Chapter Three - Jesse [Part Two]
Scrubbing the floor with a brush, Sophie sighed as Crystal rearranged the cushions on the sofa to hide the red wine stain on the backrest. "Hangover and cleaning fumes do not mix well," Summer groaned as she wrapped herself around a bucket as she sat in the corner.
"Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get rid of all the cups and empty glasses somewhere," Sophie ordered, chucking a roll of bags at Summer as she threw up in the bucket.
Reluctantly, Summer grabbed the roll from the floor beside her and stood up, taking deep breaths as she did so. Making her way into the kitchen, Summer opened one of the bags up and scooped all the empty cups and glasses into it. Tying a knot in the top of it, she began to walk towards the back door to put it in the trash can when she was overcome by the urge to throw up again, like she had been experiencing all morning since she awoke. Debating on whether to do the right thing and place them in the trash or just dump them before she vomited all over the floor, Summer quickly decided. Opening up the basement door, Summer hurriedly hurled the bags down the stairs before closing the door and darting off in the direction of the kitchen sink.
"Make sure you wash that out," Sophie instructed as she carried the scrubbing brush back into the kitchen.
Gargling water, Summer looked over at Sophie before chucking up again in the sink. Meanwhile, up the stairs in Lucy's bedroom, Lucy began to stir, reaching her hand out onto the other side of the bed, expecting to find Jesse laying beside her but instead, her hand fell onto the empty bed. Sitting up in confusion, Lucy looked around the room to realise none of Jesse's belongings were where he had left them the night before. Putting her hand over her head, Lucy fell back into the pillow and let out a deep sigh of disappointment.
"Knock, knock," Crystal smiled as she opened the door, carrying a mug of coffee towards Lucy and placing it on the bedside table. "How you feeling?"
"Terrible," Lucy confessed. "I've never felt so crappy in my entire life."
"Well, I'm sure that's not true," Crystal laughed, sitting on the end of the bed as she looked at Lucy with a sympathetic look across her face. "Haven't you ever been so drunk before that you wake up the morning after and feel like your head is on fire?"
"It's not that," Lucy sighed. "It's just.."
"We know you and Jesse, um, how do I say this?" Crystal paused. "Got it on."
"He must have left during the night," Lucy mumbled as she nursed the coffee mug in both her hands, savouring the warmth.
"There's probably some explanation with it though," Crystal smiled. "He surely wouldn't just leave with no valid reason. I mean, he seemed really into you last night. He couldn't take his eyes off of you."
"Yeah, but I screwed it up last night."
"How could you screw it up?" Crystal asked as she stood up from the bed and walked over to the windows, drawing the curtains back and letting the sunshine into the room.
"I kind of told him I really liked him and didn't want him to hurt me."
"What did he say to that?"
"He said he really liked me too and din't want to hurt me either."
"Well then, there you go," Crystal smiled.
"Get out of bed, fat ass and get down those stairs. I'm not slaving away cleaning up a mess by myself while Summer is puking up all over the place," Sophie said as she walked into Lucy's bedroom, like the domestic goddess that she had suddenly turned into.
Reluctantly, Lucy crawled out of her bed and grabbed her dressing gown.
Getting out of the car, Eve looked over the roof of the car towards Jason. "Thank-you," she smiled as they began to walk down the path and into the porte-cochère of their house. "I really needed to just get away after all the stress of mom dying and the move. Even if it was just for a night, it's really put things into perspective."
"Let's go see if the house is trashed," Jason laughed as he opened the front door to find the house miraculously clean and tidy.
Eve looked around in amazement. It was even cleaner than it was before. The wooden floors shone with the sunlight that streamed through the Tiffany stained glass windows from the polish that Sophie had spent all morning doing. The windows gleamed with a sparkle from the cleaning that Crystal had spent all morning doing. The rugs that lined the lounge floor and led into the hallway were dust-free from the vacuuming that Lucy had spent all morning doing. The kitchen glistened as it was spotless from the cleaning Summer had spent the majority of the morning doing after she recovered from her hangover. "My God," Eve beamed.
Jason and Eve walked into the lounge in astonishment as they found Lucy, Sophie, Summer and Crystal huddled beneath a blanket on the sofa, watching MTV on the television that had also been cleaned.
"Did you guys have your sleepover last night or did you just spend the night cleaning?" Jason joked.
The girls turned around and smiled at Lucy's parents. "We kind of have a confession, Mr. and Mrs. Miller," Crystal blurted out.
"No," Lucy whispered, gritting her teeth at Crystal in an attempt to keep it all hush about the party - what her parents don't know doesn't harm them, as they say 'ignorance is bliss'.
"What would that be then?" Eve asked, raising her eyebrow at her daughter that was surrounded by her friends, looking guilty as she hid beneath the blanket.
"We had a party last night."
