We Tell Lies (Behind Closed Doors Book 1) Read online

  We Tell Lies

  Behind Closed Doors Book One

  AJ Merlin

  We Tell Lies: Behind Closed Doors Book One by AJ Merlin

  Copyright © 2021 AJ Merlin

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Books and Moods

  Edited By Lunar Rose Editing

  ISBN: 978-1-955540-06-3

  Created with Vellum

  If you can’t wake up from the nightmare

  Maybe you’re not asleep

  PLAYLIST

  Bad dream – Ruelle

  Hushh – AViVA

  Imposter – Henri Werner

  Darkside – Neoni

  Nightmare – Undream & Neoni

  Panic Room – Au/Ra

  Cradles – Sub Urban

  Can't Help Falling In Love - Tommee Profitt

  The Devil Within – Digital Daggers

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Everything was fine.

  As it had been my entire life, even through the last few weeks, everything was absolutely fine.

  Everett grinned, his chubby cheeks ruddy in the midday sun as he squinted at me from his swing. His legs pumped back and forth, mostly missing the point of gaining any kind of real momentum or altitude on the swing he rode on.

  I dragged my own feet through the dirt, loving the way it felt to dig deeper and deeper trenches in the mulch that covered the ground under the swing set.

  “My mom is going to kill me,” Everett said, not for the first time. He grinned again, elbows sticking out like stork wings as he kept on swinging.

  “Then maybe you should go home?” I offered, flipping my blonde hair in its pigtails back over my shoulders.

  “Not if you’re going to stay! Mom would really kill me if I left you here. There’s a serial killer out there, you know,” he proclaimed proudly, though his missing front tooth turned serial into therial.

  Of course I knew, but that didn’t stop my best friend from bringing it up every chance he got. Every day he delivered his report from sneaking down to watch the news the night before, and I usually couldn’t help but giggle at how dramatically he explained his escapades.

  I doubted very much he’d ever hung from the rafters to watch the TV, but I wouldn’t say that to his face.

  He was fine. Both of us were fine, though we were out when we shouldn’t have been and without the safety of the regular group of parents and children that occupied Little Creek Park.

  We were fine.

  Until we weren’t.

  A man walked towards us over the grass, his movements strange and almost confused. His clothes were stained with dark, rust-colored patches that had me squinting my eyes to make them out better, and his face was obscured under a mop of curly hair.

  “Ev?” I stopped much more quickly than my frantically swinging friend did, yet he did so as fast as he could. “Did your mom hire someone new to come to get you?”

  “My babysitter is still Daisy,” Everett said, shaking his head.

  “Well, then who’s that?” My small hand raised, finger extended to point at the man who had made it to the edge of the mulch and was still walking a direct line towards the swings.

  Our swings.

  “I don’t…” His small voice trailed off, and Everett adjusted his glasses. When he did, he gasped and stumbled back, grabbing my hand in his. “Hadley, I think that’s him!” He gestured wildly, finger trembling, and looked between him and the man, my own hands clenched into fists.

  “Him?”

  “The Ashwick Butcher!”

  As if spurred on by the infamous title that the town had given him, the man came on quicker, one hand going into the heavy jacket that he wore and extracting something small and shiny.

  It was a knife.

  Both of us took off running, our feet sliding on the cushioning mulch until, with a cry, Everett fell to the ground, red staining the new jacket his mom had bought him the day before.

  Was that blood?

  I reeled back, eyes wide, as the man’s hand suddenly descended and curled around my bicep.

  “Don’t fight me,” the stranger warned in a low, slurred voice. “Your little friend there is still alive. If you fight me, I’ll make sure he won’t be for much longer.”

  I could only nod, and when the man yanked on my arm, I followed as my heart pounded in my chest and tears streamed from my eyes, blurring my vision.

  “No…” Everett’s voice was soft and pain-filled. “Don’t go. Please don’t go, Hadley. He’ll do really bad things to you and….and…” His voice trailed off, but when I turned to look at him to see if he was all right, the stranger picked me up, slung me over his shoulder, and kept walking.

  All I could do was stare at my best friend’s body with red blooming along his lower back and sob.

  Chapter 1

  “Please don’t go, Parker.”

  I blinked at the words, thumbs tapping against the steering wheel of my compact SUV.

  “I’m already there, Lily,” I pointed out in a mild tone, knowing she couldn’t see my wry grin in the rearview mirror.

  It did nothing for my pale face and only served to make it that much more evident that I didn’t want to be here when the smile never reached my hazel-green eyes.

  “Then turn around and come back to Columbus. Ohio misses you already, and it’s not too late to come back before they have you in their slimy clutches.”

