“We should get you bandaged up,” Andres says.
“I have a first-aid kit at home,” Caroline replies. She looks at me. “Are you okay to walk?”
I shake my head. “I can’t leave,” I say. “I can’t leave him.”
“Who?”
Tears well in my eyes again.
“Deshaun. The clown took him. He just … he just …” I start crying again. Andres hugs me, trying to comfort me. I close my eyes and wish I could close out the pain, the truth. Deshaun is gone, and there’s nothing we can do to save him. Just like Kyle. Just like Jeremy and the others.
The clown has taken everyone from me. And soon, I know, Caroline and Andres will be next.
Andres rocks me back and forth. After a few more frantic sobs, I manage to calm myself down a little bit.
“Tell us what happened,” he says coolly and calmly. “What happened to Deshaun?”
I tell them. Choking on the words.
“We’ll find him,” Caroline says. “The clown’s just playing with us. It doesn’t … it doesn’t want us dead yet. It wants revenge for what we did to it, and that means making us suffer.”
“It’s so horrible,” I whisper. “Where did it take him? Where’s Deshaun?”
“I don’t know where Deshaun is,” Andres admits. “But I’m sure he’s okay. Deshaun’s a smart kid. Smarter than all of us combined. You know that. He can take care of himself.”
“But what if he’s under there?” I ask, nodding to the pitiful pit I dug in front of the tombstone. “What if he needs us? We have to keep digging, just in case. I’m nearly there, I know it. I know—”
But before I can finish the sentence, the pile of dirt I built beside the pit shifts and slides. We watch in stunned horror as the pit fills itself, sucking down the shovels with it. Seconds later, it’s a smooth mound again, as if I’d never been here. As if Deshaun no longer exists.
“I don’t think he’s under there,” Andres says. Then his face brightens. “Let me try something.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. I watch his screen. He dials Deshaun’s number and puts it on speaker.
Deshaun’s number rings and the tone from Andres’s phone fills the silent graveyard. But I don’t hear Deshaun’s ringtone coming from anywhere. My heart drops. If he were here, if he were under the earth, surely we would hear it. Right?
Andres’s phone rings forever.
And then, right when I think it’s going to go to voicemail, Deshaun picks up.
“Hello?” he asks.
“Deshaun!” I yelp. I grab for Andres’s phone. “Deshaun, what happened? Where are you?”
“I’m at home,” he says. He sounds kind of confused. “Why would you ask? I told you that’s where I was going.”
“What?” I ask. “What do you mean? You just disappeared and—”
“I didn’t disappear,” he interrupts. “I told you, I got a text from Kyle saying he was back home and wanted to talk. So I came back here. Why are you freaking out? You said it was okay.”
“But I—”
“Wait,” Deshaun says. “Is this just another prank?”
“What do you mean?” I ask. My thoughts aren’t connecting. This doesn’t make sense. “You were here and you just vanished into thin air.”
Deshaun laughs. But there’s something wicked in the laughter, something angry. “I can’t believe it—Kyle was right.” He mutters something to someone in the room, and I hear Kyle respond, “She’s losing it, man, I told you.”
“Listen,” Deshaun continues, once more in that slow, calming tone that—right now—is infuriating. “I think we all just had too much candy tonight and our imaginations got the better of us. I left the graveyard after Andres and Caroline freaked and left us on top of the hill. I’m home now. Safe. Kyle’s here too. I suggest you guys go back and have your sleepover and get the sugar out of your system. We can talk in the morning. When you’ve calmed down. All of you.”
“Yeah, guys,” comes Kyle’s voice through the phone. “This is getting ridiculous. You’re being childish. There’s no clown. There’s nothing strange going on except for whatever April’s making up. Go to bed.”
“Yeah,” Deshaun says, taking the phone back. “I think it’s best if we just slept on it. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
There’s a shuffle, as if Deshaun is setting down his phone. Did he forget to turn it off?
“I can’t believe you started dating her,” Kyle says distantly through the phone.
“Honestly, man, neither can I.”
My blood goes cold. Before I can hear any more, Andres clicks off the phone. We all stare at each other. My heart thunders in my ears. My veins flood with betrayal. Tears form in my eyes, and I can’t tell if they’re from pain or anger or despair.
Their words echo in my head. The words I always feared they were saying when I wasn’t around.
“April, I—” Andres begins.
I shake my head, pushing whatever he was going to say away.
“Forget them,” I reply. “Let’s just go home.”
Before he or Caroline can try to stop me, I stomp down the hill, barely able to see where I’m going from the tears in my eyes.
My head swims with questions, my thoughts thick with sadness. How can I know what I saw anymore? That was Deshaun and Kyle. Safe at home. What if they were right? What if I was just losing it? What if I was making it all up, and everyone else was just hallucinating because I’d suggested it in the first place?
Don’t they say that the simplest answer was usually the right one?
I know the truth:
The simplest answer isn’t that the clown is back, hunting down my friends and messing with my head.
The simplest answer is that I’m making it all up. I’m hallucinating all of it. Both the clown, and the fact that my friends actually liked me. My friends were never my friends at all, and Deshaun never loved me.
