Brighter, a supernatural thriller Read online

  "What happened to Garrett?"

  He sighed. "I'll take you to him."

  She followed Mason to Water Street, to the spot where Garrett's car was parked. Garrett was lying on the gravel parking lot, beside his car. She knelt by him, tentatively touching his face. Was he unconscious? God. But Garrett turned his face to her. She gasped. Blood was pouring from his nose. Both his eyes were swollen and red. His lip was split open. She looked up to ask Mason if she should take Garrett to a hospital, but Mason wasn't there anymore. Wonderful.

  "Hi," said Ramona, and she realized that she was crying.

  Garrett reached up to touch her face, to brush away her tears. "Don't cry," he whispered.

  He was lying there all ruined and beaten up, and he was telling her not to cry? How could someone care so much about someone else? About her?

  "Can you stand?" she asked.

  "It's not as bad as it looks," Garrett said, moving to stand up. But when he stood, he winced. And when he tried to take a step, he groaned.

  Ramona rushed to support him, putting his arm around her shoulder.

  But Garrett moved away. "No," he said. "It's really okay. I just need to get cleaned up. I'm fine."

  "You aren't fine," said Ramona. "Those fucking bastards." She looked at her boyfriend's bloody face. They were going to pay. No way was she going to take this lying down. No fucking way.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mason slouched in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room in Blair's and Owen's apartment. He didn't like this house. It had been Fiona's at one point, for maybe a year, but before that, Ben had lived here for almost five years. There were too many memories attached to the house, especially concerning Ramona, who'd dated Ben for the final year he'd lived here. Mason couldn't be in any of the rooms without picturing her streaming through to the kitchen to get more beer or lying on the floor and asking questions of the ceiling. He hated it here. He was convinced Blair had moved in just to get under his skin.

  Sometimes he felt like if he stayed in an in-between place, like a doorway, he wasn't actually in the house. He was nowhere, in a no-man's land that didn't belong to any part of the apartment or the world. He wouldn't have come if it hadn't been for the fact that Blair demanded he do it. She wanted to talk to him. She always wanted to talk to him. Mason wasn't really sure why anymore. Things that had happened in the past between the two of them were the past. Blair didn't seem to think anything ever changed. He wondered if she even lived in the same reality he did anymore. Maybe it was just that Blair was intent on making sure everything stayed the same, and Mason had finally given up. Things changed. Mason wanted to change with them. Mason wanted to die.

  "Would you come into the living room?" Blair snapped. She was lounging on the couch wearing a sports bra and a long flowing skirt. Blair's arm slinked out to snatch her glass of red wine from the coffee table. She took a slow sip.

  "Can't you talk to me from here?" Mason asked. Sometimes the sight of Blair made him sick. Especially when he considered the botched up way they'd killed her. Blair could say whatever she wanted. Blair's death. Angelica's. Neither had worked out well. Things were changing. They were all losing their touch. Maybe they were dying.

  "Honestly, I have no idea why you're such a pussy lately," Blair said. "What's so goddamned scary about the living room?"

  Mason shoved off from the doorway and sauntered into the living room to face her. "You know I hate this apartment." But apparently, no matter how much he despised her, her ribbing still got to him, because she'd gotten him to move to where she wanted him.

  He sat down in an armchair opposite her. Put his feet up on the coffee table so that he jarred it and spilled her wine a little.

  Blair made a face. "You're so juvenile," she said. She got up and swept into the kitchen. "If you hate me so much," she called from the other room, "then why don't you just leave for a while?" She reappeared with paper towels to clean up the wine spill.

  "Nobody leaves," Mason said, "not unless they want to die."

  Blair laughed, placing the paper towels over the puddle of wine and watching the absorbent paper soak up the purple liquid. "Funny. I thought that was exactly what you did want."

  She had a point. But Mason couldn't leave. Not yet. Because...well, because Ramona was still here. And if he left, he didn't know what the rest of them would do to her. Time to switch tactics. He wanted out of this apartment. The best way to do that was to let Blair have her say. Once she said whatever she wanted to tell him, he'd be able to leave. "Why'd you want me to come here, anyway? You want to talk to me about something?"

