V Intermission
Bailey sat there.
“Fine,” Bailey said.
“What?” Beatrice asked.
“I love you,” Bailey said. “Have for years.”
“Really?” Beatrice asked.
“I admit it,” Bailey said.
“It’s just surprising,” Beatrice said. “You didn’t mention it until I lost a bunch of weight and became hot.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Bailey said. “Did I make fun of you? Call you fat?”
“No, I admit that you did not,” Beatrice said. “You are cleared on that one.”
“Maybe that made me realize how I always felt.”
“Good,” Beatrice said.
Beatrice looked at Bailey’s perfectly sculpted teenage body as he wore only his boxer briefs.
“You are a stud,” Beatrice said. “But can I trust you to care about me?”
“Yes,” Bailey said. “I care. I give back. I have to feel something for you. I hate that I care for you, but I do it nevertheless.”
“You need to control me?” Beatrice said. “I can’t have this be a situation in which you are in charge, and I just do whatever you say. I’m not that girl.”
Pause.
“I don’t want to blindly do anything you say,” Bailey said. “I don’t want to be someone who is given strange orders at all hours of the day and night.”
“I wouldn’t ever do that to you. I just don’t want to be your plaything,” Beatrice said.
“I need an equal relationship, no dominance by either of us.”
“Never,” Beatrice said. “I will always stand up to you. I will never force you.”
“And that is why I am with you and not Alexis.”
“You aren’t with her anymore?” Beatrice asked.
“No,” Bailey said. “She’s confused, unhinged. Something’s wrong with her. I don’t know what. She’s acting weirder than usual.”
“She usually acts weird?” Beatrice asked. “Since when did that become a thing?”
“Since a while now,” Bailey said.
There was a trickle of blood on the rug. There was a rug below the window, positioned strangely.
Beatrice picked up the rug, and it had blood underneath it, a lot of blood.
“Damn it,” Beatrice said.
Bailey opened the closet door and saw him.
Walter stood there, definitely dead.
Someone had stabbed him repeatedly.
“God damn it,” Beatrice said.
“Damn,” Bailey said. “I don’t know what to say. He was your friend, right?”
“Yeah,” Beatrice said.
“Another person is dead,” Bailey said. “This is terrible. Someone is murdering the geeks. You should fight back, Beatrice.”
“Oh, I know,” Beatrice said. “I have a plan. It’s complicated, and has a lot of steps.”
“Oh?” Bailey asked.
“I brought a gun,” Beatrice said. “That’s my plan. It’s in my purse.”
“Do we call the police?” Bailey asked.
Beatrice looked at the body. She nodded.
“Okay,” Bailey said.
Beatrice put her clothes on and walked downstairs. She turned off the music and looked at everyone in the opening between both rooms - the board game room and the roleplaying room.
A dozen or so people looked at Bailey and Beatrice, including Ghostkin, Jalon, and Alexis.
“Walter’s dead. We’re calling the cops,” Beatrice said.
“That’s a bad idea,” Ghostkin said. “He doesn’t want us to call the cops.”
“All the more reason to call the cops,” Bailey said. “I’m about to call.”
“No,” Jalon said. “He says that he’ll kill a kid if we call the police. He says it’s us versus him, here, in this mansion, tonight.”
“Grim,” Alexis said.
“Do you really think we should agree to this?” Beatrice asked. “We should have the police crawl through every speck of this place looking for him.”
“No,” Jalon said. “He might kill a little girl.” “Agreed,” Ghostkin said. “We have to fight him. See who wins.”
“Spoiler: It will be him,” Bailey said.
“No,” Jalon said. “We might be able to succeed at this.”
“Where’s Ai and Caitlyn?” Bailey asked.
“I’ll warn them,” Jalon said.
Jalon walked out and upstairs. Bailey started to talk to the group about how to protect themselves from the killer. They decided that they should each have a knife on them just in case and try to wander around in twos and threes instead of ones.
Jalon walked up to Ai’s bedroom and knocked on the door.
Ai lay on her bed. Caitlyn lay next to her. They wore dresses.
