28. Winver
TWENTY-EIGHT
“You went through my fucking flash drives?” I cry out while tears still stream down my face.
“We need to know why he needs you so badly,” Harley says, leaning over Motley as he shuts the laptop. Who needs me so badly? Nobody that I know could…
Wait.
“Axel is y’all’s boss?” I say, shooting up from my seat in complete disbelief. There’s no way they could be working for him. He got sent away, getting locked up in one of the most illegal underground prisons in the state of Texas. My father made sure of it. It was easier for me not having to see his face in court and the state wouldn’t have granted the sentence I wanted. My father told me so…
“Look, we aren’t on his side…anymore…” Motley says with a brief pause, leading me down a path of not believing him. I mean, how did he even find out where I lived?
“How did you all–”
“Get here?” Weston cuts me off, but answers my question.
“I guess we all wanted to move to a place far away from him. It just wasn’t as far as we hoped it would be…”
Even with everything spilling out, I’m still confused, mad, upset…
All emotions hit me at once like a tsunami. I was in Willow Creek to reinvent myself. To drown out the past and emerge into a new one. A better one without him in it.
“Can someone please just finally explain to me what you all want?” I don’t let them speak, still needing to get everything off my chest, still crying but never dwindling down my rage.
“Here y’all are, hiding under fucking masks because the big shot of the group wants to stay hidden? Threatening me, using me, shattering me, drugging me because that’s what Axel said to do? I can get past the fucking, but what I refuse to get past is that you all have sucked me into your hell!” I cry out, now starting to hyperventilate and there I am, drowning once again. Trapped, once again.
“You think we’re doing this because we have a fucking choice, angel?” Harley charges back, coming over to me getting right in my face.
“THEN TELL ME YOUR REASONING!” I shout, getting just as much in his face as he is with mine. “Stop leaving me in the dark!” He takes a step back, turning around to do what I thought he’d never would. Pulling off his mask, he holds it by his side. Both Motley and Weston look at him with pure, utter shock. Harley drops it on the floor, turning around to reveal his full face.
He has the sharpest jaw I’ve ever seen and those green eyes that have remained so lifeless gloss over, showing me that he has some emotion hiding in his dark soul. His black eyebrows furrow for a moment, breathing out a breath of defeat before speaking. And there it is. The man I can fully remember from Scream Box. I was so blinded by his mask that I forgot what he originally looked like.
“Two years ago, we were all at a party we hosted at this abandoned theater in Pondling, Texas. I hooked up with this chick who was dating, Axel…? At the time.” He questions his name, letting me know he never knew it to begin with.
“He walked in on us hooking up, murdered her, then blamed me for it. He put my fingerprints on the knife, mixing my blood with hers by the cut he gave me trying to stop it all. He threatened me that if I ever told anyone about it, I’d be charged for murder. However, he made a deal with me…” He starts slowly walking around the room, looking down at the floor.
“When a favor was needed, we’d answer back. He sucked all of us into it–”
“But we never would leave you because of it,” Weston reassures him.
Harley continues on all while I try to wrap my head around all of this. They’re also from Texas? “We all decided that we needed to leave San Antonio, wanting to start fresh again in hopes that he’d never find us. We agreed on Willow Creek, opening up this haunted house and trying to move past everything. That was until six months ago when his favor was finally called in.”
How does Axel know I moved to begin with? The only people…
“You”re saying you all have been stalking me for six months?”
Harley nods his head, now looking up at me. “We’ve been reporting back to him every week since. We never knew anything else solely because he never told us. He didn’t have to.”
“So you’re saying that after you saw him murder a girl, you went along with stalking another girl for him?” I demanded.
“Whatever would keep us alive and on his good side, we did,” he deadpans.
“Did he say anything about when he’s coming here?”
“Nope,” he says, popping the p. “All we know is that he’ll eventually show. And with wanting to speed the process up, that’s when we finally showed ourselves to you. I saw you on the outside cameras with your friends and I was quick to make sure you were the one that had to come into my hallway. Don’t get me wrong, angel, I wanted to have my fun while trying to break you mentally.” I squint my eyes and cock my head to the side, letting him continue on with all of this chaos.
“But, my fellow best friends over here, brought me the idea of bringing you back here, caging you in, and finding a way to make him come to us faster. That was until Motley showed me everything he found on your flash drives.”
“Until? What do you mean by that?”
“It means we’re all going to be the one to kill him,” Motley spits out.
“And how do y’all plan on going about this?” I ask. There’s no way we could kill him. There might be four of us, but Axel is a powerful human.
“We all have something we’re good at. Something we’re each capable of. But you have nothing,” Harley fires.
“What Harley is trying to say is that you’ll start training with each of us. We’ll strengthen you physically and mentally until you”re ready to face him alongside us,” Motley says, getting up and coming around the desk as he leans on it with his arms crossed.
I don’t even know what to say. With all of this information spilling out of them like it’s word vomit, I can’t think straight. I’m still so confused while at the same time understanding everything. We’ve all been pulled into Axel’s dark embrace. But if they’re still working for him, the knots in my stomach are telling me not to trust them.
”But you still plan on using me to lure him in?” I reiterate.
“Of course,” Harley says in a matter-of-fact tone.
“And if I don’t want to?”
“We’ll still have you. Remember, angel, if you run, I promise I’ll be there to catch you. You can either join us or join him,” Harley warns.
I don’t trust them.For all I know, this could be one big elaborate scheme to make me trust them. It’s a fifty-fifty shot that I don’t know I want to take. I’m on the edge of regret and contentment. I go to sit back down, crossing my leg over the other.
Please be the right decision, Winver.
“I’ll start training, but I’m not living here. I still have a job. We all have jobs we still need to do. If Axel is communicating with y’all, that means he’s out. I just don’t know how he could’ve possibly got released. I need to ask my father–”
“No. This stays between all of us. If you tell Daddy about all of this, Axel is just going to end up killing us all.”
Rolling my eyes, I’m ready to end this conversation.
“Fine. Now let me go,” I demand.
“Motley, go get her keys and phone,” Harley barks out as he then places his arms on either side of my chair, leaning down.
“If you think for a second that this makes us any closer, think again, angel. After this is all over, you’ll be nothing more than a stranger. Now get out,” Harley growls, flaring his nostrils before standing back up.
I storm out of the room, leaving Harley and Weston behind to find Motley waiting at the front door for me. We walk back down, the natural light peering in from the broken and open windows on the second floor, lighting us a path down the hallway. I’ve not even been here twenty-four hours, yet it feels like I’ve been here for days.
“You okay to drive?” Motley asks.
“Please – That whole conversation could turn the highest person sober. I’m fine.” I take my keys and my phone, now outside breathing in the October morning air.
“See you soon, angel,” Motley croons. I whip my body around getting into my car, turning on the engine when Softcore by The Neighbourhood starts playing. I pull out of the lot, speeding back home. If I thought I had already sold my soul, all that definitely just confirmed it.
I shiver at the thought of seeing Axel again. God, I was so fucking stupid back then and that was only a year ago. A lot of things can change within a year. What I thought was changing for the better, I’m now thinking it’s changing for the worse. Even if Harley was telling the truth, I’ll still have to face Axel one way or the other. Having them train me could help me with both case scenarios. One of them being taking down Axel, while the other being taking down them if needed. But I’ll gladly kill them all off, spitting on the graves that they dug for themselves.
I’ve never been a killer, but I’ll never become another victim.