“You were just laying there, Aimee. You were so incredibly pale and so still that I couldn’t even tell if you were breathing. I had no idea what to do! You told me that you absorbed memories, that you think you’re cursed, but I honestly didn’t believe you. And your eyes,” she sputtered. “Oh, God, your eyes! They became white and I just froze. I’m so sorry, Aim. I just froze.”
“It’s okay. I promise I’m okay now. Look at me please,” I plead with her.
It took a minute for her to calm her sobbing, but she finally lifts her face from her hands and very slowly looks at my face.
“See. No white eyes,” I explain. “They’re back to their normal blue. Everything is going to be fine. I promise.”
My being in control despite the obvious freakiness of the situation seems to calm Dejana. She stops crying and bravely comes to sit next to me on my bed. I feel it creak as she plops down next to me and fluffs the pillow before covering it completely with the purple comforter that dons my bed. Despite the sheer terror she must be feeling, she still wants to help me. With the memory behind us for now, thankfully things are starting to go back to normal.
“So,” starts Dejana, a bit of pep back in her voice. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. Now that I can look at you without freaking out, you want to tell me what you saw in the memory?”
I sit still for a moment, debating exactly what to tell her. How well will she take the news that there’s a killer at our school? Will she freak out and finally decide to never talk to me again? I can’t let that happen. Dejana is the only real friend I have ever had. On the other hand, she is logical and super smart. If I’m going to catch this guy, I will need her help. I’m not sure how I want to phrase it, but in the end, I just decide to tell her the unadulterated truth.
“There is a killer at our school and I have no idea who he is,” I state as calmly as I can, careful not to mention the exact perverseness of his methods.
For a while, Dejana doesn’t move as she sits beside me on the bed, her eyes casting a variety of emotions. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, but I see confusion, fear, and uncertainty etched in every feature. I’m certain she’ll walk out at any minute, but she doesn’t move as she has some kind of internal debate with herself. As much as I wouldn’t wish this curse on anyone else, I envy Dejana’s innocence. I don’t get the luxury of being oblivious to the evil that lurks in the dark. Whether I wish it or not, it’s thrust upon me with one simple touch. Finally, I see Dejana’s brown eyes come back into focus and her determination return.
“A killer? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I state simply refusing to elaborate on exactly how he kills.
After another brief, stunned silence, I see the determination arrive in Dejana’s eyes. “Well then,” she states, “what can we do to help figure out what asshole is killing those poor girls?”
That’s my girl. I feel a surge of pride as I realize that nothing defeats Dejana. Not even someone like me.
“The memory was mostly in the dark,” I begin. “So there’s nothing I could really use to identify him. I saw the girl’s face, but I don’t know her.”
“You don’t know anyone, you silly girl, ‘cause you spend all day sulking by yourself,” teases Dejana. “But maybe I do. Can you describe her? I could draw her. It’s at least a place to start. If we can get a good enough picture maybe we can find her in some kind of database or something. That’s what they do on CSI.”
Renewed with energy, Dejana jumps from the bed, almost kicking me off in the process and goes to grab her pencils and drawing paper from her bag always close at hand. Dejana is an amazing artist. She’s won so many awards for our school that I lost count. She, of course, hasn’t. She reminds me every chance she gets. But I don’t mind, I would kill to be able to draw like her. Especially since I can’t even make stick figures look like actual human beings.
Having retrieved her sketchbook from her bag, Dejana runs back into the room, her cheeks flushed from running to her car. She grabs the chair she was in earlier and pushes it as close to the bed as she can. The dark brown shirt she’s wearing brings out the sparkle in her caramel eyes, giving away the excitement she gets every time she has a chance to draw.
“So,” begins Dejana, putting her pencil to paper clearly ready to go, “what do you remember about her?”
“Based on the first two memories, both girls are light haired,” I begin. Immediately Dejana begins scribbling and asking questions as she goes. Clearly, she is in the zone.
