CHAPTER ONE

She was dead before she knew it. Before she toppled to the unyielding earth with a dull thud, she was dead. A bone snapped, maybe two, but she didn’t feel or hear them. Just before it happened she knew it was very cold. But it had been cold for days, days she didn’t and couldn’t keep track of, so she never thought to complain. Then she heard the footsteps, quick and heavy on the frosty ground. Then a piercing pain. In a hip? She couldn’t be sure. A searing heat. Then darkness. Had she the mental capacity to philosophize, she would have thought, So this is it. But she didn’t, so she didn’t. If she had been the least bit wise, and of course she wasn’t (it was impossible), she might have realized that what was happening to her was the bizarre beginning to the most terrible story the small town she didn’t know she lived in had ever seen.