Stop.
Women tied up, the videos never making it entirely clear if they were playacting or being raped.
No.
Adults doing things to children.
“Enough,” he moaned, fingers grasping the sides of his head.
He had to stop thinking about it. It terrified him, how close he’d come to spilling these transgressions to Bryan. He’d been frightened, certain the man would kill him; he’d come perilously close to revealing his addictions.
The laptop dimmed again, and with an angry swipe, Evan restored the screen to full brightness.
He was panting, aware he’d ventured a goodly distance into the forest. His throat was itching, the sweat trickling down his back. He shivered, nudged a spiderweb with his elbow. Gasped and jerked his arm away, aware again of the laptop light dimming. Goddammit, he’d just brightened it again. He swept a finger over the mouse pad, but this time the screen didn’t flare. Teeth bared, he spun the machine around to identify the problem, and when he saw what was there he cried out and dropped the computer.
His little sister was nineteen now, but back then, when he’d begun to spy on her.…
“Jesus Christ,” Evan whimpered, retreating from the computer.
For on its illuminated screen was his sister at age six with Evan as he was now, both of them naked, both of them in the shower, and it wasn’t possible, that had never happened, and he realized he was screaming, flailing at the branches and cobwebs, and he’d somehow left the trail, but the glow of the screen condemned him as he turned to flee.
Evan tripped, landed face first, the ground beneath him marshy. His glasses tumbled off. His fingers sank into the muck, the foul-smelling liquid squirting over his knuckles. He strained to push away, but the suction of the mud kept him pinned, and beneath his screams, he heard the noises issuing from the laptop, the vile, horrible sounds, and felt something slithering up his pant leg.
Evan froze, eyes widening.
He flopped onto his back and slapped at his leg, but the snake had already slithered under his knee, was squirming its way toward his groin. He fumbled with his belt, a high-pitched keening in the back of his throat, and another snake, moist and wriggling, slithered over his face. He batted at it, but it clamped down on the side of his open mouth, its fangs puncturing his cheek, and below, the snake bit his scrotum. Evan bellowed in horror, grappled with the snakes, but more teemed over him, squirming against his armpits, his lower back. Rather than injecting him with poison, he could feel them sucking, sucking, the blood streaming out of him, and somewhere, below the agony and the revulsion, he wondered if anyone would find the laptop.…
Chapter Twelve
At the exact moment Evan was being exsanguinated, Elaine rose from her bed, drifted to her window, and peered into the cloudless night. Her sleep had been fitful, a delirium really, the way it often was when she was shitfaced. The last three nights, she had smuggled a bottle upstairs – tonight it was Grey Goose vodka – and swigged from it until her writing devolved into incoherence. She told herself that the sound she heard was her imagination. An agonized voice. Someone’s death throes.
Elaine squinted into the night, teetered, and thought, Yes. Shrieking.
Abruptly, it stopped.
She was about to open her window when something else arrested her gaze, a shadow beneath her. She stared, spellbound, as a figure emerged from the mansion and waded into the lush grass of the backyard.
It was a nude man, she could see that instantly, despite the way her vision tried to double. He was sinuous, well formed, if a bit older. She realized it was Roderick Wells.
Unexpectedly, she felt a wave of arousal, the man incredibly well preserved. She disregarded her estimates of his age. He couldn’t be in his seventies, or even his sixties.
He had the body of a man in his early fifties, and even that was a stretch. Wells’s buttocks were smooth and round, his hamstrings striated. In the moonglow the calves looked like polished apples, ripe ones that cried out to be tasted, to be licked.
He’s old enough to be your grandfather. Get ahold of yourself.
Wryly, she thought, I’m about to get ahold of myself.
Wells stopped, faced the forest.
Elaine noticed the yard was illuminated not only by the moon but by a series of accent lights as well. Funny she never noticed before. Strung around the trees, spangling the yard like rhinestones, they lit up the deep blue night like a carnival.
But Wells alone absorbed her. He was motionless, godlike, his arms hanging loose at his sides. Though she couldn’t see his eyes, she knew he’d heard the screams from the forest, was staring raptly toward them.
Wells knelt, placed a hand on the ground. Head bowed, he remained like that, some anomalous lovechild of a sprinter and a parishioner, and Elaine couldn’t help but notice the bulge of his triceps as he waited, waited.…
She became aware of the new sound not with her ears, but with her skin, which tightened in dread. Shivering, Elaine tried to back away from the window but couldn’t. Frigid perspiration trickled between her breasts. The sound was a slow, metronomic pulse, a bruising thump. Her eardrums stung, her head throbbed, the sound like iron calipers squeezing her brain, and somehow the lights in the trees had begun to blaze up in time with the throb, and Elaine saw something that stole her breath, that made the wet mass in her chest threaten to burst in terror.
