Shyla's POV

We had finally reached the last one. The final murder. No more pictures, blood, sayings, and no more secrets. I think that I have finally found out everything there is to know about Dixey. You hurt Dixey,  Bailey comes for you, and if you hurt Bailey, you won't see the light of day again.

We walked up the driveway of the last house, Rachel's house. It was pale blue with black shutters and a black door. The law looked like a wreck, almost like a pig just ran through and had a party with zombies. The smell was the worst of it.

It smelled of rotten flesh, a scent that we all knew too well now, and gallons of perfume. 

"For the most popular girl in school, you would think that they would take care of their house more," Andrew said, picking up a beer can from the lawn and dropping it right after.

 "You must remember though, it has been one week and three days since the last murder, and Rachel was the last one to die so..." Bailey reminded us.

We all kept walking toward the house, trying not to throw up at the smell. It was stronger than the other places, and the fact that this was the last one, I could only imagine what had happened here.

All of us had seen burned bones made into ash, a beaten body, a drowning, and even suffocation, who could do any more than that?

I looked over to Bailey, her nose deep in her journal, and saw that she had drops of blood on her shirt.

"Bailey, where did the blood come from?" I asked.

Bailey didn't look up from her book and answered, "Came from the crime scenes."

"What did you do? Did you touch the saying and wiped off the blood on your shirt?" Amanda added.

"If I did that then I would have left my fingerprints at the scene, and they would think... that it was me," Bailey was still looking at her journal, but she seemed to fade off at the end of her sentence.

"Well, where else did it come from?" Andrew asked.

We were now surrounding her, I at the left, Amanda behind, and Andrew to the right. Bailey sighed and closed her journal, not putting a bookmark in. She continued to the house, not answering us, and walk right in.

She didn't knock, look through the windows, or even hesitate, she just walked right in like she owned the place. We followed her but looked around to see if anyone was watching us. A car passed by but didn't seem to see us, hopefully.

As soon as we went through the door, the smell was worse. Looking around a bit, I saw sprinkles of blood all over the walls and floor. We followed Bailey to the kitchen and saw even more blood.

Andrew's POV

I walked to the sink, seeing that that seemed to be the source where the blood coming from. Once there, I was able to see the weapon used on Rachel, a knife. The blade was coated in crimson blood from the tip to the base. Most of the handle on the knife had turned burgundy from the blood, but it was very interesting the way the blood had stained the handle.

It seemed to leave a handprint like someone was still holding the knife. Curiosity got the best of me and I picked the knife up, feeling the blood along the blade and the handle in my hand.

"ICE!!!!" I heard Bailey scream.

I dropped the knife back in the sink and spun around to be met face to face with a fire-eyed blond. She gripped my shoulders, almost to the point that I thought that they would snap, and she started to shake me.

"What the heck do you think you're doing?!" she screamed at me, her grip getting tighter on my shoulders.

"I-I was j-just lo-looking at the-the blade," I stuttered. 

The pain was unbearable. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw hints of red coming from where Baileys nails were digging into me. A stinging sensation went through me and I screamed in agony. I couldn't hold it in anymore, the pain was just too much.

As fast as the pain started, it left. My aching shoulders were numb from the pain and squeezing. I collapsed to the ground, my legs unable to stand from the torture they had faced, and I felt Shyla and Amanda run over to me.

Through the tears in my eyes, I saw that Bailey against the wall, holding onto her head. She seemed to be screaming something, but I couldn't hear. I looked over at the others to see them covering their ears, so Bailey must be screaming.

I then went to look at my shoulders, but I couldn't. They were covered in blood. I gathered all of my strength and rolled up my right sleeve. The nail marks were deeply engraved into my skin, each of the five fingers was clearly shone. The blood was still oozing out of each one of the punctures, and the pain was becoming unbearable.

Each of us turned our heads around the same time to look at Bailey, but she was gone. There was a sudden slam of the front door, and we all got up.

 The girls helped me to the door, and we looked outside of the window to see Bailey running across the street. We all screamed her name through the window, but she either ignored us or didn't hear.

"Why would she do such a thing like that?" Amanda asked, looking at the blood on me.

"I touched the weapon. I think we're in trouble now, or at least I am," I answered.

Shyla shook her head, "No if you're in trouble then all of us are. We're a team, and we don't leave anyone behind."

I gave them a smirk, and we rapped my crimson colored shoulders in my jacket. We continued through the house, deciding to take care of the weapon problem later, and went to the stairs. The blood on the floor was the way we knew that we were following the right pathway.

The blood got denser on the way up, and with each step, there was another bloody footprint. Shyla took pictures of one of the prints, and we were quick to be at the top. 

I looked down the hallway to the left and saw what looked like a struggle. The table and vase that was against the wall was knocked over, the vase being shattered into pieces. There were dents in the walls and picture frames either knocked off of their nails or tilted. 

