Page 2 of Fright Night (Twisted Holidays #3)

TWO

OAKLEY

My arm is numb from lying on it all night when I jerk awake on my stomach to my very annoying and very demanding alarm urging me from sleep to get ready for work. For a job I barely enjoy, although this month’s been more in line with my dreams.

Ugh.

Hair frizzled from sleep tumbles into my face, and I push it away while stretching for my phone plugged in on my nightstand, to end the blaring that immediately makes my head pound.

As my hand stretches for the device lying facedown, it hits me that something’s wrong. My phone should be on the stand, plugged in…not unplugged and resting screen-side down.

Maybe I knocked it from the charger in my sleep. Wouldn’t be the first time and probably won’t be the last.

Without thinking more on it, I tap the yellow alarm button to end the wailing.

Before my screen goes dark, it teases the notifications that arrived throughout the night.

The three bubbles marked J make me wish I could toss my phone out the window.

It’s nearing the end of the month, so his reminder is annoyingly on time.

Not that blackmail ever needs a reminder.

With a groan, I push away thoughts of my ex to soak up my remaining free seconds before the thing called adulting forces me from bed.

As my head falls back to the pillow, smothering my face because maybe if I suffocate myself it’ll mean never having to endure another dinner with my stepfather and mom—yesterday evening’s activity—my back pulls taut, like something is caked on it.

Weird.

With an awkward reach, I stretch my arm around to feel the skin there. My fingers coast over a dried substance, which only creates more questions.

Pushing onto my hands and knees, I scan the mattress beneath me for the source but the sheet appears clean.

Needing to properly inspect, I’m about to swing my legs to the side to stand and head for the mirror in the corner of my room, when my gaze snags on a sticky note stuck to my lamp, the messy handwriting immediately making dread heavily sink into me.

Dread…and then fear. No one should ever be waking with strange notes stuck to their lamp. Especially ones that say:

Check your phone.

Photos app.

First video.

Confusion. Fear. Dread. It all mingles, leaving me with nothing else to do but follow the note’s instructions, uncertain at what I’ll find.

At least this explains why my phone wasn’t in its normal place.

But it also means someone was here last night. As I reach for my phone, I scan the room, searching for a sign of something out of place but finding nothing.

Cold fingers manage to swipe the device awake, the tiny camera scanning my face to unlock it before revealing the final app last opened: the photos app. The latest entry is a video. One I’m one hundred percent certain I never took.

A numb finger taps play on it.

At first, there’s blurry movement before an arm comes into view. It’s connected to a body encased in all black. Black jeans, black hoodie. The phone is propped against my lamp, angled towards the bed where it reveals me passed out on my stomach, completely unaware of the creep hovering over me.

Why do I sleep so heavy? So, so heavy that a person breaking in went unheard and then everything happening that’s about to be shown.

The figure walks across the room to part my curtain a couple inches, which casts light onto the bed—and the scene he’s concocting. When he returns to the bedside, he tugs the blanket down to my thighs and lifts my shirt up to my shoulders, all of which went unfelt to my sleeping form.

The figure dips into view, revealing his face covered by a dark mask with lit-up orange Xs for eyes and a stitched mouth curved in a smirk. A hood is drawn up over his head, shielding his hair. While my invader’s identity is concealed, I imagine whoever it is grinning like the mask.

Using a mask makes this whole thing creepy as fuck and proves whatever’s about to happen was premeditated. The intruder needed a way to disguise himself so I couldn’t report him to the police. Without an identity, he’s stolen much of the meager power I could have had over him.

He brings a finger—no gloves covering them, which is curious—up to the mask’s mouthpiece in a shushing motion. He’s taunting me. The same finger lowers to where my shirt remains bunched. Starting there, he traces a line down my spine to the edge of my panties and circles the skin of my ass.

Watching this feels like a horror movie. Like we’re a paid actress and actor performing the scene, and not me unknowingly forced to play in whatever fucked-up show he’s directing. Not like I’m watching myself sleeping blissfully unaware of the criminal hovering over me.

His touch roves over my ass to where my legs are slightly spread. He pauses, the masked face tipping towards the phone. I get the sense he’s smiling behind the mask, which sends my heart skyrocketing. Smiling when he’s violating my peace and safety.

He’s a stranger who breaks into homes without being noticed—or at least mine. It’s clear this person has no morals, which makes bile fill my throat at the presumption of what his hand is about to do between my legs, violating me in a way no woman ever should be.

Instead, he clings to some decency and moves away.

Interesting. So that’s his limit. My breaths smooth out a bit.

He reaches for his jeans and any sense of better is obliterated by the sound of the button undoing and zipper being slid down.

“He isn’t…?”

This is when I should stop watching and not endure this for longer. When it’d be sensible to lock the phone and take the video straight to the police.

Instead, I bring the device closer to my face, observing the horrifying moment of the stranger palming his cock.

He is.

This is sick.

My free hand resting on my knee clenches in a fist, like the one he has around himself. Look away, look away, look away! I need to stop watching. Shouldn’t feed into whatever this is.

This is…vile.

Right?

He strokes himself faster, making me a voyeur to his pleasure. His head tips back, which reveals a strip of skin beneath the mask. From the shadowy recording, he appears pale, though that tells me nothing about his identity. His neck flexes the closer his orgasm nears.

My thighs clench together. For every disgusting reason this video should get deleted and this entire thing seared from my mind, I bring the phone closer. My attention can’t decide what to focus on more: his masked face or his cock.

