Slasher Girls & Monster Boys

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  Suze threw open the barn door at the same time a gunshot rang out from the slurry darkness.

  Annie screamed and ducked as a bullet shattered into the siding just above her head. She whirled to find Officer Burton by the road, car lights flashing, gun aimed at them. He was yelling something she couldn’t hear over the storm.

  Annie’s pulse raced. His car door was open, the keys in the ignition, and he was a good thirty feet away. If she could beat him to it, she could drive deeper into the woods and hide out in the mountains, away from Suze and anyone else who might get caught up in the game.

  “I owe you for that snake,” Annie called over her shoulder to Suze, and took off toward the car. Officer Burton must have guessed her plan, because he ran toward it too, and then suddenly Annie was facedown in the mud, tackled, a second before she reached the car.

  “Stay down! He’s going for his gun!” She smelled popcorn—it was Suze, pinning her down just as Officer Burton got to the car and pulled out his rifle. The wind howled, pushing at the trees, and there was a giant snap. The old oak tree they’d used to climb pitched toward the ground.

  “Suze—run!” Annie scrambled up, digging her fingers into her friend’s shoulders, trying to pull Suze out of the way as the whole trembling tree crashed toward the ground. She screamed and braced herself around Suze.

  The ripping trunk fractured the night.

  The tree crashed to earth, shaking the ground. Annie and Suze were both screaming, until after a breath, and then two, Annie realized they were untouched. She shoved to her feet, blinking through the rain.

  The tree had fallen in the opposite direction, leveling everything—including the police car and Officer Burton. Suze pushed to her feet beside her, watching in horror. A puddle of blood was already forming in the dirt. One fleshy white arm stuck out from under the tree.

  “Oh god.” Annie pressed a hand over her mouth. Officer Burton maybe wasn’t the most upstanding citizen, but he didn’t deserve to die. She started for the body, but Suze grabbed her and dragged her toward the barn.

  “It’s too late for him. It’s another trap. We have to hide, that’s the entire point!” Suze threw the door open. They crowded inside, where it smelled warm and thick with animals. It was an old barn—water drizzled in from the leaky roof—but it felt safe. Familiar.

  Annie collapsed against the closed door.

  In front of her, in the center of the barn, a crow flapped its wings.

  Anger unfurled in her like an animal ready to strike. She launched herself at the bird.

  “That was supposed to be me!” she yelled, seeing again Officer Burton’s blood in the dirt, and she collapsed into sobs, Suze holding on to her fiercely.

  The crow cocked its head, and flew outside.

  PART 4: MORNING

  When the sun rose the next morning, the storm was all but gone. They had huddled in the hayloft the rest of the night, Suze with her gun aimed toward the door, Annie flipping through A Patchwork Death for more clues, hugging her knees in close, every nerve alert, waiting for death’s next attempt. Crow Cullom had said, once this terrible twenty-four hours was over, that the world would reset itself if she won. Her stepdad would have never gone to the police. The Dixons’ house would never have burned. Officer Burton would be alive again.

  But if she didn’t win, all this destruction would remain.

  She spun the ring on her fourth finger, uselessly tugging at it.

  Suze eyed her closely. “Can’t you take it off?”

  “Not unless I win. And if I don’t, I’m dead for good.”

  Suze scratched her chin with the grip of the gun. “Shittiest engagement ring ever.”

  Hours passed with nothing but the dying storm outside. Suze eventually even fell asleep in the hay, gun hugged tight. Annie would have thought death had taken pity on her if she didn’t know better. This temporary reprieve only made her more on edge, more careless—more likely to fail when the next attempt did come.

  She unwound her tight limbs and crawled to the hayloft window with the book clutched in one arm. By the early morning light, she flipped to the page with Crow Cullom walking along a dusty road, a crow circling above him.

  There is only one rule in Crow Cullom’s games, the caption said. Only the dead can play.

