Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
Tabitha
‘Let me in.’ Tabitha pounded on her brother’s bedroom door. ‘I swear, if you don’t open up, I’m going to call Aunt Claudia. I’ve got my phone in my hand, I’m about to press her number. It’s ringing… oh, hi, Aunt Claudia.’
‘Stop.’ She heard him sliding his bedside table away then she almost fell in as he opened his door.
He snatched her phone out of her hands and put it in his pocket, before nudging her back onto the landing. She hadn’t called their aunt but the threat had worked. She poked her foot in the doorway. ‘I’m not moving until you let me in.’
His door creaked as he let it fall open.
‘I mean let me in.’ She pointed at his computer.
‘I need to know what’s happening in your head and that thing.
Who’s after you? You’re scaring me. First you shut me out of your room.
I don’t know if someone’s going to bash the door down and try to kill us.
’ She paused. ‘I saw that video. You’re a liar, Brian Thurston, and I want the truth. ’
‘I…’
‘No more lies. I will know if you’re lying.’
He sat on his bed, head in his hands.
The tears welling up in her eyes couldn’t be controlled.
She didn’t want to control them. What she’d since found out sat in her stomach like lead.
She took her phone back off him and opened up the online video that she’d downloaded from a skater’s TikTok account.
She pressed play and forced it into Brian’s face as they listened to what the boy had to say.
‘Shit, they found a body in the bushes at the playing fields off Chamberlain Drive. I was just here minding my own business and then, bang, cops everywhere.’ The boy in a puffer jacket holding a skateboard raised his brows.
‘They’ve found a body, an actual dead person, a woman.
RIP lady, whoever you might be.’ He banged his chest as a mark of respect but Tabitha thought it was anything but respectful given that he was using her death to get traction.
‘Like and subscribe for more skater tips, ventures and stories along the way. Skater babes, inbox me.’
The boy winked. ‘Ugh,’ she said.
‘Turn it off, Tabby.’
She put her phone down. ‘You were there this evening, right by the park. You took longer than I thought considering you just went to collect a prescription and some goodies. Then I see this video of a woman, and man holding a knife at her, on your computer.’
He widened his eyes and stared. ‘Are you seriously saying I could have killed her?’
‘Did you go to the park?’
He took too long to answer. ‘No.’
‘Liar.’
‘You’re the liar, Tabby. You keep your secrets from Aunt Claudia.’
‘Stop.’ She held a hand up, almost reaching his face and making him flinch.
She might be younger, definitely weaker, but she wasn’t taking this from dumbass.
It was an insult, him treating her like she was an airhead.
‘Turning this back on me makes you look more suspicious. You can see that, can’t you? ’
He slumped his shoulders and nodded. ‘I went to the park.’
She sharply inhaled a breath. Putting the pressure on had made him tell her the truth. ‘I want to know everything, from the beginning.’ As he went through his story, her skin crawled. ‘You’re missing a big part out. Why won’t you just go to the police?’
‘They have a video of me, doing something, and…’
She looked at the camera on his screen and the Plasticine. She didn’t need an explanation and she didn’t want one. ‘Shit.’ She looked around and whispered her next sentence. ‘Can they hear us?’
‘I’ve cut the sound. I have to stay connected because if that video gets out…’
He paused, as if waiting for her to humiliate him with some wank jokes but instead, she hugged her brother.
Like the photos that Abel had taken of her, he was a victim.
He’d been violated and more than anything, she loved him.
She wouldn’t be that person. He held her tight, allowing her to stroke his hair like he was a child she was comforting.
They needed each other. It was dumbass and dipshit all the way and they would beat this together.
She had to add one more thing and Brian wasn’t going to like it.
‘Bri, I think you’ve been played. I don’t think Cody is real.
He groomed you, pretended to be your friend, guided you into all this so you’d let your guard down, I mean… he didn’t turn up at the park.’
‘No, you’re wrong. Cody is in trouble and I don’t know how to help him.’
She shook her head. ‘You need to help yourself. He set you up. He gets you to go to the park and a body turns up.’
‘He didn’t set me up.’
‘Sorry, you’re wrong. It’s as clear as day. You can’t even call him.’
