“Shawna,” Glenda said, “tell me a little bit about your sister.”
A pause, eyes staring into the camera for too long without speaking. No fancy editing this time. Just raw footage that made Shawna want to cry despite the rising anger. She’d assumed the interview would air on television. At least then she wouldn’t have to watch real-time reactions. Audience members booed and snickered and she heard the words pig face on more than one occasion. Derek’s nicknames had caught on.
“What would you like to know?” Shawna finally said on-screen.
“To be honest, I’d like to know if it was . . . difficult growing up with her.”
“Difficult how?”
“Angie Everstein is the world’s biggest pop star. Her album has outsold Michael Jackson’s Thriller and is on its way to being the most successful record of all time.”
Shawna nodded. “I’m aware.”
“So, what’s it like? Living in her shadow, I mean. It must be hard watching all her success. Does it ever make you jealous?”
Yes, she’d wanted to say in real life. Yes, of course it made her jealous. It made her jealous every waking moment. Things had been tough enough before the talent show. Her sister had the normal nose. Her sister had the smooth skin. Her sister got the perfect tits. And then, as if the universe had decided to spit further onto Shawna’s face, her sister had learned perfect pitch by way of a conjuring spell. It would’ve seemed like a bad joke if it wasn’t the truth. But Shawna had kept herself together during the interview. She’d felt brave at the time but with her eyes magnified for thousands of onlookers, she just looked pathetic.
“I’m not jealous at all,” her past self said. “I’m proud of her. She’s worked her butt off and she deserves every bit of fame. Her singing didn’t just fall into her lap. She trained for years. She’s proof that hard work pays off.”
The crowd erupted into laughter and more booing. Some threw cans and crinkled wrappers. Others let the screen know how much they hated her. She was, after all, a traitor after her escape from school. This was the lion’s den and she’d stepped right in.
“Don’t let them get to you,” Mike said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
She pushed him away. “Too late for that.” She wiped her wet eyes, cursed herself for crying. Then she took the lead, waved the group on.
But froze after a few steps when the interview abruptly ended.
When the house lights lowered.
When the pyrotechnics began.
She shook her head. No. Her watch read seven-thirty. A half hour until show time. Probably longer. No concert had ever started on time, let alone early.
“Ladies and gentleman,” said a voice from the speakers. “Please welcome to the stage your one true queen, the lovely and powerful Angie Everstein.”
When Esmeralda heard the announcer, her chest tightened. She’d felt the sensation plenty of times, had described it in detail to her doctors while they’d adjusted her meds to push off the inevitable outcome. But here and now, with the crowd cheering and screaming, she was certain this was different. Her body wasn’t just pleading. It was telling.
She leaned against the nearest tree, waited for air that never came. Her lungs worked overtime for no pay. She saw stars and not just those in the sky. She couldn’t give up, even if her body was giving up on her. The stage was so close. She could see the cheering crowd. Thousands of them. So much glitter it was nearly blinding.
She limped toward the back of the stage, pictured her desired outcome once more. Her belief in magic was complicated. She thought most spells were only half true. You couldn’t say a few words and mix a few potions and think everything would work out. What it came down to was this: you had to make your own fate, your own destiny. And her destiny on this Halloween night was plain and simple: rush the stage and slice Angie’s throat from behind, just as she’d done to her manager. Then and only then would Esmeralda allow her heart to stop beating.
Another burst of pain. She held her chest. She ought to hide the knife but that seemed like a mountain of effort. Every move was a struggle and she couldn’t waste a single ounce of energy.
I’m coming, Jeannie.
Are you sure about that? Even if you manage to get to a hospital, it’ll be too late. It’s been too late for years. You’re living on borrowed time and then some.
The back-up band stood shrouded in shadows. She saw only dim outlines of a guitarist, bassist, drummer, and keyboardist. They played ambient noise, something you’d hear on the cheapest of cheap Halloween soundtracks. It did not match the pop music that would blare through the speakers in mere moments.
She could feel the notes teasing her mind, letting her know she’d become one of them soon. Once Angie’s real voice began singing it was game over. But she was too stubborn to give up or slow down.
The steps of the stage came into view, as did the screens, the speakers, the monitors. So close now. She pulled up her hood as she saw another group of Robes. They stood off to the side, watching the stage from behind. Something felt off about them. Shouldn’t they be out there in the sea of fans?
She held the knife behind her back and walked forward with slow, deliberate steps, selling her new role. Angie may have been deceiving but she’d made a fatal error in trusting Esmeralda.
A twig snapped beneath her feet. The other Robes looked her way. The tallest of them stepped away from the group. His words were lost in the soundscape of the band. Probably telling her to get back to work. Precisely her plan.
She turned toward the steps that were only steps away.
She hid the knife as best she could.
She saw her desired outcome once more, the look on Angie’s face when she fell to the cold metal stage, her reign finally over.
She froze when the tall Robe stepped in front of her, raised a pistol, and—
CHAPTER THIRTY
FINDING THE OFF SWITCH
CURTIS PULLED THE TRIGGER.
