Fifteen years ago, on an October night in a deserted part of Middle America, two cars raced down a country highway. It was Halloween night, to be precise. In each car was a teenage couple, boy driving, one arm around girl's shoulder; girl cuddling close to him. One girl wore a grinning Jack o' Lantern patch on her heavy white football sweater. She wore her young man's senior class ring. The other girl wore the same get-up, but with a plain pumpkin patch sewn on her young man's football sweater. The boys were handsome and craggy, athletes, with serious eyes but devilish grins. One planned to become a doctor, the other an English professor. The girls were attractive and wholesome, with sparkles of mischief in their eyes. One planned to become a physicist, the other a wildlife expert to save endangered species. They had it all--here and now, and ahead of them.

The cars went a bit too fast at times, and weaved right and left to goose each other. But the young people were not drunk. They were having fun. They were going to a dark spot by a pond to neck. They had absolutely no idea that they were about to become part of a multiple murder that would make national headlines and shock the country. Then, a day or two later, something new and horrible would happen, somewhere else, and that would take over the media as the latest terrible news. And so, there is nothing that can't be forgotten or paved over or somehow buried in the twilight hinterlands of memory in an unmarked drawer with no label. Unless you were part of it. And got away. The only one--forever looking over your shoulder.

The place was far from town, on a vast property owned by the utility company. People weren't supposed to be on this land at all, and nobody was, except those who had some special motive. Like these kids. And the person stalking them.

This vast property was one of those places that could be anywhere. Say, New Mexico, for the distant, sandy cliffs and flat, empty land. Or it could be Arkansas, for the lush green forests closer by, or New England, for the autumn leaves swirling on the road as the cars raced by under a full moon. It's a good bet this was upstate New York, but don't bind me to that. It doesn't matter where this happened, or who these kids were, because that's all buried in that hinterland where memories go to die. Good memories, bad memories, it doesn't matter, like the people who remember for a time, and then forget. And are themselves eventually forgotten. It doesn't matter, because they had their time and used it--whether wisely or foolishly, we'll never know--and it doesn't matter. Nobody can take away what they had, good and bad alike. And that's all that any of us gets.

The two cars screeched around a turn. You could hear laughter--two boys, two girls--as the cars left the main road and streaked with stabbing headlights down a side road.

The dark back road was narrow. It took them deeper and deeper into a forest that was owned by the utility companies. It was populated mainly by the ghosts of long-ago Native Americans who lived here, maybe as long ago as when saber tooth cats still prowled after Ice Age prey. The kids respected the past, but that was all so long ago. As the saying goes, that was then, and this was now. These kids were living in the moment, glad to be graduating, happy to have all been accepted to good colleges. What could go wrong? They had absolutely no idea that someone was following them. Someone knew of their plans for the evening, and had a different idea. A very different way of looking at things.

The cars flashed past in the bright moonlight, echoing with laughter. Leaves swirled like a cloud, fragrant with the forest's fungus and dampness, a smell of the very earth.

A man on a motorcycle rolled out of a pitch-dark stand of trees. He waited a few seconds, and then softly kicked the bike to life. It rumbled deeply, full of cat-like hunting energy. He pulled a black ski mask over his head, so that only pale dots were visible where his eyes and mouth were. He was dressed in black from head to foot, and now he pulled black wool gloves over his pale hands. They were special gloves that he had bought at a hunting goods store. They were thin and woolen, to keep your fingers warm on a cold night or a winter day, but let you feel intimately as you expertly used your hunting knife to sever an animal's skin and fur from its warm, bloody flesh. The man heeled up the kickstand and set in motion after the two cars. He rolled along quietly. The road wound through the woods. The man rolled at a moderate and careful speed, for about twenty minutes. That took him a little over a mile down a slight grade toward the water table.

He pulled over when he came to a chocolate-colored wooden sign standing upright on a four-by-four, with the words AGO N.Y. Pond carved in and painted yellow. Turning the engine off, he coasted, bouncing on old ruts covered thickly with dying leaves, until he could hide his bike in shadows. He did two things before he left the bike. He turned the bike around for a quick getaway. And he made sure the long coil of rope on the back seat was in place, where he could grab it when the time came.

Walking onto the humped little blacktop, he stood in the middle of the road and listened. He touched the hunting knife that was in a sheath at his belt, to make sure it was ready.

The woods at night were a curious mix of quiet and noisy. Night birds filled the hollow autumn air with chick-chick sounds, with warbling nesting cries like troooooo!, and with howls and mating calls. Somewhere, a pack of coyotes giggled madly, in their hunger, as they pursued a kill. A squirrel darted up a tree, almost silent, except when it snapped through leaves, in quick, darting motions. The man had disturbed a long, fat snake. Its pattern consisted of alternating bands, the lighter colored like the yellow leaves all around, the darker like those leaves that were brown like dried blood. Hypnotically, the bands moved from side to side as the snake moved deeper into the leaves to hide. An owl hooted, and the hoots echoed among the timber. The man listened, but he heard no laughter. He did hear the wind sigh around him. Leaves chittered with ghostly energy, as if unseen beings were shaking them in alarm, in dread, in foreboding. If there were ghosts about, they must be jittery. Ghosts don't remember the past much. They live in the moment of their death, without comprehending, an eternal and muddled present. But they can dimly foresee the future, especially dreadful events, and they manage to cluster about, sometimes years ahead, hordes of them, more evanescent than pollen in the air, waiting. Maybe that was them, shaking the leaves in the tree crowns all around, together with the wind spirits.

