Michael wasn’t truly sure why he’d chosen to spend his Saturday night here.
The party was loud and cacophonous, two dozen people in one small house pressed up against the edge of the woods, and there were almost certainly more that he hadn’t counted from where he was standing just outside the front door. It was a not insignificant portion of the class, and he at least knew the names of most people there. But the music was already loud, the scent of alcohol was already in the air, and he was certain he’d find a broken window upon entering.
“Are you nervous, man?”
Michael looked over, and frowned. “No. I’m just unsure of why I’m here.”
James smiled at him, looking tremendously out of place in pale jeans and a white T-shirt with a graphic of a cat on it, considering that everybody else was in much darker outfits with more pockets and an extra layer.
“It’s perfect. We could stand to be a bit more popular, there’s a lot of people here, all we need to do is impress them and we’ll be getting invites in no time.”
“Then how did you get this invite?”
“Oh, uh, Larry gave one to everybody in third period. He didn’t say anything about bringing friends, but I know a few others were going to come, and, you know, nobody was going to fight you anyway.”
James looked hopeful, but Michael didn’t share the feeling. Social politics were not things that he had any particular interest in, especially the sort that James was always so fixated on. He had somewhat hoped that James had wanted to simply go to a party to just hang out without any sort of deeper plan, but evidently not.
A nudge on his elbow, and James was pulling him into the house, the music instantly doubling in volume. Shrill guitars clashed against his ears, mixing with the chatter of what Michael counted to be thirty-one teenagers beginning to toe the line from tipsy to drunk. The pungent scent of alcohol was in his face no matter how subtle everybody might be trying to be, hanging from the air and dribbling from people’s breaths. James’s pull on his arm was insistent, dragging him down the hall and past the living room packed full of partygoers. The handful of dark looks thrown at him escaped his notice, but they didn’t escape Michael’s, even if most people missed that he was there. The few that did see him wore expressions of confusion, silently inquiring why he would be at something that at this point most people knew he was unlikely to be at, but he just ignored them. Their questions were not his problem, nor did he care enough to answer them.
James was clearly on a mission, ignoring the back porch filled with people fiddling with razors or switchblades and going for the stairs to the house’s basement. A good call, Michael decided, going by the already immense number of empty cans and crumpled plastic cups littering the floor. The probability was split between the settling of a drunken bet or an imminent fight, and while he had no problem with either, James certainly would, or at least would have the inclination to do something foolish. He did that frequently.
The door to the basement steps were open, and unfinished wood creaked under one pair of boots and one pair of sneakers. James led the way, releasing Michael’s arm and proudly descending the steps as if he had nothing to fear. Michael took the room in, eyes returning to James’s back after each sweep just to make sure he wouldn’t be suddenly stuck by something sharp. The walls were bare, wooden beams exposed, and the concrete floor was dusty and cracked one spot like something hard had been slammed into it repeatedly.
Larry did like to use baseball bats, he knew. At least he had cleaned up the stains.
The host himself was on a beanbag in the center of the room, next to a couch and a few chairs full of people. Nowhere near as many as upstairs, only six or so, but all attention was fixed on the center of the couch, where a tall, handsome man with orange-brown hair in a leather jacket was telling some complicated story. And approaching the bloody punchline.
James stopped at the edge of the group and put his hands in his pockets, waiting for the end, but Michael lingered a bit behind him. Not beyond the length of a quick dash forward, but hopefully far enough to not be roped into anything.
“So there I am, scrubbing off the cleaver with water from the garage hose, and I’m trying to be quick because she’s going to start stinking up the bathroom real soon. Brad’s coming with the car, but he doesn’t want any blood on the seats, so I need to get this thing cleaned fast. And then what happens? My goddamn dad walks in to see me trying to clean a meat cleaver with rolled-up sleeves and over a bucket of red-stained water. You know what he says? You know what he says next?
“‘Has it rusted already?’”
The group on the couch erupted into laughter, and James did too, just long enough for the man to take a sip of his drink and keep going.
“He asks me if the cleaver’s rusted when I’m standing over a bucket of blood and there’s a chopped up body cooling in my shower that I haven’t even bagged yet! I just say yes and he hands me some steel wool before going back inside. Imagine that shit! God. I ended up just tossing the cleaver with the body when I buried it, I didn’t want to see that in my kitchen again. Now that would be a horror story.”
He finally finished, leaning back in the couch and giving James a smile. “Shit, James, when did you get here?”
“Just now. How are you, Ken?”
Ken Sootworth’s smile turned to an outright grin as he raised his cup to James, saluting. “Fan-fuckin-tastic. They still haven’t even reported Alexa missing yet, if you can believe that. Not that I had anything to do with her going missing, at all, obviously. How about you?”
“I’ve been alright. I haven’t been involved with anybody’s disappearances lately either, but, you know,” he wiggled his hand, “I actually haven’t. I was wondering if you had anything to do with Alexa.”
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“I mean, I won’t say good hunch or bad hunch, but pretty good hunch. Not like anybody’s going to claim payback for that, I’ve only told the people in this room. Shame that you haven’t had anything fun happen to you.”
“I’ve got plans.” James glanced at the chairs to see if there was an open seat, and upon seeing that there weren’t any, took a few steps forward and leaned in. “I figured out where the Sydney’s cash box is. It’s a pretty easy break-in, if you just wait for them to close–”
“Cash box?” Ken cut him off. “Dude, you’ve got to go harder than a cash box. That’s kind of light work, y’know?”
