Chapter Twenty-Five

Ang sat for a long time, just staring out the window. She had Richie’s words circling around in her head. She wanted to believe they’d find Kirstin. NEEDED to believe that. If she started to doubt, well there was just no telling what could happen. She longed for first light, when Marty had promised to return and help continue their search. She felt her eyelids growing heavy with waiting. When Ang slipped into slumber a little before dawn, Kirstin was waiting for her.

"Why won’t you let me help you help me?" Kirstin asked, reaching for Angel Rose.

Ang jerked away from her long, cold fingers. "I am trying to help you," she said. "Letting you in is not the way."

Kirstin’s voice was a low, seductive whisper. "But it will be so much easier if I can just show you WHERE I AM."

"So show me. Show us. We want to help you." Ang watched Kirstin deflate, folding in on herself. "We are open to you," Ang said. "Just not that open."

"You are strong," Kirstin said. "You could let me in long enough to find me, then you could let me go." Her tone was hopeful, and her face was as guileless as a three-year-old’s.

"I am sorry," Ang said. "I just can’t."

Kirstin sighed. "Then you must find me quickly," she said. "The pull to join you is strong." She touched the side of Ang’s head, and for a moment, Ang felt her resolve weaken. She wrenched away from her touch and felt warmth rush over her face. She awoke with a start, as the sunlight caressed her cheek.

Ang stood and shook her head, struggling to rid herself of the dream. She looked up, and saw Richie still asleep. "Wake up," she said loudly.

There were general grumbles as he slowly came to consciousness. "Angel Rose, darlin’, it’s just barely morning!" Richie said when he finally managed to get his eyes open.

"We have to figure out a different way to help her. Searching the acreage isn’t the way," Angel said. "We’ll never find her before she binds to me irrevocably. We have to find another way. There’s too much out there, and you’re right, Richie, things – the landscape – will surely have changed by now."

"What else can we do?" Richie asked.

"I don’t know!" Ang said, exasperated. "Maybe there’s something of hers we can use. Maybe there’s something that will give us, me, a deeper connection to her without letting her into my head. I know she can show us the way if only the channels were clearer."

"Like those psychics you see on the police shows on TV?" Richie was incredulous.

"Do you have a better idea?" Ang asked, whirling on him. "If you do, I’d LOVE to hear it."

Someone knocked at the door. Richie shook his head and crossed the great room to answer it while he looked at his meager possessions scattered throughout the space. "Darlin’, I toured this place before I bought it. There was nothing in it. Nothing in the attics or the cellars, or in any of the rooms. Well except for the study."

"Mornin’," Marty said with fake cheer in his voice. He held up three cups. "I brought coffee." He looked Richie over and smirked. "Looks like someone could use a cup."

"Marty, you are a lifesaver," Richie said, taking a steaming cup of brew from the older man. "We were just trying to decide the best course of action for continuing the search."

"I think we need to find something of Kirstin’s," Ang said, refusing to give up on that idea.

"Is there any chance," Richie said, "that anything was left behind?"

"From that long ago?" Marty asked, shaking his head. "I doubt it. The place was thoroughly cleaned before it listed – at least this last time. I assume it was cleaned before prior listings as well. Unless the cleaning crews kept whatever they found, which is very unlikely, the place was completely empty."

"But what about in Kirstin’s room?" she asked. "If Richie couldn’t get in there, maybe the cleaning crews couldn’t either."

"For all this time?" Marty countered.

"Will it hurt to look?" Ang asked, getting testy.


And that’s how Ang, Richie, and Marty found themselves upstairs in Kirstin’s study, sifting through the rubble. They were looking for something – anything – that would act as a sort of divining rod to Kirstin. They’d been searching for half an hour, but found nothing but papers and splinters. Even the key, the key that Kirstin had slid under the door to Richie was gone.

"This is hopeless," Marty said, kicking at a pile of papers. "This house hasn’t been completely vacant since Geoffrey packed up the children and left. There were others here. Anything of value found in this house, sentimental or otherwise, is long gone." He wanted to know the outcome of Kirstin’s tale as much as Richie and Ang did. He had to know which of his ancestors had killed the poor woman. The lack of progress was making him antsy and angry.

"Hey!" Angel said, pushing a sweaty hank of hair from her forehead. "There HAS to be something here I can use to get closer to Kirstin. The alternative is far too scary."

