Chapter 7
Bianca let out a loud gasp and covered
her mouth with her hands. Somehow, up
until that very moment, it had still seemed unbelievable to her, like a
horrible nightmare that she was just waiting to wake up from. But now, seeing AJ lying on that table, the
reality of it hit her.
Howie’s arm came protectively around
Bianca, as the two of them stared down on their friend. To Howie’s relief, AJ just looked like he was
sleeping. Howie hadn’t known what to expect,
but from what Officer Davidson had told them, he had been fearing the worst,
that he would have to look down on AJ’s bloody remains. But the only blood was a little spot of it
soaking the white sheet covering the table, right below AJ’s head. Other than that, AJ looked very pale, but
otherwise fine.
“He suffered massive trauma to the
back of his head,” Officer Davidson said quietly. “His skull was shattered, and I’m sure he
died instantly. He probably never even
knew what was happening.”
Bianca figured he was only trying to
comfort them, but the policeman’s words only made Bianca feel even more queasy,
as she pictured someone creeping up behind AJ and striking him on the head,
killing him instantly. He probably
never even knew what was happening.
The words echoed in her head and made her even sadder. AJ hadn’t known what was coming. One minute he was alive and well, and the
next, he was gone for forever, without having any time to even say goodbye.
“You said he was stabbed too,” Howie
pointed out. “Wouldn’t they have stabbed
him first and then hit him?”
Bianca looked over at Howie and
shuddered. She didn’t want to know the
gory details, the order in which they had maimed her AJ. She just wanted to get out of there.
Officer Davidson cleared his throat
uncomfortable. “Well, we’re not sure
about that yet, of course, but…” He
cleared his throat again and continued, “his murder looks to be part of a
pattern of serial killings that have been occurring in the Florida area. He’s the third victim that we know of.”
Bianca’s eyes widened in fright, and she
suddenly remembered the news reports she had seen just days earlier on the
bodies found in Daytona and Miami.
Early this morning, the body of
nineteen-year-old Sarah Delap was recovered from the outskirts of a Miami park.
Delap had been missing from her college dormitory at the University of Miami
since Thursday night. She was found with
a fatal contusion to the head and stab wounds to the chest and stomach.
Disturbingly, the wounds formed the pattern of a smiley face, leading police to
the conclusion that her death is connected to the death of twenty-one-year-old
James Murphy, whose body was discovered Wednesday afternoon near Daytona Beach
with the same pattern of stab wounds to the chest…
“You mean… h-his stab wounds… they’re
in the shape of a… a hap-“ Bianca’s eyes
filled with tears of shock and horror, and she stopped, unable to finish her
sentence.
Officer Davidson nodded slowly, his
lips grimly pressed together. “They’re
calling whoever did this the Smiley Face Killer. From what we’ve seen, he
strikes at random, killing young people in their late teens and early
twenties. The three victims have been a
twenty-one-year-old man, a nineteen-year-old girl, and… Mr. McLean. From what we’ve found, the girl and the boy
that was first murdered had nothing in common.
They didn’t live near each other and didn’t know each other at all. The murders seem totally at random.”
Bianca shook her head in disgust,
tears again filling her eyes.
“At least it wasn’t someone who wanted
to kill AJ specifically,” Howie said softly.
“What does it matter?” Bianca
snapped. “Doesn’t it freak you out,
knowing that some psychopath was in the hotel, right down the hall from where
we were staying? It could have easily
been you or me or any of the others! Doesn’t
that scare you at all?”
“Bianca… I didn’t mean it like that,”
Howie said, alarmed at her outburst.
“I’m just saying that if it was totally random, the killer will move on
and leave us alone. It’s better than if
it was someone out to get all of us.”
Bianca said nothing, just looked away,
swiping at her tear-filled eyes with one hand.
“Would you like to take a few minutes
with the body?” Officer Davidson asked gently.
Howie glanced at Bianca, who furiously
shook her head. She felt nauseous and had
a headache from crying. All she wanted
was to go back to the hotel and sleep.
Right then, it seemed that sleep was the only way she could escape the
horror she had just experienced.
“No,” Howie said. “If we can, Bianca and I would like to go
back now.”
The officer nodded. “I will need to question both of you at some
point, but that can wait till later. Go
back to your hotel and try to get some rest.”
Howie doubted he’d ever fall asleep,
but Bianca looked on the verge of collapse, so he nodded and, putting his arm
around her again, led her out of the room.
***
As it turned out, not even sleep could
take away the pain and horror of what had happened to AJ. Bianca was so exhausted, both physically and
emotionally, that she fell asleep almost immediately after collapsing onto her
bed in the hotel suite. But her sleep
was ravaged by horrible nightmares.
