You Can't Hide

by Dan Poblocki

  Short-haired Azumi leapt to her feet and threw her arms around Poppy. “This girl’s a genius!” Poppy cringed at first, but then relaxed and hugged her back.

  “Dylan?” called Dash. “You up there?”

  Poppy pushed through the opening in the cupboard. As she glanced back at everyone, Marcus could see the proud glint in her eye. Something about it made his stomach ache again. “Come on,” said Poppy. “We don’t have any time to waste.”

  “We also don’t have any other options,” Marcus muttered under his breath. He kicked at the scattered papers and gathered up the glass jars, placing them into the cupboard and mixing them back in with the others. He couldn’t just leave them out for the Specials to find. He patted the page he’d tucked into the pocket of his jacket, and hurried after the others.

  IT’S DASH! THINKS Dylan. He wants to call out, Wait for me! But he holds his tongue.

  The voices in the ceiling are starting to fade. However, Dylan’s anger is just as strong as it’s been since Del Larkspur scolded him and threatened to take away his role. For the past few minutes, Dylan has had to restrain himself from running back out the door and hiding in his dressing room, but he doesn’t want the voice to scream at him again. If he makes it too angry, it’ll be a long time before he gets to check in with Dash.

  His cast members have made a mess of this room. The cat, the rabbit, and the bear. They’ve knocked over chairs and dragged the table toward the spot where the stairs disappeared into the ceiling. But Dylan says nothing. Del told him to follow the others from now on. The cat pauses before one of the bookshelves. Three taxidermied animals lie on the floor. A fox. A bobcat. A rabbit.

  To his surprise, Dylan watches as the rabbit begins to squirm slightly, a soft wheezing escaping its mouth. The cat bends down and picks it up, holding it next to her pointed plastic ears. She nods as if the rabbit is whispering secrets.

  The fox and the bobcat begin to shiver and shake. Dylan steps farther away, as if they might scurry toward him. The masked kids are silent now, so he keeps quiet too. He tries to adjust his mask so he can see better, but he finds that he can’t move it, which scares him even more.

  Where did Dash and the others go? Will they still be upstairs when he comes for them?

  The girl in the cat mask stands and then arranges the squirming animals on the bookshelf so that they’re standing upright. In the corner of the room, the stairs drop from the ceiling again. The trio of animal-faced kids begins to climb, but Dylan hangs back.

  His longing to call out to his brother—to warn him maybe—grows stronger. Suddenly, Del’s threat pops into his head: Don’t disappoint me again.

  Too late, says another voice in his ear.

  An ache pounds at his temples, worse than before.

  Dylan crouches, clutching his head. His vision blurs and his teeth chatter.

  It’s the mask, he thinks. It’s too tight.

  He needs air. He grabs at the mask and tries to pull it up and away, but his face moves with it, as if his skin is bonded to the plastic. He yanks harder. Pain tears through his skull. It feels like he’s ripped his skin away from the muscle and cartilage underneath. He shrieks, releasing the mask, and then falls backward against the wall, struggling to catch his breath.

  His three cast mates are watching from the stairs now, empty eyes revealing nothing.

  “Help me!” he cries out. “Someone, please, get my brother!” Dylan rises and then stumbles toward them. And suddenly, somehow, he remembers.

  Flash.

  They attacked us! Me and Dash and Poppy and Marcus and Azumi. In the elevator, they tried to kill us! And in the music room, when we’d pulled away Randolph’s dog mask, Marcus gave his harmonica to the boy and it set his spirit free from this place …

  There had been no cameras watching. And if there had been a script, it had nothing to do with a movie.

  But if that’s true, Dylan realizes, then everything that Del told him earlier, about running lines and fainting, about the script he’d called The Gathering … It’s all been a lie. There is no Del Larkspur. And Dylan’s older visions, the ones about the dressing room on the set of Dad’s So Clueless, about the bucket of water that had hit him, about the short-circuiting lamp he’d reached out to touch, about the morgue and the casket and the funeral … those had been the truth. The reality.

  And that means Dylan actually is—

  A knife blade of agony slices through his cranium again. He stumbles forward and falls to the floor.

