Rachel giggles. She wants to play.

The monster is beckoning.

"Stand closer to me. Watch me." He laughs.

"No. We should go back."

"It's just a game."

Rachel pulls her hand away; the warmth of it vanishes. She goes to him.

"Rachel, no, don't."

He turns, takes two steps. "Guess what I'm going to do. Watch." He disappears off the cliff before them.

"He's dead!"

Rachel stands there, giggling. Peering over the cliffside. Giggling! It is all horribly wrong!

Now Rachel is Paige standing there.

Emily screams...and screams...until-- "Emily!" Hands on her shoulders. "Emily!"

The FBI agent. Bowman. In her tent, shaking her.

"It's OK, Emily. Wake up Emily!"

Her heart is throbbing against her chest. Her hands are moist with sweat, fear. Bowman is rocking her as she weeps.

"I think I am losing my mind. It's happening again. I cannot--"

Others have come, murmuring concern outside the tent. Everything's fine. A bad dream, Bowman tells them.

"I cannot take it anymore....If I lose Paige, I--"

"Shh-shh. You need rest. Talk it out. Tell me, whatever it is you're carrying inside. It's OK Emily. It's time to tell someone. Shh, it's OK. It's time."

A game. That was how it began. A game with a monster.

Emily struggle to talk. It was so painful. It hurt so much. In the weeks, months, and years after Rachel's death, she was gripped by a dark obsession to understand what her sister's final moments were like.

Did she suffer?

My Sun Ray.

Her sister's death destroyed everything. While she searched to understand why it had happened, her mother and father withdrew into prisons of pain, leaving her under a cloud of accusation.

"Why didn't you save her?"

The wound would not heal. About a year after the trial, her father confronted her with the rumor slithering through Buckhorn Creek "It's going around that you lied about what happened out there that day."

Lied? No.

He was working in the corral on his horse, a big bay that seemed uneasy.

"I told the truth, Daddy."

"That's not what I'm hearing. People are saying you pushed your sister."

"You pushed your sister."

His words had burned like a branding iron into her soul.

"It's a lie!"

"Is it?"

His horse was snorting and jerking. He yelled at it, "Settle down there!"

The blow of her father's words brought her to her knees.

"You're my father. Why are you saying such a horrible thing?"

"Because a man has been sentenced to die, goddamn you!"

Goddamn you. Was that directed at her? Or his horse?

It began bucking wildly, throwing her father from his saddle, the animal's hind legs kicking. It's hoof like a sledgehammer to his temple, killing him instantly in front of her, his accusation hanging in the air, rising up to the mountains with her terror.

"Daddy!"

Her mother rushing from the house, throwing herself on the soft earth. "Winston! Winston! Oh sweet Jesus!" Her eyes turning to Emily, filling with horror, hurt, blame.

It was as if her father had bequeathed his suspicions to her mother. He died, never knowing the truth; while her mother lived, refusing to hear it, taking her first drink the night after they buried him next to Rachel.

Not long after, her mother sold their ranch. Their perfect, happy home nestled against the Rocky Mountains. They moved to Kansas City, where she changed their names.

Natalie Ross no longer existed, except as a headstone for a beautiful life that died in Montana.

She was now Emily Smith.

"We'll start over. New people. New life. No past."

They moved into a stifling apartment above a shoe store. Her mother waitressed in a small diner six blocks from a school and they never spoke of Montana. Sometimes at night, when she heard the chink of glass, Emily would slip from her bed to see her mother, sitting in the dark, talking to her dead sister and father.

They stayed in Kansas City for a year or so, then moved to Toronto. Changing their names again; her mother drinking more. Next, it was Dallas, then Miami. They fell into a haze of moves, staying in one city long enough to get bus fare to take them to the next.

There was one night she heard her mother muttering incoherently about the country attorney debating whether to reopen the case.

Finally, her mother took her to San Francisco where they stayed with her mother's sister, Willa. But that didn't last. One morning, her mother was gone. Vanished. A year or so later, Emily's aunt got a telephone call from Toronto. Emily's mother had died of a heart attack in a women's shelter, clutching pictures of her family taken when her daughters were little.

Her aunt claimed her mother's body. The service was in Buckhorn Creek, Montana, where they buried her next to her father and Rachel. Emily refused to attend the funeral. She stayed in San Francisco, staring at the Pacific Ocean, thinking her parents died suspecting she was responsible for Rachel's death.

She was sixteen years old. She was alone.

No one knew the truth about what happened that day.

Except the monster.

"You can tell me, Emily." Bowman was listening. "You have to tell somebody before it is too late."

Emily stared into the night, forcing herself to go back to the butterflies that led them to the cliff.

The monster.

He is just there. Waiting. Dirty jeans, boots, layers of shirts, frayed. In his teens. Tall, brown hair pasted to his head. Small, dark animal eyes hidden deep in a face lined and scarred so badly it looks like he is in pain. His smile reveals jagged brown teeth that have never known a toothbrush.

She knows his name.

Isaiah Hood.

The kids in town speak of him as if he were a myth, a spirit in the Rockies. Some sort of psycho. His father has hooks for hands. They live in a shack in the forest near the Blackfeet Reservation and the Canadian border. People rarely see him. But on this trip there are whispers around the campfire that he is out there.

And anyone with any sense knows, you do not ever go near him.

In fact, no one in Buckhorn Creek wants anything to do with the Hoods. They are regarded with scorn for what they are, pitiful.

But the butterflies lead her and Rachel to him that day, stopping them dead in their tracks.

"Hello. How about a game? Want to play a game?"

Tightening her hold on Rachel's hand.

"We should go back."

Rachel giggles. She wants to play.

"No," he says. "Stand closer to me. Watch."

"No. We should go back."

Rachel pulls away, steps closer to him. Closer to the cliff.

"It's just a game. Guess what I'm going to do. Watch."

He turns and steps off the cliff before them.

"Oh no! He's dead!"

Rachel is peering over the cliffside. Giggling! Looking back at Natalie.

"It's just a game, Lee, see?" She's laughing.

He's sitting cross-legged on a large flat ledge, a few feet below, grinning at having fooled her into thinking he had jumped from the mountain.

"OK, very funny. We have to get back. Time to go, Rachel."

He stands. "No. The little one wants to play. Come on. You try it, Rachel. I'll catch you down here."

"OK." Rachel giggles nervously. Counting one-two-three. Jumping from the higher cliff. "No, Rachel!" She is reaching for Rachel's hand but she is not fast enough. Rachel is now on the lower ledge with him. Laughing.

"Don't worry," he says. "I've got her."

They are sitting on the sun-warmed ledge. It is as big as a large bed.

She extends her hand to her sister.

Time to go, Rachel. We're not supposed to play with you, Isaiah Hood."

Hood's smile disappears and his face darkens, cold black eyes burning into hers.

"You think you're better than me and my dad, don't you?"

"No, that is not what I mean," she lies.

"All of you in town think you're better than us. We hear it. We know it."

"Rachel, come on. We have to go."

"Not yet," he says. "I say when you can go. One more game."

He stands with animal swiftness. Takes Rachel by the wrists, pulling her arms straight up--"Owww"--lifting her. He is so tall, strong, baring his dirt-brown teeth. Scarred face grimacing. She is a small doll in his grip, light and easy to play with.

"Lee!"

She jumps to the ledge. "Let her go! You can't have her!"

"Guess what I'm going to do."

Holding her, he inches to the ledge, letting her toes brush the rock.

He is laughing.

"God, please! Let Rachel go. Please!" She pounds on his arms. Futile. They are so strong.

"Think you're all better than us, like you just walk on air, my daddy says."