Scare Me

by K. R. Alexander

  Julie doesn’t say anything. Every other sound gets swallowed up by the mist.

  Lightning flashes again. Something dark is backlit in the fog. Coming toward us.

  I press even closer to the tree and hold an arm out protectively over Julie. My eyes are wide. I can’t see anything after the lightning. I can’t tell if it’s a zombie or a monster or—

  “Tanesha!” Julie cries. She flings herself forward and hugs our friend. Tanesha looks winded, but unscathed. Her makeup is smudged and the fake eyeball has fallen off somewhere mid-run.

  “You made it,” I say.

  “Course I did,” Tanesha replies. “Got lost in the fog trying to find you guys. You sure this is the right tree?”

  I open my mouth and then see that she’s kidding. I let out a forced laugh.

  “We need to get out of here,” Julie says. “What if they come back?”

  Suddenly, even my strained humor fades.

  “I think we go this way,” I say. I point toward the direction that I hope is the stairs.

  “You think, or you know?” Tanesha asks.

  I want to say I know, but I don’t want to lie again. Clearly, my hesitation is answer enough.

  “Better than nothing I guess,” she says, and begins trekking through the cemetery.

  I keep my eyes peeled for zombies as we go. Lightning flashes, but so far, I don’t see any monsters. Just an endless, churning mist dotted with spindly black shapes that I hope against hope are only trees and not giant skeletons. Hopefully, Tanesha led the zombies far, far away from here. Hopefully, we’ll find the stairs and be able to leave and this—whatever this is—will be all over.

  “What if we can’t find the stairs?” Julie whispers.

  Her words thrill me with fear; that’s exactly what I’m worried about.

  “We will,” I say reassuringly. “I’m sure of it.”

  That, at least, I’m okay lying about.

  I don’t know how long we wander through the fog. Past tombstones with scratched-out names. Under trees with branches like claws. The moon doesn’t move in the sky, and when I check my watch, it’s saying it’s midnight. Which can’t be possible. Can it?

  “Eventually, someone’s going to look for us,” Julie says as we wander.

  I know she’s just trying to convince herself, but it does make me feel a little better.

  She’s right. Eventually, the adults will realize something is wrong, and they’ll hammer down the door or break through the windows and there will be search teams and tracking dogs and everything. We’ll be safe.

  “If they can get in,” Tanesha says. She looks at me. “You heard what Patricia was saying. The house is locked. We can’t get out. And that means no one can get in.”

  “Don’t think like that,” I say. “Negative thinking doesn’t help anyone.”

  “Not negative,” she replies. “Just honest. Besides, I think it’s better if we don’t rely on adults to help us. Waiting for help to come doesn’t do anyone any good when something’s after you. We have to do this on our own.”

  “We still don’t know what any of this is,” I say.

  “No. But once we find the other kids, we’ll figure it out.” She peers through the fog, and her skeptical look breaks into a smile. “There, look! I see it!”

  I squint. And there, through the fog, I see what looks like a small, oddly shaped pyramid. My heart leaps into my chest. The stairs! And there’s a figure at the base that must be Patricia.

  “Come on!” I yell.

  Julie yells at my side, but it’s not from excitement. She’s looking behind us.

  To where the zombies are shambling forward, a lot faster than they were before.

  “Are they … running!?” Tanesha yelps.

  My heart flips in fear; she’s right. The zombies are running toward us, arms outstretched and their gray skin flashing in the moonlight. I can hear their moans now, and the trample of their feet on the earth. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Stretching out through the mist as far as I can see. And they’re gaining on us. Fast.

  “RUN!” I yell.

  We bolt. Straight toward the steps, holding each other’s hands. I can only hope that none of us stumbles, sprains an ankle, or worse.

  I don’t want any of us to be eaten by a zombie.

  My breath burns in my throat, and it feels like the stairs are getting farther

  and farther

  away.

  My toe catches on a stone.

  I stumble

  but Tanesha’s firm grip keeps me steady.

  We run.

  Panting.

  Terrified.

  The zombies

  are

  so

  close

  I can hear their grinding teeth

  and crunching bones.

  I can smell their decaying flesh.

  We’re not going to make it.

  We’re not going to make it!

  “Hurry!” Patricia yells.

  She stands near the base of the steps, and it’s then that I realize there’s a doorway at the very top. A doorway leading to nowhere.

  We put on speed and reach the stairway.

  We stumble up the wooden steps.

  Patricia urges us on and in. I barely have time to wonder how I see a hallway in the doorway before jumping through. The last thing I hear is the slam of a door behind me and the pounding of fists on the frame.

  The four of us huddle against the far wall, panting and frozen with fear as we stare at the door and hope that it holds. Zombie fists continue pounding. Their hungry moans pierce through the wood, and their shadows stretch under the door frame.

  But the door holds.

  The knocking fades.

  And finally, after what feels like an hour, the hall falls into silence.

  “What was that?” Julie asks. Her timid voice sounds far too loud.

