by Stella Hart
Next to my desk was a shelf where I kept all the books I’d read over the years while researching the case—true crime books, criminal psychology books, forensic textbooks, medical textbooks, and other relevant works.
Several of them were lying on the floor, and my notes from the murder board were scattered nearby. Some of the photos had been taken down too, and they were haphazardly strewn on my bed.
I dashed back down the hall and poked Sascha’s bare foot, which was sticking out of the blanket. “Sascha, wake up.”
She stirred and opened one eye. “What are you doing here?” she mumbled. “I thought you’d get your laptop tomorrow.”
“No, I needed it tonight. I texted you.”
She yawned. “Oh. Sorry. I’ve been sleeping.”
“Right. Did you go in my room after I left earlier?”’
She sat up a bit and nodded wearily. “I borrowed your black studded purse because it went with my dress,” she said. A guilty expression crossed her face. “Sorry, I thought you wouldn’t mind because you didn’t take it to Blackthorne.”
“Did you mess anything up while you were in there?”
She stared at me for a moment, eyes bleary with a mix of fatigue and confusion. “What do you mean?” she finally said.
“My room is all messed up. My books and notes from the murder board are scattered all over the carpet.”
Sascha sat all the way up, eyes widening. “It was fine earlier.”
“Well, that means someone’s been through it,” I said, heart pounding.
All traces of sleepiness seemed to have vanished from my sister’s face. “Shit. Are you serious?”
I nodded and gestured for her to follow me down the hall. She cast her eyes around the mess in my room and shook her head. “What the fuck? I swear it wasn’t like this when I got your purse.”
“Did you let your date in earlier?” I asked. “Could he have done this?”
“No. I met him at the restaurant. The asshole turned out to be married, and I found out literally two minutes into the date, so I was only gone from the apartment for fifteen minutes,” she replied. “I don’t understand how this could’ve happened. Did I forget to lock the door when I came home?”
“I don’t think so. It was locked when I arrived ten minutes ago,” I said. “What about the food containers out there? You had stuff delivered, right?”
“Yeah, but I met the delivery guy downstairs in the lobby, so he didn’t come in at all. And I was only gone for a minute or two. There’s no way someone could’ve broken in and done all this while I was grabbing the food,” she said, sweeping her arm over the room.
An icy feeling prickled up my spine. “What if….” I trailed off, not even wanting to say it out loud. I cleared my throat and started again. “How long were you asleep for?”
“I’m not sure. I watched some TV for a while, but I was really tired after the glass of wine, so I probably fell asleep around half past nine,” she said. Her eyes widened again as she caught on to my train of thought. “Oh my god. You think someone could’ve gotten in and sneaked around while I was asleep on the couch?”
“Maybe. I only got back here at half past ten, so they would’ve had an hour to poke around.”
“I’m going to check my room. I’ll check all the windows too,” she said before turning on her heel and dashing down the hall.
She returned a couple of minutes later. “It looks a bit messy in my room, like someone’s rummaged through my drawers,” she said. “But I’m not sure. I can’t tell if it’s just a mess I made when I was getting ready earlier, or if someone has actually gone through it all.”
I looked at her, forehead creased with concern. “What do you think we should do?”
“I don’t know. Apart from this mess on your floor, there’s no sign that someone actually broke in, so we’ll look pretty stupid if we call the cops.”
“We don’t want to involve ourselves with the cops if we can help it, anyway,” I said. “If they get our names, they might run a background check on us at some point and realize who we are. Word could get out from there, and then the whole island will suddenly know that we’re back.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” Sascha’s brows knitted. “We could just go and talk to Eric.”
“Good idea.”
Eric manned the front desk down in the lobby every night. He was cool, so I knew he’d help us out.
We trudged downstairs and approached the desk. “Hi, ladies,” Eric said with a smile. “What’s up?”
“We’ve had a bit of an incident,” Sascha said.
Concern flickered in his eyes. “What sort of incident? Should I call someone?”
I held up a palm. “Not yet. We were just wondering if you could tell us who came in and out of the building tonight.”
“Over the whole night?”
Sascha nudged me. “I borrowed your purse at just before I went out, and your room was fine then. So it had to be after that.”
I nodded and turned back to Eric. “Between half past eight and ten. Not counting me.”
He scratched his chin. “Tonight’s been pretty quiet. I saw you leave at half past eight,” he said, looking at Sascha. “And then you came back about fifteen minutes later. Mrs. Gibson from the top floor came home around nine, I think. Oh, and there was a delivery guy here at some point, but that was for you, right?”
Sascha nodded. “Yeah. So there was no one else?”
“Not that I recall.”
“What happens if you need a bathroom break? Do you leave the desk?” I asked.
“I’m allowed to leave it for a few minutes at a time, yes,” he said. “We have cameras, so it’s not a huge deal.”
“Could we look at the footage?” I asked. “Just to make sure no one else came in while you were in the bathroom.”
“Sure. Just don’t tell my boss,” he said, clicking a few things on his computer.