“Give me as many details as you can. Were they skinny girls? Did they have rounder or more angular faces?” asks Dejana.
Since I’m not an artist, I really don’t have any idea what she’s talking about. But I do my best to help her. I think back on the memories, trying my best to focus beyond the ugly, red marks on their wrists and ankles from being bound and the blood soaked bed. They were both so young, so innocent; their only mistake was trusting the wrong guy. Neither of them deserved what happened to them. I can’t imagine the horror and pain they must have endured. I could see terror reflecting back at me through their eyes as they looked at the killer they never knew existed among them. It was a horror I couldn’t help save them from. Just one of the many heinous things I endure as part of my curse. I do my best to push past my own feelings, to see the girls as they were before they were so viscously murdered.
“They were skinny, taller than your average teenage girl, and I’m pretty sure they both had long hair,” I finish, proud from remembering something normal from those nightmares of memories.
Dejana shakes her head and mumbles ‘uh huh’ a few times as her pencil flies all over the paper.
I take advantage of relative silence to think of anything else that would help identify the girls. In the first memory before my coma, the girl was already fairly beaten up; most remnants that made her identifiable were long gone. Their eyes still haunt me with their piercing looks of desperation and betrayal. Yet, I sense something more...something I had missed up until now. Gasping with excitement, I make a connection. Why hadn’t I seen it before? I sit up in bed and grab Dejana’s hand, desperate for her to see I remembered something important.
“That’s it, Dejana, I remember!” I said my breath coming in shallow puffs.
Dejana pushes her sketchpad aside and leans closer, clearly enthralled to learn the juicy bit of info. If this were a movie, she would be rubbing her hands together expecting a big treat.
“They each had blue eyes, Dejana. Blue! That must be his type: tall girls with light hair and blue eyes. Do you see how important this is? If we know his type then maybe we can predict who he might go after next!” I am elated by turn of events.
Pensive, Dejana leans back in the seat, clearly not as excited as I am about the news. She has that look in her eyes, the one where she is about to throw a rock at my perfect glass house.
“What?” I demand, offended by her lack of enthusiasm.
“Well, just knowing his type does help, but it doesn’t exactly tell us who is going to be next. We go to the biggest school in the southeast with well over three thousand kids. There is no way that we will be able to narrow down a list to every girl that is tall with light hair and blue eyes. There must be at least a hundred of them,” Dejana says with a forlorn tone in her voice.
As much as I hate to admit it, Dejana is right. There’s no way to predict who will be next and catch the killer. Plus, I want to try to identify the ones we know are gone so we can give their families a sense of closure. Otherwise, what was the point of my absorbing the killer’s memories? I may not be able to change the past, but I can make up for it somehow. Maybe that’s the purpose of my curse-cosmic justice. The ability to right the wrongs that others have committed. I can use my curse to help the families of those murdered girls find peace. Without closure, those poor girls are just gone. That’s more tragic than any curse. My purpose solidified, I decide we need to come up with another plan to catch him.
I lie back
onto the pillows on my bed and a sigh of defeat escapes my lips. It feels so hopeless. No matter how well intentioned we are, Dejana and I are not detectives. We’re just ordinary teenagers—well, at least one of us is—with no experience on how to solve a crime. I cradle my legs to my chest, letting the hopelessness overcome me. I wish for the thousandth time that my touch was not a direct route to the past. The past is a path no one ever wants to go down. I cradle my head in my hands, willing a resolution to present itself when it all of a sudden, it hits me. The answer was there all along; I was stupid not to have seen it. We certainly aren’t detectives, but no one said we had to do it alone.
I sit up in bed so abruptly it jolts Dejana out of her extreme concentration zone she gets in when she draws. She gasps at the sudden change and throws her pencil at me. Surprisingly, it is a direct hit to my head. Where did that girl get her aim?
“Dammit, Aimee! You just about gave me a heart attack!” exclaimed Dejana. “What in the world is wrong with you?”
