by Marlowe Blue
Loud static came from his end and his voice went in and out. I could only make out the words, “Neil . . . Morgan . . . out of there . . . Veronica Fisher.” Then the line went dead. I stared at my phone, puzzled.
“Who was that?” Morgan stood in the doorway smiling eerily at me.
“Detective Nichols. We’re in big trouble. We have to go home.”
Morgan shrugged. “It’ll be fine. You wanted to watch a movie before. I want you to have a good weekend Lee, so I found a good one we could watch. Come on, I have it all set up in the living room.”
It would be a couple of hours before my parents showed up to drag my ass home, so why not? “No more sick jokes?” I asked.
Morgan gave me her hand and helped me get up. “No more sick jokes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
I followed her into the living room where Toby was hooking his laptop up to the television. Shana and Peyton huddled together flipping through a magazine. Everything seemed to be back to normal.
I sat beside Morgan on the couch and curled my legs underneath me. “You know,” I told her. “The reception is bad up here, but when Nichols called, I’m pretty sure he said something about Neil and somebody named Veronica Fisher.”
Morgan took a swig of wine straight from the bottle and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Oh, yeah. Good ole Veronica.”
“Who is that?”
She fished her phone from her back pocket. After a few moments of swiping she showed me a picture of a girl with blond hair and blue-green eyes. Had it not been for those features, the girl would have been Morgan’s twin. They had the same dimples and tiny button nose.
“Who the hell is this?”
Morgan stuck her finger in her eye and made a downward motion, pulling a contact lens from her eye, then she did the same thing with her other eye. She peered at me with clear blue-green eyes. “Veronica was my name when I lived in Wisconsin. I did bad things there so my family and I had to move here and start over.”
What? Was my best friend telling me that she was really someone else. I looked at the photo again. It was definitely Morgan.
“Got it!” Toby shouted before I could ask Morgan any more questions. On the flat screen played a movie I had seen before, only this time it was shot from a different perspective.
The air was knocked out of me as I watched the screen. The scene was AJ and Brayden’s bedroom.
24
The camera showed Neil covered in blood, wrapping a bloody knife in a towel. The voice behind the camera was sickeningly familiar. “Hey all,” Morgan said, turning the camera on herself. “Our first challenge was completed successfully. The Hex is dead and we reign supreme.” Shana and Peyton also appeared on the screen, smiling proudly.
“How does it feel, girls?” Morgan asked.
Shana wiped at the blood on her forehead. “Glorious. Just like you said it would.”
I felt like I had been dropped into some alternate universe. My best friend, the school gossip, and the co-captain of the varsity cheerleader squad were bragging about murdering my friends, not just that, but reveling in what they’d done. They wore the Hex’s blood like a badge of honor.
Morgan turned the camera back on herself. “I’ll never forget the way I felt my first time. Now let’s get the hell out of here. Toby?”
Toby walked by pulling off his shirt, soaked red with my friends’ blood. “Ready. I checked all their pulses. They’re done.”
I simmered with rage.
Before they left, Morgan flipped the direction of the camera and I was shocked to see myself on the screen. I lay slumped in a corner passed out. My eyes were closed and there was not a drop of blood on me.
I wondered how I’d gotten blood all over myself that night. Had I woken up and tried to revive my friends? Hours had passed between then and when I arrived at the Thorne’s. I imagined myself being completely out of it, trying to shake my friends awake to no avail. I must have left the house to wander the dark streets before the Donahue’s had come home to discover the carnage. I still remembered none of it.
Morgan focused on her face again. “Lee, this was for you, babe. You’re free now.” The screen faded to black.
I looked at each of them as they watched me with raised eyebrows, savoring my reaction. “You weren’t joking. You killed my friends.” I wiped my tears away with the bottom of my shirt.
“That was really stupid of you,” Morgan said, “coming to my house like that. I thought you would stay at the twin’s or go home and take a shower or something. At least call the police from there.”
My mind went back to that night and I specifically remembered when Morgan asked, “Lela, what have you done now?”
“You drugged me. Who knew what I would do? I didn’t have any control over that.”
Peyton poured herself a glass of wine from a new bottle. “This is all sweet and everything, but what’s next? Is she in or is she out because it sounds like she’s not feeling this.”
What had they expected? For me to jump for joy at the sight of them covered in my friend’s blood? What was wrong with them? How had these sickos found each other?
“Of course she’s in,” Toby said. “If she knows about us, she’s in.”
Morgan turned to me. “That’s the truth. Sorry, Lee, but you have to get with the program.”
“I’m not in!”
Morgan tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. “You don’t have a choice. You know our secrets. It’s okay. I think I was drawn to you because you remind me so much of Veronica. Don’t worry. I’ll take very good care of you. I always have. I even took care of Coach myself.”
The gruesome photo of Coach’s dead body flashed before me. Coach had been stabbed so many more times than the others and much viciously. Morgan was insane.
I stepped toward the door but Shana and Peyton blocked my path. Shana smirked. “It’s not as hard as it looks. We’ve each done one and it was fun. We’ll even help you.”
