The Fear Zone

by K. R. Alexander

  An hour later, I still don’t have any answers.

  Another hour later, I really, really wish I could talk to someone about it.

  If only to get it out of my head.

  I don’t want to wake up Kyle, though. He’s my best friend, and we talk about everything. But I know when he doesn’t want to talk about stuff, when he needs time, and I know that if I push it he’ll only take longer to open up. Like when I tried to get him to come out before he was ready. He didn’t speak to me for two weeks. (Then we talked again, and it was fine. And when he was ready to tell everyone else, I was there for him.)

  If only I had April’s number. Or Andres’s. Not that I expect either of them to be awake right now—at least, I hope they’re not awake right now—but maybe texting them would feel like saying the words I want to say out loud. Maybe it would help me sleep.

  Maybe it would keep me from thinking about ghosts. About open graves.

  A few years ago, I was playing hide-and-seek with some kids that I thought were my friends. It was late. Dark. And it was Halloween. They’d wanted to play in the graveyard, and I went along with them. Except, after a while of playing, I’d found a really great hiding spot. And they never found me. And I never found my way out.

  I spent all night in the graveyard.

  Alone.

  Except I hadn’t been alone. I’d heard things out there.

  Felt things.

  Seen things. Things that even today give me nightmares.

  And I know, in the bottom of my heart, that it wasn’t a person who spray-painted that tombstone or left the tin box.

  There’s no way anyone else was out there, I tell myself. It had to have been a ghost. Or poltergeist. We were brought there for a reason, and it definitely, definitely, wasn’t good.

  But that’s only part of what I want to say. The rest I don’t want to say aloud. I don’t want to admit to anyone else, let alone myself.

  We dug something up in that graveyard. And I’ve seen enough scary movies to know that digging something up in a graveyard leads to only one thing:

  Being haunted.

  I stare up into the corners of my room, and I swear that the shadows are staring back.

  I shudder.

  It’s not my imagination.

  The shadows are staring back.

  Just like they had been in the graveyard. Tonight, and all those years ago.

  The room suddenly goes as cold as a freezer; my breath comes out in a cloud.

  I

  am

  not

  alone.

  I don’t blink.

  I don’t breathe.

  Because I know if I do, I will see something, and right now, I don’t want to see anything.

  I want to fall asleep.

  I want this to go away.

  I want it all to be a bad dream.

  I want—

  The desktop computer in my room flickers on.

  At first I think it’s my imagination, or maybe some sort of weird electrical surge, but then the screen is filled with blinking lights and a crackle that almost sounds like static and almost sounds like fire, and worst of all, even though he’s passed out right next to it, Kyle doesn’t wake up at all.

  I stare at the screen, transfixed, as the lights whirl around, becoming shapes. Eight-bit shapes that almost look like people. A landscape that is nothing but pale green covered in gray blobs. The screen continues to change and shift and sharpen and the noises become less static and more like wind. And then I realize what I’m looking at.

  Five shapes. Five people.

  Five people around a mound of dirt.

  Five people around a grave.

  It’s us.

  No, I want to yell out. But I can’t say a word. I can’t move a muscle. I am paralyzed, glued to my bed, and even though Kyle is right there, he might as well be a million miles away.

  I watch as the figures dig at the grave.

  I watch as one of them pulls out a small pixel to the sound of victorious music.

  And I watch as the figure opens what they’ve found.

  The screen instantly changes, inverting to black figures and a background so white and bright my eyes hurt. I don’t close my eyes. I couldn’t blink if I wanted to. I don’t even think my heart is beating.

  Something is coming out of that one tiny unearthed pixel.

  A blob.

  A figure.

  A ghost.

  It pulls itself from the box, growing larger and larger on the screen, eating up the white, spreading over the screen like spilled ink on paper.

  Devouring the light.

  Growing larger.

  Coming nearer.

  And the only sound,

  the only sound,

  is static.

  Static.

  The shadow has filled the screen now.

  A shadow with blazing white eyes

  and sharp white teeth.

  It reaches the edges of the screen.

  It presses

  out.

  The screen bulges.

  Static roars.

  And I know

  —I know—

  that it is coming for us

  for me.

  Whatever we unearthed has found us.

  I want to scream.

  I want to run.

  I want to hide my eyes

  as the shadow

  grows.

  As the shadow reaches out

  from the TV

  becomes a hand

  a hand stretching

  into my bedroom

  five

  gnarled

  claws.

  I call out to Kyle as the hand reaches for him

  as it looms over his face.

  I have to save him.

  “Kyle,” I croak again.

  Barely a whisper.

  Barely a breath.

  “Kyle,” purrs a voice.

  Not mine.

  Not mine.

  The talons begin to close

  around Kyle’s face.

  He’s going to suffocate

  He’s going to—

  Kyle rolls over then, and as he does, he knocks his arm into the computer tower, making the whole unit shake. One of my old toy cars falls off and thuds to the ground with a loud crash, startling him awake.

