The head looked like a pulverized piece of meat. Around its face, as I’ve mentioned before, was the rusted bear trap. But the teeth were buried so deeply into the rotted flesh that we hardly would’ve known they were there, had we not noticed the congealed blood, like red Jell-O, caked around the wounds.
Somehow, beneath the confines of the rusty metal of the bear trap, a face could still be seen. A nose half-gone with age, nibbled away by the elements and the worms. Eyes, one of which was closed; if we ignored all the dried blood and exposed gore, we might be able to think Cageface was only slumbering deeply and peacefully. Except the other eyelid had suffered the same fate as his nose, leaving one glassy eye to stare up at the old, wooden beams of the ceiling.
My heartbeat sluggishly hit the inside of my chest, each pound rocking the entirety of my body. We waited for what seemed like an eternity, wondering if that dead body would sit up, if the man-boy-thing would flash its death grin at us from behind his trap.
But he didn’t.
Zack broke the heavy silence. I was glad; I didn’t think I was actually capable of saying any words.
“What is going on here?” He pointed to the floor, which was shrouded in darkness.
I lowered the lantern, allowing the shadows of the operating room to consume Cageface once more.
On the floor, around the raised platform of the metal table, was a pentagram. Not painted, but carved. Around it stood maybe twenty candles in metal holders, their surfaces winking in the lantern light.
“A ritual,” I said. “A resurrection ritual.”
“You mean…” Zack said.
I swallowed. My throat made a dry, clicking sound that actually hurt. “Yeah.”
“But who?”
I had no idea. It could’ve been anyone. My guess was that it was someone obsessed with the Moonfall murders.
We get stupid people, crazy people, copycat killers, all that stuff. In this case, I didn’t think we were dealing with anyone stupid. Crazy, definitely. But stupid? No. The intricacies of the carved pentagram, the setup of the candles, the decapitated heads of the prisoners…
Whoever this person was knew exactly what they were doing. And that scared me, even worse than the corpse of Cageface, sitting on the table right in front of us.
But it didn’t scare me as much as the screaming we heard above.
Maddie’s screaming.
14
Why I Hate Slasher Movies
Zack grabbed my arm when we heard it, grabbed it so hard that I winced and cried out. I wished I hadn’t, but I was jumpy down here. You would’ve been, too.
“Is that Maddie?” he asked.
Sure enough, we heard her shout, “Zack! Abe!” Her voice was distant, but strong. Worried, but under control.
Zack spun around and shot out of the room.
“Wait,” I said. “What about Cageface? We have to kill him.”
Zack turned, looking at me like I was crazy. “He’s already dead, Abe. All we have to do is prevent him from coming back.”
“Let’s burn it down,” I suggested.
“No time,” he said. “I have to get to Maddie.”
She screamed again. It sounded like she was getting closer.
As it turned out, that wasn’t the case; the cavern below the cabin just went farther than we’d originally thought. Sound traveled fast down here.
Zack was right about Cageface, of course. He was as dead as a doornail. For the time being, he wasn’t going anywhere.
I told myself that, as soon as we found out what was wrong with Maddie and the others, I’d come back down here and finish the deed. So I didn’t want to be stuck alone down there with all those severed heads and the dead body of serial slasher. Sue me.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was falling for the same trap that countless final girls had before me in countless slasher movies: I, like them, wasn’t finishing the job when I had the chance to.
Think about the original Halloween—the 1978 version, the one with the tagline: ‘The Night He Came Home!’. In that movie, (if you haven’t seen it yet, spoiler alert…though it’s been forty years since its release, so if you haven’t seen this masterpiece of a movie yet, what the hell are you doing? Go watch it!)…Anyway, in that movie, Michael Myers, playing the blank-white-mask-wearing psychotic killer, stalks Jamie Lee Curtis. In the end, she manages to overpower him, knock him out somehow. As Michael Myers, this thing that has caused so much pain and fear and trouble, is lying on the floor, she walks into the hallway and cries.
