Last Things

by Jacqueline West

  “Where are you?”

  Jezz’s voice gets even softer. “In the woods, out off County N. Near the Malcolm place.”

  “What?” My brain fuzzes. “Jezz. What are you doing?”

  “We’re just checking. Patrick’s with me.” Jezz murmurs. There’s more snapping. Now I realize that it’s the sound of their feet crunching on the forest floor. “And Sasha and Carson are out here somewhere. They’re going to go up to the front door and pretend their car broke down, and then while the old lady’s distracted, we’ll check the place.”

  “Sasha and Carson?”

  “I know. They’re asses. But they’re the only people we knew would definitely be in on this.”

  “What do you think you’re going to do?” I ask. “Raid some old lady’s house?”

  “Dude,” Jezz says, a little more loudly. “She has Frankie.”

  My thoughts won’t line up. “We don’t know that for sure.”

  I hear Patrick mutter something in the background. “Right,” says Jezz. “Plus, Sasha saw stalker girl loosening your wheel.”

  The floor tilts under me. “What?”

  “She was driving past your place that afternoon, and she saw Thea in your driveway, messing with your car.”

  The floor tilts in the other direction. I’m barely staying upright.

  Sasha could be lying, covering up for herself or for Carson. Or not.

  How would Thea have known about the wheel if she hadn’t loosened it herself? Some psychic vision? Should I really believe that?

  “I’ll come out there and help,” I say. But then I stop.

  Thea is watching my house.

  She said she would be. She’ll be here by now. I can practically feel her out there, her eyes staring at me from somewhere I can’t see.

  There’s no way out. The Nissan’s right in the driveway, in clear view of the woods. Even if I sneak out a window or something, I can’t get into the car without her seeing me. Seeing me and following me—or at least trying to.

  “We’re coming up behind the backyard,” Jezz whispers. “I’d better go. Park way down the road and come find us.”

  The phone goes dead.

  I lift the very edge of the curtain. The woods are there, dark and thick. It’s getting close to midnight now. There’s a fingernail of moon in the sky. I scan for anything moving, anything with wisps of long white hair.

  And then, much closer to me, I see something else. The rusty red X that had been streaked across my windowpane is still there. But it’s thicker and brighter now. It’s fresh.

  I’m not just being watched.

  I’m marked.

  And she’s done all of this before.

  I stagger back from the window. My heart hammers.

  Okay, I tell myself. Okay. So, everything you felt—about this girl actually trying to protect you, about her being essentially good—is a lie.

  And everything that you thought, in the dim, rumbling, paranoid parts of your mind—about her being some obsessed psychopath with a plan to control you, a psychopath who might actually, somehow, be behind all the other insane and terrifying things that are happening to you, and who might have kidnapped or hurt or even killed the girl you wish could be yours, just like she’s apparently done before—is true.

  And she’s standing right outside your house.

  There’s an old wooden baseball bat under my bed. I reach under the box spring and grab it. I haven’t used it since middle school, and the handle is fuzzy with dust. I grip it tight. I close my keys in my other fist.

  Now I can stay here, trapped, with a target painted right on me. Or I can get out and move.

  I fly through the house’s front door. I shove it shut behind me, moving so fast that I’m already beside the car when I hear it slam.

  I yank open the car door. My hands shake as I shove the key into its slot. Damn it, why am I so afraid of a wispy-haired girl on an old blue bicycle?

  I can do this. I can do this.

  The Nissan roars. I surge down the driveway, into the road, hoping that it’s as deserted as usual. The baseball bat rolls in the footwell beside me. I have to get away before she can catch up. I have to get to Jezz and Patrick before she has time to call her aunt, bike home, do anything else that could get in the way. I have to be fast.

  Something flashes in my rearview. I glance up.

  No cars behind me.

  I flick on my brights and push the accelerator: Fifty. Sixty-five. Seventy-five mph. The roads are twisty, and the trees come close to the shoulders. I have to slam on the brakes at one tight curve. Centrifugal force drags the Nissan sideways, its tires shrieking. My stomach flips. Then the road straightens, and I’m back on steady ground.

