Last Kiss Goodbye. Rita Herron

flew from her hands. Mud soaked her clothes, splashed her face.

      Then someone grabbed her from behind.

      Flailing, she yelled and kicked.

      “Stop fighting me, dammit.”

      He released her, and she scrambled away on her knees. It wasn’t her father. Bad-boy Matt Mahoney was standing in the shadows. He stood motionless, his chin jutting up, a pair of ragged jeans hanging off his hips. He was soaked with rain and smelled like car grease. And he was so muscular and big he could stomp her into the ground. His black eyes tracked her as if she was an ant he wanted to kill.

      “Dammit to hell, Ivy.” He launched forward with one giant step, picked her up, then the Santa, and carried her toward a rusty van. Kudzu vines covered the roof and dangled over the windows, blocking all light.

      Ivy shuddered. It was pitch-black. She knew the nasty things men did to women in the dark. Had heard her daddy and mama. And those other men from Red Row.

      Knew what bad boys like Matt wanted.

      He opened the door, then shoved her on the bench seat in the back. With one hand, he untied the bandanna from around his head and wiped at the blood on her mouth. She couldn’t breathe. He was going to choke her just like the kudzu choked the wildflowers in the yard.

      Suddenly he yanked a knife from his pocket. The blade shimmered in the dark as he ripped away the front seat cover. His expression changed as he gently spread it over her. Then he pushed the cloth Santa back into her hands. “Shh, no one can see you in here,” he murmured softly. “It’s a good place to hide. Rest now, little Ivy.”

      She searched his big black eyes. She knew what he saw. She was covered in mud and leaves and blood. A bad girl just like her daddy said.

      She willed away the memory. Told herself it wasn’t true. Her mama hadn’t died. She would come back tomorrow. Glue the Santas together. Pick Ivy up and kiss her again. And this time her mama’s lips would be warm.

      Ivy’s head spun, and the bloody red color faded to brown again. She didn’t want to remember. To see the red. Not ever again.

      No, she had to forget….

      She closed her eyes, dragging the makeshift blanket over her head to shut out the night and the grisly images.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Fifteen years later

      “DON’T GO BACK to Kudzu Hollow, Ivy. Please. I’m begging you, it’s too dangerous. There’s nothing but evil and death in that town.”

      Ivy squeezed her adopted mother’s hand, then bent to kiss her cheek, her cool leathery skin reminding her of the time she’d kissed her birth mother goodbye.

      The day she’d died.

      In fact that kiss was the last thing Ivy remembered about that horrible night. That and the terrified cries echoing in her head. Her mother’s. Her own. She couldn’t be sure which. Or maybe it was both, all mingled together, haunting her in the night.

      Miss Nellie wheezed, cutting into Ivy’s morbid thoughts. Her adopted mother was close to death now, too. She’d suddenly taken ill a few days ago, and had gone downhill fast. She claimed she’d made peace with her maker, but Ivy wasn’t so sure. Sometimes she saw doubt, worry, secrets in Miss Nellie’s eyes. Secrets the woman refused to share.

      Secrets that told her Miss Nellie had a dark side.

      “I have to go back, Miss Nellie,” she said in a low whisper. “I…I’ve been having nightmares. Panic attacks.” And sometimes I see images from the past in the night, monsters that can’t be real. Cries and whispers of death. Screams of ghosts and spirits crying out for salvation. And I’m lost in the middle….

      Miss Nellie’s hand trembled as she lifted it to brush a strand of hair from Ivy’s cheek. “Forget about the past, dear. You have to let it go.”

      “How can I?” Fading sunlight dappled the patchwork quilt in gold and created a halo around Miss Nellie’s face. Ivy stood and faced the bedroom window, the scents of illness and dust surrounding her. She hated to lose Miss Nellie, but the elderly woman had looked so pale and her cheeks were sallow. The doctors weren’t certain what had caused her illness, but they’d said she wouldn’t make it another week, much less to Christmas.

      Christmas—the Santas…

      Ivy shuddered and fought against the fear that gnawed at her at the thought of the upcoming holidays, with all the twinkling lights, festive ornaments and decorations. Snowmen and reindeer, and of course, the Santas. Those Santas were the only thing she had left of her mother. Dozens of them. Soft ones sculpted from fine red-and-white velvet, with tiny black boots and belts and long cottony beards. Crystal and homemade crafted Santas with glass eyes and painted smiles. Wooden ones carved from bark and painted in a folk art style. Ivy kept them boxed up, though, couldn’t bear to look at them.

      Just as she couldn’t look at Miss Nellie now. She’d always felt Miss Nellie held something back, some part of herself she kept at a distance from Ivy. She knew it had to do with Nellie losing her own son when he was small, but her foster mother refused to talk about him or even show Ivy pictures.

      A sob built in Ivy’s throat. Miss Nellie was all she had. Another reason she wanted answers. When Miss Nellie passed, she’d take her secrets with her to the grave. Just as Ivy’s parents had.

      And Miss Nellie had secrets.

      “Please tell me what you meant in the journal, Miss Nellie. How did you come to get me?”

      “That journal was private, you shouldn’t have been snooping.” Miss Nellie clammed up abruptly, her thin lips pinched and almost blue as she turned her head away.

      “I didn’t mean to snoop, Miss Nellie, but I need to know.”

      “All that matters is that God wanted me to raise you. And I got you out of Kudzu Hollow. That town is tainted, I tell you,” Miss Nellie warned. “There’s evil there. I knew it when I lived there. And I’ve seen the papers, heard stories on the news over the years. Ever since your folks was murdered, bad things have been happening. Livestock and animals attacking one another. Children dying before their time. Folks rising from the grave. Men becoming animals. Teenagers turning against their folks that raised them.”

      Miss Nellie was superstitious. It was the way of the people of Appalachia. But Ivy couldn’t argue. She’d seen the stories, too, had read the papers. Every few years, always after a bout of bad thunderstorms and rain, the entire town seemed to go crazy. Crime spiked to a high. There had been several killings.

      Even more odd was the fact that very few people ever left the town—alive, anyway. And the ones who’d lost loved ones seemed trapped by the old legends. Either that or they were held there by the spirits of the dead, who supposedly roamed the graveyard on the side of the mountain.

      “No town or person is all bad,” Ivy said, clinging to her optimistic nature. “There has to be some good there, too.”

      Miss Nellie’s expression softened slightly. “You’re so naive, Ivy. You always try to find good in everything. But there ain’t no good there. Just ghosts and the devil.” The old woman coughed and reached for her oxygen mask, inhaled a deep breath, then continued in a wheezing voice. “I used to hear the children chant when they were skipping rope.

      ‘Evil in the kudzu

      devil in the men

      Death in the hollow

      again and again.’

      And it’s true. People are afraid to stay. Afraid to leave.”

      Ivy shivered. She’d been so afraid to return.

      But those old fears were keeping her from having a sane life. From being with a man. From loving.

      Even the colors hadn’t returned. The fall leaves outside had already started