Sascha and I went and stood behind him so we could look at the screen over his shoulder. The sped-up footage confirmed what he told us. Between eight-thirty and ten, the only people who came into the building were Sascha, Mrs. Gibson from upstairs, the food delivery guy, and me.
“Are there any cameras outside?” I asked.
Eric looked troubled. “Yes. Why? What’s happened?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I thought someone came into our apartment while Sascha was asleep, because my room is all messed up, but there’s no sign of a break-in apart from that.”
“Do you want me to come up and look around?” Eric asked. “After I check the other cameras, I mean.”
“That’d be good, yes.”
He furrowed his brows as he watched the earlier footage from the front and side of the building. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” he said, glancing up at us. “No one scaling your balcony, or anything like that.”
“Are there any other ways into the building apart from the front entrance?” Sascha asked.
“There’s a staff entrance in the back, but I already checked that on the footage along with the other stuff, and there’s nothing there,” Eric replied. “There’s another service entrance door at the back too, but there’s no camera there.”
I raised a brow. “Someone could’ve come in there, right? Then they could’ve picked our apartment lock and sneaked around?”
“No. Only the super has a key to that service entrance, and it’s rigged with an alarm, so if someone tried to pick the lock or break it in any way, I’d hear it.” Eric rose to his feet. “Anyway, I’ll check out your place and see if I can spot anything.”
He followed us upstairs and inspected our front door before going through the rest of the apartment.
“You were right. Definitely no sign of tampering on any of the locks,” he said when he returned to us in the living room. “Are you sure you didn’t mess up your room like that? Maybe you forgot?”
“I didn’t,” I said stiffly. I knew that was the most obvious answer to all of this, but
it wasn’t me.
He rubbed the back of his head and frowned. “Okay. In that case, all I can think of is that someone may have copied one of your keys, and they used that after figuring out a way to sneak into the building. I really don’t know how they’d do that, though.”
“What should we do?” Sascha asked, brows raised.
“I’ll arrange for someone to come and change your locks ASAP. I’d also suggest you go and stay somewhere else tonight, just in case. Can you do that?”
I nodded. “I was going to go back to my dorm at Blackthorne anyway.”
Eric looked at Sascha. “How about you?”
“I guess I can go and sleep at a friend’s place,” she said.
“You could just come back to my dorm and crash with me for the night,” I suggested. “I’ve got a big bed there.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I’m actually wide awake now, so I might just drive around for a while. Maybe go and watch a late-night movie. If I get tired, I’ll go to a friend’s place.”
“Okay. If you change your mind, I’m 3C in Redstone Hall. Just call me when you get there to wake me up.”
Eric cleared his throat. “I better head back to my desk and sort out that locksmith. You two okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks for the help.”
When Eric was gone, Sascha and I trudged down the hall to look at my room again. “Maybe this is all a big deal about nothing,” she said, forehead wrinkling. “I might’ve opened a window to let some air in earlier while I was getting ready, and it’s been pretty windy tonight. Maybe your stuff just blew onto the floor.”
“Did you actually open a window, though?” I asked, lifting a brow.
“I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. Maybe I did and my memory is just really bad.”
I twisted my lips. “Wouldn’t you remember closing it afterward and seeing all the mess on my floor?”
“You’d think so, but who knows? Maybe I was wrong when I said it wasn’t like that when I left earlier. You know me. I can be pretty scatterbrained sometimes.”
“Hm. I guess.”
“It’s like you were saying this morning. We’re just paranoid because of our past.”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t want to freak my sister out by saying I disagreed with her, but I did. Even if she opened my bedroom window earlier, there was no way the wind could knock my stuff off the board, desk, and shelf like that. Some of the notes and photos could’ve blown off, sure, but the heavy textbooks?
No way.
Even though the whole thing made no sense, and there was no real evidence apart from the mess, I was sure I was right about there being an intrusion this evening. There was no point worrying Sascha, though. The locks were getting changed soon, so even if some random creep had access to our place via stolen keys, they wouldn’t in a few short hours.
Sascha went into her own room to grab a coat while I knelt on the floor to pick up my scattered books and notes. My nose wrinkled only seconds later, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
There was something in the air here; a note of fragrance so faint that I couldn’t identify it. I couldn’t even tell if it was a man’s cologne or a woman’s perfume, only that there was a vague scent in the air. A scent which wasn’t my own.
My face went hot as something twisted and squeezed in my chest. Even though it still seemed so strange and improbable, I knew it was true.
A stranger was in my room tonight.
4
Alexis
It was almost midnight when I finally returned to my dorm at Blackthorne.
Even though it was so late, I was wired from the espresso and the break-in stress back in Avalon City, so I decided to test out my new bathroom and see if a hot shower would calm me down.
It worked.
The longer I stood in the steamy enclosure, the more I convinced myself that I was overreacting earlier. Of course my room at the apartment smelled a little different. Sascha had been in there earlier in the evening, and she was always trying out new perfumes and lotions. Eric went in there too, and he usually wore a spicy cologne. All the scents had simply mingled together to create a new and unfamiliar one.
