Apathy by L.K. Reid

Skylar

When I stepped out of my house this morning, I never would’ve imagined that this day would end in this way.

Seventeen-year-old Heather Nessai was found at the riverbank, with acidic burns on her chest and my name carved in her stomach. To say that it made me sick to my stomach would be the understatement of the year.

What made me even more sick was the fact that I lied—again—keeping those messages cryptic, because I feared for my friends. I feared that they would end up dead because of me. Knowing now that killing Megan was not just a one-time thing, I had a feeling we were dealing with an extremely deranged individual.

It didn’t help that Ash kept looking at me as if I was going to explode every minute. He kept quiet during the ride back to the town, and all the way to the police station, but he still kept looking at me. The difference was, I was too tired to look back at him. He knew something. The way he looked at that fucking letter, his reaction, I was so sure that he knew something I didn’t, and I was going to find out what.

Wasn’t it strange that the moment he came to town, these murders started happening?

And even though I wanted to erase these thoughts from my head, I started suspecting every single person in my close vicinity. Kane, Ash, ten other people, they all seemed fishy in my eyes, but I wouldn’t be able to prove anything unless I went directly to the police with the messages the murderer was sending me.

Would they be able to find who sent them? Would they be able to track the person threatening me?

Or would they decide that I was somehow at fault for these murders in town?

Then there was my name carved into their corpses, like a beacon leading to me as a prime suspect. God, I wanted to run away from here. Just pack a bag and get out of this forsaken town.

But I couldn’t, at least not yet.

Besides, even if I ran, I had a feeling it would do me no good. My father would find me no matter where I went. Dylan would blow a gasket if I just ran away without ever talking to him about all this.

And, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Ash. He riled me up like no one ever did, but my blood sang when he was around.

So, here I was, sitting in his car at six in the evening, because the same police officer interrogating me that first day decided that he needed to keep me at the station for way longer than necessary. I wanted to throw the mug on the table at him, but I couldn’t do that either.

I could count the number of things I could do on one hand, and none of those could help me find out what the fuck was happening in this town—the missing girls, then their bodies, then cryptic messages, and my name on their bodies. And that fucking letter from this morning, telling me to go to our local library to find out more about Winworth.

Did I even want to know more? I had a feeling that the more I knew, the more danger I would be in. But I couldn’t exactly just sit idly by and pretend that nothing was happening around me.

I could drown myself in drugs and alcohol, but that wouldn’t help either. All those were temporary solutions to a lasting problem.

“Are you going to be okay?” Ash asked, while parked in front of my house. The light was on, on the porch, but I knew that nobody else was at home right now. Dylan went back to Seattle to finish some things, my father was finally out of town, and my mom was still on that fucking trip.

Our housekeeper, Vera, probably already went home, which meant I would be all alone in the enormous house. Tremors rocked through my body, mostly visible on my hands, but I shoved them underneath my legs, hiding my fear from him.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for the ride.” I picked up my bag and turned to the door, but he took a hold of my arm, stopping me from going any further.

“Just,” he started. “Be safe, okay?”

Whatever it was that he wanted to say wasn’t that, but I was too tired to push him for more. I had a feeling that it was only one tragedy after another, and I couldn’t deal with grumpy Ash tonight. For some reason, I wanted him for more than just meaningless sex, and it was painfully obvious that he wasn’t willing to open up enough for us to talk about it.

One second, he was telling me things like in that forest, and in the next one, he was completely closed off. I had enough shit in my life without adding his to the pile. So no, tonight I was going to take a shower, go to sleep, and forget that this day ever happened.

“I always am,” I replied and pushed the door open, welcoming the cold air. As much as I hated the weather in Winworth, tonight it was a welcoming distraction from the disaster surrounding my life. We were in the middle of September, and the way the weather was behaving, you would think we were already in the middle of October.

The door slammed behind me, and I pulled the sweater Lauren brought to the station tighter around me, and started walking toward the front door. I opened my bag and pulled out the keys dangling from the string Dylan had given me a few years ago. I used to lose keys every second week, and after making me wear this stupid string around my neck, I stopped losing them. And when I didn’t need to wear it around my neck anymore, I kept it, unable to throw it away. Dylan gave it to me, and parting with it felt like somehow pushing him away, and I couldn’t do it.

