- STEVEN -

It was a tall lady with fiery red hair who stepped through the door. Her arms were thin, her neck smooth, her chest a dainty silhouette that bulged with her breasts. Her legs, pale but supple, were exaggerated by the thin set of high heels on which she stood a few inches taller than Mia.

Whoa, my brain buzzed. She's so freaking hot. The outside air still drifting through the open door was a wintry wave sweeping over my feverish flesh. I trembled as droplets of sweat began running down my palms, gluing my shirt tenuously to my back, slithering between my legs. It felt like I was losing control of my lower body—well, part of it anyway.

"And who are you two?" the ginger lady spoke as she slammed the door shut.

I blinked once, twice, thrice. 

My muscles tensed; my chest buckled; my knees drew close and knocked together. 

"Do you speak English!?" she screeched. "I asked you a question!"

"I'm...I'm uh," I sputtered, felt my tongue dry out.

"We're students," Ahmed finally said. "Students at EdgeWay, and we—"

"Stop." Marissa held up her hand for silence, manicured nails painted in scarlet peeking over the tips of her fingers. She turned to Mia. "You let them inside this house!?"

"I didn't, Marissa! I swear! They were here when I got—"

"What!?" Marissa raged, whirling to face me and Ahmed again. "You mean to tell me you...you children...broke into my home!? HOW DARE YOU!"

Whoa—she's got a temper. I took a step back. Still pretty hot though.

"We didn't exactly break in," Ahmed offered timidly. "The door was open..."

"GET OUT! GET OUT NOW!"

"Marissa, please," I begged. "We only came because—"

"I DON'T CARE WHY YOU'RE HERE!" Wildly, without warning, she grabbed the house phone off its hook on the nearby counter, almost wrenching the phone station to the ground. "YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO GET OUT OF MY HOUSE BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE!"

"Hey, just wait a sec—"

"GET OUT NOW!"

"But, Marissa—"

"I SAID OUT! I'LL HAVE BOTH OF YOU PROSECUTED FOR—"

"LANE MARTIN!" Ahmed finally screamed back.

Silence.

Marissa dropped the phone. "What did you just say?"

"Lane Martin—Lane Alexandria Martin."

She gasped, stalked closer to us. "...How do you know that name?"

"We know a lot more than her name," I added, moving to stand between her and Ahmed. "We know she went to trial, and we know you handled her case."

She folded her arms across one another.

"Marissa, we just want the truth," Ahmed said. "We're not accusing you of anything. But whatever happened to Lane...it was seriously messed up. A-and now there's some killer walking the streets and chopping up bodies all over town."

Marissa glanced away, then shut her eyes. "Lane Martin got what she deserved." A pause of silence filled the air. "Girls like her think they can get away with anything...even murder."

I gulped. "Are you saying she...killed someone?"

"No." Marissa shook her head, a sudden wistfulness in her voice. "But she would have. She would have killed every child in that school to get her way." She blinked, then stared straight into my eyes. "For some people, good looks aren't enough. They have to have everything—everyone—under their control. And they're willing to destroy lives to get what they want. If you gave them the earth, they'd steal the whole galaxy."

Marissa looked up and off into space, bent her neck sideways before continuing: "Lane was like that. Nothing was ever enough for her." A subtle sigh brushed between her lips. "But then one night...one night, she lost everything."

"The trial?" I asked tentatively. "Are you talking about the—?"

"Oh," Marissa laughed bitterly, "she lost more than some meaningless trial. She lost control; she lost every power she'd ever had over anyone. She even lost GiGi."

"G-GiGi?" Ahmed stammered. "GiGi Gravestepper?"

What? But that's—

"Yes," Marissa said lightly, nodding. "Yes, I believe she was named Gravestepper. How ironic, really."

I felt my face flush, heat prickling my cheeks.

"She was a coward, that GiGi. A pathetic, aimless coward." Marissa blinked twice. "I saw her dying, yet somehow she lived. But Lane—she was another story."

Mia bowed her head at the mention of Lane, slinked back into a corner. "Marissa," she said in a voice barely above a whisper, "tell them...tell us about Lane. What happened to her?"

"She died." Marissa turned to her with narrowed eyes. "She's dead—and that's all you need to know."

I took a step closer. "Then how do you explain the bloody article you had stuffed inside that pile of magazines?"

"I don't know. Maybe you should ask EdgeWay's loving pastor," she gave a sarcastic smile.

"My dad? What does he—?"

"Your dad?" Marissa trilled. "Marcus Hall is your father? Oh, forgive me—I had no idea I was in the presence of royalty." She faux-curtsied in front of me, bending her knees and tilting her head before reassuming her initial height.

"Look, lady," I barked, eyes narrowing as my lips bent into a scowl, "I don't know what your problem is, but leave my dad out of it. He's got enough to deal with already, and—"

"Oh, don't tell me he's brainwashed you too."

"Brainwashed? What the heck are you talking about?"

She rolled her eyes again.

"Answer me!" I screamed.

She smiled down at me. "Not a chance."

Blood began burning in my veins.

