Chapter 44
I’m not sure I did the right thing, but I see potential in that boy. I hope I’m not proven wrong.
“When I was seventeen, I was so different,” Nico says.
His voice is so quiet that I almost can’t hear it over the rush in my ears.
“I wish you could’ve known me then. I used to think the worst thing that could happen was failing a test or disappointing recruiters who came to my meets.
I was shy. Maybe too trusting. I believed people were good. ”
There’s a long pause.
“I’d just begun my senior year when I started having these dreams,” he says. “The dreams were all similar. A chance meeting with a woman a good ten years older than me who I’d never met, always white, and with long brown hair. They were strangers, but they all felt familiar for some reason.
“All of my dreams ended with me chasing her through the woods,” he continues.
“I didn’t know what was happening. Only that I needed to catch her, and when I did, I’d force her to the ground and strangle her.
I now know they were Billy’s memories, but at the time, I had no idea where these images were coming from.
“It didn’t take long for the dreams to start happening during the day.
I’d zone out while sketching and draw these disgusting things.
Women with blue and waxy skin. Beaten faces.
Naked women with their heads cut off. I had no idea what to think when the urges started.
I’d be walking down the hallway at school and see a girl at her locker, and this voice in my head would wonder what it would feel like to break her skull open on the metal. ”
I’m so still, hanging on every one of his words that the pain in my hand feels like it belongs to someone else.
“One night, I was at this party,” he says.
“In the woods. I’d never been much of a drinker, but my friends were pushing me to join them, and there was this girl, Allison, who I’d had a thing for since I was a freshman.
I was drinking a beer on the edge of the group when I felt…
something. I remember the feeling so clearly.
It felt like ice water was being pushed up my brain stem.
I got scared that it was alcohol poisoning, even though I’d only had two beers, but then this presence slammed into my mind and I wasn’t alone in my head anymore.
“I could hear him introducing himself to me, but I didn’t know what was happening.
I tried to move. Call for help. But I was pushed so deep in my head that I could only watch what was happening as if from the bottom of a well.
I watched my hand set my cup down. Felt my feet carry me to where Allison stood with her friends.
She looked up at me, and Billy made me grab her face and kiss her.
Right there in front of everyone. I’d never kissed a girl before.
I was trying to scream because I knew something was wrong, but to everyone else, it looked like I’d finally worked up the courage to make a move on the girl they knew I liked. ”
Nico sniffles. The space between us feels so wide, but I know he doesn’t want me closer, so I don’t move, even though I want to take away his pain.
“Billy made me get in my car,” Nico says. “I knew I shouldn’t be driving. I’d been drinking. But I could do nothing to stop it. He drove to the hardware store. I watched myself buy rope. The cashier talked about the weather, and I listened to my voice respond with things I’d never say.
“When I woke up the next morning, I thought it had been a bad dream, but my friends had texted to congratulate me about Allison, and the rope was in my car. I threw the rope in the garbage and tried to pretend it never happened. But Billy hadn’t really started.”
My eyes are adjusting as he speaks, the pitch black giving up small details: the suggestion of columns around us, and Nico’s silhouette instead of a void.
“I was walking home from cross-country practice a couple days later when Billy took control again,” Nico says.
“I ended up at the art building where Allison was loading canvas boards into her car. She smiled when she saw me, but I could feel the intentions inside my body. I tried so hard to warn her.”
He stops, breathing quick and shallow.
“I heard myself ask if she could help me load something into my car. She was confused, asking what was wrong, if I was okay. I must have looked… I don’t know what my face looked like.
“I cracked her head on the side of my car and forced her through the door, then drove forty minutes outside of town to a service road in the national forest,” Nico says quickly.
“I led her deep into the woods. Gave her the car keys and told her I’d give her a two-minute head start to run back to the car.
She ran so hard. I was so much faster. I tackled her.
Pinned her down. Strangled her with my bare hands. Then I buried her in the woods.”
