Chapter 7

Robin and Jason had a wonderful honeymoon.  They spent one week in Switzerland and one more on a small island in Porta Rico.  They had never had so much fun in all their lives, they spent most their days on the beach or in the water just enjoying each other’s company, and they spent their nights together the way they had always dreamed of.  Just a few days before the wedding Alan Quartermaine announced that all their hopes had come true, the experimental treatment had worked, Robin no longer had HIV!

There were no more worries of Jason contracting HIV from Robin and there were no worries of Robin developing AIDS.  They could be together in a way they had only dreamed possible.

When they got back Erin filled them in on what happened with the stalker.  As she had expected Jason became extremely protective and suggested that she install bulletproof glass at the cottage and for once Brenda agreed with him.  Erin excepted and had the glass installed but she put her foot down when he wanted to put guards on her.  She pointed out that nothing had happened in the past month and that let her to believe that this guy had given up the moment he saw Nik enter the picture and she doubted that he would try anything with Jason back in town.

Jason had to admit that she had a point, after discussing things with Sonny he decided that he wouldn’t put guards on her totally.  What he decided to do was have someone watch the cottage to make sure that nothing happened, more like a living security system then anything else.  He wasn’t to follow her or anything, he was just to watch the house, even if she wasn’t there; just to make sure that no one decided that would be the right time to break in.

Erin knowing that she couldn’t win gave in and said yes to that.  She knew that even if she said no he would still do it.  Brenda had told her about when Jason had put guards on her even when she had told him strait out that she didn’t want them.

Nurse’s Ball

Liz and Lucky stood in the wings weighting to go on.  They had the first number and contrary to the past few years Lucky wasn’t going to sing, he had insisted that they do something together.  Lucy came up with what she said would be perfect; she had them perform a piece of Shakespeare along with some of the other teens.  Lucky protested saying that he couldn’t act but Liz reminded him that the same could be said about most everyone that performed.

Liz looked over at Lucky and gave him a nervous smile.  “No backing out now.”  She joked.

Just then they hear the crowd crow silent.  “And now, to start off I want to make an announcement.  This has been an annual event sense 94’…” Lucy continued giving her speech about all the wonderful things that had happened over the past five years.  “And now to start off this amazing year!”  There was a swish of fabric as Lucy made her way off stage in on of her elaborate dresses.

Days went by, days turned into weeks and weeks into months, till two months had gone by.  Nothing had happened; Erin had been left alone without any sign of the stalker.  Erin had convinced Jason that it would be okay for him to take the guards off of her, after all, Nik was with her.

The cottage

Erin sat at her computer typing.  She had told Brenda she would check into a new band for her.  She had found their names mentioned on a few web sights but nothing else.  A message popped up on her screen telling her that she had mail.  Thinking that it might be one of the band members she had E-mailed earlier she quickly checked her mail.

To her surprise the mail wasn’t from who she had expected.  In fact it was from an old online friend that she hadn’t heard from in a wile.

 

Have you forgotten all about me?  I never recived a response from my last message, over six months ago.  So just in case you lost it, here is the massage [I know you are smart enough to get this, if you try.]

[Dlom dlo edoc(.)5sgnimit tar gnignarra ecitcarp\doowdE yraM ta emag ylraey ylevil ad dnetta enoyreve did\emit…x\elohw uoy ekam taht sdrow eht ylno\yenitsed ruoy(.)etirw sdrow tahw

You will get the rest of the instructions when you finish with that.  My move is over why you answer this question: Who is the next one to dye, the man, the daughter or the father?]

There has been one change, the father is now out of the picture, and the man is now married, so the wife has taken his place.  There have been a few more characters added.  You will read about them when you get there.

Aneleh Cass

 

Erin had totally forgotten about Aneleh.  Up until six months ago they had, had an on-going game.  They were send each other riddles or puzzles.  Aneleh had the habit of sending Erin to web pages with little games or riddles in them.  So far there were three characters.  A man who was cold and ruthless, connected to the organization.  A father who was also in the organization; the father was much like the man but only he had morals and feelings when it came to his daughter; where the man had none.  The daughter wasn’t much of a main character; she only made things more difficult by getting in the way.

Erin printed out the message and began to run over it looking for a pattern or something.  Out of all the riddles Aneleh had sent this was the hardest by far. 

Erin was bent over working on it when Nik came in the room.  Nik walked up behind her and leaned over to see what she was doing.  “What are you working on?”

Erin looked up at him and smiled.  “It’s a riddle, but I think it’s in a code.”  Erin said with a frustrated smile.

“Here let me take a look,” Erin handed him the peace of paper.  Nik looked at it for a bit and then smiled.  “I see why your having such a hard time with this,” Nik pulled a chair over next to Erin and sat at the desk also.  “The reason you’re having a hard time with it is it’s backwards.”  Nik said after a moment.

