Who Killed Romeo

Chapter 5

Act 1, Scene 3

The room swallowed me in silence. I wasn’t sure whether Hazel was alive or not, but all I saw was blood and lots of it. Buzzed from the vodka and swaying with guilt, I crept closer to her body.

She seemed perfectly placed, like a prop on the stage, and that swirling of culpability deep in my gut made me feel sick. If I’d been quicker, if I’d told Heath sooner about the creep watching us, if I’d taken the dagger myself then none of this would have happened.

Over the high pitch ring in my ear, I briefly heard Heath call for help behind me. Footsteps reverberated against the floor and it was as though the whole room swayed for a moment. I ignored everything else and instead my eyes zeroed in onto a piece of paper beside Hazel’s hand.

Clean from the scarlet blood that pooled around her body, I picked it up in between my fingers just as the door slammed open once more.

Mr. Puma, my Latin teacher, practically slid along the floor and dropped to his knees beside Hazel. With his cheeks flushed and body quivering, he pressed both hands to her wound to stop the blood that gushed.

“Who did this to you?” He pressed, eager and desperate and on the verge of tears. Her lips trembled and eyes fluttered open and closed, she looked frail and exhausted, knocking on death’s door, but miraculously still alive. It was difficult to tear my eyes away and as the tense atmosphere blanketed us heavily, I felt a phantom hand grip my throat tightly.

With his trousers drenched in the blonde girl’s blood, Mr. Puma turned pleading eyes to behind me where Heath stood stiffly.

“How long has she been like this?” He demanded but his voice was weak and unsure.

“Oh, I don’t know, let me ask the audience,” I quipped sarcastically and a strangled sound escaped from Heath’s throat.

More teachers filed into the small room and I felt claustrophobic. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed while I stood there, shoulder to shoulder with Heath, as the adults fussed, their chests breathing deeply and some even swayed queasily at the sight of Hazel who lay helpless and dying.

Soon, the paramedics arrived and it all got too much. Had I not been half-drunk, it might have been easier to wrap my head around the situation. They pulled her limp body onto a stretcher and hauled her out the door.

Hazel caught my eye and her mouth opened a fraction, releasing a weak breath. Her gaze held a story, a whole novel of statements and questions and dead-ends. I reached my hand out hesitantly and the world slowed to a stop around us. I had to stop myself from pulling her into my grasp and demanding answers. Her expression reminded me so clearly of Archer’s that my heart stopped.

Hazel’s hand jutted out too but her stretcher was whisked away before I caught her hand. For a fraction of a second, the hairs of her arm brushed against mine and I was enveloped by the visions that clouded the world around me until I fell into Hazel’s memories.

I felt the rush of wind through my hair, a whimsical giggle in my ear, the playful pinch to my sides, the stray name and suddenly a pierce straight through my stomach like a dagger. Slumber stole my mind and I fell to my knees as Heath caught my head before it crashed to the floor too.

“Are you okay?” He demanded as his voice leaked with even more panic.

I ignored his worry and thought back to what I just experienced in Hazel’s final moments. Comfort and betrayal.

“She knew the person who stabbed her,” I murmured and planted my hands on Heath’s shoulders to pull myself back up to my feet. My whole body was weak and heavy with exhaustion now but I met the curious boy’s gaze with my own. He lifted a dark eyebrow in question but something in the way his back stood straight, showed the concern and fright that filled him.

Nothing but Hazel’s jacket was left in the room and a large stain of blood pooled in the middle where she rested. The piece of paper weighed sharply in my pocket and all I wanted was to leave.

“We should get back to the library,” I said quietly while tucking my brown hair behind my ear. And, as I moved to leave, Heath’s gasp kept me planted in place.

A few teachers who hadn’t left with the paramedics circled the large mirror with pale faces and when I saw over their shoulders, I understood why.

‘O happy dagger, This is thy sheath’ Was smeared across the mirror in a deep scarlet. The same colour as Hazel’s blood.

“That’s what Juliet says before she stabs herself in the play,” Heath whispered, voice so wobbly that I felt a pierce through my heart.

I watched with a slacked jaw as the liquid ran its course down the looking glass, dripping into a puddle on the floor.

