The Fear Zone 2

by K. R. Alexander

  “Come on,” I say. “We’ll catch up to them. I’m sure he’s just upset because he doesn’t want to believe we’re in danger. But he’ll listen to us. I know he will. There was writing on my window last night, April. And Kyle admitted that he saw a snake yesterday. I’m sure he’s just in denial. He doesn’t want to believe it’s back.”

  “I don’t either,” she says. “But we don’t have a choice.”

  She starts walking toward the school. I follow, but as I go, I look over my shoulder to a group of kids on the sidewalk. One of them stands a little taller than the rest. My blood goes cold when I see him.

  The pale blue eyes.

  The terrible, snakelike smile.

  The pearly white face.

  The clown.

  The clown waves at me, the gesture menacing.

  Then I blink, and it’s just a kid. Just a normal, makeup-free kid.

  I wish I could convince myself that’s all it ever was.

  “Kyle, wait!” Andres calls from behind me.

  But I don’t slow down.

  I don’t wait.

  If I do, I know I’ll see them, slithering through the leaves.

  If I do, I know I’ll be back in the nightmare I fought so hard to overcome.

  “Kyle!”

  Andres grabs my arm and forces me to a halt. I spin on the spot and glare at him, but he doesn’t let go. For a moment, for a brief, terrible moment, a voice roars inside my head, telling me to throw him off, to shove him away.

  A voice that sounds far too much like my father’s.

  I force it away and try to calm down.

  I’m not going to become like my dad. I’m not.

  You already are.

  “What’s going on?” Andres asks.

  I swallow hard and look down to my feet. I almost expect serpents to slither over my shoes, but I see only my sneakers and the pavement.

  “It can’t be back,” I say. “We banished it. This is all just some, I don’t know, cry for attention.”

  “Dude—”

  “You heard April! She’s sad that we don’t hang out anymore, so she’s making up stories to get us back together again. Maybe she got the idea at the carnival last night, thought it was the best way to keep us together. It’s not right.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Andres whispers.

  “You just can’t see it because she’s your best friend,” I reply. There’s an edge to my voice I can’t shake, an anger that simmers.

  “Look, none of us want to believe this is happening. But what’s the harm in being prepared?”

  “We scare ourselves and make something out of nothing.”

  “Or we’re on alert and prevent something worse from happening.” Andres pauses and looks back toward Deshaun and April, who have passed to the other side of the street to walk past us. “They’re our friends,” he continues. “We have to stick together. You know what happened last time. The only reason we got out of that grave was because we were a team. We can’t let this split us apart.”

  I want to agree with him. I know it’s logical and rational, but the more I stand and listen to him lecture, the more my dad’s anger builds inside me and the more I want to scream at him to shut up.

  “We know what to expect,” he says calmly. “We know what to look out for. Our fears—”

  “You don’t know anything about fear!” I shout. Suddenly I’m no longer standing outside.

  I’m standing in the basement of my old house, my dad behind me, his hands on my shoulders, forcing me to stay put. We stand in the center of the room, the space lit by a single bare bulb above, its light casting harsh shadows over the dozens of snakes hissing and coiling in the terrariums around me. The sound of their slithering does nothing to drown out my dad’s warning: This is what you get for trying to stand up to me. Don’t make a noise. Don’t move a muscle. Or I’ll let them out and lock you in here.

  “Kyle,” Andres whispers. “Kyle, what’s wrong?”

  His voice snaps me from the memory. Except it’s not Andres staring at me anymore.

  It’s my dad. Standing on the sidewalk outside our school. His eyes burning bright blue, just like the clown’s. His smile stretched in a sinister sneer. Snakes spill from between his serrated teeth.

  I don’t answer him.

  I turn and run for the school, serpents hissing in my wake.

  I didn’t sleep at all last night. Bad dreams. Nightmares. I blamed it on all the cotton candy and soda at the carnival, all the bright lights and rides. A sleepless night explains the dark shadows under my eyes and the tremor in my fingers as I get ready, the gross churning in my stomach and the ache in my temples.

  But it doesn’t explain why everything feels different as I walk to school. Muted. Like a waking dream.

  I’ve had sleepless nights before. All-nighters for tests. Bingeing shows on my computer. A few girls-only slumber parties with April. But I’ve never felt like this.

  At least, not since we banished the clown. Not since my nightmares of being buried alive ended.

  I almost asked my dad to drive me. But he’s busy with work and I don’t want to bother him. Plus I like the freedom. For some reason, walking makes me feel closer to my mother. She loved wandering around. We’d often drive out to the countryside and go on all-day walks through the fields and forests. They’re my favorite memories of her, before illness took her away.

  And even though I’m lost in my thoughts, something pulls at me. More of a sensation than a sound. A tug. An urge.

  A scent.

  And it reminds me so strongly of my mother, I know I have to follow.

  Almost without meaning to, I find myself at the edge of town. Near the hill. Near the carnival.

  Near the graveyard.

  A part of me knows I should keep going. School starts in twenty minutes and I don’t want to be late. But that part is muted. Soft. Like it is the part of me that’s dreaming, and the rest is wide, wide awake.

