Cozy Christmas Shorts

by Halliday, Gemma

  By walking through these passageways, I could access any room and spy on the others through the two-way mirrors I'd installed. It was the perfect plan.

  The next step was for me to go back to the library. The cousins were going to round everyone up and take them there. Nora was next on the agenda. I needed to take her out in the next half hour.

  Nora was the little clown (I'm sure she'd hate that) who overslept himself. In the book, they found that victim the next morning. But we only had control over these people for one night, so it was sweet dreams for that psycho.

  As expected, everyone was in the library. I adjusted the sound and listened.

  "She probably had a heart attack from seeing those stupid clowns," Nora was saying. She didn't seem too upset that I was dead.

  "I knew it!" Madame Angelina exclaimed. "I saw something sinister in her aura!"

  My aura? Just for that, I decided I was going to invent something that gave Liv the appearance of a sickly green aura for the next family reunion. That would be fun. Maybe I could make it a talking aura with a thick Romanian accent.

  "I think it's sad." Annie pouted. Awww. She was sad I was dead. That's nice.

  Juan, who had been the very definition of calm up until now, was pacing the floor like a nervous cat. "I think it was poison."

  Ah. There it was. I was hoping one of the Vics would notice and my cousins wouldn't have to say anything.

  Anderson waved him off. "What makes you think it was poison? It was probably natural causes."

  "Well whatever it was," Tiffany Lauper said in her Brooklyn accent, "she's in rock and roll heaven now, jammin' with Jimi."

  Jammin' with Jimi? Maybe Gin would die from her own terrible performance. I wondered for a moment if that would be possible. Oooh! I know! An aerosol virus with a sound sensitive trigger that would react to high drama in the voice. That had some interesting possibilities. I could've used something like that when I took out a Miss America contestant who dabbled as a serial killer back in the early '90s. Mental note—experiment with hair spray as a delivery system…

  "We need to call the authorities," Annie said as she scanned the room. "Has anyone seen a landline phone here? My cell has no signal."

  As if on cue, the others all pulled out their cells and consulted them. All except Giuseppe of course. I can only assume he was "too poor" to own one.

  "I don't like it." William's eyes darted back and forth over everyone.

  Hmm…we weren't supposed to take out the big guy for a while yet. But we might have to move things up if he got nervous and tried to make a break for it.

  "I'm sure it was poison," Juan insisted. He was still pacing. "Someone poisoned…um…that woman."

  He forgot my name? I felt a little pissed about that. The son-of-a-bitch didn't even try to learn my name. What a bastard.

  I watched as Tiffany Lauper walked over to Nora, feigning drunkenness. (At least, I hoped Gin was faking it.) A few feet away, she tripped and spilled her drink down the front of Nora's very expensive silk blouse. The fashionista was soaked. Which meant she needed to go to her room.

  "You imbecile!" Nora stood up and stabbed Tiffany in the chest with her index finger. "This blouse is more expensive than this entire island!"

  "Whatever." The rock star rolled her eyes, walked back to the couch and sprawled on it.

  "I'm going to my room to change," Nora announced as if she were telling us that Coco Chanel was going to come back from the dead to give her a haute couture zombie mani/pedi, and then she swept out of the room.

  I was looking through her mirror over her dresser before she got there. Everything was ready to go.

  Nora stormed into the room and shut the door. She fumed as she tore the ruined blouse off and replaced it with another one that, in all honesty, looked exactly the same. After buttoning it up, my Vic walked over to the mirror and examined her image.

  Then, she picked her nose. Oh my God. This woman, who oozed wealth and class, was picking her nose in front of me. She pulled the finger out of her nose and put it into her ear. I couldn't take much more of this. I stepped over to the lever I'd installed that went into only her room and pulled it.

  A lavender haze descended from the vent in the ceiling. Oh, I know, I could have made it colorless. But I wanted to be able to see it to make sure it worked. Nora saw the purple mist in the mirror and turned around. I'd scented the poison with Chanel No. 5 just to keep her from running out of the room.

