As Good as Dead

by Holly Jackson

  Her speakers.

  Her Bluetooth speakers on full volume, blaring death metal in the dead of night.

  Pip screamed, fighting forward through the sound, tripping over her own feet as she dropped to her knees.

  She had to uncover one ear, the sound a physical sensation, tunneling into her brain. She reached for the four-way extension cord under her desk. Grabbed the plug. Pulled it out.

  Silence.

  But not really.

  A tinny after-sound, just as loud in her aching ears.

  And a shout from the now-open doorway.

  “Pip!”

  She screamed again, fell back against the desk.

  A figure standing in the threshold. Too big. Too many limbs.

  “Pip?” DT said again in her dad’s voice, and then a yellow glow burst into the room as he turned on the light. It was her mom and dad, standing at her door in their pajamas.

  “What the fuck was that?” her dad asked her. His eyes wide. Not just angry. Frightened. Had Pip ever seen him frightened before?

  “Victor,” her mom said in a soothing voice. “What happened?” a sharper one for Pip.

  Another sound joined the tinny ghost in Pip’s ears, a small wail down the hall, breaking into sobs.

  “Josh, honey,” Pip’s mom opened her arms and folded him in as he appeared in the doorway too. His little chest shuddered. “It’s OK. I know it was a big shock.” She kissed the top of his head. “You’re OK, sweetheart. Just a loud noise.”

  “I—I th-thought i-it was a b-bad man,” he said, losing control to the tears.

  “What the f— What the heck was that?” Pip’s dad asked her. “Will have woken up all the neighbors.”

  “I don—” But her mind wasn’t focused on forming words. It skipped from neighbors to outside to within range. DT had connected to her speakers by Bluetooth. He must be right outside her window, on the driveway.

  Pip scrambled to her feet, launched herself across her bed, and pulled open the curtains.

  The moon hung low in the sky. Its light cast an eerie silver edge on the trees, on the cars, on the man running away from their drive.

  Pip froze, a half second too long and the man was gone.

  DT.

  Dark clothes and a dark fabric face.

  He’d been wearing a mask.

  Standing right outside her window.

  Within range.

  Pip should go, she should chase after him. She could run faster than that. She’d had to learn to outrun all kinds of monsters.

  “Pip!”

  She turned. She would never be able to get past her parents. They were blocking the way and it was already too late.

  “Explain yourself,” her mom demanded.

  “I—I,” Pip stuttered. Oh, it was just the man who’s going to kill me, nothing to worry about. “I don’t know any more than you do,” she said. “It woke me up too. My speakers. I don’t know what happened. My phone must have been connected to them, and maybe, maybe it was an ad on YouTube or something. I don’t know. I didn’t do it.” Pip didn’t know how she’d managed to say so many words without any breath. “I’m sorry. I’ve unplugged the speakers. They must be faulty. It won’t happen again.”

  They asked more questions. More and more, and she didn’t know what to tell them. But it would be all her fault if the neighbors complained, she was told, and if Josh was in a foul mood tomorrow.

  Fine, that was all her fault.

  Pip climbed into bed and her dad switched off her light with a slightly strained “Love you,” and her scorched-out ears listened to the sounds of them trying to coax Josh back into bed. He wouldn’t go. He would only sleep with them.

  But Pip…she wouldn’t sleep at all.

  DT had been here. Right here. Now he was gone in the dark. And she, she was his number six.

  The screaming was still there inside, inhuman and angry, trapped in Pip’s bones. The sputt-sputt-sputt of a phantom printer in her ears. Both fighting against the gun in her heart. Not even a run could take them away or distract her. A run so hard she thought it might split her in two, all the violence and darkness within leaking out onto the pavement. Checking over her shoulder for Max Hastings, with his slicked-back hair and his gloating eyes, but he hadn’t been there.

