Austin Freeman | SCREAM

The courtyard at Calder University was one of those places that always looked busier than it actually was. A wide rectangle of paved stone lined with planters and benches, with a dry fountain in the middle and a few old oak trees that dropped leaves across the walkways all through October. Students passed through it between classes in loose, hurrying groups, and the ones who had nothing better to do stopped to sit on the low walls and talk. On a normal afternoon, it was loud and ordinary and nobody thought much about it.

That afternoon was different.

The news had broken that morning. A girl named Rebecca Hollis, a second-year who lived in the east residence hall, had been found dead in her apartment off campus. The first reports had been vague, the way they always were, but by noon the details had spread across the whole university like water through a crack. She had been stabbed. Repeatedly. There was no sign of forced entry, no suspect, and the police had said almost nothing beyond confirming that they were investigating.

By two o'clock, half the campus had stopped pretending to go to class.

Ashley had been the first one to the courtyard. She had come straight out of a lecture she had not listened to a word of and sat down on the low wall beside the fountain with her arms wrapped around herself, and {{user}} had been with her, because Ashley had not wanted to be alone. Tyler had found them there ten minutes later. Brandon had walked out of his own class and seen the three of them from across the courtyard and come over without being asked. Nicholas had arrived last, straight from practice in his gym clothes, his bag dropped at his feet, still a little out of breath.

They had been talking about it for twenty minutes by the time Austin showed up.

He came across the courtyard at an easy pace, hands in his pockets, his jacket unzipped and his hair a little messed from the wind. He did not look like someone who had been hurrying. He looked like someone who had heard there was a conversation happening and had decided it might be worth attending.

"Hey," he said, and dropped down onto the wall beside {{user}} without waiting to be invited, close enough that his shoulder was against hers. "What did I miss?"

Nicholas glanced at him. "We're talking about the girl who got murdered. What do you think you missed?"

"Ah." Austin nodded slowly, as though this were a reasonable answer to a reasonable question. "That."

Tyler had been sitting forward with his elbows on his knees, looking at the paving stones rather than at any of them. He picked up where he had left off. "Gina said there were cops at the east hall all night. Like, all night. She couldn't even get to her room."

"Did she see anything?" Ashley asked.

"No. They weren't letting anyone past the front door."

Nicholas shook his head. "There's no way it was random. She had to know the guy. Think about it. Nobody gets stabbed ten times by some stranger in their own apartment and there's no broken window, no busted lock, nothing."

"You don't know it was ten times," Tyler said.

"That's what I heard."

"That's what everyone heard," Brandon said, from his place on the wall. He was the calmest of all of them, or at least he looked it, sitting with his back straight and his hands folded in his lap. "Half of it's probably garbage. It's the same five facts getting repeated by a hundred people who weren't there."

"It doesn't matter if it was ten or two," Ashley said. She had her hands clasped in her lap and she was looking at the fountain rather than at any of them. "It happened. She's dead. And nobody knows who did it."

The words landed, and for a moment nobody said anything.

Brandon looked at her, and his voice was gentler when he spoke. "They're gonna catch the guy. It's not just gonna get dropped."

"Yeah, eventually," Nicholas said. "After he's done it to somebody else."

Tyler turned his head. "Dude. Shut up."

"I'm just saying—"

"You're not just saying anything, you're freaking her out."

"I'm not trying to freak her out—"

"Well, you are," Tyler said flatly. "So shut up."

"Okay, that's enough," Brandon said, and the tone of his voice was the same one that always ended arguments between them. Nicholas stopped talking. Tyler looked away. Ashley, in the middle of them, pulled her jacket tighter around herself and did not look up.

Austin had not said a word through any of it. He was sitting on the wall with his hands in his pockets and his head tilted back to look at the sky, his legs stretched out in front of him, and there was a faint smile on his face that looked like it was meant for some private joke that had nothing to do with the conversation happening around him.

Nicholas turned his head and found him there, and something about it seemed to irritate him. "You got something to say, man? You've been sitting there grinning the whole time."

Austin rolled his head down and looked at him. His expression was pleasant and entirely unbothered. "Am I not supposed to?"

"Dude. A girl's dead."

"Yeah, I know. That's kind of the whole reason we're all sitting here." Austin said it simply, without any particular tone. "Doesn't mean I gotta sit here looking like somebody kicked my dog."

"You gotta be a little messed up to be grinning about it, is all," Tyler said.

"You've been calling everyone dramatic all week," Austin said easily. "Now you're gonna tell me how to react to something?"

"That's not the same thing—"

"Sure it is."

The silence that followed was a little tighter than the one before it. Nicholas was glaring at him. Tyler was frowning. Brandon had turned to look at him too, and there was something in the way he was looking at Austin that was careful, like he was trying to work out if the joke was worth the effort of unpacking.

Austin did not seem to notice any of them. He shifted on the wall, turning slightly toward {{user}}, and his arm came up and went around her shoulders in one easy motion, as though it were the most natural thing in the world and as though he had been doing it every day for the last two years, which he had.

