GRAVESTONE.

Travis Thrasher.

I hear her voice calling my name.

The sound is deep in the dark.

-"A Forest" by The Cure.

Preface.

Evil wears a mask, and I can finally see its face.

The rushing waters surround us as sunlight plays tricks on my eyes. Gold glitters in these woods, damp from the earlier rain, foggy from the temperature change. My legs splash in the cool stream that comes up to my shins.

He's standing on the edge where the water drops fifty feet to the jutting rocks below. He faces me with his sick smile. "What are you going to do now, Chris?"

I'm no longer scared, no longer running away.

"It's done," I say. "You're done."

The voice talking is not mine. The hand holding this knife doesn't belong to me.

Chris Buckley is gone. Long gone.

It's been six months, but I can still taste it in my mouth. The anger, the bitterness, the absolute hunger for revenge.

You don't have to do this, not here, not like this.

He smiles. "What do you think you're going to do?"

"Whatever you're doing to this place and these people-it's over. Right now."

His laugh twists into my skin.

"There are things you need to know," he says.

"I know enough."

"You know only what you're supposed to know. That's why I brought you here."

"I followed you."

"I could break your neck if I wanted to."

I smile. Because something in me says he's wrong. Something in me believes that if he wanted me dead, I'd be dead already.

"You're not going to do anything to anybody ever again," I say.

"So what happens after you kill the Big Bad Wolf?" he asks. "There are others lurking in these woods and in this town. I'm just the obvious one. Killing me achieves nothing."

My hand shakes, but I steady it as I walk closer to him. Streaks of sunlight circle us like a laser show.

You can't really do this, Chris, no matter how you feel and how right it is.

"So the pastor stands at Marsh Falls," he says. "How ironic. How fitting. And how utterly predictable."

"You killed her," I say to him.

He laughs and looks at me through his short glasses, and I want to take them and break them just like I want to break him.

"Six months and you're still seething," Pastor Marsh says. "That's good."

"People are going to know."

"Haven't these past months taught you anything? You're smart, but you're not that smart. You're not here because you're some bright young star chosen because of your intelligence, Chris. You're really rather unremarkable, to tell you the truth."

I inch closer.

He's now about five feet away from me. He looks behind him, then glances back at me.

This is the first time I think I see fear on his face.

Because maybe, just maybe, he doesn't see fear in mine.

One more step.

The echoes of the falls smother all other sounds.

Hell is not dying, Chris. It's knowing and living.

Whoever said that was right.

I think whoever said that is standing before me right now.

"Do you want to know the truth?" he asks.

"I know the truth. The new church. I know where it is. I found the folders. The pictures. I have proof. Everybody is going to know about Solitary. Everybody is going to know what's really going on."

"Have you ever been surprised, Chris?"

"You're a sick man."

"Have you ever believed in something with all your heart, only to discover it was an ugly little lie?"

"Shut up."

"Everything you think you know about this town and about your mother and her family-all those things are pretty little lies covering up the ugly, awful truth."

"No."

"Oh, yes, Chris. Maybe this has all been some elaborate test."

I move closer.

"Maybe we never wanted Jocelyn. That sweet but dirty little thing you professed to love."

I curse at him.

"Maybe all we ever wanted was you."

My hand is steady and I know it's because I've used a weapon before and I'll do it again. Even though a gun's a lot different from a knife, it doesn't matter.

I'm not Chris Buckley because that boy died on New Year's Eve along with something far more precious.

Stop before it's too late.

"We're watching, but all you see is the scene before you," Pastor Marsh says. "You don't see anybody but a face you hate and fear and a boy you hate and fear even more."

"I'm going to kill you."

He smiles. "If you do, Chris, we will watch and applaud and await."

Then the pastor opens his arms as if giving the benediction at church.

And that's when I plunge the twelve-inch hunting blade deep into the place where I imagine his heart might have been at one time.

I see Jocelyn's face as I move the knife and feel the softness of skin and hear the gasping, choking breath as I thrust down.

I let go and see him looking surprised. Not in horror, but almost in utter delight.

"You want to know the truth, Chris?" a draining, coughing voice asks.

And then he tells me.

And suddenly I realize that he's right and I'm wrong.

I realize this just as he staggers over the falls and drops below.

1. The State of a Sixteen-year-old.

Snow.

That's what the new day brings.

A white, cold cover-up.

Complete and total isolation.

Icy fingertips on the window.

And hot, raging anger.

The second day of the new year, and I'm ready to wake up from this nightmare and find myself back in Illinois. Where's my buddy Brady's game room with all the latest games and the ability to connect with twenty other players online? I can only connect with a dog that looks like a cotton ball dropped in chocolate. Everything else is impossible. Starting with Mom.

She looks like a survivor of a car crash. I didn't want to talk with her yesterday, but when morning came and she eventually woke up and I made an effort to communicate, I knew that something was wrong with her, too. Maybe she watched her own personal New Year's Eve bonfire and sacrifice. Maybe she got a call from Dad saying he wanted her back. Maybe she realized the mess the two of us are in and then proceeded to drink herself to oblivion.

I was going to tell her, but not in her condition of walking unconsciousness. Instead I made her coffee and waited until she could listen without dozing off into Slumberland.

Our phones don't work. Of course. Mom says they've been out ever since the ice falling last night turned to snow. If she's so groggy now, how can she remember what it was like in the middle of the night? All I can remember is the tapping on the window and Midnight snuggling next to me. I can't imagine the dog enduring a storm like this in the deserted barn where Jocelyn was keeping her.

Sure you can, buddy. You can imagine anything now. Anything.

The Internet doesn't work either. Yet our cable does.

I'd try a cell, but we haven't made it that far. Baby steps. Like my license. Like my sanity. Like my soul.

Midday, and the weather reports are wrong. This ice-turning-into-snow storm has tripled expectations, at least in the wonderful little vacation getaway of Solitary. Come for the weekend, and you'll leave scarred and changed for life! Come for life, and you'll discover that life's not exactly worth living.

I stepped out on the deck and saw a good seven or eight inches.

That was hours ago.

That means any thought of driving is no good.

No phone, no Internet, no car.

And no Mom.

I'm imprisoned with this rage inside me.

Still in shock, still out of my mind in awesome terror, still in this little cabin that once belonged to Uncle Robert before he disappeared.

A voice reminds me that oh, yeah, I'm still sixteen.