by Rysa Walker
Fuck it, she thinks. I can’t check the entire school.
“Daisy! Are you here?”
No sound but her own voice echoing back.
“Have you never watched a horror movie?” Dani asks. “This is how people get killed.”
Julie shines the light onto the basketball court and spots a girl kneeling in the center. She’s not moving, and Julie is pretty sure it’s not Daisy. The girl is in a Haddonwood Howler’s blue-and-yellow cheerleading uniform.
“Are you okay?” Julie calls out.
The girl pops up, revealing a set of yellow and blue pompoms. She looks like something from The Walking Dead. The left side of her face is missing. Her right eye, perfectly clear and blue, is trained directly on Julie, while the other hangs loose from its socket.
Julie bites back a scream and pushes Dani toward the exit. Six more cheerleaders, in various stages of decay, cartwheel onto the basketball court from both sides of the gym and take position around the first girl as the cheer begins:
HOWLERS, HOWLERS
WE’RE THE BEST!
WE OWN YOUR SOUL.
THE DEAD DON’T REST.
WE FIGHT,
WE BLEED,
WE AIN’T ALL RIGHT.
WE’RE THE HOWL
THAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT!
The cheer ends with cartwheels and backflips, accompanied by thunderous applause that seems to come from the empty bleachers. Then, without warning, the cheerleaders simply vanish into the shadows.
Something else is coming from the far side of the gym now. It’s tall—over seven feet—with a solid black cowboy hat atop its misshapen head. It wears the same pair of mud-caked jeans that she remembers from her nightmares. The shirt is different, though. It’s always been a plain red-and-brown plaid work shirt. Now, the scarecrow wears a blue-and-yellow jersey, with the words HADDONWOOD HOWLERS looping and scrolling across his chest.
A buzzer goes off, and the scarecrow zips toward them, moving across the court with uncanny speed. Julie grabs Dani’s hand and pushes her through the double doors into the dark corridor.
She takes a wrong step on the way out. A bolt of pain shoots through her ankle, and she goes down. The flashlight skitters off into a corner.
“Get up, get up!” Dani yells, sounding a lot like the zombie cheerleaders as she pulls Julie to her feet and toward the front door of the school.
The scarecrow is now trying to squeeze through the gymnasium doors. Loose straw spills from the cuffs of his pants onto the floor. Julie has a clear view of the thing’s face now and can see that something other than the jersey is different. The scarecrow’s eyes are no longer stitched on. They’re very much alive, and glowing white in the darkness.
It’s made of straw! Julie tells herself as she runs. Turn around and face it, for God’s sake. Tap your inner Wicked Witch and find a lighter. How ’bout a little fire—
With this thought, Julie’s feet skid to a halt so quickly that she nearly plants face first onto the tile. She watches as Dani rams her shoulder into the front door, pushing the bar down. It’s almost like everything is in slow motion as her mind tries and fails to stitch together some missing piece.
She can even hear failure music. Womp, womp, womp.
“Help me!” Dani screams as she tries again. That snaps Julie out of it, and she adds her weight against the door. But it’s no use. It’s locked.
Julie pulls Dani back toward the long hall lined with classrooms. She glances over her shoulder and sees that the scarecrow has now squeezed himself through the door. The floor around him is littered with straw, but it doesn’t seem to have lessened his bulk in the slightest.
And Mr. Giggles is not alone. A swoosh of wheels announces the cheer squad, now clad in roller skates and armed with knives, hurtling directly toward them.
“WE GOT SPIRIT, YES WE DO. WE GOT SPIRIT, HOW ’BOUT YOU! ”
Julie hooks sharply into an open classroom. A member of the cheer squad whizzes past, narrowly missing them as she yanks Dani inside. The fingers of another cheerleader graze her sweat-slicked hair. She slams the door, and a third fiend on wheels hits it with a loud thump.
That’s not the sound that has her worried, however. The door might hold against the Howlers on wheels, but she doesn’t think it will hold against the scarecrow.