Of course, you can probably guess what happens next even if you haven’t seen the movie.
Wide-angle shot. Michael in the background sits up. He’s not dead! Oh, my God! He’s going to kill Jamie Lee Curtis no matter what!
See, that’s my problem. Why didn’t Jamie Lee Curtis take the butcher’s knife from him and saw his freaking head off? Or at least stab him a hundred times. No, a thousand times.
The answer, of course, is because it’s a movie, and without drama, some problem or obstacle for the main protagonist to overcome, you don’t have a very entertaining movie. Not to mention that a decapitated Michael Myers would have made the possibility of a sequel slim to none, and we all know that movie studios like to milk their intellectual properties to the very last drop.
But still. This isn’t a movie; my life is real.
And here I was, looking at the remains of Cageface—my own Michael Myers...which I guess made me Jamie Lee Curtis…kind of weird to think about—and my chance to end it before it could even start. Yet I was falling for the same trap Laurie Strode fell for in Halloween.
At least I had a reason; Maddie was screaming, in need of our help. Laurie was just standing there with the presumably-dead body of the psycho killer behind her. No reason for that. No reason at all.
So we left the cavern and Cageface behind. As it turned out, we’d later regret this.
Of course.
15
First Kill
I didn’t think I’d ever ran that fast in my life. The buddy system is a real thing; Zack was running on the trail at lightning speed, and I had no choice but to keep up with him.
It was late (or early, if you’re one of those people) and the torches along the path had gone out. I felt no wind on my exposed flesh—hadn’t noticed any wind at all, actually—so by the principles of deduction, I figured it was safe to think that someone had snuffed the torches out.
Either way, I didn’t want to be left behind on the trail.
Zack was a good deal more athletic than me, which really wasn’t saying much, but he also had his girlfriend’s voice spurring him forward. It would’ve been pretty easy for me to be left behind.
But I kept up.
The reason we were here was laying below the place we would’ve spent the night, strapped to a table in the middle of a pentagram. It was some sort of resurrection ritual, that was for sure. I’d seen the type before.
They almost never went well, for either of the parties involved (the conductor of said ritual and the one meant to rise from the dead), so I knew it wasn’t Cageface going around and blowing the torches out like birthday candles, and I knew Maddie wasn’t calling our names because she’d stumbled upon one of Cageface’s victims.
Unless maybe he’s currently taking a nap, exhausted after a killing?
But that didn’t make sense. Everyone knows slashers don’t take naps; at least not in the late hours. The bulk of their body count stacks up between eleven at night and five in the morning. The dark is when they’re at their scariest.
So what’s the deal? What made Maddie scream out for us? She almost never screams.
Zack skidded to a stop at the edge of the beach. I could still smell the smoky, charred remains of the campfire on our left. Could still hear the crappy, discordant phantom echoes of Freddy’s guitar.
I stopped, too, but unlike Zack, I couldn’t stand up straight. I leaned over, my hands on my knees, and gasped at the sweet, pine-scen
ted air.
Maddie was in front of us with the lake at her back. With no stars or visible moon to reflect back at the sky, the lake’s water looked like tar.
Jason looked pale, almost glowing in the darkness, the way the moon was supposed to be. He was clutching Tiffany to his side, and she had her face buried in his chest, her body convulsing with wet sobs. Freddy looked like he’d just been in a train wreck that had killed all the passengers but him, his red-rimmed eyes dazed, glazed, and still blazed.
Zack took Maddie’s hand. Even though I was gasping for air, I could see that Maddie was trembling.
“What is it?” Zack asked. He had taken his sunglasses off. I doubted it was because he wanted to appear serious for once; it was just that hard to see in all the darkness.
“Ellen,” Maddie said. “Ellen. She’s dead.”
The small amount of air I’d been able to trap in my lungs whooshed right out of me. I could actually hear myself wheeze, like a pool float deflating.
