The Next Killing

by Rebecca Drake

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

Trust Your Fear. . .

For one hundred years, the best girls have come to St. Ursula's Preparatory Academy to learn. To achieve. To make both memories and friends. But now, it's where they also come to die. . .

Watch Your Back. . .

When the first body is found, the police call it an accident--an initiation ritual gone terribly wrong. But the students know something isn't right at St. Ursula's. There are sounds in the darkened corridors, a figure glimpsed between the trees, locked doors somehow opened. Someone is watching them, judging them, hating them. . .killing them. . .

Or You'll Never Leave Alive. . .

A twisted psychopath is turning the quiet campus into a school of fear. No sins will go unpunished. No girl will escape justice. And everyone will have a chance to join a serial killer's exclusive club. . ..

Praise For Rebecca Drake's Don't Be Afraid

"Read this alone, late at night, and you won't be afraid--you'll be terrified." --Wendy Corsi Staub, New York Times bestselling author

"Fast, sharp, and super creepy. Get ready to have your socks scared off." --J.A. Konrath, author of Rusty Nail

Release date: October 9, 2013

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 416

Sample

The shed was dark. She couldn’t see a foot beyond the door where she peered in, the murky shadows at the front giving way to deep black, hinting of strange things hidden in corners. It had an awful musty smell that reminded her of a dead mouse her father had trapped once under the sink.

“No,” she said, turning back to look at the others. “I don’t want to go in there.”

They were watching her with predatory smiles. “But you do want to join the club, right?”

She swallowed hard, shifting her backpack. She’d been so excited when she got the note, pausing near her locker between classes to pull the little square from its hiding place under her math book.

“Meet us this afternoon near the track.” She’d read the single sentence over and over again, amazed that they’d asked her, thrilled to be chosen.

She lingered when school ended, waiting for others to leave before slamming her locker and hurrying out the side door. The track was empty, but one of them was sitting in the bleachers, waiting. The other stood just beyond the fence.

The walk across the playing field beyond the track was so quiet that she could hear the crunch of grass underfoot. They hardly talked, smiling occasionally if she asked a question. In the silence she heard the slight, wheezy sound of her own breathing.

Beyond the playing field the grass came up higher, tickling the skin at their ankles. The shed came into view, standing alone in the shallow basin of land below a slight rise.

“Wouldn’t that make a great clubhouse?” one of them said, stopping in front of it. Gray clapboard with faded green asphalt shingles peeling off the roof, it had a double door held together by a wide chain and a heavy padlock. The lock hung open.

“Maybe,” she said, her voice betraying the doubt she didn’t feel free to express. The sun beat down on them. She could feel the heat underneath her uniform blouse, sweat trickling into the new space created by the small buds appearing on her chest that was swaddled in what her mother stupidly called a training bra.

“Why don’t you go inside and look it over?” they said, making it sound like a suggestion, though one hurried to unhitch the padlock and the other pulled the chain through the metal loops. The door squealed as it opened and she’d leaned cautiously inside.

“No,” she repeated. “It’s too dark.”

“That’s just because your eyes haven’t adjusted. Step all the way in or you won’t be able to really tell.”

She looked from one to the other, searching for some indication that they were joking. They stared back at her with those strange, fixed smiles. Like alligators, she thought, and wished she hadn’t come.

“Don’t you want to be part of the club?”

How many times had she wished to be popular like they were? Yes, she wanted to be part of the club. She wanted to sit at the good seats in the cafeteria. She wanted teachers to smile at her the way they smiled at them. She wanted girls to feel envy when she walked down the halls and for boys’ heads to turn on the streets.

She let her backpack slip from her shoulder and drop to the grass. The door creaked, swinging slightly on its rusting hinges. She looked at the gloom and thought of wolf spiders and bats. She swallowed hard.

“Go on,” one of them said. “Hurry up.”

She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

The sudden shove in her back knocked her forward and she fell hard, slamming her knees onto rough wood floor. The door banged shut, the entire shed shuddering with the impact.

Blackness engulfed her. She screamed, struggling to her feet, and stumbled around, hands outstretched, trying to find the door. By the time she reached it they’d restrung the chain and fastened the lock.

“Let me out! Please!” She pounded the door and it shook in its frame, but didn’t budge. Her begging and pleading went unanswered, though she could hear their muffled voices outside.

