by Rysa Walker
“I’m pretty sure I saw the orange cat you mentioned at MB’s house earlier today,” Ben says. “But…yeah. You’re right. I don’t know a single person with a pet. I do remember having a dog, back before my old man started drinking so heavily. Her name was Josie, but…”
“Somebody forgot to write them into the script,” Luke says. “We’re in a damn horror movie, and someone forgot to give us pets. I don’t know how we wound up inside a movie—”
“No. Not a movie. A game.” Daisy reaches over to pull the bandage from Tucker’s forehead.
Tucker touches the spot. “Why’d you take it off? Is it…bleeding again?”
“Is what bleeding?” Ben asks.
“Exactly,” Daisy says. “That’s where the crow attacked him this morning. It was deep enough that I was worried he might need a stitch, but as you can see, it’s pretty much healed.”
She holds her hands up, and they all stare at the faint pink lines that crisscross her palms. “These were bleeding like crazy a couple of hours ago. I took the gauze off to check them around midnight when I realized they weren’t hurting anymore.”
Tucker raises his eyebrows. “Wow. I’d forgotten all about the bandages with everything else going on.”
She colors slightly. He would have definitely noticed the bandages if she’d been wearing them earlier, given the fact that her hands had traveled pretty much the entire length and breadth of his body.
“We’re in a game,” she says. “I think Luke’s point is dead-on that someone forgot to write pets into the script, except the script isn’t for a movie. I don’t know if we get extra lives—”
“Barb Starrett apparently did,” Julie says.
“True,” Daisy admits, “although I think it would be risky to assume that’s the case across the board. Someone does seem to have programmed in healing points, though.”
“A game,” Luke says softly. “Engage the dragon. Game over. You die.”
Except for Daisy, all heads whip toward Luke.
“What did you say?” Ben asks.
“Just something that’s been running through my head for a while.”
“Barb Starrett said that at the library,” Tucker says. “Right before she shot herself.”
“Hey, I don’t know anything about that,” Luke says quickly.
“No one’s blaming you,” Julie notes. “Barb said a lot of stuff. She mentioned Daisy. Chase. The pumpkin. The stupid scarecrow from my nightmares. Other things, too. I can’t remember it all. It sounded like nonsense, but I’m wondering now if it wasn’t more of a data dump.”
Everyone is silent for a moment, then Luke says, “But, yeah. Daisy’s right. This feels more like a game. Maybe that’s why I kept thinking that phrase, but every time my head would try to wrap itself around the idea that something was off about this place… ” Luke shakes his head.
“I know what you mean,” Daisy says. “Something kept pushing me away from admitting to myself what was going on. It’s like my brain would reset every time it tried to go there.” She turns to Tucker. “Chase said it was happening to him, too, didn’t he? When you were talking to him in the living room?”
“Yeah. It sounds like all of us have been having weird memory lapses.”
This feels like a separate category to Daisy. Less like a memory lapse and more like a purposeful erasure. But she nods. “Whatever it is, though, it doesn’t seem to be working very effectively right now. I mean, we’re all here, sharing information.”
Ben pulls a folded envelope from his pocket. “If we’re in a game and something—or someone—can mess with our thoughts, what does that make us? Leaving aside everyone else in town. I’m just talking about those of us in this room right now.” He taps the back of the envelope. “I’ve got a whole list here of things that just plain cannot be real. But they happened. So…I think I believe the game part. But I guess what I’m asking is whether someone inside a game can still be human?”
There’s a long silence as everyone considers this point.
“We’re human over there,” Luke says finally. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve got memories that don’t fit. Different town. Time passing differently. An entirely different marriage, different job. Aali’s there, but she’s older.” He looks around at the others. “Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s been dealing with two sets of memories. Because even though I kept telling myself that other place was just a fantasy, I’d be a whole lot happier if this was the fantasy and we could find a way to get back to wherever there is.”
