Famous Last Words

by Katie Alender

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Break your legs. See if I care.”

  Oh, God.

  He stood rooted smugly in place, clutching the knife as if he knew a thing or two about knives. “You’re going to pay for this, Willa. Your poor mama’s going to cry her eyes out when she sees you.”

  I was distracted momentarily by something else glinting in the light, besides the knife blade …

  Water.

  A trail of wet footprints on the floor, between Reed and myself.

  Paige?

  “Stay back,” I said. “I’m warning you.”

  He laughed flatly. “Big, tough Willa. Haven’t you noticed that I keep winning? Didn’t I tell you that I always win?”

  I couldn’t let him corner me. I was still woozy from the pills and not moving very fast, but I’d rather be a moving target than a sitting duck. He was hurt, too.

  I drew in a breath and charged toward him. As I got closer, I ducked and flattened myself against the wall.

  But I didn’t make it. He used his whole body to shove me to the ground. I fell back and hit my head on the sharp edge of the baseboard, so hard I saw stars. Then I scooted as far away as I could, which wasn’t very far.

  Reed loomed above me, holding the knife. “Want to know what I’m going to cut first?”

  On the ceiling above him, black words bubbled into existence.

  Just three short words:

  I AM HERE

  “Wait, Reed … please.” I held my hands up in surrender. “I just have one question.”

  He smirked. “What?”

  I took a deep breath. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  His smirk turned to a confused sneer. “Do I —”

  There was an explosion of blue light between us.

  Reed cried out in surprise, giving me a moment to dash out of his reach. I turned back and looked at him —

  At him, and at Paige.

  Her ghost stood in the center of the hallway, a girl made of light.

  Reed stared up at her in terror. “What … what are you?”

  Paige looked over at me. In her gaze I saw sympathy, understanding, sorrow … but also anger. Resolve. Strength.

  She turned back to Reed, who was basically reduced to blubbering.

  “What is this?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

  Paige smiled and took a step toward him. She spoke in a voice of hollow whispers. “This is the kind of dream you don’t wake up from, Henry.”

  When he tried to move out of her way, his foot landed on one of the wet footprints and slipped.

  He tumbled backward down the stairs.

  And then there was stillness.

  I crawled to the banister and saw Reed lying unconscious — maybe dead — on the floor of the foyer below.

  I glanced up at Paige.

  She gave me a look of satisfaction … but also full of regret and wistfulness.

  And then she disappeared.

  I raced down the stairs, past Reed’s body, and into the guest bathroom.

  The faucet was still running. The bathwater was pink with blood from Jonathan’s wounded head. The water level had just reached his mouth. I shut the water off and then hauled him over the edge so he was lying down on the floor. I turned his head to the side, and a bunch of water streamed out of his mouth. But he still didn’t wake up.

  Oh, God, what if he never woke up?

  I could not sit there and watch him not breathe and not open his eyes and not be alive anymore.

  It would break everything that was left of me.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “No, you are NOT going to die tonight!”

  Desperately, I racked my memory for the first aid I’d learned back in ninth grade. I wrestled him into a sitting position and drew my balled-up fists into the soft space beneath the center of his ribs. As I did it, I felt emotions rush through me, raw and unprocessed, and for a moment I closed my eyes and went back to that morning at the YMCA trying to save my father.

  Live, I remembered thinking. Live, Dad. Live.

  Now I thought, Live, Jonathan.

  Please live.

  Suddenly, his body began to convulse with a series of racking coughs. I ran out of strength to hold on to him, so I laid him down on his side and watched and waited as he came back to life.

  He drew in a huge gasp of air, and his eyelids blinked heavily.

  “Willa,” he croaked.

  I was too overcome with relief even to speak.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “You’re bleeding.”

  “So are you.”

  He started looking around frantically. “Where is he? We need to get out —”

  I was already moving toward the door. “I’ll be right back. I have to get help.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked, trying to sit up.

  “It’s okay. Don’t move. Wait here.”

  I got up and walked over to where Reed lay in the foyer. I thought about checking for a pulse, but decided that could wait. I kicked the knife so it slid under the heavy cabinet by the door and went to the dining room for the roll of tape Reed had used on me all night.

  I hesitated before grabbing his hands — what if my touch woke him? What if he was only dazed?

  I had a feeling that, if he sprang to life, he would have more than enough fight left to finish me off.

  “Is he … dead?”

  I jumped at the sound of Jonathan’s voice. He was slowly staggering toward us.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and my whole body began to tremble. I honestly didn’t know whether to hope the answer was yes or no.

  “Be careful,” he said. “Here … I’ll sit on him. Start with his feet, okay?”

  I nodded as Jonathan painfully lowered himself onto Reed’s chest.

  I wound the tape around his ankles about fifty times.

  “Now his hands,” I said.

  “We need to call 9-1-1,” Jonathan said.

  “This first,” I said. “Here, watch out.”

  Jonathan stiffly climbed off Reed, and together we flipped him over. Jonathan grabbed his wrists and held them tight while I circled them with the tape.

  “Hold him down,” I said. “I guess I’ll see if he’s alive.”

