The Haunting of Secrets (10 page)

Too innocent in the way of men and love to
even think of being offended by Dejana’s words, I simply stare at
her, utterly confused. Logan on the other hand, apparently, is not
as innocent as I am.

“In a pile of leaves? Seriously?” he asks
offended. “If I was going to have sex with Aimee, it would be in a
bed. And, I would at least take her on a date first. I certainly
would
not
take her to a dirty pile of leaves in the woods,
unlike most of the guys you know apparently,” he challenges,
clearly not bowing down to her intimidation tactics. I can see
Dejana’s impressed. It isn’t every day that someone stands up to
her. Usually her beauty and popularity get her anything she wants,
including bending just about anyone to her will. I am witnessing
history in the making. And I still have no idea why either of them
is mad.

“Hey, remember me over here?” I ask them as
they stare each other down. “Still a virgin, sadly and still very
much in need of Dejana’s help. There is something you need to see
regarding our little project. We had a big break today and it
wasn’t a good one.”

With Logan no longer a threat, Dejana’s
attention snaps back to me. She immediately understands the
ramifications of what I said. I can almost see her mind clicking to
find a good excuse to send Logan on his way. Luckily, I had thought
of one on the ride over here.

“Logan,” I start, “I know that you have
baseball practice right after school today and you have already
spent too much time fretting over me. Thank you for bringing me to
Dejana. She’s already dealt with me after the coma, so she’ll know
what to do,” I explain hoping he’ll buy it. When he still doesn’t
move one foot from Dejana’s front porch, I realize that he’s still
skeptical. Damn. It seems I need a better reason for him to leave
us alone. “I promise to find you tomorrow at lunch so you can see
that I’m okay,” I say, hoping he’ll take the hint. He does. I guess
the thought of my wanting to see him tomorrow is just too much to
resist. It’s almost too easy.

“Ok,” Logan says hesitantly. “I’ll leave you
to it then. See you tomorrow at lunch. Don’t stand me up or I’ll
just go and find you anyway,” he threatens as he makes his way back
to his car, gets in, and drives off. Neither of us moves until we
see him turn down the next street and disappear from view.

“Well, come on inside then,” says Dejana. “I
have a feeling we have a lot to talk about.”

I am dragged to the kitchen and plopped into
a seat at the table where Dejana tells me to drink some water
before practically forcing it down my throat. Some water sloshes
onto her crème top and jeans, but she doesn’t seem to notice. I
must really look like hell, because she doesn’t ever go all
maternal on me. I wish I could take away her worry, but there’s no
way around it; I have to add more.

“The killer left me a note in my locker. I
have no idea how the hell he pulled that off. I only just got the
new locker and combination this morning. I freaked out and ran.
Luckily, Logan saw me and came after me. I have no idea what I was
doing, but when I came to, I was on the ground and Logan was
standing over me with a worried look on his face.”

Stunned by the news, Dejana stops fretting
and sits down in the chair next to me at the table. She doesn’t say
anything for a solid minute. I know, because I counted. Finally,
Dejana seems to have gotten over her shock and I see her eyes
practically glowing with fear. The ring of the doorbell saves me
from having to say any of my darkest fears. Dejana gets up from her
chair and heads toward the door. I hear a muffling of voices
growing closer until she comes back into the kitchen with Leah.

“Hey!” says Leah bubbly as usual. “Glad
you’re here too, Aimee, because I have some information for both of
you. When I texted Dejana she said she was on her way home, so I
ran right over. Didn’t know you girls were in to skipping school.
You just jumped up two degrees in my opinion of you. Anyway,
there’s something I want to show you. I’m not interrupting
anything, am I?” Leah asks as she flutters over to the kitchen
table and takes out her expensive Mac from her bag. Even though
it’s obvious Leah interrupted us, she only asks out of Southern
politeness. From what Dejana has told me about Leah, she’s a force
to be reckoned with. And I’ve been ‘reckoned’ with enough lately
not to get in her way.

