Saturday morning was the most beautiful day in a long time. It was the perfect day for a funeral. It was the second time that all of them had been to the cemetery in one week.
Lulu was dead.
At the end of the ceremony they each laid a single white rose on the casket. The casket wasn't very big, but the Caretaker hadn't left much.
"Jamie?" asked Lulu's mother, Mrs. Benson, at the end of the service.
"Yes?"
Mrs. Benson walked up to her and took her hand. "Lulu might not have shown it but she looked at you as a friend. She would want you to have this."
Jamie looked down at the ring. Several weeks before everything had started she had admired the small amethyst ring that Lulu had worn. It wasn't a woman's ring, but a man's. It must have been important to Lulu. Even if they hadn't been the best of friends Jamie would cherish it always as a reminder of the friendship that could have been.
The gold band was distended from the heat, but the stone had not shattered.
When Jamie had inquired about it Lulu had said that purple was her and Joey's favorite color.
Thursday evening, when the Benson's returned home from a dinner party, they found their house in flames. And their daughter had been trapped inside. Only the charred remains of her body were left.
The fire hadn't been caused by gasoline or kerosene, but by faulty wiring in the kitchen. A freak accident. But the group knew that it had been something else.
"Thank you. I'll never forget her," Jamie said as she hugged Mrs. Benson. Lulu's mother walked away and Justin wrapped his arm around her waist.
"Pretty ring. If you get the stone reset," he said, turning it over in his hands. He frowned. "It looks like a man's ring."
"Yeah," Jamie agreed.
Justin stared at and suddenly his face went white. "What is it?" she asked, laying her arm on his shoulder. He shook his head and his perpetual tan returned.
"Nothing."
Thunder rolled across the sky. Jamie jumped. She had no reason to be afraid. It wasn't her turn. She was safe.
Or so she thought.
Earlier that morning while she had been at Lulu's funeral, her parents had left with Brett to spend the weekend away. They were taking Corey's death badly and needed to get away from everything. They had left a note promising to be home by Sunday evening so that they would be there for her graduation.
The remaining group, except for Justin, was coming over to stay with her. They were going to stop at the video store on the way and pick up some movies.
They weren't supposed to come over for another hour so Jamie figured that she might as well just relax. She popped a movie into the VCR and curled up on the couch to watch it.
About twenty minutes into the movie the lights and the TV went out.
"Fuck!" screamed Jamie.
She willed her heart to return to normal. Faulty wiring was responsible, nothing more.
A sudden surge of power made the lights return and the TV turn to static. She flipped the TV off. She would take a bath to relax.
She wanted so badly to be able to be with Justin but his mood since that morning had been bothering her. JC not being around must really have been getting to him. But Jamie wasn't the only one running low on friends, she needed support also.
She stripped off her clothes and sank into the bubble bath. She heard the phone begin to ring and she quickly dried off and ran to answer it, not bothering to cover herself, hoping that it was Justin.
She grabbed it before the third ring. As soon as she picked up whoever was on the other end hung up.
Standing naked and dripping by her bed she suddenly felt as though she was being watched. She looked out over the empty houses, then jerked the curtains shut. Jamie began to dress, pulling on a sweatshirt and leggings. Usually it was too warm to wear something like that but the temperature had dropped drastically.
As she was pulling the sweatshirt over her head, the power went out for the second time. The darkness lasted and lasted. Jamie saw no flash of lightening, heard no clap of thunder.
Having no natural explanation for the unusual darkness, she began to think of dozens of unnatural ones, with a sharp blade and puddle of blood in every one. Before she could go crazy the lights went back on.
Jamie sighed in relief. Where was everybody?
She could hear that the TV downstairs was on, full of static. Jamie began to feel a cold sweat drip down her back. The power button was tricky. If you didn't press it hard enough, it could pop back on, but she was 100% certain that she had hit it squarely.
