Unholy Terrors, page 23
I look over at my father’s publicist, a woman named Trish Edelman. She’s already nodding in response.
“Let’s get Aspen in front of the camera to read a statement; it’ll be more powerful coming from him, especially if we have a photo of Ash beside him. People love identical twins.” She shuffles her papers as I hold back this fresh wave of hot, raw rage. I knew what I’d be seeing when I came up with this plan, the sheer indifference toward my own emotional pain and death.
But it’s harder to handle than I thought.
“Mental health discussions are big right now,” I continue, maintaining a moue of boredom. Who cares if my identical twin might be dead? Who cares where his body is? My only pain should be coming from the fact that I didn’t get to kill him myself. That’s what Aspen would think. I knew him as well as I know myself. “If I focus on that and top off my speech with a donation to some nonprofit, we can have the public feeling sorry for us, rather than blaming us, for Ash’s lunacy.”
I turn and head for the door as my father calls out to me.
“Don’t get yourself into trouble tonight, Aspen. The last thing we need is some stray footage of you beating up another hooker.” I lift up a hand to acknowledge his words and slip out the door of his office into the hall.
For a moment, I just stand there with my back to the door, taking in long, slow breaths.
“If you don’t stop fucking other people, I’ll kill them.”
Why did I say that last night? Why did I mean it?
I open my eyes again and push off from the door, heading down the small hallway to the larger one that connects the various wings of the house.
I know why I said it: jealousy.
I want to possess Scarlett Force in a way that scares me, a way that proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m not as different from my brother as I’d like to pretend.
There in the hallway, I almost make a mistake. I almost head into my room instead of Aspen’s. It’s painful, at times, to be in his room, surrounded by his smell. He always favored a certain cologne—like black pepper and saffron—while I’ve always liked floral scents myself.
Opening the door to his room is like entering a tomb. It’s cold and dark; there’s a feeling of unease as I stand there and look around. The first night I stayed in here, I was too tired to change the sheets.
They smelled like that girl, Lemon.
That was hard, harder even than smelling my brother. I feel responsible for that girl’s death in more ways than one.
With a sigh, I approach Aspen’s closet, opening it wide and looking for something to wear. It’s Halloween, right? But I’ve been in costume every day this week. Fingering the sleek suit jackets, crisp dress shirts, and various pairs of slacks folded neatly in drawers, I feel lost, like I’m wandering a winding path with no discernible end.
Eventually, I leave his closet and bedroom untouched and, after carefully checking the hallway, I slip into my own room. Would anyone blame me? My twin could be dead; he left a suicide note, after all.
“You moron,” I whisper, lifting up a framed picture of myself and Aspen when we were just ten years old. That was the last year we went to school together, before my father started separating us, sending us to different schools, different countries.
Aspen used to mock me for keeping this photo.
“Look at you, you softhearted maggot. I couldn’t care less whether you live or die, and you worship at the altar of my disdain.”
I turn and throw the picture as hard as I can, letting it smash against the wall and rain small glass shards onto the floor. Then I rifle through my drawers until I find something to wear. It isn’t exactly a costume, but it may as well be considering.
On my way out of the house, I spot one of my father’s goons selecting a car from the garage. He chooses a plain, black coupe, something any layperson might drive, and that’s when I decide that I’m going to follow him.
Without Chet’s Pontiac to borrow, I’m left to pick one of our family’s cars.
The missing Fastback brings pangs to my heart, but I shove them aside, selecting a brand-new Lexus instead. It’s a nice car, but not so special that it’ll draw attention to me.
The goon is easy enough to catch up to, but he won’t be easy to tail; he’s too smart for that. After a couple of blocks, I let him go, unwilling to get myself into trouble for the sole purpose of seeing what he’s up to.
No, it’d be much easier to get him at home, when he’s seated at the breakfast table and sipping a cappuccino …
Instead, I head to Prescott and wait for class to get out.
I don’t follow Scarlett or any of her boys and crew. I pick someone at random instead, tailing them back to their house and then, an hour or so later, down the McKenzie Highway into the woods.
