Dead at 15

My name was December Antonia Lambert and I had less than a month to live…unless I could catch the murderer before then of course, which was exactly what I intended on doing. I was the youngest of twelve daughters before the ‘accidents’ started happening. I was now an only child. A little suspicious that eleven people of the same family died at the age of fifteen exactly right? Either everyone was entirely thick or they were covering something up. I’d put money on the latter. But who on earth would have the power to cover up eleven deaths? Let’s just say that I had my suspicions.

Like I said, my name was December. I was fourteen years old, had choppy, shoulder-length natural black hair with a side fringe, brown eyes and was about five feet and three inches in height, kind of pale – not like one of those vampires, which were ever present in current pop culture. I was a ‘normal’ kind of pale. I lived off of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and thick shakes. Killer’s was the local store, which made the best thick shakes and ice creams ever. It wasn’t actually called that by the way, it was more of a joke.

Back on topic though, all of these ‘accidents’ seemed plausible on the surface, but not anywhere beyond that. Coincidence is only a fair excuse for a little while – two deaths don’t cut it, and eleven is just ridiculous. I was no professional killer or a cop but even I could tell that these were not tidy jobs at all. It wasn’t like we Lamberts were stupid either, Dad being an ex high-ranking FBI special agent turned successful businessmen and Mom used to work at a law firm in the city (before going all weird and taking leave) with degrees in basic law and criminal law. We had to have gotten some of those smarts.

I guess my parents should have been the first ones to investigate the deaths – leading me to believe that they’re involved some how. It would’ve been sick to think that they’d kill their own daughters though. How the hell they’d do it with us all around was a mystery in itself really. November never would have…never mind. We were told these things from the cops and in the newspapers regarding my sisters’ official ‘deaths’:

January: crossed the road without looking, killed instantly by an oncoming car. The car was found ditched in a near by river – washing away all fingerprints. The driver still hadn’t been found, presumed dead.

February: poisoned herself accidentally whilst sleepwalking. She was found in the kitchen the next morning.

March: fell out of the tree at the park and broke her neck.

April: overdosed. Apparently there was a major manufacturing flaw with her sleeping pills.

May: electrocuted herself by sticking a knife into a toaster.

June: alcohol poisoning. Found in an alleyway behind a bar.

July: burnt along with her friend while making cookies.

August: trampled in a brawl at my Uncle Tom’s bar.

September: slipped off a bridge and drowned.

October: shot in the now dubbed, ‘Reaper’s Birthday Massacre.’ Culprit was named as Damian Baxter, a cocaine addict at the time, now serving his life sentence in the state prison.

And November, my best friend. It was the most mortifying and disturbing thing I’d seen in my life and I’d attended ten funerals of close family members. It completely changed my personality. November ‘committed suicide’ in the downstairs bathroom, within the forty-five minutes in which I’d gone to make lunch. Suicide though? Something was just way off about it, but the way I saw her was just so genuine. Not like she’d been killed, but like she'd willingly taken her own life.

One thing none of the ‘grown-ups’ ever considered though, was that we would talk. Of course we would. We were girls, practically designed to gossip. As we grew older, we heard more about our deceased sisters. We didn’t have tonnes of info but we had the main bits and pieces. This gossip was what made their deaths just that bit more unbelievable.

January. She was at her boyfriend’s the night she died. He’d just broken up with her. Her death was one of the few that had little cause for speculation. Even though they never found the driver.

February was the baker. She was cooking her own birthday food the night/morning of her death. I knew for a fact that the rat poison was always kept in the basement and although she was a regular sleepwalker, she never went so far as the basement.

March was the ‘antisocial’ one – though in my faint memories of her, she was generally smiling and really nice towards November and me. She also owned a Polaroid camera that never left her hands, and if she were suspicious, she probably would’ve made an effort to collect pictures of possible clues. And I knew that she was suspicious. September always called her paranoid. One of the more questionable things about her death however, was how she fell out of the tree she’d been climbing for years. Dad always compared her to a monkey. It would have taken someone to push her, for her to fall off.

April had OCD and talked a lot. Had a real thing for counting objects. Funnily enough, the pills that killed her, she’d been taking for at least a week prior to her death. Hm…

May was the family whore, discrete, but still a whore. No one, however, is stupid enough at fifteen to stick metal into a plugged in toaster.

June was an alcoholic but was said to have recovered…

July was the nerd, the know-it-all. She went to the only girls’ school remotely in the area. She was a total control freak. She would not let cookies burn – especially not to the point of a full-blown fire. Anyway, she was a snooty smart ass.

August was a bitch, an honest bitch though. The punk. Really liked to mother us all. She had her own band and didn’t put up with any shit. Shared the dislike I had of my mother. I liked her. The whole bar brawl thing was just dodgy. There would’ve been no way to tell who killed her exactly – if it was just one person.

