by Jesse Grey
Sighing, Alex gestured toward Bridge. “We should go.”
“Yeah.” Abram scoffed.
The pair got out of Willa’s car, suddenly staring at Bridge and Mercer’s faces.
“You two ride together?” Abram asked, locking the car doors.
“You think my dads aren’t tracking my gas mileage?” Mercer huffed. “No. We both just so happened to take the same bus.”
Bridge nodded. “I was already out, shooting some hoops. Paige only agreed because I told her my parents would have wanted me to keep practicing.” he shrugged. “She’ll just think I’m still practicing my hook shot at the twenty-four-hour gym down the street.”
“Yeah, let’s get to why we’re here so we can get back as soon as possible.” Alex suggested.
Mercer glanced at Abram. “You got the keys?”
He held up Willa’s. “Willa and I keep spares on our car keys.”
“Then let’s go.”
Westbrooke Storage Lot was an open parking lot full of discard-ed, forgotten, and vacation only vehicles. The only thing besides the random vehicles was a petite building where people could register their vehicle on the lot, but of course, no one was there as the time ticked towards midnight. The four friends made their way toward an RV that was a few years old, but still looked like it was fresh off the dealership’s land. It was surrounded by other vehicles, but not enough that it was too cramped for them to make their way to the average sized RV. Abram choose the right key from Willa’s set and unlocked it, everyone following him inside.
The inside of the St. James family RV was the personification of November St. James’ personality. Lavish decorations donned the place, like the faux marble countertops in the moderate kitchen, two full sized beds that lived in the high hallway walls that bore thousand thread count bedsheets, a queen sized bed inside the small bedroom in the back complete with a small 32-inch TV built into the wall, and a rather spacious shower that perfected the ambiance of the RV. The small living room consisted of two plush, though smaller than normal, couches on either side of the RV directly in between the driving cab and the small chic kitchen that housed all the essentials.
They hadn’t all been inside the RV since right after Sumner had attacked them, since the morning after they had all given their state-ments to the police and had had a rather pointless night of trying to sleep. Mercer cleared his throat as he and Bridge sat on one side while Alex and Abram sat on the other.
“Alright,” he began. “I guess I should get to why I brought you guys out here.”
“That’s a decent place to start.” Alex agreed.
Mercer exchanged a pure inhale of air. “I was talking to Kirby yesterday and—”
“Kirby?” Bridge butted in immediately. “Are you kidding me?”
“Why are you even talking to her?” Alex added.
“Chill out, guys. I gave her a ride to school.”
“Mercer, Dagger told us—”
“Jesus, get off my ass about Kirby!” Mercer stood, anger setting in at Bridge’s last attempt at speaking. “We’ve already broken curfew, some of us twice, I might add, we’re all talking to each other right now and I’m getting shit about literally just driving her to school? You guys have got to lay off. Until Dagger proves that Kirby helped Sumner back into town, enough speculating. And so what if I like her? All the more reason for you guys to show some support and eighty-six the Kirby-is-guilty campaign.”
Tension crept around their ankles as Mercer breathed heavily, his frustration settling and evaporating into the air. His friends bore somber features, clearly bothered that they had upset him so deeply.
Abram was the first to break the silence among them. “I’m sorry, Mercer. It’s just such a coincidence. But you’re right. We shouldn’t judge her based off of our paranoia.”
“I’m just scared.” Alex admitted next. “I’m completely terrified by the thought of someone helping Sumner and him being back in Ar-mor Falls. He could be anywhere, plotting anything, and I can’t help but think it’s only a matter of when that he’ll strike and put his plan into action.”
“We’re sorry, Merce.” Bridge concluded.
“Now that we’ve covered that, the fact that Sumner could be an-ywhere is sort of why we’re here.” The three of them were overcome with interest at his statement. They shifted toward Mercer as he sat back down in his seat. “Anyway, I was talking to Kirby and she got me thinking about Arclan. Do you remember the night of our first sleepover at Sumner’s?” He paused as they all nodded. “Sumner was bragging that he had found a secret passage in his room? What if that’s where Sumner is hiding? What if he’s been hiding there all along?”
