The Merciless II

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eBook ISBN: 9781101631331

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

I
stand at the living room window, staring at the empty house across the street. A single strand of old Christmas lights dangles from the roof. Half the bulbs have burned out.

A woman and her son lived there until this morning. They didn't even say good-bye, just packed their things and disappeared, like everyone else in this neighborhood. I'm surprised it took them this long. After all, no one wants to live across the street from the murder house.

I exhale, fogging the glass. Rain lashes at the window and turns our yard into a swamp. A red Matchbox car floats down the driveway in a muddy river.

I stare at the churning water and try to breathe, but the air in the house feels thick. It's like inhaling sand. I cup my hands and place them over my mouth, forcing my lungs to draw in a ragged wheeze. I exhale through my fingers and choke down another gasp of air.

Breathe,
I tell myself. My eyes flutter closed.
It's just a panic attack.
My chest unclenches, and I take a longer drag through my nose. The room stops spinning. I'm in control again.

I grab my phone off the coffee table. Mom is the first in my short list of favorites. The rest—Grace, Riley, and Alexis—are dead. I cast another glance out the window. Row after row of empty houses stare back at me, the tattered
FOR SALE
signs perched in their yards like warnings.

I hit Call and a photo of my mom, Sergeant Nina Flores, flashes across the screen. She glares at me over a bowl of cereal, a single Honey Nut Cheerio stuck to her cheek. Normally, her appearance is military-precise, but I caught her before her coffee.

The sight of Mom's face calms me a little.

“Chill, Sofia,” I mutter to myself, lifting the phone to my ear.

Mom answers her phone mid-ring. “Sofia?”

“Mom?” Relief seeps through me. “Where are you?”

“I'm still at work, Sof. Is everything okay?”

I clutch the phone with both hands, shooting another look out the window. “I thought you were coming home early today.”

“I told Jodi that I'd cover for everyone who took off early for Thanksgiving . . . Why? Did something happen?”

“No, I just—” I glance at the empty house across the street. It was different when I knew there was someone living there, even if she kept her curtains closed and averted her eyes whenever she saw me. “I just don't want to be alone.”

Mom is silent for a beat. “Did you have another attack?” she asks, her voice gentle. When I don't answer, she sighs. “Honey, did you try the breathing exercises Dr. Keller taught you?”

I drop onto the couch and take another pull of air. Dr. Keller is the therapist who helped me realize that what happened last summer was a mental breakdown. In other words:
not real
. Because of him, I could finally accept that Brooklyn didn't make blood rain from Riley's ceiling, she didn't set fires with her mind, and she definitely didn't pull out Riley's heart with her bare hands.

He told me that I don't have evil inside of me. Just guilt.

He said that witnessing Riley's murder traumatized me, and I made up a story to cope. And I want to believe
Dr. Keller. But sometimes I can still hear the sound of Riley's heart falling to the ground. I still feel Brooklyn's lips on my cheek.

We don't kill our own
was the last thing she said to me before disappearing into the woods. The police never found her.

“The exercises helped, I guess,” I mumble into the phone.

Mom exhales. “See? It's like he said after your last session: the most important thing is to learn how to control your fear so it can't control you.”

I pick at the skin next to my thumbnail. Brooklyn could be outside my house right now. My guilty conscience may have invented some of what happened over the summer. But Brooklyn was real, and she killed my three best friends.

Dr. Keller can prescribe all the breathing exercises he wants, but even he can't keep me from being afraid.

“How's
Abuela
?” Mom asks.

I shift my eyes to the staircase at the edge of the living room. Grandmother's rosary beads click against her table upstairs like a metronome, slowly counting the seconds. Yesterday, she woke up coughing and gasping in the middle of the night. She had a slight fever and her skin was clammy, but her temperature came down this morning, so we decided not to take her to the emergency
room. “She's okay. She's breathing normally and her temp was at ninety-eight point six degrees,” I say. “I checked when I got home from school.”

“Good. I'm glad she's feeling better.” Mom clears her throat. “And how's the rest of your day been?” she asks.

