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the sound of one shoe tapping against the stone as she comes up after him.
    “Don’t you remember me? I couldn’t move my legs. Look how they move now!”
    Her giggle is young and full of malice and glee and empty emotions that she shouldn’t know at that age. That no one should know. Listening to her approach, he doesn’t even realize he’s still reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and even if he did he wouldn’t expect it to bring him comfort or any hope of salvation. The Lord has abandoned him. He’d abandoned him a long time ago. He’d seen what they’d done, and for the past thirty years Reverend Barker has known he’d been speaking sermons in a soulless church that his disgusted God has vacated.
    Still, climbing onto the small raised wall and clinging to the side, he feels a wave of self-pity rush through him.
    I didn’t know what else to do! I was very young! I didn’t know what else to do!
    Forgive me!” Whether he’s speaking to her or his God he’s unsure. Whichever can give him the opportunity of salvation.
    Looking down, he is sure that in the gloom he can see children peering out from behind the gravestones. A few are smiling up at him, unpleasant smiles, their teeth and eyes glinting sharply in the pale light, but others are hiding their faces or covering their ears. He doesn’t know which group terrifies him most.
    Rain stings his eyes. It is madness, of course. All madness. It has to be. The madness of guilt catching up with him. Below, a boy in a baseball cap, sitting cross-legged on a tomb so old that the name has worn away long ago, waves and winks, his finger curling, signaling for the vicar to come.
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    “There is always a choice, Reverend. Everyone always gets a choice.” Her voice is young and playful, yet so very vile. The devil’s voice. Squeezing his eyes shut, he presses his face into the granite. He doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t need to. He knows she’ll have one shoe on and one shoe off, her knee-high white socks pulled neatly up to her knees under her tartan skirt. Her blond hair will be perfect and her eyes clear and innocently blue. Just as she was then. Just as she always will be. For ever and ever, amen.
    “Now, your choice… “she purrs almost seductively, the tone jarringly wrong in a child, “is do you want to jump, or do you want me to push you?” She giggles again. “You see? Everyone has a choice. Even you.”
    Tears are running down his face, and keeping his eyes closed, not wanting the last thing he sees to be her or any of the children-things below, he forces his shaking fingers to loosen their grip and lets himself fall forward.
    “Thy will be done…” The words are lost in the rain as he hits the ground, snapping his spine. And then there is silence.
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Chapter Six
    Dawn was breaking when Alex opened her eyes, still tired but knowing that sleep had gone again for another day. It didn’t stop her lying there for another ten minutes and trying to drift off, but as it did every morning, the panic eventually took hold, Dying. I’m dying. Really dying, and the only way she could deal with it was to get up and do something. But shit, she was exhausted.
    Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she grabbed her dressing gown from the back of the door and crept down to the kitchen. Coffee. That’s what she needed. And maybe some toast. Something to shake away the unsettled feeling that had been left behind by the weird dream or whatever it was she’d had in the night. The memory of the whole surreal experience hadn’t faded like dreams normally do, and she could still almost feel that cold finger on her lips.
    Sighing, she waited for the kettle to come to a boil on the old stove and then poured herself a very strong
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    coffee laden with sugar. She’d be buzzing for hours on that amount of caffeine, but at least she’d feel awake. Leaning against the warmth of the oven, for comfort more than a need for the heat, she gazed aimlessly out into