They all took in the theory for a moment before Abram, per usu-al, spoke up. “That’s an interesting idea.” he nodded. “But even if he is hiding out there, we have no idea where that passage leads.”
“Yeah, it’s not like we can waltz up to Shadows Manor and ask his parents to see Sumner’s super-secret passageway.” Alex quipped.
“Why would we waltz?” Bridge questioned.
Alex waved him off, dismissing his inquiry. “I just mean, we have no idea where it ends.”
“That’s the best part,” Mercer grinned. “I think I have an idea of where the passage leads.”
“Where?” Bridge prompted.
Something in Mercer’s eyes shined like light reflecting off glass. “Arclan Asylum.”
Abram stood up quickly. “I knew it!”
“You expected him to say Arclan?” Bridge said, eyebrows raised.
“Abram already told us,” Mercer nodded. “When we visited him when he was at Arclan, he told us that Sumner was visiting him by hiding in the walls. That’s where the passage leads. Straight to Ar-clan.”
“But we thought Abram was—”
“Too heavily medicated to be making sense?” Abram acknowl-edged Alex. “Forget it. Honestly, I tried my best to forget about see-ing Sumner once they transferred me to a different facility.”
“You weren’t at Arclan the whole time?”
Abram shot down the question. “I had scratch marks up and down my arms that were very real even if seeing Sumner and thinking he caused them wasn’t. They thought I was a danger to myself because of my accusations, so they transferred me to some highly recommended place in Maine. I think it was called Tarryn Hall or something.”
Bridge shifted the conversation. “Okay, let’s assume that the pas-sage does lead to Arclan. Wouldn’t Sumner’s dad know about it?”
“He’d have to.” Alex agreed. “I mean, he opened the place back up, right? He’d have blueprints of the place, not to mention he obvi-ously would know about his own house’s secrets. He would have told the police all about it.”
“Not necessarily. Arclan Shadows is the one who built both Shadows Manor and the asylum. He could have easily gotten the passage constructed and linked the two together. It wouldn’t be that hard to leave out of both buildings’ blueprints.” Mercer told them.
“You’re saying Sumner inherited his love of secret passages from his grandfather?”
Mercer scoffed at Bridge. “Is it that crazy of a concept?”
“Holy shit.” Abram said, still trying to wrap everything together in his head.
“Even if all of this, which I’d like to add is all just theory, is true, what do you suggest we do about it?” Bridge asked.
“Easy. We sneak into Arclan, find the passage, and bust his ass.” Mercer exclaimed, proud of himself for connecting all of the dots.
“Or we should go directly to Dagger, especially if the whole secret passage being wiped off of the blueprints theory is true.” Alex said heatedly. “What if Sumner is there? You think it’s smart to go in there like we’re a band of vigilantes?”
“What do you think Dagger will do to us if we tell him and Sumner isn’t there? You saw how he was with us last week, Alex. He’ll either arrest us or maim us and make it look like we did it to ourselves.”
“We can�
��t risk giving Dagger anymore reasons to not trust us.” Bridge shook his head in agreement.
“You’re onboard with this?”
“Well I definitely don’t want to go to Dagger unless we have sol-id proof.”
Abram grabbed Alex’s hand, looking deeply into his eyes. “We have to, Alex. You know we do. And if we do catch Sumner, this whole stupid lockdown crap will be put to rest and Dagger will get off our backs.”
“Or at the very least, he’ll ease off.” Mercer added.
Finally, Alex crumpled under the peer pressure to go attempted murderer hunting. “I can’t believe I’m even partially convinced.” He turned to Mercer. “How would we even get into Arclan? Obviously, not through the front doors.”
“And why did talking to Kirby ignite this plan?” Bridge wanted to know.