“She knows how to do it,” Morgan said, sounding bored. “She had her first kill way before you did. I told you that already. Lee already has a notch in her belt but she’s going to have to do it again to get in the group.”
“No! I’m not killing anyone, you sick freaks.”
Peyton shoved me. “You will. You’re not leaving this cabin until you do. Either you do someone or we do you.”
Toby stood behind me. “Not leaving the cabin? Then how is she going to kill someone?”
Morgan pursed her lips. “Good question. See, I was thinking this should be kind of an all-girl thing.” With one swift motion she stabbed Toby in his gut with the same knife Shana had used earlier, the one with the red handle. She’d been hiding it up her sleeve. I screamed as Toby doubled over, grabbing his midsection. A stream of blood flowed down his body.
She glared at me. “Finish him!”
I shoved past the others and raced through the front door. Outside was pitch black. The moon and the stars gave me some light, but not much. I held my hands out in front of me, groping my way through the night. If Detective Nichols knew about Veronica, surely he had sent for the local police department. All I had to do was survive until they got to me.
I was smacked with a grim thought. Poor reception. How did that work? If our phones weren’t getting a signal, would the police be able to use the GPS to find our location? Probably not. There was a good chance I was on my own.
I tried to remember how close we were to the nearest house as the front door of the cabin opened and slammed shut. The girls whooped and hollered in the darkness like this was all some game. They took turns singing my name. “Leeeee-laaaa!”
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Shana taunted.
“Let’s split up,” Morgan ordered.
They sounded so confident, so sure they were going to catch me and get me to do what they wanted. I took off. It didn’t matter where I was going or whether or not I could see. It was three against one and the odds
were stacked against me.
Pressing forward in the blinding darkness, I tripped over some unseen object, probably an exposed tree root. I tumbled forward, skinning my knee and tearing my jeans on a sharp rock. My ears strained, listening for sirens in the distance. The only sounds were chirping crickets and the shouts of three psychopaths on my trail.
Despite the pain shooting through my knee, I forced myself up. Moving forward, I bumped into something. Morgan, of all people. She was the worst of them all. My best friend, or former best friend, had been the ring leader who had encouraged all of this. She’d always been so small, but right in that moment, she was the biggest I had ever seen her.
She placed her flashlight underneath her chin, looking like some demented jack-o-lantern. “Oh, Lela. This is really silly, no? Come back to the house, take care of Toby, and everything will be fine.”
Thinking about all the things she’d done sent my mind into a tailspin. Morgan had orchestrated the murder of my friends and had mercilessly taken Coach’s life. She’d written those mysterious notes and pretended that someone had broken into her house while she was sleeping. The paper hexagons she’d claimed to have found at Zander’s, she’d probably had in her purse the entire time. All this time she’d pretended to be horrified, she’d been the one causing the terror. I didn’t even want to think about what she’d done back in Wisconsin. How many people had suffered because of her? What had she done that was so terrible that her family had to move away and start again as different people?
I took a step back. “I don’t even know who you are.”
Her smile widened. “I’m the same Morgan you’ve always known. Oh, I know you thought I was some goody-two-shoes and that you were corrupting me, but the truth is, I’m not a good girl at all. We had to move away and change our names because I did bad things, Lee. Bad things that were about to catch up to me.”
The perfect Thorne family had all been a façade. All their concern about Morgan keeping up her grades or making it home by curfew had been a farce. They had much bigger problems than that. I thought about the night I showed up on their doorstep covered in blood. They knew. They had to know that Morgan had been involved, yet all the screaming and yelling—that had been some hardcore acting.
The sounds of footsteps came from behind me. One of the others was creeping up on us. “This is over, Morgan. Neil ratted you out. I don’t see how you didn’t think he would. The police know you were involved.”
Morgan shrugged off this revelation. “It’s Neil’s word against ours and he can’t prove anything. The police have what he did on video, so why would they believe anything he had to say? He’s a self-proclaimed murderer. The only proof that exists is that little home movie I only kept for your benefit. Now that you’ve seen it, we can get rid of it and we’ll be home free. They’re looking for Neil’s accomplice—I think a dead Toby would fit the part quite nicely.”
“Morgan, what are we doing?”
I turned to see Shana and Peyton standing behind us, each holding a knife at their side. Shana stared me down. “If she’s not in, we need to take care of her. We can’t risk her getting away.”
Morgan glared at her. “We’re not taking care of her. She’s my best friend. Of course she’s in. We did this all for her.”
“No, you didn’t do this for me. You did this because you’re sick.” I had to think quick about my next move. Should I play along until I could make an escape? If I did that, they were going to expect me to kill Toby and there was no way I could do that. I had to get as far away from them as possible.
Maybe if I stalled and kept them talking, I could buy myself enough time until help arrived. “How did the five of you even meet, let alone find out that you were all insane?”
Peyton rolled her eyes. “If you must know, we met at the annual horror movie festival they have in Hanover every year at the old drive-in theater. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights they play classic films.”
“Yes,” Morgan continued. “You and I had just met and I didn’t have anything to do since you were going to Charlotte’s birthday party which I hadn’t been invited to.” Her voice oozed with bitterness.
