No Happily Ever After (The Fairytale Diaries #1) (11 page)

Chapter 21

S
tella mounted the stairs and had to force her feet to move.  The dim sound of the TV from the other room played at her back.  But ahead of her, there was only a deathly silence.  She peered up the stairway into the darkness above.  She wanted to turn back, but the same frightened feeling that made her anxious, also propelled her forward.

Halfway up the stairs, she noticed a smell.

In a way, the smell was almost sweet.  But too sweet.  So sweet that it turned her stomach.  Additionally, under the veil of the sweetness were other smells.  A metallic smell and another smell.  Like pure unadulterated filth.  The three smells were each so strong, they seemed to dance together like living creatures.  She blanched, and clapped her hand over her mouth and nose. Each step she took toward the upstairs made the smell grow stronger.

Tears welled in her eyes.  Something was definitely wrong.  The smell obviously came from inside the house; and nothing like that should ever, ever be inside any place where living things dwelled.  It upset her on a deep level that her conscious mind refused to acknowledge.

At the top of the stairs, Stella moved past her own bedroom door without as much as a glance.  She'd lost all interest in grabbing a hoodie.  Instead she kept drifting further into the reeking.  At the very end of the hall she came to a window.  Stella stood for a moment looking out into the rolling black expanse of starlit sky.  She glanced down at the sparkling snow.  Her parents were the sort who left the Christmas lights lit until February.  She saw the reflections of red twinkling lights on the snow down below and the thought crossed her mind that it looked like blood.

Stella took a deep breath and turned to the right, where she took hold of her parents' bedroom doorknob.  With trembling hand she turned the knob and pushed the door open.

And there they were, their bodies carelessly discarded in a haphazard pile on the floor at the end of the bed.  Her father was on the bottom, face down in a pool of blood that must have had a ten foot circumference.  Her mother was splayed atop him, on her back.  Her eyes bulged and the whites had turned brown.  Her tongue lulled out, swollen and blue.  And, her throat was slashed so deeply that her head was only attached by a sliver of skin.

Stella began to scream.

***

Madre Bar had crept up behind Stella.  When she turned to blast out of the room, she shoved right past Madre without even seeing her.  Everything moved incredibly quickly.  She saw Eric burst up the stairs and all her mind could register was to run to him.

But her incredibly long braid lashed behind her, and Madre Bar grabbed it, jerking Stella to a halt.

Stella seemed not to even notice the woman yanking on her hair.  And poor Eric had no clue what was going on.  But he'd heard Stella's blood curdling scream, and even in the shadowy darkness, he could see the malevolent look on Madre Bar's face.  He fumbled for his pocket knife even as he ran for Stella, and without pause, he raised it high in the air and then sliced it through Stella's braid, freeing her from Mrs. Bar's grip.

"Run!" he yelled.

She stopped for only a second to look at Eric as he squared off with Mrs. Bar then proceeded for the stairs.  But halfway down, she heard the sound of glass breaking and Eric yelling.

Shaking violently, Stella came to an instant standstill.  "Eric?" she called weakly.

"I'm afraid you've gone and gotten him killed, Stella," Mrs. Bar called in some sort of odd tone Stella had never heard her use.

Tears streamed down her face.  She knew she should run.  Continue down the stairs, out the front door, and just run until she could find another person.  But, she couldn't bring herself to leave Eric.  She had to know what happened.

She turned slowly and went back up to the hallway.

Mrs. Bar stood at the broken hallway window that overlooked the backyard.  Stella inched forward until she stood shoulder to shoulder with the woman looking down.

Beneath the window on the ground, there was a thorny rose bush.  Even from her perch, Stella could see Eric's eye balls impaled on two sharp branches.  Remarkably, he was alive.  He held one hand over his face, blood gushing out around it.  He mewled as would a wounded animal and he stumbled toward the trees.

Stella opened her mouth to scream at him not to move, she was coming.  But before she let out one peep, she felt cold steel against the base of her skull.

"Don't," said Madre Bar.

She gasped and her back straightened rigidly.  Slowly, she turned her head to look at Mrs. Bar.

"He'll crawl off into the woods, pass out, freeze to death and die, Stella. It'll all go very quickly so just don't worry about it.  We're going to go get a bucket of hot water, go out, and clean up his bloody mess, and within a couple hours, the snow will cover the spot back up and all will be well!" she explained cheerily, as though it all made total sense.

Stella wept inconsolably, but at the same time attempted to remain calm.  "And then what?" she whispered.

"If you're a good girl, I'll tuck you into my car and take you home.  If you're a bad girl, I'll shoot you in the head."

