly again, her fingers trembling. “What do you want from me? I found Jake there in the middle of the maze, an arrow though his heart. And blood everywhere. I knew…I mean, I knew he was dead. It was like”-she stopped tugging at the lock long enough to stare at Kristen with round, panicked eyes-“it was like I saw his soul leave, Kris. Swear to God, the life went out of his eyes as I got to him and…and I knew his soul had escaped, right in front of me…Oh, God…I was so freaked, so scared, so out of my damned mind and you were the next one who showed up and…and…and he was your date that night. You were supposed to be with him! At the dance. When you knew I was still in love with him!”
“You were broken up,” Kristen fought back, feeling a little niggle of guilt. “Jake and I had always been friends.”
Lindsay made a disparaging sound, then calmed a little. “Apparently you wanted more than that, but…Oh, crap, what does it matter? He’s dead, isn’t he? Nothing’s going to change that.”
“I had nothing to do with his murder.”
Lindsay sighed. Blinked back tears. “As I said, Kris, I went nuts. That’s all. I was crazy. Sorry!” Her chin trembled as she turned back to her locker and added in a whisper, “I don’t know what more I can say.”
Lindsay finally managed to work the combination, the lock sprang, and the door opened. She grabbed her English textbook, but not before Kristen got a glimpse of the inside of the locker door where pictures of Jake Marcott were plastered: snapshots, yearbook photos, his senior picture decorated with ticket stubs and red hearts cut out of shiny red paper.
Shocked, Kristen took a step backward, and the sounds of the normal noises in the hallway between classes, the clatter of shoes on the shiny floors, the clang of slamming lockers, the rumble of laughter and conversation, the buzzing of the tardy bell all were muted, as if those familiar noises came from a very long distance.
Only when Sister Clarice touched her on the shoulder, her black habit rustling with her quick strides, and told her to “get to class, chop-chop,” had Kristen snapped back to the present and hustled up the stairs at the end of the hall, hurrying to slide into her seat in the physics lab before cranky old Mrs. Crandall took roll.