A ghostly skein of luminescence was advancing toward Roderick Wells, was serpentining from the forest, brightening and darkening in the same relentless pulse that illumined the rest of the night. It was all around, she realized, not just in the meadow, but flashing in the woods deeper in, coruscating from the treetops in the hazy distance. The whole. Fucking. Forest. It was gathering, pulsing straight to Wells. It glowed, darkened, glowed, darkened, advancing toward Wells, and when it touched the grass at his fingertips, he too caught the pulse, his entire body lighting up with the brilliant glow. Elaine wanted to scream but couldn’t. The vodka simmered in her belly. For over the bunched muscles of Wells’s shoulders she discovered swarming black rivers on the ground, knew they were blood, and as she watched, the blood seemed to bead, to sparkle in the pulsing light, and then it was swallowed by his pores, by the kneeling man’s ravenous skin.
Slowly, the throb abated. Leaving the meadow in darkness. Leaving Wells alone in the tall grass.
He rose, turned, and though the clouds had eaten the moon, Elaine could see his glowing white eyes fixed on her, discerned his jack-o’-lantern grin. Elaine stumbled back from the window, collapsed on her bed with a sob.
She struggled for breath, wondered, Who’s dead now?
A minute passed before footsteps sounded at the end of the hallway.
Elaine glanced at the closed door, couldn’t remember if she’d locked it.
Footsteps.
She shoved a knuckle between her teeth, bit down, scarcely registered the salt sting on her tongue. The footfalls ventured nearer, and as they approached she remembered the difference in Wells when he stood, after the pulsing lights had done their work. The back muscles had stood out a bit more, the flesh nowhere near as loose. The pectoral muscles bulging, the abdominals like chiseled stone.
The figure outside her door was…what? Replenished?
Breathing. She heard it through the door.
A floorboard creaked. Elaine trembled on the bed, praying for Wells to move on. Her eyes crawled down the door, examined the gap beneath it. Was there the slightest deepening of shadow there? Was the rasp she heard Wells’s fingertips on the wood grain?
He wants in.
Elaine held her breath, her mind like an animal in an oven, flailing about wildly, the panic blazing in a white-hot cage.
Soft laughter, taunting her, the tone sadistic, demonic.
She shivered, fought the urge to let loose with the shriek that was rising in her throat.
When she thought she could stand it no longer, the footsteps sounded again, retreating.
Elaine couldn’t react. Could only watch the door and hope Wells wouldn’t return.
Chapter Thirteen
At a quarter past midnight, Will was hunched over his laptop when a knock on his door made him jump. He opened the door and felt himself relax. “Hey, man.”
Rick nodded. “Got a few minutes?”
“Sure,” Will said, returning to his chair.
“You recovered from the ballroom?” Rick asked.
“Seriously, man. What the hell was that?”
“He would’ve killed Sherilyn if he’d had a gun.”
“Sit anywhere,” Will said.
Rick hesitated and Will saw the room through Rick’s eyes. A total wreck. Clothes strewn on the bed, some on the floor. The only chair the one Will was sitting on.
“Sorry about—”
“You think I care?” Rick asked, tossing aside a shirt and slouching on the bed. “I need to tell you something.”
“You want to get a drink?” Will asked.
Rick said something Will couldn’t make out.
“Sorry?”
“I said I’m haunted.”
Will smiled. “That a joke?”
Rick looked up at him.
“There’s gotta be more.” Will’s smile faded. “Right?”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
Will thought of what he’d seen on the island, and resisted an urge to bolt from the room.
Rick shook his head. “I’ve never told anybody about this.”
Then don’t start now, Will thought. “Hey, man, if you’re not up to sharing, it’s totally—”
“It’s got to be you.”
“Why?”
Rick hesitated. “I thought about Sherilyn, but then, tonight…did you get the impression…”
“You’re the one who’s supposed to challenge the king?” Will finished.
“I did.”
“Shit. I was hoping I was just imagining things.”
“Did you see the look on Wells’s face?”
“Wish I could forget it,” Rick muttered. “If Sherilyn thinks I need to somehow overthrow Wells.…” He smiled, but there was fear in it. “I mean, that’s crazy, isn’t it?”
You know better.
“Do you feel any different?” Will asked.
Rick looked quickly at him. “I felt…something. Even though it’s madness, I can’t totally dismiss it. It was like Sherilyn’s words were changing me.”
“Tell her,” Will said.
“I’d feel foolish talking to her about it,” Rick said. “And I can’t tell Evan or Elaine.”
“Too beneath them?”
“More or less, though Elaine seems to be climbing off her high horse.”
“Seems to be.”
“Bryan’s a douchebag.”
“A total douchebag,” Will agreed.
“Anna is so…Anna.”
“Agreed.”
“And Lucy, she’s…I think I could fall in love with her.”
Will folded a leg, grasped his knee in what he hoped was an analytical pose. “It falls to me then, whatever this confession is.”
Rick raised an eyebrow. “How do you know it’s a confession?”
“You could share it with Wells.”
Rick made a scoffing sound, got up, went to the window. “Have you wondered why it took so much time from the application deadline to the actual retreat?”
“Of course I have,” a trifle defensively. He hadn’t.
“And?” Rick asked.
“And what?”