Daisy doesn’t respond, but the visions she’s had are definitely on her mind. Whatever that other place is, it doesn’t really seem like a better place to her. She remembers being strapped down. And feeling sad. A deep, overwhelming sadness and loss, like she felt right after her mom died. When Luke’s eyes fall on her, she opens her mouth to speak, not sure if she’s going to tell the truth or lie.
But Ben speaks first. “Chase has been telling me that this place isn’t real. That there’s some other reality where I’m his dad, which…sounds weird, I know. Apparently, we live near Knoxville.”
“Yeah,” Daisy says, and she fills him in on what Chase told them in the car. “He seemed pretty adamant that none of this is real. I think maybe he has a better idea of what’s going on than any of us.”
Ben looks a bit ill at that comment. “I’ve…got some jumbled memories, too. Things, people, that don’t quite fit. What about the rest of you?”
Julie shrugs. “I remember being the high school principal. But that was here. In Haddonwood, not somewhere else. And there were some very unreal aspects to those memories.”
Tucker looks over at Daisy, holding her gaze for a moment. “There have been a few times where I had some pretty vivid—well, they seem like memories, but I know they never happened. Nothing that’s really clear, though. It’s just flashes.”
He seems to be waiting for Daisy to add something, but she can’t. Not in front of everyone else. So she looks down at her notes and then at Ben. “We still haven’t heard your story. And maybe you should just jump to the part where you tell us where the hell MB is. Because I don’t think you were being honest with us last night.”
Ben gives her a look that’s equal parts hurt and anger. And even though what she said was true, she feels a wave of remorse for turning on him like that, especially since it was partly because she wanted to change the subject.
“I don’t…I don’t know, okay?” Ben says, looking like he’s about to cry. “Yeah. She went with me. Up to the Grimshaw house. She was all gung-ho about going to a haunted house, but then she just disappeared. And I don’t mean she ran away. I watched her simply…vanish. One second she’s holding that damn pumpkin and the next it’s shattered on the ground and she’s just gone.”
Ben tells the rest of his story then, and by the end, he is in tears. “I don’t know where MB is. And Chase… I’d be dead if he hadn’t stepped in. I’ve spent so much time trying to protect him, and now he’s the one who had to kill the bastard. I need to go. I need to look for him.”
“You’re right,” Tucker says. “And we’ll help you look for him. For Luke’s daughter, too. But we need a plan. If this is a game, we need to figure out how to win it. Or at the very least, how to quit.”
Daisy nods. “I was thinking about all of this earlier. Luke’s comment about horror movies wasn’t entirely wrong—he had the genre correct. I’ve tallied up dozens of different things that are from films listed in that book on the coffee table. The magnets on Martha’s fridge are one example. The statue at the bonfire is from The Wicker Man, where this cult used the thing for human sacrifices.”
“That bitch from Psycho at the Pinewood is another,” Luke adds.
“And that graveyard you described a minute ago,” Tucker says. “That’s straight out of Pet Sematary. Although I’m not sure why we’d need one in Haddonwood, given the lack of pets.”
“‘The Lottery,’” Ben says. “That’
s horror, right? The Shirley Jackson story.”
Julie nods, leaning forward. “Zombie cheerleaders. I don’t recall the name of the film, but I definitely remember seeing them on a movie poster from a long time ago. Oh, I didn’t get to that part yet, did I?” She stops as they hear a car pulling in next door.
But Daisy is already up. She knows who it is without even looking. Tucker probably does, too. They’ve both heard those tires come to a squealing stop in the driveway of the house next door pretty much every day since Dani Gray learned to drive.
Two
TUCKER
Tucker watches as Dani sinks down onto the couch between Ben and Luke. “We had to walk all the way to Chad’s house and get a can of Fix-a-Flat from his dad’s garage and then walk all the way back to the car. And the tire is already half flat again. What a sucky Halloween.”
It’s hard for anyone to disagree on that final point, but Tucker’s bullshit detector is flashing code red. Dani is lying. He’s certain of it.
“I called you,” Dani says to Daisy. “Over and over. Why didn’t you answer?”