So much of the recording remains in the dark still, the moonlight from the window only doing so much, coupled with the distance he stands, making any other identifying features impossible to guess.

Which is good. This shouldn’t make me feel anything but terror and rage towards the stranger who broke into my home to—what? Jack off over me? For what possible purpose? Because this person gets off by means of illegal acts that creep out innocent women.

Amidst the silence of my room in both the video and this instant, a low moan breaks through. Noises my sleeping figure doesn’t pick up. His hand moves faster and there’s a final moan before cum streaks from his cock and onto my back.

His cum. His fucking cum is dried on my skin?

Standing, phone in hand to continue watching, I rush across my room to the floor-length mirror propped in the corner, twisting this way and that to see behind me better, finding it nearly impossible when also trying to finish watching the video and determine what other sick horrors he’s done.

The masked man brings his head upright, staring into the camera. I imagine him grinning again, like that sewn lit-up smile, and feeling victorious over desecrating me the way he had. He tucks himself away and zips up his pants before leaning over my form.

He traces something on my skin, which isn’t made clear. I rewind three times, slowing the recording on the third review until making out what he’s drawing.

T. R. I. C.

The rest of the word is predictable and my deduction, which I know deep down to be correct, makes my stomach sink and terror clamp hold on my nerves.

K. S. T. E. R. That’s the rest.

Trickster.

There’s only one person who’s ever called me that. Hell, he gave me that nickname.

Knox.

My stepbrother, who got arrested and sent away.

He’s back. He’s here .

Fuck. If that’s true… fuck.

Spinning away from the mirror, I nearly toss the phone aside, intending to go…go do something. What, I’m not certain. Find him, for one, and then demand why this was the way he chose to announce his homecoming, rather than approaching me like a normal person.

Then again, Knox is anything but normal. He’s also never acts without purpose.

Before ending the video for good, it continues.

The masked man—now presumed to be Knox—paces around to the other side of the bed, stopping in front of the camera.

Everything’s a black blur and noises aren’t exactly decipherable until he backs away, gripping a yellow sticky note.

Identical to the one found stuck to my lampshade, but this one he brings to the end of my bed, lifts the corner of my mattress by my feet, and slips it beneath.

A few seconds later, the recording ends.

Holding my breath, I rush towards the bed, lifting the same corner both eager and terrified for his next scheme.

Eager at the weird game, a tribute to all the shit we once did to one another in the past, while terrified after his show of orgasming on my back.

Who knows which other ways he’ll torment me.

Two years have passed in which we’ve had zero communication with one another. The guy Knox was and the man he’s become are two different people, which means I’m dealing with an entirely new kind of monster.

The sticky note is easy to find and I unfold it, reading what he’s written.

Your last trick was amusing. Mine’s better. I have two years to make up for. Be ready.

It flutters to the floor between my feet, which want to move, to head for the window and ensure it’s locked and prevent him from sneaking inside. Again.

Moron, it was locked last night and he got in.

This feels too far-fetched. Knox has decided to return, but why exactly? My attention slips to the paper between my feet. Be ready. Be ready for what? Two years of tricks to make up for, which was nothing more than a stupid game once played between us.

You know why he’s back.

But I can’t say it, not even to myself. Saying it admits what fears I’ve had for years.

When my mother remarried during my third year of high school, her new husband—my stepfather—came with a teenage son my age.

Knox had this demeanor meant to seem intimidating. From the outside, he looked like the boy next door type: the pretty blond, friendly smiles, even dimples. Except, behind his grins, he was plotting something cruel. Behind his joking tone, he was hiding evil intentions.

I knew the truth. I saw it. Experienced it.

For a while, we had the classic stepsibling dislike for one another, whereas he hated Mom and me moving into what he called his “territory,” and I loathed suddenly having a brother I was supposed to get along with. Mom acted like we should behave as if we’d spent our entire lives together.

Get real.

Despite our bedrooms being beside one another, for the first few months, I hardly saw him.

We purposely avoided each other until the few times our parents forced us together for social events.

When we interacted beyond our parents’—more like Mom’s, since Henry didn’t do much outside his work as town mayor—forced fun activities, it was a game of cat and mouse, where we were both the cat and the mouse.

What started one day as a small trick I may have accidentally played on him led into round after round of us fucking with each other.

It was the way my crush on him began.

It was also the thing that brought us together. Made me see Knox for who he is, and realize the kind of family Mom truly brought me into.

Although I was downright terrified of the guy who, with a snap of his fingers, could turn the entire school —“his school,” as he so often reminded me—against me all because he said so, I was utterly in awe of him.

Terrified…but enthralled too.

Fucked-up, I realize.

His intensity, and the fear it stoked within me, was half of Knox’s appeal. It was breathtaking and alluring. He was bad news, based on the people he hung around and the way no one dared cross him. His father always said nasty things about him.

But my stupid teenage heart didn’t care.

Maybe that was why I dared to cross him that first time. To test how far he’d let me go. To taunt him the way he does others. To see if his bad guy act was exactly that: an act. To see if I , his stepsister, was allowed near his cold, dead heart.

Surprise, surprise, I was.

Tricking one another was the game that led us to graduation.

It allowed me to experience Knox on a more intimate level than anyone else was able to.

It was powerful knowing, had anyone else, even his closest friends, done any of the shit I did, they’d be six feet under.

Only I had those rights and I loved them.

Whyever he let me.

The game also led to the way my crush was forced to end.

I took it too far one night, fucked up, and never got the chance to apologize to Knox.

Which made the final time of seeing him face-to-face take place when he was being hauled away in the back of a cop car—by my own actions.