like the posters very much. But they covered the dullness of the walls, just as the clothes she wore—mostly black, decorated with metal studs and large ugly pins—were meant to cover up the aching emptiness she felt inside.
Except that Kelly wasn’t empty anymore.
She could almost feel the baby she knew was growing inside her.
Where had it come from?
Could the man have put it there?
Could he have taken her one night, creeping up on her when she was asleep?
Wouldn’t she have known it? Wouldn’t she have wakened, feeling him inside her?
No, she wouldn’t.
She would have shut it out of her mind, refusing to recognize what was happening, for had she allowed herself to experience it, she would have screamed.
Screamed, and wakened her parents, and then they would have seen how crazy she was.
No, she must have kept silent, must have retreated into sleep while the man took her. But she knew he’d been there, knew what he’d done.
She’d known it a month ago, when she’d begun being sick every morning, fighting not to let herself throw up, terrified of letting her parents know what had happened to her.
Last week, when she’d missed her period, Kelly had begun planning what she was going to do.
She wasn’t sure where the idea had come from. But now that the time had come, and she was alone in the house, and had made up her mind, she had the strange idea that she’d always known it would end this way—that some night, when she could no longer stand the sight of herself, she would end it all.
She left her room, not bothering to turn off the light, and entered the tiny bathroom that separated her room from her parents’. She stood in the gloom for a few minutes, staring at the image in the mirror. Only half her face was lit, illuminated by the dim light that filtered from the hall. She could see one of her eyes—the eyes her mother insisted were green, but that she knew were only a pale brown.
The eye stared back at her from the mirror, and she began to have the peculiar sensation that it wasn’t her own reflection she was seeing at all. It was someone else in the mirror, a girl she barely knew.
A stranger.
A stranger whose features looked older than her own sixteen years, whose skin seemed to have taken on the pallor of age, despite her youth.
She saw a lifeless face, devoid of the joy and eagerness of youth. The face of the orphan she truly was, despite what the parents who had adopted her tried to tell her.
And then, over her own darkened shoulder, another image appeared.
It was the man. The man Kelly had seen so often in her dreams but only caught glimpses of when she was awake. Now she saw him clearly.
He was old, his loose skin hanging in folds, his eyes sunken deep within their sockets. He was smiling at her, his lips drawn back to reveal yellowing teeth.
Kelly gasped and spun around.
Except for herself, the room was empty.
She reached out, switched on the light, and instantly the gloom was washed away. She stood still for a moment, her heart pounding, but then her pulse began to ease. Finally, controlling her panic with the same grim will with which she had hidden her madness for the last few years, she turned back to the mirror once more.
He was still there, leering at her, his aged, ugly face contorted, the claws that were his fingers reaching for her throat.
“No!” Kelly screamed. “No more!”
Her hands clenched into fists and she smashed them into the mirror above the sink. The mirror shattered and most of the glass dropped away. But a single shard, razor-sharp and shaped like a sword, remained where it was.
In the bladelike fragment Kelly could still see her ancient tormentor, mocking her, laughing at her, reaching out for her.
Another scream rose in her throat, but this time there were no words. Only a final cry of anguish echoed in the house as Kelly reached out and snatched the fragment of glass from its frame.
Clutching it in both hands, she stared at it as if mesmerized, then raised it up. Now. Now the time had come. In one swift motion she plunged the blade into her belly, determined to end the life of the monster that was growing inside her.
End its life, and end her own.
“Well, that was a major waste of time,” Mary Anderson sighed as she settled herself into the