“I’ll love you when you’re dead,” I answered.
Her eyes flew open, giving me the deer-in-the-headlights look. Before I could think, the knife was in her throat, and Mitch was shouting, “What the fuck?”
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Zachary Bell
My shift ended at four in the morning. I was dead-tired and sick of seeing drunk high school kids wandering through the lobby. Jeff was my relief, and I sleepily thanked him when he took over.
When I went out into the parking lot, I saw that Macy’s Jeep Cherokee was finally gone. I assumed she and that Jacob kid had hooked up or something. That would be pretty believable, considering all she’s done ( who she’s done) in the past.
I found an early-bird coffee shop and bought a triple-shot, hoping to keep myself awake on my drive home. But as I was driving down Fourth Avenue, I accidentally turned too early and had to turn on Fifth Avenue, a one-way going in the opposite direction. I was driving past the mall when I saw Macy’s Jeep parked on the sidewalk.
Why isn’t Macy at home? The mall’s closed, and she’s three blocks from any hotel. Why did she park here?
Curious, and high on caffeine, I pulled into the space in front of Macy’s Jeep and got out of my car. I almost got back in when I realized how goofy I was acting, but curiosity got the better of me and I decided to take a look.
I looked in her rear windows and saw nothing but a lump on the floor, covered in a blanket. I couldn’t tell in the darkness, but I thought I saw the outline of a stiletto through the blanket, so I tapped on the window.
“Macy?” I called.
Suddenly the blanket started moving frantically and I heard Macy screaming my name.
“Zac! Zac thank God you found me!” she yelled, her voice muffled by the blanket and the car door.
“Macy, what are you doing?” I laughed.
“Fuck you!” she screamed. “Get me out of here!”
“Macy, just sit up!” I cried. “It’s not like you’re tied up.
You just didn’t want to drive home wasted, right?”
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“No, God damn it! Jacob locked me in here!” she screamed. “There’s a hide-a-key in the tire well!”
“Wait, Jacob Fastner locked you in here?” I asked, beginning to freak out.
“GET THE DAMN KEY!”
I set my coffee on the hood of the Jeep and felt under all the tire wells, finding the hide-a-key on the driver’s side. I opened the front door and unlocked all the others, then went back to the rear door and pulled the blanket off of Macy. She was laying on the floor, her ankles and wrists bound, a piece of duct tape hanging off her left cheek.
“What the hell happened to you?” I asked, unbinding her wrists with my Leatherman. I looked at her now crooked nose and assumed it was broken. She saw me staring and winced.
“That psycho Jacob kid told me he was going to kill Sam, and I flipped, so he knocked me out, and next thing I know, I’m tied up under a blanket in my own fucking car!”
“How’d you get the duct tape off your face?”
“When you breathe on it a lot the stickiness wears off. I was in there for hours! I rubbed my cheek on the carpet and the seat until it came off. There wasn’t much I could do. It was really uncomfortable down there.”
Macy got out of the car and stretched, yawning. Then she rolled her shoulders and looked at me.
“Well, I guess we better go save the girl Mitch stole from you. The girl who stole Mitch from me,” she sighed. “Isn’t it weird we’re saving a girl who fucked things up for both of us? I hope she didn’t die already.”
“Wait, he was serious?” I shouted. “We’ve gotta call the police!”
Macy nodded affirmatively and got her cell phone out of her purse, which apparently Jacob had placed under her. She dialed 911 while we were in the car.
As she was talking to the police, I broke every speed limit to make it to the Whitmeister in less than a minute. Macy was arguing with the 911 operator.
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“I’m telling you, I’m not drunk, and I’m not high! Jacob Fastner is going to kill Samantha Steele! And probably Mitchell Mantel and everyone else!” she shouted as I pulled into the Whitmeister parking lot.
“Macy, I gotta go in,” I said. She looked at me in anguish.
“Zac, they just won’t listen! They say the Whitmeister has impeccable security and that I’m just paranoid! Oh, fuck you!”
she added to the operator.
