Very Bad Things

by Susan McBride

  “This is ridiculous.” Katie reached for the phone in her jacket just as it started to ring. She only had time to see the call was from Mark before Steve closed the gap between them and snatched the phone from her hands.

  “Not a good time to talk,” he said, and threw it hard across the room.

  Katie heard the crack as it hit the wall.

  Say something, keep talking, distract him, her brain told her. The guy liked to hear his own voice. Maybe she should let him talk until he’d bored himself.

  But Katie had had enough.

  She grabbed the straps of her book bag with both hands and swung it at him, hitting him hard in the crotch. Then she dropped the bag and took off, racing through the aisles, shoes slapping the floor. If she could just get to the rink, she could find another door, an emergency exit.

  She heard Steve cursing, then his footsteps echoing noisily behind her.

  “Why are you running from me? I just want to talk,” he called out. “I’m not the one who chopped off the girl’s hand and gave it to his girlfriend. You should be afraid of Mark.”

  But Katie kept going, moving through the dark, past row after row of metal lockers. She hit her shin on a bench and bit her lip to stop from crying out.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said from around the corner. “If you want to leave, you can leave. I won’t stop you.”

  Right, like when she’d tried to leave a minute before?

  Katie didn’t trust him. She didn’t trust her best friend anymore. How could she know that Steve hadn’t snuffed Rose? Mark seemed pretty thoroughly convinced that Steve was the killer.

  Her shin throbbing, she limped toward a weak light and ended up in the washroom. Oh, hell, she realized as she quickly glanced around. It was a dead end. There were no doors or windows in the showers. She felt her way along a tiled wall lined with sinks and mirrors, knowing she was trapped.

  She heard Steve’s footsteps, getting louder and louder with each breath. And Katie did the only thing she could think to do: she screamed as loudly as she could, hoping a security guard or someone—anyone—would hear and get her the hell out of there.

  They’d traveled far enough through the tunnels to reach the room below the ice rink where Peter lived. He moved quietly around the space. He lit a candle, then turned around so Tessa could see his face in the flickering glow. Stringy strands of pale hair hung from his scalp where it hadn’t burned. He had no eyebrows; those had been singed off in the fire, never to grow back. He wore gray sweatpants and a dark hoodie with a Whitney eagle on the front. The long sleeves hid the scars on his arms. The skin there was thick and ropy, rough like his hands.

  In the beginning, it had shocked her, seeing what he’d become—after he’d been in hiding and she’d been in foster care. But it didn’t take long for Tessa to embrace her brother again. Now she barely noticed what was different about him. She owed him too much. He had done everything he could to keep her safe.

  It was her turn to do the same for him.

  Tessa sat on a wooden stool, and Peter came over and crouched at her feet. His body seemed to vibrate even as he went still. He was like an animal, quick and wiry, ready to leap, and far stronger than he appeared.

  “I told them what happened that night,” she said, “that the girl wasn’t breathing, that someone called me from her cell. I told them everything except that it was you on the other end.” Tessa squeezed her eyes closed, trying to forget the look on Katie’s face when Tessa had accused Mark, trying to forget what Katie had said after.

  You’re messed up, messed up, messed up.

  When all Tessa was doing was trying to spare her brother more pain.

  “They took my phone and told me not to leave the dorm until the police checked out everything. But they couldn’t stop me from coming here.” She reached over to pat the top of his head. “Thank you,” she said, “for getting the girl’s phone into Mark Summers’s locker. They’ll have to arrest him now.”

  Peter grunted, but there was no expression on his face. It was as blank as ever, his blue eyes hard, hiding any pain he’d ever felt before he’d learned not to feel much of anything at all.

  He’s too damaged and we can’t fix him.… I’m afraid to be alone with him.… He’s a danger to us all.

  She’d overheard their parents saying that Peter was impossible to love. They hadn’t wanted him anymore. They’d packed his things and planned to buy him a one-way plane ticket to Moscow. But when they sat him down and told him their intentions, Peter howled. He didn’t want to go. He would never in a million years have gone and left Tessa alone.

  We have to send him back; we have no choice.

