by Tom Becker
Talk about karma coming to bite you on the ass.
Frank had started the blog on a whim, killing time on a bored Saturday afternoon. He had never anticipated that so many people would read it, or the thrill he would get every time he pressed ‘POST’. His last entry had received 2,000 views, and he had overheard people talking about it at the mall and in the halls at school, sending a shiver of satisfaction down his spine. It wasn’t as though he actually wanted anyone to die. Darla wasn’t the only one who had seen what the Angel Taker had done to Natalie Parker, and as much as Frank tried to banish the image of her corpse from his mind, it still haunted him. But if the town could pretend nothing was wrong, pressing on with their ridiculous pageant, he didn’t see why he couldn’t write about it. Everything he said was true, after all.
He sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers together behind his head. The clock at the top left of the screen read 16:05 – the pageant should have ended by now. Frank wondered how Darla had got on. He liked the fact that she wasn’t rich or stuck-up, and he probably had more in common with her than anyone else at the West Academy, even Sasha. But the hard truth was, ever since Darla had showed up in Saffron Hills with her messed-up life and her ‘visions’, she had got in the way of the thing that Frank cared about the most – his relationship with Sasha.
They had been friends since third grade: Sasha had seen Ryan trying to take Frank’s milk money and come over and smacked him across the head until he ran away. At the time Frank had been amazed that this rich, confident girl could care about someone like him, but little did he know that he had also fallen into a trap. From that moment on, he was doomed to become Sasha’s sidekick, driving her around like a chauffeur and doing her homework and listening to her complain about her problems as though she was the one who had it rough… It made Frank angry just to think about it. And now it seemed like he wasn’t even fit to be her friend – it was Darla who was going to bars with her and spending time with her. And it was because of Darla that Sasha acted so disapprovingly about the Angel Taker blog – if it had just been the two of them, she would have found it just as funny as he did, Frank was sure of it.
The cursor blinked insistently on the screen, urging Frank to continue his sentence. He hurriedly finished his blog and posted it online, before logging out and switching off the computer. When he turned on his phone it immediately began to buzz with alerts: ten texts and three missed calls from Sasha. Frank rolled his eyes. That girl was so high maintenance, she didn’t even know. He scrolled through his texts.
Where are you?
Jerk. You could have texted.
Sasha’s texts got progressively ruder until Frank reached the ones at the top of the list, and the tone abruptly changed.
The Angel Taker’s watching you.
Frank smiled thinly. This was so typical of Sasha, he thought to himself. She was mad because he hadn’t given her a ride to the pageant, so now she was trying to get her own back by creeping him out. How stupid did she think he was? As he picked up his bag, Frank noticed a book lying on the desk next to him. He picked it up and checked the library code on the spine. Unlike some people he could mention, Frank liked to leave things neat and tidy. He walked away from the computer banks and wandered into the dingy aisles of bookshelves, the soles of his shoes scratching on the coarse green carpet.
He was slipping the book back into its correct space on the shelf when his phone buzzed again. Sighing, he pulled it out of his pocket and checked the new text.
SCHOOL NOT SAFE, GET OUT OF THERE!
Frank frowned. He hadn’t told anyone that he was coming to school, so how did they know? Unless Darla had seen something. He still wasn’t sure he believed her stories about her visions, but even Frank had to admit that the girl had a knack for stumbling across the Angel Taker’s victims. And hadn’t he thought he’d heard something earlier? Doubt stroked its icy fingers down Frank’s neck as he looked around the aisles. Maybe it would be best if he went outside and phoned Sasha, just to check that she was trying to play with him.
Click.
The noise came from behind the shelf in front of him. Frank slowly pulled a book off the shelf, revealing a smooth camera lens behind it. His mouth went dry.
Click.
Darla chased after Sasha as the punk sprinted out through the auditorium fire exit into the lot behind the country club. A grey SUV carrying a large family was pulling out of its space – Sasha ran alongside and banged on the window.
“Wait up!” she shouted. “I need a ride!”
The driver of the SUV took one look at Sasha’s face and hurriedly accelerated, leaving her trailing in the vehicle’s wake.
“Asshole!”
The sound of someone giggling made Darla turn round. Heather Brodie, the girl who had sobbed at the news of Ryan and TJ’s murders, was chatting into her cell phone as she opened the door of a soft-top convertible.
“Hey, Heather!” Darla waved. “Over here!”
Engrossed in her conversation, Heather didn’t hear Darla as she got behind the wheel. But Sasha did. She strode over to the convertible and grabbed the door.
“Brodie, get out of the freaking car!”
Heather shrieked as Sasha dragged her out of the front seat, leaving her in a heap on the tarmac. Sasha slid behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition.
“Get in, Darla!” she shouted.
Heather was lying on the ground crying, but there was nothing Darla could do to help her now. They had to save Frank. She ran to the passenger seat and jumped in, barely sitting down before Sasha slammed her foot on the accelerator and the convertible roared out of the lot and along the driveway. The automated gates opened just in time to let them through.