"It took me a long time to forget that night," Marissa continued, "and no one—not you, not a psychotic stalker, and certainly not Marcus Hall—is going to make me relive it."

I clenched my fists. "I don't know if you've noticed, but people are dying! Do you really think someone crazy enough to carve a dead girl's name into a corpse has any problem coming after you?"

"Maybe I'm ready," she said matter-of-factly. "And maybe this is what Marcus gets for hiding the truth all these years." She paused, peered to the left. "I made peace with that night—what I did, what Marcus did—I came to terms with it all, finally moved on. And if this is some long-awaited reckoning, then at least I can face my future knowing that Marcus's hell will be so, so much worse than mine."

She uncrossed her arms and sauntered over to the front door, thrusting it open. "Now go. Both of you." She cast a backward glare. "If either of you ever comes to this house again, I promise I will make you regret it."

****

I couldn't speak.

Ahmed climbed from the asphalt into the passenger's seat, stared at me for a second and then looked away, lowering his head.

I locked the doors once I was inside, all of them clicking shut at once, and flicked on the headlights. Bright white glinted against the road, illuminated its grassy fringes.

The dark night whistled, branches creaked, leaves shivered in the thunderous whispers of the icy air.

A crescent moon hung behind clouds airbrushed across the skyline, joined in the darkness by a company of stars.

A sigh escaped me, my chest relaxing.

"She coulda been lying, you know." Ahmed's words were the first to be uttered.

I started the engine. Metal whirred in smoky spurts that blasted fog into the evening shadows.

"I mean, she could've just been making stuff up to scare us."

My eyes caught the road, didn't let go.

"Just because she was—"

"AHMED!"

He lowered his head again. "Sorry."

I sighed. "One more stop, alright?" I muttered. "I've gotta get gas, then I'll drop you off at your house."

The road dragged, miles of the same ragged, ash-grey ground. I held my hands on the wheel at ten and two, briefly considered clicking on the radio—briefly considered, refused.

What I needed was quiet.

The screaming inside my head was already loud enough.

Ahmed kept his head down, eyes glued to the floor as we finally pulled up to an Exxon with eight pumps.

Stopping briefly at a traffic light before cutting a right on red, I rode up an asphalt ramp to the closest pump and got out of my car to load gas, sliding my credit card in the slot for prepays.

As I was reaching out for the pump handle, the faintest of noises seemed to chirrup at my ears—light, airy, high pitched. It almost sounded like a voice...like...laughing?

I glanced left, right, left again.

The only other car on the lot was pulled in between the grungy white lines of a parking space, absconded ominously by the shadow of an overhead tree with low-hanging branches.

Squinting my eyes, I could blurrily make out the image of a moving body—no, two moving bodies. 

And one of them was blond.

That frilly laughter sounded again, this time decidedly erupting from inside that car.

I stepped away from the gas pump and started inching closer to the trills of laughter—trills accompanied suddenly by heavier, throaty groans.

"Oh...oh!" the deeper voice moaned.

"You like that?" giggled the higher one.

I could hear lips smacking against flesh, then the surge of more clarion laughter.

A few steps further, and I stopped in my tracks.

"No way," I breathed, getting my first real look at the mysterious couple. "L—Landon?"

Some blond girl had her bright-red lips smashed against his, their jaws locked together in a rhythmic dance as she shoved her way inside his mouth. Her hands held his face, fingers arched and nails painted in dark streaks of crimson, as giggles escaped in her attenuated breaths.

A hand fell on my shoulder, and I whirled, spinning in fear with my fists balled and my muscles tensed.

"Whoa, dude, it's just me." Ahmed held his hands up in defense. "Sorry, didn't mean to scare you."

I unclenched my fists. "You didn't scare me," I mumbled.

Ahmed stepped to the side. "Is that...Landon and Shelby?" 

"Shelby?"

"She came to my house earlier...said she was dating Landon."

"Looks like they're more than dating," I chortled.

Ahmed shrugged.

I shook my head, then turned my back to the crickety couple sucking face in the dark. "Come on," I said to Ahmed. "Let's get this gas and get the heck outta here."

I plodded back to my car, grabbed the pump, and started gassing up, trying my best to shut out the persistent waves of chirpy tittering and clangorous grunts as they vibrated through the air.

Can this guy just freaking climax already? I felt my grip tightening on the gas pump.

Eventually, the sound of the surging gasoline coupled with the thumping inside my own head seemed to drown them out.

It felt like an eternity before the pump finally clicked.

I glanced up at the meter. That's it, forty bucks. I slid the pump back into its slot and shut my car's gas tank.

The air was smooth, breathless—silent.

Wait...? I swiveled my head back to the shaded parking space. The car was still there, but it was quiet under the shadowy arms of the foliage overhead. And not only that: the doors, all four of them, were wide open.

Huh?

"Ahmed," I whispered through my car's open front door.

He glanced out at me. "Yeah?"

"Were those doors always open?"

He twisted in his seat. "What...no?"

I turned, started walking slowly toward what appeared to be a now-abandoned vehicle.