Mrs. Bar prompted Stella with the gun down the stairs and into the kitchen where they filled a bucket of water.  They got on their coats and took the bucket outside where Mrs. Bar directed her to get rid of Eric's blood.  Stella strained to listen for him, and to peer into the trees.  He was gone, and she couldn't hear a sound.

She prayed he'd somehow made it to safety.

Mrs. Bar plucked Eric's impaled eyeballs from the bush, and tucked them into her pocket.  Stella cringed and her tears began all over again.  She was brutally shoved toward Mrs. Bar's car.  When they got to it, Mrs. Bar opened the back door.  Just as Stella leaned over to get inside, Mrs. Bar brought the butt of her pistol down on her temple, and Stella collapsed on the back seat.

"Sorry dear," Mrs. Bar murmured. "Can't have you trying anything funny."

Chapter 22

"W
hat do you think they intend to do with us?"

A wavering female voice roused Stella.  She massaged her throbbing temples and struggled to sit up.  To her complete amazement, she found herself in a cell with Ella Cinder and Nicholas Monarch.  Directly across from where she pulled herself up to lean against a filthy stone wall, was a cell containing Cailyn, Aspen, and Kimberly.  A situation she'd thought couldn't possibly get worse, had just worsened.

After all, being killed by a psycho killer was certainly terrible.  But being kept alive by one for an unknown reason was almost certainly worse.

"What do
you
think?" said Kimberly Crimson bitterly; responding to the question Cailyn Pure had just posed.  "They will torture us all, until we die from it!"

"We must find an escape!" Cailyn insisted, pacing about the cell.  "They are far outnumbered.  We can make a plan, and overpower them!"

Stella began to blubber again.  Ella and Nicholas rushed to flank her, and each encircle her with one arm.

"Shhhh," Ella cooed.  "I know, I know.  It's terribly scary when you first wake up.

Stella peered into Ella's face to find it mutilated by a network of ugly red, jagged cuts.  She couldn't bring herself to ask Ella what had happened.  The knowledge of it might bring her to an official end of her sanity.

Her other classmates pressed against their cell bars to watch her. 

"Does…  Does anyone know if my boyfriend Eric Prince is here?" Stella asked.  "Please tell me that he's here!"

The mention of Eric made Nicholas jerk back. He paced angrily around the cell and then drew back and punched the wall.

"Wh-what's the matter with him?" Stella exclaimed.

Ella frowned as she stared into Stella's face.

"Dear, did Eric have some sort of accident or something?" Cailyn asked gently.

Stella moaned.  "Yes, he…  He… Hurt his eyes in a fall."

All the prisoners collectively cried out at the epiphany.

"What!?" Stella asked, growing hysterical.  "What is it?"

After a long pause, Cailyn spoke as Ella took Stella's hand and squeezed it tightly.  "While you were sleeping, they…  They came and tied Nicholas to that spinning wheel thing over there," Cailyn explained, gesturing her head toward one of the torture devices outside the cell.  "We didn't know whose they were but…  They made Nicholas eat a set of eyes…"

Stella's shrieking cries brought every single one of them to tears.

Part V
II

Ugly

Chapter 23

T
he various members of Carnaval de le Nuit troop had differing ways of spending their down time.  They worked out, caring for their hard bodies, maintaining their peak physical conditions.  They shopped; visiting the local vendors in whatever town or burg where they roosted.  They practiced their acts, to keep their performance ever mesmerizing for the crowds they'd surely draw.  And often most, the performers preened their proverbial peacock feathers.

For Joshua Cross, the preferred method of blowing off steam had recently become finding a local library, borrowing a computer, and observing the town of Faraway from afar. 

His former home, the town in which he'd been born and raised, was making national headlines.  Perhaps even international.  The disappearances and murders occurring in Faraway had sparked speculation all over the web, even though it appeared the cases had yet to particularly interest the FBI.  There were newspaper articles galore for him to pour over.  Additionally, a surprising number of his former high school counterparts had their own tattle tale blogs where virtual tongues wagged, from right inside the city limits.  So, he'd just read about Zoe Locke's arrest, and her claims that nobody believed.

Josh leaned back in the rolling chair, his arms folded across his chest, staring at the radiating computer screen.  The blog post he was staring at was in an atrocious neon purple font against a black background and had given him a headache, yet he read it over and over.  So, accusations were being made about the Bar family and nobody believed them?  Kids were disappearing and nobody was even going to investigate the claims? 
Typical,
Josh thought. Typical oblivion from Faraway, the land of clueless authorities.  He couldn't help but wonder if the Faraway police even cared… If they were doing anything at all to find the missing teenagers, or stop the abductions. 

