The Deep Dark Web | lrh

Seven

"Stay on the phone with me," I tell Ashley, my fingers shaking as I fall back, scurrying to get away from Luke's bag.

"What?!" she exclaims. I wince, holding the phone away from my ear. "Sophie, you just found a bunch of knives in your boyfriend's gym bag! I am not staying on the phone with you, you need to call nine-motherfucking-one-one!"

"Ashley, please! I'm freaking the fuck out," I beg her, gulping nervously as I stare at the dried blood that encrusts the blades. "Oh, god. I feel sick, Ash, this isn't good-"

"No shit, man. You may have just found police-worthy evidence and you're on the phone with a girl who stirred her coffee with a pencil and wrote with a spoon this morning," she breathes out, as shaken as me. "You need to do something."

"W-What if this is all just a mistake-"

"Oh, come on, Soph-"

"Luke wouldn't do that!" I yell, moreso aiming the words at myself then at her. I hear a silence on the other line. "He... he just wouldn't."

"You don't know that,"

"You know, you're right. But neither do you," she says. "Think about it, Sophie. How well do you know him?"

"I-"

"And I mean really know him?" she interrupts. "You've been dating for five months now? Yet you still don't know his mother's name. You have no idea if he has any siblings. He literally moved here from Australia eight months ago with no indication of who he was before?"

"Ashley, I-"

"I'm just saying," she says. I stay silent. "There's something seriously going on with that boy. The going out every night, to a place that doesn't even exist? Plus that bloody shirt, and those bloody knives? It doesn't take a genius to know something's up."

"What do I do, then?" I ask, just as the front door downstairs slams shut.

Startled, I zip the bag back up, kicking it underneath the bed before flopping down on the mattress in an attempt to look sane.

Footsteps start up the stairs as Ashley's voice sends chills down my spine.

"You get out, and you get out now."