What You Don't Know (Sequel to "Secret Love")(Hunter Hayes/James Marsden)

Sleeping Horror

Normally, updating twice in one day would be wrong, right? But I made you guys wait for almost two months once, so I think you deserve it. Plus, I'm SO STOKED FOR THIS.

COMMENT UP A STORM BECAUSE IT'S GOING DOWN GUYS!

God Bless and Happy Reading!

The taxi driver passed Hunter a paper bag. The man in his backseat looked peaky, and he could not have another person heaving chunks on the leather.

Hunter took the bag, absentmindedly breathing in and out with it pressed against his mouth. They had been stuck in this one spot for the last ten minutes, and the car in front of them seemed to have no intention of moving. Some had even turned off their engines and were hovering in park in the middle of the street.

"Where are we?" Hunter asked, and the driver gave him a mumbled answer. They were, thankfully, only five or six blocks from the theater that was showing Catch Me If You Can. "How do I get there on foot?" he asked, tossing his guitar strap back over his shoulder and tossing the wrinkled paper bag in the passenger seat with a few bills from his wallet.

"S'a straight shot untir ya see the blue sign that says 'Tree Tops'. Yer gunna turn lef thar. Thir'down."

"Thanks," he muttered, jumping out and full out sprinting in the direction the taxi man had said. He was winded after only a few moments, but he pressed on. He just knew he had to get there. He had no idea what he was going to do; he had no means to stop the behemoth that was Trenton, especially if he really was bent on killing Beth, but he had to try.

Hold in there, Bethany. Dear God, let her live.

Wait for me, Beth. I'm coming.

'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'

The scream stuck in her throat and made it impossible to breath. This was the antithesis of the room before it. Chaos covered the pitch-painted walls; red light spurted like blood from a line of bare bulbs, spraying the room with shadows.

A single claw-shaped foot remained staked in the floor, where once a bathtub was, and the room had been gutted of all of its interior like a fish. Gaping holes peered out of the darkness, rimmed with black mold, the wallpaper dripping off the plaster like decaying flesh. He had ripped the sink from the wall, torn the shower from the tile, and destroyed the drawers that provided storage for previous tenants. Nothing was left but a collection of infinitesimal shards, pieces of pipe, and the sickening smell of sulfurous rot.

Bethany, finally managing to pull her gaze away from the sunken eyes Trenton had made in the wood, stepped further in, her shoes clicking softly. The left wall, unmarred by the ghastly penetrations, was covered in newspaper clippings, pictures, police signs screaming out the names of wanted criminals, and twine connecting them in a web reminiscent of the ones in films, created by schizophrenic, tortured criminals.

She managed to snap a blurry photo and shakily hit send, but then her curious compelled her to inch nearer. Names jumped out, smacking her in the face: Terry Martin, Marvin Lovegood, Brain McAdams, Leslie Beck. Dates strained to be noticed, back as far as the datebook in her hand.

Beth looked down, almost too afraid to open it and check. Yet, she found her fingers unfolding the leather, felt her eyes peering at the page she had seen earlier.

"March 10, 2012. TM," she whispered, one hand moving back up to her mouth, her eyes flashing back to the segment of the wall she had been examining. "March 10...2012...Terry Martin killed in mysterious accident."

The next date, too, matched perfectly. "November 23, 2012. ML. Marvin Lovegood murdered."

"June 7, 2013. BM. Brian McAdams disappears."

"December 25, 2013. LB. Leslie Beck dealt fatal blow to the head."

Bethany moved along the wall, which chronicled each set of initials in the book. Bruce Clemens, Rice Leving, Tristan Turshire, Ignace le Blanc, and Dean Mosby. She was almost to the end, and she could not look away.

This section of the wall was different, strewn with pictures more than newspapers, snapshots of daily life, instead of wanted signs. No twine, and an empty sheet of paper hung just at the end of the line.

The pictures were of her. She was holding hands with Hunter on a crowded street, kissing him on the neck as he sat as his dressing room table, crying as he held her in his arms. She was watching him perform from her old spot next to the stage, hanging with him and the band, pointing a finger playfully at Benny Lumain when he would get the lights wrong. There were shots of her on the street, snaps of her half dressed in her hotel room, black and white filtered pictures of her reading in a cafe in Nashville, or eating lunch with Hunter's parents.

"Oh, my God," she clenched her hand together around the book, reaching out to touch the picture that most disturbed her. There, in the middle, at twice the size of the others, Bethany was sleeping, just a bra and a sheet covering her skin.

She had Hunter's ring around her neck, the delicate ruby resting peacefully on the back of her hand. An angry red circle claimed the necklace, crossed out the image as though to prohibit its existence, and an arrow had been drawn across the wall, and disappeared behind the blank sheet to which it seemed all of this had led.

With a quavering hand and eyes as dry and frightened as though she had seen a ghost, she ripped the sheet from the wall.

What she saw made her slip backwards, until her spine struck the wall with a thunderous splintering and she spilled into a puddle on the dingy floor.

Two words had never seemed so horrible. One phrase had never instilled so much fear and desperation.

Because Trenton had a picture of Hunter Hayes, sleeping with his phone beside his shower-drenched hair. The arrow led to another slash, this one placed over the picture on Hunter's phone, the one they had taken together after she had agreed to be his for all eternity.

Her lips were pressed to Hunter's cheek, her engagement ring glistening against his skin, and Trenton had scribbled in blood ink so darkly that Bethany could barely recognize the little Hunter in the image.

She could not look away; the words burned her irises, but she looked still, at the two syllables scrawled furiously in Trenton's sloppy script:

HE'S NEXT