Which is stupid. He’s made of straw.
“Julie…” Dani’s voice is faint, like she’s choking. When Julie turns, she sees that the girl’s face has gone pale. A red splotch appears in the middle of her white sweater. Dani coughs, and when she stumbles forward, Julie sees the hilt of a knife in the girl’s back.
The door makes a cracking noise as Julie takes a step toward her. It’s like she’s moving in slow motion. Dani gasps again, then slumps down the side of the desk and onto the floor.
“No,” Julie screams. “Please, no!”
But Dani is silent as the wood creaks again and dust falls from the top of the doorframe.
“LITTLE PIG, LITTLE PIG, LET US IN,” the chorus sings from the hall.
Another crack from the door, but Julie’s eyes are on Dani.
She’s changing. Flickering in and out like a flame.
Glitch, Julie thinks, the word popping into her head.
Here. Not here.
Here…but now the blood on the white sweater is missing.
One final flicker, and now Dani is missing, too.
Julie stares at the empty spot on the floor until another crack behind her jolts her into action. A window is in front of her. Julie doesn’t stop to see if it’ll open. She hunches forward and crashes through the glass as the classroom door finally shatters.
It’s the easiest decision she’s made all day.
She lands on her hip, and something hard jabs into her thigh. But she’s up quickly, running toward her car as best she can on the sore ankle. As soon as she’s in the car, she looks back toward the building, expecting to see the scarecrow and the cheer squad from hell pouring through the broken window.
But the window is whole, and no one is there.
No scarecrow.
No zombie cheerleaders.
No Dani.
Five
CHASE
Chase walks down the very center of the road. It’s partly because he doesn’t like being close to the woods, but he also likes following the pattern of broken lines and reflectors. It gives him something to focus on. White stripe. Yellow dot. White stripe. Yellow dot. There are no cars out tonight—he’s pretty sure on that point—but if one does appear, he’ll hear it. He can step out of the way.
Or not. He isn’t entirely sure what he’ll do at this point if he hears a car coming.
When he curled up under the blanket on the floor of his room, he’d really hoped that he wouldn’t wake up at all. But the joke was on him. He couldn’t sleep. Instead, he drifted in and out of memories that he wanted to erase. The day had indeed been a total fuckery. Being in the void was scary. Seeing his own body twisting in the wind…that was scary. Half a dozen other things had been scary since he woke up yesterday morning.
But having something take control of his body and kill the Ralph-thing? That was terrifying.
What terrifies him most, however, is knowing that it was also exhilarating. Liberating. Not knowing what would happen next, not being able to control it. Being swept away in a roaring tide of sheer, raw anger. Embracing it, even.
It had been a wild ride.
A wild, terrifying ride.
It’s only a half mile to Tucker’s house. He’ll just tell them what happened. They’ve seen the thing with white eyes. They’ll understand. He just wishes he’d thought to stop long enough to at least wash his hands before leaving the trailer. Maybe grab some clean clothes. The only thing he paused to do was check on Ben. He was out cold, but Chase could feel a pulse.
The only thing he could do for Ben was go and get help.
There had been no point checking Ralph Rey. You could look at him and see that he was dea
d.
“I could fix that. If it bothers you.”
The voice, coming from a spot just to his right, startles Chase so badly that his heart stutters, and he very nearly screams out loud. When he turns, he sees the kid from the noose. There’s no rope now, and his face seems fairly normal with no bruises or blotching, but he’s wearing the orange sneakers, with a light-colored tee and jeans like the ones Chase has on. Unlike Chase, however, his clothes are not spattered with the gory remains of Ralph Rey.
The boy looks like Chase, but he doesn’t sound like Chase. His voice sounds older. More like the Door Man at Martha’s house.
“Well? Do you want me to fix it?”
“You mean getting rid of this blood?”
