The Fear Zone

by K. R. Alexander

  He doesn’t say we’ll be safe there.

  He doesn’t tell me to face my fears.

  He is silent.

  And as he leads me toward our next room, I swear I see the clown in the crowd, staring at me with those cold blue eyes and a smile on his face.

  The clown knows.

  The clown knows.

  I watch Kyle all through chemistry. We’re lab partners, so we sit together, but even though he’s right beside me, he seems like he’s a thousand miles away. He keeps staring at the corners of the room, or looking out the window, like he’s waiting to see a ghost.

  Even though it’s really me who’s waiting for that.

  I know I need to talk to him about his dad. For the last few years, I’ve seen things in his house get worse and worse, but he’s never admitted to anything. We’ve all been too scared to talk about it. Too scared to face the truth. I mean, I don’t know for certain that things are bad at home, but I can guess. I used to stay at his all the time, and now he rarely invites me over, and only when his dad isn’t there. And the note he got … You can’t escape the fear you live with.

  That has to mean his dad. And I have to help him.

  As our teacher describes saponification, I jot down a list of things that might help keep us safe. Various charms or crystals, weird chants, hiding our mirrors, different types of incense. But every single one of those seems sillier than the last.

  I thought I’d find my answers in books, but it turns out that life is nothing like a book. In books, things always come to a neat conclusion. They make sense. Life isn’t always like that, and I’m terrified that this is one of those times.

  No matter how much I prepare, I’ll never be able to fend off the clown. It will continue to chase us all down until we die of fright.

  I think of April. The way her eyes lit up when I said I was trying to figure out how to end this thing.

  I have to protect her. I have to protect all of them.

  “You can’t protect them,” growls a voice to my right.

  I look over, goose bumps racing down my arms. It’s Vanessa, one of my classmates, only it isn’t her voice that I hear. I stare at her in shock as her head twists to face me; no other limb in her body moves. The motion is unearthly. Her eyes are white.

  “You can’t even protect yourself,” Vanessa-who-is-not-Vanessa says.

  Fear and bile rise in the back of my throat. I swallow them both down and look around. Is anyone else seeing this?

  No one else in the room is talking. Everything is frozen—our teacher holds a marker to the whiteboard; Kyle’s stuck chewing absentmindedly on a pen; even the sky outside seems paused.

  And in that moment, I know that there is nothing I can think of to defeat or protect myself from this evil force. It can make the very world stand still—what chance do a bag of salt and some charms have against that?

  “What do you want?” I ask. My voice wavers. Honestly, I’m impressed I can even talk.

  “Your fear,” Vanessa growls. She leans over, her movements jerky. “I want to drain every last drop of fear from you. All of you. Until you are nothing but husks!”

  “I won’t let you.”

  The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, before I can even register how stupid it is to be taunting an enemy like this. Everything I thought before was wrong. I’m surrounded by people, and the evil is still here. I’m facing my fear, and it isn’t going away. I force myself to think of Kyle, April, and Andres. I can’t let them get hurt. I can’t let any of us get hurt.

  “I’m going to stop you,” I say.

  “And how will you do that?” she asks with a laugh.

  I push myself to standing. The chair screeches against the floor, but not even that makes the world break back into motion. For all the people around us, it is just me and my fear.

  “You can’t hurt us,” I say. “All you can do is try to scare us. Well, I refuse to be scared. Not anymore!”

  I don’t know what I expect. I hope she’ll howl and the ghost will vanish because I’ve stood up to it.

  She opens her mouth. I wait for the scream.

  Instead, she starts to laugh. It’s the sound of breaking glass and nails on a chalkboard. It takes all my control not to cover my ears.

  “Is that so?” she asks when she’s finished cackling.

  Vanessa-not-Vanessa stands like a puppet being yanked by its strings.

  “You think you can face me? You think I can’t touch you?” She reaches out and touches my cheek. Her nail scratches my skin, and I flinch back. “You think I can’t hurt you?”

