CHAPTER TWELVE
"if she wished hard enough everything would just go away."
THE GROUP WATCHED in the lobby of Gale's apartment complex as law enforcements ran crazily; stretchers wheeled past them with plastic sheeting over it and officers and doctors sprinted across the tiled flooring. Their eyes grew distracting, their thoughts compiling into a jagged mess. They told themselves they would come up with a plan right then an there, but now, with their lives a blur, they didn't think we could.
"Can we just postpone this thing? Just by a day, because I can't think straight right now," Chad mumbled as he pushed his head back into the cold wall. Ethan nodded beside him, catching the eyes of his girlfriend across their huddled circle.
"We'll meet up again tomorrow then . . . there's just no way we can do this now," Sam nodded with an uneasy shrug. They all shared looks, would they regret this? Yes, yes they would, but there was nothing else they could do about it.
"Get a good sleep, guys . . . well, try to," Juliet said with a smile, patting the backs of Mindy and Tara, who were closest to her, before stepping away from the group.
"Hold on, I'm coming," Ethan muttered quickly as he pushed through the group, walking in a fast pace out the other side.
Chad grinned as he watched, a smirk moving to rest on Mindy's face even when it was the last thing she wanted. She didn't want to trust Ethan, he was an easy suspect, but then again, he'd been there for everything. He was there when Juliet was almost killed, there when they searched the park, there when Gale was slashed in her apartment. He had solid alibis, but Mindy needed to distance herself from someone, so she chose him.
"Have fun, you two! But not too much fun," Chad shouted after them, receiving a flip of a bird from Juliet and a panicked look from a boy with flushed cheeks. The older boy laughed as him and Tara shared a look, receiving odd glances from Sam and Mindy around them. Suddenly, it clicked, and he turned to them with wide eyes and parted lips. "Oh, you guys don't know!"
"Know what?" Mindy asked, sharing a look of confusion with the eldest Carpenter sister.
"Ethan and Jules . . . they're together now."
Meanwhile, the two in question were enjoying their peaceful stroll back to the girl's apartment. Their hands were joined, swinging in the winter breeze while the lives of many continued on around them. They were merely in the background, entering the life of one for only a second before walking back away. However, Juliet couldn't help but think, if she was in the background, why did she feel like she was front and centre?
They spoke through the silence, smiling and laughing to forget about their grief-filled and tragic reality, until the dial of a phone sliced through the air. In the midst of a laugh, Juliet blindly reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, answering it with a swift press of her finger before dragging the device up to her ear. She didn't even see who was calling her, but if she had, there was the guilty possibility that she could've saved the close tragedy of the remaining night.
"Hello, Juliet," said the voice, that one, menacing voice. She gulped, freezing in her steps as her eyes locked on the world around her, spinning. Her hand fell out of Ethan's, causing him to turn around. She didn't notice. She was too busy realising that now, right now, was the moment she stepped out of the background and became the main character.
Just by the sheer panic on her face, Ethan could tell who the person behind the call was. His eyes too darted around, landing on every person around them, which is when he realised, there was nobody but themselves. Of course they were alone.
He tugged the phone out of the girl's hands and pressed it to his own ear, a scowl gracing his lips as he continued to look around. "I thought I told you to leave her alone," Ethan muttered with distaste.
"You did," the killer smirked, the smugness sounding off their voice, "but I never said I would listen."
Ethan's jaw tightened as the sound of hanging up registered in his ear, the beeping taunting him before someone else ever could. However, it was soon drowned out by the helpless scream that came from behind him.
He whipped around in an instant, the phone falling into his back pocket, as he widened his eyes. Juliet had been pulled back by the masked individual, one hand holding her stomach and arms tight while the other held the knife pressed to her neck. The blade was close, she could feel it touching her skin, yet it wasn't close enough to feel the drag of it being cut away. She squeezed her eyes shut - maybe if she wished hard enough everything would just go away.
"Let her go," Ethan tried, trying to cover his worry and fright for the girl's safety with anger and resentment. The killer tilted their head, emitting a chuckle from beneath the mask. It was then Ethan's anger became all too real, the boy having to mentally hold himself back from jumping at the killer. He knew that if he did it was either him or Juliet being stabbed - he didn't care about himself, but the possibility for her suffering being there haunted his thoughts.
"Now why would I do that?" The killer asked, that monotone voice cutting through the air like the knife being held against the blonde's soft skin. Ethan held his hands forward, brows raising as he took a step closer. Just like he thought, just as he hoped, the killer moved their knife, it moving forward to be held threateningly in his direction. "Not a step closer."
Juliet took a breath, the feeling of sharp metal on her skin holding her back from breathing and thinking and doing anything about where they both were. Now, however, with a clean slate of air between her and the blade, she could make sense of her thoughts. That was all she could do to explain the sudden urge that led to her dragging her knee up and kicking the killer in the forbidden area that hurt all too much.
She didn't know who the killer was, it being a mere chance the masked individual had crumbled to the ground in agony as they clutched their stinging area. Immediately, Ethan reached forward and pulled the girl back, holding her behind him with his arms around her waist. She clutched onto the jacket around his arms, watching as the man looked up at the two with a knife in his hand. Maybe she should've kicked harder.
Ethan, his arms slinging back to his side as he moved forward, tried to grab the knife before the man had regained his full senses. However, the immense pain didn't stop the person behind the mask from swinging the blade around blindly, hoping to hit a nerve or some other spot that would cause the mirroring pain. Unfortunately, much to Ethan and Juliet's demise, they did.
The knife cut through the skin of Ethan's stomach, the boy falling into the brick wall beside him as his blood fell from the wound like a waterfall. He hissed as he covered it with his hands, squeezing his eyes shut as he slowly slid down the wall in pain.
"Ethan!" Juliet cried, running forward to help the boy, ignoring the killer as they struggled to stand.
When the killer was standing, Ethan realised one more thing. This time, the psychopath was his height, whereas when him and Juliet were last attacked, the person behind the mask was significantly shorter. That could only mean one thing, there was more than one killer. He didn't think it could get any worse.
Before the masked individual could slash anymore skin and watch it bleed, the sound of sirens filled the air of the street. A police car on patrol nearby had seen the killer while scanning the streets, the woman behind the wheel instantly flicking on the lights and accompanying sirens as she sped forward. It sent the killer running in the opposite direction, the two on the ground watching in a daze as the officer drove past them to chase the man.
As Juliet looked down at the blood softly gushing from the wound, red coating both of their hands as she tried to apply more pressure than he could manage to create, he stared up into her eyes. "There's two of them, Julie," he whispered, his eyes blinking slowly as he forced himself awake.
"Two of what?" she hummed nervously, eyes not moving from the wound as she watched the blood begin to slow.
"Them. There's two killers." And that shouldn't have been much of a surprise.