The Wake Part 2

A girl stepped out into the edge of the security light.
Nineteen maybe. Thin. Dark ponytail. Black dress. Boots
dusty at the toes. Lipstick smudged at one corner like
she'd put it on in the car.
Took me a second.
Then I knew her.
Renee Mercer.
Nathan's younger cousin.
"You're Luke, yeah?" she said.
"Depends who's asking."
"Renee."
"Right." I pushed off the wall. "You alright?"
No. Not even close. Her hands were shaking. She kept looking back
toward the hall, then toward the carpark, like she'd left
something unfinished in both places.
"I need to tell you something," she said.
"About what?"
"Not here."
"Why me?"
"Because everyone else is full of shit."
Fair enough.
"Renee. What happened?"
She swallowed. "Nathan told me to keep my mouth
shut if I knew what was good for me."
"About what?"
Her eyes moved over my face like she was still
deciding if she'd made a mistake coming out there.
Then she said it.
"Ellie."
Just the name. That was enough.
Then the lights went. Hall, carpark, side light, all of it.
Inside, somebody laughed like they thought it was a
fuse.
Then chairs scraped and voices started up.
Renee grabbed my arm.
"Luke-"
Someone hit us from the left.
I didn't see much. Shoulder. Hand. Weight coming in
fast.
A hand went over Renee's mouth and she got yanked
backward so hard her heel skidded on the concrete.  I went for her and hit solid body. Whoever it was
drove me sideways into the wall. My head hit brick.
White burst behind my eyes.
Renee made this awful cut-off sound into the hand
over her mouth.
Then she got loose enough to scream.
I heard her dragged around the back corner and ran
after them.
I just went.
Rounded the corner blind. Hit the metal bin cage hard
enough to bark my shin. Kept moving. Saw Renee on the
ground near the wall. Saw someone running for the oval
fence.
Tall. Fast. Something over the face maybe. Couldn't
tell.
I went after them.
The grass behind the hall was uneven and dry. I
nearly went over straight away. They hit the fence and
cleared it. I caught my knee climbing after and tore skin
but stayed up.
By then the hall had gone off properly behind me.
People shouting. Doors banging. Someone yelling for a
torch.
The runner cut for the trees by the oval.
I followed.
It was darker under there than I expected. Branches in
the face. Dirt slipping under my shoes. I could hear them
ahead for a few seconds.
Then not.  My left foot went into nothing.
I dropped hard.
Shoulder first. Rolled. Ended up at the bottom of a
ditch with dirt in my mouth and pain up my side sharp
enough to stop a clean breath.
By the time I looked up, they were standing on the
bank above me.
Moonlight hit the face.
Not a face.
A white mask.
Long mouth. Wrong smile.
Then they jumped down at me.
I got my arm up because instinct is faster than
thought. The knife caught me along the forearm and the
pain was hot enough to turn my stomach.
After that it was all close in.
Hands. Dirt. Elbows. The knife flashing when there
was enough light for it.
I got hold of their wrist once. Lost it. Tried for the
mask. Got a headbutt for my trouble.
They drove the knife down again.
I turned and it went into dirt beside my ribs.
I hit back blind and felt it land somewhere soft.
They made a noise.
I shoved, got enough room to move, and crawled up
the bank before I got my feet under me and ran.
No plan beyond getting away.
Branches caught my shirt. My arm felt wet all the way
to the wrist. The hall lights came back while I was still in the trees and for a second the whole place looked wrong.
Too bright. Too empty.
Then I heard people yelling my name.
Jonah. Mia. A few others.
I came out of the scrub half-falling.
Hands caught me before I hit properly.
"What happened?"
"You're bleeding."
"Where's Renee?"
I pulled away and ran back around the hall.
She was still there.
On her knees by the wall. One hand braced against
brick. Dress torn at the shoulder. Red marks already
coming up on her throat.
Mia dropped beside her.
Mum said my name somewhere behind me in a voice I
never want to hear again.
Renee looked up at me.
I thought she was going to tell me the thing she came
out there to say.
Instead she started crying so hard she could barely
breathe.
I crouched in front of her.
"Renee."
She shook her head once. Tried to speak. Couldn't.
Jonah had a hand on my shoulder by then, trying to
pull me back so someone could look at my arm. I
shrugged him off.
"Renee. Look at me."  She did.
And in this torn little voice she said, "He knows."
"Who?"
Her eyes moved past me toward the trees.
When she spoke again, I had to lean in to hear it.
"He knows what you did that night."
Then she folded over and Mia caught her.
Someone had triple zero on speaker. Someone else
was trying to sit me down. Nathan Mercer was suddenly
there, white-faced and loud, asking Renee if she was hurt,
where she'd been, why she'd gone out the back in the first
place.
I looked at him and felt something old and bad move
in my chest.
Not because I knew.
Because I didn't.
Because after fifteen years of carrying the same
crooked half-truth, I still didn't know who had been in
that car with Ellie.
Only that I'd seen enough to speak.
And hadn't.
That was the part nobody else knew.
Now someone in a white mask knew it too.
And they'd come to my father's wake to let me knowthe bill was still owing.