She rose from the floor with renewed energy, empowered, and strode toward the study and the Walls of Madness.

She could make a difference…she and Mr. Hands.

A difference the likes of which Detective Bill Emerson and everyone else couldn’t begin to comprehend.

She scanned the clippings on the wall, promising Heather Wilson, Daniel McKellan, Rosie and Thad Simpkins, Billy Lawrence, Crystal and Emily Ransom, and the dozens upon dozens of other children whose sad and pained final hours were detailed before her, that their deaths would not go unavenged.

Not as long as they had her.

And Mr. Hands.

For a dead monster is still a dead one.

She walked slowly, almost reverently, toward the Walls of Madness.

And there shall be no mercy for the likes of them.

She reached out and plucked a clipping from the same wall from which had come the Beals stories.

She read the details over, though she already knew the facts in the case by heart.

“Oh, yes,” she whispered. “You’ll do nicely.”

Chapter Three

“She’s here again.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”

The young couple were walking the mounds in the park, something they made it a point to do every week. It was late October, a crisp autumn afternoon on whose breeze you could smell winter’s approach, perfect for a romantic stroll. For the last five visits, every time they reached the end of their hike, there was the Sculpture Lady (as they’d come to think of her) standing before Things Left Behind and chattering on as if she thought the thing were somehow alive and could understand what she said.

“It’s so sad,” said the young woman.

“I think it’s kinda creepy,” replied her fiancé.

“Maybe because neither one of us has ever been that lonely?” The young woman stared. “She must be awfully empty to do something like this every week.”

“What makes you think it’s just every week? For all we know, she might come here every day.”

The young woman—whose friends often accused her of being too empathetic for her own good—wiped the beginnings of a tear from one of her eyes. “That’d just be too terrible. Poor woman.”

The young man kissed her among the swirling, dry, colorful leaves, then said: “I promise you that you’ll never be that sad.”

“I hope not.” She cast one last glance at the Sculpture Lady and thought, I hope it gets better for you, somehow.

And then they were off for one more stroll around the mounds, the Sculpture Lady soon forgotten as the romantic spell of autumn consumed them.

* * *

In her high-school days, Three Dog Night’s “One” had been Lucy’s favorite song, and remained so (though she’d never admit it) well into her adulthood.

Later she would think, albeit briefly, that there must have been some kind of irony at work, though she was hard pressed to fathom its subtleties by the time this occurred to her.

For in the end, it was the number 1 that undid her.