“Right.” Mercer winced, obviously not wanting to get to this part of the plan. “I was talking to Kirby on the way to school and, well, her mom is a nurse at Arclan.”
“And?” Bridge waited.
“And, we use her mom’s ID badge to get in.”
Just then, before anyone could question Mercer’s methods, there was a loud crash from outside the RV, shaking the entire vehicle.
“What the hell was that?” Alex said, speaking for all of them.
Crash. The RV shook again. No one moved, too petrified to spring into action.
“What could be—”
Alex was cut off by the shattering of the small window just above the door of the RV, eliciting screams from all of them. Abram saw a rock skipping around on the floor, obviously the cause of the broken window. Without a thought, Abram dashed for the door.
“Abe!”
He barely heard Alex’s plea as he ran outside the RV, looking around for the culprit, but no one met his gaze. All he saw were the other vehicles and the shadows they cast down on the ground before them. All he saw was darkness.
As the rest of them piled out of the RV, Abram turned to see two huge human sized dents in the RV, as if someone had thrown them-selves against the vehicle a couple times.
“Where are you!?” Abram yelled out into the open air, his friends scrambling to see the bent metal that were the body slams in the side of the RV. “Come on out, Sumner!”
“Abe,” Alex tried to get his attention, the rest of them focusing on something else entirely.
“Don’t you want to finish what you started in the cemetery!?”
“Abe!”
Abram turned to Alex, the rest of his friends’ faces tuned to hor-rified. “What?” Alex pointed to the ground, Abram moving to see what his friends had their eyes transfixed on. On the ground was a wooden stake.
And it was stained with fresh blood.
7
BREAKING & ENTERING
Sleep didn’t happen for them easily. They kept replaying the night over and over. After finding the bloody stake outside of the RV, they were horrified. It reminded them eerily of the night that Sumner attacked them at the cemetery. Working through their panic, they took the stake and burned it, just like first time.
So many questions kept them tossing and turning through their respective sleepless night. Was Sumner really the one outside the RV? Whose freshly coated blood was on the wooden stake? And if it wasn’t Sumner, then who was it, and did they know about what they had done that night?
The next morning at school, they all decided to meet back up in their little nook in between the cafeteria and the science building from the whole table incident. They all stared at each other for a little while, backpacks slung over their shoulders.
“How’d everyone sleep?” Abram scoffed.
“Are you kidding?” Bridge said sleepily. “I’ve slept more during sex.”
“Maybe you’re just a lousy lay.” Mercer chuckled.
“Like you would know, Virgin Mary.” When Bridge saw Mer-cer’s hurt facade, he sighed. “Sorry. I’m a bitch when I’m tired.”
“We remember.” Alex smirked.
“How do you know I didn’t get laid when I was in Louisiana this summer?” Mercer said, placing his hands on his hips in frustration.
Bridge gave him a stern look. “Did you get laid in Louisiana this summer?”
After a couple seconds, Mercer looked defeated. “No.”
“Look at that, case closed.” Bridge rolled his eyes.
“Okay, you definitely need this more than I do.” Alex handed Bridge his cup of sugar overdosed espresso, the latter of which took it with glee.
“Bless you.” Bridge said eagerly, taking a grateful sip.
“We need to do something about Sumner,” Alex finally said, bringing them back to the issue at hand as he pulled his jacket closer to his body on the cold brisk morning. “He could have killed some-one last night. That blood had to come from somewhere.”
“I’m not convinced that this was Sumner. None of this fits him,” Mercer solidified. “The body slams in the side of the RV and not showing his face after? He’d want his ownership of scaring the shit out of us, especially after all this time.”
“All the more reason for him to keep his distance.” Alex rebutted.
“Who else could it be?” Bridge wondered aloud.
“I think someone saw us that night.” Mercer began. “In the woods.”
“That's impossible. No one saw us. This is Sumner.” Abram de-fended.
