Whispering Death

         Beth pulled over in the grassy area, just off the pavement, and dug through her purse. She knew she had stuck the directions in there, but they were nowhere to be found. Frustrated, she ran her fingers through her hair as she leaned her elbow on the open window. She wasn’t sure where she’d made the wrong turn. The highway had suddenly turned into a dirt road somewhere East of Nayville. She was supposed to be heading West, towards Blooming. She knew there were no dirt roads near there. She had looked the directions over along with the map before leaving the house. She couldn’t understand where she had gone wrong.
Beth heard her stepmother’s voice. She grabbed the phone from her purse and turned to her stepmother.
“Huh?” she asked, pressing the speed dial for home.
“I was asking if we were lost.”
“Yeah, just a bit,” Beth answered. The phone rang a third time. She began to get worried. “I hope Dad’s home. He’s got the map.”
“I wish you would have just taken it with us,” Olivia stated, letting the rest of her sentence fall from her lips.
Beth shot her stepmother a sideways glance.
“Hello, Werrington residence,” her father answered.
         “Dad, it’s me, Beth.”
         “Hey honey, did you and Olivia get to the banquet all right?”
She looked out over where she was parked. A stream ran west, and was beautiful and clear. What she wouldn’t have given to just take her shoes and socks off and go wading in it, rather than go to some stupid banquet, but she had promised her stepmother that she would go. Now they were lost.
         “I must have taken a wrong turn, after the river, Dad,” Beth replied, the cell phone slipping out from under her chin. She hurriedly caught it and put it back up to her ear. “The pavement stopped awhile back, and there’s nowhere to turn around.”
***
“Hold on, honey,” Dad said. “I’ll try to find it on the map.”  He unfolded the map across his desk and began to look for the town they were headed to.
         “I don’t see any dirt roads in that area,” Dad said. Before he could continue, the second line beeped in.
         “Hey, let me get the second line. I’ll be right back.” He didn’t give her time to answer him. He clicked over to the other line.
         “Hello, Werrington residence.”
         “Death,” the voice whispered.
         “Excuse me?” he asked, but nobody answered him. He gave it a few more minutes, he clicked back to the first line. Shaking his head, he brought his attention back to the map.
         “Okay, where was I?” He looked over the map to find where he had left off. “Oh yes, here we go.”  His voice quivered a bit though.
         “Are you okay? You sound worried about something.”
         “Yeah, I’m fine,” Dad said, although he thought otherwise. “It’s just the call that I received while I had you on hold that’s all.” He stared down at the map.
         “Okay,” she said. “Did you find the new directions yet?”
          Before Dad could answer her, the second line beeped again.
         “Hold on again, that’s the call waiting line again.” He once again clicked over before she could answer. This was frustrating him.
         “Kill….her….” the voice whispered this time. 
         He pulled the phone away from his ear. Putting the phone back up to his ear, he questioned the caller once again, but still got no answer from them. Again he clicked back over to Beth.
         “Okay,” was all Dad would say.
         “Are you okay?”
         “Yeah, honey. Why wouldn’t I be?”
         “I don’t know.”
         “Okay found it.” Not hearing her, Dad gave her the new directions.
***
         Beth jotted them down, as her father related them to her. The static had stopped, but Beth thought about what her dad had said. Beth glanced at her stepmother, who was glancing out the passenger side window. She realized for the first time in almost five years that her stepmother had a striking resemblance to her biological mother from the side. She took this as only mere coincidence and went back to looking over the new directions she held in her hands.
         “Okay, we’re back in business.”
         “Good, I don’t want to be late.”
         Beth stared at her stepmother and then looked down at her watch. The banquet had started forty-five minutes ago. They had been lost for about a half an hour already. Beth shook her head, and started the engine, sometimes she thought her stepmother could act so much like her real mother it wasn’t funny…both arrogant and selfish. Sighing silently to herself, she put the car in reverse and backed out onto the dirt road.  Beth started towards the main highway, but stopped short when she saw a figure lying on the side of the road. 
         “Someone’s lying on the side of the road,” Beth said pointing. “I wonder if they need help.”
         “Huh? Where?” Her stepmother began, and let her eyes follow where Beth’s finger was pointing. “Yeah, what about them?”
         “I think they maybe hurt,” Beth said, stopping the car, and putting it in park.
