Chapter Twenty-six
Alexandr Miroslav
If it had been one of us, we would not have been heavy enough to stick his head through the sharp corner of the mahogany carved table. If it had been one of us, he would have gotten off with a mild headache after waking up from the concussion.
Except, that wasn't how it had happened.
The pressure of our collective body weight against his seemed to press his head deeper into the edge, digging in at least a few centimeters, and before we realized, a sickening crack echoed through the sound of breathing and scuffing, loud and clear.
We scurried off of him, but it was too late; his head was stuck in there, and his body was stretched out in an awkward position.
On his stomach, flat against the floor, fingers to thighs, and the corner of the table hidden among the soft mass of his brain that seemed to threaten to spill if we pulled him out.
My adrenaline was running too high for me to wrap my head around the severity of the situation in front of us and the toll it would be taking on my sleep.
I stood, dusted myself off and let my mind work.
I began to speak, but it was all muddled.
I was sure that they were my words, but perhaps they were someone else’s.
“August and Wolf, you guys stay with me to handle this. Rain, Marigold, you guys go after Ajax. Take the knives. Paris, I need you to return to the Fourth Quarter and go into Scott’s dorm.
Find anything he might have left behind.
If he planned this, he may have planted something in preparation for a worst-case scenario.
He would know they’d search his dorm first.” I did not know who they were, but the words kept coming, “Remove any evidence and plant your own. Write a letter from Scott with what King had just told us, claiming that the twins had run away because of their mother, and they don’t want to be found. ”
I looked around and found them still frozen in place, eyes glazed over and lost. August’s complexion was beginning to turn green.
Marigold was who shocked me, mouth agape, lips trembling, and teary-eyed. Perhaps animals and humans are not the same after all. When nobody moved, I clapped my hands together once, the crack breaking the silent tension. “Now!”
With the resonating sound and jolting voice, we all sprang into action.
I handed Marigold her pouch, and the three girls slipped out of the room.
Paris stuck her head in to speak before rushing out again, “The coast is clear. Scott didn’t seem to cause a fuss when running away.
But check again before leaving with… the body. ”
She was gone before the last word, but I heard it clearly.
I turned to Wolf and August. “We need to roll him up on the carpet, it’s the only way we can get him out of here without any traces of blood.”
Wolf spoke, but his words were lost in the trance he remained in, “What about the table?”
I let out a breathless, “Huh?”
He pointed to the mess King had left on the table, his blood splattered across the wood.
I grabbed one of the smaller tablecloths and wiped as best as I could before throwing it on top of King and removing the furniture from on top of the carpet, preparing to roll.
After a moment, I realized that I was doing it all myself, the pair I’d asked to stay behind for that very reason were standing as still as ghosts.
“Are you going to help?”
August moved slowly, blinking rapidly as he helplessly lifted and moved a chair. Wolf, on the other hand, gulped. “I need you to slap me, Sasha.”
I huffed. “This isn’t the time for your games–”
“Just do it. Hard.”
His voice was strung tight with seriousness, and it was why I walked over to him and smacked him across the face as hard as I could, just as August had done to King.
The latter gaped at us, but Wolf seemed to blink and turn back to himself, nodding resolutely. “Let’s get this over with.”
Together, we emptied out all the contents from on top of the carpet and rolled up King Kensington with ease. The hard part was lifting someone of his weight. He was built like a linebacker, and dead, he was built like what I imagined an elephant to be.
“God, he’s heavy.” August groaned from the front of our line.
Wolf, from the back, grunted. “Just lift your weight and this’ll be easy–oh god, the smell. It's like I can feel his blood in the back of my throat.”
I breathed through my mouth, but the coppery tang didn’t absolve me, I gagged, which triggered something in August, which triggered something in Wolf, and soon, we were all choking, eyes watering.
We’d barely made it to the door before we had to drop him and catch our breaths. August had the foresight to sneak a peek outside before turning to us. “The coast is clear. We should go now.”
And we did.
We carried that body all the way down the stairs and out of Fenlon Hall without a single sighting, the music still thrumming through the walls and concealing our grunts.
“There is a farm near Castle Hill. It’s far but they have pigs. If we don’t want anyone to find… him, we should get rid of him there. They’ll eat him before the sun rises,” Wolf said.
And so, we’d found our direction. On the opposite path to where Ajax ran, I was thankful for the concealment the forest provided.
For what felt like hours, we walked with the weight of a body aching against our shoulders. Every few moments, one of us had to tap out and pause. We were slow, but we were hidden, and that meant we still had time.
I tried to keep my footing against the thick roots of trees and winced at every twig we stumbled over. The stressful swoop of my stomach with every step required me to keep reminding myself that I would be in my dorm, asleep, in just about a few hours.
This night will be over soon.
Just get through this, and everything else will be okay.
Tomorrow isn’t too far away.
