Serial Killers with Cookies Cover + Chapter One + Release Date
Chapter
One
justine
Their new house was bigger than their old one. Two
stories and an attic, a balcony coming off the left side of the house, and a
porch big enough to have a barbeque on. Justine pulled an earbud out of one ear
and leaned halfway out the window to get a better look, her seatbelt digging
uncomfortably into her neck. The house was bigger, but the neighborhood looked
more suburban, more Home Improvement
than she thought she’d like.
“Pretty,
isn’t it?” her mother said, and Justine glanced at her and nodded, albeit a
little reluctantly. Both of her parents were young, in their thirties, though
her mother looked younger if her hair had been recently dyed and she had
sunglasses on to hide the crow’s feet around her eyes, like now. Justine’s
mother was short and generally happy, a teacher and sometimes author who was
currently four months pregnant. “Prettier than Fargo.”
“I
guess,” Justine said.
Danny,
her younger brother and perpetual nuisance, paused his tapping on the seat in
front of him and craned his neck to get a better view. “I want the balcony,” he
said.
“Justine
gets the balcony,” her father, dark-skinned and tall, replied. “We talked about
this.”
“Yeah,
but it looks super cool. And she’ll be gone in like three years anyway, so—”
“Justine
gets the balcony,” her father repeated. He turned up the classic rock on the
radio and bobbed his head a few times to the guitar riff in Boston’s ‘More than a Feeling.’ “Don’t
worry. I’m sure she’ll let you play on it.”
“I
won’t,” Justine said.
Her
mother snorted with laughter before turning and lowering her sunglasses to give
Justine an admonishing look. Justine shrugged and put her earbud back in. She
leaned back against the seat, pulling her knees up to rest on the back of the
driver’s side seat and her feet dangling a few centimeters above her backpack.
They’d only packed essentials in their small hybrid, and that meant mostly
food. They had everything else packed into a trailer hooked to the pickup that
they were renting, back in Fargo—after they got settled with what little they’d
brought with them there, her father would go back in a U-Haul and pick up the
rest of their things. They’d spent most of July packing, even having a garage
sale to sell total non-essentials, and now they were here. Her parents had
wanted a change; they’d wanted out of North Dakota and both had found good jobs
in one of the very few states with less people than their former Upper Plains
home.
So
they’d decided to move to this towering house in this sprawling-lawned
neighborhood with nothing but a bag for each of them and a cooler full of food.
Unfortunately,
that meant that Danny didn’t have anything to entertain himself with and had
been pounding out bad beats ever since he’d woken up an hour into the drive,
which they’d begun at seven that morning. It was a quarter past seven at night
now, the sun low in the sky but not set yet.
Her
father parked the car and Justine was out as fast as she could manage. She
shouldered her backpack and went around to the trunk to grab the cooler and
further cement her status as the favorite child, but she paused with her hands
on the trunk.
It
was rural—more rural than Fargo, anyway—but the neighborhood was large enough
to boast a pleasant-looking cul-de-sac. Each house had a decently sized yard,
and the sidewalks between the were unmarked. They’d moved into a near-new
neighborhood.
“Nice,
isn’t it?” her mother said. “Want help with that?”
“No,
I got it,” Justine said. She opened up the trunk and grabbed the cooler,
shrugging her backpack more securely onto her back and headed for the house.
Her gaze caught on a car idling just a bit down the street—a big black panel
van. She smirked a little and nudged Danny with the cooler. “If that was a white
van down there, you’d probably have to look out.”
“Huh?”
Danny said.
“What
are they teaching kids in elementary school these days? Stay away from the
white vans, kid,” Justine said, and Danny rolled his eyes. He hit the cooler
with both of his index fingers, and Justine jerked it away. “Do not start that
again. Do not. I will drop this cooler on your head.”
“Shut
up,” Danny said, but he ran for the house instead of sticking around and
bugging her. Justine followed, albeit a bit more slowly, and was about to yell
about the screen door slamming shut on her when she saw a piece of paper stuck
to the bottom. She crouched, balancing the cooler on one thigh, and pulled it
free.