  Annie slammed the book closed, looking out from the hayloft at the wreckage of the Dixon house and the oak tree smashed over the police car. Why hadn’t more police come yet? Either Burton hadn’t radioed in his last location, or Crow Cullom was working his tricks to keep them away. She could barely make out the lumps of Burton’s body beneath the tree. It didn’t seem fair. If only the dead could play, then Officer Burton should be alive right now, hungover with a pit bull drooling on his face while the TV flickered infomercials.

  A crow circled lazily in the sky against a backdrop of summer-morning blue, and landed on the highest branch of the oak tree, right above the puddle of Officer Burton’s blood.

  Rage gripped Annie. She slammed the book closed, pausing only to pry the gun from Suze’s fingers gently enough not to wake her, and started down the ladder. She slipped out of the barn door and jogged across the grass to where the crow calmly watched her.

  It dropped down and started picking the flesh off Officer Burton’s arm.

  Annie raised the gun, so angry it shook, and let off a shot at the bird. The bullet tore through the quiet morning and shattered a branch just above the bird. The bird took flight, cawing, and then swooped down behind her. She spun around, the pistol still aimed, but froze.

  Crow Cullom stood behind her, his sea-tangled hair unkempt, fresh salt rings on his coat. The bird settled on his shoulder.

  She didn’t lower the gun.

  “It isn’t fair,” she seethed, and jerked her chin toward Officer Burton’s body. “He wasn’t part of the game. No one else was supposed to die. Only the dead can play—those are the rules.”

  “The trap was set for you, Annie. He just got in the way.”

  “Well, you’re about to get in the way of this bullet.” She squeezed the trigger. A bullet ripped into his chest, tearing a hole in his black shirt, but he didn’t flinch. Another crow landed on the ground beside him.

  “You can’t kill what’s already dead, chère.”

  She gritted her teeth and lowered the gun. The rush of everything caught up with her and her body started shaking, and she spun on the tree and kicked it hard.

  “Well?” she spat at him. “You’ve found me—aren’t you going to kill me?”

  “It isn’t me seeking you. I’m just death’s harbinger, not death itself. I’ve just come to tell you that you’re doing remarkably well. It’s been twelve hours and you’re still alive. I particularly enjoyed the snake. Clever, don’t you think? Death always finds a way.”

  She pointed the gun at Officer Burton’s foot. “Clever? An innocent man is dead.” She tucked the gun in the back of her pants and folded her arms across her chest.

  The playful smile faded from Crow Cullom’s face. The bird took off from his shoulder, circling higher and higher, like smoke disappearing into air. His face was bleak and worn as the cliffs at sea now. “Don’t mourn him, chère. As for the rules, you’re right. Only the dead are supposed to play, but I’ll admit that, as death’s referee, I blur the rules on occasion. For Burton, I made an exception. Cheating has its place, you see—the man was a monster. He tortured dogs. Raised them to fight against one another.” Crow Cullom looked with disdain as one of his birds landed on the officer’s hand again and started picking off the flesh. “I was happy to bend the rules of death, if it meant ridding the world of one more miscreant.”

  Annie stared at the crow picking at Officer Burton’s pinkie finger. She didn’t want to believe Crow Cullom, but something itched in the back of her head. All those times she’d driven by Officer Burton’s house and seen the kennels out back,
the pit bulls tied to stakes.

  “What about my stepdad, then? Why don’t you kill him? He’s a monster.”

  Crow Cullom sighed. “The universe is not a fair place.”

  “You don’t say.” But the truth was, she didn’t know exactly what to think. This man, with his crows, was a legend come to life. A folktale that had walked off the pages to claim her soul—but standing in his salt-stained clothes, rubbing the scar on his palm, he seemed like so much more than a story.

  She twisted the ring around her finger.

  He pointed behind her. “I have been a spectator until now. And I have enjoyed watching you play. I suggest, if you wish to keep playing, that you hide now.”

  She whirled around. The Dixon horses, still jumpy and panicked from last night’s storm, were stampeding toward her, tearing at the ground. She could just make out Suze in the hayloft window waving frantically and screaming.

