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felt it rush in from all directions, eager to feed a spontaneous and demanding blaze that engulfed the structure in
a ferocious ball of fire.
Now I had plenty of light. The red-hot flames outside peeked menacingly through every knothole, nook and
cranny the old fish house had to offer. Already, I could feel the intense heat infiltrating the room, bringing with
it a thick plume of choking black smoke. I threw myself against the door again, gaining little more for my
efforts than a badly bruised shoulder.
Smoke gathered overhead, soothing over dry, bulky timbers in a ghostly cloud. It thickened quickly, forming
a lid of swirling black soot that descended upon me with each passing second. I began choking, the hot air
cutting into my lungs like bits of glass. My options for escape were evaporating. I contemplated the only two
choices for dying presented before me. I could either burn to death, or face asphyxiation from inside the bait
box. The latter, I imagined, would come less painfully.
Flames were licking the walls inside the shack from all four sides, as I prepared to climb into the box. I
palmed the edge and began lifting my foot, when something incredible happened. At first glance, I believed my
imagination had played a trick on me. It s the shadows, I told myself, flickering shadows on the wall. Then,
from my periphery, I saw it again. I turned and looked over my shoulder, not believing my eyes. I was not alone.
Leona Diaz stood before me, as majestically as anything I had ever seen before. She looked like an angel, a
vision of tranquility amidst a backdrop of smoke from Hell s own fire.
Leona! I cried.
She did not respond. I called to her again, this time offering outstretched hands. I thought she might join me,
if only temporarily before the smoke and flames consumed us both.
Leona, you must give me your hand!
Off in the corner, a beer bottle popped and a shard of glass sliced through Leona s silhouette unimpeded. It
caught my right cheek, leaving a cut below my eye a half-inch wide. I wiped my cheek with the back of my
hand before reaching for her again.
Leona. What is it? I supposed fear had paralyzed her to the point that she could not move, but if so, I did
not see it in her eyes. Instead of terror, I saw only empathy, a calm but passionate look of concern. I realized
then that her concern was for me only, as she was not there, at least not physically.
I had never seen Leona, or anyone else for that matter, in the non-physical state of bilocation, yet I knew that
was how she came to me in my final hour my final minutes.
She stood there, holding something in her hand, and offered it to me. I tried to take it from her, but could not
unite the physical link between her world and mine. I could not take the object; I could only study it. I squinted
through stinging eyes, concentrating on the object. It looked like her rosary, and I had no doubt that the beads in
her hand were the same as those Carlos found at the murder sites.
Why are you showing me this? I asked her. It s self-incriminating.
She held them higher, and I realized then that another rosary already hung around her neck. The beads in her
hand were not hers.
I tried to ask her what it meant, but the thickening smoke choked me to the point of nausea. I could no longer
speak. The intense heat licked at my flesh, singeing the hairs on the back of my neck. Then, in the middle of
God s own fury, it came to me: the significance of the beads and the reason Leona was trying to help me. How
obvious and ironic, I thought, that I should figure it out just in time to take my newfound discovery to my grave.
I imagined that the beads Carlos found at the murders sites came from the same strand Leona now held in her
hand. They were not rosary beads at all, but the beads of a witch s ladder, as I remembered Lilith saying that a
strand of forty beads, so designed by a witch, can serve as a witch s ladder equal in power to that of forty knots
on a rope. Somehow, a witch s ladder had played an important role in all of the murders, beginning with Travis
and including Doctor Lieberman s. Leona had come to tell me that the beads, not the towels, were the real key
to the mystery.
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