Second Verse (6 page)

“What? I don’t know! It’s just a regular pen. I had it in my bag all day. It’s normally, blue. See.” I point to the words on the side of the pen: blue ink.

With his own pen, Vaughn smears the pool of red on my page. It’s translucent. “Not
actual
blood,” he says slowly.

But still.

“Halloween prank?” He stares at the page, chewing his bottom lip. “It’s gotta be, right?”

I shrug. “I guess. Why else would someone do this?” But I’m still shaking. My friends are funny and everything, but they don’t really play pranks on each other. Especially not sick ones like this. And everyone knows how weird I get about blood. “But Halloween’s not for what?” I pause, “A week and a half? Kind of early for Halloween pranks, no?”

I rip out the pages and ball them together in the middle of the table, burying the pen inside them.

“Whatever,” I say. “Let’s just get this stupid research over with. Back to
Famous and Infamous Pennsylvania Murders
.”

On the site’s homepage is a black and white photo of a small house, light with dark shutters, all the windows broken, the top two boarded up with plywood. It’s an early winter scene – dead grass, leafless trees. Even the bushes look forlorn and neglected. It’s faded, yellowed like a scene from an old-fashioned movie. Creepy.

I stare at the picture and try to swallow my fear. Vaughn’s right, this research is the next logical step. I can ignore it all I want, but it’s not ignoring me.

Or us.

I finger the arrow keys, not daring to actually read more. Vaughn watches, humming softly under his breath, like he so often does. It’s that song again, from the other night.

Coolness washes over me as if I’m standing in front of an open window.

“All right, all right.” I avoid his eyes. “Now or never, I guess.”

“Come on,” he says, patting the table as I scoot in closer so we can both read the screen. With our bodies touching at our elbows, thighs and knees, it’s like we’re connected.

It’s unnerving.

But not quite as unnerving as the random page he clicks on. There’s a picture of a woman and child, obviously an old photograph. Printed over it is the outline of a target as if they are in the scope of a rifle.
Husband Kills Wife and Young Daughter
. Beneath it are a few lines giving the basics of the murder. They barely register: jealous husband with known anger problems uses his shotgun against his defenseless wife and daughter.

“Wow. This is sick.” Vaughn shakes his head.

On the next page, four fat middle-aged men glare into the camera looking tough. A headline reads:
Falcone Family Strikes Again
. I scan the few lines beneath it, the words not really sinking in. Blah blah Mafia. Blah blah.

“Okay, this is gross. Who had the joy of putting this site together?” I mumble as he clicks through the pages. But inside I’m racing. I don’t want to see this. Page after page is filled with pictures of smiling couples and grinning families, frozen in time before everything was taken from them. We look in silence as he scrolls through the pages, photos of buildings and schools that had been terrorized. Some are just pictures of houses where people had been killed that thankfully have no pictures of the victims.

But then, on the next screen, my nerves finally come undone.

The headline is horrible:
The Chopain Murders of 1934: A Family Sliced and Diced in the Dead of Night
.

Underneath it, a picture: a close up of a barn. Although it’s in black and white, the details tell what an old photo it is. The paint looks flawless, the grounds perfectly maintained. Even the trees, the ones that now grow in dense clumps out back, look smaller, less mature.

Beneath the photo, the write up reads:
Marie Chopain and her five children brutally killed in their Shady Springs home in the summer of 1934 by Hank Griffin, friend of the family, who committed suicide shortly after the murders
.

Murders committed in
my
house.

“W
HERE DID
D
AD
live?” I ask Mom. She’s somehow roped me into spending my Saturday sitting in the dusty attic with her, sorting through boxes. “Mostly, I mean. When he wasn’t with us?” It’s been days since I told Vaughn about my dad, but I can’t stop thinking about him.

She looks up, a startled expression widening her eyes. It’s rare we talk about Dad. I’m not sure I’ve ever brought him up casually like this, but ever since I read about the Chopain murders, I’ve been thinking nonstop about family and what it means to lose them.

She blinks, licking her lips. “All over, I guess. He was always up to something new. Never quite anchored. You know.” She turns her attention back to the magazines in the box at her feet.