Hoffman
man wife girl boy
Man
black wife white kids mixed
TOA:
August 16-25
con
on retrieval
he’s
not ready
All
except the last line was written in the same jumbled, scrawling script. Justine
frowned. All of it looked like rough notes movers or sellers might
make—although the mention of race confused her a little bit. Confused her, and
kind of creeped her out, if she was being honest. She figured that Wyoming
would be, if possible, even whiter than North Dakota—but even then, this was a
weird thing.
The
cooler was getting heavy, though, so she shoved the note in her pocket,
promising herself that she’d bring it up to her parents later, and headed
inside.
She
dropped the cooler off in the kitchen and followed her brother’s voice up a
spiral staircase, down an inappropriately grand hallway, and into a bedroom
before finally stopping in front of a set of glass doors leading out to the
balcony.
“Justine,
you have to let me have this room,” Danny said. “You have to.”
“No,”
Justine said. She tugged on one of the doors and, upon its refusal to open,
felt along the side for a lock. “It’s mine.”
Once
she got the door open, she stepped outside and leaned against the railing, her
gaze catching the panel van again. Had it moved?
Danny
burst out beside her, nearly sending her toppling over the edge. “But think how
cool—”
“It
would be to sit out here and read, or do yoga, or homework, or—”
“Drop
things on Dad when he mows the lawn.”
“Okay,”
Justine said. “I’ll give you that one. Now scram. I want to put my stuff away.”
Danny
made a face at her, but he did leave, and she headed back to her room, sending
one more glance toward the van. It was probably nothing to be concerned with.
It was probably maintenance workers for something wrong in one of the other
houses.
So
she shut the curtains and unrolled her sleeping bag in one corner (beds would
come back with Dad), stacked a few unread books in the corner (she had more,
bookshelves and the rest would come back with Dad), and folded up the extra
change of clothes and her pajamas against one wall (dresser and the rest would
come back with Dad). Finally, she placed an empty pill for her gluten
intolerance (they’d forgotten to get her prescription refilled before coming
out; Dad would do that when he went back to Fargo) atop her books. After she
was done, she took a step back and surveyed her work.
She
couldn’t wait until the rest of her stuff got here. She wanted to put up
posters, set up her (frankly, slightly outdated but still cool as hell) CD
player, alphabetize bookshelves… as stressful as the move had been, the
prospect of setting up her room was exciting.
“Justine!”
her mom called, and she trotted down to the staircase.
“What?”
“Come
down and have something to eat! I’m cutting up the summer sausage!”
“Coming!”
Justine
bounded down the stairs, running her hand along the smooth banister, and was
just at the kitchen doorway when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll
get it,” Justine said, and her mother, trying desperately to cut slices of
sausage as fast as her husband and son were eating them, smiled.
“Thank
you.”
Justine
opened the front door on two young women. They looked alike—sisters, she
guessed, because they didn’t look far enough apart in age to be mother and
daughter. One with long, dark, reddish-brown hair and the other with short hair
streaked through with bleach. A blouse and slacks, a leather jacket and a
tanktop. “Can I help you?” Justine asked.
“Hi,”
the one in the blouse said. “We’re your neighbors. We live just a few houses
down. We noticed you guys coming in and figured we’d wrap up a plate of cookies
and bring them over.”
“Oh,”
Justine said. The one in the leather jacket held out a plate—they looked like
Lofthouse imitations: round sugar cookies with a generous helping of
pastel-colored frosting on top. “Uh. Thank you?”
“It’s
our pleasure,” the one in the blouse said. She nodded to the plate that her
sister was still holding. “Please, take it. We bake too many cookies. Every
Saturday this psychopath whips up a fresh batch, and for her, a fresh batch
means at least three dozen. We can’t eat them all.”
“Sure,”
Justine said. She took the plate. “Thanks. Um. I’ll try and get the plate back
to you soon.”
“No
rush,” the one in the leather jacket said, speaking for the first time. She
offered a shark-like smile. “Enjoy.”
