5

                                    

                                          
Follow My Lead
Being inside the monster house, knowing who resided there, did nothing to ease the sense of apprehension and wrongness Evaine had always felt whenever she strayed too close to those rusted gates. Trailing behind Jesse Rayne had led her right up to the threshold of that nightmarish place, nothing between her and the darkness within as the front door had been callously beaten down and cast aside.
There were no lights, not even the telltale hum of electricity that was ever present in her own home, and every corner was left full of shadows that seemed to reach for her as she delicately stepped over the accumulation of debris littering the floor. A draft rattled through the halls, resulting in an odd whistle from somewhere on the upper floors, and the sound of creaking wood and rustling paper followed.
Jesse turned down the hall of the east wing, a narrow space with no light to see by except for the glow of moonlight coming from a room at the very end. Evaine made to follow, keeping one hand pressed against the wall to guide herself, but she hadn't gone more than two steps before Jesse turned into an opened doorway, disappearing into the impenetrable darkness of the room beyond. Evaine froze in place, unable to force her legs to move into the unknown stretching out before her.
She searched the dark in a wide-eyed stare, too frightened to blink or look away, too terrified to call out for him. The longer she watched, the more she got that familiar creeping feeling like the dark was watching her back, and she could almost imagine those twin eyes of unnatural red staring her down.
There was a sudden SCRATCH, tsss sound before a matchstick flared to life, illuminating  what appeared to be a small bathroom, and Evaine gulped down a breath of relief at the sight. Jesse stood before her, match in hand, seeming oblivious to her fear as he went about lighting a stumpy little candle which had almost entirely melted down onto the remains of what might have once been a wood countertop.
There was no toilet, but a metallic washbasin stood against one wall with a white cloth draped over the edge. A few modern toiletries had been set up there from a bar of soap to a little hand mirror leaning in an upright position—temporary accommodations for a temporary situation. On the floor off to the side was a case of plastic water bottles, one or two already missing from the pack, and it was there that Jesse pointed first. 
"Take what you need and get cleaned up," he said, not looking at her directly as he indicated the limited supplies. "I have a spare shirt around here somewhere; I'll be back."
 He breezed past her and out of the bathroom, and before she could turn her head to see where he was going, he was gone.
Mechanically, Evaine retrieved one of the water bottles and uncapped it. She was uncoordinated and a little shaken, but she managed to rinse the worst off of her hands, and then soaked the towel to begin wiping at the rest of herself. There was no hope of saving her favorite tee shirt, the one she had put on in an effort to actually look nice for the evening, as it was beginning to stick to her where the blood was drying. There wasn't enough water in her one little bottle to sufficiently rinse out her hair, so she had to settle for tying the whole mess back into a bun. She could feel it on her scalp, that cold blood of the dead man lying just outside, in her undergarments, in her ears, all the way down to her socks. 
As she worked, her overly-tensed fingers began to warm up, and a sense of normalcy slowly eased back into her. Like an unwinding of the immediacy and danger that had driven her thus far, her thoughts trickled back in to fill the silence of the bathroom, her overburdened mind sorting through all that had just happened to her as she wringed the blood out of the towel and into the washbasin.
She imagined how she would explain any of this to the police when the time finally came—she supposed that part was inevitable. A man was dead; his body would be taken to the morgue, examined, and the circumstances of his death would be investigated.
'How did you get involved?' they would ask her. 
She gritted her teeth with shame as she remembered how stupid she felt telling Jesse about the puppy in the bushes. She scrubbed furiously at the darkened blood around her nails as she pictured those imaginary police laughing in her face, or accusing her of lying about something so ridiculous. It hadn't seemed like such a bad idea at the time; who wouldn't want to reach out to an innocent creature in need of help? Who wouldn't want the distraction, the companionship, after everyone she knew had gone off to enjoy their nights, leaving her to wallow in her loneliness?
'How did you meet the victim?' 
That part she barely understood herself. He was already there, he tried to make her leave...and then he turned on her. Her hands reflexively clenched into fists at the memory, the feeling of panic when she had tried so desperately to suck in a breath of air, an impossible wish against the solid grip at her throat. 
'You're lying. If he attacked you, where are the marks?'
Evaine finally paused her cleaning just as her skin was beginning to turn raw and red from her careless scrubbing. She set the rag down and leaned closer to the mirror, angling toward the candlelight to examine her neck where the man had dug his fingers in, where she had felt his nails cutting into her skin. It had felt so tender and sore when she'd recovered from her brief stint of unconsciousness, damaged beyond repair, and yet, there wasn't a mark to be seen on her practically flawless neck. No redness, no scratches, not even a blemish where she was sure there had been one earlier in the day.
What had Jesse given her that healed her so perfectly? By all rights she should be the one lying in the dirt outside, but by Jesse's intervention, like a twist of fate, she was spared. Not even a mark to show for it. How was such a thing even possible? 
'How did he die?' 
The image of waking up to those dead eyes, that gaping hole in his chest, flashed through her mind, and she shut her eyes tightly against a sudden wave of nausea that rocked through her, the acid bile burning like a threat at the back of her throat.
She had no answers for them, no clue as to how or why any of this was happening, no insight into who or what Jesse Rayne could be. She felt so useless, having fallen into this mess by dim-witted accident, no choice but to do as she was told until he either made good on his promise to return her home safely, trusting that it hadn't been a lie to assuage her.
The thought of home, the ache in her chest to feel safe and fall into bed, letting this whole night wash away like a bad dream, reminded her of the one thing that she hadn't yet slowed down enough to consider, and it sent her heart galloping right through her chest. Her mother. She had no idea what time it was, but her mom would be returning from girl's night before long, only to discover an empty house. The thought of her panicking, freaking out and calling the police for her missing daughter, made Evaine reach for the cell phone in her pants pocket, help and rescue only a few buttons away. 
Stay calm, follow my lead. The memory of those words came back to her, his voice like a soothing balm against the fear and anxiety attempting to empty her stomach all over again. The thought alone was enough to loosen the grip of panic caused by imagining her mother's fear, and in turn, her grip on the device in her pocket fell away, her body obeying the command outside of any natural intention to do so.