The wind howled around me while an owl cried out close by. At least it wasn’t crows today. I had a feeling they were everywhere these days, and while I absolutely loved them, they reminded me of death and all the sinister things coating the history of Winworth.

As soon as I started unlocking the doors, the tires of Ash’s car screeched on the gravelly road, and I knew he was going to leave me alone for the night. I wasn’t sure if I felt disappointed or relieved that I wouldn’t have to deal with him and his mood swings tonight.

Maybe I wanted him to stay, to hold me during the night, but I also knew that would be too much to ask. I was tired of asking for things I could never have. I wanted him to do it himself, without me asking, but it was obvious that the two of us weren’t on the same wavelength when it came to this thing between us.

The lights were on in the house, Vera most probably leaving them on for me. It was both terrifying and soothing, knowing that I was completely alone. I didn’t want to call Dylan after they summoned me to the station, even though I knew he would’ve come. I didn’t want to call my father, because with him being away, I knew I could breathe a little bit.

But the truth was, I was completely and utterly alone.

Yeah, I had Lauren and my other friends, but they all had to go home to be with their families. They were all terrified of this person killing people, and I had a feeling that this was only the start of the nightmare.

Locking the door behind me, I all but ran upstairs, ready to just forget about the day. It was too early to go to sleep, but I wanted nothing more than to curl up in my bed and forget that another young girl died because a psychopath was obsessed with me.

He called these murders his gifts, and it was only a matter of time before he was going to message me again. Truth be told, I half-expected it to happen during the day, but there were still no messages on my phone.

I glared at the device as if it could give me the answers I so desperately needed, but the only thing glaring back at me was a bright screen and the picture of a wolf I placed as my background. Throwing my bag to the floor as soon as I got to my room, I started removing my clothes, ready to just take a shower and remove the remnants of the day from my skin.

I thought about Lilly and her vicious words. I thought about Ash and the hot-and-cold game we were playing. I thought about Heather and her last moments, comparing her to the visions of Megan I could never forget.

The police hadn’t shared with me if she was found in the same state Megan was but knowing that her chest was burned with acid left a sour taste in my mouth. As I stepped into the shower, letting the warm water cascade over my body, I started thinking about her family.

She was young. Too young to know that kind of violence. Too young for her life to be taken away from her. Too young to experience terror, and to go through these things. I often thought about the souls of those that died in a violent way.

Were they scared? Did they pray to God, saints, or the universe to take their pain away? What were their last thoughts before the monster took away their last breath?

Maybe it was morbid thinking about all those things. No, I knew it was morbid thinking about those things, but sometimes I liked to think that I maybe kept them in my memory, even if it was in a morbid way.

Or maybe focusing on all these things was taking away my guilt and the fact that I was probably withholding the key to bring the murderer to justice. I knew I was selfish. I was choosing the lives of my friends over the lives of the rest of the people. The fact that I didn’t receive a single message from that same number in days scared the hell out of me. I should’ve been relieved, but I had a feeling that this only meant that something worse was coming.

I could hear my phone buzzing, vibrating against the surface of the sink where I dropped it, but I didn’t want to see the number on the screen. If it wasn’t one of my friends or Dylan, it was most definitely the killer, and thinking about some deranged person roaming freely on the streets of our town was the last thing I wanted to do.

I closed my eyes instead, letting the water wash over me. Letting it clear me of the sins coating my skin, even though I knew that no amount of water would be enough to wash away all of them. But I could try to get myself rid of them.

The first thing I needed to do was to get out of here. Only then would I be free of the sicknesses marring my skin.

* * *

I woke up with a start, blinking through the darkness of the room, immediately looking for my phone. After the shower, I just collapsed onto my bed, planning to take a quick nap and then wake up to finish my homework. But looking at my phone now, I could see that my nap ended up being a full-blown sleep. Instead of waking up at nine as I planned to, I managed to sleep through all six alarms I set for myself.

It was already past midnight, and I decided to just continue sleeping instead of getting up now, but a loud crash echoed through the house, freezing me in place.

What the fuck was that?

I looked toward the door, my vision getting clearer in the dark, my heartbeat gradually speeding up. Did I imagine that sound?

