The Whispering of Bitter Creek

Chapter 1

PART ONE: HOW TO KICK A CORPSE

My footsteps are slow and steady as I walk along the school hallway, like I'm marching in my own funeral procession.

This is my fifth funeral in eight years. I should get used to dying over and over again but it still hurts like crazy. In fact, this one hurts more than all of them, because I like it here and I have finally let my guard down just enough to make some friends.

Those friends line the hallway now, standing side by side with the others, only none of them are here to mourn my untimely demise. They have not come to shed tears and lament my passing, they've come to celebrate. They're all celebrating, like the ghouls they are, because there's nothing people love more than to come kick a corpse. Even my so-called friends are lining up to take the shot and I can't say I blame them.

Kick the dead girl, I can take it. I deserve it.

There's something pinned to the front of my locker. I can see it from here, where the gaggle of ghouls have parted to give me access to my final destination and I know exactly what it is. It's the public announcement of my death.

Dear Richardson Hill High. We are pleased – no, delighted – to formally confirm the death of one Harlequin Jaden Jones, aged thirteen years. Miss Jones' death was sudden but not unexpected and we hope you will join with us in bidding her a joyful life in Hell. Signed, The Whole Damn School.

I get closer and closer and I can already see their faces – not the funeral hags, but theirs, the dead girls. The ones my Grandpops killed. I've studied those faces so often over the past eight years that I know each and every one of them like they were my own sisters. I know where they lived. I know where they went to school. I know what they were wearing when they went missing.

And there it is. My death notice. My nasty little secret laid bare for the whole school to see, for I am the granddaughter of Mr. Rheemus Jonathan Jones, notorious serial killer of twelve young girls, who met his own fate at the hands of a state penitentiary guard and a swiftly effective lethal injection right into his blood-stream.

Someone has printed out an article from the internet and taped it to my locker door. It's there, in bold black print, complete with twelve identity shots. Twelve pictures for twelve dead girls. I stare at them and they stare right back, just like they always do.

Oopsie! They found you out, Harlequin. They just done gone and found out your dirty, filthy little secret and now you're DEAD too. Just like Grandpops. Just like us. Dead, dead, DEAD!

My locker is slightly ajar and something is seeping out from under the door and drips sluggishly down the locker underneath mine. It's blood. Only it's not real blood, of course, but that crappy synthetic stuff you get at Halloween. They didn't even bother to get a real authentic-looking blood to really make an impact. Must try harder, I mentally scold, but deep down I know they've done a good job here. No one cares that the blood is fake. It's what the blood signifies that really counts. I have blood on my hands. I don't really, because I know I'm not going to touch it even though they want me to. For a moment, even I want to. I want to coat my hands in it and give them all a real show.

Hey there folks, check out the serial killer's granddaughter, covered in the blood of all those itty bitty girls he killed! Isn't she just a chip off the old block?

So I don't touch it. I don't even open my locker. Holding the door in place with one hand, I tear off the print-out in the other and folding it carefully, I place it in my backpack, wedged safely between my dog-eared copy of Macbeth and my Spanish text book.

The school hallway has never been this quiet but I'm deafened by the silence and beaten black and blue by their accusatory stares filled with such repulsion and blame, because of course, I am to blame, right? With my Grandpops reduced to nothing but ashes and safely ensconced in his urn underground, there has to be somebody else to persecute in his place. And what better person to blame than his own granddaughter, the granddaughter who at the time, was about the same age as many of those poor, cherubic angels that he slaughtered? Someone has to keep on paying, you see. This is why I'm here now, running the gauntlet of hate and accepting my death without protests of innocence and public displays of hysteria. They can have my death, but they won't get anything else from me.