  I lay my two fingers flat against his neck, under his right ear. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going to jump up and attack me.

  But he didn’t.

  “Is there a pulse?” Jonathan asked.

  I felt the faint, slow beat of Reed’s blood under my fingers, and my entire body went cold.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. My eyes felt swollen and painful.

  “My phone’s ruined,” Jonathan said, taking it out of his sopping-wet pocket. “Do you have yours?”

  “No,” I said. “Reed took it. And the landline is dead. I’ll go outside and flag down a car in a minute, but first … I need the code to get into the garage.”

  “Wait … are you okay to walk?” he asked.

  I nodded, even though it wasn’t totally true. “What’s the code?”

  “It’s four fours. Why?”

  I didn’t answer. I left the front door open and staggered over to the garage. Every step hurt, and my head ached from being slammed into the wall. Lights seemed surrounded by halos, and I saw two of everything.

  But I managed to type in 4-4-4-4, and the door opened with a rumble. I flipped on the lights and walked over to the corner, where I’d seen the puddle of water that morning.

  There was a door in the side wall, behind an old bike. It wasn’t even disguised — it just looked like it hadn’t been used in eons.

  The chauffeur’s quarters. That’s where he’d been keeping them, rehearsing with them. Preparing them for their deaths. He had easy access, since he could come and go into and out of the garage as much as he pleased. And it was far enough from the house that no one would hear the girls crying and screaming for help.

  I shoved the bike away and pulled the
door open.

  Stairs.

  From the bottom of the stairs came a soft, muffled sound.

  “Willa?” Jonathan stood, slightly swaying, in the open garage door. “What are you doing?”

  “Marnie?” I called.

  The muffled sound stopped, and turned into a muted shriek.

  “We’re getting help,” I said. “Sorry I can’t come down for you right this second, I …”

  I was so dizzy I could hardly walk. Jonathan slumped against the garage wall like he might collapse at any moment.

  “Who’s down there?” he asked.

  “His next victim,” I said. “Besides me, I mean. Her name is Marnie.”

  The devastated look that came over Jonathan’s face just about broke my heart.

  “Could you go down and tell her she’s safe?” I said. “I’m going to get help.”

  He nodded and slowly began to descend the steps while I shuffled to the gate. When I pulled it open, I saw headlights approaching from around the corner. They blurred in my vision until they were four bright diamonds of light.

  I raised my arms and stepped out into the middle of the street, thinking, Wouldn’t it be just my luck to survive all that and then get run over by some loser checking his text messages?

  But the car slowed as it neared me, and then stopped. The driver’s side door opened, and after a few seconds, a woman about my mom’s age got out.

  “Could you please — Hey, are you all right?” she asked. “Good God, what happened?”

  “Please,” I said. “Call 9-1-1.”

  Then I sat down in the middle of the street and passed out.

  “Her name is Willa. She’s my stepdaughter. We were attacked in our house by … an intruder.” I heard Jonathan speaking before I forced my eyes open. I was propped up in his arms, on the ground, just inside the gate. He glanced down at me and relief crossed his face. “Hey, try to stay awake, all right?”

  “All right,” I said. “I’m okay. I think I was just overwhelmed.”

  Jonathan managed a weak smile. “You’re well within your rights on that count. The police are coming. And an ambulance.”

  “I don’t need an ambulance,” I said.

  “Nice try,” he said. “You’re bleeding from the head. And you’re woozy. Your eyes are bloodshot. Did he give you something?”

  I thought of the white pills and nodded.

  “Do you know what it was?”

  I shook my head. Somebody had covered me with a jacket. “What about you?” I asked. “He hit you, too. And you almost drowned.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m all right. My mother always said I have a thick skull.”

  By now there was a small crowd of people around us. And there were a bunch of people in the garage, too — they must have been helping Marnie.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. Somewhere in the ravine, a pack of coyotes started howling along with them.

  Jonathan kept glancing up at the people around us, and then back down at me. “Are you really okay? Did he hurt you? I can’t believe … all this time, it was … Reed. In our house. In our garage.”

  I blinked back my tears. I couldn’t believe it, either.

  Jonathan ran his hand over my hair in an awkward, reassuring gesture. “Your mom’s on her way back. She’s going straight to the hospital. Willa, I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

  At the thought of seeing my mother and being wrapped in her arms, I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. All of the emotions I’d tried to ignore all night — fear, humiliation, anger — burst forth in a tidal wave. I started to cry huge, ugly-cry sobs.

  Jonathan hugged me closer, rocking back and forth. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re safe now, Willa. You saved us.”

  When my mother got to the hospital, she came barreling into the room. But she wasn’t hysterical, as I had expected her to be. She was strangely calm as she spoke to the doctors and nurses and police. She seemed so strong.

  She hugged me and kissed my forehead and cheeks about a thousand times, and then she took hold of my hand and didn’t let go.

  I had a concussion and a cracked rib and we were waiting for the results of my blood tests, since nobody knew exactly what was in the little pills Reed gave me. But I was feeling okay — all things considered.

  Hey, I wasn’t dead — that was something, right?