I threw the blanket off of me and moved to get up, picking my phone up at the same time. Maybe I was just being paranoid? Maybe the crash came from outside of the house? Maybe it was just floors creaking and my overactive imagination turned it into something else?

But when the second crash came, this time closer to my room, I knew I wasn’t imagining things. Somebody was in the house with me. Someone uninvited, and I had a feeling I knew who it was. My throat closed as I took a hold of the door handle, trying to open it without too much sound, hoping that this wasn’t what I thought it was.

Maybe it was Ash coming to surprise me? Or maybe… Maybe Dylan or my parents came back home, and they didn’t let me know beforehand? Yeah, it could be one of these options, and as I swung the door open, my phone tightly clutched in my hand, I peeked a glance to the hallway, contemplating my options.

But even if my brain was trying to calm me down by creating these possibilities in my head, my body knew that I was in danger. The skin on the nape of my neck stood up as footsteps creaked from the staircase, and my flight-or-fight instincts kicked in without thinking.

I pressed one hand against my mouth, muffling down any sounds of my breathing, and tiptoed toward the study opposite of my room, thankful for the already open doors. I swallowed the cry of despair threatening to erupt from my throat, and tried to calm myself down, tried to think.

I had to do something, for fuck’s sake. Something, anything.

I plastered myself against the wall next to the door inside the study, listening to the sounds blanketing the silent night, but I couldn’t hear anything but the thundering beat of my heart. It was as if my ribs were closing in, tighter, painfully tighter, around my heart, squeezing me to death, cutting off my ability to think, ability to breathe, to move, to…

No, no, no, no, this can’t be happening right now. This can’t be fucking happening.

There was a potential serial killer in my house, and my body and mind were betraying me in the moments where I needed to be sane. Where I needed to think with a cool head.

I couldn’t move because moving could uncover my position. I couldn’t shake the dreary feeling wrapping itself around my bones, and fear I never felt before started seeping into my pores, sneaking in like smoke from the fire that permeated clothes.

My vision started getting blurry and not even a second after, I felt the wetness on my left hand still pressed against my mouth.

I was crying. I was fucking crying, and I didn’t even realize.

An involuntary sob clogged itself in my throat, choking me, killing me from the inside, but I couldn’t let it out. Or maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe all of this was inside my head.

Yeah, there was no killer in the house. It was only me and my fucked-up head.

And I almost believed myself, until the creaking sound echoed around the hallway, just outside the study.

Oh my God.

I should’ve called the police while I was in my room. I should’ve been smarter, because now I couldn’t turn my phone on without it illuminating the entire room.

Another creak, another step so much louder than before, and another tear rolled down my cheek, hitting my hand. The rustling of clothes as the intruder entered my room was almost enough to push me to run, but I had to wait. Just wait and listen.

One step, and then the second one, and then I dared to sneak a peek from around the corner. Maybe if my adrenaline wasn’t at an all-time high, I would’ve passed out from the sight in front of me. But when my eyes zeroed in on the wide back standing inside my room, I bolted from my hiding spot and started running toward the stairs.

Keeping quiet wasn’t important anymore. I had to get out of the house and get help.

But where? There were no houses next to ours, and I knew that running away wasn’t an option anymore. Instead, that same anger that took a hold of me before I attacked Lilly reappeared, igniting the blood in my veins, leading me where I needed to go.

His footsteps thundered behind me as I rounded the corner and started running down the stairs, but stopping wasn’t an option, even though my heart threatened to jump out of my chest. Even though the tears continued streaming down my cheeks, I didn’t stop when I jumped from the second stair to the ground and headed toward the kitchen.

I didn’t stop when I heard him coming closer, closer, so close that if he just took a few more steps, he would be able to catch me.

But I had to survive. I wanted to survive. All that talk about wanting to die, wanting to disappear, and now when I was faced with the situation that would give me an easy way out, I couldn’t bear the thought of dying. At least, not like this.

If my death was inevitable, I wanted to be the one to decide how and when, not some deranged monster cutting girls left and right, fixating on me.

My foot slipped on the tiles in the kitchen, but I managed to straighten myself up, reaching toward the knives placed on the counter. But before I could grasp one of them, a strong set of hands lifted me from the ground and pulled me backward, slamming me into the opposite wall.