“You stupid wannabe,” one of them called. “This will teach you to stop following us around.”

Their laughter rang through her sobs as she lurched around in the blackness, slamming her shin against something hard, stabbing her hand on something sharp. Things clattered to the floor, smashing her foot, rolling around her. Something splashed her legs.

The smoke surprised her, a gentle waft against her face. She coughed and shied away from it, nostrils quivering at the scent.

There was a cracking sound, like a tree branch breaking, and suddenly there were flames racing along the floorboards, tongues of orange licking at the juncture of old walls, climbing the leg of a rickety workbench, lapping at her feet.

Choking on the billowing smoke, tears streaming from her eyes, she tried to stamp out the flames and beat them back with her hands. A sweet smell, like meat on a grill. Her own flesh burning. A line of fire reached the roof, turning a rotting beam to ash, which fell like hot, black raindrops on her head and shoulders.

Above the angry hiss of the fire and her own cries she could still hear their laughter. She would hear that sound forever.

The school had stood on the hillside for more than a hundred years. It had been there for so long that it looked as if it had sprouted from the woods surrounding it, the tops of stone buildings appearing suddenly above the trees like lichen in a sea of green.

Lauren Kavanaugh pressed her face against the taxi window to catch a glimpse of it through the rain while running her hands down the horizontal pleats creasing the pale linen skirt of her borrowed suit. She tried not to believe that wrinkled clothing was going to cost her the job.

“You visiting someone up the Hill?” the cabbie asked. His had been the only cab idling outside the local train station, where most of the commuters had been heading the opposite way, north into Manhattan. He must have seen her confusion because he laughed. “I mean St. Ursula’s. We call it the Hill because it’s up there.” He gestured out the window, but the road had turned again and the buildings had disappeared. All she could see was a mountainside covered in trees.

“It looks like a forest,” she said.

He chuckled. “Oh, the school’s in there. It’s a big campus—close to two hundred acres. You got a sister there?”

“No, I’ve got an interview.”

“Oh. Well good luck.”

She could see his eyes appraising her in the rearview mirror. “You look a little young to be a teacher.”

She didn’t reply to that, just stared out the window as they passed through the outlying streets. It was quite different from the packed streets of Hoboken, where she paid a fortune to rent a tiny apartment on the third floor of an old row house.

The center of Gashford was the intersection point of two long, wide streets lined with small businesses, a bank, and a post office, and no building was higher than ten stories. They’d sped past it and past the tree-lined, residential streets surrounding it and then on past the larger homes spaced farther apart with sweeping lawns. Now they were outside town, where civilization was encroaching on less desirable land; in either direction were cockeyed realty signs stuck in patches of sparsely covered mud.

The edges of the road were sprinkled with late summer wildflowers drooping under the continuous downpour. She could smell the unfamiliar scent of wet grass through the cracked windows.

The cabbie chattered on about the mild weather they were having for August and Lauren made murmuring noises of agreement, but all the while she was thinking about how greener this was than Hoboken and how she needed this job.

The taxi slowed and turned between two large stone pillars. A tall sign with black Gothic letters announced St. Ursula’s Preparatory Academy and then they were climbing up a winding strip of blacktop between towering oaks and pines.

“There she is,” the cabbie said, pointing ahead out the windshield, and Lauren caught another glimpse of a stone building before it, too, vanished as the road curved around the hillside.

The same building appeared again between the trees and then another building near it and then they crested the hill and the campus was before them, a large complex of stone buildings, the most massive of which sat at the peak of a semicircle driveway. The other buildings surrounding it stretched out at different points on a mandala of concrete pathways.

The taxi pulled to a stop in front of the main building. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” She paid him with money carefully counted and then he was gone and she was alone, making one last attempt to smooth the wrinkles out of her skirt.

Only she wasn’t alone. A girl dressed from head to toe in black was hunched in a corner of the wide stone steps under an overhang, tucked so close to the wall that Lauren almost missed her. The hair was what she noticed, an astonishing coppery red color. The girl was smoking, the acrid scent of tobacco unmistakable, but she had the cigarette cupped under the hand resting on the lower step, hiding it without putting it out.

