by Hannah Jayne
Addie had the padlock in one hand and was throwing the lock on the bolt when she heard the tinkle of bells from the front door. She craned her head to see Ella’s chest rise with a heaving sigh. Customers. If she was going to make Addie drag Ms. Headless to Mannequinland, Ella would just have to handle them herself.
She heard Ella’s forced cheery voice, “Hello, welcome to Bereman’s. Can I help you find something?” before she wrestled the defiled mannequin into the storeroom, stopping to grope for the light switch. Addie waited a beat for the LED light to go from dusty yellow to bright and when it did, she bit her bottom lip.
“They’re fake,” she said out loud. “Totally fake.”
The sea of dead-faced mannequins reaching out for her was like a mini scene from The Walking Dead: a thousand zombies with outstretched arms. She shuddered, doing her best to work her mannequin into the fold.
“There you go, lady. You’re with all your little mannequin friends.” She paused, knowing that per Bereman’s policy she was supposed to take the clothes off the mannequin and fill out the stupid little paper telling management why that particular mannequin was being retired. She glanced at the thing, words scrawled down the torso, and muttered, “Isn’t it obvious?” But still, Addie pulled off the mannequin’s blouse and shorts, then grabbed a pencil and paper. She started to write but paused, certain somehow that all those dead eyes were watching her, studying her, the mannequins ready to pounce.
“No offense to all of you creepy bastards, but I’m going to do this out there.” Addie had one hand on the light switch and the other on the door frame when the first scent of smoke hit her nose. She sneezed.
“Ella, are you smok—” The door wouldn’t move.
Addie’s skin prickled with a wash of wet heat. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. The door often stuck. The dead bolt, even when unlocked, almost always caught. Addie licked her lips, trying to steel herself.
“It always catches. Just jiggle the handle.”
She did that but nothing happened.
The smoke smell started to get a little stronger and Addie coughed. “Ella? Ella!”
Panic started to rise in her chest. Addie threw her shoulder against the door, her body weight hitting square with an impressive thud, but the door didn’t budge. Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes.
“Calm down, calm down. Take a deep breath.” Addie fanned her face and opened her mouth, then clamped a hand over it. Smoke licked tiny waves under the small gap at the bottom of the door.
The fire alarm cut through the silence in the storeroom, an ear-splitting screech that shook the windows and throbbed through Addie’s skull.
A big, racking sob rose and broke in her chest, and Addie was crying as she yanked on the storeroom door, kicked it, beat it with her fists.
“Help me, help me!”
She turned, looking for anything to pound against the door, anything to boost her high enough to scratch at the little window on the door, but there was nothing but the mannequins, the disembodied heads, the blank eyes staring back at her. Addie clawed for the door as the licks of smoke turned into bellows, as the fire alarm droned.
“I’m in here!” she screamed, her voice caught on the sputter and click of the overhead sprinklers before they released a torrent of icy cold silencing water. It pounded on her head and rolled into her eyes and Addie’s vision was blurred, first by the tears, then by the water. “Help,” she whispered, sinking to her knees.
She was going to die.
She was going to burn to death or drown to death surrounded by a horde of stupid mannequins.
Follow-through is important. R. J. Rosen’s words flashed before her eyes. Do what I say or else.
No.
Addie thought of Jordan fighting, clawing at her killer, desperate to save her own life.
The story is just getting good.
She yanked her T-shirt up over her nose and mouth, squinted against the water and wet smoke and felt along the sodden carpet, shoving into mannequin legs with her shoulders. She would get out of there. The killer couldn’t win.
There wasn’t enough room to crawl so Addie crouched, her thighs screaming with the effort. She knew there was an outside door at the back of the storeroom. If she could just make it there…
The fire alarm droned. The sprinklers kept up their incessant drip, drops of water pounding her skull and thudding through her brain.
I’m going to get out of here.
The smell of smoke was everywhere, the black plumes surrounding her head, half-pounded out by the splashes of water. Addie pushed past one body after another and they started to tumble like a row of dominoes, body after body falling forward, arms outstretched, rigor mortis fingers pointing at her, blank eyes somehow accusing.
You did this, they seemed to be saying. You did this to Lydia, and you did this to yourself.
“No, no…” Addie’s vision seemed to fish-eye and wobble; a thousand eyes staring at her. Her breath was strangled, a deep ache in her throat. Her head felt light, then impossibly heavy.
It was the smoke.
She tried not to breathe, tried not to think that the mannequins were moving now, slow, plodding steps toward her with a low, droning, accusing moan. Everyone in town thought that she brought a murderer into their midst. Everyone in town was right.
She stopped moving, stopped trying to fight. The mannequins were an army, were Hawthorne High students, were faces she recognized: Lydia. Spencer. Colton. Maya.
“No,” she muttered, her lips puckered and parched with the heat. “I didn’t. I didn’t mean to…”
The fire bell stopped and the water from the sprinklers lightened to a gentle trickle but there was a crashing, a pounding. Addie’s heart. Her bones as the army crashed in on her, the mannequins reached and pointed and taunted and gnawed.
And then there was silence.