Daisy’s reaction is a verbatim repeat of the scene in the car when Dani called to apologize earlier. She’s so relieved to see that Dani’s okay that she’s almost giddy, and she immediately launches into an explanation about the phones being out.
Daisy’s emotions are getting in the way of clear thinking. Tucker knows she’s too smart for Dani’s story to hold water, so the only logical conclusion is that she must desperately want to believe. Otherwise, she’d have questions.
Because Tucker sure as hell has questions. For one thing, he wants to ask why Dani had to walk back to the car from Chad’s house. Walking to his house, okay. That might make sense if they’d actually had a flat. But he’s pretty sure Chad’s parents have a car—two, in fact. Chad drives one of them around most weekends, if he hasn’t done something to piss his mom off during the week. Why wouldn’t they take one of those cars and drive back to fix Dani’s tire?
Also, Tucker knows Bill Gray. Dani has a spare tire in her car, and her father taught both girls how to change a tire before he let them get behind the wheel.
But he suspects that asking Dani those questions won’t win him brownie points with Daisy. And even more importantly, he doesn’t want to worry her. Julie finding Bill’s car at the edge of town is troubling, especially after that horrible film clip on the scream reel at the Hart. That has to be eating away at her, and he doesn’t want to make things worse.
All of this would be easier, though, if Daisy wasn’t inclined to automatically assume the best-case scenario when it comes to her sister. Because if Tucker was forced to bet, he’d wager not just that Dani Gray is lying, but that Dani Gray is not real. She’s an NPC. He could pull out his pistol and shoot her, and she’d show back up tomorrow saying it was just a flesh wound. Or talking in fucking iambic pentameter.
Not that he would ever do that. Even if she wasn’t Daisy’s sister, even if she is a non-player character, whatever the hell that means in this context. He’s lived next door to her forever, and while he considers her flaky and a little mean-spirited, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.
But that doesn’t mean he trusts her.
What he finds surprising is that Julie Kennedy appears to be thinking the same thing. She hasn’t taken her eyes off Dani since the girl walked into the house. At first, Julie seemed shocked to see her, but gradually that shock started looking more like suspicion. Ben and Luke seem a little wary, too, which means that everyone except Daisy isn’t entirely buying Dani’s song-and-dance routine.
“So,” Dani says, “have any of you figured out what in holy hell—sorry, Julie—is going on in this place? The Hart is completely closed down. Chad and three other people told me that Aric Conner’s grandma, the librarian, killed herself, but Aric was at the bonfire like nothing happened, and Chad’s saying now he never told me that. He got all mad like I was the one making things up. And I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but the sky is weird—the moon and stars are in one little cluster. Oh…and you guys saw that giant stickman at the bonfire, right?”
“Yeah,” Daisy says. “There’s no way anyone from the school built that. It would have taken weeks. We were comparing notes on all of this before you got here. This is going to sound truly insane…but we think we’re stuck in a game.”
Dani stares at her for a long moment, and then rolls her eyes. “You’re right. That sounds truly insane.” She glances at Ben to her left and Luke to her right. “Although I will say that these two had better hope they’re in a game, preferably one that lets them push the reset button on their love lives. Because otherwise they are so screwed. Marybeth says you abandoned her up at the Grimshaw place. She came down the hill a few minutes after you guys left the bonfire, crying her eyes out. Aric drove her home.”
Ben is speechless. He manages to get out a strangled noise before Dani turns to Luke. “And as for you, I hope you’ve got money saved up for a divorce lawyer. Carly was at the party last night with some guy I’ve never seen before. He was hot, too, and she was hanging all over him.”
“I don’t care,” Luke says. “What about the baby? Was Aali with her?”
Dani looks a little perplexed. “No. At least, I didn’t see a baby. And Carly wasn’t dressed like someone out with a kid. She had on this red dress cut down to here—”
“I don’t give a damn what she was wearing! What were they driving? What time did they leave?”
