Growing up, our grandparents had three rules; no eating after you brush your teeth, always be respectful, and the third rule, which was also the most strictly enforced.
Never go into the woods.
Our grandparents' house was a two-story colonial in the northwest corner of Rhode Island. Their road was quite long and theirs was one of the only houses on it. The only house relatively nearby was about a mile and a half down the road, but it had been abandoned for nearly forty years. The wood was rotted and the remnants of once-white paint were dingy and peeling. We never approached it. There was nearly three acres of untamed forest behind the two houses.
My twin sister Jade and I had lived with Grandpa Jake and Nana Jane almost since birth, because our dad wasn't fit to raise us. Apparently he went off the rails after mom died and had to be institutionalized, so Jake and Jane got custody of us. We had a pretty good life. After high school, Jade had been accepted to Stanford with a major in computer science. She got so many scholarships that she nearly had a full ride - my sister is nothing short of a genius.
As for me, I stayed local and went to URI. I was majoring in film media, and minoring in business so I had something to fall back on. I had just finished my big project for the end of the year, a short film starring my friends Vriska Serket and Terezi Pyrope. It was a flick about an infamous pirate called Marquise Spinneret Mindfang (played by Vriska) and the officer of the law who brought her to justice, Neophyte Redglare (Terezi). My professor had been incredibly impressed, especially with the costumes, which my friend Kanaya Maryam had hand-stitched just for us. "You're going places, John," he'd told me, and man did it feel good to be going places.
I'd headed back to my dorm for the trip to California I'd planned with some friends, thinking that nothing could puncture my bubble of perfection.
That… was when the call from Jade came.
I could barely understand her through her blubbering, but I got it eventually, and my heart plummeted.
There had been a car accident on Bronco Highway. Grandpa was gone. Nana was going. She told me she would be on the next flight back from California and hung up. I leapt into my car and sped to Rhode Island Hospital, getting there just in time to hold my grandmother's hand as she died.
The funeral the next week was packed with people - my friends, Jade's friends, Nana's old coworkers, Grandpa's distant cousins from New Zealand - but there were two people there that I didn't recognize.
The blonde man and woman approached my sister first. The man wore a suit, but looked like he wasn't accustomed to it. The woman's hair was styled to perfection, and she wore a pink scarf. They talked to Jade for a moment; she hugged the woman before pointing the two of them towards me.
"Hello," the woman said. She was stunning for sixty or so. The man stood behind her, looking even more sad and brooding than the other attendees.
"I know you don't know us," the woman said, "But let us introduce ourselves. I'm Roxy Lalonde," she said, shaking my hand. "Dirk Strider," said the man. He didn't put his hand forward; he seemed incredibly on edge.
"We used to be quite close with your grandparents. Jane was one of my best friends," said Ms. Lalonde. "We lived up the street from you."
"Oh, in the crumbling-house?" I asked, accidentally referring to the ramshackle building by the name Jade and I had given it as kids. Ms. Lalonde seemed to understand, though, and she nodded. "It wasn't crumbling then," she laughed. "It was gorgeous. I loved that house."
"Well then why did you move, if you don't mind me asking?"
Mr. Strider bristled. "None of your damn business, kid!" he said gruffly, but I thought I saw him begin to tear up. Ms. Lalonde put a manicured hand on his arm and he composed himself, looking despondently at his shoes.
"It's… a painful story," she said. Her voice had a soft sadness to it. "But we just wanted to stop by to pay our respects..." she gazed down at the two freshly dug graves, each holding a casket - Nana's pale blue and Grandpa's dark green. "...to some very dear friends of ours."
She offered me a hug, and I accepted. "I'm so very sorry for yours and your sister's loss," she said. I thanked her, and she made her way to the back row of folding chairs. Strider hesitated before shaking my hand. I didn't expect what he did next.
He looked me dead in the eye and said, "Listen kid. I don't know if your grandparents ever told you this, but they should've. They knew what happened. But just in case, I'm tellin' you now. Never go into those damned woods behind your house."
With that, Dirk Strider turned and walked away to join Roxy.
