The Lodge

by Shaun Kitching

  “Reed!” I yelled, in a desperate attempt to get him away from Koby. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why? Why!?” Reed snarled, his face contorting into a look of pure evil. There was no sign of his good looks which had driven half the girls at Hollow Point High crazy. Instead, a menacing, repulsive manifestation had taken over. “I’ll tell you why Amm-baaa, it’s because you failed the test! You all failed the test!” he screamed, spit flying out of his mouth.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to keep him talking.

  “You should have been friends with him! You should have invited him!” Reed screeched in fury.

  “Him? Who is him?” I said, trying to remain calm although my voice came out in a shaky tone.

  “Reed, you don’t have to do this,” Rohan suddenly said steadily.

  “Stay out of this brother!” Reed snapped.

  Brother? What was he talking about?

  “They haven’t done anything wrong Reed,” Rohan continued.

  “I said stay out of it,” Reed yelled angrily.

  “I’m your brother and I love you,” Rohan replied.

  Reed’s face suddenly changed and for a second I saw a glimpse of the young man we had all come to like. However, this quickly vanished as Reed walked over and stood before Rohan.

  “I’m doing this for you! I’m doing this for Daisy!” Reed screamed.

  “Daisy is gone. Mum passed away, remember?” Rohan said shakily.

  “Of course I remember! She’s not here to protect you, but I am!” Reed’s voice got louder.

  “I’m ok Reed, honestly. You don’t need to protect me,” Rohan said trying to remain calm.

  “They should have invited you brother! But they didn’t! And now they have to pay!” Reed screamed.

  “Reed, why are you doing this?” I asked for the second time.

  “As I said before, you all failed the test. For so many years Rohan has longed to be invited to the lodge. For his entire high school duration, he has wished for an invitation. But it never came. Then along came me; and what did you all do?” Reed hissed.

  “We invited you,” I muttered.

  “Exactly! That’s your second gold star sticker Amm-baaa, one more and you get to go home early,” he continued, letting out a vile snort.

  “Reed, there’s heaps of people at school we never invited. The lodge was just something a few of us shared. It didn’t mean anything that we never-“, I said before being cut off.

  “Shut up!” Reed yelled. “Daisy isn’t here anymore. My mum isn’t here to look after my little brother. So I have to take responsibility! I have to do what’s best for him, to look after him just like our mum would have!”

  He’s insane, I thought. He’s completely insane.

  “Reed, I never cared about not being invited to the lodge. I just said on one phone call it would be nice to go there one day because they were all nice people,” Rohan said. “Please, just let them go.”

  Reed ignored Rohan’s plea. “Daisy would have looked after you, she was a good mum,” Reed murmured to himself. “They shouldn’t have messed with my little bro. Now, they all have to pay!” Reed bent over and picked up a long knife from the coffee table.

  “No Reed! Please! Brother?” yelled Rohan.

  “Now, who to kill first?” Reed sang. He continued pacing back and forth between his prisoners. “Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe,” he muttered, as he walked. His usually groomed, wavy dark hair was scrawled outwards in a messy crop. “Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe,” he repeated. Then suddenly, with a quick lunge he thrust the knife deep into Chad’s thigh.

  “Aarrrrggggghhhh!” Chad yelled in pain.

  Zoe slowly rocked in her chair, repeatedly muttering the word please under her breath.

  Reed leant forward and pulled the knife back out of Chad’s thigh, as Chad let out another howl of pain.

  “That was the entrée,” Reed said in his menacing voice. “Now for the main course.”

  I gasped in terror as he pounced towards Chad again, the tip of the knife heading straight for Chad’s throat.

  Chapter 23: Koby

  I watched in horror as Reed sprang at Chad, just like I had seen him pounce so impressively on the rugby field. What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion. Just as Reed attacked Chad, the lodge bi-fold door busted open as a number of large policemen sprinted into the room. They wore bullet proof vests and carried guns, just like you see in all the action movies. Reed slowly turned his head to look at the uninvited guests as the knife continued towards Chad. In a last ditch effort for survival, Chad rocked the chair as hard as he could and it shuffled a few centimetres to the left. That’s all it took. The tip of the blade collided into the back of the aluminium chair, only narrowly missing Chad’s neck. The next thing I knew, Reed was being handcuffed in the corner of the room as officers quickly worked to free us from our chairs.

