I somehow made it back to the house I'd claimed as my own in Dark Falls, my mind numb. Stowing the tiny Civic in the garage, I stumbled inside holding my torn forehead, consoling myself with the knowledge that in time it would heal. Sometimes I would feel nostalgic and look back through my collection of old photographs, remembering what kind of life I had before I came to town, and I thought doing so now might bring me comfort and help me think.

The pictures looked somewhat antiquated now with their rounded corners and dates stamped on the backs with yellow ink, but they shared a common element of sunshine. It may have just been the way the colors had faded over the years, but every photo seemed awash in light. As I flipped through the images, I saw myself standing outside my high school in a graduate's cap with a big grin and a thumbs-up sign, my blond hair almost white in the sun's rays. In another, I was relaxing on the sun-drenched patio holding a magazine and a glass of what looked to be iced tea. I hadn't even been aware that one of my parents had taken the photo. There I was again, this time mowing the lawn in cut-offs, well on my way to a painful sunburn. I closed my eyes wistfully, almost smelling the aloe vera I had used for days afterward.

My father had captured in those little 4-by-4-inch photographs all the stereotypical big events in my life: attending the prom, getting the keys to a used car he'd chosen, and finally the fateful day I'd loaded all my worldly possessions into that hatchback and set off for my first professional job in a faraway town I'd never heard of called Dark Falls. If only I had known.

Pulling my face into a sneer, I turned the last picture over. "Sep 80" had been neatly stamped on the back by the mail-order developing company. It was the last image of myself I had, and by the time it had arrived in the mail from my dad as a memento of the day I'd moved from home, I'd already been dead for weeks. I had never bothered to take any pictures after the townspeople had made me one of them, nor could I enjoy the sunlight any more since even the gentlest rays would be capable of destroying me.

The house I called home was a sturdy split-level built not long before the accidental release of toxic gas that had turned Dark Falls into a town of the living dead. When Spangler had told me to choose any house, I'd picked the one that reminded me most of my old home. The shuttered plastics plant responsible for the massive dose of death was visible from the second-floor window, though I spent most of my time in the basement as did my other light-fearing friends.

I rested on the cool cement floor, staring up at the youthful artifacts of a lifetime ago. A milkcrate of vinyl records shared space atop the woodgrain television set with one of the earliest home video games ever made, and farther up on the walls were pinned the posters I'd once thought were so clever but now found overly cute. A kitten barely clinging to a rope urged me to "Hang in there, baby!" while a line of marching comic-book figures cheerily proclaimed "Keep on truckin'!"

As if. At any rate, it didn't seem like the kind of room a killer would call home, but that's what it was, and that's what I was, a soulless murderer and the only remaining Dark Falls resident. I almost felt jealous of the others, though I had no idea where their souls might be right now. Part of me even felt like they had gotten what they'd deserved, for they had guiltlessly led me to my own death years before.

Sullenly I turned on the television, pulling the paisley curtains over the glass-block windows first. I'm not sure why I bothered, for it was unlikely anybody would see the bluish glow from outdoors. Nobody was around. Amanda and Josh had surely escaped with their parents by now, though I doubted anyone would believe their story of being waylaid by an army of the living dead. I had kept up with the news reports enough to know that all major routes to our town had been blocked off long ago and Dark Falls was considered a tragic Superfund site that nobody could afford or bring themselves to demolish.

The hue on the old television was off, making the reporter's face look as ghastly as my own. She was droning on about some escaped convict from the county jail, and in distaste I crossed the room to turn the dial. Every place had its problems, and I couldn't be bothered to hear about some other murderer—some fellow murderer, I reminded myself—who was at large and probably wondering what to do with himself, as I was now.

Though I no longer had any need for sleep, I tried to lull myself into a sense of calm with a mindless late-night TV show.

It didn't work.