I press my hand over my mouth. Tears are already streaming down my face, dripping off my chin onto my lap.
“I was so scared,” Nico says. “I wanted to turn myself in, but every time I got near a police station or even thought about calling 911, Billy took control. Only two weeks passed before… Lila.”
He chokes on her name. My heart rises until I can feel it clogging my throat.
“She was Nora’s—my sister’s—friend, so she knew me already.
I was driving home from practice when I saw her walking along the road.
Billy shoved me into the back of my mind before I could even think to drive past her.
I watched myself offer her a ride. As I drove, she talked about some drama with her director while I screamed at her to jump out, do anything to get away from me.
But she kept talking, oblivious to what was about to happen to her.
When I passed her street, she was more confused than anything.
It wasn’t until we reached the woods that she realized something was wrong. ”
The memory of his scar rushes to me, the one on his temple. Lila was fighting for her life against someone who was fighting just as hard to save her. Neither of them could win.
“Billy marched her to the same place while she begged, saying my name like she could reach the real me,” Nico says. “I chased her down and smashed her face with a rock, and then he… he made me…”
I can hear a strangled sob, and the sound drives into me.
“Nico,” I say, reaching for him out of instinct.
He jerks his leg away. “Wait. Just—I learned Billy’s patterns.
He got so strong that he could control me for days.
I waited until he relinquished control after four days, when he was at his weakest. I swallowed every pill I could get my hands on.
I was dead for four minutes. I told you that already.
But they got me back, and I woke up to find my parents and sister all in the hospital with me, but this time, I could see Billy hovering behind them.
He was shaking his head with this amused look on his face. ”
Imagining it sends a full-body tremor through me.
“There were five more girls,” he says. “I’d just killed Celia and was back at my house, Billy scrubbing blood from my hands, when Donny came up behind me, gun drawn.
I was so relieved that someone was there.
That someone would see me covered in blood and I’d be arrested or, even better, shot, and all of this would be over. ”
Nico gulps, and I can feel how hard he’s trying to stop his tears.
“Donny held me down while he poured salt water down my throat. I could feel Billy fighting it, feel him clawing at me, trying to stay anchored. It was more pain than I’d ever experienced.
Billy was so strong that pulling him out felt like Donny was reaching into my chest and yanking out my spine.
By the time Billy was out, I was choking on ectoplasm and shivering so hard that Donny had wrapped me in every blanket in my house, but my head was mine again.
Completely mine. Donny said police were on their way with enough evidence to arrest me.
I had two options: wait for them and spend my life in prison, or go with him and learn what had really happened to me.
I’d thought it was me. That I was mentally ill, that there was something so wrong with me that it made me capable of those things.
I was so desperate to believe that I wasn’t a monster, so I went with him.
I never talked to my family again. I’m sure they think I’m dead.
They could get in serious trouble if they were found hiding me from the FBI, even if they did believe me.
I don’t know if they would. I think they’d turn me in. Truth is, I’m too scared to find out.
“I changed everything I could about my appearance. Donny set me up with a Social Security number, which belonged to a boy who passed away years ago, and used that to get me a driver’s license, passport, and insurance.
He paid for me to get surgery to change my face enough not to trip off facial recognition.
I dyed my hair. Added the tattoos. Got bigger.
I couldn’t believe the lengths Donny had gone to help me.
I wanted to repay him in any way I could, so I gave the work everything I had.
He needed someone who could communicate with entities.
His need for me was the only thing keeping me alive.
It was only him and me back then. Every entity we captured felt like saving someone from what I went through.
“Zoey joined the team after two years,” Nico says.
“It took a year before Donny let her move in. He was so sure she’d sell me out.
But one day, Zo asked if the reason Donny wasn’t letting her move in was that he was harboring the Boy Next Door Killer.
” He lets out a laugh that doesn’t sound completely miserable.
“I thought I was a goner, but Zo never turned me in.”
Every detail I learn about Zoey makes me want to be her friend more.