Leah pulls out one of the expensive leather
chairs that surround the dark mahogany kitchen table and fires up
her computer. Within seconds, she’s punching keys on the keyboard
and I see all sorts of things come to life on her screen that I can
never hope to understand. Before long, she seems to find what she’s
looking for and turns the laptop to face us, a look of triumph on
her face. “I’m finally finished. This slideshow of pictures shows
all the girls at our school that fit the description you gave me.
You can just scroll through them by pressing this arrow here.” She
points out a big arrow on the right hand side of the screen as if
we were simpletons. “And voilà!”

“Amazing,” Dejana says, clearly in awe of the
sheer amount of information Leah was able to put together in such a
short time period. “You did it.”

“It wasn’t so hard actually. I just had to
hack into the school system and set up a program with all the
parameters you wanted. Easy as pie,” says Leah, beaming with pride.
I sit up in my seat and pull the laptop’s screen towards me. I
begin to scroll through the pictures, not sure what I am looking
for, but determined to study every single photograph for any kind
of recognition. If the killer is as meticulous and organized as we
think he is, he has his next victim picked out already. I keep
scrolling in silence, desperate for any kind of lead to find this
asshole. If Dejana or Leah speaks to me, I don’t hear them.
Finally, my persistence is rewarded when I arrive at the
twenty-first slide. A girl with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes
stares back at me through the screen. The sense that I know her is
overwhelming. I read the name underneath the slide: Elizabeth
Donovan. I don’t recognize the name, but my insides are churning. I
can feel the killer’s memories swimming inside my head.
He
knows her, I’m certain of it. I can feel it. I can only hope that
we aren’t too late to save her.

The vertigo hits without warning. Despite
Dejana and Leah’s best efforts to reach me in time, my head hits
the table and the dreaded darkness consumes me once again.

Chapter
Sixteen

~ Monsters Among Us ~

For once, I’m not shrouded in obscurity.
After so much time spent cloaked in darkness, the light is
blinding, unnerving. I can’t be myself here. I am forced to hunt
beneath the shroud of my façade. I pretend to eat my lunch, laugh
at the ridiculous jokes of my so-called friends surrounding me,
oblivious to the monster among them. Yet, my attention is not on
the simpletons that constantly hover in my presence. My eyes are
fixed on her. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s already mine, the
next on my list. It is inevitable; I will have her. But, I must be
patient. If I’m to get what I want, everything must be perfectly
planned and executed.

Her eyes meet mine for a split second and I’m
mesmerized. She sees me staring at her and smiles back, clearly
happy to have gained my attention. Who wouldn’t be? I almost lick
my lips in anticipation, but I stop myself in time. No one can know
how much I desire her. I play along with my friends at the table,
careful as always, not to reveal the monster within. Time and time
again, my eyes float back to her. I catch myself daydreaming. I
imagine her chained to my bed, her wrists and ankles an angry red
from resisting bondages. I can almost feel the knife in my hand,
the knife I never dare bring to school for fear that the beast
within would surface, revealing what I work so hard to conceal. I’m
too careful for that and they are too stupid to see. I wonder if
her screams will be as high pitched as my last angel, Jessica. That
encounter still plays over and over in my mind. I so enjoyed
hearing her scream as I stabbed her over and over again. I can
still feel the warmth of her blood on my skin.

The bell rings, snapping me back to attention
as all of us in the cafeteria gather our belongings and head to our
next class. Quickly, I grab my friend Daniel’s arm before he can
run off to his math class.

“Hey, Danny,” I ask pointing my finger toward
the girl I was admiring from afar. “Do you know what that girl’s
name is? The one over there with the purple backpack?”

Daniel turns to look and I can see from the
gleam in his eye that he not only knows her, he is fond of her as
well. He smiles and waves at her as she passes us to head up the
stairs to her next class. “Her name is Elizabeth,” says Daniel,
trying to hide his annoyance at my interest in the girl. “Elizabeth
Donovan. She’s a junior and hot as hell. You got a thing for her,
dude?” he asks jovially.

“Nah man, I was just wondering. I caught her
looking at me a few times today during lunch. No biggie,” I lie
with a smile on my face and a pat on his back. Without another
word, I grab my backpack and head to English class, doing my best
to hide my smile. As usual, no one is the wiser.