She went to the back door and checked to make sure that it was locked. The switch on the deadbolt was turned vertically, which was the way it should have been. But Jamie remembered that when her father had installed it, he hadn't followed the instructions and installed it sideways. When the door was locked it needed to be turned horizontally.
Jamie was 99% positive that she had locked it before her bath, but she probably in her nervousness, had made a mistake. Why else would the lock be turned?
Oh, if the Caretaker just happened to be in the neighborhood.
Jamie mentally willed her brain to be quiet. She locked the door, double checked it, and poured herself a glass of milk. She considered calling Justin but she didn't need to be depressed any more than she already was.
Jamie finished her milk and walked into the garage. She knew why she was there. She went straight to her father's gun cabinet. She pulled out his Glock 9 mil and carried it back into the house with her. Surely Daddy Dearest would forgive her for bringing the gun into the house this one time. As she was carrying it inside there was a soft knock at the door.
Jamie was relived to know that her friends had finally arrived. She shoved the gun under her shirt and practically ran to open the door. The minute her hand touched the knob, however, a thought occurred to her.
Why hadn't they just rung the doorbell?
"Mariette?" Jamie called. There was no answer. "Joey?" Still no answer.
Stay calm, she told herself. Don't freak. You're not gonna die.
She pressed her ear to the door but couldn't hear anything over the rush of blood in her head.
"Hello?" she whispered.
There was no answer. Jamie took a calming breath. All she had to do was turn on the porch light and see who was out there. If there was anyone out there.
Jamie's hands were shaking so hard that she had trouble flipping the switch. When she finally did, it cast an eerily luminescent glow over the front porch. Jamie inched her eye toward the panels of glass on either side of the door. If this was some kind of sick joke of Joey's or Chris's, they were sleeping in the garage.
But there was no one there. At least not that she could see. To be absolutely certain, she needed to open the door. There was a better chance of her being abducted by extraterrestrials than her opening that door. Jamie knew that she had not imagined that knock. It had been clear and distinct and. . .
At the backdoor.
Jamie suddenly couldn't find the air to breathe. No regular person would go to the backdoor. Only psychotic killers went to the backdoor.
The knock came again. Loud and insistent.
She listened closely to the irregular knock. It wasn't the sound of knuckles on wood, but of wood on wood. It also didn't seem to be coming from the backdoor any longer, but the back of the family room.
Jamie almost laughed with relief at the simple solution. She walked to the family room and opened the door. She sobbed with relief. Through the windows she could see that the shutters were loose and had been banging against the side of the house. She opened the window and latched them into place, loving the cleansing feel of the rain on her face.
The phone rang and she jumped to answer it. She couldn't give up hope that it was Justin or at least someone in the group. If it was Justin she would be sure to tell him about the mysterious banging, minus the shutters. Maybe that would entice him to come over and spend the night.
"Hello?" she asked.
There was no answer, only breathing. Not heavy or pornographic, just ragged and faint. All of Jamie's old fears came pouring back to her.
A childish thought kept her frozen. As long as they stayed on the phone he was somewhere out there, and wouldn't be able to come and kill her. The only problem was that he might have had the same thought and had used a cell phone. As long as she continued to listen she was sitting duck for any attack.
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
The person hung up, but not before she heard what sounded suspiciously like a sigh. She slowly hung up the telephone.
But it's not my turn! I would have done whatever you asked!
Jamie picked the phone up and began to dial the police station. Finally she reached another human being.
"Hello, Orlando Police Department. How may I help you?"
"Hello my name is Jamieriquai. . ."
As soon as she had begun to speak the phone went dead. They didn't even have a name or address. They would assume that it would be some kids having fun or someone dialing the wrong number. The connection had not simply been disconnected. There was no dial tone, no static, nothing.
Jamie closed her eyes. She was going to die.
The only way they could have been on the line one minute then cut it the next was if they were at one of the places where the phone company was installing new cables. Jamie had noticed one of the large gray boxes, with many available plug ins, right down the street.
The Caretaker was definitely in the tract.