“Hi,” she said without smiling and Lauren repeated the greeting, wondering if she should say something. The girl was obviously underage. Was this some kind of test for prospective teachers? Should she tell the girl to put out her cigarette?

The front door of the building suddenly opened and a tall, horse-faced woman with a gray suit that matched her iron gray hair stepped out.

“Morgan, you know smoking isn’t allowed. You don’t want me to report that to Sister Rose, do you?”

The girl stubbed out the cigarette with a hostile look and the woman suddenly seemed to notice Lauren.

“May I help you?” she said and her eyes flicked up and down like a laser, zeroing in on the wrinkled suit.

“I’m here for an interview.”

“The main office is inside and down the hall to the left.” The woman held the door for her and gave a faint sniff as Lauren passed.

The hall was dark and empty. Wood was her first impression, dark wood and lots of it. Front and center was a large wooden crucifix with a marble Christ figure hanging above an intricately carved wooden console table. On the center of the table was a foot-tall marble statue of the Virgin Mary; she stood on a wooden base with her arms extended, head bowed submissively, and lips curved in a slight, Mona Lisa smile.

Lauren’s heels clicked loudly on the ivory marble tile floor and she wished she’d thought to check her hair in the bathroom at the station. It had finally gotten long enough to pull back and she’d fastened the unruly mass of gold curls at the base of her neck with a silver clip, hoping it made her look more mature.

The headmistress’s office was marked with a discreet black-lettered sign. A young woman with sleek black hair, wearing a blue twinset and matinee-length pearls sat in the outer office at an old wooden desk, looking for all the world like someone out of the 1940s, except she was typing away on a state-of-the-art desktop that seemed to be giving her trouble. She looked up with a pleasant smile and adjusted the stylish tortoiseshell glasses slipping down her small nose.

“May I help you?”

Lauren introduced herself. “I’ve got an interview with Sister Rose Merton?”

The young woman consulted a spiral-bound black appointment book. “Yes, of course, you’re her nine o’clock.” She gave Lauren a broad smile and adjusted the glasses again. “The headmistress will be with you in just a moment. If you’d like to take a seat?”

She gestured behind Lauren, who suddenly noticed the brown velvet sofa near an arrangement of large potted ferns. The door to the inner sanctum was at the far end of the sofa. It was open a crack.

Lauren took a seat on the couch and placed her slim briefcase carefully beside her. She sat up straight and took several deep breaths, looking at the painting in a gilt frame hanging on the wall. It was a vaguely familiar scene, a cluster of whey-faced, robe-wearing young women with oil lamps. Something from the Bible, Lauren thought, and hoped that there wouldn’t be questions that tested her religious knowledge. Thank God she was being interviewed for a history position, not religion.

She realized she could hear voices through the door. Or one raised voice and the murmuring of another, clearly placating.

“—excuses being made for the way my daughter has been treated!”

Lauren glanced at the secretary but she was engrossed in her typing again, seemingly oblivious. She looked back at the door and jumped as the voice continued. “What I’m asking is that everything not be blamed on Morgan.”

So it was the mother of the smoker. Lauren tried not to listen, but the lower the voices got the greater her urge to hear what they were saying. She caught fragments about rule breaking, about suspension, about other girls.

All at once the door opened and a tall, elegantly dressed woman with the same striking coppery hair and a frown marring her patrician features strode out. She was followed by a shorter, rounder woman wearing a look of resigned patience.

Lauren stood up and the shorter woman smiled at her.

“I’ll be right with you,” she said. She followed Morgan’s mother out of the room. The secretary caught Lauren’s eyes and rolled her own with a slight smile. Who or what that referred to Lauren wasn’t sure, but she smiled back.

A few minutes passed while Lauren waited, flipping through the magazines on the coffee table, a strange combination of religious and secular. She was barely able to focus. The headmistress came back into the room and spoke quietly to the secretary for a moment before turning to Lauren.

“You must be Miss Kavanaugh,” she said, extending one deceptively soft-looking hand for a firm shake. “I’m Sister Rose Merton, the headmistress at St. Ursula’s.”

She ushered Lauren into her office and closed the door. This time, Lauren noticed, it really was closed.

“Please, have a seat,” Sister Rose gestured toward two upholstered chairs that sat in front of a large mahogany desk that dominated the room.

