Would you like to know how a typical murder mystery evening unfolds? The following is based around a three-course meal, but we’re more than happy to fit in with whatever suits your tastes best. All timings are flexible, and all sorts of variations on this basic structure are possible!
7:30 p.m. Guests assembled; actors arrive in character and start mingling
7:40 p.m. Brief MC speech sets the scene; all guests have programs with background info and clues throughout the event—scenes take place between the actors, and the audience are invited to eavesdrop; actors are always in character and can be quizzed by guests at any time
8:00 p.m. Starter served; more scenes follow
8:30 p.m. Main course served; more scenes follow
9:00 p.m. Dessert served; a murder occurs
9:30 p.m. Audience interrogate suspects
9:45 p.m. Audience try to work out “whodunit”
10:00 p.m. Perpetrator revealed; champagne and prizes for winner(s)
10:15 p.m. Event concludes
I don’t understand. I’d seen this part of the wing still standing, but I assumed it was abandoned, like the rest of the wing. When we lived in Boston, any time an apartment was vacated, squatters would inevitably try to find their way in. It seems impossible that squatters would find their way up the mountain to take shelter here.
The stairwell is so narrow that Heath’s broad shoulders graze the walls on each side. He treads gently, but with every step comes a creak that sounds much too loud. When he reaches the top, he peers down at me for a second, then presses the latch atop the door handle and pushes open the slatted wooden door. He steps into the room and lowers his lantern, then disappears inside.
Holding Adam close, I climb the next step so that I can peer in. The room is definitely lived in. There’s an oil lamp on a table, a small bed, and other items. In fact, this room looks cozier than mine, that’s for sure. My eyes catch on a garbage can, filled with discarded wrappers for my mother’s favorite organic granola bars. Oddly, the whole room has a familiar scent, a familiar feel to it, almost like déjà vu.
One thing is clear. Whoever has been staying here isn’t here now. The window is open a crack, and news clippings are scattering across the floor. A rocking chair with bunnies on it, like one you’d find in a nursery, is slowly rocking back and forth in the breeze and must have been the source of the creaking we’d heard outside. I steady it as Heath motions me forward. “You said you had a twin brother.”
“No. He wasn’t real. I only sometimes—” I stop when I look down at the book in his hands. It’s an old battered photo album, with an embossed leather cover.
In one of the photos is a picture of me as a baby. It’s the same picture that I thought was on the back of the clues we’d been getting. But…it’s not me. The blanket the baby is wrapped in says Sawyer.
Heath flips a page, and a piece of paper slides out. I pick it up and unfold it. I know that handwriting. It’s my mother’s.
Dear Aunt Ellie,
I am so sorry that it has been such a struggle of late. As I told you in my last letter, we are doing everything possible to change the situation. I understand that things are difficult, which is why Sawyer is there with you and not with us. I have been looking into nursing homes, but they seem so inhumane. Despite what he did to Seda, he’s just a child. We feel very strongly he needs to be with family, or else he’ll spend the rest of his life in an institution.
I wish we had some way of communicating other than these letters. I feel so far away from you and from him, so helpless. But for Seda’s sake, you know we could not continue to keep him under our roof.
Thank you for the pictures. He is growing so fast that it hurts my heart not to be able to be there with him. Let him out of the restraints on his good days, would you? Enclosed is some money for his care.
I love you and appreciate everything, as always,
Maya
I read the words over and over again. I’m about to read them one more time when a voice says, “What if he wasn’t in your imagination, Seda? What if he’s real?”
I’m jarred out of my thoughts, which are running along that same track. “That’s ridiculous,” I say, the paper shaking in my hands. I look down at the photo. It looks like me. I thought it was me, without the name on the bottom. “There’s got to be some other explanation.”
“Like what?” Heath asks, flipping the page. “He wasn’t inside you, Seda. He’s real. Your mother kept your twin brother a secret from you all this time.”