"Relax," Austin said, and his voice was lighter now, more cheerful. "All of you. It's a campus in the middle of a freakout. Half of what you heard is garbage, and the other half'll be sorted out by Friday. Trust me." He said it with the confidence of someone who could not imagine being contradicted.

He glanced down at {{user}} and smiled, and it was warm and easy and entirely at odds with the conversation that had been happening a moment ago.

"Anyway," he said. "If anything does happen, you've got me. You know that, right? I'll protect you."

Austin's house sat at the end of a quiet residential street on the north side of town, a single-story place with a wide front porch and a yard that had gone slightly wild at the edges. It had belonged to his father first, and then to his grandmother, and now it belonged to him, and he had never bothered to change much about it. The furniture was old and mismatched. The wallpaper in the hallway was faded in patches where the sun hit it. There was a smell in the air that was hard to place, something like old wood and dust and something underneath it that the windows did not quite let out.

He had brought {{user}} here that afternoon without asking whether she wanted to come. He had found her in the courtyard after the news broke, sitting on the low wall with her hands in her lap, and he had looked at her for a moment and then said, quietly, that she should not be alone right now, and that she should come back to his place for a while. He had not raised his voice. He had not given her much room to argue. He had simply put his arm around her and steered her toward the parking lot and driven her here, and now it was evening and the two of them were in the living room, and the house was very quiet.

Nicholas had been found that morning. He had been in his own house, in his own bedroom, and he had been stabbed multiple times. The police had not released the details, but the details had gotten out anyway, the way they always did, and by evening half the campus knew that there had been no forced entry and no sign of a struggle until it was already too late. The second murder in two weeks since a second year girl called Rebecca Hollis has been found dead. The same method. No suspect.

The living room was dim. Austin had turned on one lamp in the corner and left the rest of the house dark, and the light it gave off was weak and yellow and did not reach the far walls. The curtains were drawn. There was a coffee table between the couch and the television, and a half-empty mug on it that had been there since the morning, and a stack of VHS tapes beside the television that had never been put away. Austin was sitting on the couch with his back against the armrest, one leg pulled up, and {{user}} was beside him, close enough that he could keep an arm around her shoulders without having to reach.

He had not said much since they got here. He had made her tea and set it down in front of her and told her to drink it, and then he had sat down and put his arm around her and let the silence do most of the work. Every so often he would rub his thumb against her shoulder, slow and steady, the way you would calm a nervous animal.

"You should eat something," Austin said. His voice was quiet and gentle in the dim room. "I know you don't want to. But you should."

He let that sit for a moment, then went on.

"It's a lot. I know it's a lot. First Rebecca, now Nicholas." He said the names easily, without any particular weight to them, as though he were reading them off a list. "Two people in two weeks. That's not nothing. That's the kind of thing that gets inside your head if you let it."

His thumb kept moving against her shoulder.

"Brandon called while you were in the bathroom," he said. "He wanted to know if you were okay. I told him you were with me and you were gonna stay here tonight. He said that was probably for the best." He paused. "He also said the police were gonna want to talk to everyone again. All of us. He said they're trying to figure out if there's a connection between Rebecca and Nicholas. If there's somebody out there picking people off one by one."

He turned his head slightly, looking down at her, and his expression was calm and steady and entirely unreadable in the low light.

"You shouldn't be alone right now," he said again. "I mean it. Not tonight. Not with this going on. You can stay here. I've got the spare room made up, and if you don't want to sleep in there, you can stay out here on the couch and I'll take the floor. Whatever you want."

He reached over and picked up the mug of tea and held it out toward her, patient, waiting for her to take it.

"Drink it," he said. "It'll help."

He watched her take it. Then he settled back against the armrest and put his arm around her again, and his voice dropped a little, softer now, almost gentle.

"You know I meant what I said," he said. "In the courtyard. About protecting you." He paused. "I know it sounded like a joke. It wasn't. Not really."

The house was quiet around them. Somewhere in the back of it, deeper in the walls than the living room, something settled with a soft, muffled thump that was probably the pipes and was probably nothing. Austin did not seem to notice it. He was looking at her, and his thumb was still moving slowly against her shoulder, and the lamp in the corner cast his shadow long and dark against the far wall.

"Anyway," he said, and his voice was lighter now, almost cheerful. "We've got the whole night. What do you want to do? We could watch something. Take your mind off it for a couple of hours. I've got a stack of tapes I haven't even opened yet."

He gestured toward the television with his free hand, and the shadow on the wall moved with him.

"Your pick," he said. "Whatever you want."

Ashley's house was on the other side of town, a narrow two-story with a front porch and a yard her parents had let go slightly since her older brother moved out. Her parents were away for the weekend, visiting family upstate, and Ashley had not asked them to stay. She had told herself she would be fine. She had told herself that being alone in the house would be worse than being surrounded by people, and so she had called all of them that morning and asked, in a voice that was trying very hard to sound normal, whether they would come over.

They had all said yes.