  I reach the straightaway that will take me to County N, where I’ll turn again. I hit the gas. Seventy-five again. Eighty. There are no other cars anywhere, and no lights but mine, casting their foggy streaks on the road. From the corner of my eye, in the mirror, I see something flicker through my taillights again.

  Maybe it’s some big nocturnal bird, I think. But this time, when I look in the rearview, I see something else.

  A girl on a bicycle.

  She’s only there for a second, but she’s there, keeping pace with me. Her white hair is flying. The spokes of her bike are a silver blur.

  We’re going eighty miles per hour.

  I nearly skid off the road.

  I force my focus forward again, watching the painted line on the pavement. My heart is banging against my ribs so hard that it hurts.

  It wasn’t real. No. My imagination is messing with me.

  I careen around the curve onto County Road N. My hands are freezing cold and sweaty at the same time. The wheel slips in my palms. Almost there.

  This road is narrower. Rougher. The trees lean closer.

  I’ve never been to the Malcolm house, but I know which one it is. Everybody does. It’s the sagging, paint-peeling blue place up a bumpy dirt drive, just past the next bend. I need to get close, park the car, and then run, alone, into the darkness and the trees and hope that I find my friends before anything finds me.

  I floor the gas pedal again. And again, I see it. The shape on the bicycle. The tendrils of her hair.

  This time it doesn’t disappear. I clench my teeth so hard it feels like they’ll shatter. It barely keeps a scream inside.

  She’s there. She’s right behind me.

  I peel my eyes away from the mirror, back to the road. Just in time.

  I’ve reached the last bend. In the distance, the dim light of the house prickles through the trees. And on the pavement right in front of me is a woman.

  She’s old, dressed in a flowered nightgown, with a crocheted sweater dangling around her shoulders. Her hair is wild. Her feet are bare. She’s running straight at me, into my headlights. She’s screaming something.

  Her mouth is a black, open hole. A hole that I am driving straight into.

  I slam on the brakes. The tires screech.

  The Nissan comes to a shaking halt. The old woman is still running toward me. I grab the baseball bat, pushing the car door open at the same time. I’m ready for whatever comes.

  But the old woman isn’t even looking at me. She’s looking just past me, at the bicycle that’s rolling to a stop.

  “They’ve got her!” the woman is screaming. Her eyes are cloudy white, like dusty chunks of ice. “Thea! They got her!”

  That’s when a hand like an iron cuff closes around my arm.

  Thea

  Aunt Mae hasn’t buttoned her sweater. It’s cold and damp out here. The impulse to do it for her crosses my mind, but there’s not time. And I’ve got to keep my grip on Anders’s arm, too.

  He gapes at both of us, his mouth shifting, wordless, as I reach out and take the baseball bat from his fist. He’s gripping it as hard as he can, but I don’t have to struggle to pull it away. I toss it into the ditch without looking. My focus is on Aunt Mae. Her terrified face.

  “What
happened?” I ask her.

  “It wasn’t—the dark ones.” Aunt Mae is short of breath and shivering. She presses one veiny hand to her heart, like she’s pushing a bird back through its cage door. “Two kids. About your age. They came to the door. Said they’d broken down out here—and their phones were dead. . . .” Aunt Mae takes another gasping breath. Anders is fighting against my grip, but I barely notice. “And then they grabbed me and pulled me out the front door and locked me outside.”

  I glance down at Aunt Mae’s knees. They’re muddy. So are her hands. Her nightdress is grass stained. I can see a scrape on her ankle, bloody and broad.

  They knocked her to the ground. Two teenagers against an old woman. Anger pulses inside me.

  “Ow,” says Anders.

  I guess I’m gripping his arm a little too tight.

  “I went all around the house—trying to get back in,” Aunt Mae gasps. “But everything was locked tight. Then I thought to check the shed. And she was gone.” She crumples. “Everything. Everything . . .”