“What?”  Erin said shocked.  “How do you know that?”

“Easy look,” Nik took another piece of paper and began to write the message backwards.

What. words write(.) your destiny./.only the words that make you whole./.x… time./.Did everyone attend da lively yearly game at Mary Eldwood./.Practice arranging rat timings5(.)code old mold

“See?”  Nik asked when he had finished.

“How did you to that so quick?”  Erin asked amazed.

“Uncle and I used to play with codes a lot, I got pretty good at recognizing patters.”

Erin looked at the message again.  “Something about this doesn’t make any sense.  Everything is so random as if…” Erin’s voice trailed off in thought.

“As if it were another puzzle.”  Nik finished for her.

“Now I get it!  I see why this looked so formilyer.  Look  at this ‘what words write’ and ‘code old mold’.  If you take the first letter of each word you have ‘www’ and ‘com’.  As is a web address.”  Erin began to write down her idea.

www.yd/otwomyw/x.t/deadlygame/part5.com

Erin typed in the address and got an error message.  “Well I guess that idea was wrong.”  Erin said disappointed.

“Maybe you weren’t all wrong.  What about that ‘xt’?  In the code it is ‘x time’, isn’t ‘x time’ an abbreviation for next time?”  Nik suggested.

Erin looked at it again and decided it was worth a try.  She typed in www.yd/otwomyw/next.time/deadlygame/part5.com.  That time the computer connected to a web page.  A deep male voice started to tell the story.

 

“It took you long enough!  I thought you would get it in a matter of hours, but I guess that is to be expected with the death of your father you must have had no time for games.  Here is the next chapter to the story.

A year has gone by.  The father was killed in a car explosion.  The daughter has gone on with her life.  She has made friends a lucky boy and a liz girl.  The man has married to a small delicate bird and are off flying now.”

 

Erin quickly became uncomfortable with the story.  It was too much like real life, too much like her life.

 

“The daughter has made another very important friend.  He is with her now, living in her cottage by the woods.  Everything is going perfect…for now.  Only time will tell what happens. 

The daughter now has a shadow.  The shadow knows who she is, but she doesn’t know who the shadow is.  The shadow knows where she is, always.”

 

This wasn’t right.  It couldn’t be.  Erin looked over at Nik worried.  She saw it in his face too.  She wasn’t dreaming.  Her worst fear was coming true.  Her stalker wasn’t playing any games.  He knew what he was doing and he knew how to push her buttons.

 

“I would watch out if I were you.  Watch your back, and remember…if you don’t’ play your cards right the daughter will end up like the rest of her family…DEAD!”

 

Then the screen went black, and so did the cottage.  Erin let out a shocked gasp and grabbed Nik’s hand.  Moments later the lights came back on.  Nik and Erin looked at each other in shock; neither of them knew how to handle this.  “I vote we get out of this room.  What do you say?”  Erin choked out in a whisper.

“That would be my vote.”  Nik said matching her voice.  The couple scrambled franticly to get out of the room, only to find that the door was locked from the outside.

Erin looked at Nik in fear, her eyes begun to fill with tears.  “What’s going on?”  Erin asked, her voice was barely audible.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it.  Is there any other way out of this room?”  Nik asked looking around.

“The only other way out is the window.”

“Okay, how good are you at climbing out windows?”  Nik joked trying to lighten up the mood.

“You would be surprised.”

“Thank god for that,” Nik got up and pulled Erin up with him.  They walked to the window and looked out.  They could climb out and into the roof and go down a near by tree.  Nik went out first to test and see if that the branch was strong enough to hold them.  He reached out his hand to help Erin.  “Careful, I don’t want you slipping.”

Erin inched her way along the roof to the branch.  Just as she reached it her foot got caught on something and she began to fall.

Nik acted quickly and caught her before she fell off the roof.  “I thought I told you to be careful.” Nik joked.

“Very funny!  Now can we get down from here?”  Erin said with a nervous laugh.  They climbed down the tree and walked to the front door and went in.  “I think I need something to drink.  Do you want anything?”  Erin asked after carefully locking the front door.

“Just some water would be nice.”  Nik said sitting down.

Erin went into the kitchen to get the drinks and Nik sat going over what just happened.  He didn’t like it; someone was setting them up, but for what?  Nik was lost in thought when her heard a crash coming from the kitchen.  Nik ran in to find Erin standing in the middle of the room looking at the table.  There was glass around her but she didn’t seem to notice.  Her face was white, like she had seen a ghost and she was shaking violently.  Nik walked up carefully to her and then saw what she was looking at.  There on the table was a picture of her and Nik, it had been taken a few months ago, and it was covered in blood with a knife in Erin’s face.  There was a message in the blood.  You should learn to keep your front door locked.