“Alright, alright, fair.” James nodded like he was not actually listening. “I mean, I know a couple other safes around town, some stashes, you know. If you really want to try and get something good, there’s a delivery for the grocery store in a few days that you can grab some booze off of.”
Ken looked around, like he was taking in the opinions of his friends, but Michael knew that he would have already made up his mind. It was going to be a no, and he had a solid hunch on why.
“James, I’m gonna be honest. That’s just the easy shit. Break-ins take work, yeah, but it’s not…you know. It’s not it. If you want to go hard, you’ve got to go hard, and you can’t just keep digging up simple wins.”
A nod from James, his mouth curled like he had eaten something disgusting. “Alright. Yeah, that’s, that’s fair. Don’t suppose I could ask for a tag-along?”
One of Ken’s friends barked out a laugh, but Ken waved him down, taking a sip from his drink as he did. “Honestly, nah, sorry. We’ve got to make sure we’ve got the good people in case it all explodes out in some terrible way, it pays to be careful.”
He tilted his head back to look over James’s shoulder, right at Michael. “But the invitation to you still stands, you know.”
Michael shrugged. “I’m not interested.”
“Still? Really?”
“Still.”
Ken sighed and threw an arm across the couch, lounging back into it. “Let me know if you ever change your mind. I’d love to watch you work sometime.”
“Noted.”
James was still standing there, just on the edge of the group, barely peeking over his shoulder to look at Michael. Michael shook his head, and anything left in his posture deflated. He turned to face him, and Michael just headed back up the stairs. He heard Ken yell something at James behind him, inviting him to stick around and have fun, but he didn’t actually want to know. Conversations with Ken were never entertaining, but more than that, it was annoying. The last five times they had spoken, it had ended with Ken asking him to come along on something and him always shutting Ken down. He was beginning to suspect that it was all he thought about, but the incessant nature was beginning to get on his nerves.
Really, it already had, he decided as he turned at the top of the stairs and headed for the back porch. It was all Ken ever wanted, and it was infuriating. But Michael knew he wouldn’t achieve anything from stewing around and wondering why Ken was so fixated on him, so he opened the backdoor to the porch and hopped the railing, heading for the woods. A walk could help him blow off some steam, and he had walked there anyway, so he could easily walk himself back.
Any thoughts of rumination or contemplation were cut off when he noticed a break in the bushes at the treeline.
Somebody seemed to have had the same idea.
Morbid curiosity overtook him as he carefully stepped through the gap, following the obvious trail in the sticks and grass. This would have been a strange place to go and sneak off with somebody at, and an even stranger one for deadlier schemes. It was too crowded, and everybody here was here for the purposes of a party, not through some sort of murder plot. But that also made it the ideal opportunity to pull off a very bold stunt, which would probably appeal to a lot of the people here. Such as Ken. Or James.
As Michael plowed on, he noticed the space between the footprints getting longer and longer, and the footprints themselves getting slightly lighter. An attempt to be stealthy, making less noise less often. A good trick if you had space to sneak up on a target, and without blinking, Michael began matching the tracks step for step. If whoever had made these had been sneaking up on somebody, it would do well for him to do the same.
And they certainly had been sneaking up on somebody very recently. The wood inside the broken sticks was still bright, free of dirt and full of moisture. The footprints hadn’t filled in or been covered over yet, not even by small breezes, but most damningly of all, he hadn’t seen any animals yet. It would have made more sense if he were closer to the party, but this far away, out of earshot, sight, and scent of the party, something else had to have scared them off. Like somebody moving through not long ago.
A sudden light cut through the trees, a blazing sun’s glow severed into strips of white and black by the tall, thin trees of the forest. There was the sound of movement as the light bounced, a slamming of something heavy, and then a blur of shadow sprinting past the light before a scream of fear rang out.
Michael moved, quicker but still quiet, approaching the scene and reaching for his knife. He was right, somebody was trying to pull something off. He must have been just behind them, closer than he thought. He could hear grunts of effort now, and had eyes on a clearing with a car in it, a larger sedan with the headlights on that had just pulled up. He stepped out from the trees right as he heard a wet shlick, loud and forceful, followed by a groan that tapered off into silence.
He knew that noise.
Two steps around the car, into the headlights, and he saw the result.
Sarah Victor stood, panting, half bent over and her hand wrapped around a push dagger buried in a boy’s chest. Blood drenched the sleeve of her dress shirt, all the way up to her elbows and dripping off of the hand clutching the weapon. Her other hand, equally covered in blood, released his jacket collar and let him slowly fall to the ground, meat slipping off the dagger with ease. More blood soaked her, splashed in her hair like dye vivid even in the dark, but none of it was hers.
She looked up, seeing him in the headlights, half his body made more pale than he always was by the glow of the light and the other half cast in total shadow, a phantom in hiding clothes, and her eyes widened. She tried to stammer something in shock, but no words came out.
Michael could tell what had happened here. The hatchet lying by the dead boy’s hand made it clear.
“Are you hurt?” He asked.
She shook her head, shaking and blinking rapidly.
He nodded, and walked over, reaching into his back pocket to pull out a pair of dark leather gloves that he only used for one purpose.
She looked at him like he had just pulled a gun on her, and he shook his head.
“We’ll start earlier than expected,” he said.
“Lesson one: how to hide a body.”