  Peter had decided the very same thing when he’d set the fire: he had no choice.

  He didn’t realize Tessa would be home. She was supposed to be sleeping over at a friend’s house, only the other girl had gotten chicken pox. But when he’d heard his sister screaming, he’d gone inside, even though he’d risked his life to do so.

  “You didn’t kill Rose,” Tessa remarked, and Peter leaned his cheek against her palm. “You just found her, and you dug her a grave in the woods so she could rest in peace. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that.”

  Peter made a noise in his throat very much like a cat’s purr.

  He’d stumbled upon Rose in the old machine room of the headmaster’s house. Before he’d taken her lifeless body into the tunnels, he’d used her phone to call Tessa. He thought the dead girl was Katie at first, and he’d been distraught. Tessa had slipped out of Amelia House and found him in the room where he lived. He’d been curled beside the body, making whimpering noises. But Tessa had shown him it wasn’t Katie. The girl had a tat. Then Tessa had taken off, wanting to get back to her room before Katie awakened. How was she to know that once she left Peter alone he’d find the bloodred rose on the back of the hand too beautiful to discard? That he would saw the dead girl’s hand off and wrap it up like a gift before he took the body to the woods and buried it? Tessa had no idea what was in the package when she’d found it in his room the next morning, before she’d taken off for the trip to the morgue. That was before he’d scrawled Katie’s name on the front, tied it with twine, and left it sitting in the rain, on the back steps of the dorm. How could Tessa have imagined he’d put something like that inside, the same way he’d boxed up Mrs. Cottingham’s cat and left it on the old lady’s porch?

  Tessa loved her brother deeply, but she knew he wasn’t right.

  He never had been.

  How could anyone survive undamaged after years in an orphanage without love, without touch, with barely enough food to keep going? His only attachment had been to Tessa. His only loyalty was to his sister. But these past few months, he’d become attached to Katie, too.

  When Katie had started dating Mark, Tessa had asked Peter to keep an eye on them. Tessa was afraid that Mark was using her friend, that he was toying with Katie’s fragile heart after his breakup with Joelle. And Peter had done it. He had looked after Katie almost too well, to the brink of obsession. Tessa had always known he roamed the tunnels at night. That was how he got everything he needed to live: food and drink from the dorm kitchens or the cafeteria, clothes from locker rooms or lost and founds. But he’d never gone beyond the first floor, and only when it was empty. Until he’d started sneaking upstairs in Amelia House to watch Katie sleep, to bring her a rose from the greenhouse, slipping away before she woke up.

  Tessa had caught him at it once, and after that she could hardly sleep for worrying that he’d show up again and leave a rose by Katie’s bed. It was a blessing in disguise that Katie’s subconscious interpreted those nighttime visits as bad dreams.

  Then Peter had started to really get out of control, leaving Katie a rose in the library, lingering in their room so that Tessa had to chase him out … and Katie had followed her into the tunnels. Katie had dared to ask if it was Tessa haunting her.

  “I don’t think Katie trusts me anymore,” she told her
brother, and he got up from the floor. He began to pace the dimly lit room, his head cocked, his gaze looking above them. “It may be time she learned the whole truth. I have to tell her our secret.”

  Tessa slipped off the stool as Peter stood quite still, like he heard something she couldn’t hear. The way dogs could detect a high-pitched whistle.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  And then he took off running, leaving Tessa alone in his dungeon-like room, wondering if she’d imagined the faint sound of a scream above her.

  “Stop yelling!” Steve grabbed Katie by the shoulders, and she tried to wriggle free. “You’re not listening to me,” he said, and shook her. “I unlocked the door. You can fucking go!”

  Steve started to release her and, as his hands fell away, she heard an oof and saw him being flung against the wall with the sinks. There was a loud crack, and glass shattered, silver rain falling to the tiled floor.

  Katie shrieked as Steve crumpled over the sink, his face a bloody mess, the mirror in a million pieces. He moaned loudly, slumping to the floor, and Katie finally saw his attacker fully. He wore old sweats and a black hoodie pulled up around a face so white it looked bloodless. His eyes were the pale blue of ice.

