Don't Go to Sleep

by Bryce Moore

Genres: YA Fantasy; YA Historical Fiction; YA Horror

Synopsis

It's 1918, WWI is in full swing, and a Spanish Influenza outbreak is on the horizon. In the midst of the chaos, families are being terrorized and people are being killed by a lone man with an axe. As Gianna and her friend Enzo investigate the heinous crimes, she realizes she's connected to the killer in a way she could have never imagined.



Gianna is the average seventeen-year-old girl living in 1918 New Orleans. She worries about her family's store, the great war, and a mysterious illness that's about to take hold of the city she loves.



It doesn't help that there also appears to be a mad man on the loose in her neighborhood. The attacks started as burglaries but soon escalate to cold blooded murder. There's a killer out there, and the police can't seem to figure out how to stop him.



Gianna enlists the help of her friend Enzo to investigate. And as they study the crimes, they see a common link between the victims, and Gianna can't help but wonder if it's the same man who attacked her family years before.



As Gianna gets closer to the killer, she discovers a connection between them that she never would have suspected.

Release date: August 2, 2022

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Print pages: 320

Sample

Prologue

In all cases both husband and wife were assaulted while they slept.

When you have the same nightmare two or three times a week for six years, you might think you’d get used to it. Even after all this time, as soon as it started to play out in my sleep, my stomach sank, and I wanted to throw up. It doesn’t matter how many times you see your parents get chopped into by an axe. It never stops horrifying you.

I was back in my bed, ten years old, listening to my parents sleep while strange sounds came from somewhere else in the house. A steady scraping, like a woodworker planing a board. I hadn’t woken my parents up back then, and I couldn’t do it during the nightmare, either. I was forced to relive it, right down to the last drop of blood.

So instead of running to Papa and screaming for him to get our own axe or call for help, I rolled onto my stomach and tried to go back to sleep. Five minutes later, the scraping stopped.

And the footsteps began.

Nothing loud or steady enough for me to recognize, of course. Only enough to echo in my memory ever since. Enough to keep me up at night, wondering what would have happened if I’d only called out in fright. Mama and Papa would have been awake when the door burst open. Papa could have gotten an arm up to stop the first blow. My entire life might have been different.

But, that night, I only wanted to go back to sleep, and the Axeman flung open the door without any warning. I didn’t see any of it, of course. My parents had the curtain up across our room to give them privacy. But I heard it all. My mother’s shriek of terror, the wet thunk that sounded like someone chopping into a ripe melon, the crash of the lamp as it fell to the floor, scattering glass everywhere.

I stayed in my bed, a frightened little mouse, wishing for the sounds to stop and praying this was just a dream. Three more blows came in quick succession, and Mama howled in pain before her voice cut off after a final hit.

More footsteps as the Axeman ran out of the room, and only then was I brave enough to get out of bed. I inched the curtain aside. “Mama? Papa?” No answer came, only ragged breaths and a low moan. I padded 

over the floor to the light switch, stepping through something warm and wet and dreading what came next.

Why had I turned on the light instead of running after the monster? A single glance at that room had burrowed into my memory, haunting me ever since. Each of my parents lay in a pool of scarlet. Papa in the middle of the floor, blood pumping out of a wound in his neck that had laid bare the bone. Mama slumped on the bed, red flowing from a gash on her chin, trickling down her cheek and into her hair before it dripped to the floor. Blood splattered across their dresser and the wall, a spray of drops to match each blow.

The sight ripped the breath from my throat like I’d been punched in the gut. My ten-year-old mind couldn’t grasp it, but I’d had plenty of time to relive it after each nightmare. It would fade to black now, and I’d—

The blood on the wall began to move, trickling left and right, up and down, defying gravity. I stared at it, confused. The nightmare never deviated. Not since the Axeman’s string of attacks stopped seven years ago. I’d had variations back then, right after it happened. Enzo and I had thought I’d made some sort of psychic link with the villain that night. We’d tried to use those nightmares to guess where the Axeman might strike next.

Ten-year-olds can’t help thinking of themselves as the hero of any story around them.

But, after those first few months, the nightmares had settled into a single routine. A song that never changed.

Until now.

The blood began to trace out words on the wall, coming together letter by letter to spell out a single message: I’m coming.