  I wanted to argue with her, but she was right about Ashwick, Indiana’s slimy clutches. I’d worked incredibly hard to get out when I turned eighteen and had remade myself pretty damn well, in my opinion.

  Of course, part of that had been learning to ignore the increasingly infrequent number of articles or blog posts that would pop up around me speculating about the identity and fate of the Ashwick Butcher’s last almost-victim or what had really happened the day Curtis Mckenzie had been killed.

  “You still with me? Tell me you’re making plans on where you can turn around.” Lily, my roommate of the past four years and my first friend from when I’d been accepted into Ohio State University, sounded worried.

  “I wish,” I sighed. “I don’t want to go back. You know that. But Scott made things sound…really bad. Amelia hasn’t been the same since losing her baby two months ago.”

  “Your sister has an entire support system in Ashwick even without your parents being around anymore,” Lily pointed out. “I don’t know why you have to go to her bedside.”

  Because she was my sister, and she’d always been there for me when I’d needed her. Even when I’d come up just short of being able to pay my tuition, my sister had swept in with a credit card and that superhero gleam in her ey
e.

  I couldn’t turn my back on her now when things were reversed, and she needed me.

  A green street sign seemed to taunt me as I got closer to it, the chipped paint proclaiming that I was ten miles from Ashwick.

  It really was too late to rethink this.

  “I’m there,” I said again, pushing back all of the thoughts that clamored to be heard in my brain and letting my hands tighten on the steering wheel until my knuckles whitened. “Or, here, I guess.”

  “When did you say you’d be back?”

  I hadn’t.

  While I hadn’t exactly told Lily my every thought, it was no secret that I wasn’t in a great place financially. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have been able to afford another 12-month contract for our apartment, and Lily had gotten a much better offer from her girlfriend to move in with her.

  I hoped that by living with my sister and her husband, I could save up some money while I was here and then move back.

  Hopefully, anyway.

  Though I wasn’t exactly sure how long that plan would take to be worth it.

  “In a few months,” I replied, crossing my fingers on both hands. I really didn’t want to make a liar out of myself, and more than that, I didn’t want to be here for any longer than I needed to be. “Hey, I gotta go, okay? I have no idea where they live, and I don’t want to be driving around this place in the dark.”

  “Be safe, okay? And don’t let anyone get away with calling you by the wrong name.”

  A smile touched my lips. “Thanks, Lil. Have a good night.”

  “Later, Parker.” I pressed the red button on my steering wheel, letting the call go dead as the grin faded once more.

  She was right. I shouldn’t have come back. I knew that. But what could I actually do?

  And why did it seem like no matter how hard I clawed and fought to get away from this place, it was reaching out to drag me back in like the monster under the bed?

  The thought made me shudder, and as the town limits came into view, the houses getting closer together, I picked up my phone from the console and switched over to my GPS.

  I’d already put my sister’s address in, and it took only a tap of my finger to have the phone pointing me in the right direction.

  Thankfully past the center of town. With my windows firmly rolled up and sunglasses now on my face, I still couldn’t help but look out to see the small town square and its myriad of shops breeze on by. Autumn leaves decorated the ground outside the glass doors and windows, moving in the light October wind that blew off Patoka Lake to the south of town.

  Blink and you’ll miss downtown, my mother had always said when my sister Amelia and I were young. Here and gone in a flash.

  She wasn’t wrong, but now it seemed to linger in my rearview mirror for longer than I’d hoped. I’d spent my childhood running with my best friend through Ashwick and had enjoyed the benefits of his dad owning more than a few of the properties that made up the town. Including the movie theater, where his dad had always given us free tickets and snacks.

  I’d expected something different, I realized, as more nice houses passed on either side of the car. I’d expected this place to have crumbled into oblivion, perhaps, or appear like the creepy, gothic village I’d taken to remembering it as in my mind.

  But it wasn’t. Not this part of it, anyway. Ashwick was part of sunny, rural America. A lake paradise, with signs proclaiming how one could get to the nearest beach and directing the locals towards the small campground, which had probably never been used to host anyone outside of this town.

  We weren’t exactly a tourist haven, after all. That was left to the south side of the lake, where the shores were smoother, and the Hoosier National Forest appeared like something out of a postcard instead of a horror movie.

  I took a deep breath and tried to calm my suddenly racing heart. You’re okay, Parker, I told myself, enforcing the thought.

  Parker, not Hadley.

  I wasn’t sure my nerves could take being The Ashwick Butcher’s last sort-of victim anymore.

  Much too soon, I turned into a short driveway, the rough gravel making enough noise to jog me out of my reveries once more as I drove up towards Amelia’s and Scott’s house.

