The two girls looked at each other mirroring the confusion on their faces before Jayden just shrugged, what a strange little town her aunt had moved them to. Alexa shook her head and walked back to her car, quick to open the convertible’s trunk and place their packages inside.
Suddenly she shivered as if a ghost had walked right through her setting her internal alarms off. Alexa whipped her head around as she scanned the area but found no wrong upon her sweep. She couldn’t place her finger on it but she was certain that someone had been looking at her, the back of her neck still tingling at the feel of the sinister gaze.
Shaking it off when she spotted no one out of the ordinary she quickly joined her cousin, who had gotten into the car whilst Alexa had put their things away. The eighteen-year-old then pulled out of the parking spot and made her way toward the dance school, where her sister was just beginning to finish her lesson.
Dull brown eyes shrunk back into the darkness of a tinted black truck, tinged with a murderous possessiveness as the engine roared to life. Ready to follow the blue convertible to where the owner’s partner already waited.
A few minutes later the pair of girls pulled into the school, ignorant of the vehicle that had tailed them, and were astounded at the number of cars waiting. No matter how long she had lived in this little town Alexa could never get used to the number of people living it.
Alexa sighed irritably, this was the only dance school in Black Pines and all the children who wanted to dance were sent here, it certainly made fetching your own tiny person a long and annoying experience.
“How about you go on ahead and I’ll steal the first parking spot I see?” Jayden suggested rather helpfully as they idled behind a silver Volvo. The truck disappeared down the road, the man inside already making his way onto school property.
“Wonderful idea!” Alexa smiled and stopped the car, got out, and made her way toward the school entrance, ignoring the honking of the car behind her as the two cousins made the switch.
She found herself entering a particularly large herd of little kids and wondered to herself (and not for the first time) how there could be so many little people in such a small town.
Her deep blue irises finally rested on the form of her baby sister, her long curly brown hair bounced as she waved excitedly. She was about to make her way toward her sister when a solid object bumped into her sending her spiraling to the floor. That object was apparently a person.
“I am so sorry I didn’t see you there,” the pale woman apologized quickly and began to help the man pick up sheets of paper that he had dropped when they had bumped into each other. She noted how deathly pale his own skin was but thought nothing of it as she continued to assist him in his task of gathering papers, who was she to judge a man based on his lack of tan, her own lack of pigmented skin glaring back at her.
The man felt pleasure run through his spine, eyes darkening from muddy to almost black as her voice washed over him. ‘Soon’ he thought, suppressing the delicious grin.
Alexa continued this task oblivious to the emotions coursing through the man until she recognized the paper as photo paper. As a photographer, she enjoyed developing her pictures herself, but their house didn’t have enough room for a dark room.
It made developing her photos extremely hard because she had to drive to the next town over to send her film to a proper store. It was a three-day journey there and back, and another whole week before the photos were ready.
Alexa looked down at the pictures in her hand, and she couldn’t help being impressed at the pictures that were taken. They were landscape pictures, some in black and white and some in color.
The man had to suppress a pleased growl as he watched her admire his work, it truly was an admiral hobby he had picked up once he saw her with her own photographic device.
“Wow, these are really good,” she complimented. The man looked up in fake shock and looked her over, drinking in her form trying to save the image for his later pleasure. When his eyes met hers again, they were filled with a strange emotion that she couldn’t identify, and it made her squirm uncomfortably under his gaze.
“Thank you.” He said the words oozing over his tongue as he smiled in a creepy way. Alexa’s own smile became stiff, but he did not notice the difference.
Something caught the girl’s attention and she looked away from the man, he took this opportunity to walk away to continue his fond observations and by the time she looked back, he was gone. She looked around for him but didn’t see him at all. She became even more weirded out and quickly made her way to where she had seen her sister.
The man’s gaze caused shivers down her spine, and not the good ones. After his stare, she felt as if she were covered in the slime that had oozed out with his words. She suddenly had to fight the urge to take a bath.
As she neared, she saw another man talking to her sister, he was holding her pink and purple bag in one hand whilst the other was on the six-year-old’s shoulder. When the child saw her sister approaching, she pulled out of the man’s grip and ran to the redhead, her brown curls bounced with every step she took.
“Ally!” Gabriella cried out in happiness running as fast as her little legs could carry her. Colliding with the teen’s legs and almost sending her toppling toward the dirt for a second time that day. She kneeled and wrapped her arms around her little sister’s frame with a smile.
“Ally, this is Mister Stilinski,” she said excitedly, pulling her older sister with all her might to introduce the older girl to the man.
‘Stilinski, where have I heard that name before?’ Alexa thought to herself as she came to stand in front of the dirty blonde-haired man, who was still holding the Barbie-themed bag in his large hand.
“It’s a pleasure, Ally, is it?” The man held his hand out for a handshake and the other with the bag. She reached out to take the bag from him her ruby-centered ring glinting in the sun as she did so.
“Alexa Winters.” She stated, grabbing the bag from him, swinging it over her shoulders, and staring at his hand distrustfully. He then curled the hand that he had offered to her, up and retracted it.
“Ah, Miss Winters then,” he said stiffly, a forced smile on his lips. Alexa dropped her hands onto Gabriella’s shoulders and pulled her closer. She stepped away from him, eyebrows knitted in confusion.