  The pain is the clown mask’s fault—the mask that Del gave him. The mask that he cannot remove. Dylan knows that he’s not in control anymore. But then, that means the other kids aren’t in control either. They’re chess pieces in a game.

  The knife blade twists, as if someone is cutting open the top of his head. He’s going to die, curled here on the floor of this room, shivering, just like he did the last time he—

  Dylan smacks his forehead, again and again, until the offending thoughts scatter, running off into the shadowy parts of his brain.

  POPPY HELPED PULL Dash up from the ladder. He stood and brushed himself off, the last of the group to reach the third floor.

  From below, there came a grinding noise. The cupboard slid shut, blocking them inside the new space.

  This room was even gloomier than the last one. The walls and windows were painted black, and the only light came from bunches of tall white candles. Some sat squat on the floor. Others jutted up, long and skinny, from elaborate iron candelabras. The flames flickered, teasing the shadows.

  “Someone must be close,” whispered Poppy. “These candles can’t have been burning for very long.”

  They could hear a scratching sound from down below. The Specials must have made it to the next room.

  The kids huddled in the center of this new space, as if the person who’d lit the wicks might suddenly step out from the shadows. Their vision adjusted, and other details of the room came into focus. Dash glanced around, wondering if Dylan might somehow have been the one to leave the candles for them.

  “This looks like the office I found on the second floor,” Poppy went on. “The one that burst into flames when I tried to leave.” She pointed toward several wooden filing cabinets hunched beside another desk. High stacks of papers were piled everywhere.

  All Dash could think was: Fire hazard.

  “Oh, that’s so creepy,” said Marcus, indicating five large photographs that were hanging side by side on one wall.

  The Specials.

  Their names were typed clearly on pieces of paper that were pinned to the bottom of each: Matilda. Esme. Aloysius. Irving. Randolph.

  “Cyrus had two offices?” asked short-haired Azumi, stepping a little too close to her counterpart. The other girl practically leapt away.

  Poppy’s eyebrows lifted as she came to a realization. “That’s why he set up these puzzles: to safeguard his darkest secrets.”

  “Okay,” Marcus said, turning in the space. “Everyone look around. The key to getting out of here has got to be here somewhere.”

  Poppy sat down at the desk and tugged the thin folder at the top of the pile in front of her. Short-haired Azumi held a candle over the pages as they both started to read.

  Inside, they discovered pages of dated notes, all of them signed by Cyrus. At the top of each was written a name: Matilda Ribaldi.

  Day One: Gave M. the first doll. A pioneer girl with a simple brown dress. M. immediately fell in love. Hugged it like it was her own child. Later, I heard M. reciting fairy tales to it. Perfect.

  Day Four: Cut off the pioneer doll’s hair while M. was sleeping. When she woke, M. screamed and cried for nearly five minutes. Later, she comforted the doll, as if part of her were living inside of it. Tonight, she read to it gently, lovingly, as if nothing had happened.

  Day Seven: Smashed the pioneer doll’s face during breakfast. M. shrieked at me, calling me a monster. I showed no emotion.

  Day Eight: Forced M. to watch as I
threw the pioneer girl into the fireplace. M. was surprisingly restrained as the doll burned. She didn’t say a word to the other children about it. Later, I heard her talking to herself in her bed. Telling stories, as if the doll were still listening. Fascinating.

  Day Nine: Gave M. the second doll. A princess in a red ball gown. At first, M. was hesitant to accept the gift. But within minutes, she appeared to …

  Poppy glanced at Azumi. “He was documenting it.” Poppy flipped through the rest of the pages. “Gross! The list goes on and on. It’s like he was keeping a record of how he broke her. Evidence of his experiment.”

  Azumi held her hand to her mouth. “Poor thing,” she whispered.

  At the back of the folder, Poppy noticed different handwriting on a new kind of paper. The date at the top caught her attention. It was only from about five years prior to today. Dear Ms. Tate, Please accept my apologies …

  Ms. Tate?

  Poppy’s legs went numb. Ms. Tate was the director of Thursday’s Hope, Poppy’s group home. She glanced at the bottom of the letter. Sincerely, Janis Caldwell. The name there was a like a wallop to her jaw. The letter was from her mother! Poppy felt the room spin.