“I was thinking,” Caitlyn said. “About life. About high school.”
“High school is irrelevant,” Ai said. “We will go to college, and that will matter because it is a fun bridge to med school or law school, whichever we choose.”
“You should understand that we aren’t making life-altering decisions tonight,” Caitlyn said.
“Agreed,” Ai said. “I just wanted to know how you feel.”
“I’m fine,” Caitlyn said.
“Are you scared?” Ai asked.
“Yes,” Caitlyn said. “Are you?”
“Yes,” Ai said. “But it’s a mystery. How to survive. How to outthink the killer. It’s an intellectual challenge. I have to go downstairs. Play games with the geeks. Remember our gay bestie who died horribly a few days ago.”
“Stay with me,” Caitlyn said. “Stay the night with me. Fuck me. Forget the people downstairs. I matter more. I love you. I love you desperately, more than life itself. You are everything to me. Be with me tonight.”
“I love you,” Ai said. “I love you.”
“Emergency,” Jalon said.
“Come in,” Ai said.
Jalon opened the door to see Ai and Caitlyn in bed together, both wearing dresses. Caitlyn smiled.
“What’s the emergency, stud?”
“Walter was murdered, and the killer is here, challenging us to defend ourselves tonight,” Jalon said.
“What do we do?” Ai asked.
“I don’t know,” Jalon said. “We have to fight back.”
“And the cops?” Ai asked.
“Nobody’s calling them,” Jalon said. “Not yet.”
“Ah, that old joke,” Ai said. “Both sides agreed not to call the cops.”
“Who could solve this in ten seconds?” Caitlyn said.
“But we want to face the killer ourselves,” Jalon said.
“Thanks,” Caitlyn said. “Am I gonna die, Jalon?”
“I don’t know,” Jalon said. “You don’t fit the profile. But he could kill you if you threaten him or if you are a victim of opportunity.”
“I don’t want to die,” Caitlyn said. “I don’t think that I should die. I do my homework, get good grades. I do volunteer work. I put out for good people. Only good people. I don’t deserve any of this.”
“I know,” Jalon said.
“I saw something,” Caitlyn said. “I saw someone walking around outside. A guy; he seemed like a geek. I didn’t know if he was wearing a mask or not.
He was watching us from a bit of a distance.
I pay close attention to the world around me now.
I don’t miss such things anymore.” “But you didn’t see his face? ” Jalon asked.
“No,” Caitlyn said. “I didn’t get a good view of a face, just someone in the shadows, looking at us, trying to pay attention. I mean, everyone looks at me. I’m a pretty teenage girl. I get that from everybody.”
“Nothing else?” Jalon asked.
“Nothing else,” Caitlyn said.
“What did he wear?” Jalon asked.
“Blue jeans and a light jacket,” Caitlyn said. “And tennis shoes. Beaten old tennis shoes.”
“Cool,” Jalon said. “And this guy - since we know he’s targeting the unpopular young men, he might not even care about you.”
“He might,” Caitlyn said. “He might notice. He might care. I might matter to him. Everything about me - he might get mad.”
“Get mad about what?” Jalon asked. “This one doesn’t seem to be murdering people to punish them for being horny teenagers. Neither of the dead guys had a girlfriend or any love life at all.”
“Good,” Caitlyn said. “Maybe he doesn’t hate women.”
They walked down to the living room to gather and discuss the matter.
Alexis grabbed Jalon and dragged him out back to hang out on the deck - a nice, beautiful, fully made elevated wooden deck with a nice table and set of chairs.
“We’re remembering Lance,” Alexis said. “Anything you haven’t told everyone?”
“Fair enough,” Jalon said. “I was a young bullying victim. I was beaten badly every morning by the next-door neighbor, right after breakfast. I didn’t dare tell the adults. They couldn’t help.”
“I’m sorry,” Alexis said.
“It was cruel,” Jalon said. “He was cruel. Then Lance started to stop by and screamed at me to stand up to him, tell on him, something. I didn’t know anything except him beating me up every day.”
