“I’ll be your guide,” he said, holding out an old-fashioned candle on a tray to guide us.
Oh, I get it. This is one of those haunted houses where you have a creepy tour guide who makes sure you don’t punch the attractions or get lost in the dark and sue.
There were several plastic dolls, dirty and eyeless, lined up on chairs in the foyer. A few small, creepy animatronics, but nothing over the top.
“This way, please!” the guide insisted, waving me toward the stairs. I could see now with the glow from his candle.
“This doesn’t seem very scary,” I remarked, placing my foot on the first stair. He followed behind me, urging me up the stairs.
“Freya!” I shouted again. “Freya, it’s Josie! If you’re in here, come find me! Please!” My voice sounded more desperate than I would have liked.
“Pick a room…any room,” my guide said as we reached the top of the stairs.
“It doesn’t matter which you choose, you’ll be doomed any way you go…” he added.
I frowned. This was stupid. Freya wasn’t inside, obviously. I listened for more screams or squeals in the dark, but heard nothing. It was eerily silent up here on the second floor.
“Where do I go?” I asked impatiently. “I just want to get out of here. I’m looking for a friend.”
“How about the first room?” the creepy butler suggested. He was blocking my path to the stairway. Instead of taking his suggestion, I selected the second doorway. There appeared to be approximately eight rooms upstairs, all of the doors closed tightly. No sounds emanating from any of them.
Suddenly feeling nervous, I stepped back from the door, removing my hand. “I don’t want to do this. I’m going back outside to look for my friend.”
I tried to weave my way around him in the hall, but he moved side to side, blocking me.
“Seriously, fucker. I’m going to scream as loud as I can if you don’t fucking move. I’ll tell them you’re trying to rape me!”
He smiled strangely. “Pick a door, any door…” he repeated, his voice even and calm.
“Help! He won’t let me out of here!” I shouted angrily, my voice hoarse and prickly. Panic was rising in my chest. I didn’t like being in here and I didn’t like this fucking creep. And I didn’t like the fact that it was so damn quiet in here all of a sudden.
“Pick a door, before it picks you,” he said, stepping close to me in the dark. His face was inches away from mine now. I felt my blood run cold.
I was going to have to shove him and run for dear life. But before I had the chance, I heard one of the bedroom doors behind me open and close. I whipped around, locking eyes with a demented clown standing at the end of the far hallway.
He was wearing a dirty yellow clown costume, with exaggerated footwear and bright white makeup. But this was no slapstick clown. Nearly six feet tall, he stared at me, his head tilted to the side crazily. There was something red all over his face.
I turned to fight off the butler instead, but when I did, he quickly blew out the candle. I shrieked. Now I was in the dark with the butler and clown.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
I reacted quickly, reaching for the knob to the second door in the dark. I darted inside the room, slamming the door behind me. It’s just a haunted house. This isn’t real. Not real, not real, not real…I repeated over and over.
“Lock the door,” whispered a girl’s voice from behind me. Without looking back, I did, fumbling for the lock mechanism in the dark.
But it wasn’t dark, not completely. Dull lights flickered. Trick lights, like strobes, I realized.
I looked around the room for the girl. Not seeing her, I turned back to the door. I pressed my ear against it, listening.
I couldn’t hear anyone coming.
“Over here,” the voice said again. That’s when I saw where the voice was coming from. A frail girl, younger than me, was chained to a radiator in the far left corner. The dim lights barely illuminated her face, but I could see that she wore a scared expression.
I ran over to her, nearly tripping over a curled up rug on the floor. We were in a tiny bedroom, no more than fourteen feet by twelve feet. A small window let in a pale strip of light.
I crept forward, falling to my knees beside her. Pale and blonde, her eyes were sunken and lifeless. Nice makeup, I thought, rolling my eyes.
But then I saw a large bruise on her arm. And shoulder. And the other side of her cheek. The bruises were bulging and purple.
“What the hell? This isn’t funny anymore,” I said, backing up and away from the girl.
“They kidnapped me. Stole me from my family. They did…horrible things to me,” she whined, staring at me, unblinking.
“I want out of here,” I begged. “I’m looking for my friend and I want out. Is there some sort of emergency exit around here? Seriously, I could sue you for not letting me out…” I warned, trying to swallow but unable to.
“The only way out is the trap door,” she whispered hoarsely.
“What trap door?” I looked around the room confusedly.
Lifting her shackled hands, she pointed across the room. Sure enough, in the flickering lights, I could see a tiny square panel on the wall. The space was barely large enough to crawl through.
“Really? You really expect me to go through that fucking hole?” I asked disbelievingly. What do they do when heavyset people come through the haunted house? How do they fit? I wondered.
This is creeping me the fuck out. Fucking Freya, I swear I’m going to kill her myself when all of this is said and done…
“It’s the only way out,” the girl said again. She was staring at the locked door.
“Do I need to unlock it for the next…customer?” I asked irritably.
“No, please don’t,” she whimpered.