She had only one option. Go to the garage, find some bullets, and blow their brains out. The coward had taken the others when they least suspected it. She would go out fighting. By the time she was done with them, their own mother wouldn't be able to recognize them.
She opened the cabinet and began digging through the debris. She found basketballs, tennis balls, badminton rackets, roller blades. . .you name it. . .but no bullets.
Jamie grabbed an old jacket of her father's and tossed it to the side. The power went out for the third time. Thunder crashed directly overhead. It sounded as though the sky was ripping in two. She knew that the storm was not responsible for the sudden darkness. The power had been deliberately cut.
The Caretaker could not cut the power as easily as they cut the phone lines, unless he reached the metal box outside the back door. And a deadbolt wouldn't stop someone who stole grown adults right out from under the noses of their loved ones.
She had to find the bullets!
A sudden pounding on the backdoor startled her. She jumped and the gun flew out of her hand. It landed only a few feet away but the blackness pressed down on Jamie, smothering her like Satan's cloak.
She crawled around the garage frantically on her hands and knees as the pounding at the door continued. Her hand grasped something, her father's coat. She remembered then, that he kept the key to the drawer with the bullets in it, in his jacket pocket.
She searched through the pockets, while shaking the jacket. She heard the key fall to the floor and she picked it up. She felt her way to the drawer and she shoved the key in the lock.
It refused to turn.
Jamie took a calming breath and tried again. She turned it the other way and it clicked. In her fear she had been turning it the wrong way. The drawer slid open and she grabbed three bullets for the Glock. Now all she had to do was find the gun.
Her eyes had been able to adjust to the dark and she was able to find the gun relatively quickly. With shaking fingers, she managed to get the three bullets into the gun, then rose to her feet.
She took the safety off and cocked the hammer. Jamie carried the gun before her on the way to the backdoor. She slipped silently through the kitchen and stopped in the hallway. The door was directly in front of her.
Jamie stood for a moment and the door convulsed and began to splinter. It sounded like an ax.
Jamie's hands were sweating and the gun was slipping in her sweaty palms. Her reserve was faltering and she began to reconsider waiting for the Caretaker to break in before she shot him.
But it didn't seem like such a bad idea to grab her keys, slip out the front door, get in her car, put the foot on the accelerator and keep it there.
The second blow made up her mind. She ran through the kitchen, grabbing her purse as she ran. She reluctantly set down the gun, she needed to open the door and she couldn't do that holding a loaded Glock. She turned the knob.
It was stuck. Something, a bobby pin probably, had been jabbed into the lock from outside.
A portion of the backdoor cracked inward.
She began pounding on the lock, trying to dislodge the pin. If that maniac could force his way inside, then she could sure as hell force her way outside. She grabbed the gun and fired. She took the barrel of the gun and pounded the glass out of the window panel. She thrust her arm out and began to search for the pin. She got a good grip and was about to pull it out when she realized that the chopping at the back door had stopped. That meant. . .
Someone grabbed her arm.
Jamie was pulled forward and her head collided with the door so hard that she saw stars. She began to wildly flail her arm, trying to dislodge her assailant's grip. But they held strong.
Her arm had been cut from the glass and her blood dripped down her arm. It was smeared over her shirt and onto the Caretaker's hands, making it slippery.
Jamie pulled with all of her strength and her arm slid back through the glass. She saw the blurred shape of an ax, slice through the remaining glass panels, inches from her nose. She grabbed the gun and began to stumble up the stairs. As she reached the top step, she heard the front door swing open.
She managed to make it to her room. She closed the door and locked it. She was crying, she was bleeding, she was in pain, and she was going to die.
He was coming up the stairs. He paused after each heavy step. She could hear his breathing just as it had been on the phone. Whether the Caretaker was male or female was impossible to determine. The house was new, yet still the boards creaked with each step. That meant that either the Caretaker was huge, or not human.
He knew which room was hers. Her knew everything about her. The footsteps came to a stop on the other side of the door. If he had a gun, he wouldn't even need to open the door. Just shoot, and fire, then do whatever he wanted to her body at his leisure.