Richie had to agree. The alterative was for Ang to let Kirstin deeper into her head, into her mind, and hope to hell Ang kept the strength to push the spirit out after the fact. He supposed he could dig up the entire estate looking for Kirstin’s grave. Given the choice of alternatives, he didn’t want Ang to go through with the former. Richie was seriously considering the latter.

"I just don’t want you getting your hopes up, Missy," Marty answered. "If there’s nothing here, you’re going to need a ‘Plan B’."

Richie spoke up. "Look, Marty, let’s just keep searching. Kirstin chose to stay in this room for a reason, right? It stands to reason that –"

"Reason?" Marty asked, incredulous. He stood up, looking down at a crouching Richie like the younger man was insane. "REASON? You think there’s reason behind this? Or that what, now you’re an expert? You don’t know anything!" he shouted. "This is a colossal waste of time."

Richie stood too, towering over the other man. "I heard you," he practically shouted. "I said we can’t call it a waste until we finish."

Marty’s face darkened. "Do not raise your voice to me, young man," he said, poking a finger into Richie’s chest.

"Keep your hands off me," Richie retorted, slapping Marty’s hand away.

"HEY!" Ang shouted, stepping up between the two men. She put a restraining hand on Richie’s chest and pointed at Marty. "That’s enough. Marty, if you don’t want to be here, you know where the door is." She stood there between them waiting for them to calm down,

Marty sighed. "Sorry," he said. "I guess this feels like whole lot of ‘doing nothing’."

"We’re doing the best we can," Ang said softly.

Marty circled the room, ranting like a petulant child. "But we’ve been up here for over an hour." He kicked another stack of papers, sending them flying. "We haven’t found anything useful at all! We should go back out to the thicket; keep working on the path." He kicked at a large chunk of wood, sending it sailing across the room.

The broken piece of chair hit the wall, making a solid, slightly metallic thud. The three of them stood slack-jawed, staring at the mark the wood made on the wall. Finally, Ang broke the silence. "What the heck was that?" she asked. "That was not the sound of something hitting a lathe-and-plaster wall." She crossed the room, and started knocking all around the area where the chair had hit. Sure enough there were different sounds around the area of wall. There was obviously something behind it. Ang looked at Richie, an unspoken question in her eyes.

Richie looked around at the wreck of the room. "Go ahead, Angel Rose," he said. "Whatever you want to do, it can’t make this room too much more of a disaster area than it already is."

Ang pressed a quick kiss to Richie’s lips. "Thank you," she said, and ran from the room. Marty and Richie stood there in silence until they heard her footsteps come pounding back down the hall. Ang skidded to a halt just inside the door holding a fireplace poker. She held it in both hands, angled across her torso like a spear.

Richie smiled. "You look like you’re ready to go off to war," he said.

Ang smiled back. "I feel like I’m getting ready to fight a war," she answered. "Whatever happens next with Kirstin, it won’t be easy."

Richie took the poker from her hands. "Whatever happens, I’ll be there right beside you," he said, hefting the iron bar and tapping its end against his open palm. "Now, let’s break something."

He strode to the wall where Ang had heard the strange sounds. After making sure that an outlet hadn’t been added to the wall, he plunged the point of the poker through the wall. He pulled, tearing off a fair chunk of wall. "Sheetrock," he said. "Looks like this wall has been replaced once already."

Marty stepped forward. "Whatever is in this hole may be something from a more modern time than the Maddoxes." At Ang’s angry look he hastened to add "I’m just saying."

"And maybe it isn’t," Ang answered. "Just be quiet."

Richie continued to pull pieces of the wall away until he had a hole large enough to stick his arm into. He didn’t want to risk damaging whatever may be back there by just poking holes in the wall, so he reached in and felt around with his fingertips. They brushed against something that was definitely not wood. "Holy shit, there’s something in here," he said.

"Pull it out!" Ang shouted.

Richie started to methodically pull away parts of the wall until he could better reach the item. The original lathe-and-plaster wall came down with the Sheetrock. "Looks like they just put this wall up over the existing one," Richie muttered to himself.

"Oh, please hurry!" Ang pleaded.

Richie reached his arm into the hole again and wrapped a hand around a small handle. He lifted the object, and pulled it toward the hole. As he drew his arm back, the object came with it – a metal lunchbox. "Ang honey, I’m sorry." The metal container was still relatively clean and definitely not that old. "This isn’t Kirstin’s." He flipped the latch and lifted the lid. "There’s nothing in here except some costume jewelry," he said.

