The Fear Zone 2

by K. R. Alexander

  “He’ll be fine,” I repeat. “Promise.”

  We reach the cemetery. The night air feels like it dropped twenty degrees since we left Caroline’s house. Our breath comes out in clouds, and the barren sky above seems to eat up heat. It’s a sharp contrast to the blaring music and flashing lights of the carnival across the road. I stare up at the hills of the graveyard and try to calm myself. Chills race down my spine as images from years ago race through my thoughts.

  Being trapped out here. Trying to escape and unable to flee. Being trapped in the graveyard, trying to run and hide from ghosts that wailed and screamed my name until the sun rose and I was finally able to leave. Something about tonight feels so similar to then.

  The danger. The isolation.

  And the presence. Even as we stand here, at the base of the hill, staring up at the stunted trees and tombstones, it feels like we are in forbidden territory. It feels like we are being watched. I keep searching for meandering skeletons or decaying ghouls or the telltale burning blue eyes of the clown. Or even a group of teenagers getting into trouble—after all, it’s a weekend, the night after Halloween. Surely someone is up here testing their bravery.

  The cemetery is eerily empty. The lack of people is almost a presence in itself.

  “Are you sure about this?” Andres asks me. He shudders. “You didn’t see what I saw earlier. This place … this isn’t right.”

  “I’m sure,” I reply. “We need to find proof that Jeremy and the others were here. More proof than the hat, which Kyle never got to see,” I finish. “It’s the only way to convince Kyle. And even if we don’t convince him, hopefully we can find a trace of Jeremy. Hopefully we can find a way to help. They need us.”

  Andres grunts. “Fine. If you say so. But this is my good deed for the next twenty years, got it?”

  I grin slightly and hug April, who stands there with her arms crossed over her chest and a very unhappy look on her face. Caroline is the only one who seems at all prepared for this. She brought a backpack filled with flashlights and small spades, and she carries a metal baseball bat. Just in case. Her face is set in determination.

  “Come on,” she says. She trudges up the hill. We follow.

  It doesn’t take long to find the grave. There’s a tug in my gut that pulls me forward, a fear that intensifies even as it intoxicates.

  I feel like I could close my eyes and walk and I’d arrive here. No matter where I started. No matter where I wanted to go. This place would draw me back.

  The tombstone stands below a gnarled tree. Its surface is worn smooth and weathered, and just like before, there are words painted in black on the surface:

  My stomach twists in fear and nausea. The dirt at the base of the tombstone is a freshly churned mound. And at its side are five shovels. Caroline steps over to the shovels and looks at them. There’s writing on the handles.

  “Don’t touch them,” April warns as Caroline’s hand goes to one. “It could be a trap.”

  Caroline drops her hand and instead shines the light over the five shovels.

  “It wants us to dig,” Caroline says, her voice a mix of disgust and wonder. “It wants us to dig our own graves. It’s even given us shovels with our names on them.”

  “That’s twisted,” Andres says. “Why would we want to dig our own graves?”

  “Because,” comes a terribly familiar voice from behind the tombstone, “soon you will be begging to be buried here.”

  I stumble back as two enormous satin-gloved hands clamp on top of the tombstone.

  “What is it?” April asks. But I barely hear her. None of us do. Caroline and Andres and I can only stare up in horror as the clown presses itself up to standing.

  If I thought it was terrifying before, it was nothing compared with the monster before us now.

  The clown is barely human. Its face is chalk white and skeletal, its cheeks caved in to the bone and its skin pulled so tight I can see the black gums in its mouth, its razor-sharp teeth grinding in a grin that splits its face in half. Red paint frames its blackened lips, and its white ears poke out of its bushy red hair like bat wings. Its eyes blaze fierce blue from within black diamonds that look burned into its skin.

  As it stretches up, reaching higher and higher, talons shred from its gloves, and its floppy red shoes split as its feet elongate and grow claws. When it smiles down at us, saliva drips from its wolflike teeth.

