Page 5 of Fright Night
Fuck.If that’s true…fuck.
Spinning away from the mirror, I nearly toss the phone aside, intending to go…go do something. What, I’m not certain. Find him, for one, and then demand whythiswas the way he chose to announce his homecoming, rather than approaching me like a normal person.
Then again, Knox is anything but normal. He’s also never acts without purpose.
Before ending the video for good, it continues. The masked man—now presumed to be Knox—paces around to the other side of the bed, stopping in front of the camera. Everything’s a black blur and noises aren’t exactly decipherable until he backs away, gripping a yellow sticky note. Identical to the one found stuck to my lampshade, but this one he brings to the end of my bed, lifts the corner of my mattress by my feet, and slips it beneath.
A few seconds later, the recording ends.
Holding my breath, I rush towards the bed, lifting the same corner both eager and terrified for his next scheme. Eager at the weird game, a tribute to all the shit we once did to one another in the past, while terrified after his show of orgasming on my back. Who knows which other ways he’ll torment me.
Two years have passed in which we’ve had zero communication with one another. The guy Knox was and the man he’s become are two different people, which means I’m dealing with an entirely new kind of monster.
The sticky note is easy to find and I unfold it, reading what he’s written.
Your last trick was amusing. Mine’s better. I have two years to make up for. Be ready.
It flutters to the floor between my feet, which want to move, to head for the window and ensure it’s locked and prevent him from sneaking inside. Again.
Moron, it was locked last night and he got in.
This feels too far-fetched. Knox has decided to return, but why exactly? My attention slips to the paper between my feet.Be ready.Be ready for what? Two years of tricks to make up for, which was nothing more than a stupid game once played between us.
You know why he’s back.
But I can’t say it, not even to myself. Saying it admits what fears I’ve had for years.
When my mother remarried during my third year of high school, her new husband—my stepfather—came with a teenage son my age.
Knox had this demeanor meant to seem intimidating. From the outside, he looked like the boy next door type: the pretty blond, friendly smiles, even dimples. Except, behind his grins,he was plotting something cruel. Behind his joking tone, he was hiding evil intentions.
I knew the truth. Isawit. Experienced it.
For a while, we had the classic stepsibling dislike for one another, whereas he hated Mom and me moving into what he called his “territory,” and I loathed suddenly having a brother I was supposed to get along with. Mom acted like we should behave as if we’d spent our entire lives together.
Get real.
Despite our bedrooms being beside one another, for the first few months, I hardly saw him. We purposely avoided each other until the few times our parents forced us together for social events. When we interacted beyond our parents’—more like Mom’s, since Henry didn’t do much outside his work as town mayor—forced fun activities, it was a game of cat and mouse, where we were both the catandthe mouse.
What started one day as a small trick I may have accidentally played on him led into round after round of us fucking with each other.
It was the way my crush on him began.
It was also the thing that brought us together. Made meseeKnox for who he is, and realize the kind of family Mom truly brought me into.
Although I was downright terrified of the guy who, with a snap of his fingers, could turn the entire school—“his school,”as he so often reminded me—against me all because he said so, I was utterly in awe of him.
Terrified…but enthralled too.
Fucked-up, I realize.
His intensity, and the fear it stoked within me, was half of Knox’s appeal. It was breathtaking and alluring. He was bad news, based on the people he hung around and the way no one dared cross him. His father always said nasty things about him.
But my stupid teenage heart didn’t care.
Maybe that was why I dared to cross him that first time. To test how far he’d let me go. To taunt him the way he does others. To see if his bad guy act was exactly that: an act. To see ifI, his stepsister, was allowed near his cold, dead heart.
Surprise, surprise, I was.