“Which is why I have to do something,” I said. Macy nodded.
“Go,” she said. “I’ll argue with the police.”
I ran into the hotel and up to the front desk, where a young girl was doodling on a notepad.
“I need to see Evan Cage,” I said immediately, knowing Evan’s dad reserved all the rooms.
“Are you with that other boy?” she asked. “He was kind of ugly. Not someone I’d expect to be hanging around a Whitmeister. But it’s prom night. I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s fun so I told him where to go.”
“Uh, no, I’m not,” I said. “But he’s the reason I’m here.”
“Oh, well, Mr. Whitmeister reserved three rooms for his son. They are: 2424, 2425, and 2426,” she had to call out the last number to me, because I was running towards the elevators. I slammed my finger onto the up button.
The elevator seemed to take forever to arrive. The doors closed behind me too slowly. The elevator music made me even more nervous, and the ride up to the twenty-fourth floor was so slow I wished I’d taken the stairs.
When it finally arrived on the correct floor, I squeezed out of the doors before they were even halfway open.
“Fuck!” I cried, realizing how complicated the old hotel was. I ran through four hallways and found the ice-room twice before I realized I was on the wrong side of the elevators. In my panic, it took me three minutes to find the correct rooms.
But 2426 was the only room with an open door.
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I heard grunting and smacking noises inside long before I reached the door. As I ran past 2425, I heard the TV being turned up. I slid into the room to find Mitch and Jacob rolling on the floor, Mitch beating the living daylights out of that little twerp.
I wanted to help, but I was frozen.
Sam was struggling to sit up on the bed, a knife stuck in her neck, blood covering her chest and beginning to spread onto the sheets and pillow. The only thing I managed to do was shout,
“HELP! MURDER!”
The connecting door flew open and Evan stood there in his boxers and a t-shirt.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. But then he saw me standing in the doorway, Sam bleeding on the bed, and Mitch and Jacob fighting on the floor. “Oh, shit,” he said.
“What’s going-” Annika interrupted herself with a scream. “SAM!”
By now other people had started coming out of their rooms to see what all the fuss was about. Annika ran to the bed to help Sam, and Evan pulled Jacob off of Mitch. I backed into the hallway and saw a black bag, unzipped, behind the door.
The light glinted off a shiny metal pistol.
Without thinking, I grabbed the gun and ran back in the room, my eyes instantly focusing on Jacob. He was standing with his back to me, having just punched Evan in the face, knocking him over. Mitch was struggling to stand up. Jacob turned and his eyes landed on the gun.
“Mitch, get down!” I shouted. Annika screamed. Sam made a gurgling noise.
I pulled the trigger.
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Mitchell Mantel
I was asleep, my arm wrapped tightly around my girlfriend, when I heard someone knock loudly on the door.
Grumbling, I stood up and stumbled to the door, my head pounding with a monstrous hangover.
When I looked out into the hallway, I didn’t see anyone. I glanced back and forth a few times before I dec
ided I must have dreamt it and went back to bed. Only this time, I slept with my back to my girlfriend, on the bedside opposite the door. My left shoulder was sore from sleeping on it.
Sometime later, I heard Sam mumbling in her sleep, but then I heard a male voice say, “I’ll love you when you’re dead.”
I sat up just in time to see Jacob stab Sam in the throat. I wanted to shout or growl or do something frightening, but I could only manage, “What the fuck?”
I jumped over Sam, afraid to look at her neck, and tackled Jacob. I began furiously slamming my fists into his face, trying to do as much damage as possible, hopefully knock the little weasel out.
Someone appeared in the door - I didn’t look up to see who - and called for help. Evan opened the connecting door just as Jacob got the upper hand and rolled on top of me, punching me in the eye.
I got a chance to look at his face - his nose bloody, most likely broken, his busted lip, bleeding eyebrow - and felt a little bit of sick pride.
