Killers In Mercy

September 15th, 1993

Bacon sizzled on the pan as Cyndi Lauper sang, and Charlie tried to keep her hands from shaking.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun. It was Mom’s favorite, which she knew because it was the only one she’d sung along to at homecoming while she danced with the teachers. Everyone always glared at Charlie for that. It wasn’t her fault that Principal Wig had a taste for divorcees with too much makeup, and Mom hadn’t turned down a man since 1985.

Oh girls, they wanna have fun. They were bullshit lyrics anyway. Mom hadn’t had fun in years. Not since Dad left. Certainly not since Charlie was born. She was too busy rebuilding her reputation from the single mother who’d gotten married out of high school to the woman who ran the Cheerleading Team like the Navy.

“—and unfortunately, in the small town of Mercy Point, no one is having fun. Ever since the killings began this summer, locals have been living in terror. The killer, dubbed the No Mercy Slasher, has claimed three victims so far—”

Charlie turned off the radio beside the stove so fast she almost strained her arm. She couldn’t think about the killings any more than she had to. Maybe the note that she’d found in her locker a few days ago was right. You’ll never escape it. She’d written it off as a stupid prank, but now . . . she wasn’t so sure.

“You’re here.”

Charlie glanced up to see Rook standing in the doorway of his room. He looked at her like she was a ghost.

“Morning,” she greeted. “Sorry for barging in.”

He was wearing a Cardinals shirt with a stain on the collar, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Her fault, if she had to guess. She’d probably woken him up by stomping in here last night. Most guys fantasized about their girlfriends knocking on their doors in the middle of the night to mess around, not because they were sure if they went home, they’d end up as another name on the radio.

“You better be hiding a UK shirt under there,” she said, pointing the fork at his shirt. “They’ll have you jumped.”

“Are you . . . are you turning bacon with a fork?” he asked.

“You didn’t have a spatula.”

“We don’t have bacon, either.”

Charlie shrugged and turned back to the stove. She hoped Rook at least had plates, though at this point she was so hungry she wouldn’t mind eating it straight from the pan. She could feel Rook coming up behind her, his hand resting tentatively on her waist. It was the only way that he ever touched her, like he wasn’t sure if she was going to turn around and bite him the next moment. He wasn’t entirely wrong.

She could imagine the face he was making without having to turn around. His please-don’t-make-me-say-it face, where he dug his teeth into his lower lip like a girl and blinked too fast. Her freshman year boyfriend, Dale, used to throw his shoulders out and say, I want to LIVE, I want to do something!

Rook was the opposite. He was content to live his whole life within the world of Charlie’s inertia, never doing anything but rotting slowly and smoking whatever they could steal. It was why he was the only guy she’d stuck with for more than a month, and she’d been sure they’d last. She didn’t exactly have a thriving social life outside of him to fall back on.

So she wasn’t sure why now she was getting a stronger urge than ever to grab her things and run. She didn’t want to have to see the pity in his eyes, and look at the normal, beautiful boy that she’d ruined like she ruined every good thing in her life.

She found herself staring out the window above the stove, where she could usually see into the trailer beside Rook’s. Success. She could see the top of Ms. Jensen’s leathery shoulders and the tiny TV beyond her. The channel switched to the local news. Well, semi-local. She doubted anyone up in Lexington cared about what happened in Mercy. They were a blemish more than they were a town, and the killings had only made it worse. She knew what happened to towns like these in the movies. The ones that ended up getting burned to the ground, and the world was only better for it. No one ever stayed here by choice.

“Don’t worry, I’m leaving,” Charlie announced, twisting around. “The bacon’ll be ready soon, just let me—”

“Oh, don’t—”

It was too late. The second she opened the cabinet, a roach skittered out, and then another, and then another.

“Dang it, sorry, they’ve been getting bad—”

Rook grabbed a glass from beside the sink and cupped a roach in it, carrying it outside. She probably would have just squashed it beneath her heel. But Rook wasn’t like her. He was good. So good. Maybe if she were better, she would have told him that she didn’t care if he was weird or strange or if Mom disapproved. She would have said I love you back, even though she didn’t mean it, even though she wasn’t sure what it would mean if she did. He was a nice guy. He didn’t deserve all of her awfulness.

She needed to go. She could call Dad. She’d heard his new girlfriend’s family ran a RadioShack. She could get a job there. She could build . . . something. Maybe not good. Maybe not full. But something. By the time Rook came back inside, she’d already made up her mind.

“Where are you going?” he asked, squinting.

“Home,” she lied. “I don’t even know why I came here—”

“Wait, Charlie, you can’t just show up at my house and then act like this is normal—”

“Your parents are gonna be back from the town hall meeting soon. I only came here because—” she stopped, and Rook stared at her.