  Her smile is more terrifying than anything I’ve seen so far. It splits her face, almost as wide as the clown’s, and her eyes now glow blue.

  “Let me show you what I can do.”

  She holds out her hand, her fingers twisted like an open claw right toward my heart. Then she clenches, and my world goes white with pain.

  Everything hurts. Every muscle in my body goes tight, pulls past breaking, and I am screaming, screaming, as my limbs tear themselves apart. And it’s not just me screaming either—through the blinding light of my pain, I see the others. Kyle fighting off snakes that aren’t there. Andres drowning on solid ground. And April running for her life as the clown gets closer and closer.

  It’s not just my friends either who I see failing to fight their demons. At the edges, hidden in light, are my siblings, my parents, my other classmates, stretching out into infinity.

  “You are just the beginning. When I have your fear, I will bring out others’ as well!”

  The pain becomes too much.

  I collapse to the ground, and the horrifying vision collapses with it.

  The pain, however, stays.

  “Deshaun!” Kyle says. He kneels at my side, and it takes far too long for reality to fade in. I’m back in the classroom. It’s silent once more, but not because of magic or a ghost. It’s silent because I am collapsed on the ground by my desk, and the entire class is circled around me, save for the teacher.

  “Mr. Lyle went to get the nurse,” Vanessa says reassuringly. I flinch back from her, my mind still reeling with the image of her blank white eyes.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “Don’t,” Kyle says. He keeps a steady hand on my shoulder, keeping me on the ground. “Don’t move. Just in case you hurt yourself.”

  “How … What …”

  “You just started screaming,” Kyle says. “And then you passed out.”

  His voice is quiet, but I can tell he’s scared. He’s trying to play it cool around our classmates. He knows the truth.

  I close my eyes.

  Distantly, I hear Mr. Lyle come back and tell everyone to step aside. Everyone does, save for Kyle.

  “Did you see it?” Kyle whispers.

  I nod my head.

  “I was wrong. So wrong,” I say. The nurse comes over and helps me to sit up, but I don’t open my eyes. I don’t want to see any of this.

  I don’t know what I’ll see.

  “It can hurt us,” I say. I open my eyes then and stare straight at Kyle. “You have to warn them. They aren’t safe. None of us are.”

  Mr. Lyle and the nurse lift me to my feet and take me away.

  The stubbled concrete is wet and cold against my bare feet.

  All around me my classmates giggle and talk nervously, their voices echoing within the pool room. Pretty much everyone has wrapped themselves in their towels, covering as much bare skin as they can. No one has jumped in. Mostly because we all know the pool is kept regulation temp, which means freezing cold.

  I don’t want to get in at all. Not for the first time, I consider April’s advice of pretending to be sick.

  I stand here, alone, and stare at the swimming pool. She’s in social studies right now, safe and warm and dry, and all I can do is think about what Deshaun said: We’re safe so long as we aren’t alone. The clown can only scare us. Not hurt us.

  Just scare.

  Tr
ouble is, I’m pretty certain it’s 100 percent possible to be scared to death.

  “Come on, guys,” the gym teacher, Mr. Lonergan, yells out. “Everyone in the pool!”

  He blows a whistle, and, reluctantly, we all throw our towels on the bleachers—the air almost feels as cold as the pool will feel.

  The kids around me all jump in, splashing and yelping at how cold it is.

  I stand on the edge, frozen, and look into the water.

  I know there aren’t any sharks in swimming pools. I know that just doesn’t happen. It’s never happened. It never will happen. And if for some reason it does happen, the odds of it happening in my middle school swimming pool are infinitesimally small.

  I know all this.

  I know how to think rationally.

  But it’s like there’s another part of my brain now, the part that doesn’t care about things like possible and probable. And that part of my brain is screaming, telling me: Just because you can see the bottom doesn’t mean the depths aren’t hiding something sinister.