Number 413 Crocker Avenue was the same house it had always been, but somehow it was now more empty. It was an alien feeling for the smell of Nana's homemade cookies to be absent, or for the sound of Grandpa's adventure movies to be replaced with silence. Jade and I went to our respective bedrooms, across the hall from one another. I hadn't been in my room since Christmas, and neither had she. I was exhausted physically and emotionally from the day's proceedings, so I did little more than swap my suit for a Ghostbusters tee and flannel pants and brush my teeth before collapsing on my bed with my glasses still on. I was woken up a little later by the sound of crying from across the hall.
I grabbed my quilt off of my bed and quietly entered Jade's room. It was neat as a pin as always, with her blue orchid plant on the desk still very much alive. At least, it was usually on the desk. Now it was in my sister's arms, its soil beginning to dampen with the water that fell from her eyes. "Sh-she was wa-wa-watering it for me," she sobbed, clutching the flower like it was her only link to our Nana's soul. I sat beside her and put an arm around her shaking shoulders, draping the quilt over us and resting my chin on the top of her raven-haired head. She put the flower on the floor and grabbed my shirt with both hands, her damp face pressing into my chest as she wept. I hugged her close. "I've got you Jade," I whispered, closing my eyes to try to keep my own tears in check. A few dribbled out and landed on top of her head. "I've always got you."
"Dear God," Jade choked, pinching her nose with nail-bitten fingers as she entered the kitchen. Unlike me, she'd gotten dressed and was wearing her favorite brown skirt that fell to her toes. "What is that smell?"
"I think Nana and Grandpa had roast chicken or something recently," I coughed, "And they didn't bring the trash out."
"Well you bring it out, then," she replied, breathing through her mouth. "I'm going to make breakfast."
"Fine," I said, pulling the trash bag out of the garbage can and tying it shut. I pushed open the screen door leading to the backyard, where the garbage and recycling cans were kept. I lifted the black plastic lid of the trash can before I dropped the bag in, quickly closing it to keep the odor inside. I looked around the yard. The grass was lush, with no bare spots, and the flowerbed Jade and Grandpa had planted was bursting with colorful blooms. Our treehouse was still standing in the big oak tree. It's rope ladder, ragged but strong, was gently swaying in the breeze. Looking at it brought back a rush of memories from our middle school days - sleepovers and adventure games in the treehouse. Why not? I thought, giving it a meaningful stare. Deciding to take one last look at the old thing, I caught the rope ladder and began to ascend. It was sturdy enough to hold my weight, which didn't surprise me. Grandpa'd been able to climb up here with us.
"What're you doing?" Jade called, yelling through the open kitchen window. "Just taking a climb down memory lane," I shouted back, pushing open the trapdoor to the treehouse and climbing inside. It was rather small for me now, its weathered wood covered in doodles and the autographs of friends we'd brought up here. The biggest signature belonged to my childhood best friend, Karkat Vantas. A faded calendar was open to April, 2009, boasting a paled picture of a sunflower. Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust. I crawled over to the window on the farthest side of the treehouse, one that looked out over the hedges at the back of the yard and into the woods. This was Jade and I's only peek into the forbidden realm as kids, and I got a shock when I looked through it now.
There were two people in the woods, a boy and a girl about my age, wearing clothes that made them look a bit like they belonged in the seventies. The girl wore a purple and black plaid pleated skirt and a lavender button down shirt with a gray jacket. Her blonde hair was held back by a black headband and her lips were painted with black lipstick. The boy wore long black pants and a red button-down under a gray and red sweater vest, but somehow didn't look nerdy at all. He wore black aviator sunglasses that hid his eyes and a stoic expression. They bore a striking resemblance to Roxy Lalonde and Dirk Strider from the funeral, only younger.
Weird, I thought. Then without thinking, I waved and yelled, "Hey!"
Their heads snapped up so simultaneously that it creeped me out a bit. The girl fixated her eyes, which were an odd shade of purple, on me, and I assumed the boy did as well behind the shades. Neither of them said a word, but their gazes never wavered.