  Blair nodded. She leaned back on the couch, wine glass in hand. "Owen said you left without helping the guys with Garrett."

  "Not my style. You know I don't go in for that physical stuff. There's just so much blood. It's messy."

  Blair laughed again. "Funny. You wouldn't know that to look at Angelica's body."

  Mason pondered several responses and then decided not to say anything. He simply hadn't buried the body deep enough. But Blair was crazy. Angelica wasn't any worse off than most of the bodies that were buried beneath Elston. In fact, by most standards, he'd been kind.

  "Listen, it shouldn’t be lost on you that we have a problem."

  "A problem?"

  "Garrett and Ramona. It was bad enough when the two of them were apart, but now they're together, and they're figuring things out."

  "Are they really a danger to us? What do you think they'll do, go to the police?"

  "You know as well as I do that our existence here depends on the library, and Garrett is working there."

  It had never really occurred to Mason that it was possible that they could be stopped. "How would Ramona and Garrett kill us?"

  "There are ways," said Blair. "It's flimsy magic that holds it all together."

  "I didn't think there was much magic left in the world besides the flimsy kind." Faced with obliteration, Mason wondered if he really did want to die after all. Maybe what he meant when he said he wanted to die was to whither and die. He didn't know if he wanted to be snuffed out of existence in one intense moment.

  "Plus, just the fact that the two of them talk about us could poison the town against us. We need to be trusted or we won't be able to recruit. They need to be stopped. Silenced."

  "If Garrett's the one at the library, then he's the one that's the real problem," said Mason. "He's also the one who saw Blair die. Ramona just thinks she saw a ghost."

  "You like Ramona," Blair sneered. "That's all it is. You worship her. You follow her around like a puppy dog."

  "So? You have some sort of special fondness for Garrett? Any reason why he shouldn’t be silenced?"

  "I know why you want it to be Garrett," Blair grinned. "He's close to Ramona. Well, it won't be you who does him."

  "But you're going to recruit him?"

  Blair took a long drink of wine. Her eyes danced at him above the glass.

  * * *

  Garrett was still in her apartment when Ramona got home. She'd convinced him to call in sick at the library that day, even though he'd insisted he was fine. "Your face will scare people," she'd told him. He didn't look much better when she arrived at home. But he had made dinner, which Ramona thought was delightful. They ate at her breakfast bar, and it was like a perfect picture of domesticity.

  Ramona had thought of something at work today. She'd been working in a college admissions office for about five years now. That was a marketable skill. She could work in a different college admissions office. Somewhere else. She had experience. It was her way out. Maybe if she and Garrett left, if they went somewhere together and started over, then maybe they really would be happy.

  After dinner, when she was washing the dishes and Garrett was drying them, she decided to tentatively broach the subject. She was frightened of doing it, because guys usually got freaked out when girls mentioned even the idea of a future for the two of them together. Apparently, commitment terrified them. Ram
ona didn't exactly get it, but that was just the way guys were. Maybe it was socialization; maybe it was testosterone.

  "I was thinking about what you said about leaving," she said.

  "Yeah," said Garrett. "Well, I don't know how I'm going to do that exactly. I don't really have much money saved up, and I have no idea what I'd get a job doing. You know, I left before, and that didn't really turn out well."

  Garrett hadn't talked much to her about what he'd done when he'd left Elston before, and Ramona was curious, but she also didn't want to be distracted from what she was trying to talk about. "Well," she said, "what if you didn't, like, um, leave alone?"

  Garrett looked at her. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, what if someone came with you?"

  He grinned. "You mean like you?"

  Ramona shrugged, thrusting her hands into soapy water in search of another dirty dish. "I'm not trying to freak you out. I know it's barely been a month."

  "But it's been a good month," said Garrett. "Except for getting locked in basements and being beaten up."

  "Well, yeah, except that," Ramona laughed. So far, this was going okay. "I was thinking today that I could probably get a job working at another college admissions office pretty easily. I have the experience and everything, so it probably wouldn't be that hard."