From what I could see through the dust, there seemed to be drag marks on the floor. I walked to them, following their path and the girls followed. The lines reached a door that was open, almost ready to break off.

We all walked into the room, both with curiosity and fear. It seemed to be a bedroom that belonged to an adult, and not a pre-teen. The room had brown wallpaper that had red robins on it. The floor was a beige carpet, covered in dirty and clean clothes that seemed to have been worn only once in a lifetime.

I looked on the far side of the room and noticed a desk filled with jewelry and makeup. The jewelry looked worn beyond the point of breaking and the makeup looked as though a toddler had used it. On the walls above the desk were photographs of a family.

A mother and father holding each other like they still had that spark like most couples did when they first fell in love. They were holding the shoulders of two children, one being Rachel and the other being her younger sister Jill. Both of them looked just as happy as their parents, but something was different. Their eyes.

Not all of their of course, but one pair of eyes that looked like they had something to hid and were worried about it. Those eyes belonged to Rachel. Her once doe brown eyes had seemed to fade into a cold hard stare. It sent chills up my spine just to take a look at her again. 

 Shyla must have seen this too, as she took a picture of it as well as the rest of the room. The drag marks seemed to be coming from under the bed, along with the smashed lamp that was sitting on the table next to the bed.

Amanda walked over to the bed and got on her hands and knees. She looked under it and reached a hand in. As she reached, we heard the door open and close from downstairs. Shyla and I spun around to see who was coming up the stairs that were now thumping in our direction. I saw Amanda from the corner of my eye stand up with something in her hand, but it wasn't a photograph. 

The thumping grew louder and louder and it walked down the hall, coming in our direction still. 'Why couldn't they have just gone the other way down the hall,' I pleaded in my head. The steps stopped right on the outside of the door frame. I couldn't see the figure, but I didn't want to.

The door was still open, so we could have run out, pushing the person away as we screamed in terror. But we were frozen with fear. Fear that we had been caught. Fear that the murderer had come back to look at what they did again. Fear that Rachel's parents came back to see their little girl again even though the police told them not to. Everything was filled with fear.

"I know you're there guys. Please come out," I heard.

We were all still frozen with fear, unable to tell who the voice was. The stinging sensation of the cuts in my shoulder was starting to return as the person from outside the door frame came into view.

"Why are you back?" Amanda asked, still not moving from her spot near the bed.

   The blue-eyed blond could not answer and broke down in front of us. She dropped to her knees and began to sob, holding herself and covering her mouth to try and stop her cries. But that didn't work.

"I-I di-didn't want.... we j-just.....," She tried to say. Soon her cries turned into light shutters and she spoke, "We didn't want you to be the ones who are framed for this massacre. The ones who did it should be the ones held accountable, not you."

"You could have just told Andrew that he shouldn't have done that Dixey," Shyla said.

"I know, and I just want you to know that Bailey... won't be coming back for a while," Dixey said.

The sound of her voice was no longer smooth, full of life. It was more of a lonely, heartbroken sound that knew that everything was nothing more than just a game. Like the voice lost something that was a part of her, and the thing was Bailey.

I don't know how I knew, but something happened to Bailey, and she was gone. Dixey looked weaker than before. She never.... did this.

"Where is she?" I asked.

"Know where of your concern. Now, let's go see the body as soon as possible. There's a car outside that won't stop passing the house," Dixey replied, wiping the last of the tears away and going towards the door.

"Are you sure? I mean, we don't have to do this if you don't want to," Amanda said, stepping in front of Dixey so she couldn't get through.

Dixey took a deep breath, closing her eyes, the let it out while saying, "I need to see the body again. It's what Bailey needs."

'Again?" I questioned in my mind. Dixey gently pushed Amanda away from the door and walked out, not looking to see if we were coming along with her or not. We decided to follow her, considering that she seemed close to fainting at our feet at any moment.

"So you followed the bloody steps up I take it," Dixey said, still heading down the corridor.

"Yeah, so why are we going this way if the blood leads the other way?" Shyla asked.

"Because the killer was smart, clever. They cleaned the blood up and moved a trail of it towards that room. It just so happens that that room was the mother and father. Rachel died in her own room as Fiona did, but Fiona's death was much more quick than Rachel's," Dixey explained to us.

We reached a door that was closed. Police tape was covering the door so much that the dark brown color only appeared in the corners. The tape looked ripped however, someone else must have been here as well.

"Why is there so much tape?" I asked, "The scene can't be that bad."

"Think again, Andrew," Dixey said.

 Dixey reached for the door handle, twisted, and stopped.

"What are you waiting for? Open it up," Shyla said.

"Just say that you won't run as you had before. This one was the worst death of them all. Pacifica, Wendy, even Catherine's death was nothing compared to this," Dixey said, looking us dead in the eye.

"Promise," I said.

"There's no going back from this," Dixey assured us.

"We're in this together Dixey. Now open the door," Amanda said.

Dixey took another deep breath and opened the door.