  “I was protecting him mother! I did it for you Daisy!” yelled Reed, as two officers placed him face down on the floor.

  “Wait a minute,” I whisper, as the officer unties the rope around my legs. “Reed’s arm, he was stabbed outside!” The words came out louder than I expected.

  “I did that myself!’ Reed yelled, his cheeks lying flat against the floorboards. “You had my brother tied up! You knocked him out! I had to find a way to protect him. Just like Daisy would have!”

  “Oh man,” I muttered, realising Reed had fooled us with his self-inflicted stabbing. “He stabbed himself just so we would untie Rohan,” I said, turning to face Zoe.

  “And so we wouldn’t call the police and wreck his plans,” Zoe added. “But then he ended up tying up Rohan anyway. Go figure,” Zoe continued, wiping the remnants of tears away from her eyes.

  “Something tells me he never would have hurt Rohan,” I said.

  I turned to Reed once more. “What about Hank? I thought you found him like that?”

  “Of course I found him like that. It’s easy to find someone when you’re the person who did it to them,” he snarled, saliva running down his chin onto the floorboards.

  “Chad, are you ok?” Amber suddenly asked, running across the room. Chad placed his arms around two paramedics as he hobbled to a stretcher that had been wheeled in.

  “I’m ok,” he said with a smile. “Every girl in town is going to hear about this story. Plus I’ll have a scar as proof; everyone knows how scars get the girls!” I gave him a rub on the head. Haha, good old Chad.

  “How did you know we were here?” Zoe asked one of the officers. The officer pointed up into the top corner of the room.

  “The hidden security cameras!” Chad yelled, as he lay down on the stretcher. “We forgot all about them!”

  I heard Reed still mumbling about Daisy and Rohan as the officers dragged him outside. I approached Rohan, who was getting his head seen to by another paramedic. Rohan stared blankly ahead, a strained expression pasted on his face. Poor Rohan.

  “Hey Rohan, Chad and I are sorry about that,” I said pointing to his forehead.

  Rohan gave an exhausted smile, “No worries.”

  “How did you know we were here?” I asked.

  He sighed as the paramedic finished the strapping around his head. “It’s a long story.”

  “Sport, you don’t have to say anything now. I’m sure it’s been a long and stressful day for all,” an officer said. I turned to see Sergeant Vince standing there.

  “Actually, I wouldn’t mind telling the guys. I think it will help to get everything off my chest,” Rohan replied.

  Sergeant Vince didn’t say anything but nodded that he could continue.

  “I guess this all started seven years ago when our mum, whose name was Daisy, passed away due to cancer. We never met our dad so when mum passed away it hit us all pretty hard. Especially Reed. He’s a year older than me and when we were sent to foster parents, he-he changed,” Rohan said stopping for some air. “Being the older brother, he felt that he had to protect me because mum was now g
one. He always said that he was doing it for daisy and that he would never let anything happen to me. But it came too much. He came so overprotective he lost the plot. The brother I once knew had vanished. It was all too much, the stress got to him. One winter’s night our foster parents found him in the bathroom. He had tried to slit his wrists with a razor blade. After endless visits to hospitals and psychiatrists, Reed was sent to a mental institution in the city. Somewhere he could be treated and hopefully recover,” Rohan continued.

  “Son, you don’t have to carry on,” Sergeant Vince instructed, “There’ll be plenty of time for formal statements.”

