Inside the room, the darkness almost seemed like a live thing. It spilled out, pulsing and black. It took my eyes a long moment to adjust.
“Go in,” Tiffany said. “Now!”
“Do we really have to?” I asked.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind sitting this one out,” Zack echoed.
Maddie shook her head. She knew we didn’t have a choice, just like Zack and I knew it.
“I’m sorry,” Tiffany said. “But—”
“We have no choice, yeah, yeah,” I said.
Tiffany smirked. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Well, what then?” Zack asked.
“I was going to say ‘I’m sorry, but I have to kill you now’.”
Her trigger finger twitched.
20
The True Bad Guy Monologue
“Wait!” I shouted.
Her finger relaxed.
The little bead of sweat that had pooled on my brow rolled down the bridge of my nose and dripped to the dirt floor. I was glad it was just a drop of sweat and not my blood.
“What?” she asked.
“I have one question,” I said.
I didn’t; I was just buying time. Thankfully, Zack did have a question.
“If you’re in love with Cageface,” he said, “and able to revive him, how’s the intercourse situation going to work?”
“Zack…” Maddie warned, shaking her head.
“No, no, hear me out,” he continued. “I’m pretty sure you can’t bang a zombie. That’s essentially what Cageface is, right?”
Tiffany stood in the doorway. Her eyes shifted to where Jason and Freddy were up against the wall. We couldn’t see them, but I could imagine the look on Jason’s face.
The poor guy. I don’t know how I would’ve reacted, had I found out that my hot girlfriend was a crazy psychopath who had an urge to have sex with dead serial killers, but I imagine I wouldn’t have handled it so well.
Tiffany looked a little perturbed, like Zack had offended her somehow.
She sighed, never letting the gun fall away from us. “What do you see in him?” she asked Maddie.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Maddie countered, referring to the dead body on the slab of metal behind us—the one who’d terrorized the camp in the eighties, and had a bear trap embedded in his face.
Maddie had the better point, I thought, though it may have been a toss-up between the two.
I kept my mouth shut.
“Ugh, men,” Tiffany said. “They really are from Mars.”
Despite the situation, Maddie chuckled.
Of course, neither Zack or myself found this funny. I was too busy looking around for some way out of this mess. As I noted the dirt walls, the dirt floor, and the general messiness of the place, I realized that I really didn’t want to die here.
Well, I didn’t want to die at all, but if I had to die, I’d rather it be someplace a little less dreary.
“Since your time is short,” Tiffany said, “I might as well explain it to you.”
“Yes, please do,” Zack said.
Tiffany cleared her throat. “It all started when I was masturbating with a cross—”
“No, you know what? Never mind,” Zack said, cringing.
She plowed right on ahead. “I was in the woods, these very woods, and I heard a voice.”
“Cageface’s voice?” I said. “Or the witch’s voice?”
It all started to make sense. The crazy old guy in town talked of the witch in the forest, the one who’d brought Cageface back to life, the one who he had killed. Her spirit had probably roamed the woods until it found a susceptible vessel—Tiffany. That was why I’d seen her as her ugly self on a few occasions. The fact I was a soul-slayer probably helped, too.
“That must’ve been awkward,” Zack said. He shrugged. “Well, I guess that’s what happens when you go masturbating in the woods. You discover a serial—”
“Shut up!” Tiffany yelled. “Let me tell the story!”
Zack put both hands up as if to say ‘I’m innocent’, and backed away from Tiffany’s raised gun. He bumped the table with Cageface on it. I was standing right next to it, and when he hit the table, Cageface’s hand brushed against my side. It was so cold that I felt it through my shirt. I jumped about six inches off the ground, and I’ll admit…I shrieked.
“He’s still dead,” Maddie said. “Calm down, Abe.”
I offered her a weak smile.
“Not for long,” Tiffany said. Her eyes glanced over the pentagram, cut into the dirt like a thin moat.
“Hold on, we still want the story,” I said, although I knew my theory was right. Probably.