With
that, the two of them turned and walked down the sidewalk. Justine watched them
walk for a few moments, hoping to see where they lived so that she could return
the plate more easily, but then her mother called her in and she shut the door.
“What’s
that?” her mother asked when she came back with a plate.
“Cookies,”
Justine said. “A couple of neighbors stopped by. Said that they saw us moving
in and wanted to be the welcoming committee, I guess.”
“How
nice,” her mother said. “They look delicious. It’s too bad we didn’t get your
prescription filled before coming out here.”
“Yeah,”
Justine said, shrugging. Both her brother and her father had
peanut-butter-and-summer-sausage bagel sandwiches, though, and she looked at
those with a bit more longing than the cookies. She wasn’t that big of a fan of
sweets in the first place, but bagels and toast were something that she missed
when she didn’t have her pills.
Danny
reached for the plate, but their mother slapped his hand away. “Finish your
sandwich.”
Danny
stuck out his tongue, and their father grinned at him before reaching for the
plate himself. Their mother danced away with it, shaking her head. “None of you
until you finish your supper. I mean it, Zach,” she said, looking over her
sunglasses. “Even you. We’ll have dessert as a family.”
“Thanks,”
Justine said.
“Oh,
honey—” her mother said, shaking her head. “You can scrape off some frosting or
something. Or I think we still have some Twizzlers in the car. They’ll be
warm!”
“Okay,”
Justine said, and finished off the rest of her supper. “I’m going to run and
grab those Twizzlers. Don’t feel like you have to wait for me, because Danny
looks like he’s going to have an aneurysm if he waits any longer.”
Her
mother laughed and peeled the plastic wrap off of the plate, setting them down
in the center of the table. Justine paused and looked back at her family—Danny,
his hair wild and curly and springing up everywhere as he leaned forward to
pick the one with the most frosting, her father, with his tie crooked as always
and his grin infectious, reaching for it before Danny could, and her mother,
hands on her hips, demanding order with one raised eyebrow like she always
could.
It
was the last time she saw her family like that.
±
It took her too long to find the Twizzlers. She’d
checked the glove box first and found nothing but a bottle of Ibuprofen, the
car’s registration, and a tire gauge. She’d checked the center console, which
turned out a handful of napkins snatched from fast food restaurants and a
handful of change. Under the passenger side seat, which just held Fifty Shades of Gray.
She
eventually found it crushed between Danny’s seat and his door, the packaging
crusty with something she didn’t really want to identify. But there was still a
good handful of licorice inside, so she ate a few as she made her way back to
the house.
Out
of curiosity, she glanced back at the van. Still there.
She
decided to go and see what they were up to. She peeled another licorice off of
the clump and bit down on it as she walked, biting the ends off first even
though she didn’t have anything to suck through it.
She
knocked on the driver’s side window the van—it was curiously dark, so she
couldn’t see who or what was inside, and the windshield had one of those
tinfoil-looking sun blockers on the inside—and there was a thud. She took a
step back, a little concerned, but after a few moments the window rolled down.
On the other side was a disheveled teenage boy, probably a year or so older
than her, with coppery hair and gray eyes.
“What?”
he asked. His accent was decidedly clipped, more Midwestern than
Minnesotan—which Justine just supposed she was more used to, being from Fargo.
“Just
saw you idling here for a while,” Justine said. She took another bite of the
candy. “What’s up? You okay?”
“Yeah,
I’m fine,” he snapped. He ran a hand through his hair and glanced back behind
him. Justine thought of that old urban legend—the axe murderer in the
backseat—and shivered a little. “I’m just—waiting for someone.”
With
that, he rolled up the window again and Justine sook her head, making her way
back to the house.
±
She knew something was wrong when she opened the door
and the only sound she heard was a soft plink…
plink… plink… She paused in the doorway for a few moments, not really
wanting to see it, not really wanting to see whatever had happened, but then
her adrenaline kicked in, her heart sped up, and she felt the tingling at the
tips of her fingers—and then she went quickly for the kitchen. Her hand
tightened briefly around the bag of Twizzlers, and she stopped dead in the
doorway.
