Chapter Sixteen
~ Monsters Among Us ~
For once, I’m not shrouded in obscurity. After so much time spent cloaked in darkness, the light is blinding, unnerving. I can’t be myself here. I am forced to hunt beneath the shroud of my façade. I pretend to eat my lunch, laugh at the ridiculous jokes of my so-called friends surrounding me, oblivious to the monster among them. Yet, my attention is not on the simpletons that constantly hover in my presence. My eyes are fixed on her. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s already mine, the next on my list. It is inevitable; I will have her. But, I must be patient. If I’m to get what I want, everything must be perfectly planned and executed.
Her eyes meet mine for a split second and I’m mesmerized. She sees me staring at her and smiles back, clearly happy to have gained my attention. Who wouldn’t be? I almost lick my lips in anticipation, but I stop myself in time. No one can know how much I desire her. I play along with my friends at the table, careful as always, not to reveal the monster within. Time and time again, my eyes float back to her. I catch myself daydreaming. I imagine her chained to my bed, her wrists and ankles an angry red from resisting bondages. I can almost feel the knife in my hand, the knife I never dare bring to school for fear that the beast within would surface, revealing what I work so hard to conceal. I’m too careful for that and they are too stupid to see. I wonder if her screams will be as high pitched as my last angel, Jessica. That encounter still plays over and over in my mind. I so enjoyed hearing her scream as I stabbed her over and over again. I can still feel the warmth of her blood on my skin.
The bell rings, snapping me back to attention as all of us in the cafeteria gather our belongings and head to our next class. Quickly, I grab my friend Daniel’s arm before he can run off to his math class.
“Hey, Danny,” I ask pointing my finger toward the girl I was admiring from afar. “Do you know what that girl’s name is? The one over there with the purple backpack?”
Daniel turns to look and I can see from the gleam in his eye that he not only knows her, he is fond of her as well. He smiles and waves at her as she passes us to head up the stairs to her next class. “Her name is Elizabeth,” says Daniel, trying to hide his annoyance at my interest in the girl. “Elizabeth Donovan. She’s a junior and hot as hell. You got a thing for her, dude?” he asks jovially.
“Nah man, I was just wondering. I caught her looking at me a few times today during lunch. No biggie,” I lie with a smile on my face and a pat on his back. Without another word, I grab my backpack and head to English class, doing my best to hide my smile. As usual, no one is the wiser.
Chapter Seventeen
~ Lost Souls ~
“Oh. My. God,” says Leah trying her best to catch her breath but unable to. “What the hell is happening to Aimee?” she asks Dejana, her voice in full panic mode. Dejana scrambles, trying her best to find the words to describe Aimee’s, for lack of a better term, problem. But, she can’t think of any plausible lie for what’s happening to Aimee. The fact that her eyes are white and cloudy isn’t helping either. Dejana loathes telling Leah the truth simply because she’s certain Leah won’t believe it. Hell, she didn’t believe it herself until a few days ago.
Dejana knew from the start that there was something strange about Aimee, but that didn’t deter her. Dejana has always been a champion for the misunderstood. She may be popular, but she isn’t the stereotypical, cold-hearted bitch people assume she must be. Her other friends just laugh it off as one of Dejana’s quirks, clearly showing how little they truly know her. Dejana saw something special in Aimee’s eyes that day on the bus. Something she couldn’t ignore: loneliness. It took a year for her to break through the fortress of walls Aimee constructed to keep people out, but in the end, it was worth it.
Dejana found something in Aimee she has never found in any of her other friends: unwavering loyalty. When Aimee told her about her curse one night during a French study session, sometime in the middle of their sophomore year, she decided to play along and believe her. After all, even the best of friends can be just a little bit nuts. She thought Aimee just had an irrational fear of germs. Dejana never believed for a second that Aimee could truly absorb memories or she would have tested it out by touching Aimee herself. Now, more than ever, Dejana wishes she knew how this curse works. She’s only seen Aimee’s eyes cloud over once; she has no idea exactly how long it can last. Now, Leah is seeing the same thing firsthand and Dejana is torn as to what to do. She knows that Aimee doesn’t want Leah to know about her curse, but that’s kind of a moot point now. Leah can see that something’s different about Aimee. In the end, she sees no way around it; she has to tell Leah the truth and hope for the best. Dejana crosses her arms in a defensive maneuver and steels herself, ready to take on the hysteria that is sure to come.
