Page 103 of The Premonition at Withers Farm

“Who killed Cock Robin?

I, said the Sparrow,

with my bow and arrow,

I killed Cock Robin.”

Directly below the nursery rhyme, someone had sketched—in adult handwriting—the words “watch them die.”

A terrible silence wrapped itself around the three women. Molly could hear Gemma’s breaths, slow and even. Controlled. Sid’s were shakier, filled with nervous anticipation. Molly dreaded turning to the next page. She recognized the handwriting. It was identical to the writing in the farmer’s journal she’d found behind the nesting box. Only this? This was horrifying and real and sadistic.

She flipped the page, its yellowed paper revealing another rhyme, and the margins were filled with more scribbling.

Darkness will be pivotal.

Expect her to scream.

Drink the sound into your soul.

They had found it. The darkest secret yet on the old Withers farm. An almanac of sorts. A killer’s almanac.

Molly had frozen, unable to turn more pages. Gemma gently tugged the book from her hands and inspected it.

Gemma gasped softly when a lock of hair slipped from the pages, landing on her bare leg. She scurried backward, raising the book in the air and eyeing the hair as though it were a spider ready to bite.

“What the heck is that?” Sid did the opposite of Gemma, surging forward to retrieve the errant lock of dark hair. It was tied in the middle with a silk purple ribbon.

“Hair.” Gemma stated the obvious with a curl of her lip.

“A souvenir.” Molly knew she was saying what they probably all wished to avoid. She eyed the book in Gemma’s hand. “Let me see that.”

Gemma handed off the book with a nod, as if glad to be rid of it.

Molly thumbed through its pages. She curled into herself, sucking in a shuddering breath. She saw pencil sketches of women’s profiles. Some of the pages contained more entries. Dark entries. One looked as if it had been written in brown ink—stained, blood maybe?

Molly closed the book almost reverently, not out of respect but out of fear. Her eyes met Sid’s across the hole in the floor. “I think,” she whispered hoarsely, “we just found the Cornfield Ripper’s diary.”

It is a game.

This waiting.

When the moon is perfect.

When she is ready.

The monster inside awakens.

Who shall dig the grave? it asks.

Not I.

I like them to be found.

People should know that I rid the world of them.

The Temptresses.

I paint their epitaphs in their blood.