The nightmare swirled, and, when it stopped, I was the one standing before a door, holding an axe. I was the one who kicked it in and started chopping into people left and right. And, instead of horror at my actions, I felt…excited.

I woke breathless, my pulse racing and my heart pounding in my ears. After having relived the same nightmare for so long, this change made me sick to my stomach. I’m coming, the message had read. I tried to tell myself it was just another dream. That it made sense that the same nightmare couldn’t continue unchanged, year after year. It had to vary eventually.

But I couldn’t forget the feel of that axe in my hand, or the words written in blood on my bedroom wall. I’m coming.

Chapter One

In the Crutti case, as well as in the Rissetto case, both of which occurred within the present year, all the victims were Italians.

Enzo was mad at me when I showed up to meet him. It was never hard to tell. His shoulders got stiffer, and he shoved his hands in his pockets like a thundercloud. He might as well have been carrying a sign that said, “Gianna, you’re late. Again.” I held up my hands in surrender.

“I know. I know. I’m a terrible person. I made you wait a whole ten minutes, and now we’re only going to be fifty minutes early instead of an hour.”

Some of the edge left his face as he fought back a smile, which was a relief. I leaned up to him and brushed my lips against each of his cheeks. Just because I’d told him I didn’t want our relationship to get any more serious didn’t mean we had to treat each other like strangers. This was the boy I’d practically grown up with, even if it did look like he should have shaved again before coming out tonight.

“It’s not the concert I’m worried about missing,” Enzo said. His voice had gotten lower in the last year, and the rest of him had filled out even more. All that exercise, wishing he could be in the army, and now he was practically twice my size. “We haven’t talked in two weeks, and you come by out of the blue asking me to meet you for this. I thought it would be good to talk first.”

“Of course,” I said, hoping my voice sounded as light as I wanted it to be. After the last nightmare, I’d needed someone to talk to about it. Enzo had been my rock years before. I’d thought and thought about bringing it up then. In the end, I’d just asked him to meet me tonight. But it was one thing to know you should do something, and something totally different to actually do it. Talking about the nightmare would make it real.

I looked around the street, unable to meet his eyes for too long at a stretch. We stood on the corner of Canal and St. Charles, 6:10 on a Saturday afternoon. New Orleans was gearing up for another wild weekend. Neon lights shone against the purple sunset, and people people people, filling the area with the noise of chatter mixing into the whir of the electric trolley and the clatter of automobiles and horses. The air was just cold enough to make you happy you’d worn long sleeves. Perfect. “Lighten up, Vincenzo 

Rissetto. We live in a wonderful city, and we’re going to see Sidney Bechet, un clarinettista who could play for the gods.”

He cocked an eyebrow skeptically. Enzo didn’t view music the same way I did, and he wasn’t too keen on taking God lightly, either. Was it any wonder we didn’t always get along perfectly? Still, he hooked his arm into mine just like he used to, and I found myself blinking back tears. This was all going to be better with Enzo on my side, I told myself. I just had to somehow force myself to go through with it.

Better to get my mind off that as fast as I could. I hung my head and slouched my shoulders and said, “You’re right. I’m late, and I shouldn’t have been. There was this sassofonista I’d never heard on the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse, though. He was good, and I stopped to talk to him. He’s straight from Chicago, and he wants to play with some of the groups here. I gave him a few tips, and I lost track of time.”

“You haven’t eaten yet either, have you?” he said.

“I’ll eat on the way,” I replied, then pulled him north along Canal. My ankle flared up with pain for a moment, and I stumbled, leaning on Enzo before I caught my balance.

“Are you okay?”

I waved off his concern. “You know me. I’m always tripping or bumping into something or other. I must have twisted my ankle earlier today—it’s been bothering me all evening. Have you read the news? How are things in Europe?”

“They’re starting another push after Saint Mihiel,” Enzo said, glancing at my ankle once before diving into a discussion about the Great War, military tactics, and a whole bunch of other things I didn’t really understand. I let him talk, though. That had always been our understanding. I did my best to follow his obsession with the war, and he tried to develop a love for jazz. Never mind that one of those was a much bigger favor than the other.

“I should never have let you talk me out of enlisting last year,” Enzo said.