Ang was so upset she nearly cried. "Damn it!" she swore. "Damn, damn, DAMN!" She tore the box from Richie’s hands and upended it in the center of the floor. Dropping beside the meager pile of beads and paste, she pawed through it quickly looking for something, anything that would be helpful. "NOTHING!" She scattered the small pile, sending the pieces skittering around the room. One piece stopped it’s skid in a beam of sunlight. The light reflected off the faux-diamond pendant hanging from a silver-plated chain.

The glints of light hit Ang squarely in the eyes. "Damn, that necklace is blinding – OH!"

Richie looked at her, his pity turned to curiosity. "What?"

"The necklace!"

Richie scooped it up and examined it. "Honey, this isn’t that old."

"Not that necklace, you big goof; THE necklace!"

"What the Sam Hill are you talking about, Angel Rose?" Marty asked. "What necklace?"

Ang was already running out into the hall. "Come ON!" Ang called frantically over her shoulder. The two men shrugged and hustled after her. By the time they got downstairs, Ang had flung the front door open and was racing toward the truck.

"Ang, darlin’," Richie said, "where are we going?"

"To the Historical Society building," she called. "Hurry!" She looked inside the truck to see her purse on the floor and hoped her keys were inside. She repeatedly pulled on the handle of the truck’s door, and growled when she found it was locked. "You’re out here in the middle of nowhere and lock your freaking door?"

Richie chuckled. "I am not from here, darlin’. People steal things in LA." He fumbled the keys from his pocket and hit the button on the fob to unlock the doors. Ang jumped in, grabbed her purse, and dug through it, muttering under her breath until she found the key ring she was looking for. She jiggled it in her hand, the four metal keys clanging together as they lit out for town.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Richie couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he imagined Kirstin, dirty and bloody, her peach dress torn, reaching for him. "I asked you for help," she begged. Finally, unable to stand it anymore, he carefully extricated himself from Ang’s arms and stood, stretching out his back before leaving the room. She hadn’t wanted to go home. She said she had wanted to be back out there, literally at first light. Richie hoped to hell she would change her mind.

He went upstairs to Kirstin’s room and pushed a pile of rubble aside to sit against the wall. Almost immediately, he felt uneasy and tense.

"Kirstin, where are you?" he asked the room, not really expecting a response.

He sighed and leaned his head against the wall, letting his eyes lose focus as he tried to remember the dream he had when he first stayed at the house. Was it really only a matter of days since that dream? Richie shook his head. He sat there for hours, turning the dream sequence this way and that in his mind, trying to find something, anything that would lead them to where Kirstin was buried.

He was getting frustrated. Try as he might, all he could really remember was the arm poking out from the bushes, grabbing him.

"Wait a minute," he said, excitedly. "Poking out from the bushes! We’ve been looking in the wrong damned place!" He felt a sense of calm wash through him. "That’s it, isn’t it?" he said to the room. "Kirstin, I swear to you, we will find you."

Back in Richie’s makeshift bed, Ang was dreaming. Kirstin was calling to her, crying for her, begging her to keep looking. "Why can’t you find me?" she wailed.

Ang was heartbroken. "I don’t know," she answered. "We are trying, I swear to you, we’re trying. I need more help, more guidance."

Kirstin approached Ang. "There is a way," she said, and reached out with outstretched fingers. "Trust me," she said. "I can show you where I am if you just keep still." As Kirstin’s fingertips met Ang’s face, a bone-numbing cold began to permeate her body. Kirstin was trying to fuse herself, her spirit, to Ang’s soul. If she did that, Kirstin’s thoughts and memories would be Ang’s, and Ang would be able to find Kirstin easily.

"NO!" Angel shouted, sitting upright. She shook off the last vestiges of the dream only to find it wasn’t really a dream. She could feel narrow fingers of cold pulling away from her thoughts. "Why?" a voice said in her head. "Why...."

"Angel, what happened?" Richie had bolted down the stairs and to her side when he heard Ang’s cry. He dropped onto the mattress by her side and wrapped his arms around her. She was shaking and cold. So cold.

"It’s getting stronger," she told him. "Kirstin’s getting stronger. At first it was just troublesome memories. Little snippets that plagued my awake time. Now she’s trying to reach me when I sleep; trying to bind herself to me." She started to cry.