“No!” I screamed, scrambling to get away from him. Before I could run outside of the kitchen, he managed to get a hold of me again, pressing his chest to my back, caging me in his embrace.

“Please,” I cried. “Please don’t hurt me.”

I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear his labored breathing as he lowered his head to my neck, scenting me, sending shock waves through my body as fear gripped my insides.

“Please,” I begged, whimpering in his arms, but he didn’t budge even when I started thrashing in his arms. If anything, his grip tightened, and one of his hands sneaked toward my throat, pressing soft touches, caressing me.

“I’ll do anything,” I pleaded, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he turned me around, pulling another scream from me at the sight in front of my eyes.

A mask covered his face, hiding his eyes, hiding his entire identity. Its golden hue shone underneath the moonlight peeking in through the windows. I didn’t dare move. I almost didn’t dare to breathe as this stranger perused my face, his hand still wrapped around my throat, the hidden warning cloaked by the soft caresses he kept inflicting on my skin.

I pressed my hands on his chest, feeling the strong muscles beneath my fingers, but he stopped me from going any further when I tried sneaking my hands around his neck, trying to pull off the hood hiding his hair. Tilting his head to the side, he started walking forward, pushing me out of the kitchen, all the way to the foyer area where a chair stood right in front of the door.

My whimpers, my pleading, it all fell on deaf ears as he sat me down, pressing harder against my throat. As a warning, as foreplay, I didn’t know anymore. He didn’t kill me—yet—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t hurt me.

“Are you going to kill me?” I asked as he pulled out the rope from a pocket in his cloak and bound my wrists to the arms of the chair. I wanted to hear him talk. I wanted to learn anything that could give me an advantage over this person. “Why aren’t you talking?” I tried softening my voice, because if he was truly obsessed with me, then maybe he didn’t want to harm me more than he thought was necessary.

But there was no answer. Nothing but the rustling of his clothes and our breathing.

“Did you kill those girls?” I braved to ask—the wrong thing to ask—because in a second, he gripped the back of my neck and pulled my hair, exposing my throat to him. Trailing a path with his gloved finger over my skin, he went over my chin all the way to my lips, stopping just below my lower lip. “Did you?” I croaked, because dying and not knowing who he was, was unbearable.

I could’ve missed it, almost did, when he nodded slowly, before he pressed his thumb into my lower lip, moving his finger from one side of my mouth to the other. He leaned down, his face inches away from mine, and I closed my eyes, knowing that this night wasn’t going to end up well for me.

“Why can’t you let me go?” I cried. “Why are you doing this?” I asked as I opened my eyes, realizing that he’d moved back. But my momentary relief was short-lived when I saw the knife in his hand.

“No, please!” I started pushing against the chair, but it was futile fighting against the ropes he tightened around my arms. “I’m begging you,” I pleaded as he took a step closer, turning the knife to the side, looking first at it then at me.

“You don’t have to do this. Please don’t do this.”

But the faceless man continued to be quiet, staring at me, and when he took the final step, standing right next to me, he lifted his other hand, pressing his finger against his lips.

“I’m not gonna keep quiet, damn you!” I screamed. “They’re gonna find you. My brother is going to find you!”

But even I knew that these were empty threats, my last attempt to stall him, to stop him. No one would hear me. Nobody was coming to save me.

I was alone.

All fucking alone, and I was going to die tonight.

I flinched as his hand shot out, but instead of hitting me, he gently moved the hair from my face, putting it behind my ear.

My stomach lurched, because how could somebody behave like this? Both a killer and a gentle man? I thought that he would’ve killed me by now. I kept staring at his face when he pressed the tip of his knife to my arm, pulling another shriek from me.

“Noooo!”

But he kept going, carving and carving and carving, while pain kept ricocheting through my arm, through my body.

“Stop!” I thrashed and thrashed, but he didn’t stop even when my head started getting woozy and his masked face started getting blurry. “Please,” I wept, feeling the blood dripping from my arm.

My head started falling, and unable to keep it standing, to keep fighting, I closed my eyes when he began cutting me again, drawing line after line over my arm.

As the edges of my vision darkened, I just prayed that he wouldn’t drop my body somewhere in the woods. I didn’t want to be found like Megan.