“Thousands of Americans died just two weeks ago, and you’re sad you missed out on it?”

“They need more troops. I could make a difference.”

“There are over a million American soldiers there. And, besides, you were sixteen when you wanted to enlist, and you looked like you were fourteen. If you’d have shown up, they’d have laughed you out of the room. And what about your parents? What sort of son lets his disabled parents run a store by themselves while he’s off trying to get killed in Europe? If the war is still going next year when you’re eighteen, you can go and do your duty then. Let’s stop here. I’ll have a…how do you say it in English? Ananas?”

“Pineapple.”

“Pine apple. I always forget that silly word for it. It isn’t made of pine, and it tastes nothing like an apple.” I dragged him along to a nearby grocer. “I would like a pine apple for dinner. Would you buy it for me, though? I’ll give you the money, but Signora Caravaggio said I need to be especially careful about strangers and disease for the next month.”

“

You make fun of me for being worried about time, but you’re much worse about your superstitions.”

The smile left my face. “Fate will kill you, Enzo. Being late won’t. And who can put a price on knowing what the future holds? The influenza is everywhere. It will be here in New Orleans soon enough, and I’ll be ready.”

He closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side, his way of saying “I think you’re silly but I’m going to humor you,” which he did because he knew, if he said it out loud, I’d have more to say about it. I let it slide. I had been ten minutes late, after all.

But, when he bought the pineapple and the grocer sliced into it, my mind flashed back on the nightmare. The axe arcing down, plunging into his head with a moist thunk, blood welling up around the edges as I watched, enraptured.

I blinked my eyes and shook my head slightly. Think happy thoughts, Gianna. Sidney Bechet. Crisp, cool air. Time well-spent with your best friend. The grocer gave him the pineapple, now neatly cut into seven long pieces, like a yellow watermelon. He had the knife tucked into his off hand, the glint sending me for a moment back to that room. To the screams…

“You want the whole thing?” Enzo asked as we resumed walking. He stared at me for a moment, and I wondered if my expression had given me away.

“Do I want to eat an entire pine apple by myself? Do I look like I’m two people hiding in one coat? The other half is for you. You probably have to eat twenty times a day to keep all those muscles happy.”

“You’ve been speaking less English the last few months. Your accent is getting stronger.”

“Non mi va,” I said. “I speak it well enough when I need to, and I only need to when I’m out and about with you doing all of this. There are enough Italians in this city to let us ignore all the rest the same way they ignore us, no? Signora Caravaggio says I will marry a good Italian man.”

Enzo blanched.

“No,” I told him. “Not tonight. We’re not going over that again. Tonight is for Sidney Bechet and pineapple.” I tried to say the word with as strong of an American accent as I could manage to show him I was getting it down right. I could think the language just fine, but, when it came out of my mouth, it tended to get a little muddled.

“Business is good?” he asked me in what I’m sure he thought was a casual tone.

“What?” I looked up at him over the slice, juice running down the corner of my mouth. “Why are you doing this? We are out for a walk and jazz and the night air, not to talk about why I spend too much money and how my family and your family are so different even though they are the same. Have some pine apple. You’ll talk less.”

I chided myself. He’d made a stray comment, and I’d overreacted. I’d told myself I wouldn’t do that when I sent him the letter asking him to come with me to this performance. Papa had told me I’d have to keep my tongue in check. “You’re wonderful with strangers, Gia,” he’d said. “Now you need to work on treating your friends and family the same way.” Mama had only rolled her eyes.

Enzo and I continued down Canal Street, heading for the Orpheum Theater. It was still being built, but it was finished enough to have some events. Since they closed Storyville, all the excitement had to move somewhere. While that somewhere was being figured out, they used places like the Orpheum to keep things going. Tonight’s concert was just for those in the know, but I made it my business to stay on top of anything connected to music in New Orleans.

We paused when we got to the theater, only nine blocks or so from where we’d met. Enzo wanted to go in, but I insisted we finish the pineapple first. “That’s all I need. For us to get kicked out because we couldn’t eat the fruit ahead of time.”

“Do you think you’ll play in there one day?” he asked, looking up at the stone theater. It was made from granite blocks. A smooth gray front broken up in sections by carved panels of vines and urns, with a straight overhang protecting the main entrance from rain.

