by Stella Hart
“Because the woman in question is my sister.”
I swallowed hard. “Oh.”
“I introduced them. She was always interested in journalism, so I invited her to join us for lunch one day so she could pick Peter’s brain. I had no idea they’d start something up, but…” Jon trailed off and threw his palms up. “That’s what happened.”
Nausea rose in my throat. I couldn’t believe it. My father… the man I always thought was so wonderful and devoted to his family. He was a cheater?
It doesn’t make him a killer, a little voice in the back of my mind told me.
I gritted my teeth and sat up straight. “Okay. So your sister is the proof that he was innocent?”
Jon’s eyes darted around the bar before returning to my face. “Yes. The night they say Peter sneaked out to kill all those people and hang their bodies in the Blackthorne quad… he was with her. There was no way he could’ve done it.”
“You’re sure it was that exact date?”
“Yes. My sister was with him all night, until five-thirty the next morning when he sneaked back home to his family. Then he found the bodies at seven that same morning when he arrived at work. The forensics people determined that the bodies had been hanging there since three or four. So it couldn’t have been him.”
My earlier anger flared up again. “And you—or your sister—didn’t think to say anything about this when they arrested him?”
“You have to understand,” he said in a hushed voice, lifting his palms again. “We had to protect ourselves. When he was arrested, we knew what it meant. The people he was looking into had obviously framed him. Then they killed him. You know that, surely. It wasn’t just some random vigilante who broke him out of prison and murdered him.”
“You could’ve told someone he was innocent before they killed him.”
“No.” Jon vehemently shook his head. “We knew what was coming for us if we spoke up on his behalf at all. We would’ve been dragged into the whole thing and probably killed in the end too.”
I crumpled a napkin in my hand, treating it like a stress ball. “Right. So what’s changed? You’re suddenly willing to speak up now?”
“Not exactly. My sister and I want the truth to come out, but we can’t risk having our names mentioned at all.” Jon leaned forward again. “When I saw your ad, I figured you might be investigating the whole thing, and I hoped you’d be able to find some way to get the information out there while keeping our identities hidden. Is there any way you can do that?”
“I’m not sure. I’d have to think about it.”
“My sister isn’t willing to talk to you unless you can promise that her name will never, ever come up in anything you end up releasing to Peter’s family or the public.”
I hesitated as I considered it. This new information was gold. Better than gold. It could vindicate my father and restore his ruined reputation after all these long, horrible years. I couldn’t say no.
“I’m sure we can figure something out,” I finally said.
Jon was quiet for a long time. Then he stood. “I’ll call her. She might be willing to talk to you now.”
He strode out of the basement bar. Five minutes later, he returned to our spot. “She’ll talk to you tonight. But not for long,” he said.
“Here?”
He shook his head. “She’s too scared to talk about it in a public place,” he said. “Can’t blame her. She’s been scared for ten years now.”
“So she wants to talk to me at home?”
“Yes. Come with me.”
I followed Jon out of the bar and onto the street. Freezing wind was whipping through the air, sending chills up my spine.
“Lizzy lives too far from here to walk, but we probably shouldn’t drive there together,” Jon said, turning to look at me. “You’re a young woman, so I assume you won’t feel safe getting into a car with a man who’s essentially a stranger to you. I don’t blame you for that, by the way. It’s totally understandable. I wouldn’t want my daughters to get into a stranger’s car, either.”
“What are we going to do, then?”
“Why don’t I pull my car around, and you can follow me in yours?” he suggested. “That way, if you feel uncomfortable at any point, you won’t be trapped. You can just leave.”
“Sure.” I pointed up the street toward my car. “That’s my car there.”
“All right. Give me a few minutes.”
I went and sat in my car. A few minutes later, a dark red sedan pulled up next to me, and Jon waved to me from the front seat. “Ready?” he mouthed.
I nodded and turned my key in the ignition.
We drove up the street and turned onto a major boulevard, cruising past restaurants and bars with bright lights and clusters of people braving the cold to take nighttime strolls.
When we reached the end, we swung a left and headed down another street into a different neighborhood. It was still the inner city, packed with apartment buildings and businesses, but it was nowhere near as bright and busy as the area we’d just come from. Most of the stores and offices here had closed for the day, and their lights were off, leaving the streets dark and tranquil.
Jon slowed down at a sign which indicated a one-way side street on the right. He waited for me to catch up, and then he turned.
The narrow street was dark and lined with fences and brick facades from the surrounding buildings. When I squinted, I could see a few townhouses right at the end. Jon’s sister probably lived in one of them.
Jon suddenly turned left onto a service road that I hadn’t noticed until now. I started to turn as well, but before I could get anywhere, a pair of headlights appeared in front of my car, almost blinding me.
I slammed on the brakes and squinted, raising a hand above my face to cover the bright lights as the vehicle cut me off from the service road.
“This is a one-way street!” I called out, honking on my horn as the car in front of me remained there, shining their headlights onto me. “You need to reverse out!”
They didn’t move.