“Follow me,” Officer Davidson said,
and he led them down a hallway and into a room.
The room was all white and stainless steel, just like a hospital
room. The walls were full of large
drawers, where Bianca knew they stored dead bodies. There were several stainless steel tables in
the room, long white lumps lying on top of them. Knowing that AJ was one of those lumps, that
his dead body was lying on one of those tables, under one of those white
sheets, made Bianca sick to her stomach.
The police officer walked through the
room to the table furthest from the door.
“Here he is,” he said, and he slowly peeled back the white sheet that
covered the figure on the table. He
pulled it down, and Bianca could see AJ’s pale, motionless face. Then the sheet was ripped off, exposing his
whole body.
Bianca gasped as she saw the deep,
bloody knife-wounds marring his chest and stomach, wounds that appeared to be
in the shape of a grinning, blood-dripping face. Suddenly, to her horror, AJ’s body jerked
forward, and he sat up, his eyes flashing open.
But they were not their usual deep brown, but bright red.
“Bianca,” AJ whispered in a cold,
throaty voice. He grinned savagely at
her, his smile looking as horrible as the one that had been slashed into his
chest. “Bianca…” he hissed. “Bianca…”
Bianca screamed. She screamed and screamed, and still AJ
chanted her name. “Bianca… Bianca…”
“Bianca! Bianca!”
Bianca awoke to the sound of her own
scream. Someone was shaking her; someone
was calling her name, she realized. But,
opening her eyes and looking around wildly, she realized it was not AJ. Instead, she found herself looking up into
another set of brown eyes, these ones wide with concern.
“Howie,” she whispered. Her whole body was trembling, and she had
broken out in a cold sweat. “Howie, I
saw him! H-he woke up, and he was
talking to me, but it, it wasn’t really him!
H-he was evil! He kept whispering
my name, and his eyes were red, and-“
“Shh, shh, Bianca, calm down,” Howie
said, gently grabbing both of her shoulders.
“It’s alright; it was just a dream.
You’re fine.”
Looking around, Bianca realized she
was still in her hotel room, in the bed she and AJ had once shared. AJ was not there.
Her fear left her and was replaced by
the painful sense of loss. Her AJ, the
loving, caring AJ, not the monster from her dream, was gone. If it had been a normal night, it would have
been him waking her up from her nightmare, comforting her while she tried to
calm down. But AJ was dead. Howie was there instead to console her.
“Are you alright?” Howie asked, as
Bianca’s ragged breathing slowed.
She nodded slowly. “It was just a dream,” she said softly. “Only a nightmare.” She shuddered and tried to get the memory of
it out of her mind, picturing the AJ she knew in her head. But that only brought back the pain again,
and once again, her eyes brimmed with tears.
“I’ve never cried so much in my life,”
she sniffled, wiping her eyes. “You’d
think I’d be all dried out now.”
Howie smiled sadly. “It’s not that easy, Bean,” he said
sympathetically. “I know; I’ve been
there before.”
Bianca nodded, remembering how his sister Caroline had died. Howie was right; he had been there
before. He knew what it was like to lose
someone you loved. And now he had to
deal with all that pain all over again.
“Is she okay, Howie?” called a voice.
Bianca groaned inwardly; she knew that
voice. “Don’t let her come in,” she
started to tell Howie, not wanting Krystle to see her like that. But apparently, Howie had left her door open
because in came Krystle.
“Oh, Bianca!” she cried when she saw
her. “Oh, you poor thing! Are you alright??”
Does it look like I’m alright?? Bianca wanted to yell, but she said nothing, just shrugged.
“Bianca, I’m so sorry! This is all so horrible!” Krystle cried. “If there’s anything I can do, anything at
all…”
Bianca shook her head. “No,” she said. “There’s nothing anyone can do right now.”
Krystle nodded. “I understand,” she replied. “But you know I’m here, if you need someone
to talk to.”
You’re the last person I would talk
to, Bianca thought, but again, she kept her mouth shut. “I just want to be alone right now, I think,”
she said quietly, looking down at her hands, which rested atop her covers. They were still clammy and trembled slightly.
“Are you sure?” Howie asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.
Well, we’ll be next door if you need anything,” Howie said. “Come on, Krys.”
The two left, shutting the door
quietly behind them, and Bianca lay back down.
She could tell that it was getting light outside, but she didn’t want to
get up. She pulled the covers over her
face and closed her eyes, and in just a few minutes, she had drifted into a
dreamless sleep.
***