X X X

“So, we have a killer who’s recreating deaths from Shakespeare’s, Romeo and Juliet?” Heath spoke mostly to himself as we returned to our seats beside the tall window in the library. Not knowing whether Hazel was okay or not was what made my hands shake slightly and a knot settle in the depths of my chest.

“You think there’s a murderer out there who loves poetry and the theatre so much so that he’s resorted to killing people for the art?” I rolled my eyes.

“Things are only as beautiful as you make them, Eleanor – including murder.”

“Wow, you really are a writer,” I murmured, dropping my head to the table in front of me. “I hate Shakespeare.”

“Really? Because I love it.” He watched me silently before reaching to the back of his neck and scratched awkwardly. “Will you tell me what happened, now? You know, back when you fainted and said that Hazel knew who stabbed her?”

I bit my lip as anxiety oozed from my body. I didn’t want to but I knew I had to. What was the worst that could happen? So I took a deep breath, crossed my legs and leaned closer to him across the table.

“You have to promise me you won’t tell anyone, okay? And, I know it’s going to sound absolutely crazy and that I’m making it all up but you have to believe me just this once.”

He held out his hand with his pinkie finger facing me. “Promise,” he smiled sheepishly.

I frowned at his hand and Heath narrowed his eyes teasingly at me. “Go on.”

Childishly, I groaned and hooked my pinkie finger around his before retracting it so quickly that no one could have proven it happened to begin with. Looking a lot calmer now, Heath nodded for me to continue.

“I have narcolepsy…sort of,” I began. Heath furrowed his eyebrows as though that were all I had to say. I wish that were all I had to say.

“A normal narcoleptic would just fall asleep at the most inappropriate times. But I’m a little different. With me, it’s triggered. Now, stay with me here, but I sort of have this ability to see into the past.” I looked around us and leaned even closer, my voice quieter. “It can happen at any time, sometimes it’s stronger than others. My hearing is the strongest. I can hear sounds of a person or place’s past, sometimes I’ll smell or feel and on rare occasions, see. When this happens, my body puts me to sleep right after. It happens a lot in the school because this building is so old that memories are piled upon each other.”

Heath nodded slowly, taking it all in piece by piece. It wasn’t as though I’d said something life-changing but it was sometimes odd to tell a stranger that you could feel the past.

He watched me for a few moments longer and his gaze set me aflame. I turned away from his stare and chugged the tea he’d gotten me from earlier. It was cold by now but the burn from the alcohol as it made its path down my throat made up for it.

“Can you see into my past?” He then spoke.

I pulled my lips into a thin line before placing the mug down with a thud and nodding. “I can try. Here, give me your hand.”

I held out my hand for him and strangely, he took it.

My eyes glazed over and I gripped him tighter. I felt the long green grass as it tickled my legs and caressed my cheeks. I listened to siblings argue and tease one another. I felt a mother’s love as a hand ran through my hair and kissed my forehead. Dread flickered through my gut as I listened to a man speak about the future but the excitement and wonder that wrapped around me while feeling the pages of books and ink that ran along my fingers were enough to rival it. My face, as Eleanor, appeared, glistening as though looking through a kaleidoscope, and then Hazel’s blood poured suddenly.

Heath’s palm caught my forehead before it could’ve smacked against the table and I gasped awake.

“What did you see?” He wondered.

“You’ve got a lot of siblings,” I observed.

His eyes lit up. “I have five, two older sisters, two younger sisters and one baby brother. My little sister, Victoria goes to Cosima Memphis, too. The rest of my siblings are either too old or too young to be here.”

“I have a lot of cousins too,” I whispered, allowing a small smile to flutter to my lips. “Too many to count. More than I need.”

“You do?” Heath seemed sceptical, as though I’d never been in contact with human life before. I couldn’t blame him though.

“Yeah, my father has three brothers who all have at least five kids each. I’m the baby, though.”

“You’re the youngest?” Now, he looked at me incredulously, not believing my words for a second. “Are you sure? You surely don’t act like the youngest? You seem very much like an older sibling.”

“What does that even mean?”

Heath thought about it for a second and so did I. He was definitely a middle sibling. I could tell from his bursts of excitement and playfully annoying nature. But there was something in the way he moved that made me think he’d be ready to protect at any time too.

