by Willow Rose
The boy they had found was also a senior at the high school, or he used to be, but was expelled about a month ago and had run away from home because he was afraid of what his parents would do when they found out he was expelled from school. Everyone, including his parents, thought he had left the island like most kids who ran away did.
That was probably what was keeping me up all night. Was someone targeting the teenagers at the high school for some reason? Was some sicko kidnapping the high school kids and emptying them of their blood?
Why?
The good part was that Vincent, the boy found in the dumpster, was still alive and maybe he would be able to tell us more, when or if he woke up. Morten had told me he thought the killer probably believed Vincent was dead and tried to get rid of him, not knowing he was still alive, clinging to life.
I sat up in bed, my heart pounding while thinking about Maya. I wasn't so sure it was safe for her to go to school anymore, but she could hardly stay home for weeks or possibly even months before they caught this creep. I could hardly go with her and keep my eyes on her constantly either. She was, after all, seventeen years old.
I was staring at the window in the darkness and all the light coming from the street when I decided to go to the bathroom. That would probably make it easier to sleep.
I walked into the hallway and found the door to the bathroom slightly open. I pushed it all the way open and stepped inside only to find Skye in there, standing on the tiles, staring at the toilet bowl.
"Skye?" I asked. "Are you okay?"
Her little body was shaking. She didn't turn her head to look at me. She stood like she was frozen and stared at the toilet. I walked closer and looked down into it, then realized the water inside of it was moving, splashing up against the sides.
"What's wrong?" I asked again, even though I knew she wouldn't answer. I looked into her eyes and saw the terror in them. I tried to calm her down and gave her a reassuring smile. "It does that sometimes. I think it's the old plumbing."
The girl stared at me, her eyes big and wide, her slim shoulders trembling.
"You hear it too, huh?" I said with a sigh.
Victor had been hearing things for a long time now, he had told me. It came from the sewer, he said, and it was everywhere on the island or under it, as he said. I had told him a million times it was just because the plumbing under the island, the pipes and sewers, were so old they would often make loud noises, especially when it was cold outside, but he didn't believe me.
"Yeah, Victor is scared of it too," I said. "I often think he hears things more vividly than the rest of us. He does tend to hear things I don't, and he gets annoyed with loud noises. Sometimes, I can't even get him to go to the bathroom. He would rather keep it in till he's about to burst than face this fear of his. Guess you're just like him, huh?"
I grabbed her hand in mine.
"It's okay," I said. "It's just an old house on an old island with old sewers. Nothing to be scared of. Come, let me get you back to bed."
Chapter Forty-One
"Tim?"
Susan stared at the boy in the bed. She could hardly recognize him. It was like he had completely withered away. Yet she recognized the terror-stricken eyes looking back at her.
She was crying and couldn't hold it back. She didn't know Tim very well, but she knew who he was and had spoken to him several times. He had been in the other class at the high school. He had moved away before Christmas and was supposed to be in Germany with his parents, where his dad was starting a new job.
Susan approached Tim, looking at his tiny body beneath her. He was strapped down the same way she had been, with a thick leather strap around his shoulders and chest and hands and legs strapped to the bed. Not that it was necessary to keep him tied up anymore. There was no way he could go anywhere. He kept falling in and out of consciousness and was barely breathing. Susan touched his pale skin gently, then spoke to him.
"I'm gonna get us out of here. I'll run and get help."
She sobbed while realizing Tim might not even have that much time, that leaving him might be the same as killing him. She reached over to grab the straps, opening them, when she heard the sound of more moaning coming from behind another door. She rushed to it and opened it.
Then her heart stopped.
In there, she saw four more teenagers in dog cages. All were skinny and pale and looked more dead than alive. Susan gasped and clasped her mouth. Susan knew these four kids, but they weren't from her school. They lived in Sonderho, a town at the other end of the island, and they were school dropouts. Some came from foster homes, others had parents so drunk they didn't even care what their kids were up to. They were troubled kids.
The kind of kids no one would miss.
Susan fell to her knees, staring at their almost lifeless bodies, then felt the terror strike her as she realized these kids had been here for a long time, probably a lot longer than her. These kids were dying, yet he was keeping them here, why? To squeeze out a few last drops of blood from them?
The thought made her sick to her stomach.
Susan grabbed the door to one of the cages, but it was locked. She pulled it in frustration, crying in desperation, then fell back on her knees, exhausted, while the boy behind the bars was barely breathing. She wondered if he even knew what was going on anymore or if he had given up and sunk into the blissful darkness. Had he embarked on his path to leave this earth?
"I'll get help," she whispered to him and to the rest of them, who barely noticed she was there.
"I promise you. I'll get help."
She pulled herself up to her feet, stood for a few seconds and gathered all the strength she could when she heard all the clocks in the house simultaneously strike. They were chiming, bonging and bursting into a variety of tunes, almost like a concert.
It was midnight.
Chapter Forty-Two
She hid in a cabinet and closed the door by keeping her fingers in the crack, holding the door closed. She heard the front door open.