  Startling me.

  “Wha—?” Kyle snorts. He sits up. His eyes are still closed.

  I jolt. Finally able to move.

  But I can’t stop staring at the computer. At the turned-off computer.

  My skin vibrates and hums like I’ve been charged with electricity.

  I open my mouth.

  “Kyle—” I say, louder this time.

  But Kyle flops back down. Already snoring.

  I don’t move. Even as feeling and blood rush back to my fingers.

  I don’t stop watching the computer. Waiting for it to turn on again.

  Wondering if I had been dreaming, one of those half-waking dreams, and Kyle had woken me up. Wondering if I’m losing my mind.

  I watch the computer all night.

  I watch it until the sky outside melts from black to pink and my eyes burn.

  Only then do I let myself close my eyes. Only then do I let myself go to sleep.

  When I do, I dream of static.

  My mouth feels like it’s filled with static when I wake up.

  I don’t open my eyes or get out of bed right away, though. I lie there, curled up under all my covers, and try to sort through everything that happened last night. Andres snores loudly on the floor beside my bed—he normally stays in my little brother’s room, but I asked him to stay in mine. I didn’t want to be alone.

  I could tell he didn’t want to be alone either.

  We’d all practically jogged back to our houses in silence. We hadn’t even said goodnight when we parted from Kyle and Deshaun. We just shared a look, one that said we weren’t ever going to talk about this again, and left.

 
I almost wish we’d talked about it.

  What in the world had Caroline seen in that tin? Did she take something from it? Was it all her doing? I wanted to blame her for it, but seeing the shock on her face, the way her pale skin went even whiter, made me think that she was just as surprised as we were. Whatever she had seen had been personal. Which meant she hadn’t just followed us here—someone had buried that tin for her to find, which meant she probably got a note as well. Someone had wanted all five of us in that graveyard. But why?

  Despite the layers, I shiver with a sudden chill at the thought of what I saw when we were leaving. A silhouette by the grave. A clown.

  I mean, it had to be a clown. It had a pale shirt with poofy shoulders and fuzzy hair that looked like an upturned crescent moon. It waved at me with a giant gloved hand. And I swear I’d seen its eyes. Glowing pale blue in the dark. Illuminating a smile way too big for a normal human face …

  Another shiver.

  No. It had to be my imagination.

  And even if it wasn’t, it was just some high school kid in a costume. Probably the same one who brought us all out there. They probably recorded the whole thing and put it up online to make fun of us—look at the kids who scared themselves in a graveyard.

  But … really, nothing too scary had happened out there.

  Except for the clown.

  How could they have known about the clown?

  It doesn’t make sense. If it was someone pulling a prank, why didn’t they jump out and scare us? Why was it so silent?

  Maybe something went wrong. A prop didn’t work. Maybe there was supposed to be a plastic skeleton or something that popped out of the grave.

  (Though what if it wasn’t kids? What if it was the clown?)

  The more I lie here and think about it, though, the less sense it makes. Why were we all brought out there? What had been watching us leave?

  I hear Mom moving about in the room beside mine. Will she be upset that Andres stayed in my room even though he’s gay? Maybe I should kick him out before she notices, make him sneak over to Freddy’s room. I can tell Freddy isn’t up yet. He’s a terror in the morning—when he’s awake, you know it.

  I’m smiling as I think of how Freddy would wake Andres up with his own “good morning” song—but the smile goes away as soon as I hear something strange … something falling over with a soft shuffle.

  It sounds closer than my mom’s room. It sounds—

  No.

  It sounds like it’s coming from my closet.

  I freeze. I stare at the closed closet door and I know I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.

  I still hear Andres asleep on the floor, which should make me feel safe, but it doesn’t. Because it seems like besides his breathing, everything else in the world has gone silent.

  No birds chirping their morning hellos.

  No cars buzzing past.

  No Mom making coffee or starting breakfast.

  Silent.

  Save for the shuffling

  coming

  from

  my

  closet.

  Something else falls, like a coat crumpling to the ground, and I hear a sound that makes my blood run cold.

  A giggle.

  The same maniacal giggle I heard last night. In the graveyard.

  Another shuffle. Another giggle.

  “April,” comes a high-pitched man’s voice, followed by another blood-chilling giggle. “I know where you sleep, April. I can see you …”

  A squeak.

  And the door

  slowly

  opens.

  “I see you, April,” comes the man’s voice. And through the crack in the door, I see the pale blue eye glowing like a moon, the sharp teeth like a snake’s. The clown’s voice deepens, grows so loud I feel my bed shake.

  The door flings open.

  I close my eyes and scream.

  “April!” someone yells.

  Not the clown. Not the clown.

  Someone is on my bed. Someone’s hands grip my shoulders. I scream again.

  “April!” the voice says again. No, not the clown’s voice. Andres. “April, it’s okay! It’s just me. You had a bad dream.”

