Three played a 'Wicked Game.' Now, it's time for round two.
One will fight. One will meet The Maker. And one will try to keep them all safe.
The world may be black and white but to win this game, they'll have to play in the gray.
Harper stared at the shards of shattered glass covering the spot-stained green carpet as she sat in a wicker chair. It was the only chair that came with the room. Room 253. With her eyes, she tried to piece the oblong vase back together like the countless jigsaw puzzles she and her mom assembled. Those two shards by the wall, connected. Those two under the duck picture, they connected. Peeking from underneath something that was the combination of a dresser and a TV stand was a round, disk-like piece that was the bottom of the vase.
Then for a second, her eyes fluttered on the TV, which was a make and model she hadn't seen since in her life. A reporter she'd never seen before, which happened to be all of them since she rarely watched the news, was standing in front of a residential home; a red banner sprawled across the screen that read, Maine Teen Girl Found Dead; Asphyxiated With Marble.
Harper's eyes dropped back to the floor, reassembling the vase in her mind. She focused on the pieces scattered in the middle of the floor. After she connected all those she searched for smooth cylinder pieces that could be attached to the base. Bingo! There it was! Next to Preston's foot, covered in red—staining the filthy carpet. Her eyes widened even more than they already were seeing the boy's bloody face. The tricolor shards lodged in the side of Dalton's puffy face. The chair squeaked as she shifted.
"Keep your hands on your knees!" Preston ordered pulling out a shard of glass from Noah's face with the tweezers he confiscated out of her purse (her nail rescue kit to be exact.)
Dalton cringed, clenching his fist as Preston dug deep into his face at another piece of glass, this one yellow, from his non-existent cheek. "It's lodged in here."
"I'm sorry..." Harper started, gripping her pointy knees. "But in my defense, you jumped out at me."
"I was coming out of the restroom." Dalton twitched his face pulling the glass out of the tweezers.
"In the dark." She clarified animatedly. "Of a creepy hotel room."
Preston clasped the tweezers closed pinching a patch of glass-free skin and yanked.
"Shit! Preston!" Dalton flinched when Preston reached for his face again.
"Keep still!" Preston gripped Dalton's chin steady. "Harp shut up!" He shot her a sharp look. "You don't just go around hitting people. Who did you think you were? Al Capone."
"I don't do well with things popping out in front of me." Harper leaped from the chair. "I apologized so..."
Dalton waved the tweezer-wielding Preston away, "It doesn't stop the pain but...thanks." Dalton grabbed his coat off the bed and headed for the door.
Harper jumped in front of the door refusing his itchy hand from taking hold of the rusting doorknob. "Where are you going? You told us to meet you here." She wafted her inquiring eyes over his anxiety-riddled face. "What about the note you sent me? What do I need to know about Isabeth, Faith, and Alex?"
He stepped back with a growing smile on his face. "I can't believe you can't see it." He combed his smooth hand through his tousled locks, "They're liars. Ever since they came out of the Asylum it seems like they're their elite group and they...Isabeth isn't the same person we—" He looked down at his hands with horror. "Our friends are hiding something from us and that's not the worst of it." His blue eyes scrolled up to her cloaked in dread.
"What's the worst of it?" Preston turned off the TV hearing his father's voice in his head saying, these lights don't pay themselves.
"What secrets are they keeping?" Harper moved away from the door with tentative steps hanging on every one of Dalton's words. "Tell me!"
Dalton roughly wiped his mouth. "Alex had Dr. Fulton captive." He did a half twirl laying his eyes on the water-stained walls and asbestos ceiling. "Isabeth thought she killed him and—" His jaw locked as he stared out the half-shut blinds.
"And what?" Harper ignored Dalton's lost concentration but not Preston. Preston cracked open a blind with his finger to only see a sparely occupied parking lot shawled in darkness.
Dalton wrung the jacket in his shaky hands, "I still see his face. His blood on my hands." He thrashed the jacket against the dresser. "I can't. I can't." He grabbed her face. "I'm telling you to look. Think with your pretty little head." Harper pulled at his hands as he grabbed her face tighter, Preston tugged at his bulging arms. "Use that brain thousands of dollars have been spent on. You know something's wrong with our friends?" He let her go.
Harper rubbed her heated cheeks, " Just tell me!" She shivered all over. "You're scaring me, Dalton."
"It hears its name." Dalton quickly grabbed the duffle bag off the floor. "Like a lullaby lingering in the wind." He yanked the burner phone off the nightstand and stuffed it in his pocket. "Then it comes for you. It stalks you in the darkness until you can't go any further. Then when you least expect it you'll taste the wrath of its blade." He shoved his arms into his coat pocket; his eyes went dim and his face turned lax.
"It's coming for me." He choked back his sorrow. "I'm afraid, Harper." He rushed to the door and then stopped. Harper let a tear slide down her face. "I need you to find what our friends are hiding and maybe you can stop it from coming for me, too." He licked his lips gripping the doorknob tightly. "I got to get out of here. I got to run. I already can't sleep." Then Dalton was gone like a thief in the night.
"He can't sleep," Harper muttered as she wiped the tear from her cheek leering at the door. "What does that mean?" She turned to Preston.
"I don't know." Preston let his hand fall from the blinds, "But maybe it's the reason Fiona's dead and Faith's missing."
Harper shook her hands nervously, "Let's get back to Evening before..."
"Before whatever's chasing him finds us," Preston spoke the words she failed to as he rushed to the door.
What do you think is after Dalton? Or who?
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