He shook his head slowly as he pondered the blog post.  It was probably too late anyway.  They were most likely already dead.

***

Josh heard the story of his birth at least a hundred times; his older siblings loved to tell it.

He was somewhere in the middle of eight total children, born to a family living on a farm on the remote corner of the county outside Faraway.  Of all the handsome, well mannered, intelligent children in the family, Josh was the odd man out; the ugly duckling.  His mother had gone into labor in the middle of a snowy night, and it had happened so fast, there'd been no time to get to the hospital.  She'd given birth to him right there at home as a blizzard raged outside.  Her labor had been quick, but brutal and she'd nearly died.  All for a squalling, shrieking, ugly infant.

His father hated him on sight.

From the beginning he didn't fit in with his plain looks that harshly contrasted the charming good looks of his siblings.  He was a fussy baby, where not one of the other children had given their parents a moment's grief.  He grew into a moody and sullen toddler, but it was mainly because nobody could get along with him, nobody even tried.  His siblings were awful to him with their constant ridicule, their pranks, and unloading their chores onto him.  He was often beaten by them, and by his father for the slightest of infractions.  His mother was the only one who was even remotely kind to him.  She never laid a hand on him, and in private moments, she treated him tenderly.  But she did not defend him, and she often begged him to just be quiet and cooperative.

Once he reached school age, he hoped that someone at school would help him.  He complained to several teachers about his treatment at home, only to be ignored and callously brushed off.  In fact, at school, he often encountered even worse treatment than he did at home and he became progressively more angry and alone.

That's how Josh came to find out about Benjamin Bar; a secret he never revealed to another soul.

Joshua was in the fourth grade, and Benjamin followed a year behind him.  He'd often noticed that Benjamin was an outcast as well.  Perhaps not for the same reasons.  Where Josh was homely, Benjamin was strikingly good looking.  Where Josh came from a poor farm family, Benjamin was clearly of pure bread stock.  But, for some reason, Josh observed that nobody liked Benjamin.  Classmates did not tease and taunt Benjamin, as they did Josh, but it was clear they did not care for him.  Benjamin spent all his time alone at school unless other students were forced to work with him on any sort of group project.  Though the two boys had never once spoken, Josh decided one day that Benjamin would be his one and only friend.

He approached Benjamin in the cafeteria and sat down next to him at one of the many long tables.  "Hi," Josh said timidly.

Benjamin stared into his food, seeming not to hear Josh.

"I'm Joshua Cross," Josh said kindly.  Benjamin continued to ignore him.  "I'd like to be your friend.  Would you like that?"

Benjamin finally looked up.  He met Josh's eyes, and gave him a cold stare that sent a shiver down his spine.  "No."

Josh's heart sank.  He sighed and his shoulders slumped.  He felt that burning feeling in his eyes and mentally ordered himself not to cry.  "Why not?" he asked sadly, hating the note of whininess in his own voice.

Benjamin smiled, a malevolent thing that seemed more like a jagged crack in his face.  "Because I don't like you."

The tears welled in Josh's eyes, threatening to spill.  He clamped his eyes closed for a few seconds trying to get control of himself.  "Have I done something wrong to you?" Josh asked.

Benjamin giggled.  Then he got up and walked away.

***

For some reason Josh would never understand, he thought he could get Benjamin to warm up to him.  He thought if he was just friendly and patient, that Benjamin would eventually want to be friends and he wouldn't feel so all alone.  Josh tried to be patient and not to get upset when he'd take a seat next to Benjamin only to be abruptly abandoned when the boy got up and walked away.  He tried to play with Benjamin on the playground, only to have Benjamin shove him down, or run away.  It ended up being pitiful incidents of Josh chasing Benjamin around the playground, but in his own mind, he pretended they were playing tag. 

The Cross farm was situated next to the Faraway forest, and it was only a quick hike through there to the Bar home.  He began appearing on Benjamin's doorstep and knocking on the door, thinking the boy would be friendlier away from the stresses of elementary school.  Day after day, nobody answered.  Then finally, one day in late spring, Mr. Bar came to the door.

"What is it?" the domineering man demanded.

"Is…  Is Benjamin home?" Joshua asked shyly.

"What's it to you?  Why do you keep coming here, boy?"

"I just wanted to see if Benjamin would like to play!"

"He doesn't.  Not with you.  Not ever.  Now, get out of here!" Mr. Bar sneered. 

Joshua burst into tears and ran off sobbing into the woods.

