Lakyn's POV
My head pounds as I stand here in front of the Sheriffs too-big whiteboard, the pictures tacked up on it staring at me in mockery, especially the picture of my dad.
Billy, hair awry, black jacket over his shoulders, smirking. If I didn't know all of the horrible things he's done, he'd look like any other teenager from the 90's.
Sam observes the picture with me, before the two of us rip our eyes from the mesmerizing photo that was drawing us both to it for the same reason; because deep down inside, we feel one in the same as him.
Being a fraternal twin is weird. I remember always asking my mother why we weren't identical when we were little. She'd try to explain it to me, and so would our "dad," but I never quite got it. Why did some twins look the same, whereas sam and I are completely different.
"Did you call him?" Sam asks me, her eyes not leaving the white board. I have a feeling she's staring at the same picture I am. Tara however, is looking at her phone.
"Yeah they're coming," I turn to Tara, "have you talked to Chad."
"Yeah. They talked to two guys." She doesn't take her eyes of the screen, "they knew Jason and Greg, I think their names are Riggs and Jackson."
"Ha, Riggs." Sam chuckles, "who would name their kid that?"
"I kind of like it, actually." I state.
"Yeah okay." Tara quickly remarks, going back to texting on her phone.
"What'd these two have to say about Jason?" I ask, "well, and Greg."
"No idea, Lakyn." Tara remarks, "they'll probably tell us all together, so the sheriff can hear."
After a few minutes of awkward small talk, and strained conversation between us and the sheriff, there's finally a knock at the office door.
"The remainder of the core five," Chad pauses as Bailey opens the door, "has arrived."
I let out a meticulous laugh as Ethan makes his way through the door last, shuffling on his feet, brunette curls bouncing, as he makes his way over to me.
"I was worried about you." He snakes his arms around my lower back, pressing a delicate kiss to my lips, "I don't know why, but I had a bad feeling."
I nuzzle my head into his chest, listening to the heartbeat that was steadying due to his running up the stairs, the sheriffs office was around four floors up, how very convenient.
"I think maybe that's just because you like me a whole lot," I tease, "and can't stand being away from me."
"Yeah, or because you were brutally attacked not so long ago," he fires back, humor lacing his buttery voice, "and I wanna keep you safe."
"We gonna get to talking or what?" Mindy plops herself down into a chair, kicking her feet up onto the conference table and situating her arms to rest behind her head, carefree and casual, classic Mindy.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to see her and Randy in the same room, holding a conversation that likely follows the topic of horror movies. Randy was always said to be the tall gangly kid with no Billy-like aspirations, always fawning over a film, a witty jokester who elevated geek to coolness. Mindy is a spitting image of him.
Although my father wasn't directly responsible for his death, he intended to be at first. I can't help but acknowledge that his murderous plot, was one that set off a chain reaction- my grandma did kill Randy because he was talking about Billy negatively, after all.
Although I've spoken to my dad through visions, I've never truly met him. Not in the flesh.
Before I realize what I'm doing, I step gently out of my boyfriends arm and walk over to the enlarged picture of my father on the whiteboard.
The photo was luring me in again.
Sammy is already looking at it with the same curiosity, and the same intensity that I am. I see myself in his features, besides getting my mothers blue eyes, I have the same deep brown hair as my father, the same smirk that tugs at the corner of my lips and the same depth to my gaze.
I could be menacing when I wanted to be, which is a quality that I'm not sure I'm proud of, but it did safe my life... even if I got a little knife happy.
I hate what he did, though I can't help but feel a yearning to meet him in the flesh, to look at his face with my own two eyes in person, to speak to him and hear the raspiness of his malicious voice.
"Hey kid." I snap my head to the right, looking at the mirror hung on the back of the closed door.
"Oh fuck no." I whisper to myself.
"Oh fuck yes!" He shouts at me, "you ready to cut up some more motherfuckers Lakyn?"
"I'm not like you!" I mutter at his image in the mirror, clenching my fists at my side, "you know I only did that because I had to."