“What?” I managed. “How?”
Maddie shook her head. She looked to be on the verge of tears.
On cue, Freddy dropped to his knees in the sand, and vomited up a bright orange concoction, like he’d been steadily munching on cheese poofs and orange soda. He heaved for a solid minute. Jason crossed over to him and patted him on the back.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he kept saying.
“Is it!?” Freddy demanded when he was done. He looked up at Jason while orange mucus dribbled out of his nose. He snorted it back up. Now you see it, now you don’t. “It’s not! Ellen is fucking dead! Dead!”
“I know—” Jason said. He didn’t look angry—just really depressed. Shocked.
“It’s your fault we’re here!” Freddy continued.
“Stop it!” Tiffany shouted. “Stop it!”
“It’s that fucking boogeyman the locals told us about!” Freddy yelled. He stood up, almost fell, then righted himself again.
Jason tried steadying him, but Freddy only slapped his hand away. Despite being much, much bigger, Jason withdrew his hand as if he’d just stuck it into the mouth of an alligator.
“It’s not,” I said. The words hadn’t come out very strong, and to be heard over Freddy’s frenzied babbling, I would’ve had to scream.
Maddie looked at me. She’d heard.
“We’re all gonna die. We need to get out of here right now. While we still can!” Freddy said.
“It’s not,” I said again, though still not loud enough. I tried again. “It’s not!” This time, I shouted.
Everyone looked at me.
“It’s not what?” Freddy demanded.
Tiffany’s teeth chattered so hard we could all hear the steady click-click-click. Jason squeezed her tighter.
“It’s not Cageface,” I said.
“How would you know?” Freddy sneered. “How?” I opened my mouth to answer, but he cut me off before I could get a word in edgewise. “Because you’re the one who killed Ellen, aren’t you? You cut her up, smeared her blood all over the walls!”
“Freddy,” Jason moaned. “We were with Abe and his friends the entire time. You saw Ellen go back alone. Abe was sitting around the fire with us, man. You saw him.”
Freddy yelled something I didn’t understand, then he dropped to his knees again and put his face in his hands, sobbing.
Jason went to comfort him again. This time, Freddy relented.
“He’s right,” Jason said. “We have to get out of here.”
None of us said anything. Judging by the trillions of slasher movies I’d seen, I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“What do you mean it’s not him?” Maddie wanted to know.
“Cageface is below the cabin,” Zack said. “Abe and I found him in some weird dug-out cave. His corpse. He’s deader than dead.”
“For how long, I don’t know,” I said. “Though it looks like someone has been trying to revive him with a resurrection ritual.”
Maddie’s mouth dropped open. “Then...who killed Ellen?” she asked. She looked at Tiffany, who was watching us with tears in her eyes. “You sure you didn’t see the person?”
Tiffany shook her head, and let out a sob. “I got there and saw her all…bloody…and I just fainted. Oh, my God,” she said, her tan paling. “He could’ve killed me, too!” She buried her face in her hands, and kept crying.
Jason left Freddy to comfort her.
The forest was filled with our anguish.
16
The Body
Jason dragged Freddy back toward the Moonfall Lodge. They were coming with us. As the Fright Squad, it was our job to examine the murder scene. Determine if it was a supernatural attack.
“Don’t make me go back!” Freddy shouted. “Don’t make me go back!”
“The most important thing we can do right now,” I said for the millionth time, “is stick together. Okay?”
“Listen to them,” Jason said.
“Why?” Tiffany asked. “Why should we? Who are they? Are they the cops? The FBI? Because that’s who we need right now.”
“Good luck,” Zack said. The whole experience had brought Zack back down to Earth, it seemed; at least he no longer looked at Tiffany like she was some sort of god. He pulled out his cell phone and showed her the screen: no service.
Same was true on all of our phones.
“You don’t have to go in,” I assured Freddy. “None of you have to. Just stay out here, stay close. Then we’ll leave.”
