The Shepherd by Ethan Cross Read Free Book Online

of time before she joined her husband and passed on into obscurity. Only a handful of family and friends would mourn her passing. After a few years, she would only be thought of when family members examined old photo albums. No one beyond her small circle would ever know her name, and she would fade away as if she never existed—forgotten and forsaken.
    He would change all that.
    His presence at her home ensured that everyone in the surrounding area would remember the kind grandmother who had been murdered by the sadistic killer. Someday, he was certain that countless books would be written about his exploits. He would be psycho-analyzed and dissected as America’s fascination with the sinister propelled the works of his followers to the bestseller lists.
    He would be hated by most, revered by some like him, but remembered by all. He would live on forever in infamy. Through association with him, the silver-haired woman would be remembered as well. She may even warrant her own chapter in some yet-to-be written account of his deeds. Although the woman—like the countless victims that came before her—would never appreciate the gift, through death, he would give her immortality.
    ~~*~~
    Part of Maureen’s sleeping mind registered a noise in the room, and she awoke from her slumber. She blinked the cobwebs from her vision, but her heart was unprepared for what her eyes found.
    A man with haunting, gray eyes sat in her husband’s chair.
    She trembled with fear and was at a loss for words. One of her hands lay quivering on top of the table and shook with such force that it rattled the decorative centerpiece, a vase filled with lilies and orchids. She was about to speak when, without warning, the man produced a knife and drove the blade into the table, directly through the center of her shaking hand.
    She screamed in agony. She tried to pull her hand free, but it was pinned to the table’s top. The more she worked to free it, the more intense the pain became. She searched the area within her reach for some kind of weapon to use against the intruder. Ironically, the only thing within arm’s length was a paperback novel that dealt with the hunt for a serial killer.
    “Shhhh. Quiet, please. We have much to discuss.”
    She convulsed with terror and brought her shrieking under control. But she could not halt her short, raspy breaths or the tears that flowed from her eyes. Between intakes of air that bordered on hyperventilation, she managed to ask, “Who are you? What do you want?”
    “My name is Francis Ackerman Jr., and I wanna play a game.”
    Between sobs, she said, “Why are you doing this?”
    Ackerman seemed perplexed by the question. “Do you ask a lion why he eats meat? Why is the grass green and the sky blue? Some things just are the way that they are, and this is who I am.”
    Ackerman stood and walked over to the kitchen counter. He picked up a baking timer. The small plastic device was white with a round dial. Black, ornate script, located in the bottom right corner of the tool’s face, spelled out the brand name, Lux .
    The killer sat back down at the table. He held up the timer in front of her and rotated it in his hand, as if examining such a device for the first time. “I love these things,” he said, looking deep into her eyes,as though she was his oldest friend. “I have to admit that I am completely fascinated by any device that measures the concept of time. Strange, isn’t it? I mean, time is such an elusive and fluid thing. And yet, we design devices to put this grand concept into a nice, neat little box that we can understand, measure, and assign value to. Time is ever flowing and changing around us. It’s the fabric of the universe, and we are nothing—only single drops in the grand ocean of time.
    “I also love that time, in regards to personal perception, is completely relative. For example, as you sit there in terror with a knife stuck in your hand, time feels as if it has slowed to a