Allison Groves's isolation from her friends meant that she missed out on much of what occurred in the final months of the school year. This was to her benefit; the horrors that her six friends faced as the year drew to its close were great. And they startedâor so the story would later be toldâwith Jared Wilkins's bloody nose.
If Jared Wilkins had one great fault in his school years it was that he was loud. He did not mean to be so; the amount of energy he'd been blessed with simply ensured it. In theory, it was not a terribly large problem. It did not make him necessarily imprudent. He was quite able to control himself in the right situations. Serious situations, as it were. But anytime he was caught around Quintus Zima or any member of his gang always proved to be the wrong situation.
At least the boys of Quintus's group had taken an immediate disliking to Jared in their first year together. He was something of an easy target to begin with because of his build: short and thin. His boyish featuresâenhanced by a pair of bright blue eyesâwould stick with him into adulthood, giving him a constant youthful appearance. These things alone were not enough to put Jared on the permanent radar of Quintus's gang; it was that unhindered energy. Without trying toâor even wanting toâhe called a lot of attention to himself. By their second year at Briargate, Quintus Zima and all of his friends had made a target of Jared out of sheer irritation.
In all fairness, even if Jared Wilkins had not become such an adversary of Quintus's gang he probably would not have avoided what happened one day mid-April. Dean Procter in particular was still seething from the fight in January, an incident that, despite his best efforts, he had yet to, as he saw it, make right. Jared's infamy upped the intensity, however. There was an undercurrent of desperation that clung to this particular encounter that could be credited only to the mixture of indignation from the last fight and longstanding dislike of Jared in general.
Vince and Dean found him in between classes. It was bad luck that he happened to be on his own. Dean had gotten one good punch inâan oddity for himâbefore Jared had taken off, hoping his sheer speed would be enough to get away. His nose was spurting blood but he knew it wouldn't last long. It would be healed before he knew it. Luck was with him, and he was able to make it to his next class before Dean and Vince caught him. His teacher, Professor St. Paul, gave him an incredulous look as he rushed in. Professor St. Paul did not need to even ask what had happened; he knew once Dean and Vince trampled in behind him. Jared was painfully aware that his shirt was stained with blood. He hoped Caleb would let him borrow a clean one.
Caleb did, in fact, let Jared borrow a shirt. Of course, he still had to bring the stained shirt home, and it was still almost certainly going to give his mother a heart attack. He'd been in his fair share of scraps with Quintus Zima's gang even beyond the big one in January, but he'd always managed to keep the bloody clothing to a minimum in the past. It had certainly never been this badâa little ironic, considering he'd dodged most damage.
There came one blessing when Jared made it home: his mother was not there. A little perplexingâhis eight year old sister Judy was home, and with everything that had been happening in town as of late his mother had been militant about her getting a ride home from school every night. Florence Wilkins had not worried so much about her two sons, Jared and eighteen-year-old Jimmy, as they always walked home with every single O'Brien, Beaumont, and Bradbury who attended Briargate, along with Wylie Grace and her younger sister. As soon as her brothers got through the front door, Judy announcedâunprompted, which meant Florence Wilkins had told her to do it a million timesâthat their mother had run out to get ingredients for that night's dinner.
Briefly, Jared debated simply burning his shirt. Eventually he decided that wouldn't do any good; his mother would certainly notice it was missing. She was observant in many ways that drove Jared crazy. There would be no easy way out of this. If he was lucky, her voice wouldn't reach levels only a dog could hear when she yelled at him.
Jared entertained Judy with dominoes until their mother got home. Judy loved making long lines of the wooden rectangles and watching them fall, but her coordination was sadly lacking; she usually ended up knocking them over before she could finish, getting only an anticlimactic half-result. Jared was better at it, or so Judy insisted. In all honesty, his coordination wasn't always topnotch, either. Jared figured there was no rush to show his mother his mess of a shirt. She had gone straight to work on dinner, and Judy never would've let him get away without making at least a dozen domino trains to knock over. That was just fine by him.
Jared's father made it home at about quarter after five. By then, Judy had tired of the dominoes and was instead relating all the details of her day to Jared. Jared listened obediently even though much of it was quite similar to things he'd heard from her on many different occasions. He was sure he would hear it all again sometime that nightâmost likely at dinnerâwhen Judy gave their mother the full story, which would be, strangely, one of the only times during the day that Florence Wilkins would smile. Jared's father immediately traipsed into the living room, grinning cheerily at his children.
"And what are we up to, hmm?" he asked merrily. He squatted down next to them, his legs creaking in protest on the trip. Judy's smile split her face in two.
"Jared was helping me make lines of dominoes to knock down," she said, picking one up as if to provide a visual aid. Her father smiled indulgently at her. "I got bored, though."