As soon as Sophie confessed, Lucy felt herself shrinking to the size of a thimble. Instead of receiving the expected telling off that Lucy was dreading, Jason began to laugh, followed by the laughter of Eve. "I told you she wouldn't end up just having a sleepover," Jason grinned. "That's my girl."
"Well, if you clean the house this well after a party, you can have more parties like this," Eve joked.
"Mum, this is Sophie, Summer and Crystal," Lucy smiled, introducing her friends but she couldn't help but feel relieved by her parents' surprising reaction.
"Nice to meet you girls," Eve commented, smiling a warm smile to them.
Eve was happy that her daughter had managed to fit into her new school well. Although Lucy was seventeen years of age - nearly an adult, Eve still thought of her as her baby girl. The Miller family had been in the same house since the day Eve found out she was pregnant, meaning Lucy had grown up with the same bunch of friends around her. When they decided to relocate to Los Angeles and leave their lives behind in London, Eve was reluctant to let Lucy join the local community high school as she had the fear that she wouldn't fit in as she didn't know how to deal with these sort of situations - she hadn't had to deal with anything like this before.
"Thank-you for letting us stay over last night, Mrs. Miller," Summer thanked.
"Yeah, and thanks for being okay with us having a slight get together last night," Sophie agreed, turning the television off.
"We thought it would be the perfect way for Lucy to meet some new people from our school," Crystal added.
Jason walked back into the hallway, carrying his and Eve's suitcase up the stairs. "Girls, call me 'Eve'," Eve smiled as she sat on the sofa, picking up the corner of the blanket that covered the girls and placing it over her lap. "So, any gossip of the party? Any boys?"
Sophie, Summer and Crystal all looked at Lucy. Feeling like she had a thousand eyes on her, Lucy stepped out of the blanket and into the kitchen. "Anyone want a drink?"
Looking up at the summer sky through her sunglasses, Lucy smiled to herself. Regardless of how things were left with Jesse, things were on the up since moving to Los Angeles. The golden sun twinkling in the sky always put a smile on Lucy's face, especially since it was such a rare occasion to witness a sunny day back in England - a plus side to living in California. Instead of going for a casual stroll in the sunshine, Lucy was on a mission of apology to the couple from last night who got disturbed by the music. The music wasn't that loud so Lucy managed to narrow the search down to three house. Lucy walked the slight distance down the road to her next-door neighbours' house and knocked on the door, stepping back slightly as she waited for the door to be opened. The door opened and a young woman - she couldn't have been more than thirty - stood in the doorway, dressed in gym clothes, holding a yoga mat under one arm.
"Hey," the woman smiled as she looked at Lucy.
"Hi. Do you know where a couple live around here? They have a newborn baby apparently," Lucy began to explain. "The woman has hair to about here," she pointed to her ribs to indicate the length of the woman's hair. "And the man's quite tall. I think they were called Vivien and Ben?"
"No, sorry honey," the woman apologised.
"It doesn't matter then," Lucy smiled. "Must have the wrong street address."
"Sorry."
As Lucy began to walk back down the path of the woman's house, she sighed to herself. Finding the couple to apologise was becoming harder than she originally thought. Walking up the path of the second house, Lucy looked up at the house in fascination - no house on this street was identical, yet it looked nice with all the mismatch houses. Knocking on the front door, she stepped back and waited again for a response.
"Hello," Lucy greeted the elderly man as he opened the door. "Do a couple live here? Vivien and Ben?"
"No, sorry," the man replied. "I don't know anyone around here called Vivien or Ben."
"It doesn't matter then. Thank-you for your help."
Turning around to walk back to her house, Lucy was about to give up on the search for the mysterious couple. They obviously didn't want to be found. After contemplating to herself about going back to the house, Lucy decided to try one final house before she gave up. The neighbours on the other side of her house had the iron gates at the bottom of the garden locked tight so that nobody could get in, and presumably out from the way that they had been bonded together with metal clamps. Ringing the bell on the gate, Lucy waited for somebody to answer the intercom as she looked through the opening in the gate and down the path towards the house. The house looked so unloved with the grass of the grounds overgrown and surrounded in litter.
"Hello. Who is it?"
Surprisingly, the voice on the other end of the phone wasn't what Lucy expected. She expected an elderly voice with a creepy sense about it, but instead she was met with quite a polite and well-pronounced Southern accent. "Hey, it's Lucy. I'm the daughter in the family that have just moved in next door at number 939. I was just wondering if a Ben or Vivien live here?"
Lucy waited for a reply but the intercom seemed to go dead. It was as if there was no such people called Ben and Vivien that existed to these people. None of it made sense. Just as Lucy was about to give up and walk back to the house after trying her best to find the couple to apologise, the intercom began to buzz and the gates slowly opened wide enough to let Lucy in. Hesitantly, Lucy walked down the path at a cautious speed, unsure of whether she should just turn around and run back home. Something didn't feel right about the house. "This looks more like 'Murder House' than ours," Lucy whispered to herself as she studied the house that looked like it had been untouched for years. By the time Lucy reached the steps that led up to the front door, it opened and a woman appeared in the doorway.