Lauren took a seat in one as Sister Rose moved silently behind the desk, noticing that unlike the headmistress’s own leather office chair, the chairs in front of the desk were rigidly upright as if not to lull any visitors to the office into a false sense of security.

The wall to the left of Sister Rose’s desk was lined, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves. The wall opposite was hung with tasteful, if somewhat bland, landscapes in gilt frames. Directly behind her desk, hung so it appeared to be looking over her shoulder, was a sepia-tinted photo of a grim-faced nun in full habit. Directly above her was a large gold crucifix.

“Sister Augustine Clement,” Sister Rose said, following Lauren’s gaze. “St. Ursula’s founding headmistress. A smart and tenacious woman.”

The two nuns were a study in contrasts. Unlike her predecessor, Sister Rose wore no habit. She was dressed simply in a plain navy blue suit with an unadorned white blouse. She wore earrings, small pearl studs, and a gold circle pin was affixed to her lapel; a crucifix was at its center. The pin and the plain gold band on the ring finger of her left hand were the only official markers of her membership in a celibate community devoted to God. To the casual observer, she could have been just another grandmother.

She had short, dove-gray hair and piercing steel-gray eyes that were at odds with the soft and crepelike quality of her pale skin and her benign smile. She rested her plump arms on the desk and folding her hands, turned her intense focus on Lauren.

“As I mentioned when we spoke, one of our teachers unexpectedly retired and we have an unanticipated, and unwelcome, vacancy for this academic year.”

Lauren nodded. She’d been thrilled to get the call, anticipating another year of substitute teaching. She was in the bind that all new teachers were in, anxious to get a full-time job in a system that only wanted to hire the experienced. She’d never imagined that she’d get the opportunity to teach at a prep school. Submitting her résumé to St. Ursula’s had been pro forma, nothing more. She’d simply canvassed every school in Northern New Jersey and sent them her résumé.

“Usually, we’d only consider a more experienced teacher,” Sister Rose said, as if reading Lauren’s thoughts, “but circumstances dictated that we broaden our search.”

The “circumstances” were just how close it was to the start of the academic year. School was slated to begin in just two weeks. More experienced teachers had their teaching jobs lined up and ready.

Sister Rose opened a file on her desk and pulled out Lauren’s résumé.

“I see that you’ve done a full year of substitute teaching in Hoboken.”

“Yes, it’s been a great experience.” It wasn’t a lie, not exactly. It had given her enough experience to know that caring about your students wasn’t enough to transform their lives. Poverty, burned-out administrators, and limited funding had a lot to do with academic failure. Not that these things would have deterred her from accepting a full-time job there, but teachers in these districts seemed to die in their posts.

“As I mentioned, Sister Agnes was the history teacher for our upper school for over twenty years,” Sister Rose continued. “It will be difficult to fill her shoes, but we must.”

She outlined the teaching responsibilities and Lauren listened, nodding when it was expected, asking intelligent questions when a pause indicated she should, while trying to appear interested but not overeager.

It was going well. They needed her—that was clear. She’d thought she was one of many candidates, but it didn’t sound like it.

“We are a traditional Catholic school, Miss Kavanaugh. Parents send their daughters here to receive the finest education in a setting that prepares them spiritually as well as intellectually for the challenges of adult life. Our girls attend Mass twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays, as well as on the holy days, of course.”

“Of course.”

Lauren couldn’t remember all the holy days. How many were there? The last time she’d been to Mass was while touring a church in Spain with Michael. He’d whispered “hocuspocus,” during the priest’s blessing of the congregation and she’d erupted into giggles, so they’d fled the building for the hot sunshine and cobble streets outside.

“As I think I explained, this job includes an apartment in one of our dormitories.” She looked inquiringly at Lauren, who nodded. Rent-free accommodations were definitely part of the appeal.

“The resident faculty member for each dormitory is responsible for the girls in that house—we call our dormitories houses—and will generally oversee their welfare while in the dormitory.”

Lauren wondered what welfare meant. She had a sudden vision of herself armed with a thermometer and a bottle of aspirin.

“Of course we have an infirmary,” Sister Rose said as if reading her thoughts. “You would not be responsible for the care of sick children, but you would see to it that the girls in that particular house would abide by the rules of St. Ursula’s, particularly as they pertain to curfews.”