  She spun around, trying to determine what it was. At first, the woman smiled when she smelled the perfume. But then her mouth opened.

  "Holy shit! What the fuck is happening?" she said in the twangiest Southern accent I'd ever heard. This woman wasn't cultured New England. This chick was wrong side of the tracks trash, didn't wear shoes until she was nineteen, backwoods Alabama. I kind of wished I'd thought to record that.

  Then she dropped like a sack of lead. I knew Nora was dead because I made the toxin extra strong. A mutant rhino with the lung capacity of a sperm whale wouldn't have survived it. I reached over and pushed a red button that was next to the lever. There was a slight sucking sound as the poison cloud was pulled back up into that same vent. Pushing the second button sent a wave of fresh air into the room.

  I pulled the nosepiece out of the hidden panel under the mirror and opened it up. There were two prongs that went up both nostrils. I jammed them into my nose and opened the secret door that went into her room.

  Yup. She was dead. And since this little clown overslept herself, and in order not to incur any more of Madame Angelina's wrath, I lifted her up and arranged her on the bed. Her eyes were open, staring glassily at the ceiling. This bitch wasn't going to launder dirty money anymore. For a moment, I toyed with drawing a clown face on her in cheap, dollar store makeup, but I really didn't have the time. I slipped back into the passage and waited.

  Any minute now, Giuseppe would lead everyone up the stairs and into Nora's room to see what was taking her so long. Of course, my cousins didn't need to obscure the dead woman from the others because she was, in fact, actually dead.

  Any minute now, he'd walk through that door.

  Any minute now.

  Nothing happened.

  Where were they? I needed them to be here. So I could slip down to the dining room and smash two of the little clowns. And they all had to be here too. No one was supposed to know I was still alive and busy orchestrating deaths with amazing and astounding creative efficiency. They all had to go to Nora's room, and they had to realize that everyone was in that room so they'd have no idea who broke the clowns.

  The door flew open, and I sighed with relief. Frank led the way. Huh. Giuseppe was supposed to do that. But here was Cy, walking over to the dead woman's bed and taking her pulse. I wondered what had happened. Seriously, this assignment was hanging by a thread as it was. Now, Cy's earlier idea of just locking everyone in the house and blowing it up had some merit to it. I could still make that happen. I'd been experimenting with a new explosive with the consistency of water that would run through a plumbing system, activating when the cold and hot water were turned on together. The only problem was that it was slightly (meaning totally) corrosive to metal.

  Everyone was there in dead Nora's room. Anderson looked bored, Annie was concerned, Juan was worried, and William was nervous. I counted to make sure there was no one missing and then ran down to the dining room.

  I slid through the hidden door, and, within seconds, I'd smashed two of the figurines and left the way I'd come.

  I waited. From the two-way mirror, I had a good view of the staircase and hallway. Sure enough, there were the others, coming down the stairs. I couldn't hear very well, but I could tell they were upset. Yay!

  "Did you hear something?" Tiffany Lauper said on cue. She craned her neck toward the dining room. "It came from in there!" She started running with everyone hot on her heels and stopped in front of the table. The others flowed around her, and as they saw the two broken clowns repres
enting me and Nora, there was visible fear in the eyes of the four remaining targets.

  Excellent.

  We had to move quickly now. Unlike the book, we weren't trapped on an island in a storm. We were on an island that had condos and an airstrip on the other side. If any one of the remaining four made a run for it we would literally have to hunt them down.

  Giuseppe gasped dramatically. "It is ze poetic justice, no?"

  Well yes, it was to the five of us Bombays. But it wouldn't look that way to the four Vics. Why did he say that?

  Madame Angelina began moaning and wailing and dancing with her eyes closed. That was interesting.

  "I foresee…" She was standing in one place and swaying back and forth now. Suddenly, she opened her eyes and looked at Giuseppe. "You! You are next!"

  Giuseppe's eyes grew wide with overly-acted horror. "No! No! It cannot be!"

