The Haunting of Secrets by Shelley R. Pickens

that Aimee is joking, Dejana laughs.
If Aimee can be sarcastic, that means she’s not too upset about
Leah witnessing her enveloped in a memory. “You missed the part
where you almost threw up on my table. But, I’m willing to look
past it.”
    In the chair next to Aimee, Leah’s fidgeting
as she looks at her, the shock from the encounter rendering her
speechless. Dejana is about to take pity on Leah and send her on
some fool’s errand when Leah finally finds her voice. “Well, that
was fun. Can you never do it in front of me again, please?”
    “I’ll try,” Aimee concedes. “As long as you
can keep what just happened a secret. Can you do that, Leah?” Aimee
asks, her voice filled with trepidation.
    “Of course I can. I don’t want people
thinking I’m nuts too.”
    “Good, cause we have work to do.” Aimee flies
out of her chair, desperate to get moving. “I saw the girl he
picked out for his next victim. It’s her,” Aimee says, pointing to
the computer screen. “And we have to hurry, because it won’t be
long before he grabs her.”
    Dejana gently pushes Aimee back down into the
seat and takes both of her hands into her own.
    “We don’t have to save her. He can’t hurt her
anymore. She’s gone. She died in the bombing at the school. Leah
found her obituary. She was one of the thirty-seven.”
     

 
    Chapter
Eighteen
    ~ Evil Rising ~
     
    He is ecstatic, dare he even say jubilant,
from the success of his recent venture to take care of the little
problem that resulted from the bombing. It was so easy to steal the
locker list with combinations from the school’s secretary. It’s no
coincidence that she’s his neighbor. He put a sleeping pill into
her Earl Grey tea she unfailingly drinks every night before bed.
Considering the amount of whiskey she adds to her tea as well, he
was sure she didn’t notice the addition of the narcotic. Besides,
he’s so easy to trust no one would ever guess he is capable of
doing such a thing. Everyone is under his spell and he’s one hell
of a magician. It doesn’t matter that he was more comfortable in
the other school; the bomb was just a minor setback. Once he found
out from his unwitting spy at the county office the location of the
building where school would be held while the former was under
construction, he spent days staking it out. Some may think him
insane to invest so much time, but it was simply a means to an end,
an integral part of his overall plan. He had to know every crack
and crevice of this building; they must be his to dominate as much
as the puppets that lackadaisically walk around from class to
class, mistakenly under the assumption that they are in control of
their lives.
    He saw her run, saw the fear in her eyes. The
only thing that could have made the moment more perfect was if he
spilled her blood. How he longed for his knife, to feel it enter
her, feel the blood pool up around his hand. But, restraint is the
key right now. It’s the terror, the fear he longs for more so than
the actual kill itself. The torture is what arouses him, what feeds
the monster within him. It must be the blood of an angel, someone
worthy of him. He longed to go after her, but he couldn’t. He had
to stay at lunch and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was
happening; convince his friends surrounding him that he doesn’t
have a care or need in the world. They would never know his true
thoughts, or know that he was thinking of gutting her across the
middle and bathing in her blood. If they ever knew the truth about
him, they would run, too.
     
     

 
    Chapter
Nineteen
    ~ Burned ~
     
    I am lying in my own bed, despondent and
disheartened. I feel useless. I am no closer to finding the killer
than when he first touched me. I pull my purple comforter over my
head in a futile attempt to ward off the world, the memories
swimming in my head. I’m just about to give in to my uselessness
and depression when I hear a noise at the window. Sighing heavily,
I