  Mom’s perfume carries on the breeze that winds its way down from the cemetery hill. I follow.

  Up past the old iron fence.

  Up through the trees with their gnarled, bare branches.

  Past the tombstones covered in leaves.

  To the very top.

  Around the back.

  To the ancient tree that stands like a skeleton against the pale blue sky.

  To the unmarked grave that waits there.

  The grave that spelled so much horror.

  The grave that definitely wasn’t there when I was here last week.

  I freeze before it.

  The perfume fades, and so, too, does my certainty. The belief that this was okay. Safe.

  Suddenly, the fragrant breeze becomes cold and harsh. The scent changes. Becomes bitter, like decayed animals and rusted metal. I shudder, pull my light coat tighter around me.

  “I should go,” I say to no one, and turn.

  The leaves rustle,

  revealing something bright and orange beneath them.

  I hesitate.

  I should go. I don’t know why I came out here. This isn’t my mother’s grave. This is where we first unearthed the clown’s evil.

  This is the grave that vanished when we got rid of the clown.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  And neither should this grave.

  But I am. And it is. And there, among the leaves, is a bright orange hat.

  I pick it up and examine it. It’s familiar, but I don’t know why. I shove it in my pocket. It feels important.

  Before I can change my mind and toss the hat back to the leaves, I head in the direction of school.

  As I cross over the hill and the grave fades from view, I look back over my shoulder.

  To see new paint splattered over the tombstone, spelling out the words

  I turn away before I can read the names.

  I don’t want to know.

  I don’t want to know.

  “Did you hear?” April asks, corn
ering me in the lunchroom.

  So far, Kyle hasn’t said another word to me—not that he’d have much chance, seeing as we’re in completely different classes. I can’t stop thinking about how hurt he looked this morning, how angry. He almost sounded like a different person. It stings. But I know deep down he just needs time. Not even Deshaun has said hey in passing. Caroline and I had an English class together, but she sat in the back, looking lost and somewhat haunted. I wanted to ask her what was wrong; she left before I got the chance.

  April’s the first of my friends who’s actually sought me out. I can tell from the expression on her face, however, that I’m not going to like what she’s talking about.

  “Hear what?” I ask.

  She steps in close. The lunchroom is crowded and people are yelling and no one is paying attention to the two of us, but she lowers her voice, anyway.

  “Jeremy, his brother, and his brother’s friends have gone missing.”

  I swear my blood freezes.

  “What?” I whisper back.

  She nods and looks around. Her eyes have a manic, bloodshot haze to them. I wonder when she found out. I wonder how long this has been eating at her.

  “I overheard some seniors talking. One of them said that Jeremy and his brother didn’t come home last night. Neither did his brother’s friends.” She pauses and looks at me meaningfully. “Think about it: The last time we saw them, they were at the carnival. By the graveyard. And there were five of them.”

  “You don’t think … ?” I begin, but before either of us can say anything, April stands up and looks over my shoulder. I look too, to see Caroline walking our way, her hands behind her back.

  “Caroline!” April says, her voice forcefully chipper. “How are you doing? Excited for the sleepover tonight?”

  Caroline smiles slightly, but it doesn’t stick.

  “I went to the graveyard this morning,” she says. No introduction. It’s a second punch to the gut in five minutes. “I don’t know why. I just felt pulled. And … the grave was there again.” There’s no need to ask which one. There’s only one grave I know of that could disappear once its contents had been beaten. “There was also … this.”

  She holds out her hands.

  I gingerly take the orange hat and hold it in front of me.

  “This was Caleb’s,” I say. I look between them. “Jeremy’s little brother. The one dressed as a lumberjack.”

  “What was it doing by the grave?” Caroline asks.

  “None of them came home last night,” April says. She fishes in her pocket and pulls out the crumpled note. “And this morning, well …” She unfolds it and lets Caroline read. Caroline’s jaw drops.

  “It’s what I feared,” Caroline whispers. “As I was turning to go … there were words on the tombstone. I didn’t see the names. But it said … Here lie the bodies.”

  “No,” I whisper. “It can’t have gotten them. We saw them last night!”

  April shakes her head, tears forming in her eyes.

  “It must have gotten to them at the carnival, after we left. I bet it was watching us the whole time.” She takes a deep, steadying breath, but her voice still shakes when she speaks again. “If it got Jeremy and the others, we have to try to save them. Otherwise …”

  “Otherwise, it’s going to come after us next,” I finish. I look at the hat in my hands.

  A small, terrible part of me wonders if it’s already too late.

  April texts Deshaun immediately after that, and I send one to Kyle as well, though I don’t really know what to say. He was already touchy talking about the clown earlier—what will he think when he finds out Jeremy is gone? Surely, he’ll have to believe us. Right? What other option is there? I keep my text to the point:

  Jeremy, his brother, and his brother’s friends went missing. We think it’s the clown.

  He probably won’t get it until the end of the school day anyway, but at least it feels like doing something. Which is more than I can say for the rest of the lunch period. We all three sit there, barely eating, lost in our thoughts.