“She’s in the middle of experiencing someone’s memory,” states Dejana, daring Leah to tell her she’s a liar or worse, crazy. Secretly, Dejana hopes that Leah will just scream and run away. That would be the easiest solution. Later, she can just tell Leah she was seeing things that Aimee was just tired and that would be the end of it. No one would believe her anyway. But, here she stands, mouth open in amazement and not moving. Dammit, thought Dejana, of course it won’t be that easy. Dejana isn’t exactly sure how to explain Aimee’s gift when she didn’t exactly understand it herself. In her opinion, no one in the world could possibly understand, but Aimee.
She softens her voice and tries her best to explain the unexplainable. “Leah, I know this is freaky, but you have to listen to me,” says Dejana in a soft, but commanding voice. Leah turns her panicked, confused face toward Dejana in a silent invitation to explain. “Aimee has a gift. She calls it a curse. Do you notice that she is always fully clothed from head to toe? That she never shakes anyone’s hand or touches anyone at all?” Leah nods her head, apparently only capable of simple responses at this moment.
“Well,” continues Dejana apprehensively, “with one touch, she can see your entire past. One touch and she experiences all of your memories, the good and the bad.”
Leah shakes her head in disbelief, but before she can voice any of her concerns, Dejana drives forward, desperate to finish the story and make Leah understand.
“The day of the bombing, a boy touched Aimee. Her mind was flooded with images, horrible images of him killing young girls. Aimee saw all of this, through his eyes, knowing that she couldn’t help, only watch. She doesn’t know who this boy is, so she asked me to help her find him. She asked me to help her find a killer, Leah, right here among us, in our school. She’s a good person,” Dejana pleads. “She just got dealt a bad hand. Can you get past this and help us?”
Since Leah is still unresponsive, Dejana takes her by the arm and sits her in the chair at the table next to Aimee. Dejana pulls the computer from in front of Aimee and places it in front of Leah’s stunned face. She points to the girl on the screen.
“There’s only one way to help her Leah and that’s to find out everything we can about this girl. It says here her name is Elizabeth Donovan. What do we know about her?” asks Dejana, hoping that work will take Leah’s mind off Aimee. Once the computer is in front of her, Leah seems to snap out of it. Her fingers, always at home with a computer, find the keyboard and spring to life. Leah is working so fast that Dejana can’t keep up. She hacks into God knows how many sites to dig up as much information as she can about Elizabeth. Sadly, it doesn’t take her long to find the one thing that completely dashes any hope of helping her. Elizabeth is beyond their help now.
Beside them Aimee gasps for breath as her head snaps up from the table. She shudders from the intensity of the memory and looks around, momentarily confused by her surroundings. Aimee holds her arms over her stomach in an attempt to ward off the nausea that always seems to come after experiencing a memory. Especially one from this sick bastard. Dejana rushes over to the sink, pours her some water and rushes back to her side. She gets down on her knees and carefully lifts Aimee
’s head up to put the small glass of water to her parched lips.
“Drink,” she pleads. “You’ll feel better.” Dejana helps Aimee drink a bit of the water, which she immediately spits out; her face contorts with disgust like the taste of it is revolting to her now. Slowly, Dejana sees her eyes clear as the blue becomes brighter and brighter. From the other side of the kitchen, she hears Leah shuffle her feet. Dejana almost forgot she was there. Almost. Unsure exactly how to proceed, Dejana decides to ask Aimee a question, hoping that it brings her back to the real world.
“Do you know where you are?”
Aimee looks around the kitchen, her now clear blue eyes take in the scene before her. “Yes. I’m in your very expensive kitchen drooling all over your nice table and freaking out poor Leah sitting over there on the other side of the table. Did I miss anything?”
Grateful that Aimee is joking, Dejana laughs. If Aimee can be sarcastic, that means she’s not too upset about Leah witnessing her enveloped in a memory. “You missed the part where you almost threw up on my table. But, I’m willing to look past it.”
