Page 2 of A Smile Full of Lies
A cop was sent to Stonewood Manor for a welfare check, a rookie beat cop named Alyssa Allen who didn’t know what she was walking into until it was too late.
She’s the one who found their bodies. She’s the one who called me.
“You need to come home, Knox. Something terrible happened.”
I still hear her voice sometimes. Still see her cell phone number on the screen. Still taste the bile I swallowed trying to get to my car without screaming because I knew whatever had happened, it must be really fucking bad.
I’d never get the image of my entire family being wheeled out of the house in body bags out of my head. Having to identify them was worse. Ava’s pale, lifeless face still haunted my nightmares even four years later.
I never wanted to go back inside that house. And I didn’t. Not until three years after the murders. The first time I walked through those doors again, I ducked back outside and threw up in the hydrangeas.
I wasn’t about to let a group that called themselves the fucking Southern Scare Collective use the site of my family’s murder as a goddamn venue.
Mostly, I avoided Stonewood Manor at all costs and kept to my small, normal house next door to the Coopers on the other side of town. My father had once called it the wrong side of the tracks, but it could never be wrong, because it was right next door to Ros.
Of course, I had convinced my parents to let me buy it with money from my trust fund when I was eighteen, because it was only two blocks away from Stonewood University’s campus, but my mother hadn’t been as easily fooled as my father. She’d seen my obsession with Ros for what it was, and warned me not to let it consume me like my father had allowed his job to consume him.
Still, the thought of someone wanting to use Stonewood Manor as a gimmicky Halloween venue pissed me the fuck off. My jaw locked, fire boiling low in my gut.
Then I called Josh Walker back.
He answered on the second ring, chipper as hell.
“Mr. Knox! I wasn’t sure I’d hear back so quickly.”
“Then you clearly don’t understand who the fuck you’re speaking to.”
Silence flooded the line. I waited.
“Well,” he tried, his tone light and practiced. Suddenly I could picture him on the other end of the phone, a salesman with too-white teeth and a slick veneer, “I was reaching out because my team had this idea for a… specialty haunted house event. Itwould be high-end and exclusive. No lame-ass actors in cloaks from The Party Barn or anything like that. Think immersive horror, full blackout zones, elite guests, full press coverage. We’ve done similar events at historical sites in Savannah and Charleston?—”
“No.”
“Sir, if I could just finish the pitch?—”
“You’re talking about a haunted house,” I said, voice like ice, “inmyhouse. The same house where my mother, father, and nineteen-year-old sister were murdered in cold blood. That’s your pitch?”
“To clarify,” he backpedaled fast, “it wouldn’t be a ‘haunted house’ in the cheesy sense. It would be an immersive art-meets-horror event. We’d honor the space — lean into real fear and the site’s real history.”
“Let me guess,” I muttered. “You’d charge triple what you should and sell VIP tickets to bored rich assholes who want to scream and pretend it means something.”
Josh hesitated.
I smiled, but it was more me baring my teeth than anything else. If he could have seen me, my smile would have sent chills up his spine, because the ice in my veins told me I was about to take pleasure in his pain.
“There it is.” I snorted and shook my head.
“I’m just saying — this kind of thing pulls numbers,” he said. “With the anniversary of the murders coming up, and ifyougave permission… it could be a massive draw. We’re talking amulti-weekend event. Live streams. Sponsor interest. The media alone?—”
“You think I want fucking media attention?” My voice dropped lower. Sharper. “You think I want cameras in the rooms where my family died?”
“I — I understand it’s sensitive?—”
“No, you fucking don’t.” I let the silence breathe. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about what happened in that house.”
Josh rushed to fill the gap.
“I don’t mean to be insensitive. But the public’s fascination with what happened to your family isalreadythere. You might as well profit from it. Everyone else will. We’re not talking horror hobbyists. We’re talking high society. Six-figure sponsorships. VIP guest lists. The potential payout could be?—”