As expected, the student leads me to a grassy patch overflowing with cars. Based on the number of classic beauties, I make the educated guess that I’ve just stumbled into a very Prescott Halloween.
With my hood up, and a black-and-white bandanna as a mask, I slip into the crowd, music blasting wildly from the entrance of what appears to be … a cave?
Only the finest for Prescott, of course.
I step inside and find myself in a fairly large tunnel, maybe eight by eight. The walls are hard-packed earth with wood beams equidistant down the length of it. It’s overflowing with students in costume—Prescott kids, as well as students from the other two schools in town.
I’m checked right there at the door.
“Name and school?” one of the girls asks, peering up at me and then reaching for my mask. I snatch her hand and shove it away, pulling the mask down myself.
“Kelly Kitagawa, Oak Valley Prep.” That’s a bit of a lie. I’m nineteen; I’m too old for high school. But it’s a good enough lie that the girl lets me slide past. I enjoy it, anyway, using my mother’s last name. Eventually, I’d like to legally change my name and shed the Kelly blood forever.
Deeper into the tunnel, there’s drink aplenty, half-naked girls, and boys trying to show off to win their favor. Someone’s strung lights all down the tunnel, offering up light when there wouldn’t normally be any.
I glance up at the ceiling, wondering how safe it is in here, if the whole mountain might not collapse and kill us all.
Oh well.
It’s not worth worrying about; I’m not afraid of death.
I continue on, searching for Scarlett Force. She won’t be hard to find, surrounded as she usually is by an entourage.
The crowd thins a bit as I progress into the tunnel, but it doesn’t disappear; the turnout tonight is impressive.
“Hey,” a voice murmurs from a small side tunnel, drawing my attention over to Widow.
One of Scarlett’s fuckboys. I frown deeply, wondering if he recognizes me even with the mask, with my hood up like this.
“What do you want?” I ask, pausing and turning slightly toward him.
“I knew you’d come tonight,” he replies, smiling at me. It’s not a nice smile: it’s a warning. “Couldn’t stay away, could you?” He gestures with his chin down the slightly smaller, slightly darker tunnel to his right. “If you’re looking for Scarlett, Aspen Kelly, then you should come with me.”
He stands up and heads down the tunnel without waiting to see if I’m going to follow him or not. I hesitate briefly, wondering if he’s telling the truth or if he’s luring me out of the way for … something.
Bright, familiar laughter drifts down the tunnel toward me, and my body responds like it’s been jolted with a car battery. Scarlett.
I roll my shoulders to loosen some of the tension in my muscles and move after Widow, finding him waiting around a bend, a lone figure in a slightly shadowed alcove. He turns and, without warning, throws a hard punch that catches me right in the face.
My body slams into the dirt wall, rocks and pebbles spilling down around me. I ready myself for a fight, but Widow just shakes out his hand, curling his lip as he looks me up and down. I want to ask how he knew it was me, but I’m already tasting blood; he hit me hard. It’s not as if he’s after conversation here.
Although I expect him to come after me, he doesn’t. Instead, he stands there by a flickering jack-o’-lantern and watches me with slitted gold eyes. Reaching up, I drag my skeleton-maw bandanna down and swipe the blood from my lips.
“I understand her allure,” Widow says, dropping his gaze to study his knuckles. He hit me hard enough that he’s hurting, too. “Really, I do.” He looks at me again and frowns. “But every time you seek her out, you bring trouble with you. Eventually you’re going to get Scarlett—and probably yourself—killed.” He pauses and makes his way over to me as I coil my muscles and prepare to fight back.
Looking at Widow, I wonder if I could win? He’s a little wider than me, a bit more muscular.
Then again, have I ever played fair in my life? Not once. To quest for such highfalutin morals would’ve had me dead and buried at Aspen’s discretion a long, long time ago.
“What if somebody finds out that you’re the wrong Kelly boy? What then?”
I lick the blood from my lips, a metallic shimmer on my tongue.
