No Happily Ever After (The Fairytale Diaries #1) (16 page)

Part XI
I

And so it Goes

Chapter 32

A
t three thirty a.m. precisely, four Faraway Senior High students rose from their beds and dressed, quiet as church mice.

Together, Zoe and Jennifer snuck out of the Tide home and into the numbingly cold winds and the twirling snow.  They walked briskly to the end of the block where Detective Piper waited in an idling black sedan.  Stealing one last look around, the girls got into the car.

Without a word, Piper slid away from the curb and slowly maneuvered the car through the treacherous weather.  Both girls stared out their respective windows searching for any signs of life.  Each and every house they passed lay dormant and dark.  The streets were entirely empty, the sidewalks bear.  All of Faraway remained nestled snuggly in their beds in the obscenely early morning hour.

Piper navigated them outside of Faraway city limits, slowly down the highway, and turned off on a wooded lane. It seemed to take forever to reach the cottage of Hanley and Giselle Durand.

He pulled into their driveway and found they were already outside waiting.  He killed the headlights, and they motioned for him to proceed. When they'd worked out their plan, Detective Piper hadn't liked the idea of leaving his car parked at their house.  He didn't want their father to find a strange vehicle there and then discover his children missing.  But the Durand twins convinced him that their father worked second shift, and so he slept until afternoon each day.  By the time he would be awake to discover a car in the drive; they'd already long since be back and have saved the day.

Zoe and Jennifer exited the vehicle and took in the sight of the Durand twins.  Both brother and sister were dressed head to toe in black.  They both wore hoodies pulled tightly around their faces which were stony and pale, save the streak of cold scarlet coloring their cheeks.

A military grade crossbow rested at Hanley's side, and Giselle gripped a machete.

Piper eyed their weapons with one sharply arched eyebrow, but he didn't say a word about them.

"Are you ready?" Hanley asked, addressing the group collectively.  Jennifer and Zoe nodded hesitantly.

"Then let's go," Giselle said.  "The Bar place is four miles east of here," she explained, gesturing with her head toward the trees. "Walk fast and stay close."

The striking girl turned abruptly and stalked into the dark forest.

***

The group moved quickly and quietly through the woods.  Fueled by fear and intense adrenaline, they barely felt the cold as it crept into their bones.  Despite Zoe's use of crutches, they covered ground remarkably quickly.

And then Jennifer Tide tripped and fell.

The group came to an abrupt halt at the sound of Jennifer toppling to the ground.  They each turned to look down at her as she scrambled into a sitting position.  Hanley reached down to offer her a hand, but she didn't take it.  Instead, she turned her attention to what she'd tripped over.  A rather big bump in the snow.

"Come on, Jennifer," Hanley whispered harshly.  "Get up, we gotta move!"

Jennifer ignored Hanley as an unsettling feeling sent a shiver up her spine.  On hands and knees, she crawled to the bump and began digging at it with her hands.  Just a few swipes cleared away enough snow to reveal the green fabric of a shirt sleeve.

"Oh no," she murmured.  The others all dropped to their knees in the snow around the body and began frantically clawing at it.

It was Jennifer who cleared away the snow from Eric Prince's face.  It was frozen in a blue, grotesque scream, and she could only imagine the horror that would've been in his eyes…  If the eyes had been there instead of black, bloody, sunken chasms.

Jennifer began to scream.

***

They lost quite a bit of time attempting to settle Jennifer.

Piper stood silently to the side, anxiously staring into the murky depths of the forest, while Jennifer's friends comforted her.  Zoe settled awkwardly onto the ground despite her leg cast, and cradled Jennifer in her arms, holding her tightly as she wept.  Hanley and Giselle crouched behind the pair, stroking Jennifer's hair and comfortingly rubbing her back.  After what seemed like ages, Jennifer shrugged them off and leapt to her feet.

"Let's go," she snarled.  "I'll kill them.  I'll kill them with my bare hands."

