2

Kaylee wondered if Father Tom should know about the dreams she'd been having lately. Death dreams...
The ball skidded off her fingers. As she retrieved it from the grimy puddle, Kaylee squeezed hard, trying to shut off her thoughts of the nightmare.
She quickly mumbled a Hail Mary and then began bouncing the ball, concentrating on keeping it in motion without a miss.
"K, my name is Kaylee, and my mother's name is Catherine ... we live in Paterson, New Jersey, and my mother is a secretary ..." She chanted in a breathless singsong, completely unaware that she was being observed by a figure two stories above her - someone whose features were covered by a garishly tinted mask of a woman's smiling face.

* * *

1

1

It had been drizzling all afternoon, and the craggy Victorian houses huddled along the block had an ominous cast.Their stark turrets seemed threatening against the slate-gray sky; like spires on ancient, gloom-haunted castles.
When she'd been younger, Kaylee liked to pretend she was a fairy-tale princess in an evil city; on a mission to rescue her father, the king. But since she'd started studying for her First Communion, she'd been daydreaming about being a holy saint like St. Theresa, or Mother Cabrini; specially chosen by God to perform miracles on behalf of the sick and the poor.
Kaylee took a pink rubber ball from her raincoat pocket and absently bounced it against the wet sidewalk, imagining how she'd look in her communion dress. She saw herself in a shining white veil, approaching the altar to receive the sacred Host. As soon as she swallowed the wafer containing the body and blood of Christ, she'd be transformed by his grace into the purest, most beautiful saint in heaven. She'd float up to the clouds, Father Tom at her side.