  "Yeah, but you like it here."

  "No, I don't. I hate it here. Even before all the weird stuff started happening, I wanted to leave."

  "Really?" said Garrett. He paused in the middle of rubbing a towel over a plate and considered. "So, what would we do? You'd try to get an admissions job, and then we'd move wherever that was, and I would look for a job there too?"

  "Maybe," she said. Wow. He was going for it. What was wrong with Garrett? Why wasn't he like all other men?

  Garrett resumed drying. "And we'd look for an apartment together? If we could handle having a one bedroom, the rent would be a lot cheaper. But we'd kind of be on top of each other all the time, which isn't exactly a problem, but—"

  Ramona cut him off by kissing him. The thought of someone trying to plan a future with her, wanting to be with her, was almost too much. She suddenly felt an ever-swelling amount of emotion for Garrett. Garrett put his plate down to hold her. When the kiss stopped, they smiled idiotic smiles at each other. Ramona couldn't quite remember ever being this happy in her life.

  "Let's do it," said Garrett.

  "Okay," said Ramona.

  * * *

  The night air was warm. It smelled like the Chinese restaurant in town, like it always did. Garrett reached for Ramona's hand as the two strolled down Main Street. She squeezed his fingers with her own and beamed at him. He'd never seen her so happy. They were going to do it. They were going to get out of this town. Garrett was pretty happy himself.

  He and Ramona rounded the corner onto Pope Street. Now they could see the house Blair’s and Owen's apartment was in. They took a few more steps, and then they both stopped walking. Ramona looked at him. "Do you wonder what they're talking about in there?"

  The bandage on Garrett's face itched. He extracted his hand from Ramona's to scratch. He surveyed the house. They were looking at it from the side. It squatted on the corner of Pope and Duchess Streets, but it faced Duchess. The house was one story. A yellowish color. In the darkness, it looked mustard colored. Scraggly bushes grew around the building, nearly obscuring the windows from his view. But Garrett could see that all the windows were open. And the windows glowed brightly. Blair was home. Someone was home.

  "We're leaving," he said. "Right? It doesn't matter."

  "Right," she said.

  Neither of them moved. They just stared at the house. "If we did hear them say something," said Garrett, "if we did figure it out..."

  "It wouldn't really matter. Would it?" Ramona looked at him.

  "No," he said. "But it might be fun. Like we were spies."

  Ramona grinned. "Yeah. Spies."

  Garrett took Ramona's hand again and led her across Pope Street. They darted to the house, until they were standing with their backs against the back wall. Garrett crouched. Ramona followed suit. They half-walked, half-crawled behind the bushes. It was noisy. Branches scraped against the house. They stopped. They slowed. Finally, they made it to a position underneath an open window on the side of the house. Ramona sat down Indian style. Garrett settled onto his knees. They waited. They listened.

  For quite some time, there was nothing except the faint noise of the television set. A sitcom. Canned laughter. Then a female voice, unmistakably Blair's, said, "Do you want to go out tonight?"

  Garrett and Ramona both sat up straighter, straining to hear.

  "I was going to," said another voice. Male. Probably Owen. Garrett wasn't nearly as familiar with Owen's voice.

  "You weren't going to ask me to come with you?"

  "You can come if you want."

  "No. I don't really wanna go out."

  This was ridiculous. They should probably just leave.

  "So, why did you ask me if I wanted to go out?" Owen was saying.

  "I was curious. I wanted to know if you wanted to."

  "Well, I do."

  "Cool."

  More TV noises. Ramona shifted uncomfortably next to Garrett. Branches rustled. He glared at her but realized she couldn't see him because it was so dark. She stopped moving. Garrett sighed audibly. Now he realized that he was uncomfortable too. Maybe they should just get out now. But how was he going to communicate that to Ramona?

  Suddenly, the TV snapped off.

  "Hey," said Blair. "I was watching that."

  "Why aren't you coming out with me?"

  "Because I'd rather stay home."

  "Are you meeting with Mason again? Were you trying to get me out of the way so you could talk to him alone again?"

