Fatal Games

by Bruce Richards

  Alicia told Chip about accidentally stepping on Maggie's tail — that was the screech he had heard earlier. She was the one who had been looking out the window at them. It all made sense to Chip now.

  Chip surprised himself by starting to talk about the bad dream he had had a couple of hours before. He described the guy in the hood with the knife. Alicia calmly gave him a sympathetic smile. She had suffered a few bad dreams herself, lately, she admitted.

  Even though it was probably past two in the morning, Chip felt surprisingly alert. He was enjoying talking to this beautiful girl in the dark. This strange, beautiful girl with the radiant eyes and the white streak in her hair. He was about to ask her about her dreams, when the bedroom door creaked open.

  Al walked in.

  Chip figured Al had been eavesdropping in the hall. Chip was about to make chicken sounds to tease Al about running away but checked himself in time. He wanted to make a good impression on Alicia, and bickering with his brother wouldn't sound cool.

  "Hi, Al," Chip said casually. "This is Alicia, a neighbor from down the street."

  "Hi," Al said. "I'm Al. Chip's good-looking older brother."

  Alicia grinned. "Hello."

  The shutter slammed and the three teens gasped in unison. Al whipped his switchblade out and clicked it open, glancing at Alicia as he did so. Chip knew he was showing off. Then Al went to the window, leaned out, and started to unscrew the hinge.

  Alicia watched Al try to pry it loose. "That shutter's been driving me crazy for weeks. Banging all night long whenever the wind blows. Sometimes I think I can hear it in my dreams. Especially nights like this when a storm is on the way."

  Al loosened a screw and flicked it away. "So what were you doing over here?" Al asked Alicia.

  "Just looking around," Alicia said. "I'm sorry for trespassing on your property. I didn't know the place had been sold. I didn't think…" Her voice trailed off.

  "You didn't think anyone would be nuts enough to buy this place," Chip said with a sly smile.

  "Yeah. At least not so soon…"

  Al removed another screw from the rusty hinge. "You obviously don't know Chip's mother."

  "Our mother's not afraid of anything," Chip explained.

  Al snorted by the window. "That's one way to put it."

  "She was kind of a hippie before she met my father and moved to Middleton," Chip explained. "She always wanted to own a big house — she loves to fix things up. But we've never had a lot of money. When she saw the rock-bottom price on this one, she jumped at it."

  "I'll bet." Alicia's laugh was short.

  "She also found a small shop with a low rent right off Main Street. She wants to make it a doughnut shop. She grew up in Springwood, and Al was born here. My mom was pregnant with me when we moved to Middleton." Chip realized he was rambling and decided to cut his story short. "Tomorrow's my mom's first day at the new shop."

  "Cool," Alicia said.

  "I guess it's cool, if you like doughnuts," Al said. "She'll go bankrupt in a month. She should have just taken Dad's insurance money and had a big party. That's what I would've done."

  "Insurance money?" Alicia asked.

  "Our dad just died," Chip said.

  "Oh… I'm sorry," Alicia said.

  "Chip's dad," Al said curtly.

  "Al's adopted. He doesn't really consider us his family," Chip said bluntly. "Right, Al?"

  "That's right," Al said. His head was still sticking out the window. He grunted as he tried to yank the shutter loose. "Hey Chip, why don't you tell her who your real father is?"

  Alicia gave Chip a quizzical look.

  "Kind of an inside joke," Chip told her, hoping Al would let it go.

  "My dad died when I was little," Alicia told Chip. "From a stroke."

  Chip nodded.

  "I guess you guys heard what happened here," Alicia said.

  "The real estate woman told us," Chip said. "Did you know them — the ones who… died?"

  Alicia nodded.

  "Bummer," Chip said.

  Al stuck his head back in the room, breathing heavily. "That kid — the one they called Weird Evan Walker — stuffed them in the boiler downstairs before hanging himself, didn't he?" The moonlight glistened off Al's teeth as he flashed a wicked smile. "Hey, Chip, better remember to clean out the boiler tomorrow morning."

  "I think the police got all that stuff," Alicia said, briskly rubbing the arms of the oversized letter jacket to warm herself.