But suddenly Jacob was off of me, punching Evan in the face and knocking him down. I tried to stand up, but my knee was aching from slamming into the floor when I jumped on Jacob. I was halfway up when I heard Zac shout, “Mitch, get down!”
I obeyed, dropping lazily to the floor. I heard Annika scream, Sam gurgle, and a gunshot.
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Jacob fell to the floor in slow motion, clutching his chest.
Panting, I turned my head to look at Zac, who was standing with a smoking gun. Again.
Not wasting time in celebration, I shouted, “We need an ambulance!”
The ambulance raced through the downtown streets to the hospital. I couldn’t believe Sam was still alive. The knife was still in her neck, but the EMTs were cleaning the wound, preparing her for surgery. She had on an oxygen mask, but it still looked like she was struggling to breathe.
“I should’ve checked the door,” I whispered, holding her hand. Even though she was dying, Sam managed to roll her eyes at me. A smile tugged at my lips, but never truly came through.
“Is she alright?” Mrs. Steele cried when she saw me in the waiting room.
“I… I don’t know yet,” I stammered. Mrs. Steele started to cry. Her husband hugged her close. “She’s in surgery. I’m… I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Mr. Steele said, stroking his wife’s hair. “Who did this?”
“Jacob Fastner,” I said. “I don’t really know why. But he’s dead.”
“Did you kill him?” Mr. Steele asked, his voice stern. I shook my head.
“Zac Bell did. He’s in police custody now. They took him away.”
“Thank you,” Mr. Steele said gruffly, “for helping.” I nodded.
Hours later, Mrs. Steele shook me awake.
“The doctor has news honey,” she said. Dried tears covered her cheeks. I sat up, eager to listen.
“She’s stabilized,” the doctor said. “She’s going to live.”
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A breath caught in my throat. He didn’t say, “She’s going to be fine” he said, “She’s going to live.” Live as a vegetable?
Brain activity, but a coma? She’s going to be paralyzed?
“What does that mean?” I choked. The doctor took a deep breath.
“It means she might not ever be able to speak again,” he said. “And we don’t know how long she’ll be in a coma. She lost a lot of blood, and her spinal cord was nicked. So far we haven’t seen any brain or nerve damage, however. But the knife did plenty of damage to her vocal chords. They’ll heal, but at this point it’s hard to tell how the scar tissue will affect her voice. The only comfort I can give you is that she won’t be in pain while she’s in the coma.”
That’s a comfort?
I sat by Sam’s bed every day for two weeks. I still had to go to school, but I spent the rest of my time at the hospital. The Friday following the incident, the school held a memorial service for Jacob.
I skipped it to visit Sam, as did Evan, Bryce, Annika, Cami, Taylor, Caten, and quite a few others. I heard only about one-hundred kids attended - out of South’s 1,500.
The day of the service, a huge group of us - about twenty
- ordered pizza and soda and watched some of Sam’s favorite movies together in her hospital room, hoping she’d wake up and join the fun.
She didn’t.
But finally, after three weeks of being comatose, Sam’s fingers twitched. It was seven o’clock in the evening, on a Friday, and I’d been planning on going home in about an hour. But now that she was twitching, I was afraid to leave. I didn’t want her to be alone when she woke up.
I started talking to her, telling her about my classes and the situation with Zac - he was in prison, waiting to be tried as an adult. I ended up falling asleep after a few hours.
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Samantha Steele
I woke up at four in the morning because Sam’s fingers were twitching underneath my hand again. I lifted my head off the bed and looked at her face just in time to see her eyes move beneath her eyelids. Anxious, I sat up and softly called her name.
Her whole arm twitched and she moved her head, groaning. I called her name more eagerly.
But then she completely relaxed and went limp.
I started to cry.
I fell asleep again and had a nightmare. I was reliving the night Sam was stabbed, only this time she actually died. The ambulance simply never showed up. The limo was gone. We had no way of getting her to hospital. The hotel was empty. Sam was dead.
I woke up with a start, my hand squeezing Sam’s. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her chest gently rising and falling with each breath.
