And Ruin Followed Behind Her

Prologue

Prologue

I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home now. Please let me go home. God, just let me go home. I should never have left. I know that now. I know that now, but it’s too late. I ran too far and too fast after I crawled out of my window into the cold, dark night, and now I don’t know where I am.

I had never been so far from home. Mom always told me to stay in the yard, especially on rainy nights, but I wanted to show her that I was a big girl who knew what she was doing. I was eight years old, not a baby, and I would show her. I would run away and hide, and she wouldn’t be able to find me.

She would worry. She would cry, and then I would come back home. She would realize I was right, and she would stop yelling at me so much. Except it didn’t work like that, exactly.

Who am I kidding? It didn’t work like that at all. It started out fine. I ran past Old Man Magill’s house and crossed the rusted, old train tracks that haven’t worked in years. Mom told me never to cross the train tracks, not ever ever ever, but I didn’t care. She wasn’t the boss of me.

It started to rain when I crossed the tracks—almost exactly when I stepped onto the other side. It was like God telling me to turn back...but I couldn’t turn back, not until Mom learned her lesson. She can’t raise her voice to me. She can’t tell me what to do. Not anymore.

The rain came down harder and I hugged close to Teddy, my stuffed bear. I squeezed him tighter with each step I took past the train tracks. Teddy would keep me safe. He always had before, even in the worst of times. Even when Daddy got loud and scary.

The thunder cracked behind me and I leapt into the air. My palms were sweaty, and my heart thumped in my ears. It was time to go back home . . . except I didn’t know how to go back. I had turned into one alley and then another until I lost the train tracks, and now I didn’t know what to do or where to go.

What did Mom tell me to do when I was lost? Find a police officer. They would help. What did a police officer look like? They were tall, with blue suits and badges. Yes, I would look for one of them, and they would take me home, to mom.

“Hi, little girl,” a grating, female voice said behind me. Her throat sounded like she rubbed it with sandpaper. “You are out late, aren’t you?”

I didn’t want to respond, but my mouth opened despite itself. “Who—who are you?”

The woman stepped from the darkness of the alley into the street. Her eyes were bloodshot, but not in the way Mom’s were when she came home late from work. No, this woman’s eyeballs weren’t red, her pupils were, and they seemed to glow at me, sending chills up my already cold, wet spine.

“I’m a friend, now aren’t I?” the woman said, inching toward me. Her cloak was so long it covered her feet, and she moved so gracefully toward me it seemed as if she floated through the air—but she couldn’t do that, could she? Mom specifically told me magic wasn’t real. She made sure I knew that magic wasn’t real.

It felt real, though. Once, when I was two years old, I swore I floated into the air to reach a cookie jar on top of a high counter. Mom told me that was impossible though, and I believed her, about that at least. Now, I was starting to see she was right about everything.

“Mom told me not to talk to strangers,” I said, backing up from her until I reached the edge of the alley.

“Your mother is very smart, and she’s right. You should never talk to strangers, but what if we weren’t strangers? Could you talk to me then?”

“I—I—I don’t know.”

“Well. Let’s try it. I am Imogen.” She held out her pale, bony hand toward me. It shook in the cold night air as it neared me. “And now if you tell me your name, we won’t be strangers.”

I didn’t trust her. She didn’t sound like a nice person. I turned from her and ran out of the alley and across the street. I just wanted to go home. If I could just go home, I would never cause problems again. I would never say anything bad again. I would be a perfect, little girl and Mom would be proud of me, and never yell again. I would do whatever she said if I could just go home.

Except I couldn’t go home because now I was even more lost than before. I ran for two more streets—or was it three—trying to escape that horrible Imogen woman. I was confused and drenched in rain.

When I finally made it to a main street, I ended up in front a row of stores. I stopped in front of one with a candy-striped overhang that protected me from the rain. In the darkness, I started to cry. I might have already been crying and didn’t realize it with the rain pounding down all around me.

I closed my eyes and squeezed Teddy close. Morning. By morning the shops would open, and I would be safe. Somebody would find me then. All I had to do was make it until morning.

“Where is your mother?” a voice said. It sent chills down my spine. I thought Imogen had come back, but then I realized it wasn’t the same voice as before. This voice was deep, gruff, and manly. I looked up to see a smiling man with a beard, dressed in a blue police officer’s uniform and hat, smiling at me.