  “How do you like me now that I’ve fed, children?” the clown asks, cackling. Caroline and Andres and I can’t move, can’t speak. Only April is able to move, and she looks between the three of us and toward the grave with fear on her face. “This is only the beginning,” the clown continues. “You thought you had destroyed me, but you were wrong. I was merely waiting. Growing stronger. You hurt me.” Its slashed grin turns into a frown that is somehow even more terrifying. Its voice goes singsong. “You hurt my feelings. And I had to lie underground for two years, and you know what I did? I thought of all the horrible things I would do to you when I was free. And here I am. I could take all four of you right now, but that wouldn’t be so fun, would it? I want you to beg for me to stop. I want you to wish you were buried in the same place you buried me. Then maybe I will stop. Maybe.”

  The frown snaps back to a smile. When it speaks again, I know its words are echoing in my head alone.

  “I hope you are ready to be afraid, Deshaun. You thought you knew fear before. But you were so, so wrong.”

  It leans over, stretches its face so it is only a foot from mine, its blue eyes burning so bright I can’t see anything else.

  “You think you can help the others. But you are wrong. You won’t even be able to help yourself. Not where you’re going. You always thought you were so smart, didn’t you? Top of your class? So prepared for my return. You thought of everything. Well, let’s see if you can think your way out of this one.”

  Its blue eyes are bright. So bright.

  Distantly, I hear someone screaming. Feel someone shaking me.

  But the blue pulls me forward.

  Into the brightness.

  Into the dark.

  I can’t see a thing.

  Nothing is happening except Deshaun and Caroline and Andres look like they see a ghost but all I see is the tombstone and the tree and then Andres starts screaming. He screams and turns and runs down the hill before I can call out to him, but then Caroline starts screaming as well. She flees in the other direction.

  And then something happens to Deshaun.

  He steps forward. His eyes open. His face slackens.

  Entranced.

  I shake his arm. Try to get him to come to his senses.

  He steps forward, and the moment his foot touches the mound of freshly turned grave dirt, he starts to fade.

  His arm slips from my grasp. I try to catch it again, but it’s like my hand is passing through smoke. I can’t get him. Can’t reach him. Can’t help as he disappears from view.

  Then it’s my turn to scream.

  I run at full speed from the spiders that scuttle from the clown’s mouth and the rats crawling out from under its pant legs. They swarm behind me, the rats with blazing blue eyes and gnashing teeth, the spiders growing with every step, until they are the size of cats, of dogs, of small cars. I stumble over tombstones. Squelch through quicksand. Fear is a blind, frantic pulse inside me. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know where the others are.

  I stopped thinking of them the moment the clown leaned over and told me it would eat my family for breakfast and I saw that first spider leg poking from between its teeth.

  Maybe I’m running home. I hope that’s where my feet are taking me as I careen down the hill. Spiders the size of cars keep pace with me, their long legs piercing the soft earth, their pincers dripping green acid and their beady eyes glowing like blue-white moons.

  Ahead of me, behind me, I hear screaming. April’s. Caroline’s.

  My brothers’.

  I look up from where I’m r
unning just for a second. Just in time to see my brothers in the valley below me. Standing beside a tombstone.

  The clown, monstrous and tall, standing behind them.

  The clown waves at me. My brothers scream out.

  The clown’s mouth opens wide, cracks, and splits its face.

  And as I scream and stumble, as the spiders and rats scuttle behind me, laughing at my fear, the clown snaps down at the waist and devours my brothers whole.

  I run straight down the hill, straight toward my house, as the ghost of my mother howls behind me, screaming such terrible things. I slam my hands to my ears. But it doesn’t help. I can still hear her. Can still hear her saying it is my fault. That she got sick because of me. That if I had tried a little harder, I could have helped her. I could have made her better. But I didn’t. I didn’t.

  She yells that this too is all my fault. I was the one who goaded my friends into unearthing the clown.

  I was the one who started this whole nightmare.