  The run was a bad idea. Now she felt like she couldn’t move, lying here on the rug in her bedroom. Cocooned in cold air. Embalmed. She hadn’t slept at all. She’d taken the last of the Xanax almost immediately after her parents left her room last night. She’d closed her eyes and time had skipped, but it hadn’t felt like sleep. It felt like drowning.

  Now she had none. Nothing at all. No crutch.

  That got her to move, finally, picking herself up, cold sweat in the waistline of her leggings. She staggered toward her desk, plugs hanging loose beneath it. She’d unplugged everything in the room. The printer. The speakers. Her laptop. Her lamp. Her phone charger. All lifeless, trailing wires.

  She opened the second drawer, snaked her hand inside, and pulled out the burner phone at the front of the line. The same she’d used to text Luke on Wednesday. It was Saturday now, and she’d still not heard back from him. And now she was all out.

  She turned on the phone and began to type, frustrated at how slow it was, pressing 4 three times just to get to I.

  I’m out. Need more ASAP

  Why hadn’t Luke replied yet? He normally would have by now. This couldn’t go wrong too, not on top of everything else. She had to sleep tonight; she could already feel her brain moving too slow, sluggish in connecting thought to thought. She replaced the burner phone in the drawer, startled by a buzz from her real phone.

  Ravi again. You back from your run?

  He’d insisted on coming over when she’d called him earlier, still slurry from the pills as she told him about the printer and the speakers. But Pip said no. She needed a run to clear her head. And then she needed to go talk to Nat da Silva about her brother. Alone. Ravi had eventually relented, as long as she kept checking in with him all day. And there was no question about it: Pip was staying over at his house tonight. Dinner too. No question at all, he’d told her in his serious voice. Pip supposed it was a sensible idea, but what if DT somehow knew?

  Look, one thing at a time. Tonight was a lifetime away, and so was Ravi. She texted him a quick: yes, I’m fine. Love you. But now she had to focus on her next task: talk to Nat.

  It was the first thing she had to do, and the last thing she wanted to. Talking to Nat, speaking it out loud, would make it real. Hey, Nat, do you think it’s at all possible that your brother is a serial killer? Yes, I know, I have a history of accusing you and your family members of murder.

  They were close now, she and Nat. Found family. Found, that is, in violence and tragedy, but found nonetheless. Pip counted Nat on her fingers as one of the people who would look for her if she disappeared. Losing Nat would be far worse than losing that finger. What if this talk pushed that bond just a little too far, pushed it to breaking point?

  But what choice did she have? All the signs were pointing to Daniel da Silva: he fit the profile, he used to work at Green Scene and could very well have been the one who set off that security alarm while Jason Bell was at a dinner party, his red-flag interest in the case as a fellow officer, practically one of them, someone close to the Bells who Andie could have been afraid of, someone who had reason to hate Pip.

  It all fit. The path of least resistance.

  Gunshots in her chest. Quick couplets that sounded like DT. DT. DT.

  Pip glanced at her phone again. Fuck. How was it just past three o’clock? She hadn’t emerged from her bed—the last safe place—until midday, the pills too heavy in her chest to stand before then. And the run had been long, too long. Now she was hesitating, talking herself into it when she just needed to go.
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  No time for a shower. She peeled off her sweaty top and replaced it with a gray hoodie, zipping it up over her sports bra. It didn’t feel like mid-August outside today, the sun trapped behind a cover of cloud, the wind a little too insistent. Pip placed her water bottle and her keys in her open backpack and removed the USB microphones; this conversation with Nat was not one for anyone else’s ears. Ever. Then she remembered she was staying at Ravi’s tonight: she grabbed a pair of underwear and some clothes for tomorrow, fetched her toothbrush from the bathroom. Although she might actually come back here first, to check the burner phone and see whether Luke had any pills for her. The idea was hot and shameful. Pip zipped up the bag and shouldered it, grabbing her headphones and her phone before she left the room.

  “Going to go see Nat,” she told her mom at the bottom of the stairs, rubbing Stanley’s blood off her hands onto her dark leggings. “Then I’m going to the Singhs’ for dinner, and I might stay over, if that’s OK?”