***

After the gruesome discovery, the group became much more alert to horrors that could be lurking in the woods.  And as they neared the Bar property, a horror they found.

"Stop!" Hanley whispered.  The five of them again abruptly stopped in their tracks.  Hanley pointed to the ground where they could all see another snowy mound that seemed out of place.  There was a hesitation before they advanced on the mound, but morbid curiosity propelled them once more to their knees.

It was another body, as they feared.  Another male and this corpse was missing its eyes as well.  In fact, it was so badly disfigured, it was barely recognizable.  They all stared at it, unable to rip their eyes away, desperately trying to place it.

"Oh my God," Giselle muttered.  "It's Benjamin!  Benjamin Bar!"

A collective gasp moved about the group.  "Their own son?" Hanley wondered aloud.  He shuddered. 

"These people are insane," Zoe whispered.

"Obviously," Jennifer added bitterly.

Though nobody spoke on it, they all thought the same thing.  They began to doubt any of their classmates were still alive.

Hanley rose to his feet once more, and slowly the rest followed suit.  He turned toward Detective Piper, who once again remained distanced from the grisly discovery, instead watching into the trees.  "Piper, kill the flashlight," Hanley whispered trenchantly.  "We're close.  We can't let them know we're coming.  We go the rest of the way in darkness."

Chapter 33

I
n no time, Bar Estate loomed into view.

With a finger pressed cautiously to her lips, Zoe led them to the hole in the gate that, fortunately, had not been repaired.  Hanley went through the opening first, and then paused to motion them all through, one by one. 

They darted through the yard and against the log side of the home.  Pressed to it, they made their way to the same door Zoe had once found unlocked.  Not surprisingly, the door was locked.  Apparently the Bar's had at least gotten some small clue that they weren't entirely safe out there in the woods.  Not as safe as they'd thought they were. 

The group circled the house looking for any door or window left unlocked and found none.  They had to resort to their plan B.  They found a side entrance with panes of glass in the door.  With one brief motion, Giselle put the handle of her blade through one of the panes.  The glass shattered and tinkled into the darkness on the other side of the door.  She reached through the hole, unlocked the door, and quietly swung it open.

Once inside, they found themselves in a pitch black hallway.  They all stood perfectly still looking around and waiting.  Waiting to hear an alarm go off.  Or an occupant of the house coming to respond to the out of place sound in the night.  But, Zoe had already known they didn't have a security system.  After all, psychotic murders wouldn't ever want police randomly summoned to their house.  And, if anybody had heard them break in, it seemed they were pretending they did not.  They'd almost hoped to have the Bars charge at them out of the darkness.  To end it quickly.  But apparently, that was not to be.

Hanley held his finger to his lips, once again reminding everybody to remain absolutely quiet.  He peered around the circle of them wide eyed as if to ask them if they all remembered what to do.  One by one, they gave one another thumbs up.  

And so they put their plan into action.

***

Zoe led Jennifer, who wore murder on her fairylike freckled face, straight through the house, down the seemingly ordinary set of finished basement steps, and to the door of the torture chamber.  They took no detours, as they were the decoys being used in hopes of luring Mr. and Mrs. Bar out into the open.  Meanwhile, Hanley, following the description of the house that Zoe had provided was creeping toward the upstairs in search of the Bar's.  And, together, Detective Piper and Giselle searched the rest of the house.

Zoe trembled with anticipation as the door to the basement came into view.  Finally, her friend would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had not lied.  And her classmates would be found.  She just prayed beyond hope that they were all alive.  And well.

Jennifer watched Zoe rhythmically swing her crutches first and then her body.  She couldn't believe the girl had come so far.  The group had begged Zoe to stay behind, let them take care of it.  With her injured leg, they'd all worried she'd never make the trip through the forest.  Yet she had.  Zoe was a true hero. 