Freddy moaned. “I need a joint, man. I’m too sober for this shit.”
At the front door to the lodge, Maddie nodded. I didn’t particularly want to go in, but we had no choice. We knew we weren’t dealing with Cageface…I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
We stepped over the threshold while Maddie held the door open for us. It creaked and groaned like something dying.
“In the hall,” she directed.
Outside, I heard Tiffany say, “I’m not staying out here. We’re sitting ducks.” She didn’t slur, and I wondered if she’d been putting on a show around the campfire, trying to live up to her reputation.
“Freddy?” Jason said. “She’s right. We gotta go inside. Just to the living room. You can sit down, roll up a joint. I won’t even say anything about you smoking inside. Would you like that?”
Freddy didn’t answer, but I heard the door open and close again. Their footsteps creaking on the old hardwood.
We went through the hallway. My stomach rolled when I saw the first drop of blood.
Ellen had been decapitated. Her head was gone completely, someone had taken it. An axe was buried in her sternum, and blood had congealed around the wound. It was so dark it was almost black.
“You don’t think…?” Zack said to me.
“Think what?” Maddie asked.
I nodded. “There’s a good chance.” My hand, since entering the lodge, had been hovering near the gun hidden in my waistband, which was covered by my shirt. I didn’t think we’d need it right now. Whoever had done this had gotten whatever they wanted.
“A good chance for what?” Maddie asked.
“We saw a bunch of heads under the cabin,” Zack told her. “Like…you know how people collect those weird Pez dispensers?”
“No.”
“Well, my grandma did. Super weird. Anyway, the place under the cabin was like that…except with real heads,” Zack said.
“But it’s not Cageface?” Maddie said.
“Not unless he’s actually The Flash,” I said.
“What did you do with his body?” Maddie wanted to know. She looked at us normally, but as the silence of our non-answer lingered on, that gaze turned deadly.
I was reminded of the basilisk that had attacked us at the Monster Games. If looks could kill…
“You left it there?” she whisper-yelled.
“Is everything okay?” Jason shouted from the living room.
The scent of marijuana smoke drifted through the ha
llway. I wondered if I’d ever get used to it, or if I’d get a contact buzz like you often saw in the movies. I certainly didn’t need to be stoned while I was trying to solve a murder/get these people to safety. Then again, maybe it would mellow me out. I certainly needed mellowing.
No.
I had to focus.
“How can you ask that?” Tiffany demanded of her boyfriend. “Ellen is dead! And we’re next!”
“No, we’re not,” Jason assured her.
This went on for a while as we continued studying Ellen’s bloody remains.
“I can’t believe you left the body there,” Maddie said. “You should’ve burned it, or chopped it up into little pieces! What is this, freaking Halloween? Are you a bunch of Laurie Strodes?”
“Mads—you were calling us. We thought you were in danger,” Zack said.
Maddie just shook her head and looked at me. “Abe could’ve stayed behind and done the deed.”
“Split us up?” Zack said incredulously. “Great idea. This isn’t Scooby-Doo.”
Maddie snarled, then turned and headed down the hallway.
Zack whispered, “I’m so not getting any tonight.”
But he hadn’t whispered quietly enough, because Maddie said, “Try ever.”
I shrugged.
“Where are you going?” Zack asked her.
“I’m going to do what you should’ve done,” she answered.
We heard shuffling steps in the living room. The counselors standing up. They still were pale and scared; I didn’t blame them. In all honesty, aside from Freddy’s outburst (and vomiting spell) on the beach, the fact that they’d held it together this well surprised me. Most people, in the face of crazy stuff, go even crazier. But I’ve also learned that shock is a powerful thing, a natural anesthetic.
“Are we going?” Freddy asked. He held his joint; it jittered between the fingers of his right hand while he hugged himself with his left. “I knew this was a bad idea. I just knew it.”
“Yeah, we’re going,” Maddie said. “Just gotta stop at our cabin to get the car keys.”
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