The wind tugged at Darla’s hair as the convertible hurtled around the tight corners of the hills. Sasha drove with grim fury, quickly catching up with the grey SUV. Darla flinched as Sasha overtook it on the bend, veering back to the right-hand lane just before a car came in the opposite direction. A discordant chorus of car horns rang out. Sasha beeped back, and tossed her phone into Darla’s lap.
“Try Frank’s cell,” she ordered. “See if you can warn him.”
Darla scrolled through Sasha’s phonebook for Frank’s number, but when she called it his phone cut to voicemail.
“He’s not picking up,” she said.
Sasha punched the car horn in frustration. “This doesn’t make any sense!” she shouted. “The Angel Taker only goes after the beautiful people. What would they want with Frank?”
“Frank is beautiful!” Darla told her. “You just didn’t see it!” In desperation she tapped out a couple of texts to Frank, hoping that he would read them. At the intersection at the bottom of the hill Sasha hit a hard left, screeching into the road that led up to the West Academy. The convertible hit a pothole, rattling Darla’s teeth in her head. They pulled up outside the school to find it was deserted – there were no police officers standing guard on a Sunday. The parking spaces were empty save for one: a black pick-up truck. More than ever, Darla had wanted her vision to be wrong. But Frank was here, all right.
Sasha jammed on the brakes, bringing the convertible to a shuddering halt beside the pick-up truck.
“No sign of Frank,” she said as she climbed out, shielding her eyes against the late-afternoon sun. “Any idea where he might have been going?”
“He was carrying books,” Darla said uncertainly. “The library?”
Sasha nodded, and they ran up the steps and through the front entrance, which Darla noted with a chill had been left ajar. The sound of their footfalls echoed around the empty halls as they sprinted through the West Academy. At the sight of the library at the end of the corridor they slowed, sharing the unspoken fear of what might lie on the other side.
The library door swung open at Darla’s touch. Someone had been here recently – the lights had been switched on, shining down over the bookshelves and blank computer screens. But the chairs were empty, and there was
no sign of anyone.
“Frank?” Sasha called out uncertainly. “Are you in here?”
Silence.
As Darla crept through the bookshelves, ahead of her she saw that the lights were out in a solitary aisle, shrouding it in darkness. A pair of glasses lay on the floor, their frames twisted and their lenses smashed. It looked like they had been ground beneath someone’s heel. Paling, Sasha reached down and took Darla’s hand in her own hot palm. Darla had never seen her friend looked frightened before. They edged forwards together and peered around the corner.
There, in the funereal gloom, they found Frank. He lay sprawled across the floor, surrounded by a pile of books with the pages torn from their bindings. There was a gaping wound in his chest where he had been stabbed, his bright blue eyes wide open and frozen in horror. But the Angel Taker hadn’t been satisfied with that – Frank’s face and hands were covered in countless thin red scars, covering his flesh like vicious veins. Paper cuts.
Darla stared at the body, numb with disbelief. Beside her Sasha was screaming but no sound was coming out from her mouth. She clutched at Darla and slid to the floor, tears streaming down her face as she wept in her arms.
If Darla thought the horror had ended that day, she was wrong. As she walked down the lane towards her house, she saw flashing lights ahead of her. A ring of police cars was parked around her house. Darla raced down the lane, praying that she was mistaken. But as she reached the wire fence she saw her daddy being wrestled out of the front door by two police officers. Hopper’s hands were cuffed behind his back, and his shirt was torn.
“Get your hands off me!” he snarled. “I ain’t done nothing!”
“Daddy!” screamed Darla. She tried to run towards him, only for a cop to pull her away.
“You need to step back, ma’am,” he said.
“But that’s my daddy! Where are you taking him?”
“He’s going down to the station to answer some questions.”
“Questions? About what – the murders?”
The cop said nothing.
“But that’s crazy!” cried Darla. “He ain’t no killer!”
“Then he’s got nothing to worry about,” the policeman replied impassively.
At the sight of Darla, Hopper abruptly stopped fighting. “Don’t you worry now, darlin’!” he called out. “This is just one big ol’ misunderstanding. We’re going to sort this out at the station and I’ll be back before you know it.”
He tried to tell her that he loved her, but his words were cut off as he was bundled into the back of a squad car.
“You let go of him, you hear?” Darla shouted. “You got no right – he didn’t do anything!”
The policeman said nothing, keeping firm hold of her arm. Through the back windshield of the squad car, Darla caught a glimpse of her daddy’s face as he twisted in the seat. Hopper looked small, scared – she had never seen him look that way before, and the sight chilled her to the bone.
Then the squad car pulled away, and he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Almost from the moment she had arrived in Saffron Hills, it felt as though Darla had been buffeted by one shock after another – from her violent visions to the discovery of Natalie’s dead body and the brutal murders of the other Perfects. Through all of it, Darla had managed to keep it together. But Frank’s death and the sight of Hopper being led away in handcuffs had brutally snapped something inside of her. Overwhelmed, her mind and body had just shut down.
As the police continued to pore over their things in the house, Darla dimly remembered Annie breaking through the cordon. The next thing Darla knew, she was being ushered away to the safety of the artist’s house. In a numb daze, she said nothing. In the front room Annie turned on the TV and hurriedly closed the drapes in order to hide the patrol cars still parked in the lane. Someone had said something about the police searching their house and yard. For what? thought Darla. Weapons? Bloodstained clothes? More dead bodies?
