Dark Room

by Tom Becker

  “Am I really the only one who gets this?” Frank said, his blue eyes twinkling with amusement. “They’re holding a beauty pageant in the middle of a killing spree! It’s hilarious.”

  Darla wasn’t sure she saw the joke, and for once Sasha wasn’t laughing either.

  “The sooner this whole thing is over the better,” she declared. “This is getting beyond ghoulish. What if this asshole blogger is right? Is everyone in the audience going to sit there and watch while the Angel Taker chops up the contestants?”

  “At least come with me while I see the final line-up,” said Frank. He clutched Darla’s arm theatrically. “It’s not safe to be alone right now.”

  Sasha tossed away her apple core and stood up, brushing her hands. “Come on, then. Before we have to get back to class.”

  They left the canteen and headed past the lockers to the West Academy noticeboard, where the Miss Saffron entrant sheet had been hanging for weeks. A giggling crowd had gathered around it. Darla and Sasha followed Frank as he burrowed through the throng until they were close enough to study the piece of paper. There were five names on the list, beneath Gabrielle’s crossed-out signature. But Darla only had eyes for the last name on the list, signed in red pen.

  Her own.

  She stared at the sign-up sheet in horror.

  “No way!” said Frank, bursting out laughing. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to sign up?”

  “I didn’t!” Darla replied. “That’s not my signature. I don’t want to be in Miss Saffron!”

  “Well, it looks like someone didn’t get the memo,” said Frank.

  “It’s just a stupid joke,” Sasha told her. She scrabbled around inside her bag and pulled out an eyeliner pencil. “Just cross your name out.”

  Darla took the pencil and pushed to the front of the crowd. But as she stared at the imposter’s signature, the bloody, almost mocking scrawl of her name, Darla paused. So someone thought it would be funny to play a joke on her – another excuse to laugh at the Plain Girl in the class, the murder magnet.

  “Darla?”

  She looked up to find Sasha looking curiously at her.

  “You are going to withdraw, aren’t you?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  One day a year, the electronic gates of the Saffron Hills Country Club slid open to allow non-members a precious glimpse inside its walls. Cars were guided through the grounds to a hall at the rear of the club, barely a stone’s throw from the woods that enveloped the crumbling remains of Tall Pines. In this hall, the identity of Miss Saffron would be decided. As she waited backstage in the wings, nervously adjusting the gown she had borrowed from Sasha, her feet rubbing in unfamiliar shoes, Darla felt a sudden wave of terror wash over her. She was breathing in panicky gulps and she was desperate to pee. What had she been thinking? Why on earth hadn’t she withdrawn?

  At the time, Darla had simply been too mad to give the crowd around the sign-up sheet the satisfaction of seeing her cross her name out. But her anger ran deeper than that. The pageant seemed to embody the town’s obsession with wealth and good looks, the privilege of beauty. As long as there were people in Saffron Hills, there would always be a Miss Saffron – no matter what the cost. Darla didn’t want to win the competition, and she knew that she didn’t stand a chance anyway. But she was getting sick of being pushed around, and being made to feel ashamed or scared. It was time to make a stand.

  With just two days before the pageant was due to take place, Darla had spent Saturday evening at Sasha’s house trying on clothes. She didn’t own anything glitzy enough for a beauty pageant, while Sasha had a wardrobe filled with dresses with the price tags still attached – gifts from the elderly ranks of the Haas family, who were still clinging on to the futile hope that their granddaughter might dress in a more ladylike fashion. Given that Sasha was several inches taller than Darla, it was a struggle to find anything that fitted. But just when Darla had been ready to give up, Sasha had dug out a smaller dress from the back of her wardrobe: a crimson taffeta ballgown with a bow at the back.

  “For junior prom,” Sasha explained. “But I think it might just do the trick.”

  Darla held up the dress in front of the mirror, dubiously eyeing her reflection. “You think?”

  “Sure! You’ll knock ’em dead.”

  Frank winced. “Probably not the best choice of words, given the circumstances. You don’t want to be talking about people dying when there’s a good chance someone’s going to try to kill Darla.”

