Authors: Gretchen McNeil
T.J. grabbed the door handle and pressed down on the latch.
It clicked and he pushed the door open. He waited a few moments, then called out. “Hello?”
No response.
Without looking at each other, both Meg and T.J. reached out and grasped hands. The anger and resentment she’d felt toward him a few moments earlier vanished in an instant. There was something very wrong about the house, and whatever they were about to find, they’d discover it together. With a deep breath they stepped inside.
The house was deathly quiet. And dark. Other than the ambient light of the rapidly descending sun, there wasn’t a single bit of luminescence, man-made or otherwise. Not only that, but it smelled musty and damp, like an old, abandoned warehouse. Meg shivered. The house was even colder than White Rock House. It didn’t feel like the kind of place that had hosted a raging party the night before. It was more like a mausoleum.
They tiptoed from the entryway into the living room and Meg realized right away why the house was so cold. Every window was open. The gauze curtains were soaked through and billowed heavily in the breeze. Beneath her feet, the carpet squished with water, and every piece of furniture within ten feet of an open window was sopping wet.
“What’s going on?” she whispered. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like there was anyone within earshot to hear her, apparently.
T.J. gripped her hand tighter and whispered too. “I don’t get it. Where is everyone?”
There was a flash of light, a whirl of movement and sound. Suddenly the whole room sprang to life. Every light in the living room illuminated—overheads, standing torches, wall sconces. Even faux flickering “candles” around the fireplace. The room danced in warm, yellow light. The ceiling fans whirled to life, spinning at breakneck speed, dangerously close to ripping free of their moorings and catapulting across the room.
The speakers kicked in at full volume with a thump of sound that almost knocked the breath out of Meg. She screamed but could barely hear herself above the noise. The volume was maxed out, the bass was cranked up, and Meg could feel the beats of the music ricocheting through her body. There seemed to be two tracks playing at the same time: one was a ’40s-esque big band track with pulsating conga drums and a screaming brass section that made her ears bleed; the other was like canned party music complete with unintelligible conversation and chinking crystal. A lady giggled on the soundtrack, high and piercing. It was meant to sound cheerful, but in that lifeless room it chilled Meg to the bone.
She wanted to run, but her feet were rooted to the soggy carpet.
T.J. released her hand and covered his ears as he scanned the room. After a moment, he dashed to the entertainment unit on the far side of the living room and dialed down the volume.
Instantly both the music and the sound of ambient party chatter dissipated.
“What the
fuck
was that?” T.J. panted. He was out of breath, like he’d just run a mile.
Meg was shaking from head to toe. “I … I don’t …” She couldn’t even put a coherent thought together, let alone verbalize it.
T.J. looked at his watch. “It’s exactly five o’clock.”
“Exactly?”
“Exactly.”
Meg’s head cleared as she realized what was happening. The lights, the music, the party. It was all fake. All of it.
“Oh my God.” She felt the warmth drain out of her body. “It’s on a timer.”
“That means …” T.J. paused and looked her straight in the eye, his face reflecting the terror building inside. “That means there’s no one here.”
THE ROOM SPUN. MEG BRACED HERSELF AGAINST
the wall as the horrifying revelation washed over her.
The house was dead.
There’d been a sense of comfort, however distant, in the idea that there was another house party going on here, just across the isthmus from White Rock House. Kind of like long-distance chaperones in case anything really bad happened. Only apparently the whole thing was a sham. The party, the people, the sense of warmth and safety. All of it was gone in an instant. It was all an illusion.
“What about Kenny and Nathan?” Meg said. Her voice was tight, her words choked off. She was having difficulty breathing and she shook from head to toe. “Do you think—”
“Hold up,” T.J. said. The calmness in his voice was instantly soothing. “First things first.”
He crouched down and yanked the entertainment center away from the wall. The flat-screen TV teetered and crashed onto the floor, but neither she nor T.J. even flinched. It didn’t matter.
“There’s a timer with two power strips attached. Looks like every electronic device in the room is plugged into them.” T.J. passed a hand over his head. “Maybe it’s just some kind of alarm system?”