"Come on in," the woman warmly insisted, stepping aside to let Lucy into the house. The house was the complete opposite to the outside - it was like Lucy had just walked into a completely different dimension. The polished floors glinted; the windows gleamed; the carpets were spotless and fluffy as if they had never been walked on before. Antique furniture filled the rooms in a stylish way. The house complemented the woman's high standard of class. "I'm Constance Langdon."
"Lucy Miller."
"Come through to the kitchen," Constance smiled, leading Lucy into the kitchen. Ushering Lucy to sit down at the table, Constance got a pitcher of juice that was stood on the side along with two glasses. "It's cranberry."
"Thank-you, Ms. Langdon,"
"Call me Constance, please. I insist."
"Thank-you, Constance," Lucy corrected herself.
"So, tell me, Lucy. When did you and your family move next door?" Constance asked. "I've only just returned to Los Angeles from a vacation."
"Three weeks ago today," Lucy replied, sipping on her glass of juice.
"And is it just you and your mother, father?" Constance asked.
"Just me, my mum and my dad now," Lucy nodded. "My nan did live with us for a short time but she sadly passed away at the start of last week."
"Is that an English accent I sense?"
"It is."
"London?"
"Yeah."
"Lovely place. Never visited it myself but my late husband used to travel a lot and promised to take me." Lucy sat awkwardly, holding onto the glass of juice as Constance sat looking out the window in a daze. "Hugo was a drunk though. A drunk who loved whores."
"I don't mean to be rude, Constance, but can you help me locate Ben and Vivien please?" Lucy asked.
"He was the same," Constance continued, presumably going on about Ben. "He loved a good whore too. His last whore, Hayden, was the same as the whore I found my Hugo with. The thing with girls like that is they think they can have any man they want and the man will drop the world for them, regardless of who they hurt. Whores don't think about the women married to these men. They're only out for one thing - a few quick shags. Hugo ran off with his whore. Haven't heard from him in years. He left me to take care of our four children by myself."
"Do you know where Ben and Vivien are now?"
"Ben and Vivien?" Constance repeated. "They died in that house you now call home. Three years ago. Vivien died during childbirth and Ben couldn't deal with the loss of his so called beloved wife. Their daughter, Violet, was a strange one and ended up running away with the baby. Nobody knows where they are. Neither of them have been seen for the past three years. Disappeared off the face of the Earth." Lucy looked at Constance in confusion. "Why do you ask?"
"Oh, it doesn't matter now," Lucy smiled. "It was probably just some sickos playing a joke on us."
Constance looked at Lucy with a suspicious look before she flipped open the cigarette packet that laid on the table in front of her and took out a cigarette, placing it in her mouth and then lighting it. Blowing the smoke out of the corner of her mouth, she looked back over at Lucy, offering her a cigarette.
"No, thank-you," Lucy politely refused. "I don't smoke."
"It helps me deal with the stress," Constance explained, staring coldly at the cigarette that was propped between her fingers.
"Well, thank-you for the juice but I really had be getting back to my house," Lucy smiled. "I promised my parents I'd help sort out dinner."
"Take care," Constance said as she remained seated at the kitchen table, watching Lucy closely as she stood up and left the kitchen, walking down towards the front door of the house.
As soon as Lucy got out of the house, she rushed down the path and squeezed through the gate before closing it behind her as fast as she possibly could. Something about that house didn't feel right. Something about the woman didn't feel right. Watching Lucy from the attic window, Constance continued to puff away at her cigarette.
"Where are you, Michael?" she sighed to herself before rushing out of view.
Walking through the porte-cochère of her own house, Lucy glanced back at her neighbour's house and shivered. Strolling back into the lounge to find Eve and Jason fast asleep on the sofa, Lucy sighed to herself and quietly made her way up the stairs towards her room to study. She couldn't afford to not have any idea what Ms. King was on about in chemistry, especially since she wasn't sure how things would be with Jesse when she returned to school on Monday morning.
Dumping her school bag on the desk, Lucy looked around at the class with a blank look on her face. Ms. King was stood by the board, writing essays upon essays of notes on it in a barely visible ink - like usual. All the other students were sat at their places, discussing what they had done over the weekend. Lucy glanced across her desk to see Jesse wasn't in his place, which was strange, especially for him. Since Lucy's first chemistry lesson, Jesse was always on time - if not before. Nine o'clock struck on the clock but it soon past. Lucy couldn't help but wonder if Jesse hadn't turned up to chemistry so that he could avoid her. Although she was putting all her effort into listening to what Ms. King was talking to the class about and making relevant notes, Lucy found it impossible. Where the hell was Jesse?