All she needed was one good shot, and she would be able to attend her graduation alive, pick up her diploma in person. The door could stay shut for her too.
Jamie staggered to her feet and pointed the barrel at the direct center of the door.
She squeezed the trigger. One millimeter from contact the stopped.
*FLASHBACK*
"Justin wouldn't hurt me," Jamie responded naively.
"Remember, you have been told. . ."
"Remember, you have been told. . ."
Sincerely,
Your Caretaker
*END FLASHBACK*
The same line that the Caretaker had used.
And Tripetta had said it to her.
Tripetta was the Caretaker. She was a kidnapper, a pyromaniac, and a murderer.
She was also her friend, and Jamie couldn't pull the trigger.
"Tripetta," she whispered. "I know it's you."
The breathing on the other side of the door quickened. Jamie released her hold on the trigger and her hand fell away limply.
"I know you hate me," she whispered. "But I don't want to hurt you. I want to help you."
The door bumped slightly, as if Tripetta had let her head fall against it. The doorknob began to turn.
"Don't come in!" shouted Jamie. The knob stopped turning. "I've got a gun! I don't want to hurt you but if you come in right now, I'll shoot!"
The breathing stopped.
Tripetta must be thinking, Jamie thought.
September disappeared without a trace. JC's blood had soaked through the mattress. And what had been left of Lulu had been hard to distinguish from the rest of the house. Tripetta might have been friends with them, but she was also very dangerous.
The knob began to turn and the door swung open. All compassion was replaced with rage. Her foot lashed out, slamming the door in the Caretaker's face. She pressed the barrel of the gun to the door and pulled the trigger.
The gun recoiled and Jamie was knocked backward. She landed on her butt and the gun hit her chin. She tasted blood in her mouth.
The breathing on the other side of the door had stopped for good.
"You're hourglass just ran out bitch!" Jamie mumbled as she staggered to her feet.
There wasn't really any hurry for her to get up. She began to cry from relief and the loss of another friend.
When her eyes had run dry she looked at her arm and wanted to cry again. There would be scars. And a lifetime of explaining where they came from. She grabbed a blanket off of her bed. She wouldn't look at the body. If she did, she would never be free from this night. She would cover the body immediately.
Jamie kept her gaze up when she opened the door. The hall closet stared her in the face. Along with the hole her bullet had made.
If she had shot the Caretaker why was there a bullet hole in the closet?
Went straight through the bitch's body, the told herself.
But where's the blood?
Jamie swept her foot over the floor. It encountered nothing. She had to look down.
There was no body.
The Caretaker was still alive.
The phone beside her bed began to ring. The only one who could be calling was the one who had originally interrupted the line. Jamie began to seriously doubt that it had been Tripetta on the other side of the door. Unable to do anything else, she picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Do you know who I am?"
The voice was soft and serene and sounded nothing at all like the voice of a killer. The tone was neither masculine nor feminine, yet it was very familiar.
It was not Tripetta's voice.
"The Caretaker," Jamie answered dutifully.
"Yes," the voice sighed. "I'm here to take care of you."
"Don't kill me," Jamie begged.
"You kill yourself," there was a cough, and then thunder, at the exact moment that she heard it outside her own window. "Come to me," they whispered. "I have your task. Hurry. . .not much time left."
"But it's not my turn," Jamie said, knowing, yet dreading, what they were about to say next.
"It is now."
"Did you hurt Justin?"
No answer.
"I don't want to die," said Jamie, determined.
The voice spoke again and it was clearer. She knew the person. She just couldn't remember who it was.
"You are dead." The Caretaker hung up the phone and no dial tone came on.
Jamie knew that if the Caretaker wanted her dead, she'd be dead.
She hoped that the Caretaker was at least wounded. She only had one shot left. But one good shot was all she needed. It was like playing Russian Roulette, you never knew if you would die or keep playing.