“No. I meant Ben’s dad. If what happened bothers you, I could reboot him. Eventually.” He gives a half shrug and then says, “Probably. This is new territory. If things were operating normally, I could be more certain. I could get rid of that blood, too, even though it takes more effort to change things when it’s us. Or one of the others. With the real players, there’s a lot more to reset, and you risk them becoming aware. Several of them already are, and that’s going to be really hard to fix.”
The kid huffs, clearly not happy about that situation. “Ralph is different, though. He’s just…I guess you’d call him an NPC. He’s a bit more detailed than some in the game, because he’s based on Ben’s memories. So it’s not like rebooting some anonymous guy that none of you know on the street. Or even the librarian. Putting Ralphie back in the game would take resources, and those are a little scarce right now, but if killing him really bothers you that much, I could try.”
“No,” Chase says. “I don’t care about him. Even if he wasn’t an…NPC, he was bad. He’d have killed Ben. Probably would have killed me, too, if he had the chance or if he was drunk enough.”
“Well, yes. That’s true now because everything is out of whack. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. This was just going to be a fun round. I figured Daisy would like opening the Hart, and the last game with the singing and the iambic pentameter was boring. Sure, I added in some scares, because…it’s Halloween, right? I thought we could have a little fun. Maybe make a little progress at the same time.”
None of that makes much sense to Chase. He opens his mouth to ask questions, but in the brief moment when he’s trying to decide which question to ask first, the boy cuts him off.
“But then you screwed up. You screwed up, and it threw everything out of balance. Otherwise, he’d never have gotten in. I’m not blaming you, it’s just the truth.”
To Chase, it sounds very much like he is being blamed, but he lets it slide because he’s pretty sure the kid is now talking about something he needs to understand. “You mean the white-eyed guy? The one you killed while it was inside Ralph?”
The boy snorts. “You think we killed him? I doubt we even slowed him down. We killed Ralph Rey, sure, but he was just the shell. And I’ll emphasize the we in that sentence, because you weren’t simply a spectator, little brother. Make no mistake. You’d have killed him, or more likely, you’d have died trying.”
“Maybe. But I wouldn’t have…enjoyed killing him.”
All he gets is silence from the other kid, although he suspects there was an eye roll he just couldn’t see in the dark.
“I wouldn’t have enjoyed it the way you did,” Chase amends. “And that last part, with the monkey, that was all you.”
“Bullshit. You hated that ugly thing as much as you hated him.”
“Yeah, I hated it. And I might have burned it. Or buried it. Or peed on it. But I wouldn’t have smashed it into a dead man’s head over and over again until it was nothing but pulp.”
“The monkey or the head, baby brother?” He skips in front of Chase to walk the white lines, holding his hands out to the side like he’s balancing on a tightrope.
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your brother. You’re Raum, aren’t you?”
“In the flesh.”
Now it’s Chase’s turn to roll his eyes. “Somehow, I doubt that.”
“Oh no, little—” Raum glances back at him, giving him an apologetic nod. “I mean, Chase. I am very much in the flesh.”
Chase is pretty sure that he’s talking in riddles, so he shifts to a different tack. “What are you? And don’t tell me you’re human. Or that you’re me. Because I’m not buying either of those.”
“Fine. I’m not human. And I’m not you.” He doesn’t say anything else for a moment, just continues walking the white line. Chase is about to repeat the question when Raum finally continues. “What I am is a prisoner.”
“Why are you a prisoner? What did you do wrong?”
Raum tsks. “The first question was a good one, but then you had to slip in an assumption. A very judgmental assumption, too, I might add. Why do you assume that I did anything wrong?”
“Well, usually that’s why they put people in prison. Plus, you just bashed someone’s head in, and…every other time I’ve seen you like this”—he points to the clothes and sneakers—“you’ve also been wearing a noose. Did you leave it back on the tree?”
“The noose wasn’t my idea. You’ll have to take that up with Old White Eyes. I think he’s just taunting you. Taunting us. The last thing I want is you pulling another stupid stunt like the one that got us into this mess. I’m having a hard enough time patching things up as it is.”
