Penhallow

III

The third death happened two weeks after the scene in the cafeteria, just before St. Valentine’s Day.
The week before the incident, Jenzy and Nance invited me to attend Marc Clancy’s birthday party, he’s friend of Gray and Phin. I can’t come because I had a babysitting duty that day until seven in the evening. The party starts at four. That day should be      another normal day. But days always start normally before shit happens. A traitor to the bone.
I received six missed calls from Gray that night around 6:30 pm. I was busy playing with little Mickey to answer his calls.  I know it was important just seeing his six missed calls so I called him back immediately. It was five past seven, just after my shift. He answered on the second ring. He told me the summary of what happened and asked me to accompany Jenzy back home who is clearly on the verge on hysteria. I was on my way back home at the moment but hurriedly directed myself to Marc’s house, heart pounding. It was a twelve minutes ride on bike but I made it in eight. Gray said that it was Jenzy who found the body and it was not a pretty death according to Gray. Loss of blood due to countless, deep, lacerations - the victim was none other than Rebacca Shaw.
When I arrived at Marc’s house, it was swarming with people- police, party-goers and bystanders. Uncle Gray saw me and let me in. He directed me to Jenzy. I saw her immediately. She was huddled in a corner in the living room; a police officer was standing nearby watching over her. Gray is sitting by his side, whispering comforting words I can’t hear. She looked shaken. They saw me as I approached them and Jenzy run to me crying. I hugged her back. She has no love for Rebecca so I know that she’s not crying over her. She’s crying over what happened to her. And she was in shock. From what I witnessed in the place, the crime happened upstairs. From the far corner of the room I saw Uncle Grey talking to a woman- Mrs. Clancy. He must be interviewing her. Marc is nowhere on sight. And Rebecca’s parents must be with her body right now.
Gray talked me into accompanying Jenzy home first. He followed a few hours later and we both stayed by Jenzy’s side that night. She was distraught and still in shock. She needed us. The following day, we went to the police to give Jenzy’s statement. According to her, it was around past six when she found the body in one of the bedroom upstairs. She was looking for a bathroom but someone was using the one in the first floor and so Marc directed her in one of the bedrooms upstairs. The first room was locked and so it was on the second room that she went in (it was Marc’s brothers’ bedroom and I heard he went hysterical when he found out that his room became a scene of crime). She expected it to be empty. It was not. She found Rebecca instead, drowning in her own blood. She found her in that horrifying condition and her horrified scream led the others to the room. Gray found her first, standing in the middle of the room, frozen while staring at Rebecca’s body. The way she described her body took an effort. And it made me sick. Rebecca was stabbed and sliced many times. She was found naked and deep lacerations covered her whole body- face, torso, arms and legs. Her eyes said to be opened, a frozen look of terror on her face. She was stabbed to death. Hers was what you called a slow and painful death.
From the autopsy result later on, her time of death is said to be between 5:30 and 6:10 pm, just minutes before Jenzy found the body but enough time for Rebecca’s body to die from blood loss. There were signs of struggle. Someone overpowered her as seen from the bruises found in her face and arms. That someone must be strong and the police strongly suspect that it was a guy. She was gagged too and tied. The cloth used to suppress her was missing. No one heard anything at all so the music must be absolutely loud. Moreover, the main event of the party was held in the garden. No fingerprint was found again, so it was not accidental but intentional. The knife used to stab him was missing in action. And the police couldn’t find it. There was blood found on the Rebecca’s phone and the police took it for test.
There were blood also found stained on the knob as well as the window ledge so the policed deduced that the culprit used to it to escape. It was a messy death. The police questioned everyone who attended the party and even those who did not attend. I was questioned too as well as Gray and Jenzy. Everyone is a suspect. Some have alibis and many turned out none, still in the end there was nothing. No one saw any stranger or anyone acting strange. Drunk and high, yes. There were just too many of us to implicate one especially when they don’t have any evidence at all.
The third death set everything into a high alarm. Everything was turned upside now and turned our normal days into irregular ones. Everyone was on edge and even neighbouring towns heard of the serial deaths. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days, TV reporters will come here for the scoop. As a matter of fact, I am surprised that no reporters dig in yet. Three deaths are big news. Parents once again decided to keep their children at home and the school can’t do anything about it. They are doubly paranoid this time. We all have curfews now. Well, most of us. We are not fan of curfews for someone who lives in our little town most of her time, we believe it safe. Until now. Everyone is on high alert and cops started monitoring the area. I stayed with Jenzy most of the time, at her house or mine. She now recovered from shocked. She’s this usual bubbly Jenzy but from time to time she gets that blank face of her as though she was remembering something. It was indeed a nightmarish sight. I guess no one can clearly recover from that. We talked little of it though we talked much about the culprit’s identity, suspecting one and jumping to another, just random people. It was difficult this time for many dislike Rebecca. I was sorry about her death though. No one deserved that kind of death. Her death left me shaken for I knew her more than I knew Loreen. We were closer nemesis.
  Nancy is another story. By the way, she too didn’t attend the party because of some last minute emergency, which turned out to be not an emergency at all. She showed herself to us the day after the incident. She wanted to join us at Jenzy’s house that night but her parents forbid her to, afraid of her safety from the recent events. We were questioned the same time. She said that by some freaking bad luck, her outfit-of-the-day for that night was dirtied (and she deemed it ruined), which she accounted her brother for the blame. And knowing Rebecca will be at the party with her outfit-of-the-day, she decided not to go, her party mood ruined. Yeah, Nancy is that shallow, most of the time. Poor Phin he was stood up. He too didn’t attend the party, obviously because of Nancy. I reminded her of the definition of emergency after that. Nancy was affected by Rebecca’ death worse than Jenzy and she tried not to show it. She’s not doing a good job about it I wanted to tell her. She did not cry, no, Nance is too strong for that. She just looked haunted.  They were friends once and I knew that some part of her remembered that and that part died with Rebecca.
Phineas on the other hand is on the verge of becoming paranoid. He’s been pretty convinced that the culprit or culprits (in Loreen’s case) will kill all of us one by one. It took the four us to drag him out his house and set him straight after three days of hiding. But it was the word ‘sissy’ that actually did the magic. Men and their egos. Gray and I seem to be the only ones acting normally, as normal as one can be after such thing. I’m not surprised since he’s used to tough stuff like that, what with his dad’s work. He had too much control in him, the perfect lawyer wannabe. How about me? I’m always rational.
One month passed after that incident, just in the middle of March. Days are still far from normal but we’re attending school again. We do need to live and things always had to go back to normal in the end. We can see the police roaming just outside the gate and there are two additional security guards inside. That day, Jenzy and I decided to hang out in my room after class. Girl stuffs. We called Nance. I bake some muffin for the three of us (meaning- a lot). I love cooking and baking or doing anything that has to do with food- my weakness. I found Jenzy in my bedroom, in deep thoughts, staring at space. I entered carefully as to not startle her.  But she was startled anyway. I gave her a weird look and she gave me a little smile, somewhat…nervous?
“Everythings okay?” I asked.
“Y-yeah. Just thinking. Where’s Nance?”
“Out to get some drinks. She forgot to bring our favourite.” Which is another odd thing. Nancy never forgets.
Still aftershocks of the Rebecca incident I guess.  I mentally sigh. Hope they won’t be like this forever.
“What do you want to watch, comedy or action? And no romantic ones please.” I said.