“Wow, that’s dark,” Zack said.
“No darker than a psycho stalking you in your nightmares, bringing every one of your deepest and darkest fears to life,” Maddie argued.
A shadow washed over us. It darkened what was left of my chicken nuggets. I looked up to my right to see a tall man standing at our table. He had a thick handlebar mustache and wore a sleeveless leather jacket. Old, faded, blue ink tattoos rippled all over his arms, and his stringy, gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
“Hey, can you quit all this macabre stuff? My granddaughter is getting scared,” the man said to us.
For a second, I thought Zack was going to stand up to him and say something smart—which would’ve been the complete opposite of smart. This guy could probably rip our arms clean out of their sockets.
“Sorry,” he said.
“We were just leaving,” Maddie added.
“Oh, now, you don’t need to leave. Just put away your scary pictures, and talk a little lower, please. I’m watching her this weekend, and I don’t want her up all night having scary dreams, you know?”
“We’re sorry,” I told him.
The biker guy smiled at us and went back to his table, where he sat and watched his granddaughter play.
She was in the tubes saying, “Look at me, grandpa! Look at me!”
Maddie closed her book. “I’ll tell you the rest in the car,” she said.
Maddie followed through. When we got back to the car, she didn’t hold back.
According to her research, Cageface was one of the first campers at Camp Moonfall—now Camp Nightmare, thanks to the urban legends that were turning out to not be legends at all. The counselors had neglected their duty of watching him one sunny afternoon, and he swam out too deep, sank to the bottom of the lake, and, as the story goes, came face-to-face with a bear trap that someone had discarded. The bear trap clamped onto his face, and should’ve killed him.
Except it didn’t.
Not if the legends were to be believed.
“They never found his body,” Maddie finished. “Only the parts of his face that had been ripped off by the bear trap.”
“So, what, you think he grew up in the woods by himself? With a frigging bear trap on his face?” Zack asked. He sounded skeptical.
How he could sound skeptical after all the things we’d seen together, I didn’t know. I guess, as far as crazy things went, a boy getting his face ripped off by a bear trap, not dying, growing up in the woods by himself, and then coming back to the camp to get revenge twenty years later was up there as one of the crazier things… But, still. I mean, we had a goblin living at our headquarters, for crying out loud. We had battled in the Monster Games. Had been given a fortune by giant swamp creatures.
Our lives were crazy.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Maddie answered Zack.
“Isn’t it always?” I asked.
“Supernatural doesn’t always mean unexplainable,” Zack said. He pulled the PT Cruiser off the highway and onto the exit ramp.
We were about five miles away from the town of Moonfall. My palms were sweaty, and my heart rate had sped up slightly. I was nervous. I’ll admit that.
I’d been raised by movies, and a big part of those movies were horror movies. Slashers. Hauntings. Psychological thrillers. If our outcomes were decided by how those had gone, then our prospects weren’t looking very good. Usually in slasher movies, everyone died. Except one: the final girl. Like Rhonda Fowler.
Since two-thirds of the Fright Squad were male, Zack and I didn’t have a lot going for us.
“No,” Maddie agreed, “but in this case supernatural doesn’t mean unexplainable. If Cageface is out there, something has given him his power.”
“And that’s the key to defeating him, right?” I said.
It was good to talk. It helped keep my mind away from death and doom, even though that was exactly what we were talking about.
“There you go, Abe,” Maddie said. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.” She looked back at me.
I grinned sarcastically.
“Since we don’t know what that is, I’d say we’re pretty screwed,” Zack said. “So we could probably just blow him to hell.”
“We’re the Fright Squad,” I said, “when have we ever been screwed?”
“Uh, does the penis-tentacle ring a bell?” Zack said.
I leaned forward and gave him a punch in the shoulder. He swerved, hitting the ruts on the side of the road. The equipment in the trunk jostled. Guns, knives, stakes, ghost catchers, silver bullets—all the stuff one might need to fight the supernatural. Nothing to blow anyone to hell, though.
“Okay, guys,” Maddie said. “Quit it before you get us killed.”
“We’re heading that way anyway,” Zack said. “Might as well get it over with early.”
The scenery around the Cruiser changed, as if we’d entered another world. The color of the asphalt faded, and the road became bumpier, pocked with potholes as big as craters that Zack had to keep swerving around. A thick forest lined the road, with mountains and hills looming higher than the trees. We went from four lanes to just two separated by a dotted, white line almost as faded as the gray sky above us. Looked like a storm was coming. That was a bad omen.
