It was 7pm in Wisteria. On Main Street, Sadie Kimble flipped the big blue sign in her store window. “Cl😊sed,” it read, since some years before her daughter colored in the O and made it a smiley face.

Down the block, the giant flood lights over Hank’s Auto switched off and Hank’s brother, Earl, pulled chains across the entrance and exit.

At Suwanee Bank, young Lydia Nix exited in a huff. She dropped her keys attempting to lock up and then dropped them once more trying to get in her car. Earl slowed his truck as he passed. “Out a little late, aren’t we Lydia,” he shouted, before bursting into a hoarse half-cackle, half-cough.

Lydia returned the sentiment with a pair of middle fingers held high, but if it bothered Earl, it didn’t show. Before he crossed over the hill and under the town’s only stoplight, he could be heard saying “good luuuuuck.”

Finally in her car, Lydia frantically jammed the keys into the ignition. When at last the car roared to life, though, something was off. It was set to A.M. radio.

“The fuck?” she whispered, “is that the 700 Club?”

“It is, dear,” came a sweet, oddly malicious sounding voice behind her. Lydia’s eyes shot to her rearview mirror, where Esther Maybanks smiling face awaited her. Her blue eyes and short, white hair were surrounded by a black hat and face paint. Her lipstick, though, was as red as ever.

And she was holding a knife.

Lydia jumped out of the car and sprinted up the avenue. As she ran, other similarly clad figures exited the shadows around her. She could distinctly make out the silhouette of portly Paul Whitesell, her Sunday school teacher as a child. “Lydia,” he called as she passed, “come out to playyyyyyy.”