I rolled my eyes and let out an irritated sigh. This city was packed with assholes who acted like they owned the roads even though they could barely drive.
Just as I decided to reverse my own car back onto the main street and call Jon for new directions, another pair of headlights appeared in my rearview mirror, almost blinding me again. There was a powerful roar as they revved the engine and moved further forward, pinning me between them and the car in front of me.
“What the fuck?” I looked to my left and right in rapid succession, trying to think of a way out of this mess. Then I saw several dark figures step out of the car ahead of me; tall and terrifying silhouettes against the bright light.
As I stared at them, I felt an icy knot deep inside me, like skeletal fingers were squeezing at my stomach. Were these the people who framed my father? If so, what did they want from me? Did they use Jon to set me up, or was my meeting with him just a coincidence?
I glanced in my rearview mirror. More dark figures were stepping out of the car behind me. All of them were wearing something on their heads to hide their identities—black plague masks with curved beaks.
I heard a click as one of the figures ahead of me held up a key fob, and with a jolt, I realized it was the sound of my own doors unlocking. Somehow, these people had a copy of my car keys.
Terror drained the blood from my face and robbed me of my breath, turning my limbs into jelly.
“Please!” I cried out as one of the tallest figures approached my door and wrenched it open. “Please don’t hurt me!”
I had just enough time to see a black cloth descending in his hand before it covered my face, filling my mouth and nostrils with a bitter taste and sickly-sweet scent. I gasped for breath, struggling to break free, but the man held me down with his free hand. He never said a word. All I could hear was his breath rasping out from under the sinister plague mask.
I took another half-choked br
eath. Then dizziness overwhelmed me.
My body was wrenched away, and my mind was spinning with it, utterly helpless, before everything went black.
14
Alexis
“Come find me, Lexie.”
Claire’s voice drifted through the freezing air, calling to me from somewhere on the far end of the Blackthorne campus quad. I squinted to see where she was, but the air was thick with soupy white fog. I could barely see beyond the tip of my own nose.
“Lexie! Help me! He’s here!” Claire’s voice sounded closer now, and her terror was evident.
I started running toward her voice, but when I got to the other side of the quad, the sound was coming from somewhere else. My gait turned sluggish, feet barely able to drag themselves in front of each other, and when I looked up again, I realized nothing about this place was real.
I was in a dream.
The world was blurry on the edges, and I couldn’t tell up from down. I thought I was on the ground, but the gray sky seemed to be at my feet now.
“Wake up,” I told myself, trying to pinch my arm. “It’s not happening.”
The scene shifted. I found myself inside Claire’s dorm, staring down at a trail of dirty snowflakes on the floorboards. I had to find her, because I knew something awful had happened to her, but I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t know how I knew.
I turned to see her door hanging open, halfway off its hinges. When I headed outside to the residence hall stairs, I stepped in something cold and wet. Every step was covered in slicks of ice and blood.
I started running, panic spreading through me like blasts of freezing air. I was back in the quad now, and someone was up ahead of me, a black shadow in the pale mist.
“Claire!” I shouted her name over and over, but she didn’t seem to hear me.
I finally caught up to her and grabbed her arm. “Are you okay? Where have you been?” I asked.
She didn’t reply, so I frantically waved my hand at her face to get her attention. But she still wasn’t looking at me. She was looking behind me.
I shook her arm. “Claire! What’s wrong?”
“It wasn’t him. It was never him,” she whispered, yanking herself out of my grip. “It’s you.”
I stared at her, aghast. “No, it’s not me. I swear.”
She nodded, eyes bulging with terror. “It’s you, but it isn’t.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, fear and confusion roiling in my stomach. But even as I spoke the words, I knew what she meant. I wasn’t myself. I was taller, stronger, and my hands weren’t my own. They were bigger, with different skin and different nails, but they were somehow still attached to my body.
Claire turned to run away, and I pulled her back. There was a knife in my hand now. A big one. I smiled as the gleaming steel met flesh, sinking deep enough to elicit an agonized howl.
“Why?” Claire managed to croak through lips coated in bubbles of blood.
Her lavender sweater was stained with red and torn in several places now. How many times had I stabbed her already? I couldn’t remember.
I twisted the knife inside her this time, jerking it all the way in until it met hard bone. Her last cry was an anguished shriek mixed with a guttural choking sound.
Crimson cascades splashed up all over me, and as the metallic tang tingled in my mouth and nostrils, I turned around to look at the trees.
There they were. All the other bodies. They hung from the thick branches, dripping blood all over the blanket of snow beneath them.
“Who did this?” I screamed, whirling back around. “It wasn’t me, I swear! It wasn’t me!”
My eyes snapped open.
It took a minute to pull myself from that horrible place where memories and reality were twisted into nightmares. My face was coated with sweat, and my body was trembling. I felt a now-familiar sensation in my stomach: a toxic combination of guilt, remorse, and dread.
I sat up, still woozy with exhaustion, and I wondered why my mattress felt so hard and uncomfortable. That was when I realized I wasn’t in my dorm.