"You got bored?" her father asked with exaggerated incredulity. "Why, that can't be! The Judy Wilkins I know never gets bored with dominoes!"
Judy snickered, hiding it behind her hand. Her father winked at her.
"So Jared was helping you, eh?" he said. Judy nodded, and he put a hand on Jared's shoulder. "Good man." Jared's father smiled conspiratorially at him. "I know this little one tends to knock over the dominoes with her knees."
"Hey!" Judy said, but she was laughing. Her father cast an affectionate gaze her way, laughing himself.
"And did you spend any time with Pip?" he asked. "You're his favorite, you know."
He was referring to the finicky yellow canary they had inherited when Jared's paternal grandmother had died three years ago. To say Judy was his favorite was a bit of an understatement; Judy was the only one he wouldn't screech relentlessly at any time she came near. It was probably just his imagination, but Jared was certain that more than once he'd caught the bird glaring at him when he was in the same room.
"Of course," Judy said, sounding borderline offended. "He sang for me when I got home from school."
"Did he now?" her father asked, raising his eyebrows. "He's a lot more useful than that lump over there."
He jerked a thumb towards a corner of the floor where Maxwell, an overweight seven-year-old bloodhound who in no way lived up to the bloodhound reputation, was snoozing, legs up in the air, looking like a dead rat.
"I don't think he's moved since I got home," Jared said. His father snorted, not looking the least bit surprised.
"Well, I see my oldest isn't anywhere to be seen," he said, making a big show of looking around the room. "No surprise in that."
"No, he had homework," Judy said. She pulled her face down into a grimace and spoke in a low, questionable impression of her brother. "'Professor West won't stop giving bookwork. It's almost the end of the year, I can't be expected to go through such torment.'"
Jared and his father both laughed as Judy looked particularly pleased with herself.
"I don't think he actually said that," Florence Wilkins said. She had suddenly appeared in the living room with them; Jared hadn't even heard her. Jared and his father ceased laughing immediately, as if they'd been caught doing something inappropriate. Florence didn't seem to notice, but as she looked at Judy Jared thought he saw the corners of her mouth twitch. "Children, will you go set the table?"
"Yes, Mom," Judy said obediently as she and Jared got to their feet. Their father stood with them, groaning as he did so.
"Legs ain't what they used to be," he said with a wry smile. He made his way to his wife, brushing past Jared close enough that Jared got a whiff of whiskey. As his father kissed his mother's cheek, her face hardened almost imperceptibly, and Jared knew that she had smelled it too.
While the problems that plagued Dexter Bradbury's parents' marriage were common knowledge to at least most adults in Clearwater, the problems their next-door neighbors Timothy and Florence Wilkins faced were much more discreet. So much so that, at that time, when Jared and Judy were still young and Jimmy was still at home, even their own children did not quite grasp the severity of the situation. There were times, though, when Jared, at least, was beginning to see, beginning to put the puzzle together even though he did not yet have nearly all the pieces. There were times when he would see his mother shy away from his father's touch or he would see his father's weary gaze trained on his mother and he would think, almost as if the words had been broadcast into his mind: Something isn't right.
Jared heard those words now as he headed to the kitchen to get plates and napkins, but he didn't give it much thought. In fact, his conscious mind barely took notice of them. But they were there, lingering below the surface, giving him a nagging sensation in his gut.
Dinner passed as was expected. Judy did, in fact, retell the whole story of her day to her mother, who listened with great attention and provided all the appropriate reactions. Maxwell finally stirred, waddling out to the dining room to see what was on the menu that night. He never begged, but he always sat at one end of the table and looked up at each member of the family with droopy eyes, hoping for a handout. (He always got something from Jared, and he knew it too; if Judy was Pip's favorite, Jared was definitely Maxwell's.)
The food was nearly finished before Florence noticed Jared was wearing a shirt she didn't recognize. Jared was rather surprised he'd lasted that long. He then had the decidedly uncomfortable job of explaining to his mother and father what had happened that afternoon.
The problem came with the fact that both of his parents were very touchy about anything related to Briargate. It would be a few years still before Jared found out the specifics of why that was, but he knew it was true. Had Jared and Jimmy not been gifted Jared had no doubt that they would not be attending the school, even though they could have. Timothy Wilkins was telekinetic and had attended Briargate himself. But Florence Wilkins was completely normal, and so was her daughterâas far as anyone knewâand Florence had made it clear that Judy would not be attending the same school as her brothers when the time came. Judy had been the only one who'd attended public schooling as it was; Jared and Jimmy had been homeschooled for kindergarten through fourth grade by Florence herself, albeit grudgingly. Jared had a sneaking suspicion that, gift or no gift, if Florence had had her way, neither of them would have attended Briargate; it was only through his father's insistence that it was decided that they would goâsomething that made his reluctance to discuss anything related to the school that much more bewildering.