A cold rush of air went through the house and then everything went quiet. Susan held her breath as she looked out of the crack in the cabinet door. In the distance, she saw the man, the shadowy figure as he rushed across the marble tiles, making no sound as he moved, and she wondered if his feet even touched the floor. He was wearing his mask, as usual, probably ready to enter her room and start the tapping of her blood. He disappeared, then came back into the hallway with all the clocks. It didn't take him long before he noticed the open doors leading to Tim and then to the room with the other teenagers.
Susan tried hard not to make a sound, but her fingers were hurting from holding the door closed.
"Susan?" he called, breathing heavily behind the mask. "Where are you? You know you can't hide from me. Su-u-san. Su-u-san. SU-SAN!"
He looked at the teenagers, then rustled one of the cages.
"Where is she?"
The boy inside of it didn't react. The man calmed himself down. She noticed that his skin wasn't as scaly when he entered the room but now it seemed to be cracking and he looked at his hands, lifting them up in the air.
"I need her, damn it," he said. '"Look at what is happening to me. You're doing this to me, Susan. You hear me? You're the reason I am falling apart now. Please, just show yourself. I need you. I need your blood. All the others, they are almost empty now, whereas you still have the good stuff inside of you, the stuff I need. Yours is the best, Susan, did you know that? Yours is the best, better than any of the others."
Susan held onto the cabinet door, her fingertips painfully strained. She could see him moving around the room in his black clothes, rushing past her soundlessly.
Susan held her breath as he started to open the built-in cabinets one after another, starting at the end of the room and moving up toward her. It was only a matter of seconds before he would open hers.
Susan closed her eyes as she heard the doors slam against the wall behind them, then decided to make a run for
it before he reached hers. She jumped out and fell onto the tiles.
"There you are," the man said and rushed toward her, his feet barely touching the ground. Susan jolted to her feet and started to run when a hand grabbed her by the throat and made her fall back.
"There you are," he repeated, holding her tightly. He smelled her skin. "You seem to be bursting with the good stuff. Oh, how I crave your blood right now, so badly I could almost…"
He pulled her toward the door, but Susan screamed and fought him the best she could. She bit him, hard, sinking her teeth into his old and scaly skin; then, as he roared in pain and removed his hand, she hit her clenched fist into his mask. The blow was forceful and made him pull back, while her hand was hurting from the meeting with the thick plastic. To her surprise, the mask had hurt the man's face pretty badly because he was screaming in pain and, as he did, Susan turned around, rushed back into the hallway, and sprang for the front door.
Chapter Forty-Three
She was sitting in the terminal, drinking coffee, waiting for the ferry to arrive, when they approached her. Maya felt nervous, yet very determined as she, along with Samuel, walked up to Leonora Dragstedt. The woman glared at them with great surprise.
"Not you again."
"Yes, us," Maya said as she pulled out a chair and sat down.
Leonora looked at her watch. "I should be getting back to my car soon. I have to be in it when they start to board the ferry."
Maya pulled out a piece of paper and placed it on the table in front of her. "We need to talk."
Leonora looked at it, then sunk back in her chair. "W-where did you get this?"
"Your brother's computer," Samuel said.
"But he isn't really your brother," Maya said.
Leonora stared at Asgar's birth certificate in front of her, where her name was written on top. She shook her head with a sigh.
"He's your son?" Maya asked.
She nodded.
"And you never told him?" Samuel asked.
"How could you keep that a secret from him?" Maya asked.
"I had no choice. I was young," she said. "About your age. I got pregnant. It was a scandal; my parents wouldn't have it and they sent me away. They paid off Sven, the father of the child, and sent both of us away. Sven spent all the money on gambling and, last I heard, he's back on the island, working at the harbor. But he kept his promise to my parents and never told a soul. Meanwhile, I stayed at my aunt's house north of Copenhagen till it was time for me to give birth. As soon as I came home from the hospital, I found my parents waiting at my aunt's house. They took him. They told me to never come back to the island again. I lived with my aunt for a few months before she told me I had to leave. I found a place to live with the sister of a friend I knew till I could graduate high school, then got a job and worked my way through college. I did my best to forget my past and especially the child. I even got married, but we couldn't have any more children. I tried to move on and never look back, I really did."
"But he found you?" Maya asked.
She nodded, a tear shaping in the corner of her eye. "One day, he wrote to me on Facebook. He had searched for me, he said, and now he wanted to meet. I didn't know if he knew or not, but now that you found the birth certificate, I’m guessing he did. He must have found it among my parents’ belongings."
"He wanted to meet you because you were his mother," Samuel said. "But you refused to."
"What could I have done?" Leonora asked. "I wanted to meet with him, I wanted to so badly to see my only child, but I didn't dare to. What if my parents found out?"
"You were afraid of them?"
"Not for me. I am a grown woman, but for him. He was in their care. I was scared of what they might do to him if he found out."
Maya sighed and nodded. "And now you worry that something did happen, right?"