I was in a tiny room with a floor made up of dirt and stone. It was quite dark, but I could tell that the walls were made of brick on three sides with a set of bars covering the other side. They were old and rusted. It was like a jail cell from the nineteenth century.
I dragged myself over to the bars, wondering how I got here and why my limbs felt so heavy. It was a major effort to lift my fingers, let alone my legs. My head was filled with noise as well, like static from a radio tuned to the wrong station.
“What… what’s happening?” I muttered. When I heard my voice, I noticed I was slurring. I was either trapped in another nightmare or drugged to the gills.
I rubbed my eyes and peered between the bars. There was a trace of ambient light coming from somewhere outside the cell, and when I squinted hard, I could see that I was in a tunnel.
I couldn’t remember how I got here. I couldn’t remember anything from the last few hours or days.
I turned my head to scan the little cell again. There was a flimsy mattress on one side of the space, barely big enough to fit a child, and a plastic bucket on the other side. Nothing else.
There was another light now, and it was coming closer, bobbing up and down. There were faint footsteps, too, getting closer and closer. A person was approaching from the right side of the tunnel. I wanted to call out for help, but something told me I should stay quiet.
As the light drew nearer, the cell became much easier to see, and when I looked at the grayish brick walls and the stony floor over to my left, every inch of my body began to tremble violently. I couldn’t control it, couldn’t keep myself still.
Blood.
Half the cell was coated in it; dried reddish-brown stains and smears.
Terror spread right to my bones, and then my gut, and I thought I might throw up. I leaned forward and retched into the bucket.
“That’s the drugs,” a deep male voice said from somewhere behind me. “They can cause nausea.”
Something must’ve happened to me. I was at a hospital, and the voice was a nurse or doctor. He was going to explain what happened to me, and then my friends and sister would come and visit me.
That didn’t explain the cell I was trapped in, but that could be a hallucination. After all, the voice did tell me I’d been drugged.
I wiped my lips and turned around, mouth falling open at the sight of the man on the other side of the bars. He was tall and dressed in dark clothing, and a black plague mask covered his face. A small black bag hung from one arm.
“What’s happening to me?” I asked, voice cracking halfway through the sentence. “Who are you?”
He dropped the bag and crouched next to it. “I brought you some water,” he said, ignoring my questions. His voice was perfectly calm, as if everything that was happening was completely normal. “I came earlier, but you were still passed out. You know you talk in your sleep?”
I gulped and shook my head. “No.”
The plague mask tipped to the side as the man tilted his head. “You were crying. Then you were begging for forgiveness from someone named Claire.”
“She’s gone,” I whispered, slumping against the wall.
“I know. Everyone knows,” he replied, voice dripping with disdain. “It’s why you’re here.”
My eyes widened. “What?”
“It’s your fault, Alexis. You know that.”
“No.” I shook my head wildly. “No, I didn’t do anything.”
The memories were flooding back now—the clandestine interview with Jon, the affair story, the cars blocking me off, the men in masks. They’d drugged me and taken me somewhere.
The man got off the ground and rose to his full height. “You killed Claire, just like you killed the other girl. Nessa Pratchett.” He tapped the lower half of his mask. “But I guess you already knew her name, didn’t you? I’m sure she told you at some point. Where did you keep her and Clai
re, by the way? I’m curious.”
“I didn’t do anything to anyone,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Don’t lie to me, Alexis. It won’t help you.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You are. You took those girls and killed them just like your father did ten years ago.”
I struggled to my feet, eyes narrowing. “Nate?”
He took off the mask, confirming my suspicion. “Finally figured it out, huh?” he said with a thin smile.
“Well, it’s obvious now. You’re the only one on this island who knows who I really am,” I said. “But you need to get this through your head right now—my dad didn’t kill anyone, and neither did I!”
He cocked his head. “Do you really think I’d bring you here without good reason?”
“You stalked and terrorized me for the last few months for no good reason, so yeah, I do think you’d do that. You’re fucked up.” I gripped the old bars and rattled them. “Who else knows I’m here? I want to talk to them. Unlike you, they might be able to see reason.”
“No one knows you’re here except me.”
“Bullshit.” I spat at him through the bars, just missing his left cheek. “I remember everything now. There were at least seven other guys with you when you stopped me in that alley and drugged me.”
Nate nodded patiently. “My Skulls brothers helped me do that, but they thought it was just a prank. I told them I’d take you home afterwards.”
“A prank?”
“Yes. I told them you’re a little wannabe journalist who won’t stop sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.” His lips curved into a malicious smirk. “I told them we were just going to mess with you and scare you. Make you think you’d crossed the wrong people in one of your little journalistic endeavors.”
I shrank back. “What about Jon Richter?”
“He was part of it.” The smirk grew wider. “I know all about your pathetic little newspaper ad, so we found Jon and offered him ten grand to play along with our scheme. We told him that all he had to do was fill your head with bullshit about Peter Covington being innocent so he could lure you right to us. He never knew Peter, by the way. They worked at Blackthorne at the same time, but that’s all.”