  He wraps his arms around me in a hug. Squeezes me tight. And it’s only then that I realize I am crying. I can barely breathe. Can barely hear him over the blood pounding in my ears.

  He holds me close, and I finally open my eyes.

  Stare at the closet door.

  The closed closet door.

  But no.

  It’s open,

  just a little bit.

  Just enough for someone to watch us sleep.

  And I know I closed it before going to bed.

  I don’t know what has Deshaun so freaked out. He heads downstairs the moment he sees I’m awake, and there’s no chance of me asking him anything with his parents there. We eat our breakfast cereal in silence while his mom and dad talk about some of their favorite Halloween costumes over the years. Deshaun barely pays them any attention—he keeps glancing at the TV over in the living room, his dark skin paling with every glance.

  Finally, he suggests we get out of the house. Go throw a football around. Which is definitely strange, because he’s always been the type to suggest staying indoors and playing video games over going out and playing sports.

  “What happened last night?” I ask as we head toward the school playground.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “We went to the graveyard and—”

  “Not the graveyard,” I interrupt. “After. Why were you so freaked out this morning?”

  He looks like he’s going to ignore me. Change the subject or something. He keeps tossing the ball to himself, looking everywhere but at me. He seems spooked. Every single Halloween decoration we pass makes him start, even the stupid jack-o’-lanterns grinning on the neighbor’s porch. Like he’s seeing ghosts. Everywhere.

  Years ago, he admitted to me that he was terrified of ghosts. This came, of course, after we’d watched a movie about a poltergeist and he’d spent the entire time clutching a blanket to his chin, petrified. He hadn’t slept that night, and had asked me to stay over the next night as well. I could tell he was worried I’d make fun of him. I didn’t, of course. And we haven’t watched a truly scary ghost movie since.

  “I …” he finally says. “I … I mean, did you wake up at all last night? Did you hear anything?”

  The way he says it makes fear roil inside my gut, sour and sick.

  I don’t think I dreamed at all last night, and I definitely don’t remember waking up in the middle of the night.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” I tell him. “I slept like a rock.”

  He bites his lip.

  “Then I … I guess I had a bad dream.”

  I can tell by the way he says it that he doesn’t quite believe it, and I don’t believe it either. We’ve had more sleepovers than I can count, and we’ve both had bad dreams while staying at each other’s places. But I’ve never seen him this freaked.

  “What was it?” I ask quietly.

  He just shakes his head and walks faster. When we reach the field and start tossing the ball back and forth, he doesn’t mention anything else about last night. About the graveyard or the bad dream or whatever it was. I can tell he’s thinking about it from the distracted look in his eyes and the way he keeps fumbling the ball.

  But I don’t bring it up.

  Whatever happened truly scared him, and for some reason, that has me scared more than anything else.

  I don’t know what’s gotten into April.

  Ever since she woke up screaming from her nightmare, she’s been silent. I’ve only seen her like this a few other times, when she was super upset or scared after an unexpectedly scary movie. But try as I might, I can’t get her to tell me what’s wrong. She doesn’t speak all through breakfast. I mean, she does, but not about anything important. We just ask her mom about work and trick-or-treat last night and her mom asks what
we watched on TV. Nothing remotely important.

  April’s jumpy too. When Freddy comes down, still wearing his T. rex costume, he lets out a loud roar that makes me giggle. April yelps and jumps in her seat, spilling her cereal all over the place. Her mom rushes over and helps clean everything up.

  “I’m really scary!” Freddy yells happily.

  “Yes, you are,” his mom agrees.

  April barely responds.

  We make it through breakfast, and then April says she wants to go for a walk to get some fresh air. I grab my shoes and follow her outside.

  Clearly she’s upset—she doesn’t even change out of her pajamas, just throws a coat on top.

  The neighborhood feels strange today. Like it’s waking from some scary dream. The lawns are still covered in Halloween decorations, but in the light of day, they all seem … fake. The fabric ghosts hanging from trees that looked so creepy last night are limp and lifeless. The plastic skeletons on porches seem especially plastic. And the trees that had seemed like taloned hands are just normal, bare trees. It’s hard to imagine what got us so creeped out.

  Which makes me wonder …

  “What’s going on?” I ask April when I realize where we’re heading. “Are we going back?”

  I don’t have to say where. She knows exactly what I’m talking about.

  “I have to see,” she says, almost to herself. She doesn’t slow down, and the look on her face concerns me.

  “April, why are we going back there?”

  “Because …”

  She shudders and falls silent.

  I reach out and take her arm. My touch is gentle, but she still jerks back like she doesn’t realize it’s me.

  “Sorry,” I say quickly, dropping my hand. “It’s just … you seem strange today. Like. I don’t know. Did something happen?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.

  That hits harder than a slap to the face. We talk about everything. Everything. So why is she suddenly acting like I’m her enemy?

  “Okay,” I say. “But, just … why are we heading back there?”