Chapter 20 has finally arrived! This one was kind of a hard one to write, and the lack of reivews really wasn't helping either, but I just hope you like how it turned out and have fun reading!
Maisie Summerfield yanked Dani away from the crowd as soon as she laid eyes upon her. She could get rather aggressive when she was curious.
"Tell me all about it, leave out no detail, savour every part," Maisie demanded.
Dani raised her eyebrows.
"You and Willow, remember?" Maisie snapped insistently. "You went up for a little one-on-one in her bedroom."
Her friend giggled and sighed, "Oh, yeah, I remember that. Don't wind yourself up, it wasn't much."
"Wasn't much? That means there was something, doesn't it? Please don't tell me all you two did was talk. Not again."
"You know, what they say, actions speak louder than words," Dani muttered cheekily.
"Oh my god," gasped Maisie. "So are you two like a thing now?"
"No, well, I don't think so. We just kissed. All we did was kiss."
"Don't be such a buzz kill, Dan. Tell me everything. You did get to hear about my super-explicit Wolverine wet dream after all."
The girls laughed in chorus.
"I'm sorry, I just knew they wouldn't shut up about it, so I made something up," Dani explained.
"'S okay, Hugh Jackman's kinda hot for an old man," said Maisie. "I just panicked a little. I wasn't really thinking straight anymore with all the booze."
"Any progress with Ethan yet?"
I actually think I want to stop talking about the party now, Maisie realized. He just flat out rejected me. Dani might not remember, but I don't think I can forget.
"Lost cause"," she said, defeated. "I knew it from the start, anyways."
"Hey, that's what I thought at first," her friend said bracingly. "It turns out that I had a shot with Willow after all, and I'm glad I took it. You shouldn't give up so soon."
Maisie looked at her and knew she was saying stuff she didn't believe in. It was a sweet gesture, but it didn't help.
"If he doesn't see how great you are, he doesn't deserve you anyways," Dani added as an afterthought.
Maisie looked at her. Ivy, Willow, Kate and Ruby had said exactly the same but she felt no better.
"How was Willow, actually?" she asked casually.
Dani chortled, flushing.
She was about to answer, saw something, then murmured, "Great timing, Will."
Indeed, Willow was fast approaching, and though Maisie frowned at the Slipknot T-shirt, she actually liked Willow's necklace, with a pendant that looked like a black crusted diamond.
"Hey," Willow, said, though not to cheerful.
"Hey," the blondes replied in unison.
Maisie didn't miss the looks Willow and Dani exchanged and she thought it was the cutest thing ever.
"Have you seen Bernadette? She was acting weird all morning, and then suddenly when I looked around she was gone."
Normally she would have just assumed Bernadette had sneaked off to the toilet or something, but since S.K. had appeared, Maisie was second-guessing everything. She felt quite distressed.
"I haven't seen her, sorry," Maisie apologized. "Have you tried to call her already?"
"Forgot my phone," Willow said. "I was in a bit of a hurry this morning."
"I'll try her," Dani offered.
She fetched her phone from her pocket and dialled Bernadette's number. There was an everlasting silence.
"Voicemail. I'll send her a text."
Dani hadn't even started typing when she turned chalk-white and said in a hushed voice, "Gotta go. See you in class."
"What's wrong?"
Dani had pushed both her and Willow aside, instead of giving a response.
Great, thought Maisie, if I wasn't stressing before I'm certainly stressing now.
"I was just on my way to Biology," Louise muttered, "You better have a good reason to-"
Dani impatiently held her mobile phone in front of the brunette's face.
"This good enough for you?"
You didn't think I'd go without a struggle, did you?
''All the world's a stage, my dears.''
-S.K.
"It's definitely more interesting than cellular structures, I'll give you that," the brunette said darkly.
Danielle rolled her eyes.
"Dani, you know I don't have the patience for puzzles. What does this even mean? And what's with the quote? Doesn't Bernadette always say that to annoy the shit out of people when they say she's too theatrical?"
"It has something to do with Bonnie, for sure," she replied, "but what? S.K. might be saying he wants to take revenge for her arrest or something... If Holmes was correct she was one of his more passionate acolytes."