“What do you think was happening all that time?”
Will gestured vaguely. “You know what they say. Writing is waiting. Some publishers take years to answer. Why would Wells be any different?”
“He doesn’t work like that. He’s impatient. He wouldn’t wait longer than he has to.”
Will stared at Rick’s profile for a long moment, the bright lunar glow making Rick look a bit ghostly himself. “What the hell are we talking about?”
Rick leaned against the windowsill. “Wells didn’t choose us for our writing abilities.”
“Why did he choose us?”
“Can I trust you?”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“What if I told you Wells was really something else? That his face was just a mask?”
“Rick—”
“Do you believe in monsters?”
Will’s guts had drawn taut. “I believe there’s something…uncanny about Wells.”
“What about ghosts?”
Will couldn’t stand the look in Rick’s eyes. He glanced at the wall clock. “Look, man, it’s late. I’m sure that freakshow in the ballroom wore you out as much as it did me, so we might as well—”
“It follows me.”
Will stared at him.
“I’ve moved nineteen times since college, and every time I do, it finds me.”
Will couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
“It started when my mom remarried,” Rick said. “My stepfather was a narcissistic, abusive son of a bitch.”
Will pushed to his feet. “I’ll listen, but I don’t want to do it in here.”
“Too close to where Wells is lurking?”
Will eyed him ruefully. “You meant it, didn’t you? You really think Wells is something unnatural.”
Rick’s voice was soft and deadly serious. “I’ve seen him change, Will. I’ve seen the horror beneath the mask.”
Chapter Fourteen
Dear Justine,
I truly didn’t mean to kill you.
You probably don’t believe that, but I’m telling the truth, and the truth is, after sending the text, I realized there might be a more dreadful outcome.
You lived forty minutes away, but it took me less than thirty to reach Lacona. Upscale neighborhood, two-acre lots. White three-story house with black shutters and a chartreuse door.
I parked close enough to see your window. I watched it for an hour. The blinds were down, but maybe that’s how you kept them, even though at the sorority you insisted on as much sunlight as possible because you loved peering out at the snow.
There was no snow that cheerless March evening, only wet brown earth and closed blinds.
The scream came around eight o’clock, dark by then. Your dad burst out the front door and scampered across the street. The neighbor trailed your dad inside. The ambulance arrived a few minutes later – good response times in affluent neighborhoods – and the warbling sirens swept away into the night, your parents’ Mercedes trundling after.
You want to know the worst part, Justine? The punch line to the world’s sickest joke?
I almost died that night too.
On some level I knew I was pushing you too far. If a boy calling you a slut had ‘ruined your life’, how much more profound would the damage be when you learned you’d become the viral star of a coed sex tape?
I guess I got my answer.
I learned something that night. I learned that stories have incredible power. They can teach. They can transport.
But they can also bring misery. They can enslave.
Some stories can kill.
A writer can become an evil king, one who takes rather than gives. One who uses his magic to destroy love.
Justine, when I found out you were dead, I drove my MG convertible to a semi-deserted road and knocked back some tequila. I drove the convertible as fast as it would go. I had killed my best friend, marred my reputation – of course people would know it was me in that tape – and I couldn’t imagine the fallout awaiting me at the university.
The next thing I know, my MG is veerin
g off the road and heading for an oak tree: the ultimate karmic moment. One second I was veering toward the tree, the next I was bouncing into a sodden field, my tires sinking into the muck. I sobbed and pummeled the wheel and wished I could take back what I’d done to you.
Then I heard the ding from my phone, the first text message about you. It was a sorority sister.
Deanna: Did you hear about Justine??
Me: What happened?
Deanna: She OD’d on sleeping pills. Did you see the video?
It was pitch black outside, my MG was stalled in a cabbage field, and my best friend was dead because of my cruelty.
Me: What video?
Deanna: It’s basically a porno. With Justine and Jake and some other woman. Is it you? Sorry but I had to ask.
Me: Justine is dead?
Deanna: Yes. Is that you in the video?
I admitted it that night to Deanna and a couple others. They all knew it was me anyway. I told them about the stolen camera and awaited their wrath. I was sure I’d be expelled, maybe prosecuted. Shunned by everyone, barred from any meaningful future, a scarlet letter tattooed on my chest.
Then something remarkable happened.
Jake and I became victims.
Our friends believed our story, that we were just a trio of drunk kids fooling around, that some sick predator took advantage of us. The video had been posted anonymously at a public computer and was never traced to the guy I hired. I feared for a while that the boy – a creep I met in Com class – would blackmail me. But I never saw him again after what happened to Justine. Maybe he killed himself too.
Jake and I were feted as survivors of a cybercrime, and perversely, we became more popular than ever.
I threw myself into my writing, now armed with legitimate emotional suffering. It must have helped because my professors commented on the rawness of my narratives.
You’ll never see this on an inspirational poster, but it’s the truth:
Bad girls finish first.
This contest?
This is one of those times.
There are only eight of us left. Wells likes me best.
The Dark Game Page 18