Chase has a vague tickling sensation at the back of his head. It’s a thought that he really doesn’t want to examine further, so he pushes it aside.
“Oh, come on!” Raum says, turning around to face him. “Avoidance? Do you really think that’s going to work? Everyone you know, including me, is in danger because you popped one pill too many. And if your friend Zophiel is right—”
“She’s not my friend.”
“Well, she’s sure as hell not mine. But if she’s correct, and if I can’t get this game back on track, everything could come crashing down.”
“Good. That’s fine with me. Then I can get back to the other place.”
“Right. Because you’re so damn happy there that you gulped down a bunch of pills.”
“I’m done talking to you,” Chase says. “You’re just in my head.”
“True. But now you’re in mine, too. And therein lies the problem.”
More riddles, Chase thinks. Because that’s really what I need right now.
Raum’s clothes morph into a green suit covered with question marks.
Riddle me this, Riddle brother…
And apparently it doesn’t matter whether Chase talks to him or not. Raum knows what he’s thinking.
“I’m not your brother. Just tell me how to get home or else go away.”
When he turns around this time, Raum is still in the costume, but the green mask can’t hide the frustration in his eyes. “I don’t know how to get you home, Chase.” He continues walking backward, still toeing the white line as he speaks. “Zophiel clearly thought that Martha taking an early exit would restore the balance, but things haven’t exactly gotten better. HAVE THEY, ZOPHIEL?”
Raum shouts those last words up at the night sky and waits, as if he’s expecting a response. When he gets nothing, he stops walking and points upward, waving his finger in a circle. “Do you see that, Chase? Do you see that pathetic excuse for a sky? A dusting of stars and the moon, right here over our little town. I could expand the sky, make it stretch out as far as your eyes can see, but that would come at a cost. It might mean that I couldn’t maintain the air in this little section of the game.”
With those words, Chase realizes he can’t breathe. It’s like something sucked all of the air away. No matter how hard he tries to pull air into his lungs, there’s just none to pull in.
He stares, wide-eyed, at the kid in the Riddler costume for several seconds. Raum isn’t breathing either, and the half of his face that is visible below the mask is turning red. Then Raum flicks his finger, and the air is back. Chase t
akes several deep, glorious breaths. Tears sting his eyes. He doesn’t say fuck you, but he definitely thinks it.
Raum gives him a grim smile that lets Chase know he got the message, loud and clear. But he does lose the costume. Chase is once again staring at his twin. Who, thinking back on the message at Miss Martha’s house—RAUM LIES—is quite possibly his evil twin.
“Of course I lie,” Raum says. “Everybody lies. The operative questions are when and why? And I’m sorry for stealing your air, but I had to make a point. We’re on a budget. I have to conserve resources. That’s why everybody in Haddonwood seems to have turned in early tonight. Why Daisy’s precious theater is back to its default setting, along with most of the town.”
They walk along silently for a couple of minutes, as Chase tries to get his breathing back to normal. Something rustles in the trees off to the right. He thinks maybe it’s the wind, but the night is totally still. Maybe wind is one of the resources he’s conserving, too.
“That’s what happened at the school, isn’t it?” Chase asks, keeping one wary eye on the trees. “With the duplicates. And kids blinking out. You were saving resources.”
“Yes. It was a place I could cut corners. You were the only one at the school who would notice. At the high school, there were two players. Plus, you were already questioning things anyway.”
“What I don’t get is why you can’t just end it. Stop playing the game. Let me go home.”
“Me, me, me,” Raum says. “You’re so selfish. Getting home isn’t the most important thing right now. You were willing to risk your life to save Ben back at the trailer, but it’s not just Ben who’s at risk. Not just you. It’s Daisy. Tucker. It’s everyone in the game. If you believe Zophiel,” he adds in a louder voice, “and I’m not sure I do, everyone outside the game is at risk, too.”
“I’m not trying to be selfish,” Chase says. “You’re acting like this is some game where I know the rules. I don’t want anyone to be hurt. But…I don’t know what you want me to do.”