“Mitchell honey,” Sam’s mom said behind me. “Did you stay here all night?”
“Yeah,” I said with a nod, rubbing my eyes. Sam’s mom plopped a bag of doughnuts on the bedside table.
“You want me to get you a coffee?” she asked. I shook my head.
“No, no, I need to stretch my legs.”
“Why were you here all night?”
“Her fingers were twitching,” I said. I would’ve told Mrs.
Steele about the incident in the middle of the night, but I was afraid to give her false hope, in case Sam didn’t really wake up.
I walked down to the basement to get a cup of coffee, and then brought it back up to Sam’s room. Her mom was eating a doughnut and reading the newspaper. She looked up when she saw me.
“Feel free to dig into the doughnuts,” she said, folding the paper and finishing her pastry. “If you’ll watch her, I’m going to ask the doctor about her progress.”
I sat down in my chair and tucked in to a doughnut, suddenly realizing how hungry I was. It was ten in the morning,
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and sunlight was blazing in from the windows. I held Sam’s hand and closed my eyes, enjoying the heat of the sun on my face.
“Today’s the day you’re going to wake up,” I said quietly.
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to give up,” I added with a sigh.
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Samantha Steele
My eyes opened, but the harsh lighting made me squeeze them shut again. I heard a shuffling noise.
“Sam?” Mitchell called my name softly. I tried to say something in return, but all that came out was a cough. Pain suddenly ripped through my throat and I realized I couldn’t speak.
“Don’t try to talk,” Mitch said. “Your wounds are still healing.”
He looked at me with a tiny smile. “I knew you’d wake up today.”
Wake up? My wounds? Wait, I’m still ALIVE?
Suddenly everything came flooding back. I remembered the open door, calling to Mitch, seeing the knife, Jacob stabbing me… I remembered choking and gurgling, trying to breathe.
Despite the pain, I flicked my eyes open and struggled to sit up. Mitch put an arm under my shoulders
and helped me prop myself up on the pillows. I opened and closed my mouth, afraid to try speaking again.
“Your throat,” Mitch said, guiding my fingers to my neck. I felt bandages. Right next to my trachea, on the right side, I felt a hard crunchiness under the bandages. Stitches. “That’s where Jacob stabbed you. You almost died.”
I started to cry silently. My chest wanted to release a wail of agony, but I was afraid to use my damaged vocal chords. Mitch held me gently, avoiding my neck. The wound was sore, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the fear I would never be able to speak again.
“Are you feeling any better today?” Dr. Herman asked me. He was a tall, attractive man with dark, wavy hair and blue eyes - just the comforting look you wanted in the person nursing you back to health. I nodded. It had been a month since I woke up, and although I could manage whispers now, it still hurt to talk most of the time.
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Dr. Herman looked over my progress on a clipboard while a nurse took my temperature and blood pressure. He came closer to me and began peeling off my neck bandages.
“It seems to be healing very nicely,” he said. “But you’ll have a nasty scar, there’s not much we can do about that. The good news is, your progress is excellent. You should be released within the next few days, and you should have full use of your vocal chords in a month or two. Can you speak above a whisper at all?”
“A little,” I said quietly, my voice raspy and painfully sharp. “But it hurts a lot,” I added in a whisper. Dr. Herman smiled with concern.
“I know. Try a little each day, just to check your healing.
But don’t hurt yourself. That’ll only make things worse.”
That night, I heard a shuffling in the hallway. I rolled over to look out my door, which was open. Angry at the nurse who left it that way, I slowly stood up and went to close it.
There was an old woman in the hallway, and she looked confused. She noticed me staring, and came closer.
“I can’t find my room,” she said in a tiny, high pitched voice. “I got out of bed for a snack, and now I’m lost.”
“I don’t know where your room is, lady,” I said quietly.
My voice had improved a little since this morning.
“Well, I thought I knew, but when I went in, there was another old woman in my bed.” The lady leaned forward and beckoned me to listen closer. “I think she was dead.”
Night Prowler Part One Page 15