Sighing, I squatted down in front of the trap door. A thin sheaf of plywood covered the tiny, square opening. I pushed on it with my palms, easily collapsing the board. I stared at the tight black hole before me. I had no choice but to crawl through.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Like a snake, I scurried through the tight tunnel in the dark, using my elbows and knees to guide me. Ever been down the rabbit hole? I imagined Freya asking, blowing smoke rings in the dark.
In less than a minute, I was in the next room. I stood up, brushing off my shorts and looking around. God, all I want to do is find Freya, I thought desperately. Better yet, I want to get out of here and go see Rachel. Fuck Freya and all the trouble she’s caused me.
I considered shouting for Freya again, but didn’t want to alert the creepy clown to my location. Even though none of this was real, I still felt mildly frightened.
There were more flashing lights in this room. They buzzed on and off, providing brief flashes of my surroundings.
There was no sound but the buzzing lights, but as I took a few steps forward in the dark, a loud speaker turned on, music blaring. I covered my hands with my ears, turning in circles, trying to find the source of the sound.
The music seemed to be coming from everywhere. I recognized the song immediately. An old seventies band, The Doors or something like that.
Lyrics rang out, words about riding snakes and kill kill kill…
I shuddered. What was the point of all this?
Wishing my eyes would adjust to the dark, I felt around for a wall. Surely, if there was a trap door in the other room, there’ll be one in here too. Right?
Or better yet, maybe I just need to find the regular door and make a run for the stairs. Sure, the clown might chase me out of the haunted house, but it beat listening to this wild, crazy music in the pitch black darkness in this freaky place.
Still floundering through the flickering lights and booming music, I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks. I could “feel” someone in the room with me. I spun around in circles, waiting for the light to come on so I could see who or what was with me. But there was nothing but the pounding sou
nds of the guitar chords and Jim Morrison’s haunting voice.
I inched along the wall, keeping my back pressed against it. This isn’t a normal haunted house.
In fact, I was starting to wonder if I might be in some sort of real danger.
What sort of sick freaks design a haunted house in a place like this, anyway? The same sort of weirdos who might actually hurt the girls who patronize it, a voice in my head warned.
The light flicked on and off again, and I saw something crawling in the dark. I held my breath, edging toward the door, panicked. When the light flickered on again, I saw the clown’s face. He was crawling on the floor, headed straight for me, his mouth hanging open in a gruesome grin.
Instantly, my fight or flight kicked in—I chose flight—and I ran for what I hoped was the direction of the bedroom door. Sounds of screaming filled my head.
Fuck. This house. This whole damn town.
I realized that I was the one screaming.
I threw the door open and ran out to the hallway, my feet nearly slipping out from under me.
“Please, let me out of here!” I shrieked, racing down the hallway toward the stairs. But then the door to the first room flew open, and the man with the pins in his face stepped out. But he’s a friend, my brain tried to tell me.
Suddenly, thick arms grabbed me around the middle, body slamming me face first to the ground. My face and mouth hit the hardwood floor with a sickening thud.
Head spinning, I tried to claw and kick as the clown dragged me back down the hallway. I tried to look up at “Pinner,” call for help, but he was gone.
The clown yanked me inside a room, tossing me on my back.
The song stopped momentarily, but then immediately started over. Jim Morrison sung about the end and how his only friend was the end…
I let out a bloodcurdling scream, still trying to kick and punch on my back.
He was on top of me now, slamming the back of my head against the rigid wood floors.
He was going to kill me.
I felt a sharp prick in my right arm. He was drugging me! I kicked and fought, ignoring the tearing pain in my arm.
But then my arms turned to Jell-O and my breathing slowed. I laid my cheek against the cold, hard floor, sucking in small gasps as I stared at a picture on the wall. It was the picture I’d drawn back in Lamison, the one that looked like a scary house.
The picture got smaller and smaller, until it was a tiny dot.
And then my world faded to black.
Chapter
Thirty-Four
Wendi
Sweat beading my face, I jerked up in bed, stopping short of screaming. It was my first nightmare in a while, but having one never surprised me. Thirty years had come and gone. Yet still…I dreamt of their faces, that horrible town…and the lyrics of that eerie song.
What had I been dreaming of, anyway? I struggled to remember as I stood up, stretched, and made my way to the kitchen. Marianna was sitting in a kitchen chair, her back facing me. Dressed in a silky, baby blue robe, she was working hard at something, sifting through pages of reports, her ice-blonde hair covering half her face as she wrote.
Five years had come and gone since our first meeting. She’d matured, aged even. Based on my own age, I was more of a mother to her, but she called me her friend.
Taking the seat across from her, she shot me a worried look.
“You were dreaming again…Was it about Flocksdale?” she asked. Her bright azure eyes beamed at me.
I shrugged, reaching out to steal her coffee. I took a sip. Made a face at her. She always used too much sugar.
Marianna had no one but me. And…the others, of course.
We’d formed a club of sorts. The “Lost Girls,” we called ourselves.
Thanks to my late husband’s position as a police sergeant, I still had connections in the police force. For the past several years, “the club” had been following all reported missing persons cases coming through the system, specifically missing teenage girls.
