Maisie and Kai had fall into silence after their little pie celebration.

She rubs her toes together, already feeling the warmth in her blood dissipates quickly into the cool air. Crossing her legs, she adjusts the thin blanket over her lap and carries on sewing, pieces of fabric surrounding her, the yellow bed lamp shines at her hands as her fingers painstakingly tugs the needle pin, finishing up some dolls’ eyes. Their breathing low and faint, absorbed by the rough, prime-white walls. Above, Mama’s padding barely sound at all. Indistinctly, she hears the cupboard eases open and a hollow sound of pills shaking out of the plastic container. Mama’s soft cough.

Maisie pricks the pointy tip to her index, but she barely notices. Her mind keeps wandering back to earlier. Mama was lingering on top of the steps, a pained expression painted over her face, didn’t notice Maisie crept up the stair with leftover cake. Mama had jumped back, alert and embarrassment flush her skin. Mama’s hands were shaking as Maisie recounts what she and Kai were talking about.

Long after she concluded, Mama just sat there, quiet, gaze glazed over, so stone-still.

“Mama, he didn’t change. He’s still your son. Why wouldn’t you talk to him?” Maisie asked. “Mama, don’t you want him to stay?”

Mama turned her back. She spoke harshly, “I’d be damned.”

Kai must have heard the words, because when she came out, he turned sullen. Kai smiled, although there’s something false in his eyes, as if he has seen something she didn’t.

Maisie moves again when she can’t feel her bum and feet anymore, but then changes her mind and clears out the sewing materials, switches off the light. She curls up, hugging herself against the cold.

The house hull creaks as wind and rain continue to drizzle on. The quietude between Kai and Maisie condense into something palpable in her lungs. It’s a good kind of silence, the kind that she is used with Doctor Vu. Tranquil and calming, to breath and clear one’s head. The quietude that allows unspoken words to settle between the two of them, that allows thoughts to seep out.

Kai stretches out on his bundle of sleeping bags. They are careful to arrange themselves so that they would both remain out of each other’s peripheral vision. Kai’s breath is even and soft, but he didn’t fall asleep yet. His wired muscles restlessly twitching to release the cooped-up anxiety brimming his mind. Kai had made a point by not touching his phone at all, though she knows his internal clock is ticking away nonetheless, like a bomb. She knows, because she feels the same way, too.

It’s about over eight, now. One more hour before Papa comes home from work. Then, God knows what would happen?

“Are you scared?” Maisie whispers into the sealed blackness.

Kai doesn’t answer at first. She thinks he deliberately ignores the question, so she doesn’t push it, but he speaks then, “I didn’t plan to come inside.” He says. “I was just lingering outside, you know. Turned off the ignition. Thought I could just look and remember my childhood’s home, right? But then the front door flinged open and Mama was there, banging on my car’s window, telling me to come in. I freaked out, almost ran her over.”

He pauses. As if expecting her to comment, to answer, to tell him something. But she doesn’t.

Kai sighs, his voice sounds scratchy. “It’s weird, you know. Like, she wants me here but she doesn’t want me here. She was crying then she gave me a cold shoulder.”

Maisie stares into the darkness engulf them. Somewhere, there’s a sliver of light slips in.

“She’s scared.” She says gently. “She thought she lose you that day, remember? Losing someone the second time around is much harder and painful than the first.”

A newfound uncertainty pregnant in the air.

Her eyes are fully adjust now. She can make out Kai’s faint outlines, especially the define cuts of his arms, chin and chest where the skin almost lustrous.

“What’re you doing in West Bass, Kai?”

Kai hesitates. He turns, huffs. His words hushes, rushed, meaning for insider’s ears. “There’s a homicide, down in that abandoned construction site. Two kids, dead.”

Maisie inhales sharply. A shiver goes through her, suddenly the room temperature dips. She pulls the blanket tighter around herself, her palms sweaty. Acidic bile edging slowly up the back of her throat.

“I heard so.”

“Did you see the morning news?” He sounds sick as he continues. Maisie doesn’t remind him that they’ve sold their TV long ago to pay off a particular loan from a loan shark business Seyana was getting into a few years back. “God. Those reporters, you know, they barely have any empathy left. Two boys with their fucking ribs ripped open and they were arguing about how the Chinese should be deported from America.” His words, angry and disgusted at the same time, the emotions tangle so deep she cannot pull one apart from the other. Their black neighbourhood had a tight relationship with the Chinese ghettos since both are underdogs, partners in crime and wealth. Maisie vaguely remembers Kai’s best friends are mostly Chinese.

“I doubt the Salmons allow the police to venture on their properties.” Maisie says.