Dani shrinks away a bit at Luke’s intensity. “How would I know? I only saw her for a minute.”
For the first time since Dani walked in, Tucker sees a whisper of doubt in Daisy’s eyes. They just watched Ben in tears, telling them about MB disappearing, and Luke definitely wasn’t lying when he told them about Carly. Everything both of them said happened was batshit crazy, but they were in a town filled to the brim with batshit crazy right now. What Ben and Luke told them felt genuine—a lot more genuine than Dani’s comments just now.
Daisy’s frown only lasts a moment, though, and then she seems to shake it off.
Julie, who has been watching quietly, stands up, careful not to put too much weight on her ankle. “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starving. There should be enough eggs and bread at Bill’s house for us to feed everyone if we all move next door. Then we can figure out a…” She shrugs. “A game plan, I guess.”
“I don’t have time for brunch,” Ben says. “We need to—”
“I’m not talking about fucking brunch!” Julie snaps, surprising everyone. “I’m talking about putting fuel into your body so that you can think clearly. A jolt of caffeine wouldn’t hurt either, since I doubt any of us has slept. You going off half-cocked without any idea of what we’re facing isn’t going to help Chase. Same goes for Luke and his baby. Whatever the nature of this game we’re in, our odds of helping those children—and ourselves—are better if we work together.”
“She’s right,” Dani says. “It’s not brunch if you eat if before dawn. I’m not even sure you can call it breakfast.”
Julie gives Dani a look that Tucker can’t interpret, then says, “That’s not at all what I meant, but I guess it’s a valid point. Anyway, if you guys want to take off on your own, without support, without information, there’s the door. But me? I’m going to go scramble some eggs.”
A contrary idea thumps about inside Tucker’s head. If this is a game, if they aren’t actually living, breathing people—something every rational part of his mind wants to reject—then food probably isn’t relevant.
His stomach, however, begs to differ. It growled at the mere mention of breakfast.
“Let’s go, then,” he says. “The best I can offer is Cheerios, and you’d have to soak them down with beer or water.”
Ten minutes later, the coffee is brewed, Julie is scrambling eggs, and Dani is stacking the last few slices of toast onto a plate. Daisy pulls six mugs from the cabinet next to the stove and reaches for
the coffee pot.
Tucker puts his hands on her shoulders. “I can do that. Go get your notes together so we can work while we eat.”
Daisy gives him a smile. “Thank you. I’ve got the butter and jelly,” she tells Dani. “Just bring the toast.”
Tucker fills the mugs, and as soon as Daisy and her sister are out of earshot, he leans over to whisper to Julie. “What’s up with Dani?”
He sees hesitation on Julie’s face. She glances toward the dining room and then back down at the eggs she’s stirring.
“You don’t think she’s real, do you?”
Julie ignores him as she searches through the cabinet to find a bowl for the eggs. “I don’t know anything for certain,” she says softly, and he realizes her search for the bowl had been, at least in part, to put a cabinet door between their faces and Dani’s line of sight. “Something happened at the school. A lot like what Ben said about Scott’s daughter. I thought the girl who was killed was Dani, but—”
He mouths the word shh when Daisy approaches and says, “Hey. Just looking for the sugar. Is it on the table, or…?”
“Table,” Daisy says, giving Julie an odd look. “I was coming to grab the milk.”
They carry the eggs and coffee into the dining room, and for a few minutes, the only sounds at the table are of food being wolfed down.
When the chewing slows, Daisy grabs her tablet from beneath her chair. “Okay. Here’s the deal. I know horror movies. And books. Tucker and Dani can attest to that.”
“Yep,” Dani confirms around a bite of toast she’s spread with peanut butter and a handful of chocolate chips from the bag on the counter. “My sister is a walking encyclopedia of blood and gore.”
“But…” Daisy continues, “I’m not an expert on gaming. Dani and I used to play—” She cuts herself off, frowning, and then goes on. “We used to play a few console games when we were little. And something online called Club Penguin. But that’s it. What about the rest of you?”