With that, I double over as a sharp pain grips my stomach. All this time…the twin I thought was inside me was living three states away? Not only that, but he had violent tendencies that demanded she keep him apart from me? But did she have to keep him a secret from me too? Is that even possible? “I’d remember him.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t remember most of my life before I was three. Maybe everyone convinced you that he was your imaginary friend.”
I think of the suggestions Sawyer gave me when I was a child. Did they come from inside me, or had they come from someone living? You have a real good imagination. Those words in my mother’s voice. She was always trying to protect us, but more than anything, she wanted to keep us together. I’m suddenly struck with something I heard her whisper to my father one night before he left: Above all, we have to stay together. I take a deep breath of air, and another, but it doesn’t help. The room is spinning, and my vision bends. “Heath, this is ridiculous. She couldn’t…”
I trail off. Maybe she could.
I steady myself against the edge of the table as Heath says, “Hey, look at this.”
I don’t want to see more, but he shoves it under my nose so that I have no choice but to read. It’s a small news clipping with the headline “Couple Found Murdered in Remote Mansion.” I scan the article, catching on the sentence, “State Police have no leads as to who could have committed these brutal murders…” My eyes sweep over the smiling faces of a gray-haired couple in the black-and-white photo beside the article.
I’ve never seen pictures of them before, but I can only guess that these people are my aunt and uncle. My mother never said how they died. I’d assumed it was from old age, but what if they had been murdered? Would she have come here to watch over Sawyer and never told us? It all sounds so utterly unbelievable, but at the same time, I’ve read stories about how twins communicate. Maybe the feeling in my stomach wasn’t Sawyer speaking from inside me, but from somewhere else.
I shove the article back into the book before I can read more. I swallow back the lump in my throat and lurch away. I’m going to throw up.
“My twin brother is really alive,” I murmur. “Alive, and a serial killer.”
My own flesh and blood was born insane. But at least he’s not me. We may have shared a womb, but twins are different people. He’s not a part of me. And maybe, if that’s true, then…
Heath doesn’t say a word. He’s still flipping through the photo album. I don’t want to look, but it’s like I can’t turn away. There are more baby pictures, and then the same photo I had in my bedroom upstairs, with the seven of us together last Christmas at our home in Boston. I don’t have to look closely to see that there is a big, fat X drawn in Sharpie over every one of our faces.
The one over mine looks particularly heavy.
Sawyer hates us, but he hates me most. I have no doubt about that. He’s probably killed my mother by now, and all my siblings. Maybe he’s saving me for last.
I grab Adam’s hand tightly as the realization overcomes me. Sawyer is responsible for all the deaths in this house. I had nothing to do with any of this.
But he’s not done yet. I’ve always known that Sawyer hated me. And yet, despite that, my stomach feels settled with relief. It’s not me.
“If your brother’s doing this, where the hell is Liam?”
“Dead,” I say surely. “I’m sure it has to do with whatever costume he had on and that gunshot we heard.”
“Gunshot?” Heath says as if he’d forgotten.
But for me, it’s like a window shade that was stuck halfway is now opened fully, letting in all the light. Everything makes sense. Why my mother was oddly protective of us. Why we spent time in Erie when we first got down here. Why she’d disappear for hours and we’d think she was in her office writing. All those weekly trips she’d take down to Art’s. Why we had to stay. Why Dad was so upset before he…
Heath slumps down on the bed and buries his head in his hands. “Oh yeah. That’s right. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. We’ve got to get out of here. The three of us can make it down the mountain. That’s got to be safer than being here.”
I shake my head furiously. “I can’t go without my family.”
“What if they’re dead?”
“What if they’re not?” I reply. “I can’t just leave them.”
“Right. Shit.” He rubs at his eyes tiredly. “You know he’s going to kill us, one by one. Right?”
I grip the knife’s handle. “Not if we stay together.”
He brings his hands together in front of his mouth, almost as if praying. Finally, he nods and stands, rubbing his hands together. “All right. Let’s go get them.”
“OK.” I start for the door and suddenly stop.
Adam is gone.