“No. But it was some CNN snitch discovered the deaths, not our local Diem Tribune. The Salmons are basically having a noose around their neck. CNN was digging into the death history. By tomorrow morning, I bet they would ‘shed some light’ on the unresolved cases.”

She feels a cold fist closes around her neck.

Sweat breaks over her skin.

Kai shifts, sits up. “The thing is: the killer is an amatuer. You can tell. The stabbing are hasty. She left so many trails behind.” He continues somberly, doesn’t seem to notice Maisie’s sudden silence.

She licks her lips. Once, twice. Swallows. Throat dry.

They would catch her.

“How do you know it’s a she?” Maisie rasps. The sound of saliva sliding down her trachea amplifies in the dark, cacophonous.

“Testimonies from the kids’ friends.” Kai answers. He sighs, shaking his head. “I wish they would have fix the fucking surveillance system, for Christ’s sake.”

She is quiet for a moment. Mulling. “Plenty of the high men will be booted after this.”

Kai’s rueful smile echoing in response. “That’s why Fairmount force is here. To verified those white bastards. At the very least, only the Chief is on the line. For the Salmons, they would be dead either way.”

The Chinese expands their territories rapidly. Not only by headcount, but also through the sheer amount of influence influxed recently. Chinese businessmen, with their abundance Renminbi, heavily invested in construction and mortgages, and sending their wives and children over to claim the rights. Meanwhile, the Red Salmon gang terrorizes West Bass lanes. Black and white gangs seem amatuer compared to the Salmons. Salmons, with their smooth Oriental face and cold lilted accent, need no tattoo or bulky bodies to scare others into submission. The red-clad men came and gone with the breeze, never leave a trace, never cause a scene. However, the victims’ deaths are gruesome, and to some degree, almost supernatural. Belly torn open, guts and liver and intestines spilling purple fluid, demolished faces, wide-opened mouth still slick with foam.

By the time the official government realized, the giant has creeped up near the top of the hill. Chinese has already infiltrated the municipal ranks.

Around the time Maisie was in primary school, a Chinese businessman from Red Salmon gang, the same one that owned Chinese Town Market, had purchased the contract to a major construction project. Of course, the purpose was never disclosed. Rumour has it the Salmons used the site as disposal ground to hide dead, unrecorded bodies, where devils like Maisie Watson took away lives.

“What does the families say?” Maisie asks, cautiously sweeps the tittering tenseness off her voice.

“Inflated with a sense of justice,” Kai scoffs. “When we arrived at the scene this morning, reporters were already swarming the place, wiring up as if this is a page from Sherlock Holmes and the case would easily been solved by a dude reading the mud print.”

“I’m sorry.” Maisie says softly, fearing her brother would detect a crack in her voice. “It must be hard for you. To analyze those kids’ dead bodies.”

Kai quiets. “Let’s get some sleep before Papa comes home.” He says finally, laying back down on the sleeping bags.

As she waddles in the stifling darkness, she remembers some odd memories.

The basement is very big for one person to fill in. Papa has always been talking about renovate it into two rooms for better use of space, but the talk had started since Maisie was in grade 11 and the basement was still looking as bare as it was, forty years ago. Well, minus the walls and the floor. Once, Mama was fed up with Papa’s empty promises, she called a contractor to do the work. Papa was mad. He came home from work and brought out his rifle and waved them at the orange-shirt men until they were gone. He and Mama had a massive fight, plenty of things flied that day, not just fists.

Mama was black and blue all over for the next few weeks, couldn’t even roll out of bed.

What stuck in her head was Papa’s calm demeanour when he cracked the rifle chamber to show a fully loaded carriage. That, and his flat, cold tone when he fired at the wall, the bullet grazed one of the construction men’s neck. He had pointed the nuzzle, still hot and then had a faint wisp of smoke curling out, at the door and snarled as the workers scurried all out.

It was an unspoken unfortunate that deaths in West Bass rarely get resolve. Criminals get away with things here. It had been almost fifty years since the world suddenly turned its attention onto this small town, fifty years since Jacob Hurrell. And now, once again, America sneered upon West Bass as the sleepy town get shook by the murder of two young boys.

The last time, West Bass has turned into a little conspiracy theory of its own, splitted by races and power, coloured by blood and lies and suspicious. A neck-breaking reality show where the darkside contaminated and seeped through the colourlessness, where the audience hold their breath, unsure of the next move.

She laughs quietly at herself.

While her Papa didn’t hesitate to shoot clueless men who follows order, Maisie Watson surely didn’t hesitate to kill two innocent boys in cold blood.

Killer blood truly runs deep.