I frown and tug at a thread coming loose from my jeans. “Fine. Boring.”

“What, no big Thanksgiving break party?” She's trying to be funny, but her voice sounds strained. She knows I don't have any friends left in this town. Charlie is the only person I still know in Friend, Mississippi, and he hasn't spoken to me since the night I stole his truck and tried to save Riley. I've barely said a word to another classmate since I found Grace's dead body hanging from our shed. The thread unravels, leaving a tiny hole in my jeans. I press down on the fabric, but the hole won't magically knit itself back together. None of the holes in my life will.

“Mom,” I whisper, the word cracking in my mouth. “Why do we have to stay here?”

A sigh echoes through the phone. “Sofia . . .”

I blink hard to keep from crying. “Dr. Keller says this environment is toxic for me, and everyone else has already moved away. We could go back to Arizona, or—”

“I'm stationed here, in Friend. I have another sixteen months before I can apply for reassignment.”

“But—”

“It's my job, Sofia. You know how the army works. There's nothing I can do.”

I lay back on the couch, swallowing the rest of my argument. We've talked about this before. A lot. Silence stretches between us. Wind presses against the glass of the windows, and thunder rumbles in the distance. It reminds me of a car engine, except cars don't drive down this street anymore.

“Sweetie,” Mom says, her voice a bit softer, “sometimes I wish we could leave, too. Even I get jealous of how everyone else can pack up and go. Our life is just a little more complicated than that. What's that needlepoint your grandmother has on her wall? Jealousy is cancer, or—”

“
Jealousy is like cancer in your bones
,” I correct her. “It's from the Bible.”

Mom releases a small laugh. “Right. Jealousy will eat you up inside if you let it, so let's try to look for a silver lining. Do you think you can do that?”

I shrug, even though I know Mom can't see me. “I guess.”

There's a pause. “Look, I might be able to convince Jodi to let me leave a few minutes early,” Mom says. “Everyone's already left for the holiday, so there's not much to take care of. How about I swing by China
Garden to pick up some takeout, and we can watch
The Wizard of Oz
?”

A small smile tugs at the corner of my lips.
The Wizard of Oz
is my favorite movie. We watch it whenever I have a bad day. “That sounds okay,” I say.

“I'll call ahead and order the usual. See you soon.”

“Thanks, Mom. Love you.”

“Love you. Now do your homework.”

“Roger that,” I say, and we both hang up.

Reluctantly, I flip through my dog-eared copy of Shakespeare's
The Tempest
and open up my laptop. My last three schools have all done a unit on
The Tempest
. I could probably recite the entire play from memory. I stifle a yawn and my eye twitches.

The cover of
The Tempest
shows a girl in a blue dress staring out over a stormy sea. She has her back to me, her tangled red hair blowing in the wind. Miranda has been stranded on a deserted island with a crazy magician for twelve years but I'd still trade places with her in a second. Deserted island beats murder house any day.

Just looking at her makes my eyelids feel heavy. I'm supposed to write an essay detailing the major themes and, even though I've read the play
three
times, I can't think of a single thing to write. I stare at the blank Word document on my laptop. The cursor blinks mockingly. The sound of my grandmother's rosary beads echoes
down the stairs and, after a second, the blinking and the clicking match up.

Blink.
Click.
Blink.
Click.
Blink.

I tear my eyes away from the screen and pick up
The Tempest
.

The girl on the cover stares right at me, a terrible smile on her face.

I jump up, banging my knee—
hard
—on the coffee table. I wheeze in pain at the shock. The book goes flying and hits the wall with a smack and then drops to the carpet, faceup. My heart is pounding so hard that I want to throw up.

I don't want to look. But I
have
to look. I lift my head.

The cover of
The Tempest
is normal again. Miranda stares out over the sea, her hair teased out behind her. No demon smile. I unclench my fists and stop holding my breath. The nausea has passed.

I sink back onto the couch and pull my computer onto my lap. My knee pulses with pain. I'll have an ugly purple bruise tomorrow, but I won't be able to distinguish it from the others. I've been so jumpy lately that I'm covered in welts and marks.