Her mind was a quirky thing; she had learned that long ago. It could allow conversation with a spirit, or could relinquish control on her psyche and let the spirit take over. The possession, the total abandonment of self, was something she had thus far been able to stave off. At best, letting another soul take over hers would be ill-advised, but at worst, it could be catastrophic. She, Angel Rose, could be lost forever. She’d heard stories of people deemed to be mad because they thought they were someone else. In some cases, a few cases, they truly were mad, but in others, most of them in fact, they really had become the spirit to whom their bodies had become hosts.

Angel did not want to become Kirstin Maddox. She was quite happy being Angel Rose Summerlin, gift notwithstanding.

But the fact remained, she found herself losing part of her essence to Kirstin. Every dream, every vision, she could feel the other woman winding her threads of self around Ang’s. It wasn’t malicious, it just was. It was the only way the spirits knew. She felt Kirstin becoming part of her and it scared her half to death. Ang felt, felt so deeply in her bones that she knew, that Kirstin was doing this because they weren’t helping her fast enough, that there was MORE that needed to be done.

"What happens if she does that?" Richie asked her, half-knowing the answer already.

"I become her," Kirstin said. "I mean, I’ll talk like I’m her, having her memories and oh Richie, I don’t want that to happen!" She pushed away from Richie’s chest and shook him by the shoulders. "I don’t want to disappear!"

"Shhh, we won’t let that happen. All we have to do is find her."

"I know," Ang said, getting angry. "But we can’t find her." She looked at her watch. It was coming up on five in the morning. "Soon it will be light. We have to go out and finish clearing the path. We have to find her grave."

Richie suddenly remembered the revelation he had up in Kirstin’s room. "Honey, I don’t think she’s under the path," he said. He recalled the dream to her, explaining how Kirstin’s arm had thrust out from the bushes to grab him. "That has to mean that she’s buried in the thicket of bushes, not along the path, right?"

Ang thought for a moment. "Yes, I think it would." She said. "But," she started getting excited. "We know she took off down the path; we followed her that way. We still have to clear it off, but now we know what we have to look for!"

"We do?" Richie asked. "How are we going to find her if she isn’t in the path? That’s a lot of bushes out there."

"I know," Ang said, "but think about it. Whoever buried her probably didn’t drag her too far into the shrubs. He wouldn’t have wanted there to be any trace. He must have buried her in an empty spot. A – a – void in the bushes. We just have to look for that void!"

Richie smiled at Ang. It sounded so simple, that should be easy to do. Except. "Hell, Angel," he said cautiously. "I’m no scientist, but wouldn’t the void be filled now? I mean, surely in all the time since she died, she’s been, uh, well, taken back to the earth you could say."

"Yeah, and?"

"And," Richie really didn’t want to discourage Ang, but he didn’t want her being disappointed when they didn’t find anything, either. "Well, wouldn’t things have grown over her grave?"

"Probably," Ang agreed reluctantly. "But the bushes are pretty thickly packed; not too much sunlight." She shook her head. "Nope, I believe there’s a place to look." She got up and strode to the window, willing the sun to peek over the horizon. "Now we just have to wait for the damned sun to come up." She put her chin on her fist, fixed her gaze on the horizon, and waited.

The Past

When it was done, when Isaiah was on his way to the bottom of the lake, Jeremiah went back into the woods to his friend’s grave. "I am truly sorry for my brother’s sins." He looked down at her mud-streaked face and cried. He didn’t want to leave her there, but what choice did he have? If he carried her back to her house, Geoffrey would surely believe HE had killed her. No, he decided she had to have her funeral now. But not here. Not in the place where Isaiah had terrified her and killed her. She had to go somewhere different; somewhere pure.

He walked along the path, but everywhere he looked, all he could see was his brother’s face. He veered off the path into the bushes, breaking a few branches as he went. He had to find someplace...here. He came to a place where two bushes had tangled together, making a canopy of flowers. Underneath was a mossy bed, almost fit for a princess to rest on. Grinning, he ran back to get the shovel.

He carefully dug the moss up, setting it aside so he could put it back on her grave when he was done. Then he dug.

Finally, he went back to where he had left Kirstin. He knelt by her side and took her hand. "I’m sorry I cannot take you home. You’re the best friend I ever had, and you should be home. But I can’t. But I found someplace pretty for you to be. I promise." He started to weep as he gathered her gently in his arms. He walked slowly through the bushes, not wanting anything to snag on her hair or poke at her skin.