“What, for all the cat burglars roaming around Henry Island?” Meg said. “And with every window open and the door unlocked? Not likely.”
“Okay,” T.J. said. “Then it’s here for a reason.”
The truth was horrifying. “To throw us off. To make us feel at home.”
“Which means whoever did this—”
“Killed Lori, Vivian, and Ben.”
T.J. nodded. “And probably—”
“Stop.” She knew what he was going to say.
And probably Nathan and Kenny
. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Okay,” T.J. said calmly. “But there’s another option.”
Meg’s voice shook. “One or both of them is the killer.”
“Yeah.” T.J. scanned the area at the back of the living room. “The stairs are near the kitchen,” he said. He took her hand lightly, as if he was afraid he would break her. “We should go together.”
She didn’t want to. She wanted to flee, to start running and never stop. But she knew T.J. was right: They needed to search the house and see if Nathan and Kenny were still there. They had to know.
Side by side, Meg and T.J. slowly walked through the living room. The curtains ballooned toward her and Meg cowered against T.J.’s arm. It was like they wanted to enfold her, keep her in that house forever. Everything felt tainted, and Meg didn’t want to touch anything. There wasn’t enough antibacterial soap in the world to wash away the feel of that house.
The living room opened into a large kitchen separated by a staircase. A phone was mounted on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. Meg held her breath as T.J. picked up the receiver and hit the
CALL
button. The house had electricity. Maybe, just maybe …
The handset’s
ON
light glowed in all its green glory. Meg waited, not even daring to breathe, desperate to hear the monotonous drone of a dial tone.
Silence.
T.J. clicked the power button a few times, but still nothing. “It’s charged, but no phone line.”
“No, it has to work. It has to.” She snatched the phone out of his hand and frantically hit every button on the receiver. “There’s power, so the phone has to work.”
“Meg.” T.J. placed his hand on top of hers. “Meg, there’s no dial tone.”
Meg couldn’t look at him. Tears welled up in her eyes, thick and blinding. All she could do was stare at the handset as T.J. slid his hand up her arm and around her shoulders. They were so close to safety. This stupid cordless phone that she so often took for granted could have been their salvation, their connection to the outside world. The phone was charged, it was on, glaring back at her indignantly, flashing the last number called....
Lawrence, John and Jean 360-555-2920
Meg straightened up. “What are Jessica’s parents’ names?”
“Huh?”
“Her parents. What are their names?”
“Uh …” T.J. shook his head, trying to get a handle on what she was asking. “Her dad’s John. And her mom’s …”
“Jean?”
“Yeah, I think so.” T.J. pulled his arm away. “How did you know?”
Meg shoved the phone in his hand. “Look.”
T.J. stared at the handset for a moment, then scrolled through the call log entry. “I think this is the number for White Rock House,” he said. “And it looks like they called it—” T.J. froze. His eyebrows pulled together in a look of utter bewilderment.
“What?”
T.J.’s eyes met hers. “It looks like they called White Rock House yesterday afternoon.”
Meg’s heart pounded in her chest. “That means someone’s here,” she screamed. “Someone must be in the house. Someone alive!”
She spun around blindly, as if expecting to find the Taylors standing there in the kitchen making dinner.
T.J. shook his head. “Meg, I don’t think—”
“No!” she snapped. “Someone’s here. We just have to find them.” Meg’s eyes drifted to the staircase. Of course! They must be upstairs sleeping or something. Without a second thought, she bolted up the stairs.
“Meg, wait!”
But she wasn’t listening. She took the stairs two at a time, desperate to get to the top. She knew there’d be someone there. Someone who could help. Had to be. There had to be someone. There had to be—
Meg never even saw what she tripped over. As she raced up the stairs and onto the second-floor landing, her foot hit something big and heavy on the ground. She lost her balance and flopped face-first over the object, landing half on it, half off it, and smacked her forehead on the thin rug.
“Meg, are you okay?” T.J. was just steps behind her. “What happened?”
Meg rolled onto her side, rubbing her head. “I’m fine. Just tripped on …” She looked back to see what she had fallen over.
It was a body. A huge body.
Kenny.