"Acolytes?" Louise said, raising her brow. "I didn't know we were talking about a cult?"
"It has certain elements of a cult is all I'm saying," Dani corrected her. "We have a hierarchy of sorts, S.K. on top, victims at the bottom, people like us that only do the ratting out, and people who execute his plans, like Holden and Bonnie."
The brunette smirked, adding, "Only difference is we're not all doing each other."
Dani buried her face in her hands, smiling all the same. She momentarily forgot about the text. When she remembered, however, she asked quietly, "So? What will we do?"
"There's no way we're going rogue again with a serial killer on the loose," Louise said. "We need to give this to Sherlock."
"I was hoping so badly you wouldn't say that..." the blonde groaned.
Louise returned that statement with an I-know-you-don't-like-him-but-that-sucks-for-you kind of look. Danielle sighed, following her friend to the principal's office. Mr. Duval had given up the room for Sherlock and John to make it their office, or a student-free environment at least.
Both girls had only just launched into a detailed explanation about the text, when Louise's phone rang.
"Not again," said Louise, wanting to press 'decline'. "Sorry, it's probably some electrical company..."
"Wait," Dani stopped her, "Answer."
"S.K. only uses Blocked Caller ID."
"Bonnie might not."
Louise answered, putting it on speaker. Silence filled the room.
"Bonnie?" Danielle tried after a while. "You don't have to do this. Tell us where you are, and all of this will be over. No one has to get hurt."
All they could hear was a loud click, followed by soft music, growing louder and louder.
"Do any of you know the song?" John asked, just before the lyrics came on.
'Nightmare!
Now your nightmare comes to life
Dragged you down below
Down to the devil's show
To be his guest forever ...'
"Oh!" squealed Dani, her eyes widening.
"What it's called?" the detective inquired, but she shushed him.
'...Flesh is burning
You can smell it in the air
Cause men like you have
Such an easy soul to steal...'
"What are they doing to Bernadette?" said Louise, sounding frightened.
"I don't understand..." Dani kept muttering.
'...You're now a slave
Until the end of time here
Nothing stops the madness..'
"There has to be some clue."
'...You should have known
The price of evil
And it hurts to know
That you belong here, yeah
Ooh, it's your fuckin' nightmare...'
"Her nightmare..." the brunette suggested. "Her personal nightmare? The most horrible way to... way to..."
"The girl's going to die," Holmes said firmly. "She's going to die if we don't find out how on time. It's all a game."
Die? thought Dani wildly. S.K. was out to kill again?
"The Great Game," Louise said, quoting the title of one of Watson's blog entries, Dani supposed.
"What does this have to do with Moriarty?" John asked.
"He's a fan of your blog, John, and a copy-cat," Holmes said briskly. "Think, you two, how would Bernadette hate to die the most?"
"How could we know?" Louise protested. "Neither of us are close to her."
Danielle thought, thought desperately and hopelessly, she had to find out, Bernadette's life depends on my mind, and the song was nearly halfway...
'No one to call
Everybody to fear
Your tragic fate is looking so clear, yeah
Ooh, it's your fuckin' nightmare'
No one could hear her, she thought. What if Avenged Sevenfold was part of the clue? Another song, another-
"She's been buried alive," she gasped, her voice shaking. "Another Avenged Sevenfold song."
Louise clapped her hand in front of her mouth, horrified.
The detective rudely ripped the phone from her hands and snapped, "Buried Alive- Avenged Sevenfold. You've buried her alive, somewhere on the school grounds."
The music stopped.
"She'll be okay," John assured the girls. "They're going to tell us where she is right now."
It turned out this was not the case. Instead, another song was tuned in.
'Take the time just to listen
When the voices screaming are much too loud,
Take a look in the distance,
Try and see it all...'
"Another clue?" asked John pointedly, looking at the detective.
Danielle bit her lip, having a bad feeling about this.
"It's not a clue," said Holmes slowly, "We have to find her. This was meant to slow us down."
Louise caught her eye, looking just as beaten. Dani could not unsee the image of Bernadette screaming, manically trying to escape, hearing the dirt fall onto her coffin, knowing what was going to happen to her...