“But what if someone did? There's always a chance, Abe. Do you think, without any doubt, that Sumner would be stupid enough to try and attack us again? Just to freak us out or keep us paranoid after being gone for so long?”
Abram hesitated, clearly already second guessing himself. “Okay, I guess it might not be Sumner, but I just don't know who would possibly want to mess with us like this.”
“I'm telling you, someone saw us.” Mercer reiterated.
“Well until we find out it's Sumner or some mystery maniac, we need to forget about it.” Abram demanded.
“I still think we need to go to Arclan,” Bridge said, finishing his newly awarded coffee. “If Sumner did come to the RV last night, at least we could try and confront him about it.”
“If he doesn't kill us first.” Alex sighed.
“So I'll talk to Kirby today about the plan.”
“Whoa, what?”
Mercer scoffed at Alex. “How do you expect for me to get her mom’s badge?”
“Mercer, if you wanna date Kirby, great, try mini golf. But I don't think we should bring her into all this.” Bridge stated.
“I’m not saying we tell her anything specific, just that we might know where Sumner is and that we need her help to get into Ar-clan.”
Abram and Alex were both about to argue, but Bridge put his hand up, putting aside his differences and stepping up to Mercer.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked him.
“I don’t think we have a choice.” Mercer nodded.
“So when are we doing this?”
Alex shot Abram a look, both of them realizing that they couldn’t actually get into Arclan without some kind of help. Mercer was right. Kirby was their best shot at getting into Arclan.
“Saturday.” Abram breathed easily.
“But whether we find Sumner or not, we have to stop sneaking out before our parents catch on to us.” Alex continued.
“Alright,” Mercer nodded, agreeing to the terms. “Saturday will be the last night.”
“We should get to class.” Bridge said. “Let us know what Kirby says.”
“Will do.” Mercer smiled. “Thanks guys, I’ll see you in calc.”
They all went to go their separate ways when Ben came up to them.
“Ben, I’m fine.” Abram scoffed. “No checkup needed.” He lightly punched Ben on the shoulder.
“Your parents wanted me to see if you were still talking to your friends.” Ben glanced at the rest of them. “I see that their worry is justified.”
“Are you seriously spying on us for our parents?” Alex accused pointedly.
“Why do you need to talk to Ben?” Abram contemplated.
“Because we’ve been having sex.”
Ben’s eyes flew open with wide terror as Bridge’s friends looked completely floored.
“Uh, yeah, see you in calc, B.”
“Definitely.”
“Bye, Ben.”
The three of them left for their classes as Ben swatted Bridge as soon as they were out of earshot. “The hell is wrong with you?”
“Why are you spying on us, Ben? Why would you agree to do something like that?”
“Mr. and Mrs. St. James were just worried that you guys might be sneaking out behind their backs.”
“Don’t follow us around.”
“So it’s true.” Ben scoffed angrily. “All of you guys are breaking curfew. I mean, aside from your little trip to Core.”
Referencing their exploit was acid liquefying his skin, the meta-phoric sizzling of his flesh the final straw in upholding his conversa-tional decorum. “It’s none of your business! You don’t have anything to do with what we have going on. Stay out of it.”
“I’m worried about you, Bridge.” Ben said, inching closer to him, but Bridge trembled in disgust and backed away.
“Your fiancé could be anywhere.”
“Bridge, please.”
“Ben, you’re getting married to Paige. Stop trying to act like we can be something when you’re planning to marry the woman whose house I’m staying in.” Bridge sighed, pausing to see the hurt expres-sion Ben wore, but he knew that he had to do this. “I’ve had a good time with you. A really good time, but it’s over. I hope you and Paige have a beautiful life together.”
Ben grabbed his arm when Bridge went to leave. “I’ll break up with her.”
Bridge choked on his tongue. “What?”
“I’ll break it off with Paige.” Ben nodded. “I’ll call off the wedding. Paige...Paige is a great person. But what I feel when we’re to-gether...Paige and I haven’t...not since I met you.”