Sitting at the desk in the study, Eve began to type out her business proposal. Flicking through the research Eve had already conducted to put in her plan, she sighed to herself. Financial data sheets covered the desk and spilled out onto the sofa as Eve glanced over them, inputting the date into her proposal. Competitive analysis of the current industry sheets were all scattered around the floor, in vision of Eve as she tried to get it all sorted. Pulling her long brown locks into a ponytail, she began to get into the proposal. Her fingers battling each other on the keyboard of her laptop as she typed it up.
"Hello," a voice called from the hallway.
Eve looked around the room in confusion. Getting up from the chair, she walked out of the study and into the hallway to find a woman stood in the middle of the room, looking around the house. "Can I help you?" Eve asked, quite annoyed at the fact that this stranger had just stormed their way into her house, without so much as a knock.
"I'm Constance. I live next door. I just wanted to come have a look around. I was quite close to the previous neighbours. Lovely family they were."
"Would you mind coming back later?" Eve asked. "I'm just in the middle of something right now."
"Don't worry, I won't be long," Constance insisted emphatically, waltzing into the kitchen. "I love what you've done with the place."
Eve looked at her rude neighbour in disbelief before reluctantly engaging in conversation. "Yes. We decided to take it back to the original decor and keep it as authentic as possible."
"You have such lovely stuff," Constance commented as she admired the vase that stood on the kitchen counter, holding daffodils.
"Thank-you."
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm just in the middle of setting up my own hair salon," Eve smiled proudly.
"Business woman?" Constance questioned. "I believe a woman's job is to raise the children."
"Our only daughter, Lucy, is old enough to look after herself now and owning my own salon has been a lifelong dream," Eve began to explain. "I used to work in a salon back in London but decided that the move to LA would be my chance to get my dreams."
"So young," Constance smiled, circling Eve. "So naive. I thought that too when I moved here, but I was so young - I didn't know any better. Los Angeles isn't a city where dreams are made. Los Angeles is the a city where dreams are smashed."
Stood uncomfortably in the middle of the kitchen, Eve smiled at Constance, unsure of what to say or do.
"Anyway, I'd love to stand around and chat but I can't. Would you mind if I just had a quick look around?" Constance asked. "I was quite close to Ben and Vivien when they lived here - they were like family to me."
"Sure," Eve nodded.
As Constance disappeared up the staircase, Eve looked after her in confusion. "Strange woman," Eve whispered to herself, shaking her head slightly before she returned back to the study to continue with her business proposal.
Upstairs, Constance paraded into each room with a mission. "Michael," she growled, searching under each bed and in each wardrobe. "This isn't funny."
Strolling into the maths classroom, Lucy spotted Tammy at the back of the classroom. As Lucy sat down beside her, Tammy shuffled the chair in the opposite direction and continued to scribble doodles on her notepad.
"Hey," Lucy smiled.
Tammy remained silent, as if she was ignoring Lucy.
"I guess you heard about the party then?" Lucy asked.
Tammy put her pen down and looked at Lucy. "Of course I did. Did you think I would be the only person in the entire school that wouldn't hear about it?" Tammy snarled.
"Look, Tammy. It wasn't as big as people are making it out to be. There was only about thirty people to begin with but everyone left by 10 o'clock. I wanted to invite you, honestly," Lucy began to explain. "It's just.."
"It's just what, Lucy? I'm not cool enough for your friends? Just because I don't wear skirts that show off my ass or shirts that make my boobs look the size of watermelons?" Tammy argued, talking a little louder than she realised as the people surrounding them had looked around. "No, Lucy. I'm not gonna pretend to be somebody I'm not just because some jumped up bitches don't wanna be friends with me."
Standing up, Tammy grabbed her stuff and began to walk out the classroom. As everyone turned around to look at Lucy, Mr. Lunbridge walked through the door, passed Tammy as she stormed out the classroom. "Can you all look at the board please?" Mr. Lunbridge asked, clapping to get the attention of his distracted students. "I want you to get your algebra books out and turn to page 263."
Scanning through the textbook, Lucy tried to concentrate on the letters and numbers that were appearing on the page but no matter what she did, she just couldn't. Within three weeks since her first day at the new school, Lucy had managed to ruin a potential relationship and now she's screwed up a things weren't looking up as she originally thought they were on Saturday night. By the time Mr. Lunbridge had dismissed the class, Lucy had several missed calls from Sophie, Summer and Crystal. Instead of ringing them back, she headed straight to her locker to get rid of her algebra book that felt like it was going to break her shoulder it was that heavy. Unlocking her locker, she sighed as she stuffed her bag into it and looked down the busy corridor that was full of strangers, recognising only a few of the faces from previous encounters in the corridors.
