Before the Stoke of Midnight

They’d reached the door that Clare had described, right on the far side of the building. And as they did so, Clare’s spirit emerged, distraught.

“He’s got her on the table! He cuts his victims through the year for his ‘forty days of blood,’ but right before, he creates long slashes and then . . . I was out of it by the time he finally cut my throat and that won’t happen until just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, but he’s going to hurt her so badly . . . I mean . . . she’s down now! She could bleed to death if he . . . oh . . .”

Jackson looked at Angela and she looked back at him.

And he knew they were thinking alike.

With a nod, she moved off.

“What, what are you doing?” Clare demanded.

“Distracting him,” Angela told her.

And Angela hurried on to the main entrance, throwing the door open and calling out, “Hey, anyone here? I need help! Please, is anyone here?”

Jackson quietly slipped through the back door.

As they had planned—and hoped—she’d drawn the man standing over Ella at the sacrificial table to take steps toward the entrance, to look at what was happening.

And being in, Angela pretended she knew nothing about what was going on and let out a horrendous scream.

She turned as if she would run.

Of course, the man went after her.

Jackson drew his weapon, hurrying toward the table lest her captor turn back to finish off his victim knowing that he was gone.

And the man turned back.

He looked so ordinary. Maybe six-foot-even, brown, slightly curly hair, slim but wiry body . . . a man maybe in his late twenties or early thirties.

“Stop, now, or I’ll shoot!” Jackson warned him.

He turned to run in Angela’s direction.

“Stop, now, or I’ll be the one who shoots,” Angela said.

Well, the ghost of Clare Brunet had been right. Because thus threatened, the man turned with his knife raised high, determined to slice into Ella before he could be killed himself.

But no good; Jackson didn’t need to kill the man, though he would have done so.

Angela had fired. She’d caught him perfectly in the left shoulder, the force of her shot causing him to spin around and fall backwards, the knife flying from his hand.

Landing harmlessly on the ground.

He lay there, screaming.

“Oh, shut up, help is on the way,” Angela assured him.

She still had her Glock aimed at him. Jackson put through the call, reaching Adam who, he knew, would get Pete and his crew right there along with all the medical help that they might need.

He hurried forward himself to remove all the ties that were holding Ella to the table. She was weeping hysterically but telling him they had to rescue the other girl—the new girl who had been slated to be either the virgin mother—or the sacrifice for the coming year.

And of course, he did.

But the man on the floor was screaming. “Do it, do it, you fool, you don’t know, you don’t know what must be done, but He will come for you, so . . . you won! You just shoot me!”

“I don’t think so,” Angela told him. “Because in my world order, there’s justice. There’s life, there’s belief in justice. And while I am tasked with stopping your murdering and cruelty, I am not the judge or the jury or even the medical experts who must deal with you now!”

He smiled. She was right; their part was over.

But as he helped the hysterical young woman who had been tied to a structural pole, Angela stood over the fallen man on the ground until help rushed in, Pete and his local officers, EMTs, those who could help the victims,

There was always confusion. People getting to the right place at a crime scene, medical help arriving. And they discovered the man who had kidnapped and killed in the name of his “New World Order” was Michael Cardigan, an “influencer” who had somehow managed to take his own rhetoric way too seriously.

He would receive medical attention. Whether he wound up with a lifelong prison term or in a facility for the criminally insane remained to be seen.

As Angela had said, they were there to enforce the law. They were not judges and jury—or even the kind of medical personnel who could determine the true state of the man’s mind.

The ghost of Clare Brunet stayed with them through it all. She stood near the victims and touched their hair with gentle fingers.

It seemed that while they didn’t see her, she did give them a soothing touch.

And when Jackson and Angela were ready to leave the last of the work behind, Clare came with them and offered them both hugs and thanks.

“I just wish we’d been . . . sooner!” Angela whispered to her.

“You gave me everything! You gave me peace, and a sense that I did come into this world to give . . . to be . . . I don’t know! But I feel it now, I feel the warmth! I was able to make a mark on this world, and I’m ready for the next!” Clare’s spirit told them.

And it was true; she was already warmer.

She blew them a kiss and raced into the woods. They watched her go; and they stood together, Jackson with his arm around his wife.

A split-second burst of light tore through the heavens.

And then it was gone.

“We still have paperwork—”

“Always! And it can wait until morning.”

“But the hospital first! We need to check on the victims.”

They discovered that the second victim was Mary Goodwin; and she’d been abducted from a hike. But she was fine—her family was with her, and she’d be released that night. Her parents were sweetly, hysterically grateful.

And it was nice.

The good part of what they did.

Ella was going to be in the hospital for a while longer while all the incisions she’d received “bleeding” for forty days were carefully tended to, and where she could receive physical rehab to get all her parts functioning well again.

It was there her mom Jeannie found them, and where she was a bit of a basket case, but a beautiful basket case in her gratitude.

They’d said goodbye to Clare. But Ella’s sister was desperate to get their mom to have a cup of coffee and calm down enough for the doctors to allow them to stay through the night. They assured Jeannie they’d wait until she and Ella’s little sister could get some food.

They were able to spend a few minutes with Ella. And Ella, too, told them she couldn’t thank them enough.

They assured her that her life was all the gratitude they might need.

“It was . . . surreal!” Ella told him. “I knew what was happening. I’d seen what he’d done to Clare. But . . .”

“But?” Angela asked softly.

“I could have sworn she was . . . I don’t know. Somehow with me in spirit. That’s crazy, I know. But in the end . . . I felt as if she was telling me just to hang on a while longer and that I’d be okay . . . and then you came!” Ella said.

Angela smiled at her. “Maybe her spirit was with you, who are we to judge?”

Ella nodded. “I always like to believe that while we know there is evil out there, there’s more goodness in the world as well!”

When Ella’s mom and sister returned, Jackson and Angela left at last.

New Year’s Eve was actually upon them then—it was past the stroke of midnight.

And when they walked into their new home, they checked on the kids and Mary Tiger. All were sleeping peacefully.

And they slid into one another’s arms.

“Out with the old!” Jackson said.

“And a good, good out with the old! Not a throw-out, a solve!” Angela said.

“So, maybe . . . hm. ‘All’s well that ends well!’”

She grinned at him.

“And into the promise of tomorrow! Happy ‘almost’ New Year’s, my love! Oh! I mean, sometimes, even into the new year, there’s the old to be cherished!” she told him. “Because, well . . . I will always cherish you!”

“And I, you,” he vowed. Then he frowned. “Hey! Just how darned old are we now?” he muttered.

And laughing, arm in arm, they headed for bed.

And it was true. There was the old to be solved, and there was the new . . .

And the old to be cherished forever.