Even over the music, Shawna heard the report of the pistol. The bullet lodged into the Robe’s throat. The hood fell, revealing a large woman’s face.
Esmeralda Hopkins.
She held her wound to no avail. Blood leaked from the cracks of her fingers. Eyes wide, she charged them, mouthing something incoherent. Red bubbles emerged from her lips, popping with each syllable.
Curtis took aim again and fired. This time the bullet met her forehead, making her indistinguishable. She fell back and her eyes remained open.
Mike reached over and lowered Curtis’s hand, which was shaking badly now. Tears distorted his dollar-sign tattoo. He shook his head and, despite his tough guy attitude, cried like an infant.
Shawna kneeled down, reached forth, and closed Esmeralda's eyelids.
“Did you know her?” Mike said.
“A long time ago.” She almost told him this was the woman who’d given Angie her tools. In a way, it was just as much Esmeralda’s fault as Angie herself. After all, she wore a robe. She was one of them.
When Shawna stood back up, Curtis held a second pistol, this one nearly twice the size of the first.
Professor Foster, who might have been the world’s sweetest, most grandfatherly man, held on to his semi-automatic, pointed it toward the stage.
Mike, holding a rifle, nodded toward her. The gesture carried with it more words than the sum of all their conversations.
The band was finishing up their introduction.
It was time.
Through the trees she saw a figure enter the stage. There was no transition about it, no door through which the figure could’ve stepped. One moment there was empty space, the next a blond-haired, green-eyed girl.
Angie strutted toward the microphone and said one simple word.
“Welcome.”
The crowd did not cheer. They grew so silent Shawna heard her own heartbeat.
From her boot, she retrieved the pistol Mike had given her. It was pathetic compared to the rest of the group’s artillery, more toy-l
ike than deadly. But the weight of it was comforting all the same.
“Tonight is a special night,” Angie said. Her voice seemed to emanate not from the speakers but from the trees, the ground, the earth itself. “Join me, won’t you, in the dawn of a new time. A new era. Raise your hands if that sounds like fun.”
The crowd obeyed. If there was a hand left down, it was lost in the thousands pointing at the night sky. Shawna took the lead, stepping forward. She heard the others following, rustling leaves as they went.
No more Robes appeared. They were all on the other side of the stage, just as mesmerized as the glitter critters at their one true queen.
“I’m glad you’re all here,” Angie said. “It means the world to me. Now, what do you say we play some music?”
The silence vanished, replaced with thundering applause loud enough to shake the ground beneath.
Shawna made it to the small clearing behind the lights. She wasn’t sure how close the others were but she didn’t have time to look back. There was only enough time to climb the back steps, taking them two at a time, reach the upper level of the platform, raise the gun and—
—and freeze as the band started back up, playing actual music this time. Familiar music. Music that led its listeners down a deep, dark, primal path. Music she’d heard countless times no matter how hard she tried to avoid it.
“Forever with you,” her sister sang.
Angie had barely gotten through the first few lines before the change took place.
The air shifted.
The temperature plummeted.
The sky darkened.
The crowd erupted into something like a riot. She’d heard stories of looting and violence during times of disaster. Hurricanes and earthquakes brought out the worst in humanity but this was an entirely different beast.
The depravity was spread wide. Near the front of the stage, a woman removed her sequin pants and tied them around the neck of a small girl standing nearby. The girl’s eyes widened, face turning first red then blue. She struggled for only a few moments before her body went limp. The woman took back the pants, waved them in the air like a flag but her victory was short-lived. The man standing behind her, graying hair and tweed blazer that did not scream pop fan, bashed her over the head with what looked like a baseball bat with several nails driven through its shaft.
There were other such scenes. A murder here, a rape there. Screams and pleas and cheers as if they were one and the same. Bone and flesh and blood. So much blood. It was hard to tell where the head bopping ended and the head removing began.
The chaos was not limited to Gallows Hill. In the distance, police cruisers flashed, lighting up Salem like Fourth of July fireworks.
Foster had only been half right. There may have been a secret track on the recordings but that wasn’t the worst of it. Angie’s producers, whoever they might have been, had added the frequency to mimic her real voice.
“Come on,” Shawna shouted to the group, words lost in the commotion.
She sensed them gaining but sensed something else as well.
She turned her head and saw that the people in the crowd weren’t the only ones affected by the world’s most popular song.
Foster’s glasses drooped too far down his nose as he stumbled toward her. The frames fell to the ground, crushed under one of his boots, though he didn’t notice. He held his hands out, dropping the gun in the process.
“Professor? What’re you doing?” She knew the answer of course. He was just as much a critter in that moment as the sea of fans behind her.
Curtis, too, was affected. He raised his pistols for the second time that night and fired. The first bullet struck a nearby tree. The second made contact with Foster’s left leg. He went down hard, buying her just enough time to finish climbing the steps.
She eyed Mike as he kicked Curtis to the ground and tossed the pistols aside. He nodded toward her, met her eyes. Go, he said without saying it. End this now. He hadn’t lost his mind yet but that would likely change any moment.