September however, was the nasty bitch. Two faced as hell. Hated her. What on earth she was doing near water I did not know, she couldn’t even swim.

October. She was strange. That was the only way to describe her. Strange. She always had her journal and a pen on her. She was the only other one apart from January who was 'murdered.' But with Damian, it seemed likely that he was hired.

November was my best friend. All there was to it. Nobody else could give me shit about how she must’ve been depressed and fucked up from having so many family members die in tragic accidents.

I wasn’t an outsider. I had extra facts to work from. I wasn’t a corrupt cop or some snooty bullshitting psychologist. Lucky me right? Anyway, I’d decided to do my own C.S.I. type thing. Except without all the kick ass forensics and weapons. Pity. But I did know that I could be methodical about it. I’d definitely want to invest in a box of latex gloves, which were easily purchased at our town’s grocery store, and a notebook was vital. My memory really wasn’t the same after…everything.

First thing’s first, you’ve got to look at the evidence and knowledge you have. Bedrooms, belongings, causes of death, where they died, what they were doing before they died. But unlike crime shows, I had no ‘fresh’ scene and no bodies lying around, much to my disappointment.

Alright, so once you’ve done that, you do the interviews, see what anybody knows about the victim a.k.a. what they were doing on the day/night of. Which would be tricky for me considering that my parents had the most information, but would get interested in what I was doing if I wasn’t careful…long story short, I needed a cover story. School project? Maybe.
And after that, you narrow down the suspects – someone who had the means and a motive then all the evidence that can convict them. It’d be a very short list. I knew that the local police station held a fair bit of evidence – mainly October’s things because it was placed at an ‘actual’ crime scene. I'd need to get my hands on it.

Now I know that generally murder investigators look to the first victim first but I figured that the most information was in the later deaths – plus I had my own memories, which were better fresh. So, I would start at the end. Meaning I’d have to deal with the bathroom that had haunted me for the past year. November.

***

I’d left November to go make us some mac n cheese. I’d just shoved it in the oven and had wandered over to the TV, switching it on to watch cartoons. After that was cooked, I took the food back to our room. Funnily enough, November's bed was empty. I placed the tray on the desk, and then went looking for her. The downstairs bathroom door was closed, but unlocked. When I opened the door, however, was when I screamed.

Red water had just begun to overflow from the tub, November’s hair hung over the back, one of her elbows was resting on the edge at an odd angle. I ran over to her and lifted her arm slowly; a long, deep, vertical slash was down the middle of it. I whimpered as the lukewarm water touched my feet, seeping into the cracks of my toes. I turned off the taps that were emitting buckets full of water and grabbed November’s arm again, now deathly pale despite the bloody water giving it a reddish tint. I grabbed her wrist and searched desperately for a pulse. Nothing. I then checked the pulse in her neck. Again, nothing.

Where were Mom and Dad? Tears streamed down the face, my cheeks became flushed and I dropped her arm, running back to the bedroom, leaving pink footprints in the carpet. I sat on my bed and hugged my knees to my chest, rocking myself quickly. Oh God I left her alone, I left her alone. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! Calm down. Calm down. It’s okay. I thought to myself, logic taking over my emotions for the moment. Panic in a minute. Think December. Think. Cops are going to want her things right? Her cell phone maybe? That conversation with the bitch was not enough for suicide. Don’t let them insult her. I grabbed the silver phone off the nightstand and shoved it in the pocket of my jeans, then curled into a ball in the corner, truly allowing the shock and grief to swallow me, ‘Alice Cooper’ still playing in the background. Then it dawned on me. I was the last one left.

***

There were no signs of a struggle, no bruises, no scratches, no tissue under the nails and she wasn’t drugged. The cuts were executed in a way that only the victim could’ve done herself. They were so deep and long that she would’ve taken under thirty minutes to bleed out, especially being in the tub. This was all according to the autopsy report.

But I was definitely right to steal the phone. It was one of the first things the cops asked for as evidence. As stated, she never had a real motive for suicide – that, they could ‘conclude’. They just assumed that she committed suicide due to the psychological trauma of having ten dead sisters. Which was bullshit. Why would she wait, and why would she just so happen to do it on her birthday?

About a month after she died, I went through a very angry stage of finding anything related to how she died. It was my ‘fault’ so I had to find out who killed her, or if she really did kill herself. The phone was my sanity for a while. I’d looked through it every night. Eventually, I realized that this agressive yet totally unorganised search was getting me nowhere, and gave up trying.

Only recently did I properly search through the texts, recent calls, everything, to find nothing apart from those texts from Tania. But who was I kidding? It was no suicide, so why was I looking for evidence to prove it? November was murdered like the rest. But I'd shoved it all away, till almost a year later and now time was running out.