  He ducked as Sasha kicked a shoe at him, narrowly missing his head as it thumped into the wall.

  “Hey!” he said. “That coulda hurt!”

  “Would have served you right for being such an asshole,” Sasha told him.

  “Don’t worry about the Angel Taker, Frank,” Darla said. “He only cares about beautiful-looking people, and I sure as hell ain’t one of them.”

  “Ignore him, Darla,” Sasha said firmly. “You’re going to look great.”

  Darla gave her friend a suspicious look. “You seem kinda keen all of a sudden. I thought you hated these pageants.”

  “I do. But you’re not … you know, the pageant type.”

  “Ohhhhh, I get it,” Darla drawled. “It’s OK for me to enter it, because I ain’t pretty?”

  “I didn’t meant it like that!” Sasha said, exasperated. “I just meant it was nice you’re not some airheaded bimbo, that’s all. Do you want the dress or not?”

  Darla nodded. “Sure,” she said quietly. She couldn’t help noticing that Sasha hadn’t tried to tell her she was pretty.

  Now, as the other contestants gathered around her, checking their make-up in their compacts, Darla could almost have laughed at the absurdity of it. Did she want to be beautiful and in mortal danger, or plain and safe? The hall was electric with nervous anticipation. The ghoulish publicity swirling around the competition seemed to have only swelled the crowd, and there was standing room only at the back of auditorium. Security was tight. Police lined the hall, checking the ID of everyone who came in. The judges were sitting at a table in front of the stage: Miss Saffron 1977, a middle-aged woman in a crisp blue suit; the owner of a boutique in the mall; and the president of the country club.

  Darla scanned the faces in the audience, wondering whether a killer might be training their camera lens upon her. Her palms were damp with sweat and her stomach was queasy. At least neither Hopper nor Annie were in the crowd – she didn’t want either of them to find out what she had done. The one friendly face Darla could pick out was Sasha, sitting at the end of a row halfway back in the hall. She leaned her head back against the chair and blew a large bubble from her gum, visibly bored. For all his apparent enthusiasm for the pageant, Frank was nowhere to be seen. He had bailed on Sasha at the last minute, forcing her to call a cab to take her and Darla up to the country club.

  A waft of aftershave announced the presence in the wings of the pageant emcee, a middle-aged man with thick, wavy hair and a fixed smile. After checking his teeth in a handheld mirror, he picked up a microphone, swept past the girls and bounded out on to the stage.

  “How y’all doing, folks?” he said in a smooth voice. “This is Ron Frazier, your drive-time host from your favourite local station, Radio KWPR. Welcome to the annual Miss Saffron beauty pageant – where the most beautiful roses in South Carolina bloom. Due to certain unforeseen events this year’s contest will be slightly shorter than usual, but rest assured the competition is as fierce as ever. Contestants will be judged in four categories: Attire, Poise, Speech-Making and Stage Presence. Whoever gains the highest overall score will be crowned Miss Saffron. So without further ado, let’s bring on our contestants!”

  Polite applause greeted the five girls as they trooped out on to the stage, taking their places on marks drawn on the stage floor. It wasn’t really the line-up that the crowd had been hoping for – a couple of the girls were pretty, one could play the flute and another was apparently destined for Harvard, but n
one of them had the dazzling glamour of the Picture Perfect girls. Ron seemed taken aback by the lukewarm reception, hurriedly shuffling his cue cards. “Now, please give a warm hand to our first contestant … Miss Darla O’Neill!”

  The spotlight zeroed in on Darla, blinding her view of the audience. Her name was greeted with stony silence, punctuated by a lone shout of support – Sasha, she guessed. As she stepped towards the microphone stand at the front of the stage, Darla flinched at the sound of a camera flash going off somewhere in the audience. It wasn’t the Angel Taker, she told herself firmly, he didn’t care about people like her. She cleared her throat, the sound echoing out through the microphone.