When he came to the grave, he stopped at the edge and looked down. It looked so dark and scary in the hole. He put Kirstin on the pile of moss and stripped blooms from the bushes around him. Not too many; because he didn’t want to get caught, but enough to line the bottom of the hole. He picked her up again, and transferred her delicately onto the bed of flowers. He straightened Kirstin’s clothes, and crossed her hands over her chest. After dropping a few more blooms around her, he took Kirstin’s hand and said a prayer for her soul. Then he sent up another prayer that she would understand what he was about to do.

With shaking hands, he pulled Kirstin’s wedding ring from her hand and put it in his pocket. Geoffrey would want this. Jeremiah would give it to Kirstin’s widower before he left. He took the locket from her throat, the one she had shown him with her children’s pictures tucked inside, her most favorite thing, and put that in his pocket as well. That he would keep for himself.

Then after saying one last message of goodbye, and putting a mostly clean rag from his pocket over her face, he started to bury her.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Richie led them to the edge of the dense copse of shrubbery. They fanned out and looked for any break in the foliage, but could find none. Ang called out, "Look at the bottoms of the shrubs," she said. "The branches may be overcrowding the path, but the roots will show the way."

They did as she bid, and fifteen minutes later, Marty called out, "I think I found it!" Richie and Ang ran to his side, and crouched down to get a better look.

"Yes," Ang said excitedly. "This definitely looks like it used to be a path." She started tearing at the branches, trying to make a hole big enough to squeeze through.

"Wait a minute," Richie said, pulling Ang back from the shrubs. "Shouldn’t we start from the house? Work our way into this from there?"

Ang shook her head and pushed Richie away, not wanting to stop. "It doesn’t matter. If she’s in there, we’ll find her." She continued pulling at the branches; throwing her whole body weight against them when they didn’t snap easily.

Richie again tried to stop her, this time clamping his hands around her wrists and turning her to him. "You’re going to tear your hands open doing that."

Ang shrugged him off. "We are so close," she said. "I just know it. If we could just..." She set to work again, frantically pulling furiously at the tangled overgrowth.

Rather than try to argue with her, the men shared a look and waded in, helping to remove some of the thicker branches. They quickly had cleared a path going a several yards into the shrubbery.

"This is going to take forever!" Ang lamented, starting to cry as they moved further into the thicket. "We’re going to lose the light!"

"Angel Rose," Richie said, pulling down another thick branch. "When we lose the light, we will start fresh in the morning."

"That’s right," Marty said. "We won’t give up. I for one really want to see if we can find her. Imagine. Being able to say we solved a hundred-year-old mystery. How thrilling!"

Ang turned on Marty, fire flashing in her eyes. "We are not just solving a mystery!" she cried. "We are finding a lost soul, helping a wandering spirit..."

"Angel Rose," Richie said patiently, "he didn’t mean anything by it. I think you’re a bit overwrought. Maybe we should stop and rest, and come back in the morn—"

"Overwrought? Screw you. No," she said, sniffling, looking past Richie into the dark tangle of leaves. "We will keep going until we can’t see anymore. Then you will go and find flashlights and lanterns and maybe a machete or..."

Richie grabbed Ang and gave her another little shake. "ANGEL ROSE!" he shouted. "I know this is important, but it’s too important to do wrong. What if we miss something in the dark? Huh? What then?"

Ang’s eyes slowly refocused on Richie’s. "I can’t stand that she’s in here, somewhere, all by herself."

"We don’t know that she’s even here," Marty said.

"Oh, I do," Ang answered. "I can feel it. Something happened in here, mark my words." She sighed. "Alright, we’ll work until dark. But at first light, I’m coming back."

"And I’ll be with you," Richie said. "I promise."

They worked hard, sweating with the effort of their labor. They had made it nearly a hundred yards before it was too dark to see. Ang’s hands were so battered; she was tasked with dragging the branches up the path and out by the lake as Richie and Marty pulled them down. Her last trip back, she stumbled on a root and cried out as she fell.

"That’s it," Richie declared. "It is now officially too dark to keep going tonight." Ang started to argue, but Richie was having none of it. "The last thing we need is someone getting hurt."

Ang’s shoulders slumped. "I know. You’re right. Enough people have gotten hurt in here already."

"People?" Marty asked. "You mean more than one person was hurt here? You really think so?"

"Not think so, know so," Ang replied. "Can’t you feel it?"