  “Come on, Andres,” Mr. Lonergan says. He steps up beside me. “Hop on in. The water won’t bite.”

  I look up at him. Does he know what he just insinuated? He smiles at me. And there’s nothing really scary in that smile, but for the briefest moment, I swear his eyes flash pale blue.

  “Either that or sit out and get an F for the day,” he says. He shrugs. “Choice is yours.”

  I look between him and the water. Just staring at the pool makes me shiver, and not from the temperature. Who knows what’s waiting in there? But if it’s a matter of facing a cold pool or facing an angry mother demanding to know why I failed an easy class like gym, I’ll take the pool.

  It only wants to scare us. It only wants to scare us.

  I dip my toe in the water.

  It’s colder than I thought.

  Then, before I can second-guess, I jump in.

  Freezing water rushes around me, and I thrash to the surface with a gasp.

  When I do, I’m no longer in the swimming pool.

  “No,” I whisper.

  Cold, salty water sneaks into my mouth. I cough.

  I am in the middle of the ocean.

  Water stretches as far as I can see. Cold, slate-blue water and a cloudy gray sky. My heart immediately starts hammering in my chest. I turn around, treading water frantically. No shore behind me. No land anywhere.

  Just an endless blanket of water and a cold, unforgiving sky.

  “Help!” I yell.

  My voice doesn’t echo like it would in the gym. My cry gets swallowed by the emptiness around me. And that’s when I know—this isn’t a hallucination or vision. I’ve been transported to the ocean, and if I don’t get out quick, I’m going to drown. My limbs are already so cold that swimming is getting difficult. I don’t have time to figure out what happened or why. My only thought is how I’m going to escape.

  “Somebody, help!” I call out. Nothing. “Please!”

  My mind conjures up all sorts of terrible things that could be swimming below and around me, just waiting to brush against my legs or nibble on my feet.

  Jellyfish or giant squid.

  Or sharks.

  Of course, sharks.

  Fresh goose bumps crawl over my body.

  I go to call out for help again, but my mouth fills with salt water. I sputter and choke, kick harder to remain afloat. I’m thrashing so hard, it would be impossible not to see me.

  I see it then. On the horizon.

  A shape cutting through the water, materializing through the mirage line between sky and sea. A boat. And it’s heading straight toward me.

  I wave my arms wildly, throwing up waves.

  It has to see me. It has to.

  The ship keeps getting larger, growing closer. Tall and gray and grand, probably the size of an ocean liner. It slices through the waves, tossing up sprays of white.

  It’s coming fast.

  Too fast.

  The boat draws nearer.

  It’s not a boat.

  It’s a shark fin. And it is larger than anything I’ve ever seen.

  “HELP!” I scream out.

  I begin to swim. Paddling as hard and as fast as I can. Away from the giant monster closing in behind me. My breath screams in my lungs and my limbs are getting slower, heavier.

  When I glance back, I see the shark is nearer now.

  The top half of its body is above the water. Larger than a submarine and faster, parting waves the size of houses. Its beady black eyes are locked on me.

  It opens its mouth.

  A silent roar.

  Its jaws are huge. Its bloody teeth larger than skyscrapers.

  I know then that I’m not going to escape.

  I’m

  never

  going

  to escape.

  I try to swim harder.

  My body fails me.

  My arms are tired. Gelatinous. I flop through the water.

  I glance back once more at the shark.

  I can smell the stink of its breath. The roar of its hungry jaws.

  I am going to die.

  I close my eyes.

  Let myself sink under the water.

  I don’t want to see this. Just want it to be over.

  And something grabs me by the arm, pulls me back up. Onto cold, wet concrete.

  “Andres!” Mr. Lonergan yells out. “Andres, are you okay?”

  I blink open my eyes. Cough up water.

  I don’t taste salt.

  I taste chlorine.

  I’m in the pool room. I’m safe and in school and everything is okay.

  “What happened?”

  “You just started thrashing,” the teacher says. “I thought you knew how to swim!”