  I glance left and right. Nothing in here seems to have changed. The hall stretches from one end of the manor to the other, lined with armoires and bookshelves and closed doors. We’re near the back, but there, near the front door, is a huddle of shadowed shapes.

  “What’s in the basement?” someone calls from the door.

  “Zombies!” Patricia calls back.

  Whoever asked mumbles something; they don’t sound happy.

  “Who’s that?” I whisper to Patricia.

  “Ed,” she replies. “From the Mummies. We’re trying to rally everyone together, but …”

  “But what?” Tanesha presses.

  “But we can’t find everyone,” Patricia says. She looks to me, and I’m surprised to see there are actually tears in her eyes. “Lily from my team is missing. The Creepy Crawlies are still lost. And Ed and James are the only ones from the Masked Mummies who made it back.”

  She swallows, hard.

  “What exactly is happening here?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she replies. She sinks back against the wall, and it’s the first time I’ve seen her not look angelic or demonic. She looks like a kid, just like the rest of us. Scared and confused and in a bad costume.

  In that moment, she doesn’t seem like an enemy, and I don’t quite know what to do with that.

  “We were all getting ready for the judges to show up. It was Ed who first realized something was wrong—he was waiting by the front door in hiding. The judges never showed, so after a few minutes he tried opening the door to see what was up. It didn’t budge. And when he went back to talk to his teammates, he realized it was … well …”

  Patricia gulps.

  “He opened the door to his room and it was filled with creepy clowns and carnival music. He slammed it shut immediately and ran up to try to find us. Thankfully, James had been waiting for him at the door for updates.”

  For a moment, I feel a pang of anger that Ed didn’t come to the basement first. But then again, if I had just seen a room of creepy clowns, the basement is probably the last place I would have wanted to run.

 
“We tried gathering everyone we could,” Patricia says. “That’s why I went to get you. But we can’t get far into the rooms without getting lost. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s like all of our themes came alive. The attic has become a real labyrinth. The second floor is like some possessed toy factory. And then you have your graveyard …”

  She trails off. None of this makes sense.

  “How could this be happening?” Julie asks. “How could this be real?”

  “I don’t know,” Patricia says. “But we have to find a way out of here. Before we all get trapped forever. Or worse.”

  Eventually, we gather ourselves and head to the front door. Ed and the others are stationed there, huddled in their costumes like sad trick-or-treaters.

  “It’s locked,” Ed says when we near. He’s still in his bandages, but he’s taken off the creepy clown mask. He wiggles the handle to prove his point: The door doesn’t budge.

  “What are we going to do?” Julie asks.

  “We have to find a way out of here,” Ed says. “I’ve tried the back door but it’s locked, too. And we can’t break the windows. We tried. They’re like steel.”

  The front door is mostly an ornate stained-glass window; it looks like it would shatter if we breathed on it too hard. But I don’t doubt Ed one bit. I press up to the window and look out through one of the blocks of stained glass. Outside, everything is obscured in fog.

  “I can’t see anything,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Ed replies. “All the windows are like that. It’s like we’re … I dunno. It’s like we’ve been transported somewhere else.”

  One of the kids—James—is rocking back and forth with his knees curled to his chest, mumbling over and over, “This can’t be happening.” It isn’t making me feel any better.

  “So even if we do get the door open,” I say, “there’s no telling what we’re going to find out there.”

  “What are you saying?” Patricia asks.

  “I’m saying that our first priority needs to be finding the others. We can split up. Take our own floors since team leaders should know the layout.”

  I regret the words the moment they leave my mouth. The last thing I want to do is venture deeper into this nightmare. Now it seems like we don’t have a choice.

  “What about the second floor?” Ed interjects. “No one from the Creepy Crawlies has made it out.”

  “We’ll go,” I say. Julie glares at me when I say it. She absolutely hates dolls.

  “You know that things always go wrong when people split up in scary movies?” Tanesha asks.

  “Yes, but if we all go floor by floor it will take forever. Who knows what will have happened to the others by then?”

  Everyone seems to see the logic in my rationale, even though it does feel safer in one large group. And it definitely feels safer in the hall. Nothing strange is going on here. So far. There’s even a large plastic cauldron of candy sitting by the door, and some individual packs of apple juice. At least we won’t starve.

  “Okay, then,” I say. “We meet back here in an hour, got it? Stay in your groups. We don’t want anyone else getting lost.”

  Patricia and Ed both nod.

  “Let’s go,” Patricia says.

  “One hour,” Ed replies.

  I don’t mention that my watch doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t want to freak them out.

  Hopefully, we’ll all be back here in just a few minutes.

  Hopefully, this will all be over soon.

  Whatever it is.

  It’s a lot of things to hope for, and I have a sick feeling in my gut that says none of them will happen.

  We stand outside the door to the haunted toy factory. Tanesha waits coolly by my side, and Julie hovers behind us. Patricia and Maribeth have already gone upstairs to find Lily, and I know Ed and James are downstairs, searching for their lost teammate in the fun house.

