Scare Me

by K. R. Alexander

  “ACK!” Julie yelps.

  I jolt around in time to see her leap into the air. My heart immediately starts racing—did she see something, too?

  “What?” Tanesha asks.

  Julie stares wide-eyed at the fake webs.

  “That spider isn’t plastic.”

  Sure enough, a large black spider scuttles from the webbing, vanishing into the shadows of the basement. Just watching it makes my skin crawl. Is it the same one from the bride? It almost makes me feel like we’re being watched.

  Cold trickles down the back of my neck, making my hairs stand on end.

  It definitely feels like we’re being watched.

  I glance over to the placard still in the corner, to the place where I thought I saw a shadowy figure. There’s nothing there. And yet, I could swear that’s where the feeling of eyes is coming from.

  “There better not be more of those,” Tanesha says. “I hate spiders.”

  “Probably not,” I say. “Besides, we don’t have any poisonous spiders here. That was probably just a daddy longlegs.”

  “Right,” Julie says. Then she mumbles under her breath, “It was way too big to be a daddy longlegs.”

  Julie doesn’t return to the spiderwebs. She starts pulling out the Styrofoam tombstones instead.

  Before we can really get back to business, the door opens and a new set of footsteps tromps down the stairs. I think I know who it is before I even turn around. When I do look, my stomach sinks further and anger simmers in my veins.

  “Patricia,” Julie says.

  “What are you doing down here?” I ask my nemesis.

  Everyone seems to think Patricia is innocent. Probably because she looks like a stereotypical angel—long blond hair, blue eyes, and skin so pale I don’t think she ever goes outside. Her voice, too, is high-pitched and sweet, and she always wears frilly old-fashioned clothes—which honestly just makes her look creepy, in my opinion. Like she thinks she was born in another century. Adults think she’s darling, and that means she can get away with a ton of bad things.

  Like what she did to us last year.

  Just the thought brings my anger from a simmer to a boil.

  “I heard a scream from all the way up in the attic,” Patricia says with her cherubic smile. “So I thought I’d come down and see what you’d done to scare yourselves.”

  “I stubbed my toe,” I say quickly. “Nothing scary.”

  “Really?” Patricia asks. “You scream like a girl.”

  I shrug. My best friends are girls—the insult means nothing to me.

  But Patricia isn’t even paying attention to my reaction. She’s already stepping past me and staring over my shoulder at the stuff we have unpacked. I move to block her, but obviously it doesn’t work. We have too much out in the open.

  I should have locked the door.

  “Huh,” she says.

  “You’re not supposed to be down here,” I say. “You know the rules. No snooping.”

  “I’m not snooping,” she says, still surveying our décor. Both Julie and Tanesha stare at her with open animosity. They step to my sides to help block her view.

  She goes on. “I was just concerned. What was Mr. Evans carrying up? I heard you broke something.”

  “None of your business,” I say. I have to force myself not to grind my teeth or look toward the mannequin’s placard. The last thing I need is for her to seek the mannequin out herself.

  “Maybe you should go,” Tanesha says. “I’d hate to have you disqualified for breaking the rules so early in the game.”

  Patricia steps back and gives us her most innocent smile.

  “I’m just a concerned friend. Wanting to make sure everyone here is okay.” The smile drops, and the real Patricia shows herself. “You’re going to need to up your game if that’s all you’ve got. I was kind of hoping it would be a real competition this year.” She sends an unimpressed glance up to our spiderwebs before leveling an even less impressed glance back at us. “And frankly, so far, I’m not convinced.” Then she smiles again, sweetly, like she didn’t just insult our entire project, before turning on her heel and prancing up the stairs.

  I growl under my breath when the door clicks shut behind her.

  “Don’t let her get to you,” Tanesha says. She puts her hand on my arm. “She’s just trying to distract us.”