She obeyed.
Up the steps and onto the stage.
Past the band and around the speakers.
At the microphone now, Angie’s perfect ass shaking in tune to the beat, when suddenly, without warning, the song stopped.
The band froze. Not a stray note or beat to be heard. The screams took precedence, occupying the silence. It was the worst thing Shawna had ever heard and that, recent events considered, was saying something.
“I was waiting for you,” her sister said into the microphone. “I’m actually surprised in a way. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“You thought I’d let you do this? Thought I’d let you end the world?”
“This is already happening. The world ended”—she looked at a small, sparkling watch on her left wrist—“about two minutes ago.”
“Maybe,” Shawna said. “But you’re going to hell with the rest of us.”
Someone near the front of the stage screamed in agony. A tall man with dreadlocks and a basketball jersey. A group of three surrounded him, lifted him by his limbs, and pulled. Shawna swore she could hear skin and muscle tearing as he, quite literally, fell to pieces.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” The back of Angie’s head was, in a way, worse than the real thing. Shawna suspected that if her sister turned around, it wouldn’t be her sister anymore. It would be . . . something else.
“Is this what you wanted? Is this why you took up singing in the first place?”
“It was Ethel’s idea. Her life’s dream. I just made it come true. She’s here with us, Sis. All around us. And she’s delighted.”
Shawna shivered. A cool breeze blew through Gallows Hill, bringing with it the scent of the recently deceased. Blood soaked the ground and the trees and everything else. “Tell Ethel I never liked her voice anyway.” She raised the pistol.
Angie turned around.
Shawna had been right. It wasn’t her sister. It was something horrid, something deformed and misshapen created in the image of her sister. It was the thing she’d seen in so many nightmares.
Green, scaly skin.
Matching eyes.
Oval-shaped pupils more snake than human.
Jutting chin and raised eyebrows and pointed ears.
The teeth were the worst, for there were far too many. Dark with decay, hanging from her mouth like spikes.
“What are you?” Shawna said, forgetting for a moment about the pistol in her shaking hands.
“Something new,” Shawna said. Her voice was not one but many. Countless whispers speaking in unison. “It’s the music, Sis. The songs are . . . special. They changed me for the better. And everyone in the audience—everyone who survives the change—they’ll be different too. New and improved. Humans 2.0. These are my children now.”
It didn’t look as though many would survive, Shawna thought, surveying the crowd once more. But the change was worldwide. Surely there would be enough to form an army.
“Make this easy on yourself,” Angie continued. “Join us.”
“You really think after all this I’d give in to you?”
Angie laughed. Claws on a chalkboard. “Of course not. You’ve wanted me dead since we were girls. Since before Ethel. I’ve always been the prettier one. The talented one. You’re not a twin. You’re a growth they removed from me. A tumor and nothing more. You—”
Shawna pulled the trigger. She hadn’t been prepared for the recoil. Her arms lifted against her will and she fell back, elbows catching her fall.
The bullet sliced clean through Angie’s left shoulder, leaving behind a gaping mouth-like hole.
Angie brought a crooked finger to the wound, collected some of the brown blood, and licked it off like candy. “You’ve got to work on your aim.”
The Robes stormed the stage. Unlike the crowd, they had not lost their minds completely. They moaned in ecstasy but they seemed more lucid than the rest. Perhaps they’d been spared. Perhaps they’d been
chosen.
Angie ordered them to stop. She grabbed the microphone, held it to her scaly lips, and sang.
The band did not join this time. Her sister sang a cappella, the notes haunting and beautiful despite Angie’s new gravelly voice. Voices. The words entered Shawna’s mind. Worse than the recording studio. This was direct from the source and there was no off switch. No obvious one, at least.
Shawna tried to reach for the pistol. She’d dropped it during her fall. It couldn’t have gone far but her hands did not feel the cold metal.
That’s it, her sister seemed to say while singing “Forever with You.” Give in. Stop fighting and maybe you’ll become one of us if you’re lucky enough. If not, you’ll just lose your mind. Either way, I’ve already won. What is it your little bullies call you? Pig Face? Well, Pig Face, it’s time to start oinking.
Shawna’s skin grew cold, then hot. Her insides churned. Warm blood trickled from her eyes, her ears, her mouth. A headache formed in the back of her head the likes of which she’d never known. She rubbed the flesh but there was no relief. She saw in her mind all the lives she could end. All the carnage she could create. What she’d seen down there in the crowd—it was nothing. Just an appetizer for the main course.
She smiled as the song went on. It wasn’t all that bad. Quite catchy, the more she thought about it. Her best plan of action was to lie back and let the melody do its job. Better just to give in. She’d fought long and hard but in the end it hadn’t mattered. In the end there was only Angie Everstein.
From behind, she vaguely felt someone touch her temples. Or perhaps that was part of the change. Her body was giving up all control and soon she’d join the crowd in their debauchery.
Next, the music was turned down, as if by some cosmic volume knob, before it mostly vanished altogether.
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