  “I’m not sure what y’all want me to say,” she said. “I know that I’m no one’s idea of a beauty queen, and if it weren’t for all the terrible things that have been happening round here I wouldn’t be on this stage. Someone else signed me up for this – I don’t know why, maybe they thought it would be funny – because this is a beauty pageant and I’m sure as hell no beauty. I got freckles all over my face and my ears are too big, I’m as plain as you like. And I guess that’s why I didn’t cross my name off the list, and that’s why I got up on this stage – because there are other Plain Girls out there just like me, and they won’t be Miss Saffron either. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Thank you all very much.”

  Darla shuffled away from the microphone. The shocked silence was broken by a grinning Sasha, who started clapping loudly. As the punk got to her feet other girls started to join in, applause catching and rippling out across the auditorium like bushfire. Suddenly half the hall was standing up, cheering and whooping. Sasha stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled her approval. Darla went bright red, and looked down at her feet.

  “Ladies and… Ladies and gentlemen!” Ron called out making calming gestures with his hands. Reluctantly the noise abated. “Thank you very much for that … spirited speech, Darla,” he said. He consulted his cue cards. “Now, next on stage we have—”

  He was interrupted by a disturbance in the wings, raised voices filtering through on to the stage. An anxious murmur ran through the crowd. The emcee glanced backstage. Suddenly Gabrielle strode out from the wings, her long dark hair falling in graceful waves around her beautiful face, her flawless skin gleaming in the spotlight. She was wearing a Saffron Tigers football jacket over the top of a yellow cheerleaders’ outfit, white sneakers on her feet. Don smiled with relief. Applause rang out once more across the hall, and Gabrielle waved at the audience.

  “Good afternoon, y’all,” she said into Don’s microphone. “I apologize for being late… I nearly didn’t come at all. But I have something important to say, and I was hoping I could get the opportunity to do so.”

  Don glanced over to the judges, who nodded as one.

  “Be my guest,” he told Gabrielle, handing her his microphone. She walked to the front of the stage and looked out over the audience.

  “My name is Gabrielle Jones,” she said. “Those of you who know me will know that I’ve lost some friends recently…” Her voice faltered. She paused, blinking back tears. “They were kind, beautiful people who deserved long and happy lives but that was taken away from them. And it made me scared – too scared to come up here. It made me wish I went to another school, lived in another state where maybe I’d be safer. But I realized today that if you live in fear it doesn’t matter whether you die or not, because that’s when killers and terrorists win. I’m not a cheerleader, and I’m not a football player, but I chose to wear these clothes to show that my school spirit burns deeper and brighter than ever before, and no one can terrorize me into hiding or staying silent. My name is Gabrielle Jones, and I am proud to be a member of the West Academy student body, and I am proud to be a citizen of the beautiful town of Saffron Hills!”

  The hall erupted with applause, twice as loud as the ovation that had greeted Darla. This time Ron made no effort to quieten it, joining in with the clapping as Gabrielle sashayed back to the others. In the crowd, Sasha sat on her hands, an eyebrow raised ironically in a way that said to Darla, ‘What can you do?’ As the judges huddled together, nodding and frantically scribbling on their notepaper, it was obvious to everyone that the competition was effectively over. Darla barely remembered the other contestants’ speeches – most of them looked beaten before they even opened their mouths.

  When the speeches were over, the judges took less than five minutes to come to their decision. Ron beamed as he opened the winning envelope and read out Gabrielle’s name. Her hands flew to her mouth – if she was surprised, she was the only person in the hall. She bounded forwards to accept her bouquet of flowers, waving graciously at the audience as the ‘Miss Saffron 2015’ sash was slipped over her and a sparkling tiara placed on top of her head. Gabrielle looked every inch a queen, thought Darla. She might not have liked Gabrielle but she could see how much this meant to her, and to her surprise Darla found it impossible to begrudge the new Miss Saffron her victory.

  The beaten contestants were ushered off the stage, leaving Gabrielle to soak up the applause. Darla let out a sigh of relief as she headed into the shadow of the wings. She hadn’t won, but she had survived.

  “You. Were. Incredible!” screamed Sasha, bounding over to her and giving her a fierce hug. “Seriously, I’ve never been so proud.”