"You know who you are. You're a Loomis through and through kid." He smirks at me, "stop trying to ignore it."
"I'm not doing this right now!" I practically scream, my eyes narrowed out of anger.
I cool off, noticing the room has gone almost completely silent. Sam looks at me with empathy, likely understanding what just happened. The rest of them look at me with confusion.
Except Ethan, he strides over to me and places a hand on my shoulder, "it's okay baby. We know you're just stressed out."
"Y-yeah." I breathe, "yeah. Let's get back to the pictures."
Next to my dad's picture, is a smaller-scaled picture of Stu Macher. Some people say that Stu was a Billy wannabe, almost the jock, almost handsome, almost cool. They say he tried way too hard, but personally I think Stu to be one of the handsomer ghost face villains. His blue eyes suited him well, tanned skin and hair so light brown it looks blond in strong sunlight, and a tongue with unholy length. He was a lapdog, that's true. If that lap dog were Cerberus from Dante's inferno. The famous Stu Macher is supposedly dead, although some reports say his body was never found. Most people try to cover that fact up, though.
I've got a better chance of meeting his accomplice than my actual father, but I'm not complaining.
Mickey Altieri came next, some sequel obsessed horror nut who'd actually lost the reality switch in his brain, unlike Randy. He wanted to get caught, and get famous off of some sick trial, because face it, the world is all about true crime these days. He was naive to think that would ever work.
I shoot a look over my shoulder to Gale, patting myself on the back for such a witty internal-monologue remark.
Anyways, my grandma, Nancy Loomis was his partner, and college funder apparently. She had no other motive than to avenge her psychotic son, which is solid enough.
I take another step, making my way across the whiteboard when my eyes land on none other than Roman Bridger. The wannabe big shot director who was supposed to produce the movie stab three, but ended up producing a real-life version of events instead. Sidney's close to handsome half brother, who was turned away by Maureen when he went searching for his origins- ouch.
Charlie Walker, another boy like Mickey, except far more foolish as to trust someone like Jill Roberts, a narcissistic, pathological liar. She would have stopped at nothing for fame, the one and only ghost face who made it past act three- the one and only ghost face who almost got away with it. Honestly, it was hard to tell from the outside when talking to Jill that she was psycho. Sam and I were freshman when she was a senior, which is how we knew Kirby and Jill; quite frankly, I had a little bit of a crush on her until I found out she tried to hack up Sidney.
She tutored me in calculus, for a while.
My heart drops into my chest as I come face to face with a picture of my ex-best friend, my ex-girlfriend. There she was, still beautiful as ever, smiling in her school photo that was taken just last year. I never thought I'd mourn the loss of a serial killer, but every now and then I remember the good times, the movie nights and shopping dates, the growing up sleeping over at each others houses. I struggle to come to terms with the fact that she did once love me, but one faithful day, sometime in the last few years, the reality button in her head imploded, and she went crazy.
Part of me wished she'd never seen those movies, never discovered that she lived in Stu Machers house. Her parents should've hid that from her.
The other part of me is glad her true colors came to light, it showed me that we never would have worked out.
Richie Kirsch, my sister's ex boyfriend and the idea man behind the murders in Woodsboro last year. I don't have much to say about him, because I didn't have much to say to him at all when he and my sister returned home upon Tara's assault.
He was always too oblivious, too awkward and new to the horror genre, too loving towards Sammy and too intent on staying when my sister told him to go. He was always on my list, but Amber, she's what threw me for the loop of my fucking life.
"Lakyn?" I'm snapped out of my thoughts so quickly that the room practically begins to spin. I turn on my heels, facing the rest of the room, which was a cluster of worry-ridden faces observing my affair with the photographed killers.
"What?" I shrug, a bit of an edge to my tone.
"You were staring at those photos for, like..." Tara looks down at the clock on her phone, "ten whole minutes?"