For a murder to have taken place, it would’ve been timed perfectly, which meant that someone would’ve been watching me as well. But no signs of a struggle? That just didn’t make sense. Again, this was what confused me for a long time, why I got nowhere. This was so perfectly depicted to look like a suicide but at the same time, there wasn’t much to say that there most definitely was a suicide.

If it were to be a murder, it had to have been done by someone she trusted, even then, how can you not attempt to fight back when someone comes at you with a knife? Nothing clicked there. But one thing that had me convinced that she was murdered was the fact that the taps were left running.

I’d read online that in cases of suicide of slitting the wrists, the person sits in a tub to ease the pain and to make the 'cleaning up' easier. November was quite a tidy person, liked order. If she were to commit suicide (as unlikely as it was) she would’ve made sure that everything was nicer to clean up. Leaving the taps on would’ve stained everything and would’ve been very nasty to clean up (which it was but we didn’t have to handle that) and totally out of character. Then again it’s arguable that November wasn’t in her right mind and blah, blah, blah. But I knew her better than anyone. November was murdered. All of my sisters were so why was she any different? Her death just proved that the killer was getting better. Damian Baxter didn't kill the rest of my sisters like he did with October and was now locked away so November comitted suicide anyway. It wasn't him. There was no way it was him.

Mom and Dad were, apparently, at the grocery store when it happened. They found me an hour later and then phoned the boys in blue. I didn’t need any other suspects, maybe I'd keep my eyes open but I was convinced that it was them, or at least one of them and the other was covering it up. Why? Well Dad could’ve easily stopped proper investigations in all of the cases. His best friend is our town's Sheriff, and being an ex-FBI agent, he still had a lot of…power. Not to mention, he knows the business. He knows how to get away with it. And Mom, well she was a lawyer. Even if she/they did get found out, she’d be able to stir up a very decent defence. That’s why she used to get paid the big bucks in the city.

We lived in a fairly large two-story house with a double door garage, and swimming pool in the backyard. Mom had tulips growing out front. The whole place was fenced in and there was a large willow tree that grew to the side of the house and over half the backyard that Dad couldn’t be bothered cutting down even though it made the pool and gutters bitches to clean.

Jan and Feb’s old room was downstairs along with May and June’s, April and July’s and November’s and mine. There was one bathroom downstairs, the open plan kitchen and dining room and the living room. Mom and Dad were upstairs, so was March (who managed to get a single), September and July (July refused to sleep in the room April had died in so they moved her into September’s smallish room) and August and October’s old room. There were two more bathrooms upstairs, Dad's study and the ‘family’ study. We didn’t have an attic either, just a basement.

I moved to the family study when November died. Every room was left the way it was when its inhabitants…departed. But back to the point, the entrances to the house are pretty much endless but near impossible to get into without someone noticing. It was getting closer to winter too when November died so all the windows were shut and you could only open them from the inside. I checked to make sure there were no broken windows once I regained some sense of composure, seeing as the cops wouldn’t do their freaking jobs properly. So obviously, no one came in via the windows.

There were also two balconies. One off of my room and one off the study upstairs but the doors leading to them were the same story as the windows. So the murderer must have entered downstairs. The back door was locked, so the only option left was the front door. Being unlocked, and me not being particularly vigilant, anyone could’ve entered. But again, Mom and Dad really were the most likely culprits.

So basically, I believed that my parents were the ones who did it. I just couldn’t really prove it and I only had one shot at getting it right. I needed solid evidence. There was a major evidence drought with November so I’d have to move on to October.

***

“Dad?” I asked, cutting my potato slowly. Man I loved potatoes.
“Yes?”
“Are you going to the state prison anytime soon?”
“Not that I know of…”
“Oh, okay.” Plan B then.
“Why?”
“No reason. Just curious.” I’d take a bus. Mom and Dad gave me identically confused looks. “Thanks for dinner,” I said with a smile before leaving the table.

I opened the door to October and August’s room. There had to be something that could help me there. After an hour of searching through October’s things, nothing. I groaned. Fan-fucking-tastic. I’d hoped that the cops would return her journal at least, but no, a massacre that happened two years ago, a solved case, took priority over the family of a victim. Great. More work for me.

I closed the door quietly behind me before running off to my own room, which was an utter pigsty. I lifted the false bottom in one of my desk drawers and pulled out the newspaper and magazine articles.
Damian Baxter’s hollow face looked up at me and I stared back coolly. My eyes scanned caption below. ‘Cocaine addict, Damian Baxter, was convicted today for the murders of fourteen young adults.’
Another article caught my eye though. (I’d read the headliner already.) ‘Olivia Marris speaks out about the Reaper’s Birthday Massacre.’ Olivia Marris? October’s friend!