“Yeah, sans the masturbating in the woods,” Zack agreed.
Tiffany’s lips curled up into a devious smile.
“In the woods, I heard him call to me. He called my name, louder and louder. I searched for that voice for six hours straight—”
“But it was in her head the whole time!” Zack cut in.
“That’s it!” Tiffany yelled. “One more snarky comment, and I’m starting the ritual early.” Absentmindedly, she checked her watch.
That gave me hope. The ritual must need to be at a certain time. She couldn’t start until…when? Why? I didn’t know, but I guess it didn’t matter as long as we were kept alive for the time being. Any precious seconds we could hold onto were great.
It made sense, why she hadn’t killed us yet. Why she had decided to tell us her story.
“Or you could just kill him now!” Freddy yelled from the other room. “I’m sick of hearing his whiny voice!”
“Shut up, Freddy!” Tiffany yelled back.
Zack squinted as if he could peer through the dirt walls right at Freddy. “Yeah, shut up, Freddy!”
“Enough!” Tiffany said. “Or do you just wanna die now?”
“Sorry,” Zack mumbled.
“I heard the voice,” she continued, “and I followed it for nearly three days. Lived in the woods. Never slept. Ate whatever vegetation and game I could find. Then I opened my body. To them.”
“The crucifixes…?” Zack asked. “Wait, I’m confused.”
Wow, I was thinking, this chick is truly crazy.
“I have a few tricks up my sleeve, Fright Squad,” Tiffany said, ignoring Zack. “How I killed Ellen is one of them. The dumb bitch; she would’ve made a good offering. Her virgin blood would’ve gone a long way, but then you three had to ruin it. Too bad. But, like my dad used to say, ‘there’s silver lining every raincloud’.”
Is that how the saying goes? I didn’t know, but I figured there was no point in trying to decipher crazy-people talk. I’m sure the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
“Why did you look at me when you said ‘virgin’?” Zack demanded, jabbing his chest with his finger. “I’m not a virgin.”
“Whoa,” I said, looking at Maddie and Zack. They both blushed. “You guys…?”
Zack looked at Maddie and asked, “Can I tell him now? I mean, it could be the last time I get the chance.”
She nodded.
“WE DID IT!” Zack yelled at the top of his lungs. Dust fell from the ceiling beams that kept the dirt from caving in on us. “We banged!”
“We don’t care!” Freddy said. “Just get this crazy bitch away from the gun!”
We promptly ignored him, though Tiffany snarled.
I went to high-five Zack, but Tiffany wasn’t having any of that, either. She snarled again, and my high-five died in the air.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Zack.
He shrugged. “I don’t kiss and tell.” But then he leaned closer and whispered, “Not telling you was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my entire life, believe me, Abe.”
Tiffany cleared her throat in an excellently villainous manner. Suffice it to say, it regained our attention. “As I was saying, Ellen was an easy kill, and I had to do it. For him.” She looked past us at the dead body.
It hadn
’t smelled very nice when we were in the cavern the first time, but since we’d been here, the smell had somehow gotten sharper. My stomach clenched as I thought all about the decomposition it had gone through.
“Then you found my little cave, and my plans were thwarted.”
“Thwarted?” Zack said.
“Quiet,” Tiffany hissed. She looked at her watch once more. “Almost time. Yes, almost time.” Again she looked longingly at Cageface. “He calls for me to bring him back to life. His taste for blood isn’t satisfied; he needs more blood. Needs more,” Tiffany said. “Don’t worry, my dear. It is almost time.” She cackled like a witch.
I wondered if she knew she was under the witch’s influence. I wondered why the witch wanted Cageface alive again (Can I call it that?), if he’d killed her the last time. Eh, then again, the crazy old guy in town probably didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.
Never trust crazy.
“So it was all a lie?” Jason appeared in the door behind her.
“Get back!” she shouted, and her voice was loud enough to make it feel like my head was going to split.
