Chương 27: Psycho killers, Qu'est-ce que c'est?

PART III Mass Casualty Event Our walk to camp was welcomingly uneventful, but the careful blankness Isabel wore earlier was gone, along with that hint of perpetual amusement that usually danced behind her eyes. Her smoky monotone was strained, cracking at the edges when she spoke, and she kept picking at the black polish on her thumbnail, chipping away the edge with obsessive focus. The weight of Deputy Rowe's deathbed confession, the very likely possibility that Sameer might be involved…

it was all hitting her at once.

Whenever Tre tried to theorize about Sameer being one of the killers, she got defensive, which is why he'd switched to the Mindbleed. The result was that Tre appeared uncharacteristically quiet since we left the diner, but Isabel didn't notice or care. However, Tre's voice was a near-constant presence in my skull; a low hum of thoughts and theories broadcast directly into my head via the Mindbleed.

Since I couldn't respond out loud without looking unhinged, I'd worked out a subtle shorthand: a slight nod for agreement, and rubbing the back of my neck for disagreement, which I could pass off as working out a kink if Isabel noticed. If the Weepy Whites are working together, Tre projected into my mind, then we have to assume their attacks were carefully coordinated. I nodded slightly. It was a solid assumption.

And, since I hadn't gotten a notification updating the "Unmask the Killer" objective, we assumed the sprinklers had saved the Weepy Whites from the fire. It bothered me that the objective itself was still singular when there were clearly two different masked murderers. I didn't know if that signified something important or was just a typo. Either way, anger flared hot across my cheeks, imagining them escaping with evidence we'd never get another shot at.

When we passed the school, I replayed the morning's glimpse of the killer watching us from the football field sideline. Sameer had been with us at the time, meaning I saw the other killer. If Sameer was one of the Weepy Whites, they must have planned that. One of them positioned themselves to be seen, while Sameer had a perfect alibi, walking openly with us in broad daylight. Or Sameer wasn't one of the killers. But we had no additional suspects beyond Sameer and Evan.

The likelihood of them working together seemed as equally possible as Maltheris deciding The Grindhouse was too cruel to continue and setting us all free. Meaning it would never happen. So, we had nothing. We were out of time and didn't accomplish anything. My mind created an Instagram reel of worst-case scenarios, and I couldn't stop doomscrolling. My chest tightened, and I couldn't get in enough air, so I slowed down to catch my breath, suddenly worried I was having a heart attack. No. A panic attack.

Realizing what was happening helped me control it. I forced my shoulders to relax. And slowly started to breathe. In for four, hold, out for eight. Again. The counting steadied me, beating back the panic just enough to think. EVOLUTION TRIGGERED! BOX BREATHING II (Passive) Effect: -10% Fear, faster cooldown.

"Your mental health is important to me." Rank II effects were useful, but I couldn't help but wonder if Maltheris had forced that panic attack to trigger the level-up or if it happened on its own. Eager to focus on anything other than panic attacks, I blurted out: "What's the plan once we get to camp?" Isabel looked behind her, then back at me.

"Are you asking me?"

"I'm asking everyone."

"The plan is to observe from the shadows," Tre said.

"Hold on," Isabel said.

"You don't have a plan?"

"Am I supposed to?"

"Or we could go in guns blazing and start questioning everyone," Tre suggested.

"You're the leader, aren't you?" Isabel asked me. I shook my head.

"No. There is no… we're a team."

"Maybe we observe, then investigate," Tre threw out, hoping to refocus the discussion. Isabel stopped walking for the first time since we'd left the diner.

"What are we even looking for? I mean, what would suspicious behavior look like at a party where everyone is drunk and acting stupid?"

"Good point." I paused, watching my next words." If Sameer is—" Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"Don't." Isabel stiffened.

"Just... can we talk about this without you guys having already decided Sameer's guilty?"

"Okay. Let's work from the other direction. Whoever the killers are, they killed Doc Mosley, Hardin, Rowe, and Austin. The first three are all connected to the crash cover-up. So, the killers benefit from those people being dead."

"Plus, Austin was defending Sameer's sister," Isabel added.

"Which gives Evan plenty of motive to kill him." Ask her who benefits from killing the guy who was protecting Rafael's reputation, Tre projected into my mind. Why would Evan kill Hardin? I rubbed the back of my neck. Not yet.

"Evan's been aggressive about the crash since the beginning," Isabel continued.

"Maybe Mosley threatened to go public with the real tox report. Evan kills him to keep it buried. Then Hardin can't keep quiet about the doc's death, so Evan takes him out and Rowe too." It almost made sense.

"But Mickey just told us Hardin was covering for Evan's dad," Tre said gently.

"If Rafael was really sober that night, Hardin was the one protecting that story." Isabel's thumbnail went to her black polish, chipping at it with renewed dedication.

"Maybe Evan didn't know Hardin was on his side," she offered after a moment.

"Maybe he just saw a corrupt cop and assumed the worst." That's a reach. I nodded slightly. It was a reach; Tre was right about that. But I wasn't going to be the one to say it out loud.

"Since we don't know if it's Sameer or Evan, we should watch them both," Tre suggested.

"They're probably not working together."

"Good point, so who's the second one?" I asked, pivoting.

"If there are two Weepy Whites, we need to think in pairs."

"Evan and Liam are the most obvious," Isabel said.