  “It’s working,” I grumble. I glance back to the foam tombstones and fake cobwebs. And I think of my brief conversation with Mr. Evans, the idea that had seemed risky but now seems like the only way forward. We need more than some killer props and design—we need a story. A terrifying story, one that makes people connect with our exhibit. I’d been waiting for the missing piece, and the bride is it. My anger fades into resolve. “Come on,” I say. “We have a lot to do before going home.”

  In the back of my mind, I promise myself again to do whatever it takes to make this the scariest year ever. Even if it means going behind Mr. Evans’s back. Patricia thinks we need to up our game? I’ll up our game. I’ll prove that she shouldn’t underestimate us.

  No matter what, we’re going to have a terrifying graveyard.

  Ghost bride and all.

  Julie and Tanesha both head home a little bit before I do.

  I hang back in the basement while waiting for my parents. We’ve gotten as much done as we can—the basement is fully mapped out and I have a long list of things to pack and bring with me tomorrow, so we should be able to get everything installed right away. Then we have one more day to get everything dressed and figure out the small details. The three of us work really quickly together, which is good since we don’t have much time. This is going to be the most ambitious year yet.

  I slowly detangle the strands of purple lights, still thinking about what Patricia said and wondering if maybe she’s right. Maybe we don’t have a chance. Her parents and friends have a ton of money, so she’s able to get the best practical effects.

  It’s not fair.

  I glance over to the animatronic skeletons lined up against the wall. They stare at me with empty eyes. And empty heads, too, as we forgot the batteries to bring them to life. They’re new. I bought them on sale at the end of Halloween last year, and when I did, I was sure that they would be the key to winning this year. They can record messages and parrot them back to the audience whenever someone walks by. It’s just a shame they don’t move as well. I was going to hide a few behind tombstones and others within the gates of a mausoleum, and when people walked by, the skeletons would laugh and scare everyone half to death.

  But now, when I look at them, I can only think that they look fake. Cheap. You can see the LEDs in their eye sockets and the wires in their joints. Maybe we didn’t lose last year just because of Patricia. Maybe we lost because my team can’t afford scarier things.

  I sigh and try to fight down the sadness. Without my friends around, it’s hard.

  “This is your year, Kevin,” I say to myself, trying to psych myself up. “And someday, you’re going to make special effects for big movies and haunted houses and you’ll be famous.”

  It’s the same thing I’ve told myself every night for the last month, to pump myself up.

  “This is your year, Kevin,” comes a creepy electronic voice.

  I startle and look to the skeletons. One of them has glowing green eyes, and its mouth moves jerkily as it talks. Its teeth look oddly rotten, and I swear that mud cakes its bones. It leans forward, just a little, which should be impossible, and turns its head

  ever

  so

  slowly

  to face me.

  Its broken teeth and twisted mouth turn up into a sneer.

  “This is your year, Kevin,” it says again.

  “What in the world?” I whisper. My heart races in my chest. “I thought you didn’t have batteries?” Maybe one of my dads put batteries in to test it out?

  “This is your year, Kevin,” it repeats. Its voice is less mechanical this time. More feminin
e. Creepier. Chills race down my back as I take a step closer.

  “How are you—?”

  “This is your fear, Kevin,” the skeleton says. I stop a foot away from it; I don’t want to get too close. I don’t want to consider the impossible—that it might reach out and grab me. It must be malfunctioning. Something wrong with the mic or—

  “You wouldn’t let me rest, Kevin. And now, neither will you.”

  The lights in the skeleton’s eyes blink out.

  Silence returns to the basement.

  Silence, if you don’t count the thud of my heart.

  Silence, if you don’t count the screaming in my head.

  And when I reach out and pick up the skeleton, I realize something that—for the first time in my life—makes me truly afraid.

  The battery case really is empty.

  The skeleton came to life on its own.

  I don’t want to go to sleep.

  After my dads picked me up, we went home and sorted through all my old decorations in the basement. It took an hour. And then I had to do homework. And even though it’s late and I’m tired and in bed, I don’t want to close my eyes.