Her
father sat tipped back in his chair, arms hanging at his side and his face
toward the ceiling. His mouth was crusted with blood or vomit or both; his eyes
were glassy and bulging. Her mother was on the floor, on her side, head lolled
to the side, bloody vomit streaking the floor in front of her; her face; her
blouse. Danny was right behind her, on his knees, his eyes squeezed shut and
his hands making fists so tight his knuckles were white.
“Danny?”
He
looked up at her and up came a glut of vomit, cascading over her mother’s body.
Another retch brought more vomit, tinged red, and Justine grabbed her cell
phone out of her pocket, fingers trembling so much she could hardly press the
‘Emergency Call’ button on the lock screen, and within a few moments she was
connected to a 9-1-1 dispatcher.
“9-1-1,
where is your emergency?”
“Yeah,
yeah, my—my family’s dead, they’re dead, my brother, he’s puking up something,
it’s bloody, my parents are dead—”
“Where
are you?”
“Uh—uh
we just moved here, I don’t—h-hold on, Danny—” she cut herself off as her
brother threw up again. This time he fell forward, his forehead thudding into
her mother’s arm. His body was still shaking, though, his shoulders moving up
and down rapidly. Still alive. Seizing, maybe on his last legs, still alive.
The
address.
She
closed her eyes and knelt down beside her father. It was easier if she closed
her eyes, easier if she prodded at thick denim pockets when she didn’t see the
bloated and bloody and terrifyingly gray face.
Checked one pocket. Nothing. Reached over and checked the other pocket.
Wallet.
Justine
swallowed and pulled her father off of his chair. His body (his corpse) hit the linoleum floor with
a sickening, terrible thud, and when
she opened her eyes a fraction she saw him on his front, one arm twisted behind
him, head twisted to the side with his tongue out, ass up in the air like he
was doing some sort of yoga pose. But she could see the blocky shape of his
wallet in one back pocket. She swallowed again, she could feel something trying
to push its way up, either puke or tears, and pulled the wallet free. Opened it
with shaking fingers—she found the slip of paper he’d written the address on
and read it out to the dispatcher. She repeated it back, and Justine managed a,
“Y-yeah, that’s right—”
“Please
take any surviving members outside—to a car, if you have one. Help will be
there shortly. Would you like me to stay on the line with you?”
Justine
swallowed a few times. She could feel tears prick at the corners of her eyes but
refused to let them pass. “N-no. No. No, I’ll be fine.”
“All
right,” the woman said, and Justine hung up. She stuck her phone back in her
pocket and grabbed Danny under the arms, dragging him to the door, while he
twitched and puked and his struggles grew softer. She tried not to think about
that, though, as she gritted her teeth and shoved the door open with her
shoulder. As his shoes bounced along the driveway and as she opened the
backdoor of the Prius and leaned him against it, his ass on the ground and his
head lolling back.
She
tipped it forward. So he would puke on himself instead of choking on it.
She
found that she couldn’t sit still, so she paced in front of him. He’d stopped
throwing up. Hadn’t in a couple of minutes. He was still twitching, moaning a
little bit, so she guessed (hoped)
that if the ambulance got there soon enough, they could pump his stomach or
something and he would survive it. And she wouldn’t lose her entire fucking
family in one fell swoop.
Out
of the corner of her eye, she saw movement. A dark shadow, moving across their
lawn and toward the black van that had been idling on the street this entire
time.
“Hey!”
Justine called, and she broke into a sprint. The shadow glanced back, and she
caught a bandanna over the face and silver hair.
She
put on some more speed, her legs pumping and her calves and thighs already
screaming at her to stop, but she kept going. “Hey! What were you doing in
there? Stop—”
One
side of the van slid back, and the silver-haired man dove in headfirst. The van
was down the road before the door was shut, and Justine was left, panting, her
hands on her knees and her eyes straining to read the license plate. She caught
the last three numbers—173—but she doubted it meant much, anyway. They probably
switched their license plates frequently.
When
she got back to Danny, he was dead.
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