"Uh…" I began dumbly. "What're you guys doing here? There's nothing for a couple of miles except this house." I paused and gave them a skeptical glance. "How'd you get here, anyway?"
Their mouths moved, but I couldn't hear anything. "What was that?" I called.
Suddenly a rustling sound came from the woods behind them. Both of their faces contorted into fear - the girl put a hand on her stomach, as if she felt a great pain, and the boy clapped a hand to his forehead.
"GO!" They screamed at a horribly high volume, in unison and terror, the girl's purple eyes big and wide with fear. "BLACKJACK!"
I scrambled back from the window, my heart pounding. As fast as I could, I shimmied down the rope ladder and ran into the house, slamming the screen door behind me.
"What's the matter?" Jade asked, giving me a concerned glance as she sliced a cantaloupe. I looked at her in confusion, still panting. "You didn't hear them?"
She cocked her head, her green eyes worried behind her round glasses. "Hear who, John?"
"That's them!" I cried, jabbing my finger at the screen of Jade's laptop. I had pulled up a newspaper article from 1977, about two kids who had been reported missing from Crocker Avenue. Two black and white school pictures were shown beside the headline "LOCAL TEENAGERS VANISH."
Jade squinted over my shoulder at the article, a mug of tea in her hand. "'Twin siblings David and Rose Strider-Lalonde were reported missing on Tuesday after they did not return home from school...'" she read, skimming the next few sentences. She gasped and read one towards the end of the paragraph. "'...blood found on the driver's seat of the crashed Chevrolet confirmed as David's, hair samples confirmed as Rose's. Parents Roxanne Lalonde and Dirk Strider desperate for any information…' Oh God, that's horrible!"
"There's another," I said, scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking on a link that took me to the next article. "This one's from a few days later."
I inhaled sharply; Jade put a hand over her mouth.
"MISSING TEENAGERS FOUND DEAD BEHIND HOME…" I read shakily. "Missing teens David and Rose Strider-Lalonde were discovered dead behind their home on Monday evening by their father. Their bodies were scuffed as if dragged a considerable way and each had a different cause of death; Rose from a stab wound to the stomach and David from a bullet wound to the head. The identity of their killer is unknown... Jade, what the actual hell?"
"There's one more," my sister said, shakily pointing at a link at the bottom of the page.
"LOCAL WOMAN CLAIMS TO SEE DECEASED TEENAGERS," I read, my voice wavering a bit. "Mailwoman Peregrine Mendicant claims to have seen the ghosts of two teenagers near their home on Crocker Avenue. Ms. Mendicant, 22, hit a deer with her delivery truck on Saturday. She exited the truck and entered the Crocker Avenue woods. Mendicant was confronted by two teenagers. She claims that they yelled the words "Go, Blackjack," at her until she left the woods." The article was accompanied by a blurry image taken by the mailwoman. All it took was a glance, though, for me to realize these were the same two kids I'd seen earlier that day.
"Jade," I said. "I saw those kids. It makes sense - they said the same things to that mailwoman that they said to me! The ways that they died - when I saw them, the girl, she - she grabbed her stomach and the guy had his hand on his forehead and they were scared and in pain, like they were feeling themselves die again-"
"God," Jade said, her eyes rounder than dinner plates. "Oh my God, oh my…"
The cantaloupe was forgotten, the juice-slicked knife lying beside it. The pan lay cold on the stove, empty from when we'd hastily eaten the eggs while I pilfered the Internet for information on the what seen in the woods. Jade had joined in voluntarily - to my surprise, she had believed me when I told her my tale, despite not hearing anything herself. I think she just welcomed anything that distracted her from her grief for a moment.
"What are we supposed to do, Jade?" I asked, running a hand through my slightly-greasy black hair. I shivered - it was cold in here. Had Jade turned the air conditioning on?
"I don't - HOLY CRAP!" she screamed. Her mug fell from her hand, shattering on the linoleum. She raised a shaking finger and pointed towards the screen door.