And it’s only when I reach the bottom of the hill that I realize it doesn’t even really matter. Either the clown’s back, or it’s not—either way, I’m already living in my nightmare, and there’s no way for me to change it.
“April,” I say as we walk back to Caroline’s house, “you know that wasn’t really Deshaun, right?”
She doesn’t respond. She stares out into the night sky, tears still streaming from her eyes and a dark expression on her face. I’m worried about her. I haven’t seen her this upset since, well, since she and Caroline were enemies and Caroline insulted her for being overweight. It’s a bone-deep sadness, one that I know nothing I say can cut through. Not that it stops me from trying.
“He wouldn’t say that,” I continue. “Neither of them would. Deshaun loves you. You’re practically all he ever talks about.”
Caroline mhmms in agreement.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” April says.
“Okay,” I say. I look to Caroline, who catches my eye and shrugs slightly. “Then we need to figure out what we’re going to do. I still haven’t gotten through to Kyle and—”
“What are you talking about?” April interrupts. “We just heard him on the phone.”
“Yes, but—”
“Just because you don’t want to believe it’s him saying that mean stuff doesn’t mean it isn’t. He left you. Just like Deshaun left me.”
Her words are a stab to the heart. Because deep down, I worry she’s right. Hasn’t that been my fear for the last few weeks? That Kyle was growing distant? That he was moving on? April keeps talking, but rather than trying to make me feel better, her words make it worse.
“Don’t believe me?” she asks. Her voice is rough. “Let’s go by his house. I bet he’s there. I bet he and Deshaun are laughing at us right now.”
Once more, I look to Caroline. Why not? I try to emote with a shrug. She nods and we turn at the next corner, heading to Deshaun’s and Kyle’s.
“But the clown—” I say, because I refuse to believe any of this. I refuse to believe Desha
un actually left her on the hilltop. He isn’t that sort of person. He’s a good guy.
Just like you thought Kyle was a good guy? I think, remembering how angry he became.
“Kyle was right,” April says. “I haven’t seen the clown.”
“But you saw Deshaun disappear!”
She sniffs and wipes her eyes. “I don’t know what I saw anymore.”
I groan in frustration. “Well, look,” I say. “I know what I saw. And I believe Caroline saw what she saw—there’s no way she just scratched herself, and we all saw those shovels disappear. You have the wounds to prove they were there! Kids are missing and the clown is getting stronger and the more we fight among ourselves, the stronger it gets, and the less chance we have of finding the missing kids and the less chance we have of winning.”
April just sighs in response.
I can’t believe her. She has to know that was the clown on the phone. If it could conjure our worst fears—if it could actually scratch Caroline and break the sculpture in her house—it could easily mimic Kyle’s and Deshaun’s voices.
Are you so sure? whispers a little voice inside me. And despite myself, I start imagining all of my interactions with Kyle over the last few weeks. The short texts. The stilted conversations. The awkward half date at the carnival. He’d been growing distant. Haunted. Way before yesterday, way before the note and any talk of the clown.
It’s just the clown getting to you, I try to convince myself. You know Kyle loves you. You know this is just the clown.
“There,” April says. And even though there’s pain in her voice, she sounds triumphant. “See?”
I shake my head and look up, pushing away the thoughts that had clouded my vision, and see we’ve stopped in front of Deshaun’s and Kyle’s house.
The porch light is on. Jack-o’-lanterns and fake ghosts and bats decorate the patio.
And the top right window—Deshaun’s window—is lit.
I sit there, holding my breath.
Please don’t be home. Please don’t be home.
Then I see them. Both of them. Deshaun walks past the window with a football in his hands, laughing, and a moment later Kyle steps into view.
My breath catches.
Kyle catches the football Deshaun tosses to him, then throws it back.
Kyle pauses. Turns.
He looks out the window and looks at us in the street.
Sees me staring back, my heart breaking every second.
Then, with a wicked grin, he grabs the curtains and closes them, not breaking eye contact.
“Let’s go,” I grunt.
Caroline and April oblige.
I try to blink away Kyle’s angry smile; it’s far too easy to convince myself that the flash of blue in his eyes was from the streetlight or the moon.
It’s far too easy to believe that he was home, safe and sound, with Deshaun. Laughing at us behind our backs. Saying horrible things about us behind our backs. Saying we’d made everything up. Saying we’re just stupid children, the silly underclassmen, hopped up on sugar and imagination.
It’s far too easy to believe that the three of us are on our own.
“This is your fault,” the clown—my father—says, his hands gripping my shoulders like vises. “All of this is your fault. You know that, don’t you? Deep down. You know you don’t deserve friends. And that’s why this is happening to them. That’s why they are slipping away.”
I nod.
I can’t help it. His words make too much sense.
“This is where you belong,” he continues. “You know that too. This is who you are, Kyle. This is what you deserve.”
Around us, snakes hiss from their open terrariums. Dozens. Hundreds. They spill over the tank edges, drape from the rafters, dangle from the single flickering light above me. The ground heaves and roils with scales and darting tongues.
I don’t move. I can’t move.
I’ve tried so hard to get away from here.
