by R. L. Weeks
I thought about everything that had happened over the last few days, starting with Mom and Dad’s murder-suicide just over a week ago to the strange things happening since we’d arrived in Washington State. Bad luck seemed to be following our family everywhere we went now. We moved all the way across the country, and we still weren’t going to escape Dad’s karma. I guess Jackson and I would have to accept a dark future if we believed everything they’d said on the news before we fled.
Dad had stolen fortunes from thousands of people, left them penniless, broke, bankrupt… all so our family could live a life of luxury. We only had the life we had because Father had stolen it from other people. I wondered how we had been so blind as to what our father really was, and I began to see why his own mother didn’t particularly like him or care about his death.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got, however. I tried to push the feelings aside. I wasn’t the type of person to lose control of her emotions, but I couldn’t hold back the rage I was feeling in the moment.
I screamed and pounded my fists on the shower tile. I stopped when I heard the mirror shatter and crash against the porcelain sink below it. Panicked, I ripped open the shower curtain and saw the shards of glass covering the bathroom floor and sink. If this house had anything to do with it, I would be perpetually cleaning it for all eternity. I had been spending a bit of time cleaning things here and there, but the more I cleaned, the filthier the rest of the manor seemed to get. Feeling too tired to care, I turned back to my shower.
I scrubbed my scalp with shampoo and leaned back under the shower head, letting the warm water massage my head, neck, and shoulders as I waited for Jackson to burst into the bathroom. I was sure she had heard my screams and would come crashing in any second to make sure I was okay. I waited and waited, but no footsteps ever rushed down the hallway. The door never sprang open, and Jackson’s frantic cries never interrupted my shower. This worried me. My sister was never one to value my privacy, and her room wasn’t far from the bathroom in this wing of the house. Where was my sister?
I turned off the water and wrapped a fluffy blue towel—one of the only clean things in the bathroom—around my body, careful to avoid the shards of glass as I stepped out. I opened the door and left the mess behind, creeping down the hallway, dripping wet, toward Jackson’s room. Her door sat cracked open.
I pushed it open the rest of the way and rushed inside. “Jackie?” I called.
No reply.
I figured she was downstairs having breakfast. It was already almost eight, and she was wide awake when I’d seen her an hour before. I wanted to check to make sure she was there before getting dressed, so I followed down the hallway and staircase to the main floor and padded barefoot toward the kitchen.
“Hey, Jackson,” I said in greeting to absolutely no one once I turned the corner into the empty kitchen.
I frowned and turned on my heels to check the sitting room, foyer, front porch, and downstairs bathroom. All I found were spiders, some black mold, and a dead mouse—no Jackson. I made a mental note to ask Grandma for some money to get more cleaning supplies and hoped deep down she’d let me hire a service to at least get some of the heavy cleaning out of the way. The dusting and vacuuming I had done here and there were clearly not going to be enough.
I climbed back up the stairs with the intention of going to my room, but as I stood on the landing, rather than turn to go down the hallway in the west wing, something nagged at my mind, from the east wing. I let my curiosity guide me. After all, Grandmother had given me the key to the east wing, which I had quickly lost, so it clearly wasn’t forbidden any longer.
The large mahogany french-style doors that led into the wing towered before me. The wood swirled with natural knots under an ebony stain, and the knobs were decorative brass, with a rune-like symbol resembling a pitchfork carved into the face of each. I ran my fingertips over the mysterious symbols but quickly withdrew my hand as heat radiated under my fingertips. What the hell? I thought as I rubbed my reddened fingers.
I stood on something. I looked down, moving my foot, and saw it. The key, it was right in front of the door. It looked like someone had dropped it when they were trying to get into the room. The thought made me shiver. Had Grandma come in and grabbed it from the nightstand to take it down here, or had something else taken it and I’d come here before it got a chance to get inside?
I pushed the key into the lock, and the doors that had remained locked since I had been a child sprung open, revealing a room of darkness.
