The Perfect Murder She Planned

1: 1

After my top college pick came through, I went hiking with my childhood friend and my best friend.

We spent the whole day out, had a few drinks, and split up at a barbecue joint to head home in the small hours.

I'd just showered and was ready to sleep.

Then Clive Gilbert was knocking outside my door. Bells, have you managed to reach Olivia Summers?

She's been gone all day. The whole class is scared something's happened to her. Message her, please, tell her not to do anything stupid!

I blinked, and answered without thinking. Clive, are you drunk?

Olivia was with us all day. She was in a great mood. What's there to be upset about? She just went to take a shower a minute ago, humming to herself.

His voice cut off.

I figured he'd sobered up and gone home to sleep.

Then the next second, his voice came back, thick with fear.:

Olivia's with you?!

But she just posted a suicide note. The class president found her body at the school building!

A jolt ran through me.

My eyes went straight to the bathroom door. It was shut, the frosted glass letting through the patter of running water and a soft blur of light.

I asked, not quite sure of myself. Clive, you're joking, right?

It's the middle of the night. This isn't funny at all. You nearly gave me a heart attack.

But Clive's voice didn't change. If anything, it got more strained, more frantic.

Bells, I'm not joking.

Open the door first. I don't dare talk loud through it. I'm scared I'll wake her up!

Gooseflesh rose all over me.

It was summer, but a cold crept into my body on its own, the fine hairs on my arms standing on end.

I ignored Clive's pushing from outside and opened the social feed first.

Right at the top, the very first post, was my best friend's profile picture.

I tapped open the long image she'd posted.

I only read the first line, and it turned me to ice.

I'm sorry, everyone. I'm sorry, Mom and Dad. I'm sorry to my classmates. But I really don't have the courage to face life anymore.

Shaking, I kept reading.

It seemed she'd given so much, sacrificed so much.

Three years of high school, and someone who loved looking pretty had cut her hair short, gone bare-faced every day, stopped bothering with herself.

When everyone else wore new clothes out on breaks, she was still moving between cram-school classes in her dull gray uniform.

She was under enormous pressure.

She wasn't that smart. Every exam she gave it everything she had, and the scores still came back disappointing.

Her parents blamed her, her teachers sighed, her classmates doubted her.

Until the girl who'd studied her way into the honors class broke down sobbing.

I read every word of her hurt and pain, and tears wet the screen.

Eyes blurred, I opened the class group chat.

999+ messages had already blown up. I jumped to the top, to the message that tagged everyone.

Help!

I was helping a teacher sort papers today and left my earbuds in the office. When I went back for them, I saw Olivia jump off the roof of the school building!

Right after, the class president posted a photo.

It was blurred out, but you could still make out red, and a mess of flesh.

I tapped it open to look, like I was punishing myself.

In a corner I found the keychain Olivia always carried.

It was her favorite anime character, something she treasured, never went anywhere without.

The last thread of doubt burned away.

In its place came a thick, heavy grief and fear.

Only then did I remember what Clive had said.

If Olivia was already dead, then who had gone hiking with me, who had come home with me...

I was about to open the door and let Clive in.

Then Olivia came out of the bathroom, done with her shower.

She grinned at me, a strange smile spreading across her face.

Bella Henson, who are you talking to?

2: 2

My skin prickled cold all over.

Before I could do anything, a message came through from Clive.

I cupped my hand around the phone, put some distance between me and Olivia, and tapped play on mute.

Bang! !!

The video was short, but I screamed the instant it started.

Because it was school security footage.

The whole thing, Olivia going off the roof, exported and looping in front of me, frame by frame.

I stared at that spreading pool of blood on the ground and couldn't hold back the sound of gagging.

Cold sweat soaked through the back of my shirt. I didn't dare lift my head to look at the person in front of me.

The real Olivia was already a smear of pulp on the pavement.

So this thing in front of me, what was it...

My mind raced, spinning through every way to get out.

That was when Clive messaged again.

"Bells, the thing beside you is a powerful, filthy thing. She'll keep feeding on your life force until you die without ever noticing!"

"There's only one way to break it. Don't believe a single thing she says, and get completely away from her!"

"She's set your home as her anchor. She can't leave its range. If you just run outside, you're saved!"

"But you have to do it quietly. Whatever you do, don't alert it!"

"If she realizes you already know the truth, she'll kill you on the spot!"