***

After that incident, Josh began hiding in the trees and watching the Bar residence.  He'd wait for any signs of Benjamin, and if the boy came outside, he trailed him as he hiked into the forest.  He no longer wanted to approach the boy, but he somehow still felt close to him just by observing him from a distance.

In retrospect, Josh could look back on the events of that time in his youth, and know that he stalked Benjamin.  He didn't understand what had possessed him to do it.  Maybe it was just a way to kill time and stay away from his tumultuous home life.  Maybe somewhere inside himself he'd honestly thought he'd found a friend.  Or maybe, somehow, he'd known that there was a secret to be revealed.

One day in one of the early hot days of summer, Josh caught sight of Benjamin leaving the back door of his house and darting into the trees.  Josh was on the outside of the gates, and he scampered quickly around to keep Benjamin in his sight.  Benjamin often roamed aimlessly about the trees with Josh on his tail.  But that day, he seemed to have a purpose.  He walked faster than usual; practically jogged.  Josh's heart thudded, a strange feeling rose inside him.  Maybe it was the heat of the day, leaving him soggy with sweat and short of breath that brought about a sense of anxiety.  Or maybe…  Maybe it was something else.  Something he knew on an unconscious level, but didn't
really know. 

Benjamin led Josh farther into the woods than ever before.  They went so far, and the trees became so thick that it became noticeably cooler and definitely darker.  Josh didn't like the sounds that emanated there.  Strange hoots, creaks, and shrieks that somehow seemed different from the woodland creatures in the sunnier parts of the forest.

He lost sight of Benjamin briefly when the boy reached the mouth of a cave and dove inside without hesitation.  Josh crept up to the cave.  As he approached, he was assaulted by a stench unlike anything he'd ever smelled before.  He placed a hand against the cold stone wall of the cave and leaned over.  His stomach heaved and he struggled not to vomit.

Something told Josh not to follow Benjamin into the cave.  But, he wanted to see what was in there.  As much as he didn't want to know; he
needed
to know what that smell was.  Josh crept behind a tree and decided to wait until Benjamin left the cave.

Time ticked slowly by.  Josh sat propped against the tree and grew bored.  Soon, his eyes grew heavy and he dozed there in the eerie stillness of the dark wood.  He had no idea how much time had gone by when a twig snapped and roused him from his light slumber.

He peeked around the tree to see Benjamin disappearing into the woods, heading back in the direction of home.  Once he could no longer hear Benjamin's footsteps, Josh stood up and brushed the pine needles and leaves from his jeans.  He took another good look around and then headed for the opening to the cave.

Again the stink rolled into his face and bile rose in his throat.  His rational mind told him distinctly to turn around and leave.  But that place in the mind that exists under everything that makes sense, urged him on.

Josh tip toed into the cave, each step difficult as he struggled against his good sense.  As he proceeded all traces of daylight faded to black and he wished he had some sort of light.  There was a whoosh and a flutter, and Josh felt wings beat up around him.  He froze in place, beginning to tremble violently.  He would never know what possessed him to continue.

But, he did.

He continued to creep slowly forward until he once again saw a trace of light.  He picked up his pace, eager to get to wherever the light came from.  Soon, he stepped into a cavern, where daylight shone in through several holes in the craggy rocks overhead.

Josh's mouth fell open, his face contorted by a silent scream.

His eyes darted around quickly, too frightened and shocked to rest on any one thing.  But his panicked mind somehow absorbed everything.  Corpses, in every state of decomposition.  Many animal, and quite a few human.  Each was posed in some sort of macabre fashion, as though forming a museum of the dead.  One woman reclined on a bed of rocks with her hand across her forehead, as though in a faint.  As though she were a living lady, shocked by the sight of the gruesome cavern.  Except, her skin was wrinkled, grey, and peeling back from her bones.  Her hair hung in thin stringy clumps.  Her paper thin eyelids closed over sunken eye sockets and her lips drew back in a tongue lulling grimace.

In another corner, a boy who could not have been more than four in life, crouched on his knees, held in place by a crude wiring system attached to the ceiling above.  He appeared to be playing with the cadaver of a puppy.  Half the boy's face was missing and where the wires attached to him, his fetid flesh was impaled by staples.  The dog's rotting entrails escaped it's abdomen even as it stood posed jumping up on the boy.  They were like marionette puppets from hell.

Scenes such as those filled the cave.  Some of the corpses were mummified.  Others had decayed away completely to skeletal remains.  There was every manner of forest and farm animal, and people from toddler to elderly.  Josh's mind simply could not grasp what he was saying.

He turned and blasted back through the cave, guided through the black tunnel by terrified grace.  He burst back into daylight.  He ran and ran.