  "But that's what the kid did, right?" Al asked again. "Stuffed them in the boiler."

  "Something like that," Alicia said in a soft voice.

  "You must have known the boy who did it, right? He was your neighbor," Al persisted.

  Alicia suddenly broke down in tears, heavy sobs wracking her slender body. Before Chip realized what he was doing he had slid across the floor and wrapped his arms around her. She dropped her head onto Chip's shoulder as she cried. Chip stroked the back of her head, smoothing her hair, hoping to comfort her.

  Chip heard Al making loud smacking noises and looked up. Al smirked, then made gross little silent kisses with his mouth.

  Chip looked away.

  "It was horrible," Alicia said, trembling in Chip's arms.

  "If you don't want to talk about it, that's cool," Chip said softly, pushing a strand of white hair out of her eyes.

  Al sniggered from where he stood by the window. "So I guess you knew him."

  "Hey, Al — why don't you just jump out that window," Chip said, growing angry.

  With a fierce yank, Al finally ripped the shutter loose. He pulled the weathered chunk of wood inside the window and examined it carefully. "How many people did he kill again?"

  "Al!" Chip shot his brother a warning glance. "She doesn't want to talk about it!"

  Al jammed the knifepoint into the rotten wood.

  Alicia breathed deeply, a visible effort to calm herself. She wiped away her tears. "It was horrible." Chip felt a shudder run through her upper body.

  Al pulled the point of the blade out of the shutter and started to whittle the wood. "So why were you snooping around here like Nancy Drew? Looking for clues?" he asked.

  Chip turned calmly to Alicia. "Just ignore him."

  "No, it's okay. I owe you an explanation. I guess… I was looking for clues, sort of. Some kind of answers. This is the first time I've been back here since… since it all happened… Oh, wow," Alicia said, her head swaying back and forth as if her neck muscles had suddenly given out. Then her head fell heavily onto Chip's shoulder.

  Alicia had fainted.

  Chapter 6

  Chip pulled off his denim jacket and arranged it on the floor for a pillow. He lowered Alicia down gently, being especially careful with her head. He knew her brain needed oxygen, and laying her down was the best way to get the blood circulating. He was struck by how peaceful she looked, lying there in the moonlight.

  As peaceful as a corpse.

  "What's her problem?" Al asked nonchalantly.

  "She passed out," Chip said. "All your idiot talk about the murders upset her."

  Al continued to carve the wooden shutter, his pale blue eyes gleaming over the sheen of the knife blade. "So what should we do with her?" Al asked.

  The tone of Al's question sent a chill through Chip. He looked down at Alicia. She appeared to be breathing normally. He could barely take his eyes off her lovely face.

  Sleeping beauty.

  If he kissed her, would she wake up?

  A clicking sound brought Chip back to reality. Al was in the bathroom flicking the light switch on and off.

  "I tried it already," Chip said. "There's no electricity."

  "Mom said the real estate lady was supposed to turn everything on," Al complained, still flicking the light switch.

  "There's probably a fuse box down in the basement. Why don't you go take a look?" Chip wanted to be alone with Alicia. But Al must have sensed Chip's desire. As usual, big brother wasn't going to let Chip ge
t what he wanted.

  "Why don't you go?" Al suggested with a sneer.

  "I've got to stay with her," Chip said, nodding toward Alicia, who was beginning to stir.

  Her eyes flashed open suddenly, filled with terror, her whole face contorted. For a moment Chip thought she might scream, but then she realized where she was and her features softened again.

  "What happened?" Alicia asked in a barely audible voice.

  "You passed out," Al said, casually.

  "Are you all right?" Chip asked.

  Alicia nodded and started to sit up. Then she glanced at Al's switchblade stuck in the rotted shutter. The moonlight glinted off the red dragon on the handle. Chip thought he could see its reflection in her eyes.

  …a red dragon…

  Something deep in his subconscious was stirred, but he couldn't identify it. The dragon, the red. Something.

  Then, before he could pinpoint a connection, he felt a sudden dead weight against his arm as Alicia fell back into a faint.