I stepped back without thinking, twice.

I quickly messaged Clive: "Okay, are you outside the door?"

"I'm coming right now. Meet me at the door!"

Clive sent me a photo.

He was standing right at my front door, holding up a wooden warding sword and a ring of garlic.

I glanced at Olivia, who hadn't moved.

Little steps, edging sideways, counting the distance to the door in my head.

Then, fast, so fast I forgot to breathe, I spun and ran and threw the door open.

But outside was empty.

Pitch black. Not a sliver of light.

I looked, on instinct, to the spot in the photo where Clive had been standing, and the stairwell there was simply gone!

The elevator light was dead.

The staircase broke off into nothing.

Across the hall there was no Clive's front door either, just a black wall.

My whole body locked up.

I messaged Clive over and over.

But it just kept spinning, sending, failing to send.

Footsteps rose behind me.

One step. One step. Closer and closer.

Stiffly, I turned my head.

And saw Olivia's furious face.

She yanked me back inside and slammed the door shut hard.

The door boomed heavy in its frame, and my heart shuddered with it.

I stood by the door, not daring to speak, not daring to look at her.

Terrified that the next second she'd turn into some horrible thing and lunge at me and eat me.

Instinct made me shrink back, my heartbeat going faster and faster.

Thud, thud.

Until a voice broke the silence of the room.

"You want to die, Bella?"

My heart pounded like it couldn't take any more, and I couldn't hold on. I dropped to the floor and gasped for air.

My hands flew up over my head on their own: "Don't kill me, don't kill me!"

But what I heard was Olivia's annoyed voice: "Bella, you've lost your mind!"

"Bolting out the door in the middle of the night, do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"

"You come back inside and now you're saying don't kill you? You drank something bad, didn't you, you're not making any sense!"

I lifted my head, confused.

The person in front of me stood under the light, scolding me with a face full of irritation, her shadow stretched long.

All at once the air went out of me, and then I broke down sobbing.

"Olivia, you're not dead!"

"Ah, hu hu hu hu, Clive said you were dead, said you were a filthy thing that was going to kill me. I was so scared just now, hu hu hu..."

But Olivia got angry.

She flung my hands off and said, "Clive, Clive, Clive, all day long it's just Clive with you!"

"He's about to get you killed and you still trust him this much. You're going to be the death of me!"

3: 3

I froze.

Before I could get a word out, Olivia went on. "This afternoon you swore up and down you'd never speak to him again. By tonight you'd already made up."

"Bella, you and Clive really are close. For his sake you'd throw your own life away."

However I turned it over, the words felt wrong.

I couldn't help asking, "What's that supposed to mean?"

At the same time I lowered my head and started texting Clive.

Olivia saw what I was doing and let out a small scoff.

Her voice was flat. "Nothing, really. I shouldn't have dragged you back just now. Go on, go find your precious Clive."

"If I had to guess, you suddenly wanted to run out because he told you to, right?"

I nodded.

Olivia's expression turned even more mocking.

"I knew it. You going crazy in the middle of the night was never going to be anything good."

Clive still hadn't answered my message, so I held my patience and asked, "What is actually going on?"

"Clive told me you were dead. He even showed me a video of you jumping off a building."

"And you say Clive wants to kill me. Which one of you is telling the truth?"

Olivia thrust out her arm, unimpressed.

"Touch it and you'll know."

"Who's dead? I'm right here, alive and well. Feel how warm I am!"

At that I reached out and touched her, then gave her arm a couple of squeezes.

The warmth of her skin came through, and something in me settled a little.

Olivia really was a living person.

Which meant the one lying was Clive.

"Why would he lie to me?"

Olivia drank a glass of water and sat down on the couch. "Do you really not remember any of it?"

"This afternoon on the hike, the two of you argued about college. A huge fight."

"You said some awful things. Clive got angry and almost pushed you off the mountain."

"If I hadn't stopped him, you might not even be standing here now."

The whole time she talked, I kept watching her body.

When I saw that the water really had gone down into her stomach and hadn't leaked out anywhere, the weight in my chest finally lifted.

But another question surfaced.

"What? Clive pushed me off the mountain?"

"Why don't I have the slightest memory of it?"

Olivia said nothing. She just pulled out her phone and showed me a video.

It was the three of us coming down the mountain.

In the video, Clive asked me, "Bella, do you really want the Ivy League?"