  “Oh. Yes, fine,” her mom said, sighing as Josh started whining about something else from the living room. “You’ll have to be back tomorrow morning, though. We’ve told Josh we’re going to Adventureland tomorrow. Cheered him up for all of two seconds.”

  “Yeah, OK,” Pip said. “Sounds fun. Bye.” She hesitated by the front door. “Love you, Mom.”

  “Oh.” Her mom looked surprised, turning back to her with a smile, one that reached into her eyes. “I love you too, sweetie. See you in the morning. And say hi to Nisha and Mohan from me.”

  “Will do.”

  Pip closed the front door. She glanced up at the brick wall beneath her window, standing exactly where he might have stood. It had rained again this morning, so she couldn’t tell, but there were little white disembodied marks up the wall. Maybe they’d always been there, maybe they hadn’t.

  She hesitated by her car, and then walked on past it. She shouldn’t drive; it probably wasn’t safe. The pills were still in her system, weighing her down, and the world felt almost like a dream unrolling around her. Out of time, out of place.

  She placed her headphones over her ears as she left the drive and started walking down Thatcher Road. She didn’t even want to listen to anything, just flicked on the noise-cancellation button and tried to float in that free, untethered place again. Disappeared. Where the gunshots and the sputt-sputt and the screaming music couldn’t find her.

  Down Main Street, past the Book Cellar and the library. Past the café and Cara inside, handing someone two takeout cups, and Pip could read the words on her best friend’s lips: Careful, they’re hot. But Pip couldn’t stop. Past Church Street on her left, which wound round the corner up to the Bells’ house. But Andie wasn’t in that house, she was here now, with Pip. Turn right. Down Chalk Road, and onto Cross Lane.

  The trees shivered above her. They always seemed to do that here, like they knew something she didn’t.

  She walked halfway up, her eyes fixating on the painted blue door as it came into view. Nat’s house.

  She didn’t want to do this.

  She had to do this.

  This deadly game between her and DT led here, and she was one move behind.

  She stopped on the sidewalk just in front of the house, let her backpack fall to the crook of one elbow so she could place her headphones inside. Zipped it back up. Took a breath and edged toward the front path.

  Her phone rang.

  In the pocket of her hoodie. Vibrating against her hip.

  Pip’s hand darted into the pocket, fumbled with the phone as she pulled it out, and stared down at the screen.

  No Caller ID.

  Her heart dragged its way back up her spine.

  This was him, she knew it.

  DT.

  And now she had him. Checkmate.

  Pip hurried past Nat’s house, the phone still buzzing against her cupped hands. Out of sight of the da Silvas’ house, she held it up and pressed the side button twice, to redirect the incoming call to CallTrapper.

  The phone went dark.

  One step.

  Two.

  Three.

  The screen lit up again with an incoming call. Only this time, it didn’t say No Caller ID. A cell phone number scrolled across the top of her screen, unmasked. A number Pip didn’t recognize, but that didn’t matter. It was a direct link to DT. To Daniel da Silva. Concrete evidence. Game over.

  She didn’t need to accept the call; she could just let it ring out. But her thumb was already moving to the green button, pressing against it and bringing the phone up to her ear.

  “Hello, DT,” Pip said, walking down Cross Lane, to where the houses faded away and the trees thickened over the road. They weren’t just shivering anymore; they were waving to her. “Or do you prefer the Stratford Strangler?”

  A sound down the line, jagged yet soft. It wasn’t the wind. It was him, breathing. He didn’t know it was game over, that she’d already won. That this third and final call was his fatal flaw.

  “I prefer DT, I think,” Pip said. “It’s more fitting, especially as you’re not from Stratford. You’re from here. Fairview.” Pip carried on, the canopy now hiding the stifled sun from her, a road of flickering shadows. “I enjoyed your trick last night. Very impressive. And I know you have a question for me: you want to know who would look for me if I disappeared. But I have a question for you instead.”