  Chapter 7

  Alicia's head was spinning, her thoughts whirling about as if caught up in a tornado. Time became meaningless and in an instant she remembered everything she had tried so hard to forget.

  The hit-and-run. Her resultant blindness. The total destruction of Scott's face and an abrupt end to their relationship. Then there had been Evan. Evan, the nerd. The kid everybody loved to hate, but he was the sensitive one who became her total support system.

  Things had been the worst they could possibly be. Until everything else had gone wrong, too. Another hit-and-run killed Tiffany and crippled Boomer. Then Ellen had disappeared.

  Alicia marveled that she had agreed so readily to the eye surgery offered by Evan's uncle. The man was weird — weirder than Evan. But Alicia had been desperate, and the surgery was convenient. Same day, right next door.

  The basement turned out to be more than she had bargained for, though. Not exactly sterile. Something apparently had worked, though, because she woke up able to see again.

  But it was no prize when the first thing she saw was Ellen and Tiffany squished into the boiler, feet first, heads last, eyes gouged out of their sockets. Evan was nearby, hanging from some rusty pipes, a noose around his neck. His eyeballs were out, too.

  The police assumed that Evan had killed himself after desecrating the other bodies. Why not? Weird Evan had been a scapegoat all his life. It seemed like a nice, tidy conclusion.

  But it wasn't nice and tidy, Alicia knew.

  Murder seldom was.

  Fragments of truth stepped forward in Alicia's memory. Dr. Hawke was leaning over her… only it wasn't Dr. Hawke. It was someone else — something else — inhuman, evil beyond words…

  Alicia felt a sweeping wave of nausea make its way from her toes up to the top of her head, as the dark, familiar fear gripped her heart and soul with its icy hand.

  Chapter 8

  Chip again supported Alicia by the shoulders and head and lowered her to the floor.

  "Is this chick for real?" Al asked, making no move to help Chip. "What's with the fainting bit?"

  Alicia was out for only a moment this time. When her eyes opened again, Chip helped her over to the window seat, hoping some fresh air would help revive her.

  Alicia was shaking all over. "Where did you get that knife?" she asked Al.

  "What's it to you?" Al asked, crossing to where the knife was stuck in the chunk of wood.

  "Just curious."

  "It's some stupid brotherhood Al's in," Chip said. "All the gang members carry red dragon knives."

  Al pulled the knife from the board, closed the blade, and stuck it back in his pocket. He returned to the bathroom then and started playing around with the squeaky bathroom faucets. Chip assumed his brother was hanging around just to annoy him.

  "Why don't you make yourself useful and see if you can find the fuse box?" Chip asked his brother when he came back out.

  Al ignored Chip. He was standing in front of the stove now. "What is this thing?" he asked Alicia.

  "It's an old wood-burning stove," Alicia said. "A lot of the old houses around here have them. They come in handy on chilly nights."

  "What about this thing?" Al asked, kicking an old radiator that was against the side wall. "Doesn't it work?"

  "Probably. But a wood stove's cozier, I guess," Alicia said with a shrug.

  "Maybe we should start it up," Chip suggested to Alicia, briskly rubbing his hands together for warmth. "Do you really think it works? It looks like it dates back to the Civil War." He examined it more closely in what little light was available. It was rusty, with a metal bird attached to a handle that lifted a trapdoor on top. In its talons the bird — it looked like an eagle, or a hawk — clutched a small animal.

  "I think this was Evan's room," Alicia said. "Evan used to keep a bunch of cats here. I think I can still smell them."

  "Once the windows are open for a while that stuff will air out," Chip said.

  "I hope so for your sake," Al said. "Because this is going to be your room."

  Chip shrugged. "No problem. I guess that leaves the one on the other end of the hallway for you. Mom's taking the big one downstairs."

  Al walked to the door, flicking his Bic lighter before exiting. "Friggin' Addams family house," he muttered as he disappeared down the long hallway. The glow from the Bic lighter dimmed and the hall was black again.

  "Your brother seems a little crazy," Alicia said. She seemed more at ease now that Al was gone.