  Because no matter what I do, I can’t get the talking skeleton out of my head.

  I’m not scared.

  I don’t get scared.

  I’m just … confused.

  Yeah. That’s it.

  It has to have been Patricia’s doing. Maybe she managed to sneak in a wireless speaker or something. Maybe she switched out the skeletons when I went on a bathroom break. There has to be some logical explanation of what happened, and I’ll bet anything that Patricia is the force behind it.

  After all, that’s one of the reasons I love haunted houses: Everything inside is explainable and safe. Every single scare is created by a normal person like me, and once you realize that, it’s not so scary. It’s just cool to see how they did it. Which means I need to figure out how Patricia did it, because it was a creepy effect, and I’m sure it would scare someone who could actually, you know, get scared.

  So yeah, I’m not awake because I’m freaked out. I’m awake because I want to know how Patricia pulled it off.

  Soon, it’s almost midnight, and I’m no more tired than I was when I went to bed at eight. My dads are asleep and the house is quiet, and as I lie there, staring at the ceiling, my thoughts drift from Patricia and the skeleton to the ghostly bride. If I’m going to use her in the display, I need to know her story. I need to make her real.

  I roll over and grab my phone from the nightstand. Maybe if I start reading about her, I’ll tire myself out so I can sleep. I squint against the brightness of the screen and start to research.

  It doesn’t take much to learn about her. All I do is type in Happy Hills and ghost bride and a dozen articles show up. Each is creepier than the last.

  I scroll through articles by the local newspaper, as well as blog posts by fans of the story. The headlines are almost as scary as the content: MOURNING FAMILY CREATES NIGHTMARE. GHOST BRIDE LIVES AGAIN.

  One article in particular makes me pause: UNABLE TO MOVE ON, FAMILY BRINGS DEAD TO LIFE. I read through, and with every word goose bumps creep up over my skin.

  Turns out, Anna’s family didn’t just create the mannequin bride to remember their daughter. They created it to replace their daughter. When she died, they were completely devastated. They say her mother snapped.

  My blood runs cold as I read on.

  Anna had been buried in her wedding dress. But her mother dug her up and removed it, putting it on the mannequin because she couldn’t let her daughter go. The police tried to get involved, but it sounds like Anna’s parents were big deals. They actually built Corvidon Manor and half the town. No charges were ever pressed, and the whole thing was forgotten. Except …

  I scroll down further, and there are photos scattered throughout the text. Old black-and-white pictures. A man and woman in the dining room. And there, propped awkwardly in the corner, is a mannequin dressed in white. The next shows a huge bed, the woman sitting on its edge and the mannequin bride tucked in with the covers to its chin. The next shows the mannequin bride in the manor’s window, Anna’s mother at its side, waving.

  I blink. My breath catches.

  Did it—?

  No. It couldn’t have. I keep scrolling.

  There’s no way the bride turned to look at me.

  I must be more tired than I thought. But that doesn’t stop the chills from crawling all over my skin, nor does it calm my sudden desire to turn on all the lights in the room.

  I feel like I’m being watched again.

  From the corner.

  From the shadows.

  Get ahold of yourself. It’s just your imagination.

  It doesn’t make me feel any better.

  I read through the end of the article, which just talks about how the mannequin bride stayed in the manor after the parents died and the whole place became part of the historical society. Nothing super interesting. Then I turn off my phone.

  Darkness settles around me like hands pressing against my chest. Once more, I want to turn all my lights on, but that’s not like me. I don’t get scared. There’s a logical reason for my fear—I read an article that triggered an emotional response, and in the darkness, my imagination is allowed to go haywire.

  It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself that.

  The chills don’t go away.

  The feeling of being watched doesn’t fade.

  It doesn’t matter that I know it’s all in my head.

  As sleep swims in, I know I hear a woman crying.

  My nightmare begins like this.