“Come on Erin, let’s get out of here,” When Erin didn’t respond he picked her up and carried her into the living room.  “I know what you said earlier but I think you should pack some things and come with me to Windimear.  I don’t want any arguments, just do as I say,” Erin looked up at him and nodded.  Nik followed Erin up to her room and watched her as she packed a bag.  Nik helped Erin into his car and they drove to the docks.  “Do you think we should call Jason and tell him what happened?”  Nik asked as they weighted for the launch.

It was cold and there was a fog coming in off the water, making the light glow and seem eary.  Erin shivered in spite of herself.  She thought of all the old scary movies that she had seen and this would be where the evil monster would jump out and attach the couple.  “I’ll call him tomorrow.”  Erin’s voice was soft and distant.

The next morning
Windimear

Erin stood at the edge of a cliff, looking off at the crashing waves.  The wind was cold and it stung her cheeks, but she didn’t care.  The sky was gray with an impending storm.  The drop off of the cliff was somewhere around 50ft but she could still feel the spray if the wind caught it right.  This was the same spot Nik had brought her when he had first met her.  It looked like a completely different place; there were no longer and beautiful sunrises or sunsets.  It was always gray and gloomy.

She didn’t know how she was going to tell Jason about the computer message.  On one hand she didn’t want him so rush over to her all worried and tell her he told her this would happen; she didn’t want to do that to him.  But on the other hand she wanted him there to comfort her and tell her everything would be okay.

She thought of calling Sonny but he had left town a few days ago; something about some problems in LA that he had to take care of.  If she were to call Sonny now he definitely would drop what he was doing to come to her.  He had made a big fuss over her moving into the cottage, he had said that she couldn’t be properly protected and that it was out in the middle of no-where.  She didn’t want him to come home and say ‘I told you so’.

The coolness of the wind had calmed her nerves some and she gathered the courage to call both Jason and Sonny.  She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Jason’s number.

“Hello?”  The connection was bad and she could bearly hear Jason.

“Jason, it’s Erin.”  Erin had to raise her voice so that Jason could hear her.

“Erin, is everything okay?”

“To tell you the truth, no,” Erin paused before continuing.  “I had an unwelcome visitor last night.”

“Who was it?”  Jason asked, doing his best not to flip out.

“That’s just it, I don’t know.  Nik and I were up stares and the lights went out.  And when we tried to get out of the room the door was jammed, so we had to go out the window.  To make a long story short, we got back in and I went into the kitchen and found a picture of Nik and I with a knife in my head with a message in blood.”

“Blood?  Who’s blood was it?”  Jason asked staying calm he knew that if he got upset it would only scare Erin and Robin who was sitting next to him.

“I don’t know,” Erin said shakily her voice began to break with teas.  “I don’t know if it was really blood, all I know was that it was red and Nik got me out of there the moment he saw it.”  Erin’s breath was coming in gasps now, as she tried to calm herself down.

“Okay now calm down, we are on our way over.  I should have kept guards on you.  Where are you now?”

“I’m at Windimear.”

“Okay, I am going to come over right now and pick you up,” Erin, not wanting to push him agreed but only under the condition that Nik could come with her.  “Okay, anything, as long as you are safe.  Have you called Sonny?  I know he is going want to come back when he hears.”

“That’s why I haven’t called him.  Before he left he said that this was important and I don’t want him messing anything up because I seemed to have gotten into some more trouble.  I was hoping you would call him and tell him what’s going on, maybe he’ll listen to you and finish what he went to LA to do.”

“Okay I’ll do that.  I’ll be there in half a hour.”

“Jason?”  Erin said softly.

“What?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For everything, but mostly for caring.”

“That’s like thanking me for breathing, I’ll talk to you when I get there, okay?”

“Okay, bye.”

“Bye.”  Jason hung up the phone and covered his mouth with his hand.

Robin looked at him, he was visibly upset.  Robin placed a hand on his shoulder.  “Jason, what’s wrong?”  It frightened Robin to see Jason so upset.  He normally kept his emotions under control; very few things ever caused him to get upset.  “Jason what’s wrong?”  Robin repeated frantically when Jason didn’t respond.  “You can tell me anything, what’s happened?”

Jason looked at her as if snapped out of a trance.  “Erin’s stalker is back.  It seems that he got into the cottage and left her a note…in blood.”  Jason said getting up.

Robin looked at him in horror.  “Where is she?  Is she okay?”

“She’s fine, but I’m on my way to pick her up from Windimear.”

“Yes of corse. I’m sure you need to make a few calls, I’ll be up stares.”

Jason picked up the phone, someone was going to pay for this, and Jason was going to make sure of it.