Finally, when we spotted the fence, relief broke through fatigue. The sweat that covered our bodies was cooled by the cold wind, and I was sure we’d all wake up sick tomorrow, but that wasn’t a priority right now.
“We’ll just throw him and jump over ourselves, okay? On three,” I said and waited for the other two to confirm.
I counted down, and on three, our groans and grunts filled the air, but he was too heavy and the fence was too high.
We were tired, exhausted, and worn. Our energy was depleting quickly, and we needed to rest; we needed help.
But I couldn’t imagine one of us running back and trying to find Ajax and the girls. It would be too late.
We weren’t fighting against suspicion anymore, but against time.
The grounds were too vast, and students would be returning to their dorms from the party by then. Our saving grace was how deep we’d delved into the forests that surrounded Castle Hill.
“Someone call for a hero?” A voice came from the darkest part of the forest, and panic seized us, froze us. Our heads whipped at the sound, eyes squinting in the pitch black we were basked in.
A shiver ran down my spine, and I almost died of a heart attack right there against the frozen fence.
Our minds were so scattered, we hadn’t recognized Ajax’s voice, and it was only until he marched closer, Rain and Marigold not far behind him, did the events of tonight catch up to me, and the ground rose to meet my weak and relieved limbs as the damp forest floor pressed against my trousers, the cold seeping into my knees.
He had a wide smile on his face as he regarded our slumped bodies. “This is why you don’t insult 'brainless brutes'."
I huffed out a breath of relief, Wolf and August along with me. “I don’t think you realize how much I mean this: it is so good to see you, Ajax.”
I could tell the enervating anxiety was still there, but the light rush of adrenaline coursing in my veins helped keep me alert.
August laughed sluggishly. “I would go a step further and say that I could kiss you right now.”
Ajax held up his hands. “Whoa, so all we needed was a life-or-death situation to finally become true friends? Looks like Thaddeus was wrong–those dinners were useless.”
Wolf was on his knees, hands against his waist, as he tried to catch his breath, and shook his head. “I love you, Ajax.”
Rain strode closer, her expression still serious, but a hint of relief and amusement glinted in her eyes. "Alright, enough talking–more working. We’re losing night-time.”
Marigold leaned against a tree, the blood stains splattered against her clothes stark, but we all pointedly ignored them. “We had the same idea. The pigs are taking care of Scott as we speak.”
With three more people, it was much easier to get King’s body across the fence and into the pig pen.
It was a large pen with mud overflowing out of it and onto the freshly mowed grass. The pigs were wide awake, seemingly pleased by the early breakfast. The owner of the property must have been dragged down into the deepest depths of sleep to not notice us on his land, and I was grateful for it.
For a moment, we all watched as the pigs ate and ate and ate until there was nothing left of King and Scott Kensington, as if they never existed.
It was a shuddering thought–a sobering one. That if things did ever lead back to us tomorrow or any day afterward, the board would likely find a similar way to vanish the world of our existence.
“What now?” August asked.
“Now, we check in with Paris before going back to our dorms and going to sleep. We wake up tomorrow as if nothing had happened. We don’t know anything, we never saw anything.
The pigs will eat or at least chew on the carpet until it isn’t much under all that mud.
Our tracks should be covered. We meet for breakfast and remain alert.
The tides could always shift.” I answered.
Slowly, one by one, we followed the path back to The Quarters. The party seemed to remain in full swing when we hustled to Paris’s dorm, because the grounds were devoid of any other presence.
Still, we hoped nobody came out and spotted our blood-ridden clothes and the mud-filled shoes we pulled off outside and carried up.
We hadn’t expected so many flaws in our plan, nor did we expect to return to our dorms relatively different people than when we’d left.
In many different ways than just physical.
Paris opened the door a crack and swung it wide when she spotted us, ushering us inside before sticking her head out to make sure no eyes or ears were privy.
“What happened? Is it done?” Paris spoke once she shut and locked her door.
“Done,” Rain answered solemnly.
“All of it?”
“All of it,” Ajax replied. He was in brighter spirits than the rest, as he was missing from all the action when everything went to hell.
He hadn’t heard the pleading of an innocent boy, nor did the crack of an innocent soul's skull echo in his mind. I’d never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it, but what I was more afraid of, was that my mind wouldn’t know how to make the difference.
“Is it done on your end?” I asked, curious to know how it went.
Paris nodded quickly. “Yes. You were right, he tried to leave a letter. It was all paranoid scratches on paper, but I burned it and left one of my own. The Kensington brothers are on their way into hiding. I took some of their clothes and belongings to make it more believable. We’ll burn them when the coast is clear.
For now, I buried them in the woods behind The Quarters, where X marks the spot. ”
I nodded, relieved.
We all were, I could tell. The collective breath of air we released said as much.
Looking back, I didn’t remember how I’d gotten back to my dorm, but I remembered my last words before leaving Paris’ dorm, to Ajax, “Congratulations on your promotion, President of The Fenlon Society.”