  Ramona twitched. Garrett didn't know this Mason guy very well. Mason hadn't lived in town when Garrett had left a few years ago. But he knew that Mason had been there when he was getting beaten up. And he was pretty sure that Mason hadn't actually laid a finger on him.

  "Jesus," said Blair. "Not this again. Don't tell me you're jealous, Owen."

  "I just don't know why I'm not allowed in on whatever it is the two of you discuss."

  "It's always been the two of us that discuss things," said Blair. Her voice sounded threatening. "It's always been the two of us that make the decisions. You've never had a problem with it before."

  "Mason's changed," said Owen. He sounded disgusted.

  "We don't change," Blair thundered.

  Silence for a few minutes.

  "Mason's changed," Owen said again, but his voice was soft, frightened.

  "It's not a change exactly. Maybe it's more like a phase."

  "It all started with Ramona. I don't know why we aren't planning to take that girl out."

  "It has nothing to do with Ramona. Nothing at all. Because there's nothing going on with Mason. He's fine. You've never been power hungry before. Maybe you're the one who's changing. With all your accusations..."

  "No, no," said Owen quickly. Defensively. "I'm the same. I'm not...never mind. You should come out with me is all."

  "Why don't you stay in?"

  "And watch reruns of Seinfeld? No thanks."

  "There are other things we could do..."

  Oh, yuck. If Blair and Owen were going to have sex, there was no way that Garrett was sticking around to listen to it. The thought made him feel ill.

  "Oh yeah?" said Owen.

  This was definitely getting gross. Garrett touched Ramona's shoulder and indicated with his head that they should leave. Ramona nodded. She began to crawl forward. The rustling noises sounded deafening to Garrett. He was so caught up in cursing her noisiness that he didn't notice the person standing at the back of the house.

  When they emerged from the bushes and started to stand up, Mason was there. His arms were folded over his chest. He looked at them with smoldering eyes.

  * * *

  R
amona stood up, brushing at her pants. Jesus Christ. They'd been caught. But at least it was just Mason. Of course, the last time she'd spoken to Mason, he'd told her to stay away from Blair if she wanted to stay alive. And Mason looked pretty pissed. Plus, she thought it was awfully weird that Blair and Owen had just been talking about Mason. It was weird that Mason and Blair were talking alone and that it bothered Owen. Was there something going on between Mason and Blair? Was that why Mason never seemed to respond to Ramona's advances? He was in love with Blair?

  There were too many questions. And Mason had already warned her not to ask questions. The thing was, she wasn't sure if she could stop. Earlier that evening, she'd been content with the idea of running off with Garrett and moving in together. But now, all the questions seemed tantalizing.

  "Hi Mason," she said sheepishly.

  "Come with me," he said, turned, and walked.

  Ramona looked at Garrett. He shook his head. Ramona followed Mason anyway. When they were back on Main Street, Ramona looked back to see if Garrett had followed them. He had. He was a few paces behind. Mason stopped walking. "I don't even want to know what you were doing there," he said.

  Garrett caught up with them. Mason glowered at Garrett. "It was your idea, wasn't it?" Mason asked Garrett.

  Garrett seemed embarrassed. "Look, we just were...it was stupid."

  "Oh, it absolutely was," said Mason. "I want to talk to Ramona alone."

  "No way," said Garrett.

  "Why can't Garrett stay?" Ramona asked. "You know that whatever you tell me, I'll just tell him, right?"

  Mason shrugged. "I don't like him."

  Ramona sighed. "I don't understand why no one in this town will give Garrett a chance. He's not a rapist."

  "I know he's not a rapist," said Mason.

  Garrett took Ramona's hand. "Let's go," he said to her.

  Ramona looked at Garrett. She could understand why he was angry with Mason. Mason was being rude. But Mason was her friend. She'd known Mason for a lot longer than she'd known Garrett. And there were a lot of things she was willing to give up for Garrett. But she realized that her friendship with Mason was not one of them. "No," she said. "I know he's being an ass, but I need to hear what he has to say."