  “We have to help them,” April says a few minutes before the final bell rings. “Jeremy and the others. If they were taken by the clown, we have to figure out how to get them back.”

  “Maybe they’re still in the graveyard?” I ask, remembering the night we were trapped in the cave beneath the tombstone.

  Caroline shakes her head. “I didn’t see any sign of them besides the hat. If they were taken, I don’t know how we’re going to get them back. The clown isn’t just going to give them up easily.”

  “But we have to do something,” April says. “Maybe their parents would know …”

  But she trails off. We all know the truth—the clown isn’t going to give anyone back. The clown isn’t going to let us find them. It has powers we can’t even dream of. There’s nothing anyone’s parents could do, and no authorities would ever believe us. I mean, come on: Who would believe a group of high schoolers swearing some evil paranormal clown had taken five kids from a town where literally nothing bad has ever happened?

  Still, April’s right—we have to try something.

  “Maybe we can swing by the graveyard tonight,” I say. “Kyle won’t like it, but I bet the five of us together could discover something.”

  “That feels like walking into a trap,” Caroline whispers. “The clown wants us.”

  “No,” I say. “Think about it: If the clown wanted us, it would have gotten us. We were all at the carnival last night. And the clown hasn’t gone after us—it chose Jeremy and the rest. Maybe because it knew we would resist. Maybe it was, I don’t know, scared of us.”

  April laughs. “That I find hard to believe.”

  “The clown wants us to be scared,” I say. “It’s taking people close to us to make us worried. So we just have to be not scared. We know its tricks and we know how to defeat it. We’ll go to the graveyard and find the others and help them defeat whatever nightmare they’re fighting and then put the clown to rest. Again.”

  Even as I say it, I know it’s too simple. The clown won’t fall for that trick again. April and Caroline nod, but I can tell that they too don’t quite believe me. But neither of them can come up with anything else. My only hope is that Deshaun can think of something better. I know for a fact that he’s spent the last two years trying to problem-solve for every possible threat.

  I can’t help but wonder if the possibility that the clown would target us by stealing other kids ever crossed his mind.

  “Keep your phones on you at all times,” April says when the lunch bell rings. “If there’s an emergency—even if you just think you saw something strange—text.”

  “Our phones will get taken away,” I say, then realize how stupid a worry it is before April even opens her mouth. “Never mind.”

  “This is important. If you’re in trouble, run. No matter what. If the clown is back, if it already took some kids … we have to believe it’s stronger than ever. We have to believe it has some new tricks up its sleeve.”

  Caroline shudders at the thought, but we all nod.

  “I’ve told Deshaun and Kyle what we’ve learned. They haven’t responded, but they’re still in class. If you see them, warn them. We have to stick together, got it?”

  “Got it,” I say. I’m instantly reminded of her tears earlier this morning, when she saw how easily just the thought of the clown had created a rift. I have to hope Kyle will see sense. He has to.

  The bell rings again. April hugs both of us, then dashes off to class.

  “Did you want to keep this?” I ask Caroline, holding up the hat I’ve been clutching. She shakes her head and leaves me with it.

  I don’t want to keep it. I consider handing it in to the security officer—after all, it counts as evidence, right? But they won’t be able to do anything, even if they did believe us. No normal weapon could defeat the clown. No cops or search dogs could hunt it down.

  Just us.

  I
head over to the nearest trash can and toss the hat inside.

  Something rustles within.

  I hesitate. Every nerve in my body is set to run, but I take a step closer to the garbage can. Peer into the shadows and wrappers and old food piled inside.

  Moments later, the garbage rustles, and hundreds of hairy black spiders crawl out. They scuttle up and over the sides of the can, all shapes and sizes, some as big as my hand.

  I yelp and jump back, but the moment I blink, the spiders are gone.

  I stand there, staring at the empty trash, my hand clutched to my hammering heart. A few kids laugh at me as they pass, but I barely notice them.

  The hat is nowhere to be seen.

  What was that? I think to myself.

  The spiders were scary, sure, but only because they shocked me, only because there were so many of them. I’ve never been scared of spiders. Heck, I once asked my parents for a pet tarantula. (They said no. My mom actually screamed no.)

  Before, we were only shown our deepest fears. Mine is sharks.

  So why am I seeing spiders?

  I don’t have an answer, but when I turn and jog from the cafeteria, the third bell warning that I’m about to be late to my next class, a thought bubbles up to the surface.

  Maybe April is right—maybe taking Jeremy and the others has made the clown stronger. Given it powers we can’t even dream of.

  Maybe this is no longer about just facing our individual fears.

  Maybe now, we have to face everyone else’s too.

  I’m being followed.

  I want to think it’s my overactive imagination, some combination of seeing April in tears and Kyle freaking out. And yes, that’s probably part of it. But in reality, I know that it’s not in my head. I know, because it’s the exact same sensation I had in the middle of the night, when I looked out my window and saw the blue-eyed, needle-toothed clown grinning back at me.

  Time to Play. Time to Play.

  The words churn on repeat in my head as I make my way to the cafeteria. Around me, kids are talking or yelling or laughing, but even though I’m surrounded by people, I feel alone.