Chapter 1

     Kimmi Carter had been looking forward to this night all week, and she was not, not going to let the events from earlier in the week get her down. Yes, it was unfortunate, tragic even, that one of her classmates had been found brutally murdered, and the killer – another classmate – had committed suicide afterward, but she and Ben had been planning this night for over a month – ever since she found out that her parents would be leaving her home alone for the weekend to attend a wedding – and nothing, nothing was going to ruin it.

     And besides, it’s not like she really knew Brian Robertson or Carley Benson, the boy who’d been murdered and the girl who had murdered him. Kimmi and Brian had one class together, back in Freshman year, and she’d had a couple classes with Carley, but that was it. As horrible as it was, she wasn’t going to let it ruin this night. Besides, it’s not like there was any lurking danger, anyway.

     She had it all planned out. She’d rented a romantic comedy for Ben and her to watch together, snuggling on the couch after having a nice, candlelit dinner of homemade chicken fettuccini alfredo. The whole house was decorated with tiny, flickering candles, and her bed was covered with rose petals. She and her best friend, Becky, had gone lingerie shopping earlier in the week and picked out an outfit – if it could even be called an outfit – that would make her mother’s head explode. The night was going to be perfect.

     She checked her watch. 8:15. He was fifteen minutes late. Granted, Ben was always late, but she would’ve thought he’d be on time for this, if not anything else…

     She was reaching for her cell to call him when the phone chimed, indicating an incoming FaceSpace message.

     This had better be good, she thought, as she picked up the phone, seeing that the message was from Ben.

      “The notes keep playing, playing in my head…They keep repeating, 'til all I see is red…The world is swaying, swaying, but soon I'll be dead…The rhythm won’t stop beating, an endless night’s ahead…”

     “What the fuck?” Kimmi cursed, trying to suppress the shiver running down her spine. Ben was not exactly the poetic type, and she did not find it the least bit amusing that the first poem he wrote for her was such a creepy one.

      Kimmi tried calling Ben, but it just went straight to voicemail.

     She rushed to the sliding glass doors that led from the living room onto the back patio and yard, and breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was locked. She turned to go check the garage door, but stopped when something out in the yard caught her eye. She turned back, certain her eyes had played a trick on her, but they had not.

     The pool had turned completely red. It was early November, and the pool was heated, so a thin layer of mist obscured a clear view of the pool, but it was undeniably red, which was a stark contrast to its usual luminescent blue-green.

     Although every ounce of common sense and self preservation instincts screamed at her not to, she unlocked the patio door, opened it, and stepped out into the brisk November evening. She shivered – not entirely from the cold – and hugged herself tightly as she crossed the patio toward the pool, which waited, ominous and patient, at the edge of the lawn.

     As she drew closer, she began to make out through the mist a figure that appeared to be floating in the middle of the pool. The closer she got, the more features she could make out, and it appeared to be human.

     Even though her mind silently screamed for her to stop and run back inside, her feet ignored her. She was going to have to have a serious talk with those podiatral traitors later.

     As she stepped up to the edge of the pool, she could see for certain that the form in the pool was human, and definitely the source for the change in the pool’s color. He was floating face up, and Kimmi recognized the face immediately (though, on some level, she didn’t need to see it, because she knew whose face it was going to be).

     It was Ben, his jaw hanging open, in a horrific frozen scream, blood flowing freely from a gaping slit in his throat.

     Kimmi fell to her knees and retched into the pool, adding an even further variety of color to the already tainted water.

     “H-hello, Kimmi,” came a voice from behind her.

     Kimmi spun around, and found herself face-to-face with Derek Hughes, a nerdy kid from her class. Derek was short, for a guy, at least. Barely taller than Kimmi, herself. Glasses obscured his face, and he was wearing tattered jeans, sneakers, and an old, grey hoodie, all of which were splattered with blood – Ben’s blood.

     His eyes were twitching nervously, as were the fingers of his left hand. His right hand was clenched tightly around an old-fashioned barber’s razor knife.

     “Derek, w-what have you d-done?” Kimmi asked, trying to pull her jumble of emotions – panic, grief, fear, nausea, terror, etc. – into some semblance of order so that she might be able to somehow get herself out of this alive.

     “I…I’ve always h-had a thing for you, Kimmi,” Derek stammered, his eyes and fingers continuing to twitch beyond his control. “Ever since…since second grade. B-but you were always too c-cool to be b-bothered with me.”

     “Is that what this is about, Derek?” Kimmi shrieked, indignantly. “My God, you fucking killed him, over some stupid crush? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

     On some level, she knew that yelling at him like that probably was not the best of plans, but she just couldn’t control it, logic was just one thing that her emotionally strained brain could not process right now. Fortunately, it seemed that the angrier she got, the calmer he became.

     “No…no. It…it’s not about that,” Derek replied softly. “I…I can’t explain it. Please understand…h-how can you, though, when even I…I don’t. It’s just…the notes…they won’t stop…I have to make them stop…you can understand that, can’t you?”

     “What the fuck are you talking about, you fucking freak?” Kimmi shrieked. Nothing was making any sense. How could the night – this night – have gone this way?

     Suddenly, a light came on next door in Mrs. Carcharan’s house.

     God, I’ve been so stupid! Kimmi thought to herself.

     She turned toward Mrs. Carcharan’s house and started to yell for help, but Derek was upon her before she even realized he had moved. He shoved her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her.

     As she struggled to regain her breath, Derek knelt down and sat lightly upon her belly, straddling her torso between his thighs.

     “I’m so sorry,” he said, tears streaming down his face, as he slit her throat with the barber’s blade.

     He leaned in and kissed her on her bloody lips, and whispered in her ear,

     “The notes keep playing, playing in my head...They keep repeating, 'til all I see is red...The world is swaying, swaying, but soon I'll be dead...The rhythm won’t stop beating, an endless night’s ahead.”

     Then, as Kimmi Carter died, still pinned between the thighs of her murderer, Derek Hughes reached up and slit his own throat from ear to ear.