“Are—are you a policeman?” I asked hesitantly.

He smiled. “Yes, little girl. I’m a policeman. Now, where did you run off from?”

I wiped my face from the tears and rain. “I ran away from home.”

“You did? Well, that’s not a very smart thing to do. Why would you do that?”

“I got in a fight with my mom.”

The police officer knelt next to me. “Hmmm...I get in fights with my children, too.”

My eyes went wide. “You do?”

He nodded. “I do, and sometimes, we get so angry we want to run away, but you know what?”

“What?”

“Once we calm down, we always realize we would miss our family something terrible if we left, right?”

I wiped away another tear. “I just want to go home.”

“Then let’s get you home.” He held his hand out.

I hesitated to take his hand. “How do I know you’ll take me to my house?”

“Cuz that’s my job, little lady.” He pointed to his badge. “I’m an officer of the law, don’t you know. Our job is to protect and serve.”

He gestured to a blue car with a rack of lights on the top of it. Mom pointed them out to me every time we went into town. It was a police car, and the thought of getting into his warm car and being driven home put me at ease.

I smiled, reaching out my hand. “Okay.”

“You will leave this place,” a slithering, growling Imogen groaned from behind the officer. The pupils on the cop’s eyes narrowed and his face went slack. The color drained from his face as I stepped back from him.

“Leave me alone!” I shouted to Imogen, but I knew she would never listen to me.

The police officer rose and turned to her. “I—I—can’t leave—the girl—”

“She is of no concern to you,” Imogen said. “Leave, and forget you ever found her.”

Her voice was deeper and smoother than it was when she talked to me. She sounded like the snake from The Jungle Book and the officer was under her spell.

The officer nodded. “Yes ma’am.” He walked off in a daze, leaving me alone with Imogen.

She turned to me. “Men are so easily seduced.”

“What—What do you want?”

“I told you. I want to be your friend. Don’t you want to be friends with me? Most little girls want to be friends with me, and you are a very special little girl, aren’t you? I smell it on you.”

The sides of Imogen’s mouth curled up, but they did not stop where normal mouths ended. No, her mouth opened all the way to the far side of her cheeks and touched the edge of her hair. When she unhinged her jaw to smile, her mouth was filled with hundreds of spiked teeth like a shark.

“I—I—I don’t want to be friends with you!” I screamed and sprinted out into the rain, anything to get away from her.

Slowly, gracefully, she floated after me. She must have known I had nowhere to go and would eventually tire out, so she didn’t bother rushing. All she had to do was follow me close enough until I couldn’t run any more.

“You can’t escape me, girl. I have caught your smell and can follow you anywhere. The sweet smell of magic. You will be a prize like no other—a prize for my prince!”

I wanted to scream out that there was no such thing as magic but couldn’t spare an ounce of energy. Not that she would care. She would never believe me, just like I didn’t believe Mom.

I didn’t stop to see where she was, or whether she was still following me at all. I just kept running down the street as fast as my feet could go.

In front of me loomed a monstrous mansion. It was the Colburn estate. It was big and scary, and nobody went in there, not even Mom. People said they heard screams at night coming from the mansion, even though it had been abandoned for years. It was just my luck that of all the places in town, my feet led me there.

Then I realized something. I knew how to get home from the Colburn house! In three more blocks were the train tracks, and five blocks after that I would see Mr. Magill’s house. Then I would just have to cross the street and I would be home free.

I smiled for the first time all night. I would be home soon enough. Mom would make me hot chocolate and bundle me up until I was nothing but a face and two little arms. She would tell me she loved me, and then I would be safe. If I pumped my legs fast enough, I could be home in less than ten minutes.

“Interesting,” Imogen hissed, making her way up the sidewalk in front of me. “That you would end up here.”

“Just—let me go home,” I said to her.

“I can’t do that, my precious,” Imogen said with a crooked smile. “You are too important. I have been looking for you a long time. You are the key to everything. Don’t you see that?”

I shook my head. “I’m just a girl.”

“No, my love. You are so much more.” Imogen moved toward me, this time with the speed of a cheetah, and pounced on me. She pulled open her coat and wrapped me into it. A drowsy feeling came over me and I knew I would never see my mother’s face again.

In my last moment of consciousness, Teddy fell out of my hands. He could not protect me. I was not safe from the nightmares that skulked in the darkness. I was not safe from anything, not anymore.