There was another catch that was more of a personal preference than anything else: Jared did not want to tell them what had happened. There was this abstract kind of doubt that he supposed was rooted in knowing his parents as well as he did. He had a feeling that he would not be believed. Not exactly, anyway. Perhaps his father would, but he'd be overruled by his mother. She'd believe the fight happened, of course; that would not be the problem. The issue would be that she'd think him to blame. She'd believe he was roughhousing or looking for someone to provoke, and that would hurt perhaps more than if she just called him a liar outright.
Jared was just about to speakâwhat it was he was going to say, he wasn't sureâwhen he was saved unexpectedly.
"Oh, he didn't tell you?" Jimmy asked, looking honestly surprised. "He got a nosebleed in the middle of lunch today. Like a geyser. Got all over his shirt. He had to borrow a new one from one of the kids he hangs around with."
Jared did his best to hide his surprise as he looked at his brother. Jimmy knew the real story. Jared had told him as they'd walked home from school. There'd been no reason for him to invent a new story.
...or, perhaps, judging from the very pointed look Jimmy was giving him now, there was. Perhaps Jimmy understood.
"I hope you brought that shirt home," his mother said, blessedly not yelling. "There are some tricks I can try to get the blood out."
"Yes, Mom, I've got it," Jared responded.
"And I hope you thanked the boy who gave you a new shirt to wear," she continued. "He didn't have to do that, you know."
"I did," Jared assured her.
"Good." Florence nodded, satisfied. Without another word on the subject, she stood up and began clearing the table. Jared shot a grateful glance at his brother that he hoped no one else would catch. The slightest nod of the head told him that Jimmy had seen. Suddenly in a generous mood, Jared gave his last scraps to Maxwell, making sure his mother did not see.
A crisis narrowly avoidedâor Jared liked to view it as such. His mother did look at the bloodstain quite distastefully when he retrieved the shirt for her, after the table was clear and the dishes were done, but she did not seem to blame him for it. As he knew she wouldn't; his mother was not that unfair. If she'd believed Jimmy's story she could not be mad at Jared. She set straight to work at seeing if anything could be done for it.
After dinner, the Wilkins family did not talk much to each other. Florence was secluded from the rest, trying to get the blood out of Jared's shirt. Judy flitted from one corner of the living room to the next, keeping herself entertained with a game only she knew and understood, every so often stopping to coo over Pip the canary in his cage. The three Wilkins boys all sat in the living room together, watching Judy as she played, but they rarely addressed each other. Jimmy had his nose stuck in a book that Jared was sure he was only half-reading (it took him nearly twenty minutes to turn a page). And as for Jared's father...well, he did what he had always done best: he popped the tab on a beer can and got to work.
There were timesâthough they did not come oftenâwhen Jared let his mind linger on the fact that, ever since he was little, he had rarely seen his father without some sort of alcoholic beverage in his hand. Most times he insisted to himself that it was not a problem. He'd heard stories from other kids; this was not the same as when Dexter would tell him about the times that his father got drunk. Dexter's father would get irritable and clumsy and lash out at whoever was near for no reason. This wasn't like Steve Bellfrey either, who Jared himself had seen stumbling around town a time or two, soused to the gills, usually tripping over his own feet and singing something loudly and boisterously. Jared's father did not act like them, he did not behave in the way that would have made the old Radley sisters, who lived on Oak Avenue and had attended every single mass service St. Patrick's had ever held, stick up their noses and huff, "Drunk." Jared's father wasn't like that, wasn't ever like that. It was easy for a twelve-year-old boy to write it off, to insist that because it did not seem a problem, it wasn't.
But that was only most times. Sometimes he had other ideas. That night, as his father drank into quiet oblivion, he had other ideas. Jared got on the floor to play with Maxwell, who gave only a half-hearted effort.
Later, when Jared crawled into bed, Maxwell trotting sluggishly at his heels, he had an unmistakable queasy feeling in his stomach. It was the same sort of feeling he got when he had a big test he didn't feel prepared for or when he realized there was a piece of homework he'd forgotten to do. The words came again, but in different context this time: Something isn't right.
***
Jared woke up the next morning to the sound of his younger sister shrieking. It may seem odd to say that he was not immediately alarmed, but he'd awakened to a shouting match a time or two before. At first, he found it entirely likely that Jimmy had done something Judy hadn't liked or she'd gotten into a fight with their mother over some trivial matter that wouldn't seem nearly as bad after the moment had passed. He groaned and rolled over in a foggy state of half-sleep, having to disentangle his legs from underneath the dog. Maxwell didn't budge. It was a few more moments, as he tried to fully wake up, before he realized Judy's shrieking did not seem angry. It seemed frantic. It seemed scared.
