Page 26 of A Haunting at Keystone Manor

“What’s going on, Jake? What happened?” he asks, concern lacing his voice. It takes me a minute to find my voice.

“Andrei,” I spit out, chest heaving.

“What about Andrei?” When I don’t answer he says, “Jake, you’re scaring me. Please tell me what’s going on.” He sets a hand gently on my shoulder, hoping to comfort me. It’s not working.

“He’s here at the hotel. Doing more of my father’s dirty work. He’s with Kayla right now, in her office.” I cover my face with my hands, feeling like I’m going to be sick.

“Oh my god,” Alex says. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me into a tight hug. “I’m going to kill him. I think I’m charged enough to do it. I just need to find a weapon. A knife, or a baseball bat. Maybe I could light him on fire. That might be too complicated. I think I have a pair of scissors around here somewhere.” He rambles on, and while I appreciate his vivid imagination, I need him to keep holding me more.

“Alex, please stay with me. Don’t go looking for him, please.” I shudder and he tightens his grip on me.

“I’ll stay,” he says, voice low. He crawls onto my lap, and we hold each other for a long time. Eventually my breathing slows down and my panic fades. He can’t get to us. We just have to stay here, in this room. I tuck my face into Alex’s neck and breathe him in while he rocks us gently.

“Everything will be okay. We’ll find a way to get rid of him. Have you seen Brandon or Seth lately?”

“I think I saw Brandon coming out of the attic a day or so ago. He’s probably up there again. He mentioned something about writing a book? I don’t know. Seth is probably up there with him,” I say against his skin.

“Okay, I’ll go check in a bit.” I just nod.

A loud crash comes from somewhere in the house, making us both jump. He flies off my lap towards the door and I follow close behind, trying to figure out where it came from. Another crash sounds. It sounds like it’s coming from the front of the house. We make our way towards the lobby. Empty.

“The office?” I ask, and Alex runs down the hall that leads to the office. He stops suddenly when he gets to the door, which is being propped open by Andrei’s body. Kayla is standing over him with a paperweight in her hand, tears streaking down her face, breathing hard. Andrei’s blood is splattered all over her face and clothing. I heave as I see a little piece of brain matter sticking to her shoulder.

“That’s for Jake,” she tells his dead body.

“Kayla, oh my god. We really need to talk about your penchant for murder. Gross,” Alex says. Kayla lets the paperweight fall out of her hand onto the floor, landing with a loud thud. She pulls out her cellphone and dials a number.

“Mr. Covington,” she starts, still breathing hard. “There’s been an accident at the hotel, can you send a cleaner?” She listens for a minute before continuing, “Yes, it’s your associate Andrei. He… slipped and fell. Hit his head pretty hard. Judging by the amount of brain matter on the floor, I’d say he’s pretty dead.” She listens for another minute. “Okay. Yes, okay. Thanks, I’ll wait here for them.”

She ends the call, sliding her phone into a back pocket. She kicks Andrei’s corpse a few times in the side, and once in the head for good measure.

“You fucking asshole! How dare you, you absolute motherfucker. Jake was a good guy, he never hurt anyone. Fuck you!” She continues to wail on Andrei’s body for a bit.

Alex leans into me and smirks. “Looks like you’ve got an admirer.”

“Shut up, brat,” I say, still stunned at this turn of events. I’m looking at his dead, mangled corpse but I’m having trouble believing this is real. Can ghosts hallucinate? I watch as Kayla straddles his body and picks the paperweight back up, slamming it repeatedly into the side of his head. At this point he’s starting to resemble ground beef. I look away.

Just then, Brandon runs in with Seth trailing behind. They must have heard the commotion. “Whoa, gnarly,” he says. Kayla looks up, seemingly coming out of a trance.

“Huh?”

“What the heck happened here?” Brandon asks.

“He tripped,” Kayla says and stands up, once again dropping the paperweight to the floor.

“He tripped. Onto your rock?” he asks, dubious.

“Yeah, something like that. This is the motherfucker that killed Jake. I threatened to go to the authorities. The ones he isn’t in cahoots with. He attacked me. Anyway, I have a cleaner coming to dispose of this trash. I don’t think I have to tell you to forget what you’ve seen here. You’re a pretty good assistant, it would really suck if you tripped too.” She wipes her brow, smearing blood around her face.

“10-4, we saw nothing. For what it’s worth, though, good job. Jake’s a good dude, he didn’t deserve that.” He backs out of the room. “Come on Seth, let’s take a smoke break. I have an idea for my book that I want to run by you.” Seth chews on his lip ring for a minute before nodding, giving me and Alex a quick look before turning and heading back down the corridor.

“We'll be discussing this later, Kayla,” Alex says, pointing to the corpse on the floor.

***

I’m still trying to process the events of this day as I cuddle with Alex. Kayla is a stone cold psycho, but I’m strangely glad that she killed Andrei. He can’t hurt anyone again. That’s all that matters.

“I can’t believe she stole my kill,” Alex complains, adjusting his head on my shoulder. “I had a whole list of fun things I wanted to do to him before I finally sent him to hell.” He pats the notebook lying next to him as he says this.