I lower my fingers to the keyboard and type:
Power and enslavement, the favored and the forsaken, lovers and masters. These major themes of
The Tempest—

My screen freezes. I frown and tap on the keys. Nothing.

“Shit,” I mutter. I slide a finger over the trackpad, but the cursor doesn't move. It's not even blinking. I groan and close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose with two fingers. This is just perfect. My knee aches, my brain feels mushy, and now my computer's not working. It's like the universe doesn't actually want me to get anything done.

I open my eyes and reach for the power button to restart. A blank window pops onto the screen.

“What the hell?” I whisper. A cursor appears. Someone starts to type.

Hello, Sofia.

Fear curdles in my stomach. This isn't happening. My eyes must be playing tricks on me.

A GIF of a skinned cat opens on the desktop. Flies crawl over its limp, pink tongue, and its cloudy eyes stare out at me from a raw, bloody face. Someone painted a pentagram on the dead grass, and dripping candles form a circle around its rotting body.

Every other sound in the house goes silent. I can't hear the rain or Grandmother's rosary, but my breathing magnifies in my ears until the ragged gasps overwhelm me. I remember the smell of that cat. Milk gone sour. Fish left in the heat. I press the computer's power button, hoping to erase the image that's already seared into my brain. It won't turn off.

Another photograph appears. It's Alexis's dead body, crumpled beneath the second-story window of the abandoned house. I still don't know if she jumped or was pushed. The curve of her twisted limbs is deeply unnatural. A beautiful broken doll. She stares up at the sky, a thin line of blood dribbling from her lips. Her fingers curl toward her palms, as though she's reaching for someone.

I jerk away from the sofa and stumble to my feet, the laptop tumbling to the ground.

“Stop it,” I whisper. I back up against the wall as more pictures flash across the computer screen.

A girl holding a butcher knife. Bloody handprints. Cockroaches racing across the floor.

Then a video file pops up, blocking all the other images. A train races toward the screen, headlights flashing. A horn blares, followed by a high, piercing scream. I press myself into the wall behind me, my breath fast and ragged. I'd know that scream anywhere. Karen. The girl I killed.

I squeeze my eyes shut and throw my hands over my ears. “Stop it!” I shout. “Please!”

Laughter echoes through the house.

I open my eyes and spin around, certain I'm going to see Brooklyn standing behind me smiling her terrible demon smile. But I'm alone. The laughing grows louder.

“Please,” I whisper. My hands start to shake. I curl them into fists and hug them to my chest. “
Please
stop.”

“So-fi-a,” someone says in a singsong voice, making the hair on my arms stand up. The voice is coming from the laptop speakers.

“You're one of us, Sofia,” Brooklyn says. “I'm coming for you.”

“
No!
” I shout, and I jerk awake, gasping.

I'm lying on the couch, my computer still balanced on my lap. There's nothing on the screen except for a blank Word document and a blinking cursor. The storm beats against the windows and my grandmother's rosary beads click away upstairs. Otherwise, it's dead quiet. My chest rises and falls as I try to catch my breath. It was a nightmare. Just like all the other nightmares I've had since the day Brooklyn killed Riley and revealed my horrible secret. No one else knows that I dragged a girl onto the train tracks at my last school. Not Dr. Keller. Not even my mother.

Tears spill onto my cheeks. I try to wipe them away but they come too quickly, blurring my vision and making my breath hitch. I vowed that I would never think about that night again. It was an accident, a moment of insanity. And, after everything that happened with Brooklyn, I've more than paid for my crime.

I start to do my exercises, but my hands shake so
badly that I can't keep them cupped around my mouth. I grab my phone to call Mom again, then pause.

The time blinks at me from the home screen: 9:47. I click on my recent calls list. I talked to Mom at six fifty-two. Almost three hours ago.

“What the hell?” I murmur. I wipe the last of the tears from my eyes. “Mom?” I call, pushing myself to my feet. “Are you there?”