“Are you still friends with that girl that’s a computer whiz? The one I always see you with in computer science class?” I ask barely able to contain my excitement.
“You mean Leah? Sure. What do you want with her?” Dejana asks with a confused look on her face.
“She can help us! She could take the information we have and narrow down a list of girls that fit the description of our victims. We need help Dejana. We need her,” I finish, desperation leaking out in my voice.
Dejana gives me a quizzical look as she turns her head back and forth for a bit, having some internal debate before finally nodding in apparent acquiescence to my idea. “Not bad. Not bad at all. We should be able to trust her. You’re right that we need help and if we need information, she’s the person that can get it for us. I can’t see one problem with your idea. I’ll go call her now,” says Dejana before stalking off downstairs to her car to get her phone.
“Wait!” I yell to Dejana, who stops just at my door and turns her full attention to me. “She can’t know about me. We need her help, not for her to run for the hills screaming to everyone I’m even more of a freak than everyone thinks.”
“Of course. It’s okay,” responds Dejana softly before disappearing down the hall.
With a plan in place, I start to feel much more optimistic about the future. I cuddle down within my sheets and feel the warmth surround me, settling my mind and body for some much needed sleep. I don’t fight the exhaustion as it takes over. My final thoughts are shaky, but optimistic that we will find the killer and bring him to justice. I should have known better.
Chapter Eight
~ Is This The Love Boat or The Titanic? ~
I hadn’t been sleeping long before the sound of rocks hitting my window wakes me. For a brief moment, I panic, thinking the killer has found me. I put my hands to my chest in an attempt to calm the runaway train that has become my heart. I hear another rock hitting my window before I get out of bed and cautiously make my way across the bedroom to see who it is. I open the curtain just a sliver and look out into the darkness. A figure is in my front yard by the big willow tree but I can’t quite make out who it is. When the figure waves, I decide to open the window. Tentatively, I poke my head out, hoping the moonlight would show me a bit more of the visitor’s face.
“Who is it and what do you want?” I ask without preamble to the dark figure lurking under the tree.
“It’s me, Logan. Step back, I’m coming up,” he says without even asking for permission.
I debate for a second if I should close the window and just go back to bed. If it was anybody but Logan, I would. But he is the only one that has never teased me. That act alone deserves better behavior from me. Besides, he’d probably just jump through it anyway. It still begs the question, why in the world is he here?
Logan makes the slow climb up the willow tree and tells me to stand back again seconds before he does a flying leap into my bedroom. His head hits something hard in the darkness in a failed attempt to stop the momentum from his leap. I stifle a laugh as I turn on the lamp on my bedside table. Light floods the room and I see Logan on the floor beside my dresser decked out in jeans and a t-shirt holding his head in his hands. A giggle escapes, but I put my hands on my mouth to stop it so it comes out more like a cough. He isn’t fooled.
“Hey, don’t laugh,” he says, rubbing his head to ward off the pain. “You think that was easy?” he asked me with a hint of embarrassment in his voice. I guess the fall bruised more than his head.
“Nope, not at all. I’m surprised you even made the jump. That was pretty impressive. Now you see why I never sneak out through the window,” I say, hoping my words had the intended effect.
Logan stands up and faces me, apparently appeased by my words. His hair is a bit out of sorts from the climb and his face is flushed from the exertion. I can’t imagine a sexier look on him. While I’m in my white tank top and old pajama pants, probably looking like a homeless person. I wish I had advanced warning; I would at least have brushed my hair. I hold my uncovered hands behind my back so I don’t accidentally touch Logan. He’s still standing there staring at me like he’s forgotten why he’s come. I clear my throat in the hopes that he’ll snap out of it.
“Not that I don’t mind a good scare at two a.m., but why are you here, Logan?”
“I hope you don’t mind that I stopped by, I just wanted to check on you. And give you this,” he says pulling out a single white rose from around his back and holds it out for me.
My breath catches in my throat and I feel like my heart is melting in my chest. No one has ever given me a flower before. No boy has ever looked my way and I was fine with that, until now.