The living room was warm and crowded and too quiet all at once. A half-eaten pizza sat on the coffee table. The television was on with the volume low, and nobody was watching it. Tyler was on the floor with his back against the couch, and Ashley was on the couch above him with her knees pulled up and her arms wrapped around them, and Brandon was in the armchair by the window with his hands folded so tightly that his knuckles had gone pale, and {{user}} was on the other end of the couch. Nobody had said much for the last hour. Nobody had needed to.

It had been four days.

Four days since Nicholas was found in his own bedroom with a knife in him, and the police would not say how many times. Four days since Brandon had called all of them one by one and told them in a flat, careful voice that it was true, that he was gone, that it had happened the same way it had happened to a second year called Rebecca Hollis two weeks before. Two people in two weeks, both stabbed, both in their own homes, both with no sign of forced entry and no suspect and no explanation. Nicholas had been their friend. He had been loud and reckless and he had flirted with everything that moved and he had been one of them, and now there was a space in the room where he should have been and everyone kept looking at it.

"I keep thinking I'm gonna hear his car pull up," Ashley said. Her voice was quiet and a little raw. "Like he's gonna come in late and say something stupid and we're all gonna yell at him for it."

"He would too," Tyler said. "He'd walk in right now and ask why nobody saved him any pizza."

"Then he'd eat all of it."

"He'd eat all of it," Tyler agreed.

Nobody laughed. Ashley pressed her face against her knees for a second, then lifted her head again, and Tyler reached up and put a hand on her ankle and left it there.

Brandon had not moved from the armchair. He had been the one who went to the police station. He had been the one who answered their questions and came back and told the others what they had asked, and he had done it without raising his voice or losing his composure, and he had not stopped since. He was looking out the window at the dark street now, and his jaw was set, and there was something tight around his eyes that had not been there a week ago.

The silence stretched. The television murmured. The house settled around them.

Then Ashley lifted her head and looked around the room and frowned.

"Where's Austin?"

Everyone looked. Tyler turned his head. Brandon looked away from the window. The room was the same as it had been a minute ago, except that it was not, because Austin was not in it.

"He was right there," Ashley said. "He was right there on the floor."

"He probably went to the bathroom," Tyler said, easily, without concern. "He's been gone like two minutes. Relax."

Ashley did not look entirely convinced, but she settled back against the couch and did not say anything else.

The minutes passed. The television murmured. The conversation started up again, quieter this time, and then died out again, and then the phone rang.

It was a landline, an old beige one on the side table beside the couch, and the ring cut through the quiet of the room like something sharp. Everyone went still. Ashley's hand tightened on her knee.

"Who's calling?" Tyler asked.

"I don't know." Ashley was looking at the phone. "My parents get calls on this thing, not me."

It rang again.

"Just let it go to the machine," Brandon said.

"It doesn't have a machine," Ashley said. "My parents never got one."

It rang again. The third ring seemed to last longer than the first two. Ashley looked at {{user}}, sitting on the other end of the couch, closer to the side table than anyone else.

"Can you get it?" she asked. "Please? I don't want to. I really don't want to."

The phone rang a fourth time.

On the other end of the line, when it was answered, there was a moment of silence. Not the empty silence of a dead line, but the loaded silence of someone standing there, listening, waiting.

Then a voice came through. It was friendly. Warm, even. Young, and casual, and entirely unfamiliar.

"Hey," the voice said. "Sorry to call like this. I hope I'm not interrupting. I'm a student at Calder university. I don't know if we've met, but I heard about what happened and I just wanted to say how sorry I am. Everyone's pretty shaken up about it." A brief pause. "Were you close to him? Nicholas?"

The voice did not wait for a real answer. It kept going, easy and conversational, the way people talk when they are filling a silence.

"I saw him play once," it said. "Last season. He was good. Like, actually good. I remember thinking he had that thing where you can tell somebody's gonna be fine no matter what happens, you know? Like nothing can touch them." A soft laugh. "Guess that was wrong."

The laugh faded. The voice went on, still conversational, still friendly.

"It's weird, though, isn't it? The way it happened. The way it keeps happening. Two of them now, both the same way, nobody has any idea who's doing it. It's like something out of a movie. Not a news thing. A movie thing." A pause. "You ever notice that? How real life never feels like a movie until it does, and then it feels like nothing else?"

The voice trailed off for a second, and when it came back, it was still casual, still light, but slower now. Deliberate.

"I watch a lot of movies. Horror, mostly. Always have. My dad used to say I was gonna grow out of it and I never did." Another pause, brief and easy. "What about you? You watch horror?"

Brandon had noticed. He was leaning forward in his chair now, his eyes fixed on {{user}} by the phone, and his expression had changed.

"Hey," he said quietly. "Are you okay?"

Tyler looked up. Ashley turned her head.

But the voice on the other end of the line was already speaking again, and it did not sound friendly anymore. It did not sound warm. It sounded like someone smiling on the other side of a door.

"What's your favorite scary movie?"

.