“Well, the youngest is usually… I don’t know? Bubbly? Irresponsible? A troublemaker?”

“You’re saying I’m not bubbly?” I deadpanned, earning a loud laugh from Heath. He shook his head and his eyes clouded with thought.

“Also, you’re a mamma’s boy, too,” I smirked. “I saw it through your eyes.”

His cheeks blossomed red but he shrugged it off as though it didn’t matter but I knew it did, I had just seen his memories after all.

“That’s really amazing. It’s cool, really cool,” he commented.

I looked down at the notebook he’d left open and frowned at how messy it all was. Though it was lined paper not one sentence was structured as he wrote over himself, drew arrows and crossed out so harshly that the paper punctured. Then, I felt the wave of euphoria that washed over me from his memories. I understood the raw passion and pure love he felt for the art and understood his motive for following the murders so closely now.

“You better keep my name out of that,” I warned and poked the page.

He smirked, crossed his arms and leaned back into the seat. “I might even write it in your point of view, Eleanor.”

I scoffed playfully, “Yeah, you wish you could think like me.”

He shook his head amusedly and we fell back into silence.

It was a burning quiet that I couldn’t quite distinguish. The unspoken words between us sizzled and begged to be said out loud but neither Heath nor I were brave enough to utter them first.

I’d seen another dead body. Well, even if Hazel had not yet passed, she might as well have been. I didn’t like to be morbid but I would be surprised if her death wasn’t announced over the tannoy by tomorrow morning.

“I found something,” I announced quietly and plucked the white card from my pocket to drop in front of Heath. “It was on the floor by her hand, I think she might have dropped it before she died.”

With thick, furrowed brows, Heath picked up the card and inspected. A bunch of numbers were scrawled in pencil, smudged slightly but very much readable.

“Do you think the person that k-killed Archer was the same person who attacked Hazel?” Heath questioned but he faltered slightly and there was something off with the way he spoke.

I just shrugged though and brought my trusty flask back out from my jacket pocket. It was running out of drink and my stomach dropped with disappointment.

“It’s a telephone number. Maybe Hazel was going to use it before she was attacked. Do you think whoever wrote this to Hazel was the one who tried to kill her?” He continued.

“We’re dealing with more than one person.” And I was very sure about it, arrogantly so. “Ask me why I think so,” I dared to say while feeling buzzed from the contents of the flask.

“Why?” He followed along.

I grabbed the notebook that we’d found earlier from Heath’s hands, who still grasped it like a lifeline, and opened it up to the first page that read Archer’s, Hazel’s and my name. Then, I put the white card up against that page and easily saw how different the numbers looked. For one, the two was written elegantly with a fancy loop through it on the card while everything in the notebook our creeper left was messy and rushed. “They could be accomplices or nothing to do with one another. That’s something I’m not sure of yet.”

“I think if our sleuthing normally goes like this, my book could be a best-seller,” Heath hummed. “I think we could really solve it. We have the telephone number, the notebook, found the threat on the mirror… we’re a modern-day detective duo. Right, Watson?”

“I am not Watson,” I grumbled.

“Then you can be Irene Adler,” he grinned.

“Yeah, dream on. You can be Adler, and I’ll be Sherlock.”

He held my gaze and thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. Heath glanced down to his watch before his eyes widened.

“Oh, I’m late.” He jumped up, threw on his big coat and gathered all his belongings into his arms. “I’ll phone the number later.”

Then, he was rushing off and out the door, leaving me to my thoughts that felt a lot more daunting now than before. I just stared at the door and watched from my peripheral as people came and left.

Then, a knock sounded erratically from the window beside the table. As my heart raced, I snapped my head to see Heath.

“Sorry,” he called and his voice was muffled from the glass. “Have you got a telephone in your room?”

“No?”

“How about one in the corridor?”

“Yes, there’s one around the corner. Why?”

He sighed. “Uhm, okay. I’ll get you a pager, then. That way, we can always be ready.”

I furrowed my brows at his pleading behaviour and tried not to laugh as he pouted like a puppy. “You know we’re not actually detectives, right?”

He left one last knock on the glass and waved dramatically as he scurried away.

While I watched him depart into the sea of students, a strange and rare smile pulled at my lips. Odd.