         “What are you doing? We’ve got to get going or we will be late!”
         Beth looked over at her stepmother a moment.
         “I don’t care about being late!” With that, Beth undid her seat belt and got out of the car. Olivia stayed behind.
***
         Jeremy, Beth’s father, was in the den, working on a research project he had been putting off for a while now. As he was reading the article, the phone began to ring. Thinking that it was Beth again, he picked it up. But all he heard was silence on the other end. Annoyed, he put the receiver back down on its cradle and went back to reading his article.  He wasn’t even a third of the way through, when the phone rang again. He picked up.
         “Kill her,” it said.
         “Who is this?” he began. “Kill who?”
         “I will kill her…” the voice said.
         Thinking that this was a prank, he hung up the phone. It angered him that people could be so ignorant, and he thought about calling the cops, but decided against it. He just took the phone off the hook, hoping that it would deter the pranksters from ever calling there again. He had a cell phone if work or Beth needed to get a hold of him.
***
         Beth continued over to the person, but as she did, a strange feeling of dread came over her. The day light was beginning to turn to dusk, but Beth didn’t care. Beth finally made it over to where the body was laying, some twenty feet away, but as she came close, something didn’t seem right. She saw the brunette hair and the flower dress the body was wearing. She wondered how long the woman had been lying there. Bending down, she felt for a pulse, but was shocked learn that the body was actually a store mannequin. Angered by this, she turned to go back to the car, but as she did, she realized that Olivia was not in the car. She found this strange, but continued on, feeling like a fool. Slowly, she made her way back to the car.  She stopped at her driver side door, looking over her shoulder. There was nothing behind her but thick bushes and tall green trees. She suddenly had the feeling that she needed to get out of there and quick. She couldn’t though…not without her stepmother. Frustrated she moved back some and began to yell for her stepmother.
“Olivia,” she yelled, but her only response back was her voice echoing back to her. “Olivia!”  She looked around the wooded area but saw nothing. Not knowing what else to do, and figuring the woman grew so impatient she had just decided to walk, she decided to go after the woman, after she grabbed her cell phone. As her hand reached for the door handle, she heard branches breaking and grass moving behind her. She froze not sure what to do. After a few minutes though, everything grew eerily quiet again. She didn’t like it, but she had to find out what it was.

What if it was Olivia? Maybe she just had to go to the bathroom. Beth reasoned with her self and turned around to go and look for her stepmother. The sun was setting low below the hills in the distance, and Beth didn’t want to spend any more time here than she needed to. Slowly, she made her way to where she thought the branches and grass had moved, and stopped short. There stood Olivia, not even ten feet from her, holding a large object in her hand. Beth looked into the woman’s eyes. They were sadistic, evil looking. Beth didn’t like it.
“Olivia, what’s wrong?” But Beth got no response from the woman. She watched Olivia come towards her with the object. Beth turned and ran to the car. Once there, she tried to quickly pull on the door handle, but the door was locked. Feeling her pockets, she tried to find her keys, then looked inside the car. They were not in the ignition. Slapping her hands on top of the roof, searching for the keys, she turned and faced her stepmother’s glaring gaze.
“Looking for these?”
Beth watched as her stepmother tossed the keys to the side, and then saw, for the first time, what the object was that Olivia held in her hands. Her eyes grew wide as the large piece of rock was lifted and brought back down on her head. The pain was excruciating, and Beth began to see stars in front of her eyes. She raised her arms to block the blows. Both of her wrists broke from the force, and the size, of the rock being pounded into her body. Every part of her throbbed, and she was seeing bright flashes of light dancing in front of her eyes. As the blows continued, Beth wished she would never have agreed to go. 
***
Olivia kept the blows coming, as Jane began to take control.