“What?” he insisted.

She sat down on the raggedy couch, gripping the cushion. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t! You’ll think I’m crazy!”

“So what if you’re crazy? I’m crazy. You’re crazy. I love you no matter what,” he said, scooting closer.

He pressed their knees together, and it made her feel a little less like a violent dog that was being cooed at just so it could be taken to the vet.

“You know how my mom’s totally shacking up with Wig?” she asked. Rook nodded. “She was trying to look good in front of him, and she confiscated all my cigs. So, tonight, when they were at town hall, I went to get them back from her room. But I found this.”

She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out the case of Marlboros. The photo fell out again, just like it had when she’d opened the box the first time. Her English teacher Mr. Taylor’s mangled corpse on the floor of the locker room, where he had been found, the knife that had been missing from the crime scene was still lodged in his chest.

“I guess she, uh, got in a rush and shoved the picture in there. Or maybe she was trying to pin it on me. I knew she hated me. Even when I was a kid, I knew she hated me. And I hated her. But I always loved her a little. I thought she had to love me a little, too,” Charlie choked.

She waited for Rook to tell her that it was going to be okay. That they would figure this out together, even though they wouldn’t. Even though she knew she couldn’t. He squeezed her shoulder. And then he stood up. She stared as he walked over to the closet. When he turned back to look at her, something had changed.

“You’re wrong, Charlie. She really did love you.”

And then he opened the door. There, crumpled up in the corner of the closet with a knife sticking out of her side, was Mom. Charlie would have recognized that bright blue eyeshadow anywhere, even if it was smeared across her face. Her eyes were glazed over.

She started to move forward, and immediately bile rose to the surface and sent her falling over. When she got her vision back, Rook was staring at her, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t look anything like himself. He looked everything like himself.

“Why?” she choked. “Why? What did she ever do to you?”

“How about what did she do to you? C’mon, Char, you never stop complaining about her. She’s a bitch, she’s insane, she’s a control freak, yada yada yada,” Rook said. “You’re seriously going to tell me you never wished she was dead? And now that I finally do it, now that I’m finally man enough for you—”

“Man enough?” Charlie shrieked. “Man enough? Are you serious? And don’t try to act like this is about me!”

He shrugged. “I told you I love you.”

And what the heck did that have to do with anything? She ran through the victims in her mind. Ashley Larayes. The head cheerleader. She’s totally Mom’s favorite, she remembered telling Rook while they were watching Home Alone on his dad’s shitty TV. She doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. And I wouldn’t care if Ashley wasn’t such a jerk to me at school. Then there was Dale. We’d get so drunk. He was so mean to me, Charlie had confided. Rook had squeezed her hand. And then Mr. Taylor. Mr. Taylor, who had never done anything wrong but gave her a C on her last assignment. And he’d died for it.

Oh god. Maybe what Rook was saying was true. Maybe he had done it all for her. She thought about it all the times he’d told her he loved her and she’d taken it as a confession and not what it clearly was. A promise. A prayer. A vow made in blood. A vow that he had paid. When she looked at him, she could tell that he knew she’d realized it. A grin slid across his face.

“This town, it’s like it’s stuck. Time doesn’t move. It just circles around and around and around. It gets to everyone eventually. It got to you,” he made a circle motion with his fingers. She could feel her stomach caving in on itself. “Someone had to shake things up.”

Rook. The boy who picked her flowers. The boy who said I love you as a response to anything she’d said. The boy who had cried at the end of ET. The only person that would ever really love her.

“That’s why I had to kill them, don’t you get it? What is it your mom says? ‘If you want something you gotta go for it’! That’s what I’m doing here! I’m going for it!”

Their first kiss was on the broken-down Ferris Wheel at the fair. She whispered, We might die. He’d said, I don’t mind dying if it’s with you. She’d laughed.

“We’re the same.”

She’d been so sure that she would ruin him. That she would ruin this. But she was wrong. There was nothing left to ruin. Charlie started to run, but before she could she was being slammed to the ground. She felt her nose crack against the floor, and hot, sticky blood was streaming into her mouth. Rook was saying something behind her, but she couldn’t hear.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he whispered into her ear. “I just can’t have you messing up my big plan now, huh? But aren’t you proud of me? I love you.”

He’d brought the cigarettes. She remembered that now. She’d run out and he had offered to pay, even though she always told him he didn’t have to. Then she’d spent the night at his house and must have taken the wrong box home, where Mom had confiscated them. A few hours later, they found out that Mr. Taylor had been murdered that night. That was why he had gone after Mom. She managed to turn herself onto her elbow, just enough that she could see his face as she said, “Sorry, Rook. I’m just not there yet.”