  She scanned the rest of the letter quickly. Bits of it leapt out at her, sending a creeping chill across her body. Never loved the child … Memories that make me want to do bad things … Her incessant crying … I don’t trust myself … Please take her … Don’t let her find me, ever …

  Poppy let out a small squeak before slamming her mouth shut and flipping the page over so she wouldn’t have to see any more of it.

  “What was that?” asked the short-haired Azumi.

  Had Azumi read any of it? “I-I don’t … ” Poppy couldn’t finish. Her throat felt tight, and she worried that if she tried to talk, she might throw up. Her fist closed on the paper, crumpling it into a tight wad.

  Azumi slid over to the next folder. Taped inside were black-and-white photographs of a young girl whose face had been scratched away. “Esme had a sister she longed for, right?” Azumi asked. Her face reddened. “Like me. I wonder if this is a photograph of her?”

  Poppy opened another folder. This time, the girls discovered pages and pages covered in what looked like red crayon: SAY SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING.

  “Aloysius,” whispered Azumi. “The boy who didn’t talk.”

  Poppy shook her head, her eyes stinging. Azumi rested her hand on Poppy’s back. Azumi’s fingers felt hot, like a cattle brand, and Poppy scooted away.

  One thing was clear: Cyrus had wanted Poppy to find the letter from her mother. It wasn’t enough for him to torture the orphans he’d brought to Larkspur. He’d pushed Matilda and Esme, Aloysius and the rest until they’d all cracked. It must have taken years. After seeing the horrible things in her mother’s letter, Poppy was certain she wouldn’t last nearly as long.

  DASH FORCED HIMSELF to ignore the whimpers and whispers coming from Poppy and one of the Azumis, huddled over the desk. Instead, he pretended to look closely at the photos of the Specials hanging on the walls. He couldn’t stop thinking about his brother wandering these haunted hallways, encountering ghouls like the Foxes or the walking corpse from the greenhouse. Yes, Dylan was dead, but he wouldn’t be if it hadn’t been for the trick that Dash had played on him. He had found the others, and now he needed to find Dylan instead of poking around in a bunch of files. There was no way he could allow Cyrus to keep his brother trapped inside this nightmare.

  “This is messed up,” said long-haired Azumi. Reaching into one of the filing cabinet drawers, she removed an ancient pair of leather shoes. She let them dangle from their laces for a moment, then dropped them to the floor with a heavy thump. She pulled another pair from the drawer. And another.

  Poppy shifted away from the spot where she’d been reading. “Who did those belong to?” she asked, a weird tension creeping into her voice.

  Where had her optimism gone? Dash wondered.

  “Maybe to some of the orphans who lived here,” said Marcus, leaning against a wall on the other side of the filing cabinets.

  Almost manic, Poppy jumped to her feet. “What else is in these cabinets?” she asked. She started opening more of the drawers, practically shoving the long-haired Azumi aside.

  “Look!” she said. She pulled out a headless doll, a jar filled with colorful hard candies, some torn sheet music, a deflated leather football, and a worn spiral-bound notebook with a pencil shoved into the spine. “Marcus is right! These line up with what we know about the Specials. Cyrus locked away whatever was left of their favorite possessions.” Her face practically glowed with determination. “Now we just have to take off their masks and get these things to them.”

  “Can I see that last one?” asked short-haired Azumi. Poppy held it out to her. The notebook was filled with scrawled letters. Dear Sister topped every page. “Esme,” Azumi sighed. A leaf of paper slipped out from between the pages, and she scrambled to catch it. She took a glance at it, then screamed and tossed it away.

  It fell to Dash’s feet and he picked it up.

  “Don’t look at that!” Azumi cried out, reaching to snatch it back.

  But he’d seen it. It was a crime scene photograph. A body was sprawled out on a forest floor, clothes dirty, but familiar. He’d seen them in the greenhouse downstairs.

  “No!” screamed long-haired Azumi, catching a glimpse of it. “Moriko!” She rushed at Dash. Instinctively, he held up his hand. She bumped into him and bounced onto to the ground.

  “Don’t touch her!” shouted Marcus. He hurried to Azumi’s side and helped her back to her feet.

  Dash felt faint. “I didn’t! She was trying to—”

  “Just leave her alone,” said Marcus, leading the sobbing, long-haired Azumi away from Dash.

