Becoming Juliet - Paula Marinaro Page 0,14

a flashlight to make his way through the wooded area, he had complained more than once that the cheap plastic torch did little to cut through the pea soup like mist.

Lucy pulled some of her things together as fast as she could; her purse, her phone and her computer all went into her backpack. She stuffed her feet in boots and wrapped herself in a black hoodie. Because Kenny and Lucy had not known quite where they would end up, they had taken their savings out of the bank and had kept it with them in a locked box along with the money from their severance pay. Without giving it a second thought, Lucy shoved the box into the backpack and ran down the hall. She had seen far too many horror movies where the victim would take time to pack while the killer was beating down the door. She was not going to make that mistake.

Lucy grabbed the keys to the jeep from the kitchen table and ran out the back door to the garage. She kept her head down and her body hugged tight against the jeep as she heard Kenny approach the north side of the house. It wasn’t long before Lucy heard him shout and begin to bang against the door calling for her to let him in. Lucy waited with a pounding heart and the key in the ignition until she heard him go around to the farthest corner of the house. She used the sound of his shouting to muffle the noise of the engine igniting. With a pounding heart, Juliet put the Jeep in gear and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. As she careened out the garage and down the driveway, she looked in the rearview mirror to see Kenny standing stupefied in front of the house. He cupped his hand to his mouth and bellowed out her name. There was a look of such pained confusion and worry on his face that Lucy’s mind was suddenly assailed in doubt; she almost changed her mind.

Lucy almost went back.

But then Kenny’s face lit with sudden realization. That veneer of humanity, that mask of deception had slipped away. Left in its place was an expression that was demonic in its murderous rage. To Lucy’s horror, Kenny began to run after the jeep at an incredible speed. His voice was unrecognizable as he shouted out obscenities in feral growls. Lucy’s husband charged after her with inhuman like speed. To her shocked surprise, Kenny was able to grab onto the bumper and somehow managed to climb from there to the roof of the jeep. His foot stomped over and over again into the moon roof. Lucy couldn’t believe this was happening, not to her, not to him. Before her very eyes, the man that Lucy loved with all her heart had turned into something bloodthirsty and bent on her destruction. With fear and sorrow, Lucy continued to accelerate with her foot pressed like a lead stone on the gas pedal. Kenny had almost broken through the moonroof now. He was so intent on smashing through the glass that he never saw the thick, low hanging branch up ahead. But Lucy saw it, and when she did, she drove full speed towards it.

The impact of the hit flew Kenny off the roof of the vehicle and onto the jagged rocks of the ravine below. Juliet slammed on the brakes, got out of the car, and peered over the ledge. The moonlight took that moment to pierce through the fog, and she saw him. His bloody body was draped over a rock, his limbs bent, his neck twisted at a strange angle. She thought he was dead. By all accounts he should have been dead, but then he turned his head and looked straight at her. Kenny’s eyes glared red while he let out a bloodcurdling animal like howl. Lucy ran back to her car and drove straight to the police station.

In the days, weeks, and months that followed, Lucy Brewster learned a lot about evil.

She learned that evil was not a creature hiding under a child’s bed. It wasn’t a candied house in a grim fairy tale. Its secrets weren’t hidden in a dark, windowless closet.

Evil was a mansion; one room after another with endless doorways that twisted and turned and were lit with the fires of hell. And Lucy was made to walk all the hallways, she was forced to climb all those stairs. The