Caved beneath mountains upon mountains of files and folders that were crammed full of papers, Jason groaned as he grabbed another file from the top of the pile and opened it. Grabbing a pen from the pot on the windowsill, he began to work through the file - circling and annotating the forms as he went through each sheet, one by one. The corridors outside his office were bursting with noise as patients dashed to appointments and doctors rushed to different departments to deal with a range of emergencies but the office which Jason had spent the last two days catching up on paperwork were silent. One week into the job and Jason was slowly beginning to hate it. If he could, he would have easily swapped the senior doctor position back for a general practitioner dealing with patients in the busy accident and emergency department of St. Guys' Hospital in Central London within a heartbeat. Jason wasn't much for paperwork - even throughout his studying at medical school. Jason much more preferred dealing with patients face-to-face than being stuck behind a mountain of paperwork that didn't help anybody apart from killing trees. Reaching out for his coffee cup that was dumped on the top of the heap of papers, Jason pulled it towards him to find it was empty. Instead of calling for the receptionist that had promised to refill his cup as soon as it was empty, Jason grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and pulled it on. Leaving his office, he locked the door behind him and walked down the corridor without looking back. Strolling down the corridor past all the patients that were still waiting to see Jason's new colleagues, he waved past the receptionists at the reception desk who was occupied by numerous patients with all their different situations and walked straight into the elevator. Watching the floor numbers decrease as the elevator made its way down to the ground floor, Jason finally felt a feeling of relief as he left all the pressure from paperwork deadlines behind in his office. Even though the thought of having to do it all when he got back from lunch was in the back of his mind, Jason felt the weight lift off his shoulders. Climbing into his car, he turned on the ignition and reversed out of the parking spot.
Chopping up some lettuce and dressing it with a sauce that Eve had just freshly made, Eve looked out the window at the garden. As she did, she imagined everything she could do with it. Ever since she had watched an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Design for the first time, Eve had dreamt of having the perfect house and the perfect garden, designed just how she wanted it to be. As she mixed the salad, she daydreamed about everything the garden could possibly be. Fairy lights strung from the trees, lighting up the water fountain feature beneath it that was sprinkling water over back over the pond. A glass patio set with a parasol beside the already built wooden gazebo for the perfect summer evening barbecues and get togethers. And maybe even a hot tub in the corner of the garden for Lucy to enjoy with her friends during the school holidays and weekends. Maybe.
"Eve," Jason called as he walked into the house, closing the front door behind him.
"I wasn't expecting you to be home until later on tonight," Eve smiled, pleasantly surprised by her husband's impromptu appearance since she wasn't looking to a lunch by herself, especially with her business proposal was taking longer than she initially expected.
"I've decided to pull a late one tonight to get the paperwork finished," Jason explained. "I can't work without coffee so thought I'd come home and get some coffee as the hospital cafe's coffee isn't that nice."
"Not that you wanted to come home to see your darling wife?" Eve joked.
"You know I meant that too," Jason laughed, kissing his wife's cheek before he turned the coffee machine on.
"Well, I've had a bit of a strange morning this morning," Eve began. "I met our next-door neighbour."
"Are they nice?"
"She seemed nice. A bit of a pessimist though," Eve smiled. "I was sat in the study working on the proposal when I heard her someone in the hallway and walked out to find her just stood in the house. No knocking or anything."
"Maybe she's just really into the neighbour community spirit thing," Jason suggested as Eve passed him a bowl of salad before sitting down opposite him at the breakfast bar.
"Maybe, but it's just the way she waltzed in here like she had the right to without permission, just because she was close with the previous owners," Eve sighed.
"But sometimes if you get close with the previous owners and they don't mind you walking into their house without knocking, I suppose it can become a bit of a habit and she didn't realise you wouldn't mind," Jason smiled. "I won't think too much about it, Eve. If you don't feel safe being in the house alone knowing she could just walk in unannounced, just keep the doors locked. I've got a key and Lucy has a key."
"We shouldn't have to though," Eve argued. "This is our home."
"I know, darling. I know."
"This salad is lovely," Eve commented, changing the subject as things were getting a little heated. "I never knew Californian lettuce would taste a bit different to English lettuce but it really does."
"It's nice," Jason smiled, yawning as he poured the coffee from the cafetiere into two mugs - one set in front of himself and one set in front of Eve. "That's one thing. Do you know where the old coffee maker is? I was thinking about installing it in my office at work so I wouldn't have to bother the receptionist in going to the cafe every time I run out of coffee, nor traipse down there myself when I should be getting on with the paperwork."
"What, like you should be getting on with your paperwork now?" Eve teased.
"Have you seen the coffee maker?" Jason repeated, ignoring Eve's dig.
"I think the removal guys put it down in the basement," Eve suggested, getting up from the stool and pushing it beneath the breakfast bar before she placed the dishes in the sink.