  “I …”

  I look over to the pool. To the still, safe indoor pool. All of my classmates stare at me. No one speaks.

  “I think I better go to the nurse,” I manage to say.

  “Yeah,” Mr. Lonergan replies. “Yeah, I think that would be a good idea.”

  He drapes a towel over me and helps me shakily stand. I pull the towel around tight. I’m cold. So cold.

  And scared.

  So scared.

  That shark was real.

  I know it was real.

  If it had caught me, I’d be dead.

  A shudder rips through my body, almost taking me to my knees, but the teacher’s arm around my shoulders helps keep me upright.

  “It’s okay, big guy,” Mr. Lonergan says. He looks down at me and smiles. Sharp teeth. A smile too wide for his face. And his eyes burning blue as fire. “I’m only just starting to have fun with you.”

  I don’t leave Deshaun’s side.

  We sit together in the nurse’s office while she takes his temp and looks at his pupils and checks his head for injuries.

  “Are you sure you don’t remember what happened?” she asks.

  Deshaun shakes his head. His dark face has paled, and his eyes are even more bloodshot than they were this morning. I know the look she’s giving him—she’s wondering if she should send him to the hospital to run tests. And I know that’s the last place he should be right now. Alone and isolated and defenseless.

  “He told me he didn’t get any sleep last night,” I interject. “Or the night before.”

  “Are you not feeling okay?” the nurse asks, concerned.

  “Video games,” I respond for him.

  The nurse raises an eyebrow. “Video games?”

  “Yeah,” Deshaun says. He looks over to me, then lowers his eyes with fake guilt. “I got a new one on Friday and haven’t stopped playing until, well, until this morning.”

  The nurse tsks. “That would explain it. Prolonged staring at a screen and sleep deprivation isn’t a good combination. I’m sure you haven’t been eating well either. All that Halloween candy.” She touches his forehead again, as if to make sure he doesn’t have a fever. “I think the best thing I can do for you righ
t now is to send you home. I’ll call your parents.”

  “They’re at work,” I say. “I can take him home, though. He’s only a few blocks away.”

  “You’re not getting out of class, Kyle,” the nurse says.

  “No, I know. I’ll be back before next period. Please? I want to make sure he gets home safe.”

  I have no doubt that the nurse wants to say no. I have no doubt that this goes entirely against protocol. I am quickly thinking of excuses or ways I can convince her when the door to the nurse’s office slams open suddenly and a kid walks in, his face green as spinach.

  “I’m sick,” the kid says. The moment the words leave his mouth, he starts to throw up.

  The nurse leaps into action, grabbing a bucket and trying to contain the mess.

  “Go, just go,” she says to us. “Get some rest, Deshaun. I’ll tell your teachers you won’t be back. Kyle, you have thirty minutes. Go!”

  Deshaun and I look at each other and try to contain our surprise. How in the world did we manage to get out of school that easily? It makes me think we should have tried this sooner. When not running from killer clowns. I help him off the cot where he’s been sitting, and together we hastily make our way out the door, stepping over the puddles as we go.

  “What happened in there?” I ask as soon as we’re outside. My excitement over getting out of class quickly vanishes with the weight of why I’m out here in the first place: Something terrible happened to Deshaun. And if it happened to him, it could happen to any of us.

  Deshaun doesn’t answer.

  “Deshaun—” I begin.

  “You don’t want to know,” he interrupts. He looks at me, and the fear in his eyes tells me everything. He is correct: I don’t want to know what he saw. “Where are we going?” he asks.

  “Your house,” I say. “You need to sleep.”

  “No!” he yells. Much more forcefully than I think he intends. He shakes his head. “Sorry. I just … I can’t go back there. Not after what happened. I don’t think it’s safe for us to wait around. This thing. Whatever it is, it’s getting violent. It’s getting more powerful. It can hurt us now. We need to get rid of it.”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know,” he admits. “But we need to get to the others before something bad happens to them.”