  The worst part is, I know she is right. On this, she’s right. If I hadn’t made fun of them, if I hadn’t poked them, we might have left the graveyard that night two years ago without ever digging up the grave, without ever pulling out that cursed tin box. If I hadn’t been a bully, everyone would be safe. If I hadn’t been mean—as mean as the clown—nothing bad would have happened.

  If not for me, Jeremy and the others might still be alive.

  If not for me, my mother might still be alive too.

  Guilt burns inside me, and as I run, a new sound fills my ears. Thunder.

  Rumbling shakes the ground. An earthquake?

  No.

  Barking.

  I glance over my shoulder, and rather than the ghoulish ghost of my mother, there are dogs scrambling up from the dirt, unearthing themselves and shaking off the wet soil. But in that one glance I know they aren’t normal dogs—their eyes blaze blue, and their teeth stick out of foaming mouths like saber-toothed tigers, and I can see ribs and bones through the scraggly fur of a few of them.

  Zombie dogs.

  They howl when they spot me. And then they take off down the hill.

  I focus all my attention on running even as the dogs run faster, gaining on me, their paws smacking the earth and making it rumble and shake. I lose my footing. Scramble back up. Run harder. Faster. Even as a small voice inside me says I shouldn’t run. I’m not worth saving.

  This is all my fault.

  Tears fill my eyes and spill down my cheeks. Breath burns like fire in my lungs.

  I see an empty car parked ahead of me on the street.

  I lean in, run full speed.

  And when I reach the car I pray it’s unlocked, jerk open the door, and slam it shut. I lock the door and close my eyes, curling up into a tight little ball in the driver’s seat and squeezing my hands to my ears, my eyes to my knees, rocking back and forth as seconds later thunder rolls over the car, making it shudder as the dogs slam against the sides, beating on the windows, biting at the door handles, trying to get in.

  “Go away,” I whisper, frantic, rocking back and forth and trying to block out the noise. “Go away, please go away, please go away.”

  “Let me in, Caroline,” comes the clown’s sneering voice. Comes my mom’s cajoling voice. Comes both of their voices at once. “I only want to play with you. Let me in, Sunnybunny. Let me in!”

  “Caroline, let me in, please!”

  I blink my eyes open.

  Andres stands outside the passenger door, slamming on the glass, his eyes wide with fright.

  Nothing else out there.

  But he looks like he’s running from something horrible.

  I unlock the door and he jumps in, slamming the door shut and locking it behind him.

  He collapses back into the seat.

  “Did you see that?” he asks through his gasping breaths. “Did you see it?!”

  I nod, speechless. But I don’t know what he saw. It doesn’t matter. No matter what, we know it was horrible.

  “Where are the others?” he asks, looking into the back seat. “Didn’t they follow you?”

  “No,” I’m finally able to gasp. “I thought they followed you?”

  We both stare up the hill.

  Toward the tombstone where we left April and Deshaun.

  From here, we can’t see anything. No monsters running down the hillside. No April or Deshaun.

  “Do you think we should go up there?” Andres asks after a moment.

  Lights from the carnival flicker over the hills, making the tombstones cast harsh shadows. Those shadows could be hiding anything. The only sound is the carnival music: cheerful, menacing. A reminder that even though there are people nearby, we are alone in our fear.

  I can’t answer. I know I should say yes. I know we should go help April and Deshaun. They need us.

  But fear has me rooted. Along with my mother’s words: This is your fault, this is your fault.

  I know it’s true.

  I know it’s all true.

  And I’m too scared to do anything about it.

  “Come inside, Kyle,” my father says. His eyes burn blue. His clown costume flickers. He flickers. Now my dad, now the clown, now the same person. Maybe they were always the same person. “Come back home.”

  Snakes slither over his feet, tangle down the porch steps, twine around my ankles.

  I am terrified. But I am also past the fear.

  I deserve the fear.

  I deserve to be home.

  My father opens the door wide.

  “Come inside,” the clown repeats. “You can’t run away from who you are forever.”