But I
don’t
know. From what I remember, he was in and out of our lives, as inconsistent as the weather. As confusing as all the places we lived, all the new schools and the constantly changing friends. If I dig deep, I can pull out snippets of him; the clomp of heavy boots, me planting kisses on his red cheeks. I remember a circus once, when I was very young, screaming in the face of a clown and Dad hurrying me away, holding me in his arms, where I traced the serpent tattoo coiled around his forearm with my little finger.

I silently paw through my own box until I find an old Coke bottle. “How about this?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Tacky.”

I consider it before placing it back in the box. Rustling through old scarves and books, I think about my dad and all the other things I wish I knew. Why did he always leave? And why did he have to die? It’s weird, suddenly thinking about him so much. It’s like my mind is purposely trying to stay away from what we saw on that website. Even though I’d refused to look at anything else after that one site, the haunting recap of the Chopain murders had burrowed into me. I have to keep it away. My tendency to dwell on things used to be one of my biggest problems before Dr. Ramirez taught me how to redirect my thoughts. Maybe that’s all this dad stuff is now.

My mind flips to the family who was brutally murdered in this house. I try to ignore what’s becoming the familiar tugging I get in my stomach whenever I think of them, as if knowing their story and living in this house has somehow connected me to them. I hide my shaking hands deep in the box on my lap, wishing for the millionth time I hadn’t read those gory details.

“Aha!” Mom roots around in her box with a victorious smirk on her face. From its depths, she pulls out a rose-colored perfume bottle, bulb shaped with scalloped sides. It balances perfectly on her palm when she holds it out to me. “Isn’t this pretty? Look at the shape of it. And that color glass. I don’t think I’ve found any this color yet. You know, the pink reminds me of something,” she taps her finger on her chin as she looks at the glass matter of factly. “Plus, pink often wards off disconcerting spirits, you know. This is probably a very lucky find.”

I stare at the bottle, unable to think straight. My body leans forward slowly, as if I’m a hulking piece of metal and she’s holding a strong magnet. My heartbeat is nearly deafening.

“Can I?” I ask, reaching out.

“Can you what?” Confusion twists Mom’s features.

I nod to the bottle in her hand, my fingers aching for it, imagining its cool surface, lightweight in my hand, dimpled around the bottom edge.

When I take it from her, gently, as if it’s an egg, something shifts in me. I lose sight of the entire room. The light blinks in and out, like clouds drifting in front of the sun. Mom fades like she’s underwater. Blurry. Blurrier still, until she’s gone. It’s dark all around me and I swallow the urge to scream.

I bring the bottle to my nose and although it’s empty, the scent lingers. It’s vaguely sweet, musky almost, with the hint of the earliest spring flowers. It overwhelms me.

The light fades in again, like I’m in a forest, sun winking through leaves overhead. Then I’m back in the attic, Mom in the distance, staring at me like I’ve finally lost my mind.

When it goes dark again, I hear his voice. It’s Vaughn, words slipping into my ear like something liquid, something smooth. “For you, my dear. For you.” There’s a lilt to his voice, something that’s out of place.

My skin prickles with anticipation as his voice gets closer and when I can almost feel the heat of him near me, I fall in the darkness, the bottle slipping from my hand. Glass shatters on the floor.

There’s a flash, the room lit like lightening.

I see him. It’s his face, but not. His hair is cropped now, brushed casually to the side, his face is smooth, without the constant scruffy shadow I’ve gotten used to. His smile is more eager than I know it, filled with hope, somehow. His bone structure is different too. Lower cheekbones, eyes spread further apart. It’s really not him, but like with any dream, I somehow just know it is. He has the same dark, piercing eyes.

But this isn’t real.

“Find me,” he hisses. “Before it’s too late.”

I taste metal in my mouth, and feel that same sense of unlocking deep inside, that rush of air.

But then he shakes me, hard. I’m a doll in his arms and I can’t even fight. Over his shoulder I see a corridor. It’s tight like a tunnel, descending down into darkness. I close my eyes.