She nodded, the tear escaping her eye and rolling across her cheek. "I fear he might have confronted them with it, asking them about it, telling them he wanted to meet me, and then they…"
"Killed him," Samuel said.
Leonora sniffled and looked up, then nodded. "Yes."
Chapter Forty-Four
I was sitting in my kitchen writing on my laptop when a car drove up in front of my house. I had let Victor stay home from school one more day to spend it with Skye. They were playing in the living room, so I hurried up and closed the door before I walked to the front door and opened it. I grabbed my coat and put it on.
Out of the car stepped Maya, Samuel, and Leonora Dragstedt. It was an odd combination, but with what was going on these days, I was getting quite used to odd.
"Maya? What’s going on?" I asked.
She approached me. The wind bit my cheeks.
"We need your help, Mom. We need to talk to Morten."
"Morten? But why?"
Maya sighed.
"What's going on, Maya? You're scaring me."
"We know who killed Asgar," she said.
I stared at my daughter, eyebrows lifted. "Really?"
Leonora stepped forward, waving and smiling awkwardly. "Hi. I'm Leonora," she said.
"Nice to meet you," I said, shaking her hand, then rubbing my arms because I was freezing. I was hesitant to let them all inside since I was scared they might see Victor and Skye engaged in one of their games of making things float and throwing them around. "Could someone please explain what is going on?"
"Leonora is…was Asgar's mother," Maya said. "She was pregnant when her parents sent her away then took the baby and raised Asgar as their own to avoid a scandal. We believe Asgar found out and confronted them and then they…killed him."
"Really?" I asked.
Maya nodded. "We talked Leonora into telling her part of the story, but we don't want it to be to those people from Copenhagen. We trust Morten, so we wanted to tell him everything first."
I nodded. "I can't blame you, but Maya, there's…"
"I tried to call him," Maya said, cutting me off, "but he isn't answering. Do you know where he is?"
"He's at the golf club. They have the grand opening of the new hole today. Hole thirteen got a makeover as far as I heard. Maybe got a new sand trap or something, I don't know. Everyone is down there, the mayor, the commissioners, and everyone who is anybody on the island is present."
Maya nodded. "We'll find him there then."
"Wait," I said. "I'll go with you. Let me just call Sophia. She can stay with Victor and Skye."
"Mom, Victor is twelve years old, he can stay at home alone for a little while. He'll be fine."
I sighed, phone in my hand, dialing Sophia's number. "Not your brother, Maya. Not Victor."
Chapter Forty-Five
Mayor Rasmussen was in the middle of her speech when we entered the clubhouse. It was packed with people from all over the island, all dressed nicely for the occasion. The opening of a new hole on the golf course was a big event around here, or at least they managed to make us all think it was. The local newspaper, the Fanoe Gazette was even there, and so was the local TV station, TV-Fanoe. They all turned their heads as we entered.
The mayor continued her speech, looking every bit as mad as she had always been.
"As always, I would like to thank my family for supporting me,” she said like she was in the middle of a thank you speech for winning an award. As usual, she had probably completely forgotten why she was really there. But people thought it was a good speech and clapped. I spotted Morten in his uniform standing by the end wall and approached him.
"Emma?" he whispered. "What are you doing here? I’m working, you do know that, right?"
"Yes. That’s why I’m here."
"Maya? Samuel? What are you all doing here? And Leonora Dragstedt? Why is she here?"
I showed him the birth certificate. He read it, then looked up at me. "What on earth is this? What's going on?"
"We think Asgar's parents killed him," I said, a little too quietly to be heard over the clapping, when suddenly the clapping stoppe
d, and all eyes were on us. Even the mayor was staring.
I smiled awkwardly. "Because of this," I continued.
"What's going on here?" Mrs. Dragstedt asked and elbowed her way through the crowd. "Emma Frost? What on earth are you doing here? This is an invite-only event, not open to the public. Oh, maybe you're working on one of your delightful books? I hardly think this place is cliché-filled enough for you. You'll have more fun down at the harbor with your little friends."
Mrs. Dragstedt laughed. I looked her in the eye, then showed her the birth certificate.
Her smile froze.
"Care to elaborate?” I asked. "Maybe in front of your guests?"
"Oh, please," she said.
Her daughter stepped forward. "I told them everything, Mom."
Mrs. Dragstedt stared at her, contempt in her eyes. "You would, wouldn't you? You love to stir the pot a little. Cause a little havoc because that's what you love, isn't it? You love to see your mother in pain, don't you?"
"You're the one who has inflicted an entire life of pain on me."
"Oh, please, because I saved you from embarrassment? At least you had a life. You could move on and forget. I was the one who had to live with the shame each and every day of my life. Every day. Every time I…looked at him, at my own son."
Leonora was crying now, holding a hand to her chest. "He was mine, Mom. He was my son and you…you took him from me. Now you have taken him away forever."
My eyes met Morten's and he understood. He walked up to Mrs. Dragstedt. Her husband came up behind her.
"Mr. and Mrs. Dragstedt. I need you to come to the station with me. I think we need to have a talk."
Part IV
Two days later
Chapter Forty-Six