"Yes, I do." The words came right out of me.

His face darkened.

"Where did this sudden urge to apply to the Ivy League come from? Didn't we agree to go to the same school? Bella, drop out and take the year over."

I thought about Northwood University, the school Clive had applied to.

It was a well-known school too, but it was two whole tiers below the Ivy League.

This year's SATs were hard, and the average cutoff scores had come out a few points lower than usual.

My score was just within reach if I stretched for it.

So I'd been bold and put the Ivy League down as my first choice. If I didn't get in, my second choice would catch me.

And if I did get in, I couldn't lose.

Working all that out had taken only a few minutes. I'd rushed to redo my applications before the system closed, checked them again, and submitted.

After that came the nervous waiting.

I hadn't expected the results today, that I'd scraped in and gotten into the Ivy League.

I was in the wrong on this, but it still made me angry that Clive wanted me to retake the year, and it came through in my tone.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you ahead of time."

"The Ivy League really is my dream. I thought that even though you were upset we didn't get into the same school, you'd still be happy for me. I never imagined you'd want me to redo the whole year..."

Clive's face fell.

"You're going back on your word!"

"Bella, everything we've been to each other since we were kids, and it can't measure up to some Ivy League school?"

"I don't care. You're dropping out, end of story!"

A furious little laugh escaped me.

I turned my head away then and there, done wasting words on him.

I hadn't expected that to set him off.

He stared at my back, his eyes dark.

And then his hand shot out toward me.

4: 4

The video cut off.

I broke into a cold sweat, still shaking, and looked at Olivia.

"When did this happen? Why don't I remember any of it?"

Olivia's voice came low and quiet. "You only remember us having fun, don't you? Everything else is just gone."

I nodded.

In my memory, Clive and I really had fought, and I'd stopped speaking to him.

But afterward Clive came to make up with me, apologized for saying things without thinking, and we went back to normal.

I looked at Olivia, confused.

She didn't answer. Instead she moved on to something else.

She pulled me toward the door.

"I don't know what you saw out there, but look again. Does it still look the way it did before?"

I fixed my eyes on it.

Outside the door, everything had gone back to normal.

The stairs, the wall across from me, all of it laid out the way it had always been, the lights in the hallway glowing again.

Nothing like the darkness from a few minutes ago.

I couldn't believe it. I dragged Olivia up the stairs, down the stairs, and knocked on the wall across the way.

The hard, solid feel of it told me these things were real, that they'd never gone anywhere.

A fine crawl of goosebumps rose over my skin.

Cold sweat running, I looked at Olivia. "Just now it was all darkness, I couldn't see anything, nothing was there"

"And the thing in the video"

"And him saying you were already dead"

"What is going on? I need someone to explain this to me!"

Olivia sighed. "I knew it would come to this. Do you remember what Clive put down as his first-choice major?"

"Medical psychology?"

"That's right. He's a genius at it. He learned hypnosis a long time ago."

A shudder ran through me, and a nameless panic rose in my chest.

"Looks like you're starting to understand."

Olivia read my reaction and spoke without hurry. "From the moment you started down the mountain, Clive was already hypnotizing you."

She pointed at my head. "Your memory. Something's gone wrong with it."

"Clive is blurring what's real and what's not. Keep this up and you won't be able to tell the real world from the illusions. No one will understand you. They'll just think there's something wrong with your mind."

"And in the end you'll turn completely into"

"A madwoman."

Her voice was soft, but each word landed on me heavy as iron.

I was truly afraid now.

My voice shook as I spoke. "Then what do I do?"

"I don't want to live like this, in a daze, half out of my mind. I just got into the Ivy League. My whole life is only just beginning!"

"Olivia, help me. You know all this already, so you must have a way, right?"

Olivia sighed and gave me two words. "Pain."

"Only enough pain can tear you out of the illusion and bring you back to reality."

She handed me a knife.

"Do it. I'll watch over you. I won't let anything happen to you."

The knife was sharp, its edge giving off a cold, cruel gleam inch by inch.

I bit my lip.

Olivia frowned, displeased. "Do you want to become a madwoman? I'm trying to help you here!"

Trembling, I took the knife.

I was gritting my teeth, about to draw it across my wrist, when a text from Clive suddenly came through.

"Don't trust Olivia!"

"She's luring you into spilling your blood!"