Switch Blade Romance

Wicked

February 20th, 2015.

Annabelle Texas. 12:30 am.

Rachel Edison lay dreaming in her bedroom, and for once the dream was gentle. That alone should have warned her.
She hadn’t slept peacefully since January—not since the Rag Man. Night after night the nightmares came like bad weather, predictable and cruel. That was before the pills, before the chalky taste and the heavy descent into borrowed rest. Tonight the pills had done their work, and the dream opened soft as a sigh.
A picnic. Sunlight like honey. A checkered blanket spread in a field that smelled of clover and cut grass. Andrew was there, and Lacy, and Casey, Anita, Peter, Max—everyone. All her friends. They were smiling, laughing, caught in that careless way people laugh when the world isn’t broken. Even Andrew smiled. He wore a white shirt and black slacks, neat as a church deacon, and he kept looking at Rachel as if she were the punchline to a private joke.
But Rachel didn’t smile back.
Something was wrong. Not on the surface—no, the surface was perfect—but underneath it throbbed like a bruise you didn’t remember earning. Lacy chatted with Casey, who sat close to Peter on the blanket. They looked happy. Casey giggled and turned to Rachel.
“Rachel, you’re not eating,” she said. “You okay?”
Rachel nodded. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
She wasn’t. She knew it. The wrongness pressed closer, thick and electric.
Max squinted at Andrew. “Hey,” he said, “where’s your boyfriend?”
Andrew blinked. “What… huh…?”
And then it hit her.
Casey was dead. So was Peter. So was Chris. Max was in the hospital. Andrew was missing.
The sky darkened as if someone had thumbed a switch. Clouds rolled in, bruised and low. The laughter stopped. Smiles slid off faces like masks. Andrew’s expression went small and sad. He lifted a finger and pointed to his left.
“He’s over there,” Andrew said. “Watching us.”
Rachel turned.
In the field, twenty yards away, stood a man in a gray, tattered suit. His face was hidden behind a porcelain doll mask—smooth, blank, wrong. The Rag Man.
“No,” Rachel whispered, shaking her head. “No, no, no. You’re not here. You’re gone. You took Andrew and you’re gone, you son of a bitch—you’re not here.”
Casey’s voice floated to her, calm as a lullaby. “Rachel, it’s not that bad. It only hurts for a little bit. Then it’s over.”
Rachel looked at her and gasped.
Casey was no longer the green-eyed blonde she’d known for three years. Her skin was ash-gray. Dried blood crusted beneath her nose and around her mouth. Her eyes were glazed, unfocused, already somewhere else. Rachel screamed and clamped a hand over her mouth.
Peter sat beside Casey, shirtless. Rachel saw the scars on his chest where the mortician had sewn him shut. He smiled. The stitches split. His chest and stomach opened like a bad joke, spilling his insides onto the picnic cloth. Wet. Steaming.
Rachel gagged. Oh God. Wake me up. Please. Please.
Andrew spoke.
She turned and screamed.
His eyes burned bright green—the same green as the Rag Man’s. The sky above them had gone violet, bruised purple and wrong.
“And the sky is all violet, Rachel,” Andrew said, and laughed. It wasn’t Andrew’s laugh.
His face began to shift, skin crawling like wax near a flame. Features smoothed and hardened until the porcelain mask stared back at her.
The Rag Man laughed again. “You really should’ve found me, Rachel.”
Before she could answer, hands wrenched her head back. A cold, sharp blade kissed her throat and slid. The metallic stink of blood filled her nose. She shook, dimly aware of someone calling her name from far away.
Rachel woke screaming.
Lacy Woodley stood beside the bed, gripping her shoulders. “Rachel, wake up. You were dreaming—and from the sound of it, it wasn’t pleasant.”
Rachel bolted upright, heart hammering. “What—what’s…?”
Lacy’s face was pale. “Sheriff Henry and Dr. Anthony are in the living room.”
Oh God. “They found him, didn’t they?” Rachel whispered.
“Just get dressed and come talk to them, okay?”
Five minutes later Rachel stepped into the living room. Lacy had been staying with her for weeks now. Dr. Anthony sat in Rachel’s armchair, hands folded. Sheriff Henry sat on the couch beside Lacy.
“Rachel,” Dr. Anthony said gently, smiling the way doctors do when they’re about to hurt you. “How are you?”
“I’m… I guess I’m okay,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“We found something,” he said, and held out a piece of paper.
Rachel read:
Rachel, out on the road today.
I saw a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.
A little voice inside my head said,
Don’t look back. You can never look back.
“Andrew,” she breathed, and the paper slipped from her fingers. “Oh my God. He’s alive. That’s our song. We loved that song when we first started dating. He’s alive—he has to be.”
Dr. Anthony nodded slowly. “He was alive when the note was written. Yes. But that was a month ago. We found it in the station wagon of a murdered couple. Along with Andrew’s fingerprints. And some hair.”
“Where?” Rachel asked.
“In the woods near the Arkansas–Tennessee state line,” Sheriff Henry said. “We were heading there first thing tomorrow. We stopped by to ask if you and Lacy wanted to come with us. Lacy already said yes. Anita can’t go. Max can’t either. We haven’t contacted Andrew’s parents yet.”
“Yes,” Rachel said immediately. “I’ll go. We can leave tonight. Right now.”
Henry hesitated. “It’s a nine, ten-hour drive.”
“Then I’ll pack,” Rachel said. “You make coffee. Get a rental car. Hotel rooms. Whatever we need. We’re leaving in an hour.”
She looked at them, eyes hard now, awake in a way sleep could never touch.
“We’re going to find Andrew,” Rachel said. “And we’re going to kill Charles Grady.”