Sarah Benadine is Dead

Prologue

Strangely enough, as far as I have ever come to know, our story begins with a page from a children's book. The page, glossy and vibrantly illustrated, was new, only months old and had, until just moments before our tale begins, been part of a recently purchased addition to the Clearwater Public Library collection. By the start of this story, however, the page had been torn free from the book it belonged to and had been left to drift about by itself in the early evening breeze. At the precise moment I shall commence my narration, the page had come to rest, weighted down by dew and caught in the grass near six-year-old Angela Carson's backyard.

It may have lasted until morning there-may have even moved on, perhaps to be lost forever-had Angela's parents not been gone that late August night when this all began, leaving her older brother, Joshua, in charge of looking after her. It was only because Joshua saw no problem with letting his younger sister play in the backyard while he was inside with his girlfriend that Angela was outside at all that night. As it is, while the young girl was attempting to catch fireflies in the setting sun, she was led straight to the book page, and it began.

Living just across the street from the library, Angela Carson was already an avid reader. Joshua maintained she'd grow out of it, but every week she would cross the street with her mother or father and bring home a new stack of books to read. She recognized the book page immediately, having read the book it was a part of just last week.

Angela picked the page up reverently, scared of tearing it. She couldn't fathom how it had ended up here, in her yard, but she knew she had to get it back to the library, where it belonged. It didn't matter that it was torn; the librarians could make it good as new. She never thought of asking her brother to go with her, or even if she could go at all. Her brother, she knew, hadn't set foot in the library in at least two years.

The Clearwater Public Library was closed for the night already, but Angela knew that sometimes one or two of the librarians, or Sarah Benadine, the high school worker, stayed late to clean up and get things back where they belonged. The doors were locked when Angela got to them, and the interior was dark, the only illumination coming from the outside floodlights and the rapidly setting sun. Getting as close to the glass doors as she could, Angela peered in and froze.

When Angela's parents returned, they would find a mess of police officers and paramedics swarming their house and the library, the glass doors to which would lay shattered on the cement, and their six year old daughter in hysterics, screaming about a monster that had tried to get her. For now, though, everything was still, outside the library and in, where dozens of books-including the one our lonely page belonged to-were scattered and torn and destroyed, multiple bookshelves were collapsed atop each other, and the broken body of Sarah Benadine lay motionless just in front of the circulation desk: the main attraction.

The murder of Sarah Benadine was the start of the terror that would pervade the small town of Clearwater, Wisconsin and would not end until many more were dead.