“I don’t know what to say,” I tell him, yet do not attempt to take the flower since my hands and arms are so exposed. Thankfully, he doesn’t venture closer to me.
“If you don’t mind, could you please put the flower on the night stand for me?” I ask just before I move out of his path and make my way around so that the bed is between us. For the first time, there is a boy in my room. Better yet, he brought me a flower. I want it to mean something special, but with my lack of experience, I’m not sure what to think.
“So are you going to tell me why you’re here? And in the middle of the night no less,” I ask curiously.
Logan shifts back and forth on his feet for a few moments, his adorable face sheepish as his brown hair makes moving shadows on the wall. He’s here for a reason, but I can’t fathom what it is. Logan is one of the most popular boys in school. He has scores of girls following him around, whispering and giggling while they talk to him yet for some reason, he’s in my room. He looks up and fixes his brown eyes on me, an intensity burning in them that I’ve never seen before. My heart flutters in my chest as I wait for him to make the first move. Luckily, it isn’t long in coming.
“I really just wanted to make sure you were okay. When I went to the hospital, the nurse told me you were in a coma. But the doctors wouldn’t let me see you. They wouldn’t tell me if you were okay or not. And since Mary hardly ever left your side... well, my mind has been working overtime thinking of all kinds of horrible injuries you sustained that they were hiding from me. I wish I had never left you that day in the parking lot. Maybe I could’ve helped you before you fell unconscious. Anyway, when I heard tonight that there was a girl lost in the hospital, I ran straight here thinking it was you. Looks like I was right.”
Logan moves forward to the edge of the bed and sits down across from me. He smiles and pats the other side of the bed, a clear invitation for me to sit down. I am so nervous I can barely move my legs, so I just kind of fall into a sitting position a few feet away from him. It’s still a bit too close for comfort, but I trust Logan not to touch me. The image of him lunging for me across the bed, arms open, and his lush lips ready for a kiss assaults my mind and I jump up from the bed all of the sudden, nearly falling in the process.
“What did I do?” asks Logan, his expression clear
ly confused.
I can’t tell him that it was what he didn’t do that was bothering me, but it’s obviously a bad idea to tell the guy you really like that you are thinking of him kissing you, so I scramble for an appropriate response. “Nothing,” I stammer. “I’ve just never had a guy in my room before. I guess I’m not sure exactly what to do with you.”
“You can do anything you want with me,” he says as he leans back on the end of my bed frame, comfortable and confident like he’s been in my room a hundred times already.
I cross my arms over my stomach, willing my hands to stay where they are. I never realized until now, how desperate I am to feel the sensation of someone touching me. How thirsty I am for a real touch; one that is dripping with want and need to embrace me. The kind of touch that sends licks of fire through your veins, boiling your blood and driving you forward for more. It takes all of my strength to stand in front of him yet not touch him. I almost give in to my need, almost.
“How about I throw you back out the window ass first? You see now that I’m fine, so why are you still here?” I ask, hoping to take my mind off the dangerous path it was heading.
As if a switch was thrown, Logan’s face changes and sadness overtakes him. He puts his head in his hands in an attempt to control his emotions, but not before I see the tears glistening in the soft light. It’s then that I understand the anguish threatening to take him over.
“How many died?” I ask in a whisper, not certain I want to know the answer.
Logan takes in a deep breath and responds, his voice shaky, “Thirty-seven. Three of them were baseball players. Two were footballs players. Five of them were in the band. Many more were people I would call my friends. And in seconds, they were all gone.”
I want more than anything to go to him. Hold him and tell him that everything is going to be all right. But I can’t. I stand here numbly, full of wishes that can never come true.
“I am so sorry,” is all I can think of to say. I had no idea the loss of life was of that magnitude. The coma may have kept me sane, but it did not save me from the impact; the devastation that comes with a tragedy that hits you when you least expect it.
The Haunting of Secrets Page 4