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ABIGAIL MANGIN 25
“Is murder genetic in your family?”
Brother George stood from the pews. “Get out.”
The harpist continued to play. He nervously softened his mel-
ody beneath the commotion.
“An online Chatter poll shows forty-two percent of responders
think LeClaire Model Management is hiding that you’re a serial killer. Would you like to comment?”
Brother George clutched his Bible and rushed down the aisle to drive the reporters outside. He was absorbed into the mob. When he pushed past them, they knocked him in the face with camera lenses. Lights flashed so brightly he couldn’t see anything but white and the shadowy red outline of the veins in his eyes pulsing before him.
He was pushed outside and knocked onto his knees. The quiet hum of the wind had gone. Geese flew away from the flashing lights and cackling voices. The sun faded behind the trees. And all Brother George had left was the rocky ground that scraped his knees.
“It’s the tenth anniversary of Annabelle Leigh’s disappear- ance,” a reporter said. “Did you make the skin coat? Kill again to celebrate?”
Brother George felt light-headed. Reporters surrounded him with vicious, glazed-over eyes. They wanted to consume him. There was no lonelier feeling than being trapped by reporters, seeing your own terrified eyes shining back at you in the camera lens crosshairs.
It reminded him of the first time he was mauled by the press.
October 23rd, 2009. Two weeks after Annabelle Leigh disap- peared outside of his home.
It was the first time Cecil learned that he was evil.
Fourteen-year-old Cecil LeClaire wore his usual school uni- form—an Armani suit jacket two sizes too big. He had read on the internet that people make posters when a friend goes missing. What he didn’t know was that he was not “people.”
So he stepped inside a dingy Manhattan FedEx and plugged his USB into the printer. Missing person posters shot out, Annabelle Leigh’s grin fading and reemerging in each new image, like an animation bringing her back to life. Missing Girl.