Chapter 1 — Rites of Spring

“Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.”

Emily Dickinson “I looked Death in the face last night I saw Him in a mirror And He simply smiled He told me not to worry He told me just to take my time.”

Danny Elfman “I promise not to kill myself tonight, if you let me tell you EVERYTHING.

After all, I am your favorite dead girl.”

Pamela Vasquez-Kuznik They gathered one night on the eastern slope—wandering souls, men of oak, soiled by mud, by gravel and glass, their arms and their clothing splattered in blood—lost souls chained to the stretch of asphalt that stole them out of their suburban dreams.

It was March 19th, the day before the Vernal Equinox—a season foretold to avenge their fate. “Harness the violence of all of the elements—drunkenness, courage, foolishness, lust. Gather them up from the valleys below and like ‘hooks in their jaws’ draw them up into our lair.” Candles danced in the cold night air as spirits chanted a dark invocation. A priestess shrouded in long dark robes—bearing the scars of a fateful decision, her body outlined in flickering light, sockets replacing her once dark eyes—stretched forth her arms in the midst of the masses.

A victim of the canyon herself, witnesses claim that she not only murdered her young husband’s mistress but disposed of her body in one of the creeks. Leaving the scene, her car lost control on the hairpins—her body and spirit avenged in the same rocks and water.

“Lost Eyes” lifted up her head to the hills as spirits sang in an ancient Chaldean tongue, then raised her arms to harness their power. “Reverse the winds that blow in the spring, the breath of the desert, a plague of locusts.” Chanting arose in harmonic convergence—a plainsong from the abode of the damned—the ground quaked in nefarious spasms. “Send for me the soul of a woman; young and beautiful, dressed all in black, Pisces Moon and Scorpio Venus, illusions of her own immortality, a doubter of God, locked outside of His ‘hedge of protection.’ Her soul for mine! Her eyes for my own!” She lifted her head as the warm canyon wind sent torches dancing in a circle of hands—dark empty sockets glowing with fire, her face a bruised and blood-stained pallor—shadows answering down from the hills.