David and Rose Strider-Lalonde stood there, motionless. There was one change since I'd last seen them; their injuries. Rose's shirt was torn, revealing a grizzly cut in her abdomen. David's pale face had been marred with a single bullet hole in the center of his forehead. A trickle of blood dripped onto his sunglasses. The two were staring at us in horror. The glass of the screen door was frosting over. I moved in front of Jade. Their eyes followed me. Rose beckoned us forward despairingly.
I gulped. "I d-don't think they want to hurt us," I said, barely controlling my fear. "M-maybe they just want to talk?"
"Have you never seen a horror movie?" Jade squeaked, her face pale. I looked back at the ghosts. David wrote in the frost with his finger. Just Talk,
"See?" I said to Jade, swallowing hard. "They just want to talk." Against my better judgement I walked forward. I was face to face with David with only the thin glass and aluminum door between us. Jade whimpered, appearing at my side, inches from Rose. The phantom girl raised her hand and wrote beneath her brother's message.
Know Us?
"Yeah," I said. "We know who you are."
Danger, Dave scrawled. Jade frowned. "Danger? Are you in danger? Or... are we?"
You
Show you
"Show us what?" I asked. Frost was beginning to fog up my glasses, and Jade was having the same problem.
Danger
Story
Show you
Show you
Suddenly their hands passed through the door. David put his hand on my forehead, and Rose did the same to Jade. I barely had time to register how cold his hand was before I fainted.
You laugh, your shades pushed up and your arm out the window of your precious '74 Impala. Rose sits in the passenger seat, re-applying her weird black lipstick in the rearview mirror. Her short blonde hair flaps in the wind. This is perfect, you think. Just me, Rose, and the car. It's really too bad that this is the last time you're driving home together, as today was the last day of school. Rose is off to Harvard in a few weeks, and then you'll be heading to the University of Texas. You'll never tell her you'll miss her though - She'd never let you hear the end of it.
"Ugh," she says, pulling back her hair with her favorite headband. "That creep Jack Noir was following me at school today."
"Again?" You tighten your grip on the steering wheel, joviality gone. You thought you'd taught that kid a necessary lesson last time, when you and Equius broke two of his ribs for trying to look up Rose's skirt. Apparently even that couldn't keep this guy away from her.
"That's it," You growl, turning onto Crowfoot Lane. What a dumb name for a street. Just one more left turn and you'll be home. "When we get to the house, I'm calling the co-"
There's a loud popping sound like a gunshot. Rose screams. Another of the sounds follows; you swear profusely when you realize both of your back tires have popped. You lose control of the car and it swerves, crashing off of the road and into the woods. It skids for almost a hundred feet before finally coming to a stop. You're both screaming now and all you can think about is Rose and if she's alright. She's panting heavily and some of her hair is caught in the seat, but she's unharmed. You have a bloody nose; you remember punching yourself in the face while wrestling with the steering wheel. Blood drips on the seat as you force open the driver's-side door, dazedly clambering out to check the damage done to your beloved car.
The figure is hard to make out at first. You wave, hoping that it's a passerby come to help. But it's not, and in your groggy state you don't recognize Jack Noir until he shoves you to the ground, stomping hard on your chest. You scream as you feel your ribs crack. He smirks. "Not so fun when it happens to you, is it Strider?" He cackles. Rose has climbed out of the car at this point. You want to tell her to run but you can't find the words. She doesn't see the gun in Noir's hands until he's pointing it at you - she stops dead in her tracks. "Dave!" she screams, terrified. "Don't you even THINK about hurting him, you son of a bitch!"
Noir mumbles something to himself and looks at Rose lustfully. You would've killed him if you could've. Your heart pounds with rage and fear; you glance at Rose, trying to signal her to flee with your eyes.
"Gotta kiss me," Noir cackles. "or else Davie bites th' dust here and now."
Rose hesitates. Looks at you. You shake your head. You don't want that perverted jackass touching her. She looks back at Jack with a desperate and disgusted expression. "Fine," she says. "Fine."
She steps forward. Noir, keeping his gun trained on you, walks towards her. She closes her eyes, grabs his collar, and kisses him. It hurts you to watch.