Making his way over to the basement, Jason groaned to himself as he opened up the basement door to be greeted by darkness. Unknown to Jason, Jesse's mutilated body laid in the middle of the gloomy basement. The pool of blood that surrounded Jesse's lifeless corpse had dried on the concrete floor where the creature and Tate had left him to bleed to death. Jason was completely unaware that he was about to stumble across the horrific murder that unfolded in the room just two days ago. A foul stench of rotting flesh filled the basement, making Jason wheeze as he held his breath, covering his mouth with his jacket sleeve of one hand as he felt around the cold stone wall, trying to find the light switch. As he finger ran across the switch, the light flickered on. Tate, who was stood in the corner of the room out of sight, stared at Jesse's body, waiting for it to be discovered with a smile across his face - his eyes gleaming with an evil sparkle.
"Oh, Jason, I've found it," Eve called from the kitchen. "It was in the cupboard beneath the sink. It's a bit dusty though."
"I don't know what's down in this basement but the smell is making me feel sick," Jason called back as he switched the light back off and walked out of the basement, shutting the door behind him.
"Well, Marcy did say it would need a deep and thorough clean if we wanted to use it," Eve smiled as she began to clean the dust off the coffee machine. "I'll hire an industrial cleaner to come around and see what they can do with is sometime next week."
Left in the darkness of the cold basement again, Tate raged in anger as his plan of discovery had failed.
Stood by her locker before she was about to go to the final lesson of the day - Literature, Lucy grabbed her books from the back of the locker and dumped them inside her bag. As she looked at her reflection in the mirror that was hung up on the back of the locker door, she sighed to herself. How was it possible to be so down when the other day she was the happiest she had been in a long time? Just as she was about to apply some lip balm and head off to Literature, two police officers walked down the corridor, separating the students as they parted through the corridor towards where Lucy was stood at her locker, watching the drama unfold in front of her very eyes.
"Lucy Miller?" the stumpy policeman asked as they stopped just centimetres away from where Lucy was stood.
"Yes, that's me," Lucy replied nervously, unsure of what was going and, more importantly, why the police knew her name.
"Would you mind coming with us? We need to ask you some questions," the stumpy policemen said, before he turned around and began to walk back down the corridor, expecting Lucy to follow him.
Instead of following him, Lucy froze by her locker.
"Don't worry, honey," the policewoman that was with the policeman smiled warmly at a frightened Lucy. "You're not in trouble. We just need your help with something."
Hesitantly, Lucy nodded and locked her locker back up before she followed the police officers back down the corridor. As they made their way into the principal's office, all the students that were stood around the corridors of the school gawped at what was going on - although they had more of an idea that was going on than Lucy. Walking into the office, Lucy saw that Sophie, Summer and Crystal were already sat down at the principal's desk, looking as scared as Lucy felt.
"Take a seat," the policeman instructed, ushering Lucy to sit down in the chair that was next to Sophie. "Your parents have been informed that we're questioning you but we just want to ask you a few questions on a casual manner instead of taking you all in for separate interviewing."
"Interviewing?" Sophie repeated.
"Questioning?" Crystal asked. "What's going on?"
"Is it about the party on Friday night? We didn't make much noise and we were hardly drinking. We know we shouldn't have been drinking but.."
The policewoman interrupted Summer before she got the girls into even more trouble - that is, if they were even in trouble at all. "Don't worry, girls," she smiled warmly, trying to reassure the girls who were evidently panicking like crazy. "We just need to ask you some questions about Jesse Porter."
"Jesse?" Lucy asked.
"Yes, Jesse," the policeman confirmed. "We have reason to believe you knew Jesse."
"You could say that," Sophie replied, looking at Lucy.
"Did he attend the party on Friday night?" the policeman asked.
"Yes," Sophie answered. "He brought a few of his friends with him but they left before he did."
"And we have down here that the party was held at your house, Lucy. Are we right?" the policeman asked, completely ignoring what Sophie had just said and following the questions that he had jotted down on his notepad. "939 Berro Drive?"
Lucy nodded, waiting in anticipation to see why they wanted to ask questions about Jesse.
"What time did Jesse leave?" the policewoman asked.
"It must have been about three, maybe four," Crystal replied.
"In the morning?"
"Yes."
"But we have witnesses saying the party ended at about midnight," the policeman stated, looking confused.
"That's because Jesse stayed behind," Summer explained.
"He stayed behind with me," Lucy added.
"So you four were the last people to see him that night then?" the policeman asked.
"I didn't see him as such. I woke up and he'd already gone," Lucy replied.
The policeman gave a suspicious look towards Lucy before scribbling down some notes on his notepad as the policewoman looked at Lucy, trying to reassure her with a friendly smile. "Are we right to assume you two slept together then?" the policewoman asked.
Lucy nodded as she looked down at the floor, trying to hide the fact she was blushing.
"We were downstairs watching movies when we heard the front door open and then close," Sophie began. "I looked out the window to see Jesse walking down the path towards the road."