“I don’t understand the reaction I am getting from this guy, have I always been this hostile to complete strangers?” Alexa wondered to herself, feeling uneasy in this man’s presence. She got the same feeling towards this man as she had the stranger before him. Something about these two men she had crossed paths with had set off red flags in her mind and that made her cautious.
“Well, my name is -”
“Raymond?!” The rather loud and angered shout came from behind Alexa, who turned to look over her shoulder to stare at her cousin.
Said woman came to stand next to Alexa and Gabriella, passing the car keys to the redhead and then turning to glare at the man, whose name was apparently Raymond.
“Oh, Jayden! What a wonderful thing it is to see you!” The man physically lit up, like a kid on Christmas.
“What the hell are you doing here?” She all but snarled at him. Her arms crossed. And once again Alexa wondered what this man had done to deserve such treatment from her cousin.
“Would you believe me if I said I was taking a vacation?” The question was so innocent, it left a sour taste in Jayden’s mouth. She too had the sudden urge to bathe and wash away the man’s foul words.
Alexa did not like this, not one bit. Everything about this man just oozed distrust and lies. Jayden was worried about what he would do and wanted to get both of her cousins away as fast as possible.
“No, where’s your shadow, Raymond?” He continued to look at her as if she were his personal slave, a piece of meat to tear apart.
His eyes roamed over her body, undressing her with his mud-colored eyes. There was something else in those muddy eyes of his, something that just screamed out possession as if he saw her as a mere trophy that he was just dying to claim.
“He’s around, my brother’s never been too far,” he said simply as if it explained everything. He looked over their heads in search of something before returning their muddy depths back to the twenty-one-year-old brunette.
Gabriella looked between the three adults and frowned, not understanding what was happening, or why they were all looking at each other like that. Still, she remained quiet and stood in front of her sister, with her sister’s hands clutching at her shoulders.
“It was a pleasure, Mister Stilinski,” was all Alexa said before she reached down grabbed Gabriella, and began to drag her away, not allowing the young girl to say goodbye. She made a sound and tried to pull away from her sister, who in turn just stopped and hooked her slender fingers under her sister’s arms and hoisted her up onto her hip, then continued to walk toward the car.
“Ally,” Gabriella whined
“Stay still Gabriella, don’t fight me on this,” Alexa said roughly. Gabriella immediately stopped fighting; she had never heard her sister talk to her like that and knew that she should listen.
Alexa opened the car door after unlocking it, placing Gabriella down, and pushing the driver’s seat forward. Gabriella climbed into the back seat, over the driver’s seat, and allowed her sister to help her put her seat belt on. The driver’s seat was pushed back into its place with an audible click.
Jayden, who took the little girl’s backpack from her cousin when she moved to put her into the backseat, opened the trunk of the car and placed it beside the brown paper bags containing their books which they had received earlier that day.
Jayden looked up after closing the boot door and tried to spot Raymond Stilinski, but it was as if he had vanished into thin air. She became highly suspicious and a tad bit worried. She then made her way to the passenger side of the car and climbed in, buckling in her own seatbelt.
Two men both with mud-colored brown eyes watched the two women climb into the metallic blue vehicle and smirked.
“That went rather well don’t you think dear brother?” a sinister smirk appeared on the pale man’s features.
“I would definitely say so,” the tanner man with the dirty blond hair agreed as he too smirked in self-satisfaction.
“Soon brother, soon they will be ours,” the younger brother with slicked-back black locks promised. They watched the vehicle pull out of the school lot before they went back to the tinted black truck just down the road.
“Who was that Jayden?” Alexa asked once they were out of the schoolyard and on their way home. She glanced at her cousin and saw that she looked ashamed of what Alexa couldn’t be sure.
“Raymond Stilin-”
“I know his name! What I want to know is who the hell he is to you!”
“An old boyfriend, a very old boyfriend…” Jayden cringed at this admission
“Wait, is this the same Stilinski from Ohio?” Alexa asked, finally realizing where she had heard the name before.
“… I broke up with him a few years ago, and he didn’t take it so well.” Jayden tried to explain, her shoulders slumped forward in her shame. “He has also been very, uhm, violently stalker-ish” She sounded unsure of how she said it, but her intentions were very clear.
“Stalker-ish?! Jayden, he was talking to my sister! My baby sister!” Alexa cried out in alarm, she continued to drive home, her car speeding down the road.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know he followed me here!” Jayden cried
“He was having a ‘chat’ with my baby sister Jay!” Alexa was outraged
“I am sorry, I didn’t know I swear.”
“Why didn’t you tell me he was still bothering you?”
“I didn’t know how to tell you, I am so sorry,” Jayden began to cry, so ashamed of having not only endangered her family but kept this a secret from her best friend.
“Ally?” The tiny voice broke through the tense atmosphere, Gabriella had been silent the whole drive and was very confused and worried.
“Everything is okay,” Alexa promised, taking her eyes off the road to look at her sister in the rear-view mirror, but by doing so she didn’t see a white BMW drift into their lane, the driver having fallen asleep whilst drunk driving.
“Alexa! Watch the road!” Nothing more was heard other than the high-pitched screeching of tires on the tar road.