  My heart starts to hammer. Hard and steady.

  No. I won’t lose her. Not this time.

  “You did have her.” Anders’s voice cuts through the pounding in my blood. “You had Frankie.” He’s staring at me. Steel eyed.

  He knows.

  And he’s seen. He’s seen me move. He’s felt the strength in my arms. He can feel it right now.

  He looks at me, so stunned that his face is a perfect blank. “What are you?”

  And then I move.

  I race into the woods, with him beside me.

  He stumbles at first, then tries to run, then falls. I drag him through the trees like a purse on a broken strap. We rush up to the shed, Aunt Mae padding as quick as she can behind us.

  The shed door is hanging open. Even by the moonlight, I can see that the root cellar door is open, too, the barrels and bags shoved messily aside. The cross drawn in my blood, the circle of river stones; they don’t matter against a bunch of clumsy human hands. Their power means nothing to the powerless. I pull Anders, who has clambered to his feet again, toward the gaping cellar.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell him. And then I shove him as gently and quickly as I can down the cellar stairs. I swing the door shut and bolt it.

  I turn to Aunt Mae, who is staggering up to the shed. “Are they still in the house?”

  “I believe so.” Her voice is raspy now. Painful to hear.

  “Will you stay with him?” I point to the root cellar. “I’ll be back.”

  Aunt Mae nods.

  With my key, I open the back door and slip inside. I can already hear them, thumping upstairs, two loud voices. They’re in my room.

  I’m up the stairs, standing in my bedroom doorway, before they can even turn toward the sound of my steps. They’ve switched on the bedside lamp. Frankie is nowhere to be seen. Sasha is digging through the dresser drawers. Her head is down. Carson is standing nearer the door, looking up at the picture of Anders onstage, the one I printed at the library, posted above the row of candles.

  “. . . sure we’ll find proof. Because this is seriously sick,” he’s saying just as his eyes float toward me.

  I keep still.

  I can see the thoughts flash through Carson’s mind. Weighing the risks. Guessing my next move. Then he lunges. He’s aiming for my shoulders, his big hands out and open, ready to knock me down.

  It’s only once he touches me that I move.

  My hands strike his chest. He flies into the air, lands, slides backward across the hardwood floor. The back of his head strikes the wall. Hard. He slumps, his chin nuzzling his own shoulder.

  Sasha gapes at me. Her face is flat with horror. She drops the thing she’s holding—I think it’s a pair of my socks—and takes a small step backward.

  I could throw her through the window. The image of glass shattering in a wide, blossoming burst and Sasha flying through it, out into the woods, is satisfying for a second. Like scratching an already-raw rash.

  But I just grab her by the arm (“No—no—no,” she’s sobbing) and throw her into my closet.

  “Where is Frankie?” I demand.

  Sasha gapes at me. “I don’t—you’re the one that had her!”

  I block the doorway with one arm. “You didn’t let her out?”

  “Let her out from . . .” I see hope and horror mashing on her face. “No. The others must have—”

  I slam the closet door and bolt it from the outside. I bolt my bedroom from the outside, too. I was prepared. Sasha’s beating at the closet door, sobbing and screaming, as I run back down the stairs.

  But there’s no time for this. Not even to think about it.

  I’m back inside the shed in a heartbeat.

  “You go inside, Aunt Mae,” I tell her. “They’re secure.”

  “Are you sure?” She reaches up and puts a cold hand on my cheek.

  “Yes. I’ll find her. It’s all right.”

  With a last look at me, Aunt Mae shuffles out into the darkness.

  I unlatch the root cellar door. A waft of sour, stale air breathes over me.

  Anders, inside, is quiet. He’s standing on the steps, staring up at me. His eyes glitter in the dimness. His face is tight. His words come fast.

  “You kept Frankie here,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “You kidnapped her.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve kidnapped people before.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you loosen the wheel on my car?” he asks. He isn’t even trying to climb out. He’s just watching me now. “Did you take my cat?”

  “I found your cat,” I tell him. “I checked your wheel. I told your friends.”