Her face was just inches from his. So close. His eyes were closed and his face peaceful. He wasn’t stiff and cold like Lori had been, evidence that he hadn’t been there long. And though Meg wished she could believe he was just taking a nap there on the floor, his body was utterly still, breathless and unmoving, and several red streaks marred his forehead and cheek, cascading downward from his skull.
Meg scrambled away from the body as if it had been covered in poisonous snakes. Dead. Kenny was dead. She clawed at her clothes, trying to wipe the death off of her. It was too much. It was all too much.
“Meg!” T.J. had his arms around her in an instant, helping her off the ground.
“I can’t take it,” she sobbed. “I can’t take it anymore.”
T.J. stroked her hair. “I know, baby. I know.”
Meg buried her face in his shoulder. “When I saw the phone call I thought … I thought …”
“I know,” he said quietly. “But, Meg, that was the call I got. The one that was supposed to be from Mr. Lawrence.”
Meg pulled her head back. “What?”
“Yeah. The caller ID marks the call at the exact time we heard from Jessica’s dad. Or someone pretending to be Jessica’s dad, I guess. The connection was pretty bad.”
Meg wiped the tears from her cheeks. “It was the killer.”
“Yeah.”
They stared at Kenny’s body. Neither of them bent down to check for a pulse. Neither of them made a move to touch him.
The hair on the back of his head was slick and wet. Beside the body lay a black mallet, and Meg could see a chunk of Kenny’s dark, curly hair stuck to the metal head. Someone had bludgeoned him from behind. Kenny probably never even saw who hit him. Maybe that was a good thing, not seeing the approach of death. Maybe that made it easier? Or at least less painful.
A sudden noise brought Meg’s disconnected consciousness back into the terrifying present. Both she and T.J. froze. There was a rustling—like the movement of fabric—coming from a half-closed door to their left.
Meg held her breath. Nathan. It had to be Nathan. He’d had the opportunity to kill Lori and Vivian, and he could easily have put the ground-up pecans in Ben’s water bottle. And now Kenny. All of them went to Mariner—Nathan was killing them off one by one.
She grabbed T.J.’s jacket. “Nathan,” she mouthed, not daring to make a sound. She tried to pull him back down the stairs. “Nathan’s the killer.”
T.J. had something else in mind. He pressed his finger to his lips, then noiselessly lifted a large iron candelabra off an end table in the hall. He raised it above his head as he tiptoed to the door.
Meg followed right behind him. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt like she needed to be there, to be his backup, in case Nathan attacked him. Together, they could stop him before he killed someone else.
T.J. glanced at her and she watched as his lips silently counted.
One …
Two …
Three.
T.J. THREW HIS WEIGHT AGAINST THE DOOR AND
they barreled through. Meg half expected to be assaulted by a wild-eyed Nathan, wielding an ax. But no one lunged at them. In fact, nothing in the room moved, with the exception of ornate silk damask curtains, which like their lighter counterparts downstairs, billowed in front of open windows.
So much for Nathan.
Though being attacked by an insane killer might have been better than what they found.
Meg’s eyes drifted from the curtains to the bed in the center of what appeared to be the master bedroom. Two people lay in bed together, spooning. The man was older—early sixties perhaps, judging by the thinning wisps of gray hair combed across his head. He had his arm draped across the woman, who looked about the same age but with highlighted brown hair.
Like Kenny, they looked like they were just asleep, and Meg wished with all her heart that she could believe it was true. But their facial features sagged unnaturally, and their skin had a white-gray pallor. There was a smell in the air, putrid and nauseating. Meg pulled her sweatshirt sleeve down over her hand and held it over her nose and mouth.
Dead. Just like Kenny.
T.J. covered his nose and mouth as well as he edged his way around the bed. He used the candelabra to pull the curtains away from the window just to make sure no one was there. Then he checked the closet.
Meg turned away. She knew—she just knew—that there was no one alive in that house. She was tired of death, tired of feeling the weight of it pressing in on her. She desperately wanted to be out of the house, off the island, away from all of it.
Meg turned to leave when something caught her eye. The door to the bathroom off the master suite was wide open. It was dark inside, but Meg could see something on the mirror. It looked like writing.