  After the initial flurry of activity, the room was deserted, just me and Mom.

  “Don’t you want to go see Jonathan?” I asked. “I’ll be okay for a few minutes.”

  “He’s fine,” she said. “I talked to him before.”

  “But maybe you should —”

  “Willa,” she said softly. “He’s worried about you. He wants me to stay here. I’m not leaving you, sweetie. Not tonight.”

  And she didn’t. When I woke up in the morning, she was curled up in the faux-leather visitor’s chair, her hand still wrapped around mine. She told me the doctor had been by to let her know the white pills Reed had given me were sedatives, designed to make me sleepy and weak. They would be completely out of my system within a few days.

  And Reed was in police custody. He would live, but he might be paralyzed. I nodded, trying to take everything in.

  I thought about the house, and wondered if Paige’s ghost was gone now. If she was at peace. I hoped she was.

  I was sitting up and having some orange juice when a knock came on the door. Mom and I looked up and saw Wyatt Sheppard standing there.

  “How did you get past security?” Mom asked, a little alarmed.

  Wyatt turned bright red.

  “It’s cool, Mom,” I said. “He has connections. This is my friend Wyatt.”

  This explanation didn’t entirely satisfy my mother, but she nodded anyway and shook his hand. Then she stood up and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll go check on Jonathan.”

  When she was gone, Wyatt took a step into the room. I sat up straighter, my pulse speeding up — a fact made embarrassingly obvious by the beeping monitor next to my hospital bed.

  “I …” he said softly. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s a first.”

  He didn’t even come close to laughing. His lips were turned down at the corners. Not a trace of his usual smirk. And his voice was low and strained. “Did he hurt you?”

  “Not badly,” I said. “I mean, I don’t want to go through it again, but I’ll live.”

  “Willa,” he said. “Don’t talk to me that way.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “What way?”

  “Like this isn’t serious. I — I feel very serious about this. About you.” He took a deep breath. “When I heard what happened, I felt like … like I’d been ripped in half. I wanted to find that guy and tear his head off.”

  “There’s no need for that now,” I said, managing a little smile in spite of the stinging tears in my eyes. “He’s going to jail. Forever.”

  Suddenly, I remembered thinking of Wyatt in what I’d feared would be my last moments.

  “What about you?” I asked as Wyatt took a step closer to my bed. “You got arrested, right? What happened?”

  Sinking into Mom’s vacated chair, he breathed into his hands and shook his head, like he didn’t know where to begin. He told me the story of the police showing up at his house, how he’d been taken to the station and fingerprinted, and then how his dad had stepped in and called in a mess of favors to keep Wyatt from being charged with trespassing — or worse.

  So Wyatt wasn’t going to jail. He was, however, grounded. He didn’t even ask his parents how long the grounding would last. He figured it would let up around graduation.

  But given the circumstances, his parents had allowed him this one trip to the hospital.

  “Given what circumstances?” I asked.

  “Given that I … I begged,” he said. “I told them that my best friend was almost murdered by a serial killer, and if they didn’t let me come see you —” Hi
s voice broke, and he looked toward the bright window, blinking furiously.

  “Stop,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  My best friend, he’d said.

  “I’m glad you came,” I said. “I wanted to see you.”

  And Wyatt reached over carefully and put his warm hand on top of mine. I laced my fingers through his and we sat there like that until Mom came back.

  I was discharged from the hospital two days later, but the house was still an active crime scene, so we couldn’t go back yet. Jonathan booked a suite in a hotel and started making plans to sell the house. As far as he and Mom were concerned, we couldn’t be rid of it fast enough.

  My feelings were a little more complicated.

  So much bad happened there, I wrote in my journal. But it wasn’t the house’s fault. In a way it seems like the house was a victim, too. Maybe it hated its own role. Maybe the house is what gave Paige the strength to resist. Maybe somehow the spirit of Diana Del Mar was fighting alongside me the whole time I was fighting back.

  Or maybe I’m

  I stopped and held the pen away from the paper before I could write the word crazy.

  I didn’t think that anymore, so it was time to stop saying it.

  Over the following week, we talked to the police endlessly. I explained in as much detail as I could without including any ghosty parts. Luckily, the story still made sense — how I’d started to get a weird feeling about Reed that day. How I found Diana’s workroom and recognized the name of the movie. How Reed and I fought our way to the top of the stairs, and then he slipped in a puddle of his own blood and fell. Everything checked out, and the police didn’t seem suspicious.

  Besides, I was a pretty decent teller of half truths at this point in my life.

  We were bombarded with requests for interviews and quotes. Some producer friend of Jonathan’s even wanted to buy the movie rights. But Mom took charge and deflected them all. She talked to the lawyers, the media, even Jonathan’s agents. She handled it all like it was second nature to her. Jonathan was pretty impressed.

  I, personally, would never have expected anything less.

  Reporters dug into Reed’s past and cobbled together a portrait of a serial killer — smooth, confident, charming, but alienated. Bad-tempered, with a record of lashing out in school. The victim of an inferiority complex made worse by the loss of his parents and his time with a grandfather who was described by their neighbors as “mean as a snake.”