About a mile or so down the road, we passed a sign that read: ‘NOW ENTERING MOONFALL!’ It was older than time itself, it seemed. The letters were cracked and faded. One of the Ls hung askew. Vines and tall grass obscured whatever was written at the bottom of the sign.
“Now entering hillbilly country,” Zack mumbled under his breath.
“Not nice,” Maddie said.
“I mean, seriously,” he countered. “If there was ever a place for a crazy, demented serial killer to attack, it’s here.”
I didn’t think he was wrong. Still, I had to try and be positive. I wasn’t sure if Maddie and Zack thought of me as the leader, but I did.
“Well, that was years ago. It probably won’t happen again,” I said.
“Dude!” Zack was glaring at me in the rearview, his eyes just visible over his dark sunglasses. “You know what you just did? You sealed our fate. You know you can’t say stuff like that!”
“I’m with Zack on this one,” Maddie mumbled.
“I know you think you’re doing research, or whatever it is that floats your boat,” Zack said, “but he’s not gonna want to have a sit-down with you. I’m pretty sure he’ll just want to hang you by your intestines.”
Maddie shrugged, as if saying, ‘We’ll see about that.’
We both looked at her like she was crazy. Just as Zack was about to say something, a light blinked on the dashboard, and an alarm chimed.
It was the little yellow gas canister.
“Oh, crap,” Zack said. “Think a place like this has a gas station?”
We drove on a little longer. The road curved and the trees thinned out a bit. As we crested a hill, we saw a sleepy town below. It wasn’t big, and at this distance, it seemed picturesque—the kind of town you’d see on a postcard. Small Town, USA.
Down the hill we went, and on the outskirts of this tiny town, there was a gas station. No name brand place; a Speedway or a BP wouldn’t do much business around here. Instead we found Mikey’s Garage, with two old-timey pumps standing on the tarmac, their metal casing as rusty as the ancient Ford pickup sitting outside the store.
Zack steered the PT Cruiser in and pulled up at the closest pump.
Before he even cut the engine, an old man in coveralls that were stained black with oil and grease came out of the shop. The town was so quiet that the bell above the door rang out more like a church’s.
The man hardly had any hair left, but the little he did have was gray and wispy, getting caught in the wind like dandelion fluff. He wiped his hands on a rag about as greasy as his coveralls.
“Howdy,” he said.
Zack got out of the car.
“No need, my friend. No need,” the old man s
aid. “I’ll fill her up for you.”
“Whoa,” Maddie said.
I was thinking the same thing. It’s all self-serves, these days.
“Uh…thanks,” Zack said. He leaned forward and dug his wallet out of his back pocket. Opened the flap. Peered in. “Oh, crap. You take card?”
The old man leaned in the open window. He seemed much older up close. A lightning storm of deep wrinkles wound all over his cheeks and brow. His teeth were brown and not all there.
“Card?” he said.
“Yeah. American Express? MasterCard?” Zack said.
The old man didn’t answer immediately. He was peering into the cab. He gave me a once-over that made me feel cold, his eyes like icy daggers. Then his gaze settled on Maddie. A sickening smile curled up the corner of his mouth, making him look more like the Grim Reaper than an old man.
Zack snapped his fingers in front of the old guy’s face, and he jumped.
“Huh?” Zack pressed. “Card?”
“Oh, uh…no. We don’t take plastic.” The old man turned and looked out toward one of the nearby mountains. “Since the coal got all dried up, the town got hit pretty hard. Ain’t no one can afford them card reader thingamajigs.”
I was expecting the guy to go on about the good old days, but he didn’t.
Zack leaned back, looked at us. “You guys have cash?”
I shook my head. I hardly ever took cash with me; I didn’t feel right with it. I lost fifty bucks at the bowling alley when I was in high school, and hadn’t carried any since. Maddie shook her head, too.
“Gold?”
“Nope,” I answered.
“Well,” Zack said to the old man. “Looks like we’ll have to try somewhere else.”
“Ain’t nowhere else,” the old man said. “I’m the only station for about twenty miles.”
We really are in the middle of nowhere, I thought.
“ ’Sides, I already started filling her up,” the old man reasoned.
We all looked back in unison: the pump wasn’t even off the hook. But we could tell by the guy’s grimace that he didn’t want to lose our business.
“Cheapest prices around, too,” he said. “You’d be fools to go elsewhere.”
“Okay…” Zack said.
Now the old guy took the handle of the pump and stuck the nozzle into the tank. He squeezed the trigger, and it made a rickety wheeze like some sort of dying animal.