The shade of tree branches reached down, blanketing the car in unforgiving darkness. Night air breezed by, tiny rocks rolling across dark asphalt like tumbleweeds whipped in sultry wind.

A light crunch sounded in the distance.

Then another.

Another still.

Ahmed had caught up to me at the sound of a fourth, his soft footsteps trailing my own across the faintly crackling ground.

"Steven..." His voice was low, shaky. "Dude, this is really starting to freak me out."

We stepped closer to the car, the frostiness in the air seeming to thicken with each passing moment.

I walked around the left side of the car, stopping just behind the open backseat door.

No one.

Not a soul was in sight, not a single face-sucking soul. They'd both ditched the car. 

But why?

I pressed the light attached to the roof of the car, flooding the leathered seats with the pale shimmer of a gleaming pearl. Thin blond strands clung to the cushions beneath; and furtively, tucked below the squared floor mat behind the driver's seat, a tiny white corner peeked from the shadows.

There's no freaking way.

I squatted, bending to reach the floor as I peeled back the mat to grab the collection of pages underneath.

"Ahmed," I gulped, turned to him. "It's...this is Lane's file."

His eyes grew wide. "But why would Landon and Shelby have—"

"Wait," I hesitated, flipping the sheets, noticing almost instantly the thickness of the pages. "This isn't the same file; it's...bigger." I pulled the paperclip from the top corner and spread out the document in its entirety on the car seat.

The final four or so pages weren't even pages—they were full-sized, glossy photographic renderings.

"What the..." Ahmed trailed off as he looked over my shoulder.

I shuffled through the pictures. The first was an image of an empty bathtub, and the second was a closer shot—I could see blood smeared across the dingy inside wall of the tub.

I gasped the moment I caught a glimpse of the third—angled on the tub's edge, in full and florid color, was the form and figure of Marissa Harraway, grasping the blond hair of a girl who wore a bitter scowl and whose face was streaked with tears. 

And we both knew who that girl was.

Her narrow frame sat fearfully inside the tub, sudsy water surrounding her waist, upper thighs, and feet. Eyes shut and eyebrows arched in agony, she'd folded her arms across her chest as if to shield herself from shivering. And in that instant, it dawned on me that she wasn't wearing any clothes. 

The tips of her knees were clearly visible, and the ends of her breasts peeked out beneath the shadow of her crossed arms, though her more scandalous parts were blocked from view by the water and its thick, white bubbles.

"Ahmed...look."

He drew closer, and I watched his eyes pop the moment he got a good look at the photograph. "That's...that's Lane, but—I just...I don't get it." He turned to me. "Steven, I'm so lost here."

"It looks like Marissa's...bathing her." I winced.

"And she's bleeding," Ahmed added lowly.

I looked closer, noticed swaths of dark red that looked to be swirling amid the frothy soap.

I reached for another photo but stopped the moment I heard what sounded like a footstep. I spun on the seat to face the night, Ahmed turning as well.

Two more light crunches of the asphalt, distant and barely audible, pitter-pattered in the wind.

I grabbed Lane's file with all the photos and handed them to Ahmed. "Here," I ordered. "Take pictures. I'm gonna check and make sure no one else's here."

I stood up slowly from the car seat and stepped past Ahmed to listen. My fists clenched instantly at the noise of a branch above as it was rustled by an icy breeze.

Arms and legs scraggled by the freezing wind, I forced myself to stride onward. Plodding to the Exxon convenience store, I stopped at the bricked building and peered around to the other side of the gas station. I moved my head from left to right in the dim light of street lamp posts, searching for anything, any sign that someone might've been there...and then I saw her.

Shelby!? My mouth fell agape.

Along a stretch of barbed wire fence mere meters from the road hung the body of Shelby Bark, her neck and wrists strapped tightly to the fence with spiked coils. Both of her upper thighs had been pierced through with jagged barbs, and bright-red blood oozed past her knees and ankles, dripping dark stains onto the rocks and grass below.

Ragged fear gripped every part of my body as I began to shake, to shiver numbingly. All sensation in my legs seemed to disappear; only my arms remained, and I wrapped myself with them, fighting the cold—the terror—as best I could.

At some point, my knees must have bent, my feet must have stepped. I couldn't feel myself move, but I could see Shelby's corpse inching closer.

I was magnetized, unable to fathom what my legs were doing, yet summarily unable to stop. 

As I drew closer, I could hear something—a scratchiness, a rumbling. Could it be...breathing?

"Oh, my gosh!" I stopped creeping forward and burst into a full-on sprint, bounding to Shelby in seconds. "Shelby!" I screamed. "Shelby! Wake up!" I grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her vigorously back and forth.

A gravelly cough tore from deep inside her throat, rocking her entire body tethered to the wireframe fence. Quivering in the glimmers of light that fell all around, she managed to pry open both eyes, tiny slits of blue peeking out at me. 

"Y—you." Her usually high-pitched voice was heavy, laden with stone. "You're Marcus's boy," she rasped. "My, you've really...really g-grown up."