Tried so hard to convince myself that this was behind me. But how could it be behind me? This was a part of me. The only thing that wasn’t true to myself was my friends. They didn’t fit here. They weren’t what I deserved.
“I’ll make you a deal,” my dad says.
He steps in front of me, but weight still pushes down on my shoulders. I can’t take my eyes off my father in the horrifying clown suit, his black-and-white makeup and blue eyes. But I can see, from the corner of my vision, the giant boa constrictor that drapes over my shoulders, heavy as a boulder, heavy as all the things I’m running from.
“Join me,” Dad says. This close, his breath smells like stale cotton candy and rot. In his eyes, I see my friends, screaming in fear. “Stay here. Where you belong. Let me scare you. Forever. You deserve nothing less. Stay with me here, and I’ll let your friends go.”
The snakes hiss and writhe.
I know I should fight. I shouldn’t let myself believe him.
But deep down, I know the truth: It hisses within me, the voice of a thousand snakes, the voice of my father, the voice of the clown.
This is what I deserve.
My friends never really liked me. They were just friendly because we had overcome the clown together. Well, guess what. We didn’t actually overcome anything. Our friendship meant nothing.
I meant nothing.
The best thing I can do is disappear.
The boa around me tightens.
I nod.
My dad smiles. His face cracks, his mouth widens, fills with jagged teeth.
He reaches up.
Turns out the light.
In the darkness, all I can see are his burning eyes.
All I can hear is the hissing of the snakes.
Until, a moment later, the darkness overtakes everything.
I’m alone.
As light flickers around me, I realize with dread where I am.
A fun house.
The neon and fluorescent lights illuminate violently orange-and-green walls, the colors so garish my eyes hurt. Spirals spin where windows should be, and the floor is made of uneven planks that tilt and wobble when I adjust my weight.
How in the world did I get here? And how do I get out?
Behind me, someone laughs. It’s not a normal laugh. It’s one of those bone-chilling horror-movie cackles that makes goose bumps race over my arms and my bones lock in fear.
And it’s getting closer.
I run.
Down the hall, toward the fuzzy red light that I hope is an exit.
With every step, the hall stretches impossibly longer. The ground beneath me rocks back and forth as I go over the planks. Lights flicker, and the shadows behind them grow darker.
The laughter gets louder.
I run faster. Breath burns in my lungs and I kick myself for not trying harder in gym class because even though I don’t know what’s behind me, I know I can’t let it catch me.
“We’re coming for you, Deshaun,” the voice croons behind me. “And when we catch you, we will make you one of our own.”
The red exit light ahead gets closer, but behind me, I can hear the creature or creatures that chase me. Can hear the scurry of their footsteps.
It sounds like there are hundreds behind me.
I glance back, briefly, to see shadows darting along the walls. When I look forward, the hall has changed, become a long, spinning tunnel painted like a spiral. Just looking at it makes my head twirl. The red light at the end beckons.
“Don’t run, Deshaun. Join us. Join our family.”
The red sign nears. I’m close. So close.
But so, too, are the monsters on my heels. I run through the tunnel, lurching as vertigo hits and the world spins. As I spin. I stumble along, trying to keep my balance, trying to make my way to the red light at the end that rotates as well, and I no longer know which way is up or down or if they even matter anymore. My stomach lurches into my throat.
I fall to my knees.
Look back.
I scramble forward, not taking my eyes off the writhing, pulsing monsters behind me.
When my hands and knees hit solid, flat, unmoving concrete, I almost sigh in relief.
Until I look forward, and I realize the red light isn’t an exit after all.
The monster in front of me is enormous, takes up the entire space of the hall, so large and twisted it takes a moment to realize it’s not a single monster after all.
It’s kids.
All my classmates, twined together like some giant living statue. Their eyes are all burning blue, save for the two in the middle, whose eyes blaze red. They form a giant, toadlike creature, with a gaping mouth of children holding knives and cutlery for teeth. A long tongue of waving arms curls within its hungry maw.
I turn, but there’s nowhere to run.
The spiral hall behind me is filled with more of my classmates. They cling to the walls, their eyes blue, their arms and legs bent in strange, spiderlike ways as they scuttle around me.
“You can’t run from us, Deshaun,” they hiss in unison. “You’re trapped in this maze forever, and soon, we’ll make you one of us. We’ll make you hunt your friends.”
Hastily, I yank out one of my protective amulets and hold it in front of me.
I hoped it would cause them to hiss and back away, like vampires hiding from garlic. Instead, they laugh.
“You think your toys can protect you? Can protect any of you? All your hard work, all your planning … how does it feel to know it was all in vain?”
The beast in front of me roars.
I’m completely surrounded. Nowhere to run.
The kids in the tunnel scuttle to the sides, clearing a space for something farther on. A silhouette stepping out of a faintly illuminated fog. A shadow with blue eyes. It doesn’t rotate with the tunnel. It floats forward, its arms stretched out to the sides, clawed fingers screeching horribly against the tunnel walls. I drop my amulet and press my hands to my ears, but the horrible noise pierces through my brain.
Something floats above one hand. A pale blue balloon. There’s something on the back of the balloon, but I can’t see what.
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