  I stand in the hall of a mansion. The walls tower above me, the ceiling so far up I can’t even see it in the shadows. Great drapes billow down the sides like splashes of blood, and everywhere I turn, in every corner, along every wall, is a mannequin. Or part of a mannequin. Smooth-faced porcelain mannequins or fully detailed ones with eyebrows and lips and glass eyes, of all shapes and colors and sizes. They stand facing the walls, or upside down in enormous brass flower pots, or illuminated on bureaus. Everything is silent. So silent, I can hear myself breathing, can hear the blood in my veins.

  I take a step forward. My foot squishes deep into the carpet. But

  it doesn’t feel like carpet.

  It feels like something alive,

  or mostly alive.

  The moment I take another step, I catch something from the corner of my eye and freeze.

  The mannequin nearest to me moved.

  I look over to it. It’s one of the more detailed mannequins, with blank eyes and red lips. It doesn’t look any different, but I swear it moved. I swear it moved to stare at me.

  I swear it wasn’t smiling before.

  Another step. I have to get out of here. My pulse races in my ears and now I’m not so certain that I only hear my breathing.

  I think I hear other inhalations.

  I think I hear the mannequins breathing.

  Another step, and I know the mannequin I pass turns. Its head cocked to the side, whiplash fast, watching me run. Because I am running now. Running down the squishy hallway as the drapes billow with hidden breezes and the mannequins jerk and turn to watch me flee. As they jerk and follow me.

  As they run, too.

  And suddenly I am running down a hall that stretches toward infinity, and as I run my feet start sinking into the carpet and I can barely take a step, can barely lift my legs from the mud-like floor, but the mannequins behind me are close now, so close, and I can’t let them get to me. Can’t let their cold porcelain fingers reach me.

  Something claws my back.

  I yelp and twist around and throw a punch, and the mannequin’s porcelain face explodes into pale dust. Into snow.

  All the mannequins turn to snow, and snow drifts down around me in the courtyard. The courtyard with its bent trees and frozen fountain and bone-white mansion stretching up in the darkness beyond. Everything in the courtyard i
s white and frozen, snow drifting down peacefully, and in the heavy silence of the snow I hear my heartbeat slow. I feel the panic subside.

  What was I running from?

  Where was I running from?

  I turn slowly on the spot, looking out at the gnarled trees and the mansion that looks so, so familiar, and when I make a full circle I see a figure standing before the fountain, facing away.

  A figure in a wedding dress as white as the snow.

  A figure that makes my skin go as cold as the snow.

  She is crying.

  Despite myself, my feet move forward, as if pulled on strings. I walk toward her, my feet crunching on ice, and even though my footfalls are loud, she doesn’t turn to look at me. She doesn’t seem to know I’m there.

  I don’t know why I do it.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. She doesn’t respond, and still my feet move me closer.

  I reach out when I’m near. Touch her shoulder. It is hard and firm. Like ice.

  Like porcelain.

  And when she whips about to face me, her frozen fingers clutching my arms, I know my mistake.

  The mannequin clutches me in her hands. Her veil billows back, revealing nothing but shadows and smiling teeth.

  I scream as her mouth widens and swallows me whole.

  I feel strange all through school.

  I’m on edge. Jumpy. Maybe it’s because I woke up with a pounding headache and the feeling that I didn’t actually get any sleep. Maybe it’s because Patricia keeps smiling at me from her desk like she’s up to something. Maybe it’s because today, we’re setting up for real, and for the first time this year, I’m worried that we won’t be able to pull it off. Or maybe it’s because I woke up tangled in my sheets and covered in sweat, running from a nightmare I can no longer remember.

  For some reason, though, every time I see movement from the corner of my eye, a chill races down my spine. And I expect to see a woman in a white wedding dress.

  Every once in a while, I think I do.

  By the time school is out, I’m jumping at everything. The final bell rings, and I grab my stuff and head to my locker. Once my bag is packed, I slam the locker and race to the front door to find my friends.