  Tessa’s eyes, she thought, and blinked. Maybe she was hallucinating.

  “Kay-tee.”

  He came toward her, whispering her name in that strangled way, just like in her dreams.

  This wasn’t happening. Katie wobbled, her legs unsteady beneath her. “Peter?” she said, and he grunted. He looked like a modern-day Phantom of the Opera, minus the mask, his skin pink and scarred, his hair stringy and sparse.

  Oh, God, it was true.

  Katie’s hands went to her mouth and she swayed. She would have fallen if he hadn’t reached out for her.

  Peter Lupinski was alive.

  She could hear his raspy breathing. Could smell the dank, musky scent of him. And he was touching her.

  Katie looked down at the ropy red skin of his hand, and she did something she’d never done in her entire life: she passed out, going down like a rag doll.

  “Katie, can you hear me? Please, be okay, please.”

  Tessa’s voice poked at Katie’s consciousness. She’d been drifting somewhere between hazy fog and awake since she’d blacked out in the washroom at the ice rink. She could still see Steve’s bloody face, which had unnerved her nearly as much as Tessa’s brother’s cold blue eyes.

  No, Katie told herself. It couldn’t be Peter Lupinski. Tessa’s brother had died ten years ago in the house fire. They’d buried him in the plot with Tessa’s parents. Katie had seen the gravesite herself. As far as she knew—outside of fiction—dead people couldn’t be resurrected.

  “Katie? Please wake up and talk to me.”

  She heard Tessa’s voice, fading in and out for what seemed like hours but was probably minutes. Then she finally cracked open her eyes.

  Where was she?

  The space was sparsely lit by a candle, and the air smelled like mold and earth and a century’s worth of dust. A familiar smell. Was she in a basement? She’d breathed in that messy mix of scents before.

  Of course, she realized. The steam tunnels.

  Mark had shown her several rooms in the tunnels used to store ancient things. She figured she was in one of those, tucked somewhere under campus.

  She struggled to lift her head. She wiggled her fingers but couldn’t separate her wrists. Finally, she blinked away the fog, her head pounding, and realized her hands were tied behind her back. What the hell was going on?

  “Tessa,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  “Hey! You’re awake!” The old springs in the bare mattress beneath her creaked and Tessa was suddenly beside her. She brushed the hair from Katie’s cheeks. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “You’re okay. Peter took care of Steve and brought you here so you’ll be safe.”

  “Then why am I tied up?” She felt like a prisoner, not a guest, in Peter’s underground den.

  “He’s worried that you’ll try to leave,” Tessa whispered. “He wants to keep you down here with him for a while.”

  Was she out of her mind?

  “Let me go, Tessa,” Katie said, shivering.

  “Not until you understand.” Tessa’s face went from relieved to stony. “Not until you listen instead of running off like you did from Dr. Capello’s office.”

  Katie was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. She had to be.

  She switched her focus from Tessa to the figure that lurked in the shadows behind her roommate. The hood of his black sweatshirt covered most of his head, and the sallow face that peered out seemed almost to disappear like a blank space, like nothing was really there.

  “Peter’s dead,” Katie said, because that was the truth as she’d known it since she’d met Tessa. It was the truth as everyone in Barnard had known it for the past decade.

  “No.” Tessa shook her head. “He isn’t.”

  “He was buried with your parents,” Katie insisted. “Three people died in the fire. Three.”

  “It wasn’t him,” Tessa told her, glancing over at the figure in the shadows. “The boy who burned in the house was just some runaway. He didn’t belong to anyone. No one missed him.”

  Just some runaway? No one missed him?

  Katie recalled Tessa’s words about Rose Tatum when they’d been looking at her Facebook page. Girls like her ask for trouble. Doesn’t it seem like they always end up OD’ing or something?

  So Tessa figured some people were disposable? The way she’d said Rose was disposable to guys like Steve?