I jerk my head over in Ethan's direction for confirmation, who nods his head at me with a small grin tugging on the corners of his lips, "you're exceptionally cute when you're focused."
"You should see yourself in Econ!" I giggle in his direction, earning a throaty laugh in return from my boyfriend.
"Lakyn bacon!" Chad walks up to me, putting his hands on my shoulders and shaking me gently, as if trying to shake the thoughts out of my head, "what were you thinkin' about?"
"I was just... going over everything in my head," I shrug, his hands still on my shoulders as my eyes flick between different people in the room, "re-defining them in my own terms. I'm trying to put together any puzzle pieces and see how this could be related to the killings last year."
"There was a whole shrine, so they've got to be connected." Sam steps away from our fathers picture, "we just don't have any idea how."
"Well, listen wannabe reporters," Gale clears her throat, "Riggs and Jackson didn't do anything but shovel down Chinese food, reveal that Greg and Jason had the hots for the Carpenters-"
Ethan scoffs, so does Chad.
"...and that they weren't very sociable at parties." Gale finishes, closing her notebook with a slight roll of her eyes.
"So basically, just a bunch of shit that we already knew." Sheriff Bailey interjects, with a disapproving shake of his head.
"Except for the fact that they wanted to fuck us." Tara shrugs, "I always saw Jason's eyes lingering on me."
Chad walks over to Tara, wrapping his strong arms around her as she giggles into his embrace, the pair rocking back and fourth on their feet momentarily.
"Jackson wanted to have a field day with you, Lakyn." Mindy chuckles, leaning her head back to let her laughter escape.
My cheeks heat up with embarrassment, "what?"
"God, that dickhead was pissing me off." Ethan makes his way to sit on the table behind me, pulling my body to shit between his legs as he begins twirling some of my brown hair around his finger.
I blow my bangs out of my face, leaning my back into his chest and letting myself relax.
Should I say it?
Nobody else has shared the news that we ever-so-urgently called them for.
"They never found Charlies body." I mumble.
The four newcomers stiffen, I can physically feel Ethan's muscles contract underneath me, but my sisters, Kirby, Bailey and I remain calm and collected. This is news that Kirby had revealed to us in a frenzy as she came back from a phone call with one of her superiors.
She thought it was a good detail to let us know about it. I mentioned how numerous reports have stated that Stu's body was never found either, but all she did was shoot me a wink. I vowed to try and decode that later, because if Stu is alive, I want to meet him. I need to know more about my father, about my origins.
Shit, I'm starting to sound like Roman.
Despite the information, my gut doesn't sense the villain coming after us to be Stu, or Charlie.
This ghost face, this killer, is something... different.
"So, you're saying it is Charlie... or?" Gale trails off, looking me dead in my eyes with immense curiosity, but weariness as well. Her body language practically screams that she's going to release this information to the public later, or maybe I can just tell because I know her well.
"I don't think so, personally." I mumble, leaning my head further back onto Ethan's shoulder and screwing my eyes shut, a migraine brewing.
"You okay baby?" He whispers into my ear, his soft curls brushing my cheek as I feel his arms tighten around my stomach, pulling my body closer to him and pressing a kiss against my cheek.
I hum with approval in response to his question, as well as his display of affection, "just feeling a headache coming on."
"That doesn't mean it isn't a possibility." Kirby fires back, shooting me a hostile look.
There goes the friendliness.
She showed up uninvited about thirty minutes into our chat with Bailey, and she's been really ignorant towards my sisters and I ever since the whole argument at the theatre.
"That being said!" The sheriff cuts in, stepping in the middle of all of us, "there is no immediate suspect yet, but the fact that his body was never found is definitely suspicious."
The room shares a look, my eyes connecting with Samantha's to convey a silent message: neither of us think that this murderer is Charlie. Charlie's style of killing seems extremely tame compared to this killer, and why target Sam and I, why not Kirby- his original victim. It doesn't make sense.
"We still have no idea what's going on." Samantha concludes, "or how many more people will bite it until this is over."