She took her eyes off Zoe and regarded the door they advanced upon.  She knew they were almost there.  She shook from head to toe, and tears welled in her eyes as she contemplated any number of horrible things they might encounter on the other side. She couldn't erase the image of Eric's frozen bloodied corpse from her darkened mind.  Jennifer threw back her shoulders with a new murderous resolve.  Zoe cast one last glance over her shoulder.  Jennifer nodded, and together, they threw open the door.

As planned, they let the door bang into the wall and plowed straight through the small finished atrium that Zoe knew lead to the death chamber.  With a shriek, Zoe thrust open that door as well.

Already knowing what to expect, Zoe rushed inside and burst straight past the devices of torture to the bars of the adjacent cells.  But Jennifer stopped dead in her tracks, just inside the door.

Cailyn, Ella, Nicholas, Kimberly, and Aspen all struggled off of the various spots on the dirty floor where they'd lay.  Their filthy, gaunt, pale faces all fell in complete shock, as though witnessing ghosts walk in the door.  Jennifer returned their mystified look.

"THEY'RE HERE!" Zoe screamed.

"Shhh!" Cailyn demanded, a look of terror crossing her sorrowful face.  "You'll wake them! Please!"

"HANLEY!" Zoe screamed again, not fazed by any sort of fear of her classmates' captors.  "WE FOUND THEM!"

"There!" Nicholas cried urgently, pointing toward the door.  "Get the keys!  Let us out!"

Finally snapping from her reverie, Jennifer spun around and snatched the key ring that he pointed to.  She rushed to the cells, and the prisoners were able to easily tell her which key to use to unlock them.  They chattered with incredible excitement as finally, their captivity came to an end.

Except that, just then, Abraham Bar crashed into the room with a bellow that sounded as though it could only have come straight from the depths of hell. 

He slammed into Nicholas, barreling him back into the cell he'd just exited.  The two of them crashed into the wall with a force that cracked several of Nicholas' ribs.  Nicholas and Bar flew to the floor where they tangled violently in the grime and the dried blood.  All the girls scurried away from the fight, uncertain of what to do.

Then Hanley darted into the room.  He came silently and gracefully like the skilled hunter that he was.  Without even a pause, he lifted his bow and put an arrow through Abraham Bar's head.

The man fell still instantly, heavily lying across Nicholas Monarch on the floor.

For a few harrowing seconds every eye in the room rested on the dead monster as Nicholas rolled him off and stood.  But then came a ragged breath.

"My husband."

Their attention all snapped back to the doorway of the torture chamber.

"You've killed him.  You little monsters, you've killed him."

Madre Bar stood there looking frail in her filmy pink nightgown.  Her eyes were wild and incoherent, her hair a stringy rat's nest, and her face had streaks of blood still from her efforts earlier in the night to dispose of her own son's body.  She looked positively awful; not at all like the woman they'd known for many years.  Worst of all, the unhinged wraith leveled a shot gun on them with two shaking hands.

"Put your weapon on the floor," she told Hanley, who stared darkly at her but complied.  "He was all that I had left," she wept.

"Mrs. Bar…" Zoe said cautiously.

"SHUT UP!" Mrs. Bar shrieked, thrusting the gun at them.  "Get in the cells.  Get back in, all of you!" she demanded.

Cailyn released a great, choking sob.  Ella cried as well, uttering incoherent pleas.  Kimberly stared evilly at the woman, thinking she'd rather just die right then, if the only alternative was the cell again.

"MOVE!" Madre brayed.

The thing that Mrs. Bar didn't realize was that still another hunter lurked about her home.  And this one came so quickly, so quietly; that nobody realized she was there…  Until, with one fluid swoop, Giselle Durand slit Madre Bar's throat.

The shot gun clattered to the floor as Madre dropped to her knees.  She tottered for several agonizing seconds and everyone watched with gruesome curiosity as blood spurted from her gaping neck.

Then she fell forward as would a tree in the forest, meeting the floor so hard that every single bone in her face shattered.