  “It’s fine,” Rohan said, holding up his hand. “Anyway, Reed remained in the institution until the summer just gone. During his time there, I wasn’t allowed to visit. His doctors feared this would only enhance Reed’s protective state that he seemed to enter when around me. But I was allowed to make phone calls. Not many, just two or three a year. He would ask how I was going. We would chat about school mainly and how he wished he could attend as well. The conversations were really easy flowing, just like the brother I used to know all those years ago. He seemed normal. One day, he asked me about my friends. I’ve never been the most social butterfly in the world. Reed always had a knack when it came to people. He could charm the pants off of anyone. But not me. I told him how I didn’t have many friends but there was always a group I liked talking to. I mentioned you guys and how you ventured off to the lodge on weekends and how fun it sounded. This was one conversation that only lasted a few minutes. I didn’t think Reed was even listening that carefully. I actually thought he was getting better. And so did the mental institution. Because last summer they signed his release, said he was cured and could lead a normal life. Our foster parents picked him up from the city and brought him to Hollow Point, they were a bit nervous but they thought it would be good for me. You know, to get my brother back. At first it was. Reed seemed like his old self and was doing really well at school with rugby and making friends. But then I started having my suspicions,” Rohan said, explaining the turn of events.

  “Suspicions?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Firstly, there was the whole daisy thing with the murders. As I said, Daisy was our mum’s name so I thought it was odd that these daisy murders begun to occur when Reed came back. But I thought of this as a long shot. I knew Reed had tried to harm himself in the past but I never imaged he would hurt others. Next there was Hank’s murder. I distinctly remember Reed leaving home that morning around six o’clock. He woke me up when he left the house. Reed told police that he didn’t find Hank’s body until around seven thirty. To me, that didn’t make sense. It’s only a ten minute walk to school from our house so something didn’t add up. Then there was the diary.”

  “He kept a diary?” asked Amber.

  “I think so,” replied Rohan. “I didn’t see much. I went into Reed’s room one day after school and he was writing in it. I saw the words daisy and kill in the first paragraph but then he snapped it shut before I could see anything else. But that was enough. Although I didn’t want to believe it, I knew deep down he was responsible for all those deaths. I peered into Reed’s room yesterday morning and saw that he was talking to you on Chatter. So I ran into my room and logged on. I wanted to warn you that he was the killer. I knew that he would never harm me so I was never in any danger.”

  “But you confessed?” I asked, remembering the brief few seconds Rohan had logged on for.

  “Well, in a way I was responsible. Reed was killing because he wanted to protect me. Without me, none of your friends would have been killed. Of course, I was going to tell you that it was Reed but before I had the chance Reed had disconnected my computer from the modem, which sat in his room. The next thing I knew Reed had left the house. Being the self-confessed nerd that I am, I was able to hack into his computer and found the email that he sent you. I contemplated going to the police but I thought if I got to the lodge before all of you, I may be able to reason with Reed when you all arrived. Convince him to come forward to the police. I thought it would be better if he came forward as opposed to being caught. I’m not sure what I was thinking really. At the end of the day he’s my brother and I just want him to get the help that he needs,” Rohan broke out into a quiet sob.

  “Ok sport, that’s enough for today. Let’s get you home, ok?” Sergeant Vince stepped forward and wrapped a blanket around Rohan that had been handed to him by one of the paramedics.

  Poor Rohan, I thought again. He had gone through so much without us even knowing.

  “Ok, there’s lifts outside for everyone. Your parents have been notified so let’s get you home.”

  I walked towards the empty space which had once held the lodge front door. Suddenly, Amber ran from behind me and took my hand in hers.

  “You said it was Reed,” she said.

  “I have good senses when it comes to people,” I said with a smile.

  “Really? What do your senses say about me?” Amber replied.

  I leaned across and gave her a lingering kiss on the lips.

  As I drew away, a large smile burst onto her face. “So,” she said. “What do you want to do this weekend?”

  “How about the lodge?” I said with a grin.

  She gave me a playful shove. “How about the movies instead?”

  I leaned in for my second kiss. “Sounds great.”

  ###

  About Shaun Kitching

  Shaun Kitching lives in South East Queensland, Australia with his wife and two children. He is a keen sportsman, with football being his favourite sport. In his spare time, he enjoys kayak fishing, going to the beach and spending time with his family.

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  Coming Soon

  Enjoy The Lodge? Shaun Kitching will be publishing his second book in the Hollow Point Horrors series very soon.