And You Will Find Love

She could see that Chet still walked with a cane, limping slightly. She had been the cause of that, and thought it must have been part of what had driven him mad. Lust, anger, and hatred now distorted his handsome face, and she knew to whom they were directed.

"Barbara!" he called out in a cat-and-mouse voice.

"I know you've come in here. I followed you from your hotel. Come out, so neither of us falls and breaks our neck. I can't see where I'm going, and neither can you. Why not just come out and... we'll talk."

She did not reply, but moved farther back into the church- yard, praying that she could blend with its overgrowth and shadows and become invisible.

Chet quickly lost his patience. "Barbara, come the hell out where I can see you! Don't make me any more mad at you than I already am. I'll be gentle with you. I promise. Even after waiting for you so long, I'll be gentle. Even after what you've done to me, I'll be gentle..."

His crazy man's high-pitched laugh then frightened her so, she turned and began to run, not knowing where in the shadows she was running.

"Dear God!" she screamed as she ran right into the other man, who was stalking her. Tall and broad-shouldered, his gray hair wild and windblown, his clothes looked worn and dusty, as if he had been at work in the churchyard. Digging a fresh grave? Her grave?

Barbara had run right into No Face's strong, possessive arms, and they held her like she was in a vise. They stood face-to-face, except that his was only half a face. He had not lost the other half of it in the war; she knew that because she had seen him before the war, back home in America.

Now the sight of his face, as if it had been eaten away by a cancer, with only half a nose on the left side and no right ear, and him holding her so close, sent her into hysterical trembling.

Holding Barbara so tightly she could hardly breathe, her stalker then covered her mouth with the heavy flat of one hand.

"Shhh!" No Face told her harshly. "Don't make a sound!"

She tried to free herself from his grasp, but he would not release her. The harder she fought to wrest herself from him, the tighter No Face held her. She tried to bite his hand, but could not open her mouth.

Unable to utter a sound, Barbara silently beseeched the ghosts who haunt bombed-out churchyards. "Dear God, No!"Her words were muffled and could not escape her tightly closed mouth. "Merciful God, No! No! No!"