  Frank came over to the sideboard under my mirror and poured a glass of water. He rolled his eyes at me. I clapped my hands over my mouth so I wouldn't giggle. Even though the passageways were soundproofed, and I'd done the work myself, I wasn't taking any chances.

  "Death is not my overlord!" Giuseppe was shouting. "I will not sleep the final sleep of the dead!" He ran out of the room and out the door. The others stood staring at each other for a moment before following him out into the night.

  I moved to the secret room off the kitchen and checked the monitors. I had to admit—this was starting to be fun. I had no idea we could do something like this. Maybe we could do this more often with our targets. Get Mom involved. She'd like that.

  Directly behind the house was a nice stretch of quicksand. The real thing. I didn't even have to invent it—which kind of disappointed me when Lex had found it a few weeks ago.

  The others had just come around the corner of the house when they stopped cold. Giuseppe's black beret was lying in the middle of the sand.

  "How was that?" Paris said behind me. He'd run around to the kitchen and joined me in the secret room. He looked down at the floor. "Squishy!" he said.

  "Good," I said, reaching out to grab his arm before he fell over. "But you were ridiculous."

  "Hey!" Paris stopped bouncing and pouted. "I was using original material!"

  "Don't quit your day job," I said as I handed him the hatchet. "And speaking of your day job…"

  "I have to smash the figurine first," he said as he glanced at the monitors. Frank was on his knees, testing the sand. He got up and shook his head, his lips moving. I didn't hear what he said, but I figured he was telling them it was quicksand.

  Paris vanished and then reappeared with a huge smile on his face. "That was fun!"

  I nodded. "I know. You're up."

  He frowned at the hatchet. "I'm not sure we really thought this through. I mean, what would an aristocratic Brit be doing with a hatchet?"

  "It doesn't matter as long as you have it buried in some soft part of his body and make him dead." I turned back to the monitors, frowning.

  Time was flying by. One of our Vics was now thoughtfully dead, but we had four more to go.

  Paris looked at me. "You're worried about Gin and Cy's Vics, Juan and William."

  I nodded. "Normally, I wouldn't be, but we probably should've taken them out first. Neither of them would just let us walk up and kill them."

  "Why did we do it in this order?" my cousin asked.

  I shrugged. "I had to go first because I engineered the house. If you guys went first and had problems with the technology, I couldn't help you. And you should've probably died the minute you opened your mouth."

  Paris frowned. Probably because of the insult, but also because he knew I was right about William and Juan. Still, Nora was the easiest one to kill. Anderson and Annie wouldn't be too hard. Neither of them had fighting experience. But Juan and William were fighters. Killers trained to survive.

  A noise from the screens caught my attention. "They're moving back into the house."

  The group had reconvened in the dining room. They stared at the third, smashed clown. This was actually a good psychological experiment. Too bad we couldn't involve anyone outside the family to analyze that.

  "I put the note in Anderson's pocket when we checked on Nora," Paris whispered. "He should find it soon."

  The group sat down at the table, which was weird because we hadn't cleared it. One by one, they started to wordlessly pick at the food.

  "Where's that guy?" Annie asked. "The one who brought us here and made dinner?"

  William shook his head. "Haven't seen him."

  Anderson picked up a roll and buttered it. Apparently, the deaths of three people hadn't unsettled him much. "He must have gone. He didn't clear the table. You just can't get good help these days."

  Madame Angelina stood up. "I will do it." She started to gather plates, and I wasn't surprised to see only Tiffany Lauper and Annie helping her. The three women went into the kitchen, leaving the three men behind.

  Frank sipped his wine but said nothing. It was good thinking on his part to stay and watch Juan and William.

  "I'll take the kitchen," I whispered to Paris. "You stay here and watch them. If Anderson sees the note and leaves, you need to follow him and do your bit."

  Paris nodded and stayed put while I moved down the hall to the secret room off the kitchen. Putting a mirror in there hadn't been easy. I couldn't think of any reason whatsoever to have a mirror in a kitchen. Well, one that seemed normal, that is. So, Lex and I had built this room and filled it with monitors that viewed the grounds outside of the house and the kitchen.