Forty
The beeping was incessant. It kept going, loud, insistent, even as Addie gritted her teeth and clenched her eyes shut harder, doing her best to burrow under her covers to drown the sound out.
“She’s stirring.”
“I think she’s waking up.”
Addie could hear the voices somewhere in the distance, shrouded in sleep or somehow underwater. Was she in Gap Lake? In between the beeps she could almost hear the lap of the lake against the shore and she was so warm, her bare shoulders lolling into the sand, the sun beating down on her face.
“Addie?”
It sounded like Declan Levy. Or at least, it sounded like the gravelly voice she made up for him in her head. That was it. She was in Gap Lake on junior cut day, lying in the sand and Declan was looking over her, casting a cool shadow over her neck and forearms.
But Gap Lake wasn’t real.
Declan Levy wasn’t real.
And the beeping…
She tried to move, tried to move an arm or wriggle a finger but she was a thousand pounds, weighted down. There was pressure on her chest. A pounding in her temples. She tried to lick her lips, but there was not a drop of moisture left in her body and her throat was ripped raw.
Lydia’s hands were on both sides of Addie’s face, her fingernails thin and wet digging into Addie’s cheeks. Her eyes were bright, wide, but milky somehow and her words were garbled, drowned out by the beeping.
“She’s coming around!”
Addie gasped, clawing her own chest, feeling the heat of torn skin as her fingernails dug into her flesh.
“Where am I?”
The light was blindingly white and she wasn’t weighted down anymore—she was floating, faces swirling around her.
A light in her eye.
“She’s going to be okay?”
“What is…where am…?”
“She’s trying to talk. Can we take off the oxygen mask?”
Addie’s e
yes widened at the giant hand that came for her, that removed the gag from her mouth. She sucked in a great lungful of air, the oxygen ripping holes in her already torn throat, cutting through her lungs like razor blades. The tears poured over her cheeks.
“Where am I?”
“You’re safe, sweetheart…you’re safe, baby.” Her father stood near her shoulder, his voice soothing but too slow, his head cocked as he stared at her with eyes riddled with terror. He stroked her hand and Addie realized hers was ice cold.
“Where—”
“In the hospital.”
“I’ll let you two talk.” The voice she thought was Declan Levy’s belonged to an older man in a long white coat. “Ma’am?”
Addie craned her head. “Maya?”
Maya was by her feet, a hand each on Addie’s big toes. “Thank God, you’re awake. I would have had to kill you if you died.”
“Give us a minute?” Morton said, eyes toward Maya.
Maya gave a curt nod and shook Addie’s right toe. “I’ll be back as soon as they let me.”
“Dad, what’s going on?” Addie asked once Maya and the doctor left.
“Do you remember anything?”
Addie scanned the room, her eyes skipping over the sterile white everything, taking in the IV taped to her arm, the needle buried in the back of her hand. Her stomach lurched and she thought of Lydia, of her cold hands on her face. “Did it have something to do with Lydia Stevenson?”
Her father looked taken aback. “Oh, honey, no, I don’t think so. You were in a fire, remember? At the store. You were in the storeroom when they found you.”
Addie tried to think back but the beeping and the ache that was forming behind her eyes were making it hard. She remembered hands, so many hands reaching for her and the cold, accusing eyes…
“The mannequins.”
Morton nodded. “Yes, the storeroom. You were passed out.”
“I was locked in.”
He started. “What?”
“I was locked in the storeroom. Sometimes the lock sticks but…I couldn’t get out and Ella—where’s Ella? Oh my God, Dad, is she okay?”
Mr. Gaines blinked. “Ella’s fine. She was the one who called in the fire. She ran out for a second because she thought she saw the kids who had vandalized some mannequins, and when she came back, she saw the smoke and called it in. Thank God she did.”
Addie shook her head slowly, the effort monumental, the pain just as bad. She pressed her fingertips to her temples to get the incessant drumbeat to stop. She tried to think. There was something else, something else hanging on the edge of her peripheral. “Voices. There were other voices.”
Her father nodded slowly. “They were probably customers.”
Addie could feel a lick of heat low in her gut. He was patronizing her. “Yeah, but Ella was there and there were customers so how…where…what happened to the store?”
Morton Gaines rubbed his palms on his jeans, paced the length of Addie’s bed. “The police aren’t saying much, but they think the fire looked suspicious.”
“Is the store still there? I mean, did it…did it burn down or anything?”
“There’s a significant amount of damage. We were just so lucky that the fire alarm was working and the fire department was able to get to you in time. If not…if…I don’t know what I would have done—” Morton turned to Addie, his eyes glossy. He sniffed and took both of her hands, squeezing tightly. “I don’t even want to think about it.”
Addie nodded, a lump forming in her own throat. She could have died.
The fire looked suspicious…
“Do they think someone set the fire?”
Morton paused for a beat. He licked his lips, looked away.
“Dad?”
“It’s an old building, Addie. The wiring was probably faulty. I don’t think anyone would intentionally set a fire like that.”
Addie wasn’t so sure.
It’s only going to get worse for you.