“How did you know it was me?” I ask, and Widow smiles menacingly.
“First off, your clothes are bourgeois as fuck.” He pauses and sighs, leaning down and pointing at his eyes with two fingers. “And your eyes, they’re more like your brother’s than you think.”
He withdraws as I scowl at him, turning away to head down the tunnel before pausing once more to look back at me.
“Breaking up with Scarlett would be a favor to her. If you care about her more than yourself, you’ll leave.” Widow waits for a moment, reaching up to drag a monster mask over his face. I realize then that he’s supposed to be a wolfman or something. He’s shirtless, with torn jeans and gray boots. There’s fur strapped to his arms with leather straps, the cheap man’s version of a werewolf. He has chains around his neck, too, which are clearly not from any Halloween store in town. Oh no, those are real. “But let me guess: you’re not going to do that, now are you?”
He lets out a small, condescending laugh.
“I was careful when I came here; I know how to cover my tracks.”
“Sure you do, rich boy. Believe me: if I see you as a threat to Scarlett, I’ll bury you somewhere that even Bohnes can’t find you.” He turns and takes off down the tunnel.
After a moment—against my better judgement—I follow him.
There are yet more pumpkins along the length of the tunnel, all of them carved into grotesque faces. As I pass, I come across students carving more of the disturbing monstrosities and adding them to the display. There are hay bales here and there for people to sit on, tables laden with alcohol.
I hear Scarlett before I see her, singing along to the song that’s echoing from the speakers positioned near the ceiling. The lyrics are … interesting. Something about fucking a tight pussy like a pumpkin, an orange Lamborghini, and being a ghost in the sheets.
When I come around the corner, I pause, spotting her atop a hay bale with a microphone in her hand. That’s when I realize that she’s doing some sort of karaoke thing.
I lean my shoulder against the wall to watch as she stands there in a pair of pinstriped pants, a white dress shirt, and suspenders. With the gray fedora on her head, a pair of two-tone Oxfords on her feet, and a fake—I think—Tommy gun slung over one arm, she looks like a twenties mobster.
I’m assuming that’s the point.
Still, she’s the most beautiful mobster I’ve ever seen, and her voice isn’t half-bad.
She finishes the song and throws her arms up in triumph as her girls cheer and jostle around for attention. I truly despise that, the way they throw themselves at her. And is it all that different from the way you’re throwing yourself at her, Ash Kelly?
“Well, fellow campers, that was ‘Halloweenie II: Pumpkin Spice’ from Ashnikko. Up next, we’re continuing the trend with ‘Halloweenie III: Seven Days’. Enjoy and stay safe, Prescott.”
The next song starts up as Scarlett passes over the mic to one of her girlfriends, accepting her friend’s—Bastian, was it?—offer of help to climb down. She spots me right away, like her eyes are magnetically drawn to me.
A frown creases her heavily painted lips, and she makes her way over to stand in front of me.
“Ohayou, Kelly-kun,” she sneers, and I smile slightly. Oh, she’s been practicing her Japanese for me. Isn’t that adorable? It is to me. If she asked me to run away with her right now, snatch a fake passport, and hop continents, I’d do it.
“Konbanwa,” I correct. “It’s not morning. Ohayou is good morning.”
“Mm,” she muses, reaching up to adjust her hat. “Okay, yeah. How do you say go fuck yourself, Kelly in Japanese?”
I don’t bother to translate that for her; I have a feeling she’d memorize it and use it against me regularly.
“Nice costume, by the way. What are you supposed to be? An ex-fuckboy?” she tilts her head at me and then reaches out, swiping some of the blood from my lower lip and, surprisingly, bringing it to her tongue to taste. Her brows go up and she lifts her eyes to mine. “Real blood, Kelly? That’s a lot, even for someone like you.”
I don’t mention that Widow punched me or the things he said; he wasn’t wrong.
No, I hate it, but he’s right. He’s absolutely right and yet, I can’t seem to bring myself to leave. Just one more night, I tell myself, but that’s a lie. My heart, my cock, and my soul, we all know it.