Suddenly, Noir reaches into his pocket with his free hand and pulls out a knife. Before you can do anything it's buried in Rose's stomach and he's ripping her open. "NO! ROSE!" You scream as she falls to the ground, bleeding profusely but still alive. You crawl over to her and put her head in your lap. There's so much blood. Her eyes are losing focus. All she says is "I love you so much, Dave," before she's gone and your spirit's gone with her.
Noir laughs as you begin to sob raggedly. "Now she won't be goin' round kissin' other boys insteada me," he giggles, dropping the blade at Rose's feet. You look up at him with raw pain and fury.
"Run away little Davie. Run away."
You stand and pick up Rose bridal style, walking away from Noir towards the road agonizingly slowly. Suddenly he runs ahead of you and points his gun at your head, cackling and grinning wickedly. "Ki-dding! Can't let be tellin' the cops my story! Any last words, Strider-boy?"
You kiss your sister's pale forehead and whisper, "I'll miss you, Rose." The bullet flies into your forehead and everything goes black.
Jade shook me with clammy hands, and my eyes snapped open. The blonde siblings were still on the other side of the door, staring at us with a soft sadness. I felt sick from the vision; Jade looked a bit green as well. "Did you see…" she whispers, and I nod.
She collects herself and turns back to the screen door. "Okay, you've "shown us" now," she says, her voice wavering. "N-now what's this d-danger you mentioned?"
Coming for you, Rose writes. Beside it, Dave scrawls Blackjack.
"What?" I gasp, re-reading their words. "Why?"
You saw us. Know his secret
No Witnesses
No Witnesses
"He think's we're going to turn him in?"
Never caught. Lives in woods
"It's been thirty-nine years and he's lived in the woods this whole time?" I cry. The spirits nod in unison.
"You were warning that mailwoman away from the woods," Jade whispers. "The week after you died. Peregrine Mendicant - you scared her away to protect her!"
"And me," I added. They nodded again. Dave wrote, And Others.
Suddenly, their faces became terrified. They vanished, leaving one final message written in huge letters in the frost.
GO. Blackjack. GO! BLACKJACK!
"'Noir' is French for 'black,'" Jade gasped. "All this time, they were telling people their killer's name. And nobody figured it out."
"Jade, not the time!" I cried, grabbing a pair of Grandpa's old boots from beside the door and tugging them on. "We've got to get out of here!"
Jade grabbed a rifle from Grandpa's gun rack and loaded it. I took the cantaloupe knife; unlike my sister, I didn't pay attention much when our grandfather taught us to shoot. We ran out of the house together. When we got outside, my car's tires were slashed. I swore loudly, my heart pounding thunderously. Jade was shaking, but she held the rifle steadily. "Just run!" She squeaked, and we took off as fast as we could down the road. I panted, holding the knife as far from us as I could. I reached into my pocket for my phone to call the police, but realized it was still on my nightstand. Jade's long skirt tripped her up a few times as she ran, but she didn't fall.
The twin ghosts appeared in front of us, panicked and covered in blood. "GO! BLACKJACK!" They screamed. I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder.
The man was thinner than anyone I'd ever seen, his skin stretched thinly over his skull. His hair was long, wild, and graying, and he had a scraggly beard. His teeth were yellow. His eyes were full of bloodlust and madness. His clothes were ragged. He carried the same old gun I'd seen in Dave's memory, but something told me it still worked just fine.
Jade looked. And screamed. She stopped mid-stride and aimed her rifle, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her along. "Run! Just run!" I yelled. Noir was gaining ground, and we were starting to tire. Neither of us were runners.
We were approaching the crumbling-house when I had to stop for breath. It was a mistake - there were still almost two miles to the highway and Noir was practically on top of us. Jade, who had kept going, turned around as he grabbed me by the back of my T-shirt. My heart was skipping beats; I was too terrified to use my knife. Jade aimed and fired in seconds; Noir grunted and let go of me, his arm bleeding. I dashed out of his reach. Jade and I kept running.
We'd forgotten Noir's gun. A shot rang out and Jade screamed; the bullet had hit her arm. Her rifle clattered to the pavement. "Keep going!" she whispered, as I went to help her. "I'm going into the woods, to distract him."