In the chair next to Aimee, Leah’s fidgeting as she looks at her, the shock from the encounter rendering her speechless. Dejana is about to take pity on Leah and send her on some fool’s errand when Leah finally finds her voice. “Well, that was fun. Can you never do it in front of me again, please?”
“I’ll try,” Aimee concedes. “As long as you can keep what just happened a secret. Can you do that, Leah?” Aimee asks, her voice filled with trepidation.
“Of course I can. I don’t want people thinking I’m nuts too.”
“Good, cause we have work to do.” Aimee flies out of her chair, desperate to get moving. “I saw the girl he picked out for his next victim. It’s her,” Aimee says, pointing to the computer screen. “And we have to hurry, because it won’t be long before he grabs her.”
Dejana gently pushes Aimee back down into the seat and takes both of her hands into her own.
“We don’t have to save her. He can’t hurt her anymore. She’s gone. She died in the bombing at the school. Leah found her obituary. She was one of the thirty-seven.”
Chapter Eighteen
~ Evil Rising ~
He is ecstatic, dare he even say jubilant, from the success of his recent venture to take care of the little problem that resulted from the bombing. It was so easy to steal the locker list with combinations from the school’s secretary. It’s no coincidence that she’s his neighbor. He put a sleeping pill into her Earl Grey tea she unfailingly drinks every night before bed. Considering the amount of whiskey she adds to her tea as well, he was sure she didn’t notice the addition of the narcotic. Besides, he’s so easy to trust no one would ever guess he is capable of doing such a thing. Everyone is under his spell and he’s one hell of a magician. It doesn’t matter that he was more comfortable in the other school; the bomb was just a minor setback. Once he found out from his unwitting spy at the county office the location of the building where school would be held while the former was under construction, he spent days staking it out. Some may think him insane to invest so much time, but it was simply a means to an end, an integral part of his overall plan. He had to know every crack and crevice of this building; they must be his to dominate as much as the puppets that lackadaisically walk around from class to class, mistakenly under the assumption that they are in control of their lives.
He saw her run, saw the fear in her eyes. The only thing that could have made the moment more perfect was if he spilled her blood. How he longed for his knife, to feel it enter her, feel the blood pool up around his hand. But, restraint is the key right now. It’s the terror, the fear he longs for more so than the actual kill itself. The torture is what arouses him, what feeds the monster within him. It must be the blood of an angel, someone worthy of him. He longed to go after her, but he couldn’t. He had to stay at lunch and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was happening; convince his friends surrounding him that he doesn’t have a care or need in the world. They would never know his true thoughts, or know that he was thinking of gutting her across the middle and bathing in her blood. If they ever knew the truth about him, they would run, too.
Chapter Nineteen
~ Burned ~
I am lying in my own bed, despondent and disheartened. I feel useless. I am no closer to finding the killer than when he first touched me. I pull my purple comforter over my head in a futile attempt to ward off the world, the memories swimming in my head. I’m just about to give in to my uselessness and depression when I hear a noise at the window. Sighing heavily, I try to decide whether to acknowledge it when I hear a loud crash. I jump out of my bed, grab the knife I hid under my pillow ever since that night the killer paid me a visit, and run to the window ready for battle. I hear a curse word from a familiar voice seconds before I see Logan’s darkened figure try to make its way through the broken window, little shreds of glass catching his clothes here and there.
“What the hell, Logan?” I ask exasperated. “Just because I don’t answer your ‘rock call’, you decide to break the damn window? What were you thinking?” I ask rattling off question after question in one breath, giving him no chance to answer.
Logan, obviously ignoring all of my questions, continues to concentrate on climbing through my window. I return the knife to its hiding place under my pillow and stand with my arms crossed, facing Logan. As pissed as I am about my window and how clueless I feel as to how I’m going to explain to Mary how my window got broken, watching Logan’s cute butt try and wiggle through the hole that used to be my window, is actually entertaining. He is twisting his way through the shards of glass, breaking what he needs to here and there, trying his best not to get cut. His expression is intense. Like last time, he’s wearing dark, blue jeans with a black t-shirt in a failed attempt at concealing himself. He’s almost through the window when his arm catches on a piece of glass he doesn’t see and it tears into him with a vengeance. I hear him cuss and see a cut, about three inches long on his arm just below his shoulder, begin to bleed. I grab a towel from my floor and run over to him, hoping to stop him from bleeding all over my floor. I might be able to find a reasonable story for the window, but blood on the floor would send Mary over the edge.