Brian folded his arms and flumped back onto his bed, staring up at the solar system poster on his ceiling, his planet obsession that he had in his earlier teens well and truly gone.
‘There’s something else… What if?’ She scrunched her brows as her brain began to make possible connections.
‘What are you on about?’ he asked.
‘When you lied to me about the people on screen being AI, there was a man. He was going about his business, getting ready to go out. That video I just watched, there was a knife trailing on the woman’s body.
And now a body has been found right where you were tonight.
What if it’s her, the woman in the video? ’
‘It’s not her. It could be anyone. I mean, maybe someone just had a heart attack?’
‘In the bushes?’
‘Yeah.’
She checked ‘What’s up Cleevesford’ on Facebook. She didn’t normally venture there but it might update them as to what was happening.
Murder, woman, body.
That’s all she needed to see. A woman who claimed that her best friend had found the body had posted. Nothing stayed a secret for long in Cleevesford. ‘It was murder.’ She showed Brian her phone.
He sat back up and began hyperventilating. She rubbed his back and he started shouting. ‘I don’t know what to do, Tab.’
She wanted to say go to the police, you’re a victim, but she understood how humiliating that video was for him because she’d never risk the photos of her getting out.
She’d do all she could to protect Brian.
But they were in danger. Brian was followed.
The argument in her mind played thought tennis with her at breakneck speed.
‘Brian, did you tell anyone about the stash?’ Yes, she was thinking about herself during her brother’s crisis.
He shook his head.
Phew.
Brian’s phone beeped and they both fell silent. Even her inner dialogue went blank.
He held his phone up and saw it was a photo message on Snapchat.
‘You have to open it.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You have to.’
‘What if…? I don’t want you to look. It might have me in it. Turn round.’
She didn’t want to see so she turned away.
He gasped out loud and hit his bed.
‘What?’ He could at least tell her.
‘Look.’
She slowly turned and she gasped, too. It was a photo of Brian sitting at the park earlier that night.
I know where you were tonight and I know what you did. OpenMeSmiler awaits you.
‘I need to get that off my computer.’ He ran over and started trying to log out of the account. ‘I need to bury this thing and… burn it.’
‘They know who you are,’ Tabitha shouted.
As he tried to log out, someone took over remotely. A picture of Cody came up in the middle of the screen and melted before him, giving way to something more sinister behind it, a creepy armoured mask. A speech bubble popped up and words began to appear.
Clean off your camera lens. You are part of the game. You are the game, as am I. Remove whatever’s on your camera now or your video goes live.
He pulled the Plasticine off and Tabitha let out a shriek. ‘I’m here, dumbass.’ How could he expose her to a psychopath with no name, no address or identity? He could have given her time to get out of the room.
He held a hand over his mouth and muffled some words. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think.’
She kicked him under the desk, not letting their watcher see.
‘Turn the sound back on or I will do it for you? Actually, don’t.’
They watched as the mouse cursor took over. Now they were fully exposed to the evil that hid behind OpenMeSmiler. A robotic voice filled the room, one that Tabitha would never forget as she came over all cold. ‘You were there tonight. You killed that woman,’ she said.
The voice laughed. ‘I didn’t. Maybe it was your lovely brother.’
She stared at Brian and then back at the screen. ‘No, he wouldn’t.’
‘Now, now, that’s not how the police would see it if they got hold of the photo of him sitting on that bench, right in front of where the body sat.
I can disappear just like that and no one will ever know about me, us, or OpenMeSmiler.
I can instantly wipe all this and set you up.
You are no match for me so don’t try to be.
You can’t outrun me, you can’t outsmart me, you can’t hide from me. ’
‘Why me?’
Tabitha hadn’t seen Brian’s eyes water up since their parents’ funeral.
‘Because you’re perfect for it.’ The robotic voice paused. ‘In five minutes, there will be another live stream. Watch or I end your life as you know it. I have all your contacts. I will ruin you. Click now on the new stream thumbnail.’
Brian navigated back to the home page and there was a still of the young man Tabitha had seen getting ready to go out.
The robotic voice took on a demonic tone. ‘Let the next show begin.’