Jamie took the gun and ran down the stairs. The front door stood open. She stepped outside and immediately she was soaked.
Her sweatshirt clung to her body, making it hard to move. Her wet socks slid on the driveway, almost making the Caretaker's job easier by falling and breaking her neck.
The car door was locked. She put the key in the lock. It didn't fit. Not again! Her mind screamed. She tried again and the lock clicked open.
She got into the car. She was going to make it! She pressed the lock down with her finger and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened.
She was not going to make it.
Jamie wasn't even going to bother looking under the hood. All attempts to escape would be futile. The Caretaker had probably cut some important wire or something.
Jamie slowly climbed out of the car in supplication. She had no where to go. She could barely walk and the Caretaker would get her before she got very far. She wondered if she turned herself in now, the Caretaker would kill her quickly.
Jamie heard music.
I feel the reason, as it's leaving me,
No! Not again!
It's quite deceiving as I'm feeling thy flesh,
Make me bad
Someone was playing a KoRn CD.
Hadn't her father mentioned another family moving in? Jamie refused to get her hopes up but a house down the street had lights on. The entire night, help had been right there.
Jamie began to run. Her soaked socks slid on the wet pavement. Her wet hair obscured her vision and twice she fell, once scraping the skin off her left knee. But it didn't slow her down.
As she reached the driveway a pinprick of doubt burst her bubble of joy. Was it a trap? She was glad that she still had the gun.
She walked up to the front door. Voices, human voices, sounds of a party poured from the house. Laughter and music. How ridiculous would she look walking in with a loaded Glock 9 mil? She laughed and tossed the gun behind a bush, next to the front door. She'd grab it when she left.
She knocked on the front door and someone called her in. She turned the knob and stepped inside.
The house was empty. No people, no furniture, except for 4 unshaded lamps on the floor, connected by a single long extension cord, that looped beneath her feet and under the door. The music and voices poured from the walls.
The extension cord jerked under her feet. Jamie stumbled. The second she hit the floor the music stopped and the lights went out.
An arm encircled her neck, locking tight.
Jamie went limp, giving up, allowing her windpipe to be blocked off. Her life flashed before her eyes. One memory played over and over, like a broken record player.
Justin, his bare skin pressing against hers, passion darkening his beautiful blue eyes.
Jamie would never see him again. Never be able to just hold him in her arms and kiss him. Those thoughts gave her a new reason to live.
She jabbed her elbows back, connecting with the Caretaker's ribs. The breath washed out of his lungs and his grip loosened. Jamie refilled her lungs with air and pushed backward. They stumbled and Jamie pulled open the door.
The Caretaker grabbed the back of her sweatshirt, digging into her flesh. Jamie swung her arm and caught the Caretaker's nose. Their warm, sticky blood spurted over her fingers. She moved and her shadow jumped. With the light from the street she could almost see who it was. But she didn't care about knowing, only about living.
She jumped out the door and her hands sunk into the dirt. Too late she realized that the bushes were rose bushes. The thorns dug into her already raw flesh and stuck there. Dirt and Mud stuck under her fingernails and on her arms. She grabbed the gun and held it out with her slimy hands.
She kicked the door wider and positioned the gun. The Caretaker was laying on the floor, directly in front of her. His black clothes were wet and were giving off a faint wet dog odor.
Jamie stepped closer and the Caretaker looked up. Not even their floppy hat could shield their face from the light of the street.
"No!" Jamie whispered.
It was someone impossible. Blue eyes stared into hers.
"It doesn't matter!" she screamed. Taking a step forward she pulled the trigger.
The Caretaker moved quickly, however, and stretched one long leg out, slamming the door. The doorknob nudged the barrel of the gun upward, discharging the bullet into the ceiling.
Jamie turned to run, not wanting to waste time.
Her feet slipped out from under her. She landed on the hard concrete steps. The gun flew into the air. It somersaulted several times before falling and hitting her squarely in the forehead.
Jamie's eyes closed and she was knocked out.