Logan’s face registers shock as I run towards him. He takes a few steps back, clearly confused by my behavior. I wonder then when things had shifted between us. It’s then that I realize I am not as wary of the possibility of his touch as before. I’m not sure when things started to change, but I am grateful they did. I reach Logan and wrap the towel around his arm to stop the bleeding, careful not to actually touch his skin. He places his hand over the towel to hold it in place and his gaze lifts to mine.
For a moment, I’m lost in his eyes; I feel the case around my heart melting. For the first time, someone sees through the walls I built to keep people out. For the first time, someone cared to get to know the real me. My hands start to shake. I need to move away before I dare to want things I know I can’t have. My emotions reeling from being so near him, I step back and head to the bathroom to get supplies from the first aid kit Mary insists I have under my bathroom sink. I grab the kit and more towels and head back to play nurse to Logan.
“Sit down, Logan, and let’s see how badly you’ve hurt yourself,” I insist. Logan walks over to the bed and sits down lightly. My heart skips a beat seeing him on my bed again. He’s holding his injured arm at his side, careful not to get blood anywhere as he inspects the wound. I see his ample muscles flex as he turns, admire the strength I see in his chest, a product of many years of playing sports, no doubt. His face is flushed, I suppose from his injury and his eyes are glazed over with an emotion I can’t put my finger on. Much to my chagrin, nothing in his face is an indication of what he is truly thinking. Before he notices my openly staring at him, I hurry over to the bed and sit beside him. I pour some hydrogen peroxide on the cut and smile a bit when I hear him try to hide his wince of pain.
&n
bsp; “So, Logan, what brings you here tonight?” I ask as I continue to clean and cover the cut, hoping that the elation I feel of having him on my bed isn’t coming through in my voice.
Logan shrugs and I wonder why he hesitates. He must have something he wants to tell me, but can’t get it out. So, I decide to make it a little easier on him. I finish with my ministrations, walk across the room to get the chair from my desk that sits adjacent to the window, and bring it over to sit in front of Logan, turning the chair around and straddling it so the back of the chair is between us. He is holding his head down, hesitating for some reason.
I sigh, already tired of this game. I’m sure my feelings of despondence are showing. “Spit it out, Logan. Just tell me what you came here to say,” I demand a bit too harshly.
Logan studies his hands for a minute more, clearly unsure of how to say something.
I grab my gloves from the bedside table, put them on, and approach Logan carefully. He never looks up from his hands. Even though I’m not sure anymore that I want to know what he came here to say, I put my gloved hands on top of his clenched ones and wait patiently for him to look at me, all the while trying to think of something soothing to say to him. A good three minutes pass before Logan unclenches his hands and wraps them around mine. The heat from his hands seeps through the gloves and it’s intoxicating. I have never been this close to anyone, never shared this type of intimacy. I understand better now why couples hold hands. My heart beats like a drum in my chest, I am incapable of hearing anything else, feeling anything else outside of this moment.
Slowly, Logan raises his head and he meets my eyes. The minute our eyes meet, the nausea hits me full force. Fleetingly, I wonder if my feelings for Logan could be some sort of trigger for unveiling memories. But I don’t have time to ponder that right now; he can’t see what happens when I’m encased within a memory. I have to get out of here before the past takes over. I stand up quickly, knocking the chair in front of me out of the way and hitting Logan all in the same motion. Panic engulfs me; I have no other option but to run. I fly out of the room and turn right, not sure of where I am going, but trying to put as much distance between Logan and me as possible. I never want Logan to see me when I’m experiencing a memory. That would be the quickest way to push him out of my life forever and I was just getting used to having him around. I run down the long upstairs hall, all the way to the attic door. Behind me, I hear Logan yelling my name, but I don’t answer. I open the door and race through to the attic, locking it behind me. I’m halfway up the stairs when I hear a pounding on the door, but I ignore it. I have just enough time to make it all the way up before I collapse. The darkness takes me and the memory begins.
The Haunting of Secrets Page 8