  More snakes tumble out the front door. Their hissing grows louder. The sound fills my head, makes it impossible to question. He’s right. He’s right.

  This is who I am. This is where I’m meant to be.

  I take a step forward.

  The snakes part with every step.

  Making way for me. A path of poison.

  Bringing me back to where I belong.

  I stumble to my knees as Deshaun disappears completely. One moment he’s there, the faintest wisp of a figure. The next, he’s gone.

  “Deshaun!” I scream out for the millionth time.

  But he isn’t there. He isn’t there. I fumble around in the dirt, reaching out for the legs or fingertips that I know I won’t touch again.

  Tears fall to the overturned earth, to my trembling hands. I can’t bring myself to stand. I can’t get my legs to work. Can’t get reality to work.

  Deshaun is gone.

  But he can’t be gone.

  “Deshaun!” I yell, and all I can think is how awful I’ve been to him lately, how distant, how distracted. I’ve been a horrible girlfriend and now he’s gone, gone, and I have to get him back.

  The thought fills me with resolve, a dull ache. I push myself to stand. My legs shake and wobble, but I don’t collapse.

  And that’s when I realize that Deshaun isn’t the only one missing.

  Andres and Caroline are nowhere to be seen.

  I run to the edge of the hill and look deeper into the graveyard. Nothing. I circle the top of the hill, but I don’t see anyone among the shadowed tombstones. No sign of Deshaun or Andres or Caroline. Just the graveyard to one side and the carnival to the other.

  I make my way back over to the spray-painted tombstone and kick the shovels. They clatter loudly, loud enough to wake the dead. That’s what I’m hoping for. That’s what I want.

  “Where are you?” I scream. It’s only as I call out that I feel it—the anger. The rage. Not at my friends, no.

  At the clown.

  The clown who still hasn’t shown its face to me.

  The clown who has scared or tricked or taken all my friends from me.

  “Why are you hiding from me?” I yell. I turn on the spot, staring out at the empty, moonlit graveyard. Nothing rustles. Nothing stirs. Even the wind is quiet. “Are you scared of me? Is that it?”

&
nbsp; Nothing responds.

  Something wavers in my vision, but it’s just another tear forming and falling.

  “Why?” I ask, a whisper this time. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  No response.

  I look to the freshly churned earth at the base of the tombstone. An idea forms in my head.

  Last time, there was a tunnel here. Maybe it’s still there. Maybe Deshaun was taken down below. Maybe he’s safe there. There, with the missing kids. Waiting for me. Caroline thought the shovels were so we could dig our own graves. Maybe I can use the clown’s cruel tricks against it.

  I grab a shovel; it has Kyle’s name written on it.

  I start to dig.

  I don’t know how long I hunch there, my arms and back aching, tears of fear and rage still dripping down into the soil. I dig until my arms shake so hard I can barely get them to move, but I keep going, even though the pile of dirt beside me barely seems to increase, nor does the hole I dig in the soft soil. I imagine Deshaun trapped in the caves below there, scared for his life, waiting for me. The thought gives me purpose, gives me hope. But it doesn’t give me much more strength. I keep going, though, my movements getting slower and more strained with every shovelful of dirt I toss to the side. Tears continue to streak down my face.

  I can’t give up.

  “April?”

  I jolt upright and spin around, nearly smacking the intruder with the shovel in self-defense.

  But it’s only Andres. Andres and Caroline.

  I gasp in relief and toss the shovel to the side, falling headfirst into Andres’s arms. He squeezes me tight for the longest time. I sob onto his shoulder, unable to move or speak for what feels like hours. Caroline is there, rubbing my back. Eventually she breaks the spell of silence.

  “What’s going on up here?” Caroline asks. “Where is Deshaun? And what happened to your hands?”

  I stand upright, and she gently takes my hands in hers to show me my palms. They’re blistered and red and streaked with blood and tiny splinters. I hadn’t even noticed it before, and even now my hands are just a dull throb. The moment I see the splinters, though, I wince.