  "This place has him spooked. He's really not so tough. Most of his courage is borrowed from his 'blood brothers. »

  "Who are they?"

  "The red dragons — like the knife. Brotherhood stuff."

  Alicia started pacing the room aimlessly.

  "What's wrong?" Chip asked.

  "I know a guy who used to carry a knife that looked just like the one your brother has. A switchblade with a red dragon on it."

  Chip was silent for a moment. "Then I guess you've met one of his 'brothers, " he said simply. "Al says they have members all over the state."

  Chip couldn't imagine why Alicia was so upset over a gang of juvenile delinquents after what her own neighborhood had been through recently.

  Chip turned to the potbellied stove as Alicia continued to pace. He opened the rusty trapdoor on top and peered inside. "I keep expecting something to jump out of this thing. A skeleton or something," he joked, trying to relieve some of Alicia's tension.

  But Alicia wasn't so easily distracted. She kept pacing back and forth, back and forth, like a caged jungle cat, until it seemed she wasn't even aware of her surroundings anymore. He watched her warily, then saw her stumble and rushed over to keep her from falling.

  The girl was trembling again.

  "Sorry," Alicia said in a barely audible voice. "I… haven't been myself lately."

  Chip walked her back to the window seat.

  "Do you want me to take you home?" he asked, hoping she would say no. She could faint all she wanted to into his arms.

  "No. It's okay. I'll just sit here a minute. And try… not to think."

  And try not to think. Chip shot her a puzzled look. He made sure she was all right, then went back to the stove. He creaked open the rectangular metal door at the top again and peered in, not quite knowing what he expected to find. Bones, maybe? A partially cremated body or something equally gruesome?

  Instead he saw what looked like pieces of burnt wood. "I think someone's used this recently," Chip told Alicia, who was staring out the window. "I can see some wood scraps down in there."

  At least I hope it's wood, he thought.

  Chip spotted a large box of wooden kitchen matches beneath the stubby metal legs of the stove, next to a small stack of old newspapers. He balled up several sections of the newspaper and crammed them into the stove. Then he looked around the room for some other fuel. He spotted the chunk of wood Al had been whittling and retrieved it.

  Al had carved the shape of a cru
de dragon.

  Chip broke up the rotting wood with his foot and stuck the pieces down inside the stove. Then he lit the kindling with one of the kitchen matches.

  A blaze erupted of such ferocity that it sent Chip staggering backward.

  Then the entire house shook with a monstrous clank.

  Chapter 9

  "What the hell was that?" Chip asked.

  The whole house was still trembling.

  Alicia had instantly leapt from the window seat and rushed to Chip's side. They held onto each other now, waiting for whatever might happen next.

  Suddenly, steam erupted from the far wall.

  Alicia began to laugh. "Oh my God — it's just the radiator. Your brother must have turned on the water valve downstairs. It's steam coming up through the pipes."

  Chip breathed a sigh of relief. "It scared me to death."

  "Me, too," agreed Alicia.

  More steam clanked up through the old water pipes, making a terrible racket, as the radiator began to hiss with life.

  Chip noticed that she made no attempt to step out of their embrace. As she looked up to him expectantly, he kissed her, gently, on the lips. He felt her body relax in his arms.

  "I guess that did it!" Al's voice suddenly filled the room, small but penetrating. Alicia jumped back, out of Chip's arms. Silently, Chip cursed his brother. He spun around, expecting to see Al's familiar smirk.

  But Al wasn't there.

  Where had his brother's voice come from?

  "Check the lights!" Al's voice came again from the corner of the room.

  Chip walked to that corner and found an air vent.

  "Did you hear me?" came Al's voice through the vent. "Check the lights!"

  "Gotcha," Chip shouted back down.

  Alicia crossed the room to the bedroom light switch. She flicked it up and down but nothing happened.

  "Keep trying!" Chip shouted down to his brother.

  Alicia walked over to the stove to warm herself. Chip joined her there.

  "I guess you and your brother will be transferring to Springwood High," Alicia said. Tongues of flame licked up through the open trapdoor of the stove, making her eyes glow with an eerie brightness.