“He called you shit?” Alexis asked.
“Yeah,” Jalon said. “He would walk in while I went to the bathroom.”
“Wow,” Alexis said.
“His name was Derry Faircheer. He was a monster. He became friends with Lance’s older brother Carson, and Carson would ruin Lance’s life, and Derry would ruin my life. He was my age.”
“Where are they now?” Alexis asked.
“College,” Jalon said. “Carson came back for one second when Lance died. I assume he’s back at college. Derry’s at State. He’s in pre-law. He’s going to be a lawyer and help guilty people get away with shady crimes.”
“This guy sounds like an absolute zero,” Alexis said.
“Perfectly nice guy, now, too,” Jalon said. “Will be kind, polite, giving to your face now. It’s only after a drink or two or in private that the monster comes out.”
“And this killer?” Alexis said.
“I fight,” Jalon said. “Arrest him.”
“Fuck that,” Alexis said. “You should arrest him? Really? You should fucking kill this guy.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s what you would say? Really? Really? I am going to give you a few minutes; take that back.”
“No,” Alexis said.
“Just take it back. Just fucking admit that arresting is right and murder is wrong.”
“No,” Alexis said. “He kills people. He wants Beatrice. He wants to finish it by killing Beatrice.”
“He won’t succeed,” Jalon said.
“Is she that great at defending herself?” Alexis asked.
“She has tremendous spirit,” Jalon said.
“Which doesn’t help when a fight happens. She’s going to die. The killer will win.”
“No,” Jalon said.
“Maybe,” Alexis said. “How do we bring the fight to him?”
Jalon walked back to the main room with the main group of people. He noted with regret that not nearly everyone was here - Ghostkin had wandered off, and so had Beatrice.
“Everyone gather in the living room!” Jalon yelled at the top of his lungs. “For your safety and protection!”
Alexis smiled at Jalon. “We have to search the house,” she said.
“I know,” Jalon said.
“Why are you two searching the house?” Ghostkin asked, walking into the room.
“Because Walter is dead, and someone is trying to kill the rest of us here tonight,” Jalon said.
“I don’t know if I trust you to check the house, Jalon,” Ghostkin said.
“What?” Jalon asked.
“I don’t know if I can trust you at all,” Ghostkin said. “You were with Lance when he died. You were here when Walter died, missing, not with us at the board game room. You should be devastated. Your closest friends are both dead. And you are fine.”
“Fuck you,” Jalon said. “I’ve given everything to this school, this group of geeks.
I’ve given everything for us. And you question me?
Fair enough. Everyone is a suspect, and of the geeks, I’m the best fighter.
But listen - I’m not guilty. I can die helping to stop this guy. It’s what I was made for.”
“Yes,” Ghostkin said. “I question the great Jalon Pierce, our fearless leader. I question him because we are losing people, multiple people, including students and parents, and the great Jalon Pierce has done nothing to stop this. It’s suspicious.
If there were a non-Jalon killer, Jalon would have stopped him by now. ”
“And you?” Jalon asked. “You are gone all the time when the killer is killing people. You are always somewhere else when people are dying. Kind of a strange coincidence, don’t you think?”
“I’m not killing anyone,” Ghostkin said. “And what is the killer doing?”
“Who cares?” Jalon asked. “He’s butchering people with a knife.”
“Are you sure that’s all he’s doing?” Ghostkin asked. “I think that there’s something that we are missing.”
“Have we investigated the bodies?” Alexis asked.
Silence.
Alexis laughed.
“Let’s search Walter’s body,” Alexis said.
“There’s going to be nothing unusual,” Jalon said.
“You are wrong and out of line,” Alexis said.
“I’m sorry,” Jalon said. “You are right. We should check the body.”
Jalon walked over to the body of Walter with Alexis and Ghostkin - the rest stayed in the living room.
They walked up the huge, ornate staircase to the elaborate second floor. The bedroom was on the left. They walked over to the body.
Walter’s body was no longer a person. He was now a lifeless husk that had once contained a living person.
Jalon looked at his body. He saw it.
The heart had been removed.