The Past

"Isaiah, what are you doing?" Jeremiah was confused. Why was his brother hurting his friend? He stood, transfixed, while Isaiah’s hands closed tighter around Kirstin’s throat. He saw her eyes start to roll back as she croaked his name again.

His brother glared at him. "Now, Jeremiah."

"Jeremiah, please," Kirstin said once more, then she was still.

Isaiah shot a triumphant look at his brother before turning back to Kirstin’s body. "If you’re gonna stay, you may as well help me dig, boy," he said, clawing into the dirt. He heard a noise behind him and turned to see a tree branch speeding toward his face. "What the—" was all he got out before impact.

Jeremiah wiped the spray of blood from his cheek. He had broken his brother’s nose with that branch and Isaiah was out cold for the moment, but he knew that wouldn’t last long. He also knew that once Isaiah told their father what had transpired in the rhododendron fields, he, Jeremiah, would face the brunt of their father’s wrath.

He knew he had to work fast.

He knelt by Kirstin’s lifeless body and shook her. "Kirstin!" he shouted. "Please, wake up!" Her head just lolled to the side, and he felt sick at the marks that surrounded her neck. "Oh God," he wailed. "Kirstin!" He hugged her close for a moment, mourning the loss of his friend.

Jeremiah knew he couldn’t leave her here; he couldn’t leave her out for the animals to find. He also knew he couldn’t bring her out of the woods. He knew that people would blame him. They wouldn’t believe him when he told them that Isaiah killed her. Everyone knew he was sweet on Kirstin, and when she married Geoffrey it had broken his heart. They all thought that the grief would turn him wildly violent; after all, that’s the way his father was, and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? But they didn’t know that he would sooner cut off his own arm than to do anything to harm Kirstin. All he wanted was for her to be happy.

Now, he ran a gentle hand over her face. "I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you," he said. "And I’m sorry I can’t take you home." He laid her gently, reverently, on the ground and picked up the branch he hit his brother with. He dug the end of the limb into the moist earth, starting Kirstin’s grave. As he worked, tears streamed down his face as he apologized over and over for having to bury her here. "At least it’s so pretty here, Kirstin," he sobbed as he dug. It hurt his soul to see what his brother had done to the only woman who had ever shown him unconditional kindness. His only true friend.

When the hole was done, he sat back on his heels and looked at Kirstin. She was all bloody and bruised, and it broke his heart. She had never been anything but kind to everyone. She didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve to have his brother’s filthy hands all over her. Didn’t deserve to be dead. He prayed over her for a few minutes, begging the Lord to take care of his friend, and vowing vengeance for her senseless death.

A muttered curse had him turning toward his brother. He watched as Isaiah started to sit up, wiping blood from his face. "Damn you, boy, look at what you done. I’m going to kill you."

He staggered to his feet and advanced on Jeremiah. Jeremiah jumped up, but barely had time to register his brother’s big, meaty arm swinging around before he caught Isaiah’s fist with his mouth.

Isaiah laughed as his brother tripped backwards over Kirstin’s body and fell, landing bedside her. "That’s the first and last time you will ever lie with a girl, you bastard," he hissed.

Jeremiah scrambled to get up and nearly fell into the hole he had dug. Isaiah laughed cruelly. "Go ahead, jump in that hole. Save me some work. When I kill you, I’ll be nice and bury you with your whore."

"Do not talk about her like that," Jeremiah cried, his anger swelling until it consumed him. He scanned the ground around him and found a rock about the size of a ripe cantaloupe.

Isaiah sneered. "What are you going to do with that, little brother? You don’t have the brains or the balls to use it." He advanced again, smiling evilly. "I am gonna love beating you, boy," he said.

Jeremiah held his ground, waiting for his opportunity. Isaiah may be bigger and stronger, but anger made him stupid. He waited, lightly bouncing the rock in his hand while his brother circled closer, taunting him. When Isaiah threw the first punch, Jeremiah ducked, and used the rock as a ram, slamming it into his brother’s chest. Isaiah staggered backwards, in shock from the blow.

"Well, well, little brother," Isaiah said, rubbing his chest, "it seems you were paying attention all those years Pa beat you."

Jeremiah nodded. "I learned a thing or two about fighting dirty," he agreed.

"It really isn’t going to help you," Isaiah said, as he swung at his brother’s head. Again Jeremiah ducked, and this time spun around with the rock to hit Isaiah in the side. Jeremiah heard the satisfying crack of a rib, and smiled. Howling with rage, Isaiah swore, and advanced again.