"Liam's so far up Evan's ass he'd help bury a body if asked. That kid has zero backbone."

"Could it be Evan and Summer?" Tre wondered. Isabel laughed.

"Summer? The girl who cried when she broke a nail in gym class, Freshman year?"

"Hey. Women can also be psycho killers."

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" Tre added. Isabel and I giggled. It felt good to joke, even briefly. I was thankful Tre was with me throughout all this madness. Maltheris probably didn't realize it, but without Tre by my side, I'm not sure I would have made it past the tutorial.

"You seriously think Summer drove a giant knife through the Sheriff's skull?" Isabel shook her head.

"She's a cheerleader. Her worst crime is losing the count."

"Look, if we just consider for a moment that one of the killers is Sameer," I started.

"The partner thing just proves my point; it's not Sameer," Isabel said, throwing up her hands.

"Who would he partner with? He's not friends with anyone but me. Do you guys think I'm sneaking away to murder people?"

"No," I said.

"Neither one of us thinks you're a killer."

"Plus, you were in the evidence room with both of the Weepy Whites and us," Tre added.

"You never know," Isabel teased, "I might have a secret twin sister." I laughed and saw a smile spread across her face.

"Or a clone."

"What if the Weepy Whites are Evan and Sameer?" Tre wondered, still stuck on solving the puzzle.

"What if their whole feud is an act?" Isabel's face went blank, and her body deflated. Shit. Was that too much? Tre projected over the Mindbleed. Isabel turned to me.

"Do you think that's possible?"

"I think we have to be prepared for any possibility." I put a hand on her back.

"But we also can't hyperfocus on one person without definitive proof." She nodded but didn't look convinced.

"Sameer and I have been friends forever, and as far as I know, there's no one else in his life he would confide in about, like, school stuff, let alone murders." What if it is Isabel somehow? Tre said in my head. If anything is possible, I mean. I briefly had the same thought but quickly discarded it. We had only one ally through all of this, and I wasn't paranoid enough yet to consider that Isabel had been lying to us this whole time. I shook my head firmly.

"Come on, we need to keep walking." Main Street gave way to a two-lane road that stretched out of town. Eventually, the houses on either side of the street thinned out, then disappeared altogether. By the time the last streetlight disappeared behind us, we ran out of sidewalk and started walking on gravel. Our crunchy footsteps and the distant sound of insects became the only sounds for miles. After a while, all we saw were fields on one side of the street and a tree line on the other.

My mind kept flashing to the three hundred or so kids waiting at the end of this walk. Hundreds of real people dragged into statis by a demon, given fake lives and memories, about to drink and dance in the same space as two killers. And we had no way of warning them. The cops were dead. There was no one to call. Even if I screamed the truth at every kid in the camp, they'd think I was insane or wasted or both.

"Here," Isabel said and stepped off the road into the tree line without breaking stride. It seemed arbitrary, like she just took a random right and walked us into the woods, but eventually, I noticed the ground was worn into a footpath that Isabel was navigating. Tre and I followed her down the dirt path that cut through the woods, barely wide enough for two people side by side. Branches closed in overhead, blocking what little moonlight the clouds allowed through. The dark was thick and smothering.

I pulled the flashlight from my inventory and thumbed it on. The xenon-blue beam turned the dirt path into a lunar landscape.

"What's this place called again?" I asked finally.

"Camp Stillwater," Isabel replied.

"And it's haunted or something?"

"Not haunted," Isabel said, a creep of annoyance in her tone.

"Mickey's just repeating the same tired story kids have been telling since the camp closed. None of it's true."

"The story must come from somewhere," Tre pressed.

"I think some kids went up there to get stoned and started telling ghost stories to freak each other out," Isabel said.

"Then word spread and people started daring each other to spend the night there. Eventually, that turned into everyone partying there all night, which became this whole back-to-school tradition."

"But what's the actual story?" I asked.

"The ghost story." Isabel sighed.

"I'll tell you, but don't go getting all weird on me about the party. Remember: this is all bullshit." I held my hands up.

"I swear we won't bail on you."

"Okay, so like, supposedly, the year before the camp closed, there was a boating accident," Isabel began.

"Two speedboats trailing campers on inner tubes crashed at full speed 'cause the counselors driving were drunk or high, or both.

"Depending on who tells it, there was either a massive explosion that killed everyone, or just the two kids got crushed between the boats." The grotesque imagery made me wince.

"The story goes that the following summer, the mothers of the two kids who died came back for revenge," Isabel continued.

"They showed up wearing old-school umpire masks, then they systematically hunted down every counselor in the camp, killing them one by one."

"Then what happened?" I asked.

"They left the two counselors who had been driving the boats alive," Isabel said.

"As their last act, the mothers dragged the two counselors into the lake with them. Four people go in, none come out." I shuddered involuntarily.

"And that's why they're called the Lake Mothers," Isabel said.

"And supposedly, you can summon them by feeding the lake a sacrifice."

"What kind of sacrifice?" Tre asked.

"Human? Probably. Who knows. It's just a story."

"Famous last words," Tre said. Slivers of warm light bled through the trees, carving paths through the dirt ahead. The low hum of generators and the familiar, heavy thump of bass hooked into us, enticing us forward. Eventually, the rowdy voices and booming music finally swallowed the uneasy hush of the woods. High above us, half hidden in overgrown trees, was a log arch entrance reading: WELCOME TO CAMP STILLWATER