"No, you're not!" I said. "We stick together, Jade!"
"No, John," she said, her green eyes meeting my blue ones. "You go. I want to save you, and you want to save me. We don't know who he'll follow. Either way one of us gets out alive."
"Jade, I can't leave you. I don't want to risk losing you."
Noir was almost on us.
"Go, John," she said, her panic masking a will of iron. "Please."
The only reason I agreed is because she'd have a better chance running than sitting here. "Fine," I said, nearly crying. "But if you die, I'll kill you."
She smiled, teary-eyed behind her glasses. "I love you too, dummy," she said, before hiking herself off the pavement and taking off into the woods at top speed, blood staining the green sleeve of her shirt. I continued down the street.. Please let him leave Jade alone, I thought. Please let him go for me.
He went for Jade.
The second I saw I yelled and hurtled into the woods, but he was faster than me. I followed the murderer through the forest, and I could see Jade sprinting for her life.
In the end, Noir did nothing. It was her skirt that did her in.
Too late, I realized I should have let her shoot him when she could. Too late, I realized I should have made her run on the road. As I watched, every regret I'd ever had regarding my sister came flooding back to me.
Too late, I realized I should have said goodbye.
My heart plummeted as Jade tripped on the hem of her skirt. She flew forward and landed at an awkward angle. I heard her neck snap, and I screamed.
"JADE! NO!"
I rushed passed Noir, throwing down the knife and dropping to my knees beside her. Her eyes were still open, but empty. They no longer sparkled the way they did when she smiled. They just stared up into space.
"No, not you too. Please," I whispered, brushing a strand of her hair out of her face. Her glasses were cracked. I felt for a heartbeat and found nothing.
She was gone.
I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her, closing my eyes. "I've got you Jade," I whispered, tears streaming down my face. "I've always got you."
Noir laughed wickedly. "No witnesses!" he giggled.
"Either way one of us gets out alive," Jade had said.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "It's not happening that way."
Noir laughed behind me.
"Dave, Rose, I'm sorry I couldn't get him nabbed for you," I said, addressing the air. I had a feeling they were there. I looked at Jade. "I love you, Jade. I'm sorry. For everything."
Noir swung.
I fell atop my sister's corpse with the cantaloupe knife in my back.
Everything is bright. You can tell even though your eyes are closed. You open them, and see three faces above you. Dave and Rose are there, and behind them…
Behind them is Jade.
"John, you have to make a choice now," says Rose calmly. You blink at her. "You can either Go, or Stay."
"If you Go, you move on to the afterlife. Heaven or Hell, you'll see when you get there," says Dave. "But if you Stay… you're here on Earth until your business is finished."
"You… Stayed?" you ask. Dave nods. "And we're here until Jack Noir is brought to justice."
"Jade?" you ask. Her neck is healed and her bullet wound is gone. Her eyes sparkle again.
"I waited for you to get here," she says. "I'll do what you do."
You think. "I… don't think I'm ready to Go yet," you say. "I'm… going to Stay. Until Jack's caught. I… don't want him to get away with killing us. With killing Jade."
The Strider-Lalondes nodded. "...Jade?" you ask.
"I'll Stay too," she says. "I'm not going on without you."
"Damn," Peixes said, examining the front porch of 413 Crocker Avenue. It was Jake and Jane English's grandkids. Jade's neck was broken and John had been stabbed in the back.
"I know, right?" said Megido, who had just finished sectioning off the entire property with crime scene tape. "The whole family wiped out in a week."
"It's weird," said Peixes, adjusting her glasses. "I think my mom worked a case like this back in the seventies. Actually, I think it was the house up the road."
"Huh," said Megido. "Hey, Captor found something in the backyard. It almost looks like someone dragged them here from the woods."
Peixes and Megido joined Captor in the backyard. Peixes volunteered to go into the woods and see what evidence she could find.
The moment she stepped through the hedges, they appeared. John and Jade, and two blonde kids.
"Go, Blackjack," they said.
"Go. Blackjack."