  Tessa must have detected the revulsion on Katie’s face, because she scrambled to explain. “You have to understand. Our parents were about to send Peter back to Russia. They packed up his suitcase. They were taking him to the airport and buying him a ticket. They wanted to put him on a plane like he didn’t belong to them anymore. Like he didn’t belong to anyone.” Tessa looked over at Peter with raw affection on her face. “He didn’t want to go. He couldn’t leave me. I’m all he has.”

  Katie could hardly breathe.

  Peter Lupinski had set the fire. He’d killed three people, his parents and a boy he barely knew. He had lived and they had perished.

  “You knew he did it all along?” Katie asked, tasting bile.

  Tessa let out an exasperated sigh. “Don’t you get it? He kept me alive. I would have done anything to protect him.”

  Katie squeezed her eyes shut. Please, let this not be happening. Let me not be here. She prayed that when she opened her eyes, she’d be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  But when she dared to look again, she was still sitting on an old mattress in a room lit by one candle, and there was Tessa beside her, those familiar clear blue eyes watching her expectantly. Like she was waiting for Katie to say, “Oh, hey! You were just protecting him. Well, then everything’s A-OK!”

  Katie trembled. “Tessa, untie me now.”

  But her roommate simply glanced at her brother again, as if he was in charge. As if it was up to him, not her.

  Oh, God. Peter wanted to keep her in the tunnels like she was some kind of pet. And Tessa was going to let him?

  “Tessa, this is wrong, and you know it.”

  But Tessa made no move to untie her.

  Katie’s stomach turned. She pulled as hard as she could against the twine, but it didn’t give. Is it the same twine he’d used on The Box? she found herself wondering. Was Peter involved in Rose Tatum’s death? Was that why Tessa had spun that wild story about Mark calling her?

  It was like finally putting together the border to the puzzle when nothing else fit.

  “It was him, wasn’t it?” Katie said what she was thinking. “He killed Rose, not Mark. Not Steve.”

  “No!” Tessa jumped up from the mattress. She waved her arms, shaking her head. “Peter didn’t kill her. He found her. He thought it was you, and he totally freaked out. When he called me from her phone, he was howling like a wounded
animal. I’d never heard him in such awful pain, not ever.”

  Katie stared at Tessa, her stomach cramping. She felt such disgust. “You flat-out lied about Mark. He really was drugged. He didn’t do anything.”

  Tessa’s eyes turned rock-hard. “Mark doesn’t deserve you. He never did.”

  “What he doesn’t deserve is to spend his life in jail because you helped set him up,” Katie said, her chest aching—everything aching. How could she have ever trusted Tessa? How could she have believed they were best friends when Tessa had kept so many things from her? Very bad things. Things Katie wished she didn’t know, wished she’d never had to hear.

  “I had to take care of Peter,” Tessa replied without emotion. “I had to take care of you. Don’t you see?”

  Virginia Cottingham had said there was always something off about Peter. And Katie saw clearly for the first time that there was something off about Tessa, too.

  “It’ll be okay, you’ll see,” Tessa said, her mouth curving into a thin smile again, one that didn’t touch her eyes.

  Katie watched as the dark shadow that was Peter moved carefully about the room. He was lighting candles, lots of them. As the room grew a little brighter, and then brighter still, Katie’s realized what he meant for her to see: dozens of bloodred roses stuck in old jars and cans. She breathed in their sweet smell, along with the scent of burning wick and wax, and it was all she could do not to gag.

  She thought of the rose in the library. The fingers touching her hair. The recurring nightmare that wasn’t a nightmare at all.

  It had all been Peter, hadn’t it?

  “For … Kay-tee,” he rasped, gesturing around him.

  Tessa leaned in to whisper, “I think he likes you,” as though it were a good thing.

  The flickering candles illuminated something else as well: more of Peter’s underground home and the things he had collected. Katie’s eyes went to several wooden benches and parts of old bleachers that held all kinds of things: books and backpacks, shoes, jackets, purses, ball caps. Things students had lost and he had found? There were dozens of big cans stacked against the wall as well, the kind that bulk fruits and veggies came in, and Katie wondered about the food found down in the basement at Amelia House when Tessa started living there. Was Tessa the one who’d taken it from the dorm’s kitchen for Peter? Or did Peter pilfer food for himself?