Footsteps behind her, soft. She whirled around and leveled the gun.
“All that about your sister dying from an overdose and her depression?” Jason pressed. “All of it was a lie. You’re just…”
“Crazy!” Freddy shouted.
“Get back.” Tiffany pulled the trigger.
The sound the shot made was so much worse than the shooter’s squealing. I didn’t think she was going to do it, either. I didn’t think she had the guts.
But then again, I would’ve never guessed that she’d hack Ellen up into pieces and take her head.
My eyes closed with the concussive sound of the gunshot, and my heart deflated. It had been our job to protect Octavius’s nephew, and we’d failed. And it wasn’t even Cageface that had done it, but Jason’s crazy girlfriend. I couldn’t—
“Get back, or the next shot hits your face.” Tiffany’s warning interrupted my meltdown.
Jason stood mannequin-still.
She hadn’t killed him, thank God, but I could tell her patience was running low. Dangerously low. The next time she squeezed the trigger, it would be for the kill shot.
She looked at her watch again. “Almost there, almost there.”
“You don’t have a virgin,” I said.
She smirked, and I saw another glimpse of the ugly witch beneath the beautiful exterior. “Oh, but I do, don’t I? Because blow-up dolls don’t count, Abe,” Tiffany said.
I shook my head.
“You’re not fooling anyone,” she continued.
Zack and Maddie were watching me. I felt my face grow hotter.
“I could tell you were a virgin the moment I laid eyes on you,” she told me. “I could tell by the way you laid eyes on me. I had thought Zack here was the virgin, judging by his style—"
“Hey!” Zack shouted.
“I mean, who wears sunglasses all the time?” she continued, ignoring the protest. “But I was wrong. Though I’m not wrong about you, am I?”
“I’m not a virgin,” I said. I had to sell this as well as possible, had to buy myself some more time. “So you’re gonna be pretty pissed when you kill me and nothing happens.”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll just go out and get another virgin. I could always try Ellen’s blood…though it may have been too long since I killed her. The ritual may not work properly.”
She looked at the watch again. “It’s time,” she said. The gun’s barrel stared me straight in the face. “On your knees,” she said. “All of you.”
I had no choice.
21
Beaten (Literally)
Time was up, and no outside forces were going to save our asses. I’d have to do it myself.
I bent down.
In my head, I was wondering if I could take her. I mean, I’d punched a ‘Stein straight in the face, and survived a task in the Monster Games. I could take her, right? Well, I thought so, but I’d learned there was a fine line between confidence and stupidity.
Still, I had to try, didn’t I?
Halfway into my crouch, I sprang forward and jumped into Tiffany. My goal was to wrestle the gun out of her hands and then leave the punching-in-the-face to Maddie. That was fair game.
Unfortunately, my target was stronger than I thought.
I grabbed her wrists, and we twirled around like we were dancing. The thought that went through my head as I gritted my teeth and felt my veins bulging from the pathetic things I called muscles was that I really needed to start lifting weights, or maybe even give up the fast food and frozen pizzas.
Tiffany seemed to have the upper hand as she drove me back into the table. Maddie and Zack moved out of the way. They looked like a couple of people who were trying to knock a bee’s nest out of a tree in their backyard: stepping forward, stepping back, poking, prodding. Except there were no bees—only bullets.
Tiffany and I hit the dirt. We hit it so hard that the wind was knocked out of my lungs in a vicious whoosh. I gasped for air, but the air was heavy with dust and it didn’t go down very easily. It burned.
Tiffany elbowed me in the ribs. I felt a crack, like the dull snapping of a thick branch, and white-hot pain blinded me. You’d think this would’ve made me angry, but it didn’t. If anything, it was a wake-up call; one that told me if I didn’t get the gun out of her hand, there’d be way worse consequences than an elbow to the ribs.
Tiffany screamed and came at me with her free hand. Her fingers were out like claws. She meant to rake my eyes out.