"Find her," she whispered, "please."
Holmes looked at her emotionlessly, answering, "The odds-"
"I don't care about the freaking odds!" Dani snapped at him. "You're the brilliant detective, prove it! FIND HER NOW!"
'...Still I'm on my way,
On and on it goes,
Vacant hope to take...'
Louise looked at her phone and stopped the call.
"Think," John demanded. "Think, Sherlock."
"How am I supposed to find a body when I couldn't even-"
"Because it matters now!"
The detective closed his eyes and put his fingers to his temples, making little circles. After what seemed like an eternity (probably about ten seconds) his eyes snapped open again.
'I know where to go," he said, and the sound of his voice saying those words was the sweetest sound in the world to Dani. "There's only so many places you can bury someone alive and manage not to be seen, one of them being behind the students' bicycle shed, but someone would have heard them-"
"Sherlock," said Watson urgently. "Not really the time, mate."
"Right. Follow me, then."
When the four of them arrived at the teacher's bicycle shed (most teachers went by car anyway, no one would visit it during school time and it was much better secured than the students' shed, walls thick enough to keep out sound) all their hypotheses seemed to be proven.
Dani clearly saw Bonnie had been hasty; the tiles had been put back in place so clumsily she could clearly see which ones to move and even the shovel had been left in place.
There was something in the back of her mind about fingerprints but she realized they wouldn't have to find a killer if Bernadette wasn't dead, so Louise and the doctor helped her to remove the tiles, Watson starting to dig like crazy.
She didn't even have time to concern herself with Holmes, who stood at a distance, watching.
Eventually a loud thump told them they had hit the wooden coffin, which was relatively easy to crack open. When they did, the last hypothesis was also proven true.
There lay Bernadette, her eyes wide open, as was her mouth, in one final scream for help that came too late.
Louise Davids felt like gasping, puking, looking and looking away all at once.
Compared to Bernadette, Holden had looked quite peaceful when he was dead, he could have been sleeping if it weren't for the blood.
But this- this was a horrible sight to see. Bernadette's face showed every ounce of tragedy, horror and fear she must have felt in her final moments. Her lips were blue, her face pale and bloodless, and her eyes haunting.
"She's been dead for about a minute, I'd say."
Normally even she would have glared at the detective for saying something in a moment like this, but she felt Dani's arms wrap around her waist, her head on her shoulder, letting both of them take everything in.
BEEP BEEP BEEP
"Not now," uttered Louise, wanting nothing more than to let her phone drop and break on the tiles.
Dani's grip had tightened by now, not in a securing way, but a panicked one. Only then Louise realized what she feared. That this wasn't the end of it. There was someone else. Could there be?
Louise swallowed, gathered the last of her courage, and opened the message.
Let's play another game. Who, where and with what?
I do hope for the poor boy's sake you have better luck this time...
Kisses, S.K.
Louise felt like screaming with rage and bursting out in tears all at once, but she remained quite stoic to the outside world.
"I don't feel like playing," she whispered, "or thinking."
"It's like Cluedo or something," said Dani, sounding drained. "I've always hated Cluedo."
"He's moving up the ladder," Sherlock analyzed, "The girl, about whom you cared very little. This boy, he's a friend of yours but not necessarily your best friend."
Louise didn't know what to answer. She was too shocked and put-off to even be thinking about this sort of thing. She knew she had to, but the situation was hopeless; they would try, and it would happen again. Someone would die again, no matter what they did.
She looked at Dani, hopelessly. Dani always knew what to say.
"We said, we didn't want to play," said her friend pointedly.
"This is not about what you want-" the detective began to snarl, but stopped talking when he saw Dani stick out her hand to the brunette and order, "Louise, give me the phone."
"What are you doing?" asked John curiously. "We should call Greg, really. We can't leave her lying here."
He motioned to Bernadette.
"Give me the phone," Dani nearly snapped. "Like I said, I don't want to play."
Louise finally handed her friend the phone, saw her return the call to the last number; Bonnie's. Louise didn't know whether she had a bad feeling about this or thought it could work. Sherlock, at least, was completely disorientated. She could see him thinking 'This is not how this works; you can't just not solve it and expect to get away with it'.