"Can I ask what do you think has happened to Jesse?" Lucy asked. "I tried to text him on Sunday but I didn't get a reply and he hasn't turned up for school today."
"Why did you text him on Sunday and not Saturday?" the policeman questioned.
"I'm a girl," Lucy replied. "We don't like to come across as clingy. The way Jesse got up and left without waking me or leaving a note just didn't seem like a good sign. I didn't want to come across as needy, especially as.. well, it was my first time. I'm not exactly a pro at this whole thing. I wanted to text him on Saturday but I just thought he would text me. I only texted him on Sunday night to see if we were okay and when I didn't get any answer, I just thought he was ignoring me. I still thought he was trying to avoid me when he didn't turn up this morning for chemistry, but now with you here.. I know something must be up for the police to get involved. I just want to know that he's okay."
"Lucy, Jesse's parents reported him as missing Saturday night - 24 hours after they last saw him. They haven't had any contact from him since and nobody seems to have seen him since he left your house in the early hours of Saturday morning."
"Missing?" Lucy paused, trying to take it all in.
"We're sure he's fine," the policewoman reassured. "We just need to find where he is as his parents are worried."
"We honestly have no idea, sir," Sophie said to the policeman, as he continued to look at the girls with a suspicious eye. "If we knew anything, we would tell you straight away but we've told you what we know."
"Thank-you for cooperating, girls," the policewoman smiled.
"Please find him," Lucy pleaded as the principal entered the room and closed the door behind him, shutting the eyes of the outside world out.
"Lucy, Sophie, Crystal, Summer," he smiled. "Your parents are waiting in the school foyer to collect you. We've excused you from lessons for the rest of the day."
"We're going to do everything we can to find him," the policewoman comforted Lucy, sensing how scared she was.
As the principal led the girls out from his office and towards the foyer, shielding them from all the gossiping, Lucy stared into space as all sorts of thoughts entered her mind. The moment Lucy caught sight of her parents, who were stood waiting for her, she ran up to them and hugged them both tightly. Collapsing into a bundle of sorrow, Lucy clung onto her parents as they slowly began to walk her back to their car to take her home. Sophie, Summer and Crystal all disappeared off with their parents, feeling guilty as they left Lucy to deal with all the gossiping from the students at the school.
"Have you heard what's happened to Jesse Porter?" one girl asked another as Lucy, Jason and Eve walked behind them towards the car park of the school.
"He's gone missing, hasn't he?" the other girl replied.
"Yeah. He was last seen by that new girl at the party at the 'Murder House'. I reckon he's dead."
Storming past the tattling girls, Lucy wiped her eyes as tears slowly fell down her cheek as they walked out the doors to the car park. As Lucy fell into the back seat of the car, Jason and Eve looked at each other and then through the window at their daughter, who was sobbing quietly to herself.
"Don't worry," Eve smiled. "Drop us off back at home and then you get yourself off to work to finish the paperwork. I'll sort her out."
Circling Jesse's body, Tate looked down on it from his superior position with a glare. Bending down slightly, he examined Jesse's body and smiled. "I told you you'd never hurt with her again," he snarled, satisfied by Jesse's achievement in keeping to his promise. "But I can't keep your body here."
Placing his hands beneath Jesse's arms, Tate began to drag the body across the floor, leaving a trail of blood as he did so.
As Jason reversed the car back out onto the main road and drove back to work for a long night of battling through the ever-growing mountain of paperwork that never seemed to disappear from his desk, Eve wrapped her arm around Lucy's waist and walked with her, carrying her school bag for her, towards the house. Dragging herself up the stairs to her room, Lucy felt nothing but guilt as she kept thinking of how different things would have been if she hadn't agreed to the party on Friday night. Part of her blamed her friends for rabbiting on about the party until Lucy had no choice to agree with the idea, but the majority of her blamed herself for it all.
"I'll be in the study if you need me," Eve smiled, watching Lucy disappear.
Sighing, Eve walked back into the study to continue with her business proposal without a clue of what was going on in their basement. As Tate reappeared back into the basement from disposing of Jesse's body in a crawl space deep beneath the house, he froze as he realised he was being watched the entire time.
"Violet."
"What are you doing?" the girl, evidently called Violet, asked, looking at Tate in disbelief as she noticed all the blood that was covering the floor. "You haven't, have you?"
"What did you expect me to do?" Tate replied. "Just sit around and watch as he was about to mess her about?"
"Tate, you're meddling with their shit - shit you're not supposed to meddle with. What did I tell you three years ago?" Violet questioned, stepping down the stairs into the basement.
"You told me to leave you alone. You told me to go away."
"So why are you still here, Tate?"
"I can't go anywhere else. We're stuck here forever. Nowhere else to go."