Chapter
Seventeen

~ Lost Souls ~

“Oh. My. God,” says Leah trying her best to
catch her breath but unable to. “What the hell is happening to
Aimee?” she asks Dejana, her voice in full panic mode. Dejana
scrambles, trying her best to find the words to describe Aimee’s,
for lack of a better term, problem. But, she can’t think of any
plausible lie for what’s happening to Aimee. The fact that her eyes
are white and cloudy isn’t helping either. Dejana loathes telling
Leah the truth simply because she’s certain Leah won’t believe it.
Hell, she didn’t believe it herself until a few days ago.

Dejana knew from the start that there was
something strange about Aimee, but that didn’t deter her. Dejana
has always been a champion for the misunderstood. She may be
popular, but she isn’t the stereotypical, cold-hearted bitch people
assume she must be. Her other friends just laugh it off as one of
Dejana’s quirks, clearly showing how little they truly know her.
Dejana saw something special in Aimee’s eyes that day on the bus.
Something she couldn’t ignore: loneliness. It took a year for her
to break through the fortress of walls Aimee constructed to keep
people out, but in the end, it was worth it.

Dejana found something in Aimee she has never
found in any of her other friends: unwavering loyalty. When Aimee
told her about her curse one night during a French study session,
sometime in the middle of their sophomore year, she decided to play
along and believe her. After all, even the best of friends can be
just a little bit nuts. She thought Aimee just had an irrational
fear of germs. Dejana never believed for a second that Aimee could
truly absorb memories or she would have tested it out by touching
Aimee herself. Now, more than ever, Dejana wishes she knew how this
curse works. She’s only seen Aimee’s eyes cloud over once; she has
no idea exactly how long it can last. Now, Leah is seeing the same
thing firsthand and Dejana is torn as to what to do. She knows that
Aimee doesn’t want Leah to know about her curse, but that’s kind of
a moot point now. Leah can see that something’s different about
Aimee. In the end, she sees no way around it; she has to tell Leah
the truth and hope for the best. Dejana crosses her arms in a
defensive maneuver and steels herself, ready to take on the
hysteria that is sure to come.

“She’s in the middle of experiencing
someone’s memory,” states Dejana, daring Leah to tell her she’s a
liar or worse, crazy. Secretly, Dejana hopes that Leah will just
scream and run away. That would be the easiest solution. Later, she
can just tell Leah she was seeing things that Aimee was just tired
and that would be the end of it. No one would believe her anyway.
But, here she stands, mouth open in amazement and not moving.
Dammit
, thought Dejana,
of course it won’t be that
easy
. Dejana isn’t exactly sure how to explain Aimee’s gift
when she didn’t exactly understand it herself. In her opinion, no
one in the world could possibly understand, but Aimee.

She softens her voice and tries her best to
explain the unexplainable. “Leah, I know this is freaky, but you
have to listen to me,” says Dejana in a soft, but commanding voice.
Leah turns her panicked, confused face toward Dejana in a silent
invitation to explain. “Aimee has a gift. She calls it a curse. Do
you notice that she is always fully clothed from head to toe? That
she never shakes anyone’s hand or touches anyone at all?” Leah nods
her head, apparently only capable of simple responses at this
moment.

“Well,” continues Dejana apprehensively,
“with one touch, she can see your entire past. One touch and she
experiences all of your memories, the good and the bad.”

Leah shakes her head in disbelief, but before
she can voice any of her concerns, Dejana drives forward, desperate
to finish the story and make Leah understand.

“The day of the bombing, a boy touched Aimee.
Her mind was flooded with images, horrible images of him killing
young girls. Aimee saw all of this, through his eyes, knowing that
she couldn’t help, only watch. She doesn’t know who this boy is, so
she asked me to help her find him. She asked me to help her find a
killer, Leah, right here among us, in our school. She’s a good
person,” Dejana pleads. “She just got dealt a bad hand. Can you get
past this and help us?”

Since Leah is still unresponsive, Dejana
takes her by the arm and sits her in the chair at the table next to
Aimee. Dejana pulls the computer from in front of Aimee and places
it in front of Leah’s stunned face. She points to the girl on the
screen.