  “Wow,” I murmured, leaning forward as I parked to look at the orange and brown brick home. It wasn’t what I’d expected from my sister, and didn’t look at all like the white-sided house we’d grown up in as kids.

  I wondered if it was a coincidence that we were almost as far from our parents’ old house as we could get without leaving city limits. I knew that when they died, Amelia had sold the house. It had helped pay for my college, after all, even though I’d never gotten an honest answer as to why she didn’t want to live in the newly renovated space.

  Not that it was any of my business.

  The front door opened, admitting Scott Newman, my sister’s husband, onto the brick porch of the home. He waved, a smile on his handsome features, and waited for me to get out before speaking.

  “I thought you would’ve gotten here closer to supper,” the ebony-skinned man greeted, walking down the little cobblestone walkway until he could open his arms wide and hug me around the shoulders.

  I hugged him back, looking around his shoulder to glance at the well-manicured bushes and small garden statues. “Did Amelia do all this?” I asked, surprised. She’d never been one for lawn decoration.

  “Oh God no,” Scott promised, stepping back and shielding dark brown eyes from the sun. “She says a yard is for grass, not frog statues. Next spring, I’m thinking about putting in a pond over there.” He gestured towards the grass in front of a large window. “Once the ground is soft enough not to be such a pain to work with.”

  “I would’ve thought you were much too busy upholding the law for lawn work,” I said, stepping back and shoving my hands in the pockets of my jeans.

  “Yeah, well.” He rubbed the back of his neck where his black, curly hair gradually sloped into a buzzcut. “So, like I said...I wasn’t expecting you until dinner or so. Didn’t you want to go catch up with anyone before settling in?”

  “Nah.” I blinked, keeping my voice neutral. “No one here I really want to catch up with.”

  The surprise on his face was evident. “Not even Everett? He used to come around here a lot, you know. I think he misses you, and I bet he’d love to see you.”

  Memories hit me like a two-by-four in the face.

  Please don’t go, Hadley.

  That one was always first when I thought about my childhood best friend.

  And maybe that was the problem. I couldn’t move past the fact that I’d always-always-blame myself for him almost dying.

  Even though we’d been inseparable for years, even after that incident, the worst day of my life was always my go-to when I thought of him. My heart always twisted in my chest, as it did now, at the painful flashbacks.

  Whatever Scott saw on my face had him backtracking. “Well, I’m sure you’ll have time to catch up with him and Daisy later. She’s been asking about you all week, by the way.”

  “You told people I was coming back?” That was…awkward.

  Though, I supposed, I should’ve expected it.

  Removing my sunglasses, I slid them into my pocket and blinked in the bright autumn sun as Scott spoke.

  “Of course I did. People are delighted you’re back, Parker. Even if you think otherwise. Although, I don’t think Everett knows. Just the other cops and Daisy.”

  Daisy probably would’ve told him, I imagined.

  “Is Amelia awake?” I asked gently, unsure of how to approach the subject. I’d come here for my sister, after all, and it’d been almost eight months since I’d last seen her.

  I missed her, and I was worried about her.

  Especially with what Scott had told me.

  My brother-in-law’s face fell slightly, before forcing a smile back on his lips.

  I wasn’t sure who he was trying to fool.

  “Yeah
…maybe.” He sounded doubtful. “I bet she’ll be happy to see you. Come on.” He turned on his heel, leading me into the house as he added, “I’ll grab your stuff while you guys catch up and throw it in the spare bedroom.”

  I didn’t reply. How could I think to do so, when the inside of his wooden-floored, white-walled living room was the least-Amelia thing I’d ever seen. Plush leather couches sat sprawled on either side of a decorative area rug, and a large flat screen that had been hung over the fireplace displayed a basketball game on mute. The only noise in the room, really, was a fan overhead that quietly whooshed as the chain under it spun in circles.

  Movement caught my attention, and I looked over to the window to see a large cage just inside the curtains, one side of it sheltered by the wall while the other looked out over the yard.

  Two pied doves sat next to each other on a perch, one of them gently preening the other.

  “If you hear laughter, it’s them,” Scott told me, pausing to see what had caught my attention. “It’s kind of terrifying. Freaked me out a few times now. But they’re low maintenance, and once they like you, they’ll sit on your hand without any fuss. Better than a goldfish and a lot prettier.”

  “Did you get them too?” I asked, wondering if everything in here was his doing.

  “No. Amelia did, once she’d finished decorating this place. She said we needed some life here. Since….” He blinked and looked away. “Well, that was almost a year ago now. They can live for at least a decade, and I keep hoping Amelia will want to take care of them like she used to,” He shrugged, tone clipped, and led me past the kitchen that was just off of the living room.