Forty-One
Mr. Gaines pulled into the driveway and sped around the car, pulling open the passenger side door for his daughter.
“I’m fine, Dad,” Addie said, but she was smiling, enjoying her father fawning over her, his full attention hers.
“Let’s just get you set up in the living room. Do you want pizza? We can order pizza, anything you want.”
“No.” Addie swung her head. “I’m fine. I’m not even hungry.”
A ping from her cell phone made Addie’s whole body stiffen, her blood run cold.
“Oh jeez,” her father said, a deep frown on his face. “We left your prescription.” He raised his brows. “Back in the car or do you want to wait here?”
“I wouldn’t hate a milkshake with those pills.” Addie smiled.
He father yanked open his car door and grinned. “You got it. Twenty minutes, tops. Go inside and relax. If Louisa isn’t still there, I’m sure she’s stocked the entire place with snacks and meals.” He swallowed, his eyes covered with a slight mist. “I was really worried about you, Addison. When I got that call…”
Addie nodded sharply, not wanting to cry. “It’s okay, Dad.”
She let herself into the house, shrugging out of her jacket and going straight to the junk drawer. She fished out a pair of scissors, then cut the hospital band from her wrist, watching the thing sail to the floor.
Someone had really tried to hurt her.
The realization sent a shock wave through her. Addie sunk into a dining room chair, holding her head in her hands. Suddenly, her house felt cavernous and dark. She spun in her chair, feeling eyes all over her.
I’ve been watching you…
No. It was over. She had gone to the police, she had turned over the emails—and someone had tried to singe her to a crisp.
But she had survived.
She was grinning until she remembered that there was an active murder investigation going on in her town. She startled when she heard a door slam in the other room.
Her heart started to thud, beating the breath out of her chest. “Uh-uh,” she muttered to herself. “Hello?” It was weak, strangled. She didn’t want to be heard.
She didn’t want someone to answer back.
Addie gripped the stairway banister, resting her foot on the first step. She cocked her head, listening.
Someone’s heart was beating. Someone’s breath was a thunderous roar.
“It’s me. It’s me! I’m freaking myself the crap out. Everything is fine. There is no one in my house and doors slammed because windows were open and wind rushed and stuff.” She glanced out the kitchen window, hoping for a gust or a hurricane, but the leaves on the birch trees weren’t moving at all. The night was solid, still. Deathly quiet.
She grabbed her cell phone from her back pocket, speed dialed Maya. “Pick up, pick up!”
“Maya’s Psychic Services. Your loss is my gain. Are you home?”
“I thought you were a psychic?”
“My powers tell me this is Addison Gaines calling to tell me about something creepy or murderous.”
Addie groaned. “Your psychic powers have discovered caller ID.” She bit her bottom lip. “I just need to talk. I’m freaking out and my dad went to get my meds. He’ll be home in like twenty minutes.”
“Do you want me to come too? I can kick down doors, clear the place? Pretty sure I have pepper spray in my Prada bag.”
“That Prada bag is mine. Just stay on the phone, okay?”
“I’ll come over but it’s going to take me about a half hour, what with you living in Boondockville and me driving a horse and buggy.”
“You drive a Honda.”
“And you could be driving a vintage Mustang.”
Addie’s stomach knotted. “Shut up. Just stay on the phone. I’m going to investigate.”
>
“Do you have a Maglite and a Sig Sauer?”
Addie paused on the third stair. “I don’t know what either of those things are.”
“A flashlight and a gun.”
“I have a cell phone and the daughter of two cops on standby.”
“Good enough.” Maya paused. “Are you really worried though? Maybe you should just wait for your dad outside. Or go over to Colton’s.”
“I think I’m just being a little freaky.”
“Ooh.” Addie could practically hear the waggle in Maya’s voice.
“Not in a gross way.”
“Someone tried to light you on fire, Addie. It’s okay to be freaked out.”
“But I was feeling fine five minutes ago.”
“Addie, Colton is right next door. You’re fine, girl. I promise. There is no boogeyman.”
Addie opened the door to her father’s room and poked her head in. The room was pristine, just as Louisa left it: vacuum lines in the carpet. Hospital corners on the bed. The mirrors and marble counters glittering in the bathroom.
“Well, he’s not sleeping in Papa Bear’s bed.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re okay.”
Addie crossed the hall to her own room, doing a cursory check in the closet. She shifted the basket of clean laundry on the window seat, lifted the dust ruffle on the bed with her sneakered foot. “Pretty sure I’m okay too, except for the dust bunnies under my bed.”
“Dust bunnies?” Maya snorted. “What are you, a hundred?”
She rolled her eyes, poked her head in the bathroom. The shower curtain was pulled, her bathrobe on the back of the door. “Okay, I was officially being lame.”
“So you’re not about to die?”
“Not tonight, sorry to disappoint. Thanks anyway, though. I think I’m going to take a shower.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“Of course you did.”
Addie swiped off her phone and tossed it on the counter, then pulled her shirt over her head. She shimmied out of her pants and took the rest of her clothes off, then grabbed a towel from the basket. She turned on the bathroom faucet and yanked the curtain.