  Even though it’s just a door—plain wood, no decorations—I’m intimidated to open it. I don’t want to even put my hand on the doorknob. I feel like I can hear the door breathing. As if it’s expectant. Waiting for us to come inside.

  As if it’s excited for our terror.

  “Ready, Banshees?” I ask. My voice shakes a little, but I don’t think the others care. We’re all scared. None of this should be happening. But it is. We have to do this. It’s the only logical way forward.

  My friends nod.

  “If it gets too dangerous,” I continue, “we leave immediately. And no matter what, we need to stay together. We can’t let anyone get left behind.”

  I place my hand on the doorknob.

  The door opens inward before I even turn it.

  Like I said … waiting for us.

  The three of us step in. Julie holds a flashlight in her hands, the beam shaking in the darkness. And that’s all there is. The door clicks shut behind us, and all we see is darkness.

  “This can’t be right,” I whisper.

  Something clangs to the floor in front of us in response. We back up.

  And keep going.

  “Guys,” Julie whispers. “The door.”

  I don’t have to ask what she’s talking about. I reach behind us in the inky blackness and know for myself, just as the lights in the factory flicker on and reveal the nightmare we have landed in.

  The door is gone.

  This isn’t like any factory I’ve seen before.

  Metal ducts snake across the ceiling, and harsh light flickers from overhead metal grates. Giant pieces of boxlike machinery tower around us, blinking with lights and codes, all of them connected by silent conveyor belts.

  I want to say the factory is empty, but it’s not.

  Because at every single station is a mannequin in denim coveralls. And on the conveyor belts, in every stage of production, are empty toy boxes.

  Everything is still and silent.

  And waiting.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Julie says. Her voice wavers.

  “I don’t either,” I reply. Because before, when I would go into a haunted house, I knew everything we saw was just a trick. Something created by a normal human like me to scare people. But now I’m positive that’s not the case.

  This place doesn’t just want to scare us.

  It wants to keep us here. Forever.

  Here, every single scare and danger is real.

  “Come on,” Tanesha says. She steps past me, toward the warren of aisles. “We have to start somewhere. Might as well be here and now.”

  I swallow.

  “Do we call out their names?” I ask.

  She looks at me, but she doesn’t answer. Even our quiet voices echo loudly in the factory. Like there’s no one else alive.

  Immediately, I fear the worst. What if something’s already happened to the missing kids? What if they’ve been turned into dolls or packed up tight or a hundred other terrible scenarios?

  Tanesha seems to follow my train of thought. She starts calling out the kids’ names. I flinch at the first holler of her voice. It’s loud. Too loud. But when only silence responds, I start calling out as well.

  Together, the three of us slowly make our way into the depths of the toy factory. There’s no point trying to remember which way we came from, not when there’s no door back. Still, I keep glancing behind me as we trek down the main aisle. I really wish we had string or breadcrumbs; we’re no good to the missing kids if we can’t find a way out.

  Giant machines rise up on either side of us, all blinking lights and shiny metal, our terrified faces staring back. Our real fear, however, comes from the mannequin workers. They linger everywhere, arms upraised as if pulling levers or sorting toys. Frozen. Their blank faces are smooth as bowls, but for some reason, that makes them even scarier.

  Everything is silent. Absolutely silent. Save for our infrequent calls out to the missing team. Farther in we go. And as the heavy quiet settles on our shoulders and the mannequin workers crowd around us, those calls grow quieter a
nd quieter, until even Tanesha is barely whispering.

  “I don’t like this,” I finally say. “Why don’t we hear anyone?”

  The graveyard had been alive. Haunted. Filled with wind and mist and lightning and zombies. I had expected a dozen toy monsters to leap out at us by now. For this to be a nightmare. Instead, there’s just that sense that the factory is quietly waiting for us. And I don’t want to find out what it will do once it stops waiting.

  “Maybe we should go back,” Tanesha says. She looks behind us. “Connect with the rest of the group. We can all come through and comb the factory together.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I say. I call out for the missing kids one more time. I don’t expect a response.

  But then I hear something, coming from our left.

  “Help!”

  It’s so faint, at first I think it’s my imagination. Except Tanesha’s eyes are wide as she stares in the direction of the voice.

  “That’s them!” I say.

  “It could be a trap,” Julie warns.

  We have no other choice. We have to go on.

  We start walking toward the voice, but the mannequins here are closer together, and even though I try my best to slip between them, I hit one with my shoulder.

  It wobbles.

  I reach out, try to steady it, but my hands are too slick from fear, and it slips from my grasp and falls.

  It feels like slow motion, watching it fall over. When it hits the ground and explodes into a dozen pieces, however, time speeds back up. The crash echoes down the long corridor.

  One by one, the other mannequins snap

  their heads

  to attention.

  For a moment, the three of us stand there, and it’s like everything is frozen. The mannequins stare at us blankly. We stare back.

  And then,

  with the click and roar of machinery,

  the entire factory

  comes