I felt around the walls just inside the doors, looking for a light switch.
I shrieked as what felt like a centipede ran across my hand. Chills ran over my entire body as I jumped up and down shaking my hands. The insect hadn’t bitten me, but bugs were not my thing, and this house was full of them. I calmed myself after a minute and took a deep breath before gathering the courage to try again.
I ran my hand along the wall slower this time and felt the switch a little farther to the left. I flicked it up and watched as an electric chandelier sprung to life and lit a gargantuan, two-story-tall library that seemed right out of a fairytale. I hadn’t ever been into books, but even I had an appreciation for the massive collection in front of me.
The room smelled like old paper, herbs, dust, and mildew. The scent was earthy and almost comforting, but it reminded me how dirty and old the house was, making me miss our luxury apartment back in Manhattan.
I sighed and wiped away another tear threatening to escape as I browsed the bookshelves, leaving streaks of dusty fingerprints along the spines. The books were all written in other languages. Some were in Latin, others German, French, and a few in Olde English even, but they were all leather bound, which told me they were very old. Books were either hardcover or paperback nowadays. I pulled one down from the shelf with the title Mors Vitae. Thanks to my Latin class, I knew the title meant death brings life, but I soon realized I had no idea what the passages inside the book meant because they were written in Vulgar Latin rather than the Classical Latin we’d learned at prep school. Illustrations in the book showed people in various stages of torture with grotesque scenes of bloodletting rituals, sacrifice, and even orgies. I slammed the book shut and shoved it back onto the shelf. Some library this was.
I made my way to a large, farmhouse-style table covered in rolled-up papers and others were laid flat and stacked atop each other. I picked one up and shook the layer of dust from it, revealing a map. I wiped away the grime with a corner of the towel still wrapped tightly around my body and saw the title Ridgeview Woods. It was the name of the forest that encompassed the hill the manor was on and surrounded the town. The map was marked with red Xs labeled “traps” in the map key, and other places had their names written across them. A black dot labeled “Mendoza Manor” marked Vera’s home, while others were labeled things such as “school,” “grocer,” and “clinic.” Besides the bold red Xs, the map seemed like a rather normal map of Ridgeview dated 1949, seventy years ago.
Newspapers were also piled on the table with articles with big red circles around some of the headlines: “Missing Girl Found in Pieces,” “Missing Teen Found Drained of Blood,” “Is a Serial Killer Stalking the Streets of Ridgeview,” and “New Evidence in Hillside Wolf Attack.” I rifled through the stacks looking at the dates on the papers. They went back all the way to the early 1930s and continued up until 1998, right before Mom and Dad had gotten married. There were dozens and dozens of papers, outlining the gruesome deaths and disappearances in Ridgeview over the decades.
I scanned the rest of the room, and my eyes stopped on a large wooden wardrobe. My head didn’t want to know what was inside, but my legs moved anyways, and before I knew what I was doing, I yanked open the doors and gasped.
The wardrobe was a weapons cabinet, and inside was all different types of axes, knives, swords, several different types of rifles, wooden stakes, flasks of water with crosses on the front, and a large box of ammunition labeled “premium sil
ver bullets.”
I quickly shut the doors and stared at the cabinet wide-eyed as all the old stories Vera had taught me as a little girl swirled through my mind. I’d thought they were just scary stories I could use to terrorize Jackson, but I was realizing there was something much darker and sinister happening at Mendoza Manor, and a nagging voice in my head warned me I was at the center of it all.
I needed to find Jackson and tell her what I found, what the east wing was hiding, and about the horrible deaths that had happened in Ridgeview. We needed to get out of town and go back home, to our real home in Manhattan. I didn’t want any part in whatever was going on in this manor, on this hill, or in this town.
I turned around to leave the room and stopped dead in my tracks.
The towel around my body started to slip, but I grasped it and tightened my hold.
