Page 56 of Horror and Chill
I grind my teeth before I respond. “Yes, I am.”
“She’s the one,” Evander nods.
He waits for me to blink. I don’t give him that. After a moment he drops back into his chair and scrubs both hands over his face.
“I’m still on board, I just wanted to check.”
We go over it again. Door. Windows. Hiding points. The order we step into view. The order we speak. Corwin will go first because he likes dramatic entrances. I will go second. Evander will go last.
The room quiets around us. The masks watch from the table. I try to imagine what she will look like the exact second she sees us in her room. Will she have that little tilt to her chin like she had at the barn? Will she whisper something for the camera out of habit? Will she laugh first just to show us she can?
“Tomorrow,” I say again.
We check the blades and sharpen them. We test the cuffs and the padlocks. We wipe prints. We wipe again. We fold dark clothes into a neat row and line up boots like soldiers.
When we finally step back from the table, it looks like someone emptied their pockets and laid their life out for inspection. I pick up my mask and hold it against my chest. It smells like resin and sweat.
“She’s going to run,” Corwin’s tone is flat. “They always run when the lights go out.”
“Then we'll teach her how to run toward us,” I answer. “Or we teach her not to run at all.”
Evander looks at me, eyes steady. “And if she chooses neither.”
“We are not a church,” I snap, leaving no room for argument. “We don't need anyone to kneel. We need her to look at us and see exactly what is in the room. If she can't see it, we take her somewhere quiet and teach her how to look.”
Corwin snorts. “You say that like you won’t choke yourself out if she tells you to leave.”
“I’ll choke on my own breath if she lies,” I answer. “Not if she speaks the truth. I can work with truth.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it. He hates when I sound older than him. He hates when I'm right.
We break for a few hours to eat and to stop vibrating like live wires. Food goes down without taste.
Sleep comes in pieces, and in it she smiles up at me from a pool of red, like she’s finally in on the joke. I wake with my hand clenched around nothing.
When morning comes,my skin feels too tight. I volunteer to watch her errands because if I stay in the house any longer, I will start moving the furniture to bleed off my excess energy. Corwinand Evander nod. They want to be in place early, anyway. They want to breathe her air before she gets there and claim the corners like dogs.
I dress in black, and I keep my mask in the passenger seat with its empty eyes turned toward me.
Her routine unfolds right in front of me. I trail her like a shadow that remembers how to smile. She never looks in the rearview long enough to notice.
I watch her push a cart down the grocery aisle, pretending she hates takeout even though we both know she lives on it. Then it’s the Halloween store, where she spends money like it isn’t real on way too many decorations I’m sure she plans to use as props. When she parks outside the nail salon, she tilts the mirror down and checks her lipstick, then laughs at herself and flips it closed. She’s easy to watch when she thinks she’s not performing. It feels like I'm stealing minutes that don’t belong to me.
Now I’m staring through the window while some stranger files her nails. She’s letting another man hold her hand, filing her pretty black nails. I sit in the car, watching his fingers on hers, and my teeth ache with anger. I want to snap his file and stuff it down his fucking throat. But I don’t move. She likes her nails black. If I ruin that, I ruin the part where she looks at her hands and thinks of herself as the kind of woman who can claw her way out of anything.
At the counter, she pays with a smile, then slips into the dusk sky. I watch as she walks to her car, just two spaces to the left of mine, and slides into it, tossing her bag carelessly onto the passenger seat. The second the engine turns, the stereo blasts so loud I hear it through my windows.Draculaby Bea Miller. Of course. Our little horror blasting an anthem about monsters and blood. It rattles her speakers, probably rattles her bones, and she looks like she wouldn’t care if it deafened her.
She doesn’t notice me slip out right after her. I keep a steady distance, headlights tucked far enough back to look like any other car. Through her rear window, I catch glimpses of her—hair bouncing with the beat, shoulders moving, one hand drumming the wheel while the other keeps her steady. When the chorus hits, both arms fly up, and for a second I see her silhouette throwing herself into it like the music belongs to her alone. I can’t hear her, but I can imagine the sound—raw, how it’ll break apart when she’s screaming for me instead.
Not once does she look back. Not at the mirrors, not at me. I could ride her bumper, I could cut my lights, I could pull alongside and she wouldn’t notice. She’s too far gone in her little concert, too high on the sound of her own fun.
She pulls onto her street, still singing, still moving with the music. I drop farther behind before she notices the same set of headlights following too long. When she turns into her drive, I roll past and cut the engine a block down. She climbs out of her car and pauses just long enough to glance up and down the street. Nothing stirs. No one watching her but me. She heads up the steps, keys in hand, door swinging open like she can’t wait to get back inside her own little world.
I kill the engine and sit in the dark. Corwin and Evander are already waiting, tucked away inside her walls, biding their time. All I have to do is wait for Evander’s text that she’s asleep. Then I’ll go in. Then we’ll strip away every illusion she still clings to.
Soon, Little Horror. You’re going to get everything you crave and more.
21