It was too easy to get back into their lives. A hair cut, color, some purple contacts, and different style of clothes helped a lot more than she thought it would, but she was glad it did. Olivia never did look like her, and that was good. It had been a long five years, but it was worth the wait. The whole time she had let her other personality, Olivia, take over. Olivia also made it easier; since they never knew about her alternate personality. She made sure of that. Olivia did well, though Olivia had to fight to keep Jane down, when she had heard all their bad remarks; their mean and evil words. She knew that she had to make them pay, but Olivia had taken total control, allowing Beth to grow up. She couldn’t allow that anymore. She had made sure that Beth left the map at home, and had even made sure that she had made the wrong turn. Now she would make her pay, but it wasn’t enough to just kill her daughter. She had to end Jeremy’s life, her ex-husband…no wait; he was Jane’s ex husband. She hit Beth a couple more times with the boulder, once in the left arm and a couple more times in the back. Satisfied, she threw the boulder down by her daughter’s lifeless body, and walked back to the car. She slid into the driver’s seat, putting the car into gear, but she looked down at her shirt. It was blood splattered. She had to get rid of the evidence. Turning around, she pulled a gym bag out of the back seat. In it there were clean clothes. Putting it back into park, she walked down to the stream and washed up, putting the new clothes on. Picking up the blood stained clothes, she stuffed them into the gym bag; throwing the bag into the river, where she knew nobody would find them. She started back for the car. She finally felt in control.
***
          Jeremy heard someone’s car pulling up into the driveway. He wasn’t expecting anybody, and got up to see who it was. As he pulled the curtain back, there was Beth’s car idling in the driveway. He glanced down at his watch. They hadn’t even been gone an hour and a half. He heard the front door open, and walked out to the foyer to great them. It was empty.
         “Beth! Olivia!” he yelled, as he looked around him. He glanced at the little end table and saw Beth’s keys sitting there. Someone was definitely home. He gave them a couple more minutes then yelled up the stairs for them again. “Beth! Olivia! Are you home?”
         “Yes, Jeremy,” a female voice answered. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
         “Oh, okay.” He shrugged, walking back into the den. As he sat back down in front of the computer, he thought about the sound of Olivia’s voice. It sounded somehow different. He tried to place why, but he couldn’t. Finally he gave up on trying, and went back to his article.
***
         Jane stood in front of the mirror smiling, as she held the butcher knife she had grabbed from the kitchen, in her hand. She felt excited and angry all at the same time. Now it was time to show him who was boss.
         “Oh, Jeremy, can you come up here a minute please,” she let Olivia yell down to him. When she heard him coming up the stairs, she quietly hid behind the door. She raised the knife above her head and waited.
***
         Jeremy had gotten almost all the way through the article, THREATS FROM AN EX-LOVER, when he heard Olivia calling to him. Sighing, he got up, leaving the computer on, and made his way upstairs.
         “Where are you at?” he asked.
         “I’m in the bathroom,” she said. He walked to the door, turning the knob. 
         “I don’t see you,” he said. Just as the words left his mouth, he felt the knife plunge deep into his upper back, by his neck. He wasn’t sure if it had pierced his heart.  Falling to the ground, he looked over his shoulder. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
         “Jane? But where’s Olivia?” he began, his mind becoming cloudy. “You didn’t hurt Olivia?”
         He watched as Jane laughed.
         “Yeah I killed her, but I didn’t need a knife to do it,” Jane replied. She had taken out the purple contacts Olivia had been wearing. She had also put a wig on, the color of her natural hair.
         Jeremy stared at her a moment, but his moments were slipping away fast.
         “I’ve got to get to a phone,” he said, and tried to get up. She pushed him back down to the ground, pulling the knife out of his back.
         “Move and I’ll stab you again,” she threatened, but she saw the pain etched in his face. She figured he wouldn’t be moving much anyhow
         Jeremy knew that she would make good on her threat, and lay back down. He was in great pain anyway. Moving was the last thing he really felt like doing at the moment. He thought about Beth’s car being out in the driveway, but he had seen no sign of her anywhere. He became light headed and dizzy. He definitely didn’t need to move. He was going to die right where he was
         “Where’s Beth?” He managed.
“Don’t worry I took care of her already.” Jane smiled.
         Jeremy’s worst fear had come true.
         “You bitch!” he screamed. “You made the phone calls too; didn’t you?”
         She stared down him, her nostrils flaring; her cheeks turning crimson red.
         “How dare you accuse me,” she said bitterly, raising the knife above her head. 
Somehow he pulled himself up from the floor, feeling as though he was moving in slow motion. As he lunged for her, she forced the blade into Jeremy’s stomach. He doubled over, and hit the floor with a loud thump. He lifted up his head for a brief moment, and then all went black.
***
In short of about fifteen minutes, Jeremy was dead. Jane dropped the knife beside his lifeless body, and walked out of the room and out of the house for good. Getting into Beth’s car, she drove off, never looking back again.