“Guys!” I yelled. “A little help?”
No one came to my aid.
“Jason? Freddy? C’mon!”
“You’re—not—ruining—this—for—me!” Tiffany shouted. She settled on top of my chest, hips straddling my sides, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. The pain was terrible.
“Seriously—punch her in the face, please!” I shouted.
Maddie made a move, but Tiffany whirled the gun around to meet her.
“Don’t move!” she shouted. “Back up!”
Maddie had no choice.
We were near the far wall. Tiffany reached back to flip a switch on the control panel there, never taking her eyes off me, or lowering her gun.
From above us came a whir of machinery. The roof opened and revealed the night sky, and sent dust and dirt cascading all around us. It covered me, getting into my mouth and eyes, but I couldn’t get it out because of the way Tiffany had me pinned.
For a second, I thought the place was going to blow…that Tiffany had flipped a self-destruct switch; that if she couldn’t win, then no one could.
But that wasn’t what happened. The place didn’t explode in a fiery rush of doom.
I seized an opportunity.
“Help!” I shouted as loud as I could with the dirt and dust choking my throat.
As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew it was useless. No one was around for miles. Even if they were, what could they have done? The four of us were no match for the gun-toting psychopath, so a passing stranger certainly wouldn’t be.
Tiffany, still atop of me, looked in the direction of the dark sky—except it wasn’t dark anymore. Not as dark as it had been while we’d sat around the campfire, while Tiffany had murdered Ellen as we listened to Freddy’s terrible guitar playing. Nope. The moon was out, uncovered by the clouds.
Tiffany smiled big, but her eyes were still crazed. “It’s time,” she said.
“Yeah, it is,” I agreed, and, giving it my all, I rose and tried to wrestle the gun out of her hands.
I managed to clamp onto her wrist, but she threw her weight forward on me, and we both went twisting back to the ground. I don’t know how she was so heavy but she was.
I guess that didn’t matter much, because the fight on the floor was short. And it ended with the gun going off.
22
The No
t-So-Slutty Blonde
“Abe!” Maddie screamed.
The gunshot seemed surreal to me, like it hadn’t really happened, like I’d imagined it. But my imagination wasn’t this good.
I could smell the smoke from the barrel. I could hear my ears ringing in the aftermath of the thunderous explosion. I felt the vibrations, the kickback on the handle, and finally…I saw the blood.
A lot had happened in a short span of time. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but I knew it wasn’t good.
For someone.
My mind told me it was me who was bleeding, me who’d been shot, but I rolled away from the twisted limbs of Tiffany, and managed to stand up. My hands slapped all over my torso: once, twice, three times.
“I’m all right,” I wheezed. “I’m all right.”
Zack bent down and swiped the gun out of Tiffany’s reach, then he pulled the other one out of her waistband and handed it to Maddie. Judging by Tiffany’s current condition, it didn’t seem like she would be reaching for either of those weapons again. She lay on her side in the fetal position, one hand clutching a hole in her stomach that was pouring sticky, red liquid.
The blood coming from the wound found the trenched-out pentagram. It flowed into the lines, turned the entire thing crimson. In the moon’s eerie glow, this was one of the worst things I’d ever seen—and I’d seen a lot of messed up stuff.
Dimly, I was aware of Freddy and Jason approaching behind me and looking over my shoulder. Maddie and Zack were closer to Tiffany, but even they looked disgusted, like they’d come upon a particularly gnarly piece of roadkill.
“You…shot her,” Jason said. There was pain in his voice.
He cared about Tiffany. Even though she’d turned out to be crazy/possibly possessed by a forest witch, and in love with a dead serial killer, he really cared about her.
“Y-y-you fools,” Tiffany said now. Her voice was rickety, the groaning shocks of an old vehicle. She tried sitting up, got about halfway on her free arm, and then collapsed. More blood rolled out of the hole. The pentagram was almost completely colored in now. Though the blood levels weren’t high, I didn’t think that could be good.
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