“Are the girls allowed off school grounds?” Lauren asked.

“Yes, but there are rules regarding this as well. As you can see, we are not an easy walk into town. There is, however, a bus that runs at the base of the hill and girls do use this bus to go into town on the weekends.”

And she would have to use it, too, Lauren thought. She didn’t own a car and until this moment it hadn’t occurred to her that the job might require one. She was used to walking to the grocery store around the corner from her apartment in Hoboken, to going to the neighborhood bar for a drink in the evening. If she got this job she would be isolated during the week.

“I’m not familiar with St. Mary’s Academy,” Sister Rose said, glancing back down at the file open on her desk. “It’s outside Pittsburgh?”

Lauren nodded. The memories came in a rush. Rows of uniformed girls kneeling in the shadows of a dark church. St. Mary’s girls do not follow, they lead. A golden orb of incense swaying gently at the end of a long chain clutched in a priest’s veiny hand. The overwhelming smell of lilies.

“I see that you attended school there when you were younger, but you finished your education at a public institution?”

“Yes.” Lauren said. She’d anticipated the question, the need to know why she’d given up a religious institution for a secular one, and she’d prepared an answer. “I moved far away.”

She was sure that Sister Rose would ask more, but the headmistress just nodded briskly and looked back down at the open file.

“And you attended university in England?”

“Yes. The University of London.”

The headmistress nodded, fiddling with the thin silver chain that held a pair of black reading glasses against her chest. “Why did you choose to go overseas?”

“I’d always been interested in seeing Europe. It seemed like a great opportunity.”

Sister Rose seemed to consider this for a moment, nodding and looking down at the file in front of her. Lauren surreptitiously wiped her sweating palms against her skirt.

“And you studied history and education, but completed your teaching certificate last year once you’d come back to the United States?”

“Yes,” Lauren said, her hands relaxing against her lap. “I knew by then that I wanted to teach.”

A few perfunctory questions about her education classes and then Sister Rose abruptly closed the folder.

“Congratulations, Miss Kavanaugh. I trust you’ll be able to move in by next Tuesday at the latest?”

Lauren’s mouth fell open and then she thought how idiotic she must look and snapped it shut. “What? You mean I’ve got the job?”

Sister Rose gave her a small smile. “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. I’m afraid that this interview was pro forma. I had reviewed your credentials already and quite frankly you’re the only qualified candidate available at the moment. We simply had to meet you in person to be one hundred percent sure.”

She had the job. She had a full-time teaching job! The tension in Lauren’s shoulders eased and she felt them drop a bit.

“I’m sure you’ll understand that with your relative lack of experience, we can offer this position only on a probationary basis,” Sister Rose added. The smile vanished in place of a serious look. “We will see how the first semester goes and decide at the end of it whether or not you’ll continue at St. Ursula’s.”

That stung a bit, but still—it was her first full-time teaching job! If she had to prove herself in it, well, that was probably to be expected. Any school would want to evaluate her competence.

Sister Rose abruptly stood up. Lauren scrambled to her feet, still stunned. The headmistress stuck out her hand and gave Lauren’s a surprisingly firm shake. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Kavanaugh. I look forward to your arrival next week.”

On the train journey back to her cramped apartment, Lauren replayed the interview in her head and wondered at having gotten the job. She needed it so badly and she’d gotten it.

All the way out here on the train, she’d kept up an internal pep talk, telling herself that if she didn’t get this job, there would be another. Only not this year.

It was too late for any other job to come through. The most she could have expected was for some regular teacher to go on maternity leave and free up a long-term substitute position.

So what that she had to live so far from a town. There were buses—she’d manage. And she could save money and pay off the credit card companies breathing down her neck. Every day she’d checked her messages and the mail, hoping to hear from a school, but now she wouldn’t have to bother.

Thinking of the mail reminded her of what had arrived in yesterday’s post. There’d been such a gap between this letter and the last that she’d gotten a shock when she saw the slim white envelope stuck in the middle of a pile of bills. She thought—she’d hoped—he’d forgotten all about her, but he never would.

It had taken him so long to find her and now she would be leaving again. Maybe this time he wouldn’t be able to find her. She stared out at the dirty window at the wet landscape streaking past, hands clenched in fists in her lap. Maybe at the school she would finally be safe.