Axel stared at me hungrily.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted.
The look in his eyes frightened me. I had no idea how he had gotten into the manor or found me all the way in the east wing.
“I came to check on you and make sure you found your sister okay yesterday. The front door was open, and no one answered when I called out downstairs, so I wanted to check and make sure everything was all right.”
Axel paused and licked his lips as his eyes ran up and down my body.
“Everything looks just fine to me,” he nearly growled.
His voice made me suddenly self-conscious, so I tugged the hem of the towel down, to Axels’ amusement.
“No need to be modest,” he smirked and winked, causing the blood in my body to rush to my face and chest as I blushed in embarrassment.
I couldn’t believe how turned on the man—who was nearly a stranger—made me. I looked down, trying not to make eye contact with him, as I walked past him and ushered him out of the library and back into the hallway.
I secured the doors with one hand and locked them with the other.
“You can’t be here. My grandmother was super upset that you were here yesterday. You have to go.” I faced him with my arms crossed over my chest. I didn’t want him to go, but I knew Vera would lose what was left of her mind if she saw him creeping about her home.
“Yeah, I remember how your grandmother felt about me,” he replied snidely. “Why don’t you go get dressed and come with me for a walk?”
I nodded and gestured for him to follow me down the hallway to west wing of the manor.
“Wait here,” I told him when we reached the top of the stairs separating the two halves of the home. When I was around him, I felt like I was under a spell – everything but him was forgotten. I guess that was what people referred to when they said falling into lust.
He leaned against the banister and crossed his ankles casually. I didn’t say another word as I pushed opened the door to my bedroom and quickly slinked inside, then closed and locked the door behind me.
I inhaled and exhaled, trying to calm my heart, which was in my throat. No one had ever terrified me and turned me on at the same time. In fact, no one had ever really done either of those things independently either. Jackson and I had our fair share of rifts because of the attention I got from boys, but all of it was unwanted. I had never been attracted to anyone else the way I was attracted to Axel. Jackson had always been the boy-crazy sister. She even had a boyfriend before I had ever been kissed, and of the two kisses I had ever shared with a boy, both were unexciting and rather uncomfortable. I thought about Axel’s thin lips and skin tone like roasted almonds at Christmastime and wondered if his mouth tasted as sweet as I imagined it would.
I leaned against my bedroom door and let the towel drop to the floor. My hand crept over my erect nipples and flat stomach, then snaked between my legs. I gasped in surprise at how turned on I was.
I picked up the towel and wiped my fingers off quickly, then hurried to get dressed. I chose a bulky, oversized cashmere sweater and skinny jeans I thought were modest enough not to get me into any sort of trouble with the man outside my bedroom door. He sent off danger alarms in my head but also drew me to him like a moth to the flame. My rationality told me I would be burned alive by a man like this, but I couldn’t help but want to fly face first into his beauty.
I ran a brush through my damp, frizzy hair, secured it with a ponytail, and stood in front of the door, willing myself to open it and join the man who was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. I finally pulled open the door and walked into the hallway.
Axel straightened his posture and cocked his eyebrow a bit in amusement. I had gone from standing before him in a towel barely bigger than a bandage to looking like a nun getting ready for casual Friday. My hands and face were the only visible skin on my body.
“Ready?” he asked and held out his hand as I walked tepidly toward him.
I nodded and accepted the hand he held out to me. I tried to grasp it lightly, but he held on firmly, pressing his palm against mine and interlocking our fingers. Warm shivers traveled up my arms and down my core to my center. I squeezed my legs together as we walked down the staircase, trying to ease the urge I had to pull his face to mine and make out with him in the middle of Vera’s manor.
I glanced up and caught his knowing smirk as his eyes flicked from mine back toward the second floor hall to the east wing.
“Whatcha looking at?”
Axel shrugged and looked back at me. “Just thought I heard something is all.”
“Probably Vera waking up. We better get out of here.”