She couldn’t relish in the shock because she was forcing her leg up to knee him in the stomach, shoving him off of her. And then she was running, falling over her feet to get to Mom. The knife was horrifyingly familiar, and Charlie thought distantly that Mom would have hated having the same knife in her that someone else had had.

“I’m really sorry about this,” she whispered, before grabbing the knife from her back.

It was harder to get out than she’d expected, and the sound the flesh made against the metal almost made her throw up on the floor, but she managed to get it out. She started to turn, and then her airflow was being cut off.

Rook’s arm wrapped around her throat like a pipe, lifting her into the air. The knife clattered onto the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mom’s eyes flickering open. She probably thought that she was imagining this. Charlie wondered how a few hours ago she could have been convinced that Mom was a murderer. Her mother who was now staring at her like every mother must have to stare at their daughter eventually, when they knew that there was nothing left they could do to save them.

I love you, Charlie thought.

The arm around her weakened. For a second, she thought that maybe she had done it, that her mindless kicking had made some effort. But as Rook crumpled to the ground and his knee shot up, she realized what had really happened. Mom. She had somehow managed to grab the knife and stab him right in the meat of his thigh. She still had that far off look in her eye, but her mouth was set in a straight line. She had saved her.

Charlie scrambled out of Rook’s grasp and lunged at Mom, feeling him grunt behind her. She buried her face in Mom’s neck, soundless sobs choking behind her.

“Is he dead?” Mom whispered.

“Are you?” Charlie asked nonsensically.

She could feel the blood soaking through her own shirt as she held her. There was so much of it.

“No,” Mom said, and then, with a turn to look at Rook, “And no.”

“You’re surprisingly awake for someone who just got stabbed,” Charlie noted, pulling back to look at Mom’s face.

“He didn’t get me too bad,” Mom wheezed, but she winced when she tried to stand up.

“We should call the police.”

“We? Remind me which of us is actively bleeding out?” Victoria asked.

“Right. Sorry,” Charlie said, standing up.

She glanced behind her, where her ex-boyfriend was currently struggling on the ground, gripping the knife.

“If you move I’ll let her stab you a second time,” she warned, and Rook backed down, holding his hands up.

“Hey, you guys aren’t actually going to send me to jail, right—” Rook grunted from the floor.

“Shut up,” Charlie and Mom snapped at the same time.

“Because everyone there knows my old man, and they’re going to—”

“He’s man enough to enact a revenge plan and not enough to go to jail. You really need to pick better men, Charlotte. This never would have happened with the boys I set you up with,” Mom pointed out. She saw how Charlie’s face soured. “Too soon?”

“Way too soon.”

After she had called the police, she sat down beside Mom on the floor with the makeshift tourniquet she had fastened, keeping pressure. Mom was right, it really wasn’t that deep of a stab wound, but she knew she wouldn’t want to be off cheerleading any longer than she needed to be. They were as far away from Rook as they could manage. They’d both seen enough movies to know that you never left the killer alone. Not that it mattered. He was fading into unconsciousness, clutching his leg.

“Do you think he really did those things because he loved me?” Charlie whispered.

“Love’s a motivation, baby. Not a force,” Mom said. “He’s angry. Angry men do bad things all the time. You’re hardly special.”

“And what about Mercy? Do you think we’ll go back to normal?”

“Lots of questions,” Mom mused. “And not nearly enough of them are about my homecoming dress. Don’t give me that look. I saved your life. I’m allowed to chaperone!”

“I saved your life first!”

“And why did I get stabbed again?”

“You just said it wasn’t my fault!”

“Hmm. Still.”

“Charlotte,” Mom said, and Charlie prepared her eyeroll. “I’m not going to ask what made you think I was a killer. But I do love you. More than a little.”

“I love you more than a little too,” Charlie said, and she was surprised at how easily the words came.

Later, when the police arrived and arrested Rook, she stood in front of the trailer and watched. Soon, Rook’s neighbors would be back from the town hall meeting organized to find the killer. Her gut tightened.

Doesn’t matter if Dad’s home or not. He haunts the place, Rook had said once. But Rook was wrong. His father hadn’t been haunting the trailer, he was haunting Rook. The violence had spread into his blood and it was the reason that three people were dead and Charlie’s Mom was being wheeled away on a stretcher. And she was sure he would haunt her too, even if she never saw him again.

He must have been the one who’d written the note saying she’d never escape. And he was right. She never would. And neither would Mercy. But Charlie had Mom. And Cyndi Lauper. She would survive. She would be more than a haunted house.