"But that doesn't give you the right to just kill whoever you want. And you know what's going to happen, don't you? He's gonna come back and tell Lucy everything. She'll tell her parents and then you'll get banished again - for good this time."
"How many times do I need to say I'm sorry until you realise that I am sorry?"
"Sorry is only fit when you accidentally smash a plate or when you forget somebody's birthday," Violet paused as she came face-to-face to Tate. "Not when you rape their mother, father their half-brother and then indirectly kill their mother when the baby kills them through childbirth."
"You have to understand. That wasn't me," Tate pleaded, trying to take hold of Violet's hand only to have it slapped away.
"That wasn't you? Wasn't this you either?" Violet questioned, pointing down to the pool of dried up blood on the floor. "Oh, and I bet the corpse that's stuck in there on top of my skeleton isn't your doing either."
"But he was going to hurt her," Tate argued.
"What, like you hurt me, Tate?" Violet asked. Tate remained silent. "No, Tate. That's what I thought. Nobody could hurt anybody like you hurt me. You raped my mom. I can't forget that. I can't forgive that. It makes me feel sick just looking at you."
"You need to understand.."
Violet interrupted Tate before he gave her another feeble excuse. "No, you need to understand. I don't want you here. We don't want you here."
Tate turned around to see an elderly lady stood in the corner, looking at them both through one eye as the other one was clouded over with a greyed appearance. "I'm not even the housekeeper anymore yet I'm still left to clean up all the mess."
"No, Moira," Violet ordered. "Leave it. Tate made the mess. Tate can clean it up."
The elderly lady, assumed to be called Moira, passed over a bucket full of soapy water and a sponge. Tate looked at the bucket and sponge in turn and then back to Violet.
"Violet."
"No, Tate. You're gonna clean this mess up and then you're going to leave this family alone."
Curled up into a ball in the middle of her bed, Lucy clutched onto a pillow as she broke down and sobbed like a child. Closing her eyes, she couldn't help but question all the what ifs. Eve, who was stood in the doorway, felt her heart break as she watched her daughter crying her heart out, knowing there was nothing that she could do to make the pain go away.
"I know you're not feeling hungry but you need to eat so I made you a sandwich," Eve said in a soothing tone as she walked across the room to Lucy and placed the sandwich plate on her bedside table, moving the docking station out of the way so the plate wouldn't fall off.
Lucy opened her eyes and smiled an unenthusiastic smile that lacked any sense of emotion apart from sadness.
"Oh, come here," Eve sighed as she sat down on the bed and swaddled Lucy with her arms. "I just want you to know that you can talk to me about anything."
"I know," Lucy croaked, sobbing into Eve's shoulder.
Eve stroked Lucy's hair, hushing her as if she was still a baby. "Don't feel guilty," Eve comforted.
"He wouldn't have gone missing if I didn't have that stupid party. He wouldn't have gone missing if he didn't come to my stupid party. His parents wouldn't be worrying about him if it wasn't for me. It's all my fault and if something has happened to him, mum, I would never forgive myself."
Eve hugged Lucy even tighter before kissing her head. "None of this is your fault, Lucy. I want you to know that, okay? It's not your fault. I reckon he's just stopped at a mate's for a few days, forgotten to tell his parents and his phone's gone dead so he can't call anybody to let them know he's okay, but he will be okay."
Lucy shrugged her shoulders before looking up at Eve - her eyes red raw, sparkling with the tears. "I don't know, mum. I just wanna know where he is. It's my fault."
Walking her perfectly pedigree dog down the street and past the Miller's house, Constance glanced up at the master bedroom window and stopped just outside the steps that led to the path that ran all the way to the porte-cochère. As the dog raised its leg up against the wall that ran the perimeter of the steps and let out a stream of urine, Constance continued to look up at the master bedroom window, as if she was waiting for something to appear - like she knew that something was going to appear at any moment. Stood waiting, Constance pulled the dog away from the wall and instructed it to stand beside her with perfect behaviour to complement her perfectly groomed appearance. Just like magic, Constance's expectations were satisfied as Tate appeared in the window, looking down at her like she was worthless. Waving up to him, Constance smiled warmly. Instead of getting a wave back, Tate lifted his left hand up to his head and pointed it to his temple as if his fingers were the barrel of a gun. Lifting his gun shaped hand up, he made a bullet noise with his lips in her direction through the window. Walking back towards her house, Constance took a deep breath as Tate disappeared again from the window into the master bedroom. Across the road, hiding in the bushes, was a silhouette figure that was watching Constance as she made her way through the gates of her house and down the path before disappearing through the doors. The figure slowly began to make its way out through the trees. With a short stature and blonde hair, the figure was revealed to be a young child - no older than four years old. Smiling up at the Miller's house, the child looked down at its hands that were covered in a blood red liquid. Giggling to itself, it began to walk towards the Miller's house as it wiped its hands on its dungarees, transferring them with the stained red substance.