I tugged his hand and picked up the pace as we got to the bottom of the stairs.
Chapter Twelve
Jackson
“Oh. My. God. There’s a Starbucks in town?”
Tommy held two of their iconic to-go cups, venti sized, in his hands. A smile I would never be able to muster so early in the morning was plastered across his face. His large, brown, puppy-dog eyes were lit with excitement.
He held one of the cups toward me as I approached, which I gladly took.
I closed my eyes as my hands warmed. The aroma of espresso, mocha, and whipped cream immediately relaxed my tense shoulders and perked up my senses enough for me to manage a small smile.
“Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I had real coffee?” I asked rhetorically.
The last time I had coffee at all was back home in Manhattan, and my last few days there were a blur now. My lips turned down as memories I didn’t want to think about dredged to the surface. I felt Tommy’s gentle grasp around my shoulder and opened my eyes.
“I grabbed them on my way in from the city early this morning. I asked for them to make it extra hot so it would still be warm when I got here. You okay?”
“Well, thanks. I’m okay, and the coffee is absolutely heavenly,” I admitted after savoring a still-warm sip of the latte. “But what are you doing here so early?”
The sun was barely above the treetops, and a few stars were still visible in the clear skies overhead. Rays of golden sunlight burst through the trees, shining spotlights and casting shadows throughout the yard. The setting was eerie yet ethereal. I was starting to see why people loved living up here in the mountains and why Vera loved this manor on the hill.
“I wasn’t sure if you heard the news or not since you’re new in town, so I wanted to come up here myself and check on you and your sister to make sure you’re good. Thought I would bring you some coffee.” He shrugged and smiled sheepishly as a dark-brown curl escaped his beanie and fell into his face.
I reached up before he could take his hand off my shoulder and brushed the silky, loose curl back behind his ear, letting my thumb just barely sweep his jawline before lowering it to my side. His lips were set in a hard, straight line now, but they twitched at the touch of my hand on his smooth skin.
“We don’t have cell service or cable up here, so there’s a good chance we won’t ever know anything about anything.” I rolled my eyes.
Tommy’s hand went from my shoulder to my hand,
and his fingers entwined tightly with mine. My heartrate sped, and I started to worry about my palms sweating, but the stern, serious look on Tommy’s face when I looked back up at him stopped all the thoughts racing through my head. “Jackson, this is serious.”
There was no longer any excitement in his eyes. His expression was set, and those milk-chocolate eyes I adored were dark and brooding.
“What happened?” I asked quietly, hoping I wouldn’t regret it.
Tommy started walking, and I followed him. He climbed the porch steps and sat on a dusty wooden rocking chair. A second identical chair sat next to it, and a small, dirty wooden table, just large enough for a dinner plate and a glass or two, rested between them. The chairs were dirty and had algae streaks and cobwebs covering them, but I didn’t want to look like a pretentious snob—not in front of Tommy anyway—so I swallowed my apprehension and sat in the empty chair. I sat my coffee cup on the table, and Tommy followed suit before leaning in toward me and taking both of my hands in his.
“Look, I don’t mean to scare you, and I should probably go tell your grandmother first to be honest with you, but they found a body in the woods last night—not too far from here, less than a mile.”
“What do you mean they found a body?”
There were a million different ways someone could die in the woods, but I knew Tommy wouldn’t have come all the way back up here this morning if something terrible hadn’t happened.
“A senior cheerleader from school, Kirsten, was found down in the ravine.”
“So she fell while hiking then. That’s sad but far from tragic. People die hiking all the time,” I rationalized.
“No, Jackson. She wasn’t the first girl to be found in the woods this month. She’s the fourth. All from Ridgeview High School. She went missing a few days ago, and a homeless dude hiking the mountain trail found her late last night. They didn’t fall. They were murdered. All of them had their throats ripped open and were drained of blood—”
“Oh my God. Stop talking. Stop. Why are you telling me this?”