As he walked down the boat-slip road, Agony Pond glittered ahead, like black oil. It was a big pond, just on the verge of being a lake. On the far side were the ruins of an old concrete cement plant, abandoned generations ago, and now home to rats and skeletons. The ruins glistened in moonlight. Their windows looked like black eyes full of gloomy thoughts.

The moon hung overhead like a silver-yellow lantern--with a shocked expression in its dark-green stony seas that slumbered in borrowed sunlight.

The man pulled his knife out in one quick, blurry motion. He did not break stride even for a second. Seeing his prey, he walked more quickly. The two cars sat parked on either side of the road, overlooking the water. They pointed slightly away from each other, modestly, as if seeking privacy. No matter, because the windows were steamed up.

The man knew which car to take first. Or, rather, he knew which one to leave for last. He walked the last few yards flat on stalking feet, like a Native American tracker, without making a sound. Holding the knife ready in his right hand, he put his other hand on the driver's side rear door handle. The lock was off, and the door opened. Two startled faces looked up at him. His face caught a blast of warm, humid air full of muzzy smells--warm hair, flushed skin, sweat, and faintly pungent sex smells. The girl started to scream, but he stabbed her in the throat and she bent away into the darkness, silent and shocked, holding her throat with both hands. The youth lunged at the attacker, who could smell the girl's lipstick on the boy's breath. With both arms on the attacker's shoulders, the boy left his torso wide open. The man finished him quickly with some ripping motions. The boy lay bleeding silently to death as the man finished the girl off with a dozen hard overhead stabs. He closed the car door and turned.

As he crossed the road, the other car's rear window rolled down. The youth called out to his friends: "You guys okay? I thought I heard something, like a scream." Then he saw the man all dressed in black, crossing the road with a dripping knife, and yelled: "Oh my God, no! What are you doing? Who are you?"

The attacker was upon him before he could roll the window up or lock the door. As he leaned into the car to stab the youth, the young man grabbed the attacker by the front of his sweatshirt. It was not a tactical move, or one with much thought, because already the attacker's knife had entered his torso at least twice, and the young man was getting drowsy from loss of blood, from shock. The girl, whose name was Emily Thurston, crawled over her boyfriend's back to help. She was an athletic, pretty blonde girl who ran track and played tennis. She reached out to grab their attacker, but managed only to pull off his ski mask.

As her boyfriend lay slumped and dying, with his wrists on the windowsill and his head propped limply face down so all you saw was a blond buzz-cut, the girl screamed: "Billy Packward! What are you doing? You've killed him!"

Billy Packward, the quiet kid who had sat near Emily Thurston in many of her classes for four years, and had been sort of a hovering annoyance to her as far back as grammar school, spoke with her for the first time in his life: "I've been in love with you since we were kids." He spoke rapidly as she sobbed with her hands over her face and tears streaming between her fingers. "You never had the time of day for me, but I love you more than you can imagine. I'm not going to hurt you, Emily. I love you. I'm going to save you and take you away from here, so we can be together."

"No, no, no, go away!" she sobbed.

The boy moved once more, and Billy Packward stabbed him again. The boy reared up and grabbed Billy's wrists in a death grip. His eyes were full of blood, and blind. Blood ran down his cheeks. He cried out to her through gritted teeth: "Run, Emily. I'll hold him as long as I can."

Obediently, Emily kicked the door open on the other side and darted away.

It was Billy's turn to cry "No!" but the knife fell from his hands as the other young man gripped his wrists, tried to bend them, break them. "Emily!" Billy cried after her, but she disappeared into night and darkness. When the young man's hands grew limp, Billy ran around the car and yelled into the darkness: "Emily! Emily!" All he heard was the echo of his own voice. "I love you!"

For a while, he stumbled about, but it was dark in the forest, and he kept bumping into bushes and trees. Finally he ran down to the boat slip and looked for signs of her anywhere out on the shores of Agony Pond. The moon stood high in the sky. Its light almost seared Billy's skin, so hot and bright was it. The man in the moon looked distraught.

"Emileeeee!" Billy cried out as loudly as he could. "I will find you. No matter where you go. I will find you, if I have to run to the ends of the earth!" He bent down by the car to retrieve his knife.

The ruins across the pond stared at him mutely with those big window-eyes. They, and the moon, and the forest all around, and the glittering lake, were in a conspiracy of silence to hide Emily from him. But he would find her. He still had the coil of rope on the back of his motorcycle. He would find her, and tie her up, and take here away someplace where they could be alone together in their love.

This happened fifteen years ago.