  She didn’t give Crow Cullom a second look as she raced across the farm.

  PART 5: AFTERNOON

  Annie threw herself into the streambed, splashing in Suze’s oversized old sneakers. She’d lost the gun in her dash. It must have fallen in the field, but she didn’t dare go back for it. One of the horses—the big one Suze could never catch—had stampeded for her, nearly catching her under its iron-clad hooves before she’d rolled away at the last second. She’d fled into the forest, where the thick rhododendron on either side of the bank would protect her from sight. Her pulse pounding in her ears, she made her way along the slick rocks, straining to listen for any approaching danger.

  How did someone hide from death? It could come from any direction. A moss-slick rock to trip on. A satellite falling from the sky. A tiny insect carrying a deadly disease.

  She reached a split in the stream and stopped. She could follow the larger stream down the valley, but that led to town, where she didn’t dare go. The police would still be looking for her, especially if they’d found Officer Burton’s body. Not to mention all the cars that might swerve off the streets and hit her, or the streetlights that might short out and electrocute her, or someone’s air-conditioning unit falling from an upper story.

  No, town was too dangerous.

  She had no choice but to continue upstream, back toward her stepdad’s house. Ever since her real dad had left one night and never come back, and then cancer got her mom, and her grandmother not long after, it had just been Annie and her stepdad and his bottles of gin. He’d threatened to beat some sense into her so many times, just like he had her mom. But he never had. Not until last night, when he’d been deep into the bottle and they’d argued over her college applications and she’d said the one thing she knew she never, ever should.

  I’m glad the cancer killed Mom—before you did.

  It had all been a blur after that. He’d raised his fist. She’d grabbed for a knife, but he’d beaten her to it. Then there’d been warm blood pooling on the porch floor, and a man in a salt-stained coat walking up the dusty porch steps.

  Her foot sank into a deep puddle, and she froze. Voices. Filtering through the leaves. She crouched down and climbed through the rhododendron until she could see the road, maybe a half mile off from her house. Three police officers, heavily armed, scanned the trees.

  She ducked, silencing her breath, but her foot slipped and splashed back into the creek.

  One of them spun and raised his pistol. “There—in the trees.”

  “Annie Noland!” another officer said. “Show yourself with your hands up!”

  Annie cursed. They wouldn’t be armed unless they thought she was a real threat. They must have found Officer Burton’s body.

  Did they think she’d killed him?

  “She’s wearing a white tank top,” one said. “Annie, come out!”

  She gritted her teeth, weighing the chances they’d actually shoot. On any other day, no. But today death was out to get her. Someone could misfire, or get spooked and fire too soon. She couldn’t risk it.

  She tore up the stream instead, knowing she could run faster through the woods than they could. A shot rang off behind her. She gasped and ran faster. Leaves blurred by as she plunged through an opening in the trees and ran up the bank, sliding and slipping. Another gun fired. She felt a sting in her arm and cried out, touching her arm, coming away with blood. But it was only a flesh wound, a nick—death had missed her by a few inches.

  Through the trees she heard the sound of the police calling, and someone radioing for backup. Shit. Sunset—the end of the game—was still an hour off. Plenty of time for the town’s entire police force to comb the woods, seeking her like death itself.

  She clamped a hand over her arm and stumbled through the woods toward her house. She could at least bandage it so she wouldn’t bleed to death—that would be a sneaky way for death to win—and change clothes into something darker, less visible.

  She looked off at the ridge, where a crow circled lazily. Her hand tightened over her bleeding arm.

  Just one more hour.

  She pushed through the leaves until she could make out the shape of her house in the late-afternoon light. She crouched behind the tool shed, looking for signs of movement, but from the tire marks in the mud and grass, it looked like the police had already been there and left. She took a deep breath, ready to dart into the house.

  A low growl came from behind her.