Also, out of all the rooms in the apartment, my bedroom was closest to the ocean. If Sascha wanted to let in a nice sea breeze while she was getting ready for her date, it made sense that she’d go and open my window for a while. It was also very windy earlier. I remembered thinking about it during my drive along the coast earlier, when I saw all those whitecaps being whipped up over the ocean.
So my sister was right after all. A freakishly heavy wind knocked all my stuff over, and she didn’t notice it when she went to close the window because she was distracted due to her excitement over her upcoming date.
That explained everything.
After I was done in the shower, I got into my pajamas, turned the lights off, and climbed into bed with my laptop and the gifted box of chocolates. I found a new Netflix show to watch on the laptop as I sampled a couple of the decadent treats, and at some point I drifted off.
When I woke again, the TV show was still playing on my laptop screen, making the walls light up with colorful flashes. Yawning, I closed the lid and snuggled back under the blankets, ready to drift off again.
My dreams were filled with images of death and carnage. Faces with gouged-out eyes. Bodies without organs. Blood.
So much blood.
It wasn’t unusual for me to experience graphic nightmares. I’d been plagued by them since I was a kid, and they were always based on the Blackthorne Butcher murders. It got worse when I started researching the case as part of my quest to prove my dad’s innocence, because that was when I finally saw the crime scene photos for the first time.
The photos weren’t supposed to be available to the public, but it wasn’t hard to find them. There were always tech-skilled people out there who could hack in and steal the images from whatever police department server they were stored on. There were shady websites that posted any gore they could get their hands on, too, and those sites went hand-in-hand with all the true crime forums. From there, the images would be shared by case enthusiasts over and over, until there was no way anyone could erase them off the internet forever.
I awoke with a start, heart pounding. There was a knot in my chest that felt like a fist, tightening and untightening. Something had woken me. Something that wasn’t part of the grisly nightmare.
As I lay there in the dark, I searched every corner of my mind for what it could’ve been. Then it struck me. I’d heard a faint knocking sound from somewhere next door. One of my new neighbors had a visitor. That was all.
I was safe.
With a tired groan, I closed my eyes again, intent on getting back to sleep. Before I was all the way out, a strange noise made my eyes snap open again. It wasn’t a knock this time. Instead it was a short, sharp human sound. A moan, or perhaps a muffled scream.
It came from Claire’s dorm. I was sure of it.
I sat up and cocked my head, listening intently, but no more sounds came from next door. I was still worried, though, because Sascha’s earlier lecture on campus safety was playing on repeat in my head. Violent crimes occurred on university campuses all over the world, even the supposedly safe and relatively isolated ones like Blackthorne. What if someone had forced their way into Claire’s dorm? What if she was being attacked in there right now while I lay in bed, hoping it was nothing?
I was aware that I was probably overreacting—again—but that didn’t stop me from getting out of bed, wrapping a coat around my pajamas, and heading out of my dorm.
I walked up to Claire’s door and knocked. There was a sliver of light under it, so I knew she was up.
There was no response to my knock, so I tried again. “Claire, are you okay?”
Another minute passed without any response.
I was starting to fret about what I should do next when the door finally opened. Just a crack.
“Yeah. I was just worried about you. I thought I heard something coming from your dorm.”
Her eyes darted to the right for a split-second. “Really?”
“Yeah. It sounded like a cut-off scream. I thought someone was attacking you.”
“Oh.” She paused for a few seconds. Then she let out a light, tinkling laugh. It sounded forced to me. “I’m watching a horror movie, and one of the characters just got killed by the zombies. You must’ve heard that,” she said. “I’ll turn the volume down. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“It’s fine. I’m just a little paranoid, I guess.”
“I get it. Thanks for checking on me,” Claire replied. “Anyway, I’ll let you get back to bed.”
She smiled as she spoke, but there didn’t seem to be any mirth or friendliness in it.
Unease crept up my spine as I smiled back at her. There was something off about this whole situation. Something that made me want to stay and keep my new friend talking, even though she said everything was fine.
A split-second later, I realized what was bothering me. It wasn’t just Claire’s strained tone, or the too-long pauses and forced laughter. It was the way she was refusing to open the door more than a few inches, as if she couldn’t stand for me to see inside.
Perhaps she was just a private person… but that didn’t square with what I knew of her from our earlier hangout session. At dinner, she was an open book. Candid, extroverted, and friendly. Now she was being cagey and evasive.
Her eyes weren’t the same, either. There was something new and unfamiliar flickering in the pretty hazel depths. Anxiety? Sadness? I couldn’t quite tell.
Then it finally struck me. The way her eyes darted right for a split-second earlier… there was someone next to her. Someone I couldn’t see through the tiny gap in the door.
You idiot, I told myself as my shoulders slumped with relief. It was so obvious now.
At dinner earlier, Claire told me that she’d recently matched with a fellow Blackthorne student on Tinder. She must’ve invited him over, and that was why I heard what sounded like a moan or shriek coming from her dorm. It wasn’t a fearful sound. It was a sound of pleasure.