A Thin Dark Line

6

The rain fell steadily, reducing the reach of the headlights, making the night close in like a tunnel. The sky seemed too low, the trees that grew thick seemed to hunch over the road. Jennifer Nolan's imagination ran wild with movie images of maniacs leaping out in front of her and cars suddenly looming up in the rearview mirror.

She hated working the late shift. But then, she hated being home at night, too. She had been raised to fear basically everything about the night: the dark, the sounds in the dark, the things that might lurk in the dark. She wished she had a roommate, but the last one had stolen her best jewelry and her television and run off with some no-account biker, and so she was living alone.

Headlights came up behind her, and Jennifer's breath caught. All anybody ever talked about anymore was murder and how women weren't safe to walk the streets. She'd heard that Bichon woman had been dismembered. That wasn't what had been reported on the news, but she'd heard it and knew it was probably true. Rumors leaked out-like the detail of the Mardi Gras mask. The police didn't want anyone to know that either, but everyone did.

Just imagining the terror that woman must have felt was enough to give Jennifer nightmares. She didn't even want to think about Mardi Gras, which was less than two weeks away, on account of that mask business. And now she had this car on her tail. For all she knew, this could have been what happened to Pam Bichon. She could have been forced off the road and herded up that driveway to her death.

The car swept up alongside her and her panic doubled. Then the car sailed on past, taillights glowing in the gloom. Relief ran through her like water. She hit the blinker and turned in at the trailer park.

She had her key in her hand as she went up the steps to the front door, the way she'd read in Glamour. Have the key ready to unlock the door quickly or to be used as a weapon if an attacker jumped up from the honeysuckle bush that struggled to live beside her stoop.

A lamp burned in the living room to give the impression someone was home all evening. After locking the door behind her, Jennifer hung her jacket on the coatrack and grabbed a towel off the kitchen counter to dab at her rain-wet red hair as she moved through the trailer, turning on more lights. She was careful not to step into a room until the light was on and she could see. She checked the spare bedroom, the bathroom. Her bedroom was at the end of the narrow hall. Nothing had been disturbed, no one was in the closet. A can of Aqua Net hair spray sat on the nightstand. She would use it like Mace if someone broke in during the night.

With the knowledge of safety, the tension began to subside, letting fatigue settle in. Too many nights with too little sleep, the hassle with her supervisor over the length of her coffee breaks, the past-due balance on her phone bill-each worry weighed down on her. Depressed, she brushed her teeth, took off her jeans, and climbed into bed in the T-shirt she'd worn all day. i'm with stupid, it read, and an arrow pointed to the empty space in the bed beside her. She was with no one. Until 1:57 a.m.

Jennifer Nolan woke with a start. A gloved hand struck her hard across the face as she struggled to sit up and opened her mouth to scream. The back of her skull smacked against the headboard. She tried again to lurch forward, stopped this time by the feel of a blade at her throat. Her bladder released and tears welled in her eyes.

But even through the blur she could see her attacker. His image was illuminated by the green glow of the alarm clock and by the light that seeped in around the edges of the cheap miniblinds. He seemed huge as he loomed over her, the vision of doom. Terrified, she fixed on his face-a face half hidden by a feathered Mardi Gras mask.