It couldn’t be true. The cops were just doing what Hopper had always feared they would – rounding up local people with criminal records in the hope that one of them would turn out to be the Angel Taker. Darla’s daddy might have done a lot of things wrong in his life, but he was no killer. He had no reason to harm the Perfects, let alone Frank. The thought was just ridiculous.
And yet. As Darla sat on Annie’s couch, gazing vacantly at the TV, she was aware of a tiny sliver of doubt, like a splinter digging painfully into her heart. She remembered Luis’s fear about Hopper finding out they had talked; his assertion that her daddy had a ‘dark side’. Darla knew that returning to Saffron Hills had brought back some painful memories of Sidney and her suicide – what if these had affected Hopper more than she had realized, and he was lashing out in the most violent way imaginable? Maybe that might explain her visions: – warnings from her own subconscious that she was in danger.
Darla hated herself for even thinking these thoughts. But just when it seemed that their lives might be turning around, things had fallen apart worse than ever. This time, there didn’t seem to be any way to put the pieces back together.
Annie called her through into the kitchen where she was zapping TV dinners in the microwave. Darla could see that Annie had been just as shocked by Hopper’s arrest as she was – even if she was trying to hide it. The artist fluttered around the kitchen taking out plates and cutlery, talking gaily as if it was a normal day and nothing bad had happened.
“You just wait, this will all be over before you know it,” she said. “Hopper will be home and everyone will know he had nothing to do with it. Innocent until proven guilty, that’s how we do things in this country.”
She tipped the steaming food from their plastic trays on to plates and served them up. Darla barely tasted hers – didn’t even look down to see what it was. She sat in silence as Annie chattered desperately. Finally Annie gave up, pushing her plate to one side.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said wearily. “There isn’t any sense in pretending. This is bad. I’m so sorry, hon.”
Darla shrugged. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “Hopper spent a long time doing things he shouldn’t have. It was always going to catch up with him some day.”
“That doesn’t mean he should be charged for something he didn’t do, though.” Darla was suddenly aware that Annie was watching her closely. “You don’t think he actually did it, do you, Darla?”
“Of course I don’t,” she replied, but the words sounded hollow even to her.
They watched TV for another hour or so before Darla went to bed early. She followed Annie up the stairs to the guest room, which was filled with a jumble of cardboard boxes, teetering stacks of books and a single bed with a metal frame.
“Sorry about the mess,” Annie said. “Six months home, and I still haven’t finished unpacking.”
Darla didn’t care about the boxes. She didn’t care about anything. Annie offered to lend her a T-shirt to sleep in but Darla climbed into bed fully clothed and pulled the blankets up around her head. Wishing her a faltering good night, Annie flicked off the light and left her alone.
It was a long, wakeful night. Darla couldn’t have fallen asleep if she tried. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Hopper being led away in handcuffs. She imagined him alone in a prison cell, waiting to be dragged back under the harsh lights of the interrogation room. It didn’t matter whether he was guilty or not – the image still left her feeling desolate.
The next thing Darla knew, her room was growing light and there was a hesitant tap at her door. Annie appeared, carrying a steaming cup of coffee.
“Morning,” she said. “Better get up now. I’m teaching a class today, and at this rate we’re both going to be late.”
“I’m not going to school,” Darla said flatly. “I don’t want to.”
“Of course you don’t, hon,” Annie replied, taking a seat on the edge of her bed. “But Hopper wouldn’t want you missing any more school because of
him. And I don’t want him thinking that I couldn’t take care of you while he was away. So can you be brave for me – for both of us – today?”
Darla sat up in bed, reluctantly accepting the coffee mug. Annie smiled.
“Good girl,” she said. “I’ll drive you.”
Even on her happiest days, Darla often dreaded going to school. But that morning was different – she was almost too distracted to care. She got into the shower and washed herself, only to put yesterday’s dirty clothes back on afterwards. Annie suggested returning to the house to pick up some things, but Darla shook her head. She wouldn’t go back home until Hopper could. Annie might have wanted to argue but they were running late as it was, so they had no choice but to go down to the car. Annie drove slowly and carefully over to the West Academy, pulling up outside the entrance.
Darla had been praying that Sasha would be waiting for her outside school, but this time the steps outside the front entrance were empty. Darla had to pass through the stony gaze of the cops at the door alone. She could almost feel the collective intake of breath as she walked past the lines of the students by the lockers. Darla hugged her textbooks tightly to her chest, wishing that she could shrink and shrink and shrink until she was so small that nobody could see her. But when she reached her locker, Darla realized that there was going to be no hiding place that day.
Across her locker, someone had scrawled ‘Killer Bitch’ in thick black marker pen.
As the rest of the students in the corridor fell silent, Darla whirled round and eyed them coldly.
“Who did this?” she demanded.
Everyone stared. No one spoke.
“Someone must have done this.” Darla’s voice echoed defiantly around the corridor. “Where are they? If they’re brave enough to write this, aren’t they brave enough to say it to my face?”