As fast as he could manage, he kicked out from under the covers and ran to the hall. He nearly crashed into Jimmy as he came out from his own room, looking as awake as Jared felt. Dimly, Jared heard his father cursing and clunking around from his parents' bedroom. He didn't know what time it was but he figured it must be early if his father hadn't gotten up for work yet. It would make sense; Judy had been going through a phase lately of getting up at the crack of dawn. His father came rushing out of the bedroom half-dressed as he and Jimmy made it to the top of the stairs.
"What the hell's going on?" Timothy Wilkins cried, dark bags underneath his eyes making him look haggard. If he was expecting an answer he was disappointed, as he was all but ignored as Jimmy and Jared dashed down the stairs, taking them two at a time. They knocked into each other at least a dozen times.
When Jared and Jimmy finally got to the ground floor (something that seemed to take ages even though it couldn't have been more than a few seconds), Judy and Florence Wilkins were standing in the living room together. Florence had her arms wrapped around Judy, and that seemed to be the only thing keeping the girl upright. The intensity of Judy's screaming had lowered a bit, and she broke off every so often into a choked sob. Jared's father finally came staggering down the stairs a few seconds later, running a hand through his hair and looking around warily.
"What the hell is it?" he snapped, but his voice trembled slightly. He pushed past his sons to get to his wife and daughter. Jared and Jimmy crowded in behind him, slightly afraid of what they might see.
What they saw, however, was almost anticlimactic. Jared, at least, had been thinking up every horror he could, likely and unlikelyâunexplained blood puddles, dead bodies, dismembered limbsâ
Cow heads, Rudy Potts's missing eyes
But what he saw was nothing so awful. In fact, he should have picked up on it, based on where his mother and sister were standing.
The old metal birdcage that housed Pip the canary was lying on the floor. A handful of the delicate bars had been twisted outward; some had been broken off altogether and were scattered on the ground next to the cage. Pip was nowhere to be found.
"Where is he?" Judy asked, finally stopping her shrieking to breathe. She wasn't quite crying, exactly, but it was the next best thing. "Where is he?!"
"Oh, shit," Timothy Wilkins said under his breath, wincing at the sharp look his wife gave him. "Sorry, dear."
"Daddy, where is he?" Judy asked, on the verge of hyperventilating. "Where's Pip?"
"N-now, now, Judy, I wouldn't panic." It was a bit late for that. "I'm sure he just...just..."
Just what? Jared could hear the gears turning desperately in his father's head but he didn't think the man would come up with anything. Judy was young but she wasn't stupid. She knew the bird hadn't just busted out of the cage and flown away on its own. What had been done to the cage had been done by a human handâ
Or something that was human-like's hand.
Jared suddenly felt very cold looking at the cage. He was aware of both of his parents' soothing voices trying to comfort his sister but he could not hear their words. Jimmy had left his side and was looking around the room, but Jared was very certain that he would not find the bird there. Something poked at his brain, a memory that was trying to push its way through, something that was importantâ
Maxwell didn't move.
Jared took off the way he had come, back up the stairs to his room. He thought his father was calling his name but he couldn't be sure. He was only vaguely aware that he was calling Maxwell's name all the way up, praying he'd get some kind of response, hoping that the dog would waddle out into the hallway, tired but just fine. But there was nothing, no barking, no movement, nothingâ
He stared into his room from the doorway, looking at the lump under the covers. He was still calling Maxwell's name stupidly, fearing the worstâbut then Maxwell's head poked out from the sheets. He let out a strange whine and stretched, not seeming all that excited to have been woken up. Jared let out the inevitable sigh of reliefâand then cold fingers of terror gripped his arms and his legs and the back of his neck.
Someone had been in his room.
Slowly, as if he was trying to negotiate his way through a minefield, Jared approached his bed. He felt a little as if he might be sick. That had been there, he didn't know for how long, but that must have been there when he was asleep, he must have rushed right past it when he'd awoken. With a hand that shook mightily, he reached out and scooped up the evidence that was on one of his pillows.
"Mom?" he said, the word barely a whisper. More firmly, he tried again. "Mom? Dad? Anyone?"
They must have heard the panic in his voice because he could hear them rushing immediately up the stairs.
"What is it, Jared?" His mother's voice floated up to him from somewhere halfway between the living room and his bedroom. It sounded thin. He could sympathize.
"I...I found Pip."
Oh, had he ever found Pip. There, lying in his hands like a lump of meat was his late grandmother's bird, its neck wrung.
It wasn't until halfway through the school day that it came to him. Something that had been bothering him, niggling at his brain in a subtle but strong way. Judy had been home alone the day before. It had been overcast, no sun. She wasn't alone for very long, but perhaps long enough to let someone in the house if they had the right excuses.
But if a vampire had been in his house, he wasn't sure what kind of message it was sending.
***RIP Pip. That's it, that's all I have to say. Oh, and thanks to everyone who voted and commented. I appreciate it :)***