“Hopefully not an ex,” I murmur, burying my pride where it belongs, right beneath my ego and my vanity. “I didn’t mean the things I said last night.” A pause. Shit. “Well, I meant them, but I won’t carry through with them; I won’t kill your other fuckboys. Pinky promise.” I lean in toward her, and she doesn’t pull away. She lets me get up close and personal with her pretty face.
After I stumbled on her with Aspen’s body, I’d hoped … No, I’d actually believed that it was the start of something much more permanent than fuckboy this, fuckboy that. I’d taken it as a grand gesture of romance, especially with the way she reacted to my reappearance.
Thus far, Scarlett Force is the only person who was upset by the idea of Ash Kelly’s death.
The only person in the entire world.
Scarlett studies me carefully as her friend, Nisha, walks up to us and pauses by her boss’ side, arms crossed, eyes defiant. She’s painted to look like some sort of snake or something, gold scales, faux fangs in her mouth, a cobra-like hood on her head.
“What does this bitch want now?” she demands, leveling her dark stare on me. “By the way, next time you see your brother and his fiancée, have her call me. I’m worried about her.”
Both Scarlett and I ignore the latter half of Nisha’s commentary. If Scarlett isn’t ready to tell her friends the truth, I’m certainly not going to.
“He’s groveling for forgiveness,” Scarlett says, wetting her lips and then glancing over at the stage. She points at it. “Get up there and perform for me, and I’ll think about it.”
“Perform?” I ask, looking over to see that Kellin Bohnes is watching me. I need to be careful with him. Widow came to me to state his intentions; Bohnes will not. Fuck, I knew he was her lover—that news was all over Prescott—but I didn’t think they had anything serious going on.
I certainly didn’t know she was sleeping with the other guy, Widow. Or … I shift my gaze over to see Alexei Grove, perched on the edge of a hay bale with a ghostly mask over his own face, a white one that matches his clothes—white suit, shirt, tie, shoes.
Even the germaphobe is all cozied up—metaphorically, not physically—with Scarlett and her Prescott crew. I remember her asking about him that night we kissed outside another one of Bohnes’ infamous parties.
I swipe a hand down my face.
“Well, if I’m not even worth that much …” she starts, but I reach out to grab her wrist when she goes to walk away from me. Even with her crisp dress shirt between my palm and her skin, the touch burns.
Scarlett stops and looks back at me, breathing heavily.
“Fine, but I need to know the song, don’t I?” I whisper, and she shakes her head.
“Entertain me, Kelly. Loosen up a little.” She tears her arm from my grip and moves over to sit beside Bohnes. Probably on purpose to rile me up. Or so my ego wants to believe.
I move over to stand awkwardly near the edge of the stage as her girl finishes the current song and another one starts up. Scarlett raises a brow, and I sigh, climbing onto the hay bale stage to take the microphone.
It’s connected to its own speaker, set up in this area of the tunnel. The music is clearly coming from a radio station of some sort. I wet my lips, tasting blood, and look around at the small but intimidating crowd.
What the fuck am I doing? I wonder as I struggle to catch my breath.
This isn’t like me at all. Any of this. I’ve lived a very careful life, one crafted of shadows, self-doubt, and fear.
My eyes catch Scarlett’s, and I see that she doesn’t fully believe that I’ll actually do this, make a fool out of myself in front of her friends. She must trust them implicitly; any one of them could rat out my presence here tonight and make life for either of us just that much more difficult.
Someone hands me a bottle of alcohol, and I take a swig, passing it back to a girl in a zombie costume, blood and guts hanging from her mangled corset.
The song that comes up is one that I know, thank fuck: ‘ZOMBIFIED’ by Falling in Reverse.
Even though I’m sure that I look like a total asshole, when the lead singer starts to croon, so do I. At first, my hand is sweaty around the mic, but then the alcohol kicks in a little and I’m moving across the hay bale like I have something to say.
Mostly, I think, I’m putting on a show for Scarlett Force.