Bonnie finally answered the phone, but it remained quiet on her side of the line.
"Game's over, Bonnie," Dani told her menacingly. "Tell us where he is right now, or we'll find you first."
"You won't find me. You weren't ever clever enough to get to little Bernadette on time."
"We will find you, you little bitch," the blonde snapped. "I just have to keep you talking. Isn't that right, detective?"
"I don't believe you," came Bonnie's reply, but Louise could sense her voice had raised an octave.
"Listening to the acoustics," said Sherlock slowly, clearly, "you're in a tight space, most likely some kind of cupboard."
"There are over thirty cupboards in school," Bonnie retorted, trying to sound casual. "The odds are very small you'll try the right one."
Dani looked at Sherlock, who nodded. The detective then motioned to the door, and folded his three middle fingers, putting his hand to his ear, looking at John, who got the hint and went outside to make a call to a guy Louise presumed was Greg.
She followed her friend and the detective outside as well, making sure to make the least amount of noise, inside. He made clear to Dani she had to keep Bonnie busy.
"I can't believe you, you know," said her friend accusingly. "You went from victim to perpetrator."
"I was never innocent," they heard on the other end of the line. "Neither are you."
"Telling the school about two guys kissing is nothing compared to cold-blooded murder," the blonde hissed. "I hoped no one would sink that low again."
Sherlock pointed to the left wing of the school, and the two girls followed him. Louise was finally starting to get the idea.
"You can keep wasting your time with insulting me," the girl said grumpily, "but your friend is dying out there."
Louise followed the other two into the art corridor, Sherlock stopping in front of the door which said 'Art cupboard', looking at Dani to give permission, who was gesturing for him to wait.
"Who said we were wasting her time?" she said wickedly, letting her hand down.
Sherlock leaped and kicked open the door, to find a horrified Bonnie crouched on the floor, her phone dropping to the floor.
"Another body, they're not going to be happy with that," Greg said, running a hand through his silver -GREY!- hair. "Good thing you were able to save the boy, though."
"Bob Vandermost, a friend to both Danielle Harding and Louise Davids," said Sherlock curtly. "The girl- McGuffin- she targeted him to torture them. Bernadette Caulfield was also in their class."
"So Vandermost was taped to a sink, the tap open?" Greg asked again, filling in the report.
"She was desperate," John said, finding that explained a lot.
"I want to speak to her," said Sherlock.
"Well good luck getting something out of her," Greg said, sighing at the thought. "Her parents taught her well. She wouldn't say anything, except 'That information about Bob came with a price'."
Nonetheless, he stood up and led the way to the room where Bonnie was waiting.
Supposed to be waiting.
The girl looked like a puppet whose strings had been cut. No movement, no breathing.
"Please say she's just sleeping," he moaned.
John went over to her, wanting to check her pulse but there was none.
He came closer and smelled, to confirm
his first thought.
"Choked in her own vomit," he stated.
"What?" said Greg. "Like in 'A Study In Pink'?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes, looking at John pointedly.
"Another fan," his friend purred, "like we first assumed."
"Bonnie didn't play like Moriarty though," the doctor reminded him.
The words 'you were wrong' hung in the air.
"She must have kept one of these in her mouth," the detective muttered, "MI6 style. S.K. tells them to off themselves."
"I thought the entire point of Molly's accident was that we couldn't know Holden didn't commit suicide?" John asked.
"Holden got cold feet," his friend shrugged. "What did she mean with 'a price'? Was taking one student's not payment enough?"
"You want extra security?" Greg offered. "Will more students be harmed?"
"Eventually yes," Sherlock answered. "But how and when? Something big is coming. S.K. wants to out-do himself over and over again, looking for new ways to impress..."
"I'll talk to the principal about more security measures," said the DI.
"Something big is coming," Sherlock said darkly. "Something that tops it all."
1. Did you like this chapter?
2. Who is your favourite OC so far?
3. Who do you think is S.K.?
4. What do you think Bonnie meant with 'That information about Bob came with a price'?