Ever since we burned down half of Flocksdale, the evil in that town had been lying low. Not one of the cases we’d followed up on could be linked to Flocksdale. Yet, we still met weekly to discuss the cases we’d each reviewed.
Truth be told, I’d have given it up years ago—if it weren’t for Marianna. She was obsessed, pressuring me to bring as many copies of case files as I could manage.
“We need to talk,” I said firmly, returning her mug of coffee. It was time to tell her—all of this needed to stop. She had plans to attend community college and I was working as an advocate for child sexual abuse victims. I loved my work and I wanted nothing more than for her to find something she loved to do just as much. This obsession with Flocksdale and missing girls was holding her back, stifling her.
I’d recently set her up with a counselor to work through some of the trauma and grief. I’d even tried taking her to the gun range, tried teaching her how to defend herself and let out some steam. But she’d missed her last few appointments, and nothing interested her besides Flocksdale and the possibility of linking one of these cases to the town that nearly destroyed both of us.
“Listen, Marianna—”
“No, wait. Me first,” she interrupted, ruffling papers. She lifted up a missing persons report. It looked like any other. My reading glasses were in the bedroom, so I had to take it from her hands and squint at the tiny printed lines.
I skimmed it, sat the paper down. “Okay, what is it about this case? What makes you think it’s linked to Flocksdale this time?” I didn’t mean to sound condescending, but that’s exactly how it came out.
Marianna narrowed her eyes at me, but explained, “This girl, Josie Crowley…she went missing a week ago from a town called Lamison Point. That’s—”
“Far away from Flocksdale,” I finished for her, sighing. I stood up, moving around the kitchen as she rambled on.
“Here’s the thing, though. She took off after another incident…another girl—her friend, apparently—went missing several days before.”
“They probably ran away together, like the last ten cases we looked into,” I protested, pulling out an expired carton of eggs.
“Will you let me finish?” she shouted, slamming her fist down on the table. I stared at her, shocked by the outburst.
I set the spoiled eggs down and leaned against the counter, listening.
“The night before the first girl—Freya was her name—went missing, the girls were hanging out at a local carnival. The Carnival de Arcanorum—”
“The Carnival of Secrets,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. Marianna gave me a surprised look. “I studied a little Latin while in rehab,” I said defensively.
“Instead of hanging out with her friend, Josie, Freya ditched her for a carnival worker. Josie was mad, so she left Freya there. Needless to say, Freya never turned up at school the next day. And when Josie went back to the carnival, the carnival had skipped town.”
I gestured for her to continue.
“Josie was cooperating with the police. Telling them everything she knew…and then she turned up missing too. Only, in her case, she called her parents a couple days later. She told them that she had to find Freya and she was following a lead of sorts…”
“This still doesn’t sound like anything the police can’t handle, Marianna. I thought you were going to fill out those apps—”
“I’m not done,” she reminded me again, giving me an icy cold glare. “Right before she took off, Josie went to her local librarian, asking for help finding an author. She wasn’t sure it was relevant at the time, but that librarian recently came forward—after weeks of no sign or word from Josie—and she told the parents the name of the author Josie was so intent on finding.”
Frustrated, I went back to the spoiled eggs. I took down an earthenware bowl. Started cracking away.
“According to the librarian, Josie said that if she could track down the author, she could find the carnival. So the aut
hor must have worked at the carnival, right? Well, the writer’s name was Lucinda Livingston.”
I suddenly remembered my dream. Less of a dream, and more of a memory…Marianna’s face in that tiny window, like my own face reflecting back at me…I’d nearly burned the house down with her in it. I was trying so hard to destroy Flocksdale that I nearly destroyed her too. Maybe I’ve already destroyed her by bringing her here with me, turning my obsession into hers.
I was barely listening now. “Wendi, did you hear what I just said?”
“I’m sorry…what?” I asked, shattering the egg’s delicate shell on the hard, unbreakable bowl.
“I tracked her down…the author she mentioned. Turns out, she really is an author. And guess where she’s from? A tiny northeastern town, a town barely anyone’s heard of. You might know it…” she said, shuffling through her papers.
I turned around, giving her my full attention.
“It’s about time you listened,” Marianna said, her icy blue eyes boring holes into mine. She was no longer ruffling papers, but staring at me intently.
She was holding a piece of paper in her hand, gripping it so tightly I could see the veins in her hand.
“Flocksdale,” we said in unison.
My body jerked, bumping the edge of the bowl with my elbow. I watched the bowl crash to the ground, shattering into a million pieces, runny bits of egg leaking all over the kitchen floor.
Chapter
Thirty-Five
“This is what we’ve been waiting for. I mean…I knew they’d strike again, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon, or that we’d be able to catch them,” I said, more to myself than to Marianna.
We’d packed two suitcases full of clothes and toiletries. My brand new Corolla was filled with gas. Now all we had to do was drive to Flocksdale.
“Don’t you think we should call the others? Ask them to come with us? Suzie Q or Matilda…”
Carnival of Dead Girls Page 10