  “I didn’t really do anything,” said Darla. “It wasn’t like I won.”

  Sasha laughed. “Of course you didn’t win, Darla – you went up there and showed everyone what a shallow joke this all is. That makes you my queen any day.”

  She took a badge with the slogan ‘President Evil’ off her bag and pinned it to Darla’s taffeta ballgown.

  “I now declare you the inaugural Miss Sasha,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  “Gosh, I guess I’m just overwhelmed,” giggled Darla, impersonating a breathless pageant queen. “This is all too much! I’d like to thank my daddy, Hopper, and all the people who voted for me!”

  As the girls fell about laughing, Darla saw Gabrielle walk through the crowd, stopping to pose for photographs with the judges and members of the audience. She looked so confident and glamorous that it seemed almost ludicrous to think that she might have been in danger.

  “You know, it was pretty brave of her to to show,” said Darla. “I don’t think I woulda, in her place.”

  “Have you seen the amount of cops that are around here?” Sasha replied. “Half the audience were wearing ear-pieces – this is probably the safest place in America right now.”

  “I guess you’re right,” said Darla. She pulled at her gown’s neckline. “I gotta change out of this dress.”

  Sasha accompanied her to the changing room backstage, a cramped space strewn with contestants’ clothes. As Darla slipped back into jeans and a T-shirt, Sasha amused herself by tottering around the room on a pair of high heels, blowing kisses at an imaginary crowd. Darla picked up a handheld mirror so she could wipe off her make-up. But when she looked into the glass she didn’t see her own face looking back. She had been dragged back to the Angel Taker’s dark room, forced to look through eyes that weren’t her own. Gloved hands were carefully hanging a framed photograph upon the wall. It was a long-lens shot of a lone figure walking up the entrance steps into the West Academy, a stack of books under their arm. The subject was too far away for Darla to make out their face, but with a sickening lurch she recognized the only vehicle parked in the school lot.

  “Darla?”

  She looked up to find Sasha staring at her intently. “You’ve seen something, haven’t you?”

  It was all Darla could to do to nod.

  “The Angel Taker? Are they going after Gabrielle?”

  She shook her head.

  “Darla, who did you see?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Frank sat alone at the computer, the only live machine in a row of dead screens. The tap of his fingers upon the keyboard echoed around the empty library. None of the other s
tudents were allowed inside the West Academy over the weekend but Frank had been given a special passkey from Principal Bell, who knew that Frank’s family didn’t have the money for a computer and was a soft touch when it came to students asking to do a project for extra credit. And anyway, people trusted Franklin K Matthews. He was a good guy.

  Frank paused, and read over his sentence again.

  So the good ol’ town of Saffron Hills won’t let the bodies piling up in the morgue get in the way of its precious beauty pageant. And with murder magnet Darla O’Neill taking to the stage, you can bet your bottom dollar that the killings will continue.

  He chewed on his lip uneasily. In hindsight, signing Darla up for the pageant had been a mistake, an impulsive joke that hadn’t proved to be funny. But Frank had never for a second thought Darla would actually enter the stupid thing. For all her quiet, mousy exterior there was a stubborn core to her that surprised Frank. In a way, she was a photo negative of Sasha, whose brashness masked a fragile heart.

  Not that Sasha was acting particularly fragile today. Her angry texts had been swarming over Frank’s phone like a horde of buzzing wasps all afternoon, forcing him to turn it off. He had decided to swerve the pageant at the last minute, figuring that he would rather spend time working on a new blog post. And if the Angel Taker did decide to make a guest appearance at the country club, Frank wanted to make sure that he was nowhere near them.

  A muffled thump made him pause, mid-sentence. Frank swivelled round in his chair, only to find himself staring at a still wall of books. Other people might have found the deserted halls and classrooms creepy, but he delighted in having the school to himself. There were no spoiled rich kids to look down their noses at him, as though Frank was some kind of sub-species just because he had been born in the wrong part of Saffron Hills. With their designer clothes and expensive cars and skiing vacations, the Perfects had convinced themselves that money made you a better person.