  “But you could have let Goblin die,” he says. “You could have let me die.” His voice is calm, all the panic and anger washed away. He’s blank faced, wondering, not quite believing the things he’s seen with his own eyes. “You’ve killed other people. Haven’t you?”

  I don’t answer. My silence is an answer anyway.

  I want the truth in the open. I want him to see it. To see me. Before the end.

  Anders goes on staring at me. I see him putting the fragments together, looking down at the reflection that starts to form. “That woman,” he says. “The music executive. The one in the river. You did that.”

  “She wasn’t a woman,” I tell him. “Not anymore.”

  The line of his jaw flickers as it clenches. His body is shaking, but he’s trying to hide it. He doesn’t break his gaze.

  “And that girl,” he says. “Corrine somebody.”

  “No,” I say quickly. He knows. He found out somehow. No wonder everything is falling apart. “Not her. I tried to save her.”

  His eyes narrow slightly. “Then . . . what happened?”

  I hesitate. I still feel the need to keep Corrine’s secrets. I promised her I would, more than a year ago, on one long night in that old blue barn.

  “She wanted things,” I tell him. “That’s all it takes. She wanted things too much.” I tilt my head toward the woods, toward the whispering darkness. “That’s how they get in.”

  Anders stares at me, unblinking. “What did she want?”

  We can’t keep wasting time. And I need him to believe me. I want him to believe me.

  I want it too much.

  “It was her stepfather.” I let it fly out. “He’d molested her for years. When Corrine told her mother, she wouldn’t believe it.” Anders’s face shifts. I see sympathy. Anger. “Corrine wanted him gone,” I continue. “She would have done anything. And they knew it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Car accident. Slippery road. He was dead before help arrived.” Anders almost smiles. I understand. I might smile, too, but I know what came next. “Of course, then they came back for their payment.” This part still hurts. It hurts like a broken branch between my ribs, like something jagged, healed over, buried inside. “At the end, I wasn’t there. We’d had
to move. Things went wrong. Just like this.” I gesture down the steps, to the empty root cellar. “I couldn’t save her. But they didn’t get her, either.” I add. “When they came for her . . . she took another way out.”

  Anders is silent for a second. Then he asks, in a thick voice, “Why Frankie?” He glances down, into the cellar where Frankie has been trapped for days. He’s sick and horrified by it; the darkness and smallness and the smell. “Is she one of them?” he asks. “Or were they using something she wanted against her?”

  “Neither. Anders.” I lean closer, making sure that he can see my face as well as I can see his. “They are taking everything you love. They will destroy everything you love. Do you understand?” He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t look away. “I was keeping her safe.”

  “You were?” He wants to believe me. I can hear it seep into his voice now, a rivulet of water cracking through ice.

  “This was the one place where they couldn’t touch her. And now she’s out there.”

  His breath catches.

  “How did you know she was here?” I ask him. “Who told you? Who is she with?” Anders keeps mute. Shadows flicker on his cheeks as his teeth clench. “I know it isn’t Sasha and Carson. They’re still inside the house. Is it Will and Gwynn?” Anders looks away. “Who is it, Anders?” I push on. “You need to tell me. Whoever took her—they’re in serious danger.”

  I bend closer. The smell of the cellar is strong, but I can still catch the distracting scent of him, carried on the warmth rising from his skin.

  No. I snap my mind away. This is not for you. This will never, never be for you.

  “Anders,” I say. “Please. I know you don’t trust me. But please. Please believe this.”

  His eyes move over my face, like he’s reading something written there in small print.

  “It was Jezz and Patrick,” he says at last.

  Of course. The fragments fall into place.

  All of them at once.

  Everything he loves.

  “Come on.” I reach down and grab his hand.

  Anders

  I haven’t ridden on the back of someone else’s bike like this since I was ten. My feet are balanced on the little pegs that stick out on either side of each rear wheel, and I’m stuck in a half squat, with my arms wrapped tight around the shoulders of Thea Malcolm.