“Lange!” Mom’s voice cuts through the dark. I blink, staring up at the bare bulb hanging from the attic rafters. Her face comes into view above me, my head throbbing as I come out of the dream like I’ve been drowning.

“Did I fall asleep? What happened?”

Was that real?

“No! You weren’t asleep! You were… I don’t know. What’s going on? What were you feeling?”

What’s going on? I’m not sure. Right now the biggest question is why I’m having dream-visions about Vaughn.

And according to that vision, he needs me.

F
IND ME
. B
EFORE
it’s too late
.

It sticks with me, what Vaughn said in my dream. Or vision. Or whatever it was.

There’s obviously no arguing that something serious is going on. First it was voices. Now it’s visions? I can’t make sense of any of it.

And the pen prank still has me freaked out too. All my friends denied it, so I know it wasn’t them. But who could have gotten into my bag? And if it was a prank, wouldn’t someone have owned up to it by now? In Motion Drawing yesterday, I was so tired and distracted by everything, I almost ruined my Transformations project.

I pull it out now. Despite my anxiety, pride unfurls in my chest.

It starts with the original young girl, drawn in the lightest pencil. She’s ten, maybe twelve. Her hair hangs in long waves, tied back with twin braids. She looks off the side of the page. You can just make out the thin slope of her nose. Drawn around her is an older girl, about seventeen. She’s drawn in heavier lines, so you can barely see the younger girl within. The elder is taller than I’ll ever be, and thinner too, her hair darker than her younger self, her chest fuller, mature. She has started to step away from the younger but still has most of the girl within her. She looks out from the paper as if directly at the viewer. Her
face is serious, her dark eyes near set over lips that form a slight smile. It’s a smile that knows something.

With these two aspects nearly done all that’s left to finish is step three. The third figure, as if she’d twirled away from the others, has kicked up streams of dust that encircle the other two girls. She’s shorter than the teenager, but she stoops. She looks over her shoulder, looking back at herself as she was. Her head is thrown back as if to laugh, but a tear slides down her cheek instead.

Whatever happened in the barn that night, whatever is still happening, has to be what inspired this project. What made me draw that first girl that night. It had to come from one of them.

Again, my stomach pulls, thinking about them.

The phone rings, bringing me back to the present. I put down my mug of tea. “Hello?”

“Pippi Langstocking?”

I’m emotionally exhausted, but he makes me smile. “What’s up Vaughn?

Taking a sip of my tea, I listen to his guitar bang and vibrate as if he’s set it down. I picture his fingers, strumming the strings.

“Not much. Was wondering what you’re up to. Tonight?”

I grip my mug tighter.

“I’ve been online all day,” he continues. “Plus I got some stuff from the library archives.”

Ugh. Of course.

“That’s how you chose to spend your Saturday? Library hopping?” I snort. “Lame.” But I have to fight the urge to ask what he found.

He doesn’t budge, his voice military when he answers. “Come on, Lange.”

Tell him about the vision in the attic. Tell him everything
.

“The girl in your drawing,” he whispers. “Trust me, you
need
to see this.”

The tea in my mug ripples and I set it down to steady it. Deep breath. I’m so not ready to dig further into the Chopain murders, but I guess there’s no choice. It’s like ripping off a band aid. Just get it done.

“All right, fine. Come on over.”

I yawn, feeling like I’ve overdosed on Nyquil. I slide deeper under my covers. My eyes close for a long blink.

“You there?”

I look at the ceiling. “I’m here.”

Find me
.

“Vaughn?”

“Yeah?”

“Something’s very wrong, isn’t it?” I whisper with my eyes closed. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud.

The words feel like a betrayal.

W
HEN
I
OPEN
my eyes, the moon has risen high enough to throw pale light against the wall at the foot of my bed. I watch the leaf shadows dancing there while my eyes adjust.

“Ah, sleeping beauty awakes.” Vaughn’s voice comes out of the dark.

“What the hell!” I sit, clutching my blanket to my chest, my eyes searching the dark. I reach for my lamp, but his hand’s already there. When he switches it on, the brightness makes me wince. “What are you doing here?”

He holds a folded piece of paper between his fingers. “I was just leaving you a note, since you were peacefully snoring away.”