  I didn't like it because I wanted to be closer to the action, but there wasn't anything I could do. I did have a secret door into the room, but I'd have to be careful. I didn't want anyone freaking out seeing a dead woman step out of the refrigerator.

  The three women were putting the food away and washing the dishes. So far, so good.

  "Where do you think our host went?" Annie asked.

  "You mean our cousin, Owen? He's dead," Tiffany Lauper answered as she washed dishes.

  Annie shook her head. "No. Not him. The other guy. The Latino."

  Madame Angelina closed the door to the fridge. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I cannot foresee what has happened to him."

  "Maybe he had a boat and took off?" Tiffany Lauper asked. I had to admit—Gin was handling the ad libs well.

  "Maybe…" Annie frowned and got lost in her own thoughts.

  "Aren't you weirded out by all these deaths?" Tiffany Lauper asked her, a little too hopefully.

  "Not really," the redhead said. "Nancy could've had a heart attack. Nora an aneurism. Giuseppe ran out and fell into quicksand. It's possible. People have a hard time at the holidays."

  The other two women stared at her. I did too. We all thought these people would freak out, at least after the second death. Maybe she was in shock. Or maybe she was a soulless idiot.

  Madame Angelina shook her head. "I do not think these were accidents. Something from the great beyond tells me it was…" She held her breath for a very dramatic pause. "Murder!"

  There should've been a sound track that went, "Dun, dun, DUN!" after her performance.

  "You think these three people were murdered?" Tiffany Lauper gasped loudly.

  The Gypsy who wasn't really a Gypsy shrugged. "It cannot be coincidence. I don't believe in coincidence."

  They were trying to freak Annie out. It wasn't working.

  Annie put the last dish away as Paris came running into the secret room.

  "He read the note! I'm meeting him outside!" He seemed giddy as he ran down the hallway holding his hatchet.

  We'd worked out a plan where Anderson would find a note in his pocket that said:

  Meet me outside, by the place where Giuseppe died. I know what is going on and how we can make this work to our advantage—ending up with everybody's shares of the inheritance.

  The idea behind this note was that Anderson wouldn't give a damn if
it said the writer knew who was behind the murders. But he would be intrigued at the idea of making bank off of this. And sure enough, it worked.

  I checked out the monitor by the quicksand. Anderson was stepping down off the porch and turning left. He looked both ways before continuing to the spot where the beret still sat in the middle of the sand.

  Something on the ground caught his attention. Paris had dropped a one hundred dollar bill there just before he took up his position. Anderson grinned as he picked up the bill. He stood and shoved it into his pocket.

  Paris threw the hatchet from his hiding place. I had no doubt it would hit it's mark. Bombays trained with all kinds of weapons since our kindergarten years. And Paris had the best throwing form of any of us.

  I watched as the hatchet spun in the air end over end, and flew right past its target into the trees. What? Dammit! I ran out of the room and stepped outside, joining Paris in moments.

  "You missed!" I whispered.

  "Just give me another one," Paris griped. "The wind took it."

  I glared at him. "You haven't been practicing."

  "I've been busy developing my character and writing poems!" he whined.

  Anderson had no idea a hatchet had sailed past him. But he was getting anxious. Pretty soon he'd give up and go inside.

  I looked around. I didn't really think to have a "backup hatchet." I spotted a screwdriver I'd left next to the steps a couple of days ago and handed it to him.

  "It's a screwdriver," Paris said.

  I shoved him. "Yes, it is. Now go and stick it in his head." I turned and went back into the house and the secret room.

  I watched the monitors as Paris ran off toward his Vic who now turned toward him. Anderson's mouth opened in surprise and he brought up his hand to point. Before he could do anything more, Paris reached behind his target and rammed the screw driver into the back of the Brit's skull. He dropped to the ground. Paris then dove into the jungle and returned seconds later with the hatchet, and after pulling out the screw driver, drove the small axe home in its place.