  “It-it’s a picture of my sister,” she said. “She’s dead. She’s really dead!” She broke down again, covering her face, as she shuddered and coughed. Marcus held her tight.

  Short-haired Azumi squeezed into the space between Poppy and Dash, looking pale but calm again. “She’s faking it,” she said in a flat voice. “I don’t know why. But Marcus sure believes her.”

  “What was that photo doing in this filing cabinet anyway?” Dash asked.

  Poppy spoke up. “It’s just like … ” She turned to look at Dash. “It’s really weird … but I found a letter from my mom. It was in a folder—” Her voice hitched. “The letter said all of these horrible things about me.”

  Dash sniffed. “When I was alone in the greenhouse, I saw a piece of newspaper stuck to the window. It mentioned that the police are looking for me and that I was … I don’t want to say what it said.”

  Poppy nodded. “Cyrus is messing with us,” she said. “The letters and pictures and articles are simply more of his … experiments. He wants to hurt us. And keep hurting us. To see how much we can take.” Poppy glanced toward Marcus and the other Azumi. “Are you guys listening? Marcus?”

  Marcus nodded.

  “Did you find anything?” Poppy asked. “A disturbing document, or something bad about your life from before you came to Larkspur?”

  “No, nothing,” said Marcus. He didn’t meet her eyes. “But maybe I’m not like the rest of you.”

  “Well … maybe you’re not,” said Poppy, squinting as if she didn’t believe him. “Maybe you’re special.”

  “What are you hiding?” asked Dash quietly.

  The scratching noises came from below again, followed by the sound of glass shattering. The cupboard!

  Marcus’s eyes went wide. He moved back toward the wall where he’d been standing earlier. There were indentations bored into the stone. As Dash came closer, Marcus began to climb.

  “Marcus!” Poppy cried out. “Where are you going?”

  “I think I see a hatch,” Marcus said, his voice rising. “Maybe it’s a way out.” But when he reached the ceiling and pushed on the wooden panel over his head, it wouldn’t move.

  “What’s that?
” Dash called out. He reached up and pulled a small black notebook from the back of Marcus’s khakis, holding it up.

  “To be honest,” said Marcus, climbing down, “I forgot I had it.” He was chagrined. “It looks like it could be Cyrus’s journal. He wrote about these plants called larkspur.”

  “Larkspur?” Poppy echoed, flipping the notebook open.

  “Apparently it was his father’s favorite flower,” said long-haired Azumi, rubbing at the spot on her chin where the other Azumi had hit her. “There are two types: delphinium and consolida.”

  Poppy glanced up, her face paling.

  “I know,” said Marcus. “Like your cousin. Connie’s parents must have named her after the flower.”

  “And delphinium,” short-haired Azumi whispered. “Delphinia … Del … ”

  “If the house is a puzzle,” said Poppy, “created by Cyrus to torture kids like us, then we have to look this over.”

  Dash reached for her shoulder. “Poppy, we’re running out of time. Those kids could smash through—”

  “This is important, Dash,” she said, dropping to the floor, crossing her legs as she scooted closer to the nearby candle light.

  “No!” he yelled, his anger rising up out of nowhere. Everyone jumped and looked at him as if he might explode. But Dash couldn’t help himself. “This isn’t what’s important anymore. My brother needs me! Azumi’s sister needs her—whichever of these two girls is the actual Azumi. We know that this house belonged to your family once upon a time. So what? Your great-great-great-cousin—or whoever!—was a total psychopath? Who cares? Leave the past in the past! It’s not helping us get what we need now. Which is to get out of this room!”

  Everyone was silent for a moment, staring at him in shock.

  “That’s funny,” Poppy answered moments later, “coming from you.”

  “Coming from me?” Dash echoed.

  “Leave the past in the past?” Poppy exhaled slowly. “Dylan is dead, Dash. The rest of us aren’t. You aren’t.”

  Short-haired Azumi raised a hand. “Guys? Do you think that maybe this is exactly what Cyrus wants? We already know that fighting isn’t going to get us anywhere.” She blinked at Dash, as if her eyelashes could brush away whatever spell had just come over him. “Poppy got us out of the first two rooms. Why don’t you just let her do what she needs to do?”