  She turned slowly. Wolf, her neighbor’s German shepherd, stood on the other side of the tool shed, teeth white and gleaming. Her neighbor had trained him as a guard dog, but with Annie he’d always been ridiculously sweet; a big puppy. Now he had a crazed look in his eye, like he didn’t recognize her. Slobber hung off his mouth in thick lines. He sniffed the air and growled again. He must have smelled the blood dripping from her shoulder.

  She regretted losing the gun—not that she could bring herself to shoot Wolf anyway, especially when death had to be behind this terrible, snarling version of him. As quietly as she could, she opened the shed latch. There would be hammers inside, and axes. She didn’t want to kill Wolf, but she wasn’t above knocking him out cold.

  On the horizon, the sun sank lower.

  Wolf lunged for her. She twisted the latch, throwing open the shed door. Wolf smashed into it, just barely missing her leg. She reached for a hammer but froze—everything inside was gone. Every tool, even down to the nails. Her stepdad must have cleared it out, or the police had.

  Wolf lunged for her again, and she threw herself into the shed and pulled the door shut behind her, holding it closed as Wolf tore at the other side. Her mind raced. Death must be as desperate as she was now; time was winding down and only one of them could win. Outside, Wolf ripped at the wooden door, scratching at the cracks.

  He’d get in eventually, but could the door hold until sunset? Could she wait it out until the game was over and Wolf—and the world—would be reset?

  Through the cracks, she saw that Wolf was trying to dig underneath the shed. He’d unearthed some old metal pipes. She crouched in the far corner, hands over her head, until she remembered what those pipes were.

  The gas main.

  They went from the house to the barn, right under the tool shed. Her stepdad had never replaced them. They were always leaky and rusted—that’s why he’d built the shed here, to hide them from the inspectors.

  Wolf dug frantically, nails tearing through the red soil, scratching on the pipes.

  Annie’s lips parted. All it would take was one scratch, at just the right pressure, to cause a spark. The entire shed could explode.

  She pushed up from the floor. In the distance, she could make out the sound of sirens on the road. Dammit. The police probably had the entire valley surrounded by now.

  The sun was sinking lower and lower. Blood gushing from her arm, dog tearing at the door, police surrounding her, a gas main ready to blow—there was only one place she
could hide now: her own house. She’d make a stand.

  She took a deep breath, ripped off a strip of her blood-soaked tank top, and twisted it in a ball. She pushed a hand through the crack in the door, Wolf tearing and snarling, and held up the piece of shirt.

  “Go get it!” she cried, and threw it as far as she could down the yard. The dog took off after it. She shoved the door open, running for the house, but her shoelace caught. She was pulled to the ground just as she turned to see the metal door scrape against the exposed gas main pipe.

  Shit.

  Wolf was already coming back, lunging toward her, nearly on her, when the explosion came. It blasted the tool shed apart. Splintering wood crashed over her. She covered her head, braced to be impaled, but she’d avoided the worst of the blast, lying flat on the ground. Wolf lay nearby, dazed and panting heavily.

  Annie’s ears rang. She could see the lights of the police cars closing in. She stumbled to her feet, away from the blazing tool shed, and climbed the porch steps in a daze. Her blood from last night was still there, dried in the cracks. She opened the door and locked it behind her.

  She was streaked with soot and dirt and blood. The police would be there any second. But the sun was just a sliver above the ridge now. Just minutes until sunset.

  She might win this thing yet.

  She stumbled down the hall to her room, then stopped. Her stepdad’s door was open. She saw his boot first, then his leg, and her pulse raced faster. He was asleep in bed, passed out with a fresh bottle.

  She could only stare. She’d thought he’d be in town, or halfway to Kentucky. Was this what death had planned for her—some twisted end where the past repeated itself, where she’d have to face her stepdad once more?

  Annie looked closer at him. He must really be drunk if the shed explosion and all the sirens didn’t wake him. Maybe it wasn’t death’s plan after all. Maybe Crow Cullom had stepped in again—not so impartial of an observer anymore—and taken pity on her. Did death’s harbinger have a heart that still felt something?