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R EBECCA

It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea...

Annabel Lee

SILVERTOWN UPPER PENINSULA OF MICHIGAN SPRING, 1874

THE VIOLENT WATER RAGED with waves that swallowed everything in its path. A vicious foe, it drove any living creature on the shore inward to the insignificant shelter of the woods. The trees took the brutal abuse of the wind that blew its frigid gales and turned otherwise peaceful blue-green water into a chilling, gray killer.

She clawed her way through the forest, rain pelting her face, assaulting the bare skin of her shoulders and neck. The blood that ran down the side of her face mingled with the rain and tasted like iron as it dripped from her lips. Her head raged with pain. She had been struck, and her coming back to consciousness had not been part of their plan. Darkness cloaked her slight form and seemed to laugh with wicked undertones. A tree branch raked her face. She wrestled with it, her breath tearing at her lungs. The pain of needing air not sodden, air not claimed by gasps of desperation, left her whimpering in the night.

Beneath her feet, the pine needles and ferns warred between spearing and cushioning her. She stumbled, her knee colliding with a rotting log lying on the forest floor. The agony was no worse than that which already flayed her body as she tried to gulp deep breaths but came up short of anything that would bring calm or comfort. She heard nothing over the sounds of the wind and the waves, but she knew. They were coming.

A glance over her shoulder revealed only darkness, outlined by shadows of trees, boulders and crevices, the lake beyond. The storm had come tonight. Then they had come. A formidable offense that captured her, incapacitated her, and now chased her once more. They were hunters— her hunters—those who answered the call of the demons, rising to claim their victims.

And they were coming for her. Again. Relentless, like the waves of gichigami.

A songbird awakened her. That and the warmth she felt as the morning sun filtered through the treetops waving overhead. The earth beneath her was saturated, and mud caked between her toes and her fingers. A gentle breeze lifted her hair, once soft like corn silk but now matted with dried blood and clumps of mud. She ran her tongue across her lips. They were dry, but she still tasted blood. Her vision blurred as she opened her eyes, and her head seemed to split with the mighty blow of a nonexistent ax.

Confusion cluttered her mind. She pushed herself from the ground, her hip sinking into the half-drowned earth. Her left hand braced her, mud oozing between her fingers. Blinking furiously, she tried to clear her thoughts. Looking around her, she tried to assess where she was.

Clothed in soiled, torn undergarments, she attempted to sit straighter, hugging her torso as if to hide herself from the trees that glowered at her. The sun seemed to flicker and twinkle, not unlike a very large star might, and for a moment she thought perhaps it was the only friendly thing here.

She stretched her leg and startled as her toes scraped across something cold and hard. The realization of it horrified her, and in spite of the pain in her joints and the obvious bruises on her legs, she shoved herself backward with a cry.

The base of the gravestone lay flat on the earth, the four-sided monument like a marker pointing directions.

Bewildered, she twisted onto her knees, her breath catching as a sharp pain told her that her injuries spanned more than just her legs and torso. Her shuddering breath was echoed by the warble of another bird—a bird she couldn’t identify. She should know what it was. She knew that she should know, but she didn’t.

Leaning toward the gravestone, she reached out a hand, her fingernails broken with flecks of blood and dirt beneath them. Her fingers traced the engraved name on the stone, Annabel , and a date, 1852 .

So many years ago. It was, wasn’t it? Many years ago? She fell back onto her heels, sitting before the marker as if kneeling in prayer. Today was ... well, it was—

Her breaths came quicker now. She couldn’t recall the year. Not the month. Not even yesterday. Nor why she was here now, bruised and bloodied, alone, and barely clothed.

A quick assessment of her body and she knew something terrible had happened to her. Something she would never put into words and never tell a soul. Part of her took a deep solace that she couldn’t remember, but another found it all the more frightful that she didn’t even know her own name.

The feel of something trailing the skin of her neck awakened her dulled senses. She cried out, batting at its feathery touch. Even a spider or a beetle was ominous to her now. But her hand connected with a chain. A delicate chain. One that was miraculously still clasped around her neck. A locket was attached to the chain, lying demurely between her breasts.

She pulled it away from her chest. The locket was open, empty inside, but covered with dried mud as though it had been pressed into the earth. Looking down, an oval-shaped bruise on the upper skin of her left breast confirmed her assumption. Yes. It had been viciously squashed between her and the ground at some point in her not-so-distant past. It would require careful cleaning.

Turning it over, her breath caught.

Sitting there at the base of Annabel’s grave, she read her own name as if for the first time.

Rebecca.

That was all.

Rebecca .