At night the lights go out and the school rests. From the sky, spotted by low-flying planes, it looks like some great coiled beast, the peaks of the rooftops like scales on a dragon’s back.

Lights must be out in the dormitories at ten; that is the rule and that is the official end to the day.

The first day was over. The hustle of moving in, the rush of old girls finding one another and the stress of new girls finding their way around—all of this noise was absorbed by the stone buildings and dissipated into the woods surrounding them. The day was over and everything that has happened now slipped into the past.

At night the school rests, but not everyone. There was movement in the dark hallways. Hours have passed. Those who were watching waited and then wait some more. Fifteen minutes after midnight they slip out of the doorways from different houses. They are used to carrying their shoes and stepping silently. They are used to pulling hoods over their faces.

Out of the houses they came, silent figures moving through the darkness. They don’t speak until they’re past the buildings, until they’re in the shelter of the trees.

“Hurry,” one of them said. “We’re late.” She held a small flashlight pointed at the ground. A round beam of light, eight inches across, is all that guides them. Still, they are used to this. They found the path they needed and moved along it.

“How do you know she’s even going to be here?”

“I heard her telling someone.”

Their feet crunched quietly against the crushed limestone, but they didn’t worry. No one will hear them out here, well, maybe not no one.

They found her near the pond. She was taking off her clothes slowly, piece by piece, and they watched her in the darkness. One of them giggled as the girl stripped off her bra and panties, adding them to the pile of clothes she left on the bank. She didn’t hear, though, because she was moving toward the water.

“You couldn’t pay me to swim in there,” one of them whispered only to be hushed by the others. The girl looks as if she might agree, lifting her foot out as soon as she put it in, obviously cold, her pale arms wrapped around an even paler torso. But this was only for a second. In the next, she stepped into the water, moving forward until she was swallowed by the dark liquid.

“What’s she doing? Where did she go?” A hiss in the silence.

“Ssh, there she is.”

Up again, emerging from the water like a sylph, like Venus, her hair hanging about her pale shoulders as she stood for a moment. And then she began to swim, careful strokes with her head above the water. She floated on her back and they could see that she was staring up at the sky. She was saying something. She was talking to the moon.

“God, she’s so weird.”

“Where’s the rope?”

She doesn’t see them until she’s swimming back to the shore, until she’s stepped forward in the soft mud of the bank, until it’s too late to run, too late to do anything but scream.

There are flames licking her hands, curling around the pale pink of her skin like orange petals on some deadly flower. The heat is curling the tiny almost invisible hairs on her bare calves. Something sizzles and there is a smell she doesn’t know, a charred scent, steak on a grill but with something sweet overlying it.

Lauren woke with a start, breathing hard. For a moment she didn’t know where she was, expecting to see the brightly colored Matisse poster she’d hung over a long scar in the chipped plaster of her apartment in Hoboken. Instead there are bare, cream-colored walls.

She didn’t see the battered chest of drawers she’d rescued from someone’s garbage. There is only a single bed with a nightstand tucked beside it and a closet. Above the bed, hanging above her head, is a crucifix in dark wood with the Christ figure in silver. She reached up a hand and ran it over the cool metal. The clock on the nightstand glowed five o’clock. Her first class as a full-time teacher would begin in just under four hours.

Moving day had been yesterday. She’d arrived along with most of the students. The sound of car doors slamming and teenage voices squealing echoed through the halls. Boxes and trunks were hauled into rooms by drivers. Music began playing almost as soon as the first girl arrived.

There were ten dormitories, called “houses,” all of them in the same Victorian Gothic style as the main building, all of them named for Doctors of the Church. Six began with “A”: Ambrose, Anselm, Augustine, Aquinas, Anthony, and Avila. The remaining four began with “B”: Basil, Bonaventure, Bernard, Bede. Lauren’s apartment was in Augustine House.

The inside of the building was relatively modern. The long hallways were carpeted and each room was outfitted with twin beds, desks, dressers, and a shared bookcase. The windows were casement style, but they were double-glazed and the house smelled of fresh paint.

At one end of the hallway was a large common room, where girls could watch TV or play the board games that were stacked on a shelf. At the other end was her apartment