  She paused.

  Another breath down the line. He was waiting.

  “Who will visit you when you’re in a cage?” she asked. “Because that’s where you’re going.”

  A guttural sound down the line, the breath stuck in his throat.

  Three loud beeps in Pip’s ear.

  He’d ended the call.

  Pip stared down at her phone, the corners of her mouth stretching in an almost-smile. Got him. The relief was instant, prying up the terrible weight from her shoulders, tethering her back to the world, the real world. A normal life. Team Ravi and Pip. She couldn’t wait to tell him. It was within her grasp now; she just had to reach out and take it. A sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh pushed through her lips.

  She navigated into her Recent Calls menu and her eyes flicked across his phone number again. It was most likely a burner phone, considering he’d never been caught before, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was his actual phone, and maybe he’d pick it up without thinking, answer with his name. Or a voice mail would give it away. Pip could go to Hawkins with this number, right now, but she wanted to know first. She wanted to be the one to find him, to finally know his name and know all of it. Daniel da Silva. DT. The Strangler. She’d earned that. She’d won.

  And maybe he should know what it feels like. The fear, the uncertainty. His screen lighting up with No Caller ID. That hesitation between answering and not. He wouldn’t know it was her. She would be masked, just like him.

  Still walking the road beneath the deepening trees, Nat’s house forgotten long behind her, Pip copied and pasted his phone number into her keypad. Before the number, she typed in *-6-7, the mask. Her thumb fizzed as it hovered above the green button.

  This was it. The moment.

  She pressed the button.

  Raised the phone to her ear once more.

  She heard it ringing, through the phone.

  But, wait, no. That wasn’t right.

  Pip stopped walking, lowered the phone.

  It wasn’t only through her phone that she could hear it ringing.

  It was in the other ear. Both of them. It was here.

  The shrill chime of the call, ringing right behind her.

  Louder.

  And louder.

  There wasn’t time to scream.

  Pip tried to turn, to see, but two arms reached out of the unknown behind her. Took her. Phone still ringing as she dropped hers.

 
; A hand collided with her face, over her mouth, blocking the scream before it could live. An arm around her neck, bent at the elbow, tightening, tightening.

  Pip struggled. One breath but no air. She tried to rip his arm away from her neck, his hand away from her mouth, but she was weakening, her head emptying.

  No air. Cut off at the neck. Shadows deepened around her. She struggled. Breathe, just breathe. She couldn’t. Explosions behind her eyes. She tried again and felt herself separating from her own body. Peeling away.

  Darkness. And her, disappearing down into it.

  Pip came through the darkness, one cracked eye at a time. It was a sound that led her out, something slamming by her ear.

  Air. She had air. Blood flowing to her brain again.

  Her eyes were open but she couldn’t make sense of the shapes around her. Not yet. A disconnect between what she saw and what she understood. And all she understood right then was pain, splitting open her head, writhing against her skull.

  But she could breathe.

  She could hear herself breathing. And then she couldn’t: the world growled and roared beneath her. But she knew that sound. She understood it. An engine starting. She was in a car. But she was lying down, on her back.

  Two more blinks and suddenly the shapes around her made sense, her mind reopening its doors. A tight enclosed space, rough carpet beneath one cheek, a slanting cover secured above her, blocking out the light.

  She was in the trunk of a car. Yes, that’s it, she told her newborn brain. And it was the rear door slamming shut; that’s what she’d heard.

  She must have only been out for seconds. Half a minute at most. He’d been parked right behind her, ready. Dragged her. The trunk open and yawning, to swallow her inside.

  Oh yes, that was the most important thing to remember, her mind now catching up.

  DT had taken her.

  She was dead.

  Not now: she was alive now and she could breathe, thank god she could breathe. But she was dead in all the ways that mattered. As good as.

  Dead girl walking. Except she wasn’t walking; she couldn’t get up.