I finished the last bite of my slice and shook my head. “An Italian girl, playing on a big stage? I’d have to practice more to get there, and when am I going to have time to practice? I already have the pastor mad enough as it is. He doesn’t like anything but Bach being played on his piano. Bach was a good guy, but these hands were not made for Bach.” I held up my juice-covered fingers, shrugged, and licked them clean.

When I finished, Enzo was staring at me. For once, I couldn’t read the gaze. I thought I’d been masking the feeling in the pit of my stomach well enough, but it might have been peeking out the edges.

“Enzo!” I said, snapping him out of his reverie. “What is it? Pine apple on my cheek?” I rubbed at my face.

“It’s gone now,” he said.

I turned and looked at the rest of the street. “Ah!” I cried out, seeing my friend and waving to the jovial-looking Black man standing just around the corner. “Harry!”

He paused and squinted in our direction. I laughed and pulled Enzo along. “What’s the matter, Harry? Do your glasses make you ugly?”

As we got closer, the man broke out into a smile. “Gianna! What are you doing waiting out here? You think they’re just going to open the doors and let you in?”

“People open doors for me wherever I go,” I said. “But I was not done with my snack just yet. Unless the Orpheum would like to taste some pine apple as well? I could have dropped it all over the seats and the carpet.”

Harry grimaced. “The Orpheum owners don’t exactly know about Bechet playing here for an audience. It’s more of a…rehearsal. Some of the fellows working on the place have keys, and they knew it was going to be empty tonight. Shame to let a stage sit lonely when it could be put to good use. So, yeah, maybe your pineapple was better left outside.”

We followed him down an alley to an innocent back door that led to a tangle of corridors and rooms lined with covered boxes, ropes, tools, and sawdust. I chatted with Harry about the concert and who else might

be there, and Enzo followed in our wake. Then Harry opened a door, and we moved from a construction zone into the middle of a palace.

The main auditorium was cavernous. Blood-red velvet seats for well over a thousand lined the main floor and the three balconies. A crystal chandelier five times as big as me hung from the ceiling, and the walls were covered in ornate blue and gold decorations. The stage was to my right, framed by a drawn red curtain with gold trim. A group of men stood there already, chatting and tuning their instruments, playing licks of songs, riffs, and arpeggios. The sound echoed more than it did in a club. Less crisp, but much larger. It wasn’t quite right for jazz, but it was different, and you never knew how a change would make you see parts of the music you didn’t catch before.

Harry waved goodbye to us and went to join some of his other friends: the main floor already had around a hundred people there, though that still left the vast majority of the seats empty. I let him go, turning to Enzo. “È incredibile, vero? Come on. I want to see what it’s like from the balconies.”

A man sat next to a table with an upturned hat in the middle of it, filled with coins. He cocked an eyebrow at us, and I laughed, digging into my purse as Enzo reached into his pocket. “I can pay for both of us,” he said, but I shook my head.

“I’ve been saving up.” If he paid for me, then he’d think of this as a date. If he thought of it as a date, things might get messed up between us again. Better to have firm boundaries, and anyway, what was another dollar? It wouldn’t be enough to keep my parent’s store open longer. I dropped the four quarters into the hat and put the worries behind me.

The man nodded his thanks, and Enzo and I padded off down the aisle, only getting lost once as we looked for the way upstairs. The railings were smooth brass, the carpet soft and new. “Are you sure we should even be here?” Enzo asked, unable to keep from looking over his shoulder. “This is trespassing.”

I shook my head. “Sometimes you’re a mouse, Enzo. A tiny little mouse. It’s Saturday night. Take a break from your worrying and have a good time. The police aren’t going to barge in here and arrest you. You worry about rules too much.”

We came to the balcony, and I went straight for the front center seats, sitting down and putting my feet up on the railing, throwing my arms wide and smiling again. “This is the place for me. Like a queen, right in the middle of the theater. Best seat in the house.”

“Don’t you want to be closer to the music?”

“We can move around when we want, but it won’t start for a while. We can enjoy the view here for now.”

Enzo stared down at the stage, not meeting my eyes. “Can you tell me what’s going on? ...