“She didn’t really know you yet, Morgan.” I felt the need to defend my dead friend, but that was the truth.
She sighed impatiently. “Anyway, I’d heard Neil and Toby talking about going earlier at school on Friday and asked if I could bum a ride. We ended up parking next to Shana and Peyton and after the last movie ended, we had a long discussion about our favorite scary movies.”
Shana looked googly-eyed, as if she were remembering a favorite Christmas memory. “I think it was Neil who said he’d always wanted to live out a real-life horror movie and that he’d get away with it. It turns out the rest of us were interested and Morgan suggested that we form a group and really make it happen. At first, I wasn’t serious about it, but the more we talked, the more we practiced with Annie, the more real it became.”
So that’s what this was? A bunch of crazy people who couldn’t separate movies from reality? “It was Toby in the bunny mask that night, wasn’t it?”
Before anyone could answer me, the cranking of an engine sliced through the nighttime sounds of the woods. We looked back as the lights of Morgan’s SUV pierced through the darkness and the vehicle roared to life. Tires screeched as the SUV tore down the road.
Morgan stomped her foot. “Shit! Toby!”
Peyton ran her fingers through her hair with her knife-free hand. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We can’t let him get to help. We’ll be so screwed.”
Morgan shoved the two girls forward. “Go stop him now!”
Shana’s face crumpled like she was on the verge of tears. “How the hell are we supposed to do that? By the time—”
“Just go!” Morgan shrieked.
Obediently, the girls raced toward the cabin, but Shana was right. It was a lost cause. By the time they grabbed Peyton’s keys from inside and got back to her car, Toby would have gotten too much of a head start. At least they were gone and it was just me and Morgan. I now had a fighting chance.
Morgan wasn’t as confident as she had been before. She looked as if everything were about to come crashing down around her. “Lela, let’s run away. Just you and me.”
I stared at her for what seemed like forever, attempting to process the ridiculous request. “Are you crazy?”
“We’re smart. We could totally do it. Starting over is actually fun. You can be anyone. We can change our looks, our names, we’ll figure it out.”
“Morgan—”
“My dad keeps money in a safe here for emergencies. We can take it and just start running now. They’ll never find us. We can take the train to California or something.”
Morgan knew it was over. She was desperate and grasping at straws. If I didn’t know about all the horrible things she had done, I might have felt sorry for her.
“Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s go to the house and get the money.”
Her face melted with relief. “Really?”
I nodded. “Really, but we have to move fast.”
Morgan darted toward the house, the flashlight bobbing around, casting eerie shadows everywhere. I followed her.
“While I go to the safe,” Morgan called over her shoulder, “you should try to fill a bag with stuff we might need. Nothing too heavy. And not our phones. They can track us that way.”
Inside, she disappeared into the master bedroom. While she was gone I grabbed a duffel bag and flung it over my shoulder, but I didn’t fill it with anything. In the kitchen, I tucked a knife into each of my Converse sneakers. Then I grabbed a poker from beside the fire place and slid that into the back of my jeans. It was uncomfortable, but I could probably keep it hidden from Morgan as long as I stayed behind her.
She emerged moments later with a hobo bag slung over her shoulder and tossed me a flashlight. “Ready?”
I nodded and followed her out the backdoor. Down the path we ran with only the flashlights
guiding our way. Sirens rang in the distance. Finally.
How were they supposed to find me if I were running away with Morgan? I paused, thinking of a way to stall for time.
Morgan stopped ahead of me. “Lee? You hear that? We have to keep going.”
No. This had been a mistake. I had to get back to the cabin where help would soon arrive. I dropped the duffel bag and sprinted away from Morgan without a word.
“Lela!” Morgan screeched, her feet pounding behind me. “What are you doing? They’ll be here any second.”
Yes, I hoped so. As I neared the cabin, a sharp pain at the back of my head held me back like an anchor. Morgan yanked my hair from behind. Pretend Time was over. She knew I had no intentions of going anywhere with her.
With a forceful pull, she threw me back where I landed roughly on the ground. Sticks and broken branches stuck in my back.
“I tried, Lela. I really tried. I just wanted to make everything right for you, but if you don’t want that—Shana was right. We have to get rid of you.”
She straddled me. The fire poker dug into my backside and I winced from the pain. There was no way I was going to be able to retrieve it, but I had a chance of reaching one of the knives.
She wrapped a hand around my throat and frowned. Yanking down the collar of my shirt, her gaze fell on Charlotte’s lioness charm. I had been wearing it every day since Marcella had given it to me.
Morgan gasped. “That’s Charlotte’s necklace. Why are you wearing her necklace?”
“She was my friend,” I managed to say even though she was crushing my throat.
Morgan slapped me across my face, scowling. “I always knew you loved her more than me. Charlotte would have never done the things for you that I’ve done.” She yanked the chain from around my neck and tossed it away.
My anger gave me the strength to wrench one of my hands free and scratch her across one cheek. “You were always jealous of her and she will always be a better person than you.”
Morgan reached behind her and withdrew a knife of her own. “I tried. I’ve done all I could do for you. I gave you so many chances. I tried to give you a better life and an escape, but if you don’t want it, so be it.”