“Go on up to Patty’s. She’s got an ATM. I’ll knock the service fee off the gas price so it evens out,” he offered.
“Come on, Zack,” Maddie said. “I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs.”
“Me either,” I said.
We had dealt with the most insane creatures imaginable; one persistent old man wasn’t going to slow us down.
“All right,” Zack agreed.
He rolled up all of the windows, and we got out of the car. The old man gave us a nod, and Zack clicked the lock button on the Cruiser, causing the alarm to chirp. In the town’s silence, the sound echoed loudly through the surrounding trees and hills.
The old man just kind of sneered in our direction and continued pumping the gas, which was apparently coming out slower than cold syrup.
He pointed. “Right up the street,” he said.
There was no sidewalk out here, so we were walking on the shoulder of the road that led into the heart of the town. A sign that read Patty’s Pub stood at the end of a gravel parking lot. There were a few rustic cars—American made, of course—and Harleys parked there. We cut through a dying field of grass into the gravel.
“Jesus, I feel like we’ve entered another freaking dimension or something. The Twilight Zone music is playing in my head,” Zack said.
On cue, Maddie sang, “Bee-doo-bee-doo. Bee-doo-bee-doo.”
I felt the same way. Coming from Akron to this town was like stepping into a time machine. It was amazing that two drastically different places could be separated by only a couple hundred miles.
As we approached the bar’s front entrance, an old, wooden door that you could see right through near the hinges, no Twilight Zone music drifted out. Just the low, twanging voice of Patsy Cline.
Zack stopped a few feet from the entrance door’s handle.
“Go on,” Maddie urged.
“You’re not gonna make me go in alone, are you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “We’re a team,” I assured him.
He shivered. “Good. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.” And then he grabbed the handle.
4
Escaped Prisoners and an ATM Buffet
The door creaked entirely too loudly when Zack opened it.
A woman with an eyepatch stood behind the bar, polishing a glass that was so murky I didn’t see the point in her polishing it at all.
Like you’ve seen in a hundred movies, the jukebox’s record scratched as soon as we stepped inside, and every patron, every bleary-eyed day-drinker, looked in our direction like we might’ve come from an entirely different planet.
I raised my hand in a wave. “Hiya,” I said.
No one said anything in response.
“Just want to use your ATM,” Zack said. “Don’t worry. We aren’t staying.”
“Zack,” Maddie mumbled, and hit him with her hip.
“Right.” He pivoted toward the ATM, which was set far back in the right corner.
We followed him while every eye in the place—which was only about two-dozen, given the dozen or so people of varying degrees of country hillbilly stereotype (straw hats, missing teeth, hand-rolled cigarettes, overalls with nothing on beneath...you know what I’m talking about)—followed us.
The awkward silence seemed to go on a lot longer than a few seconds, but eventually people went back to their own business. The jukebox kicked on again, and some poor soul was singing about drinking beer in a cornfield with his woman while a banjo played in the background.
Zack punched his PIN into the ATM, and took out sixty bucks. The machine was asking him if he wanted a receipt or not when the door was kicked open, and in walked a police officer in brown slacks and a sweat-stained, sandy-colored shirt. He toweled off his forehead with the back of his arm.
“Hey there, Pretty Patty,” he greeted the bartender, who was smiling at him and showing about four teeth.
I didn’t personally think the bartender was much of a looker, but to each their own, I guess.
“Pour me a big glass of whiskey,” he demanded. “Lord knows I need it.”
“Sheriff,” replied Pretty Patty, presumably the bar’s owner as she poured him whiskey in a dirty glass.
Zack and Maddie fumbled over the ATM’s ancient user interface; apparently, it wouldn’t give his bank card back without a fight. Meanwhile, I watched the sheriff and bartender’s conversation with great interest; out of the corner of my eye, of course. This wasn’t a place where you made direct eye contact—not unless you wanted a fight, and I didn’t particularly want to get in any skirmishes until I absolutely had to.
All that mattered at the moment was that we get to Camp Moonfall and protect the visitors for the weekend. I owe Octavius that much, don’t I? Where would I be without him?
I didn’t particularly want to know.
Besides, it was just a weekend; one weekend that we’d have to put up with the locals, then Octavius could scrounge up a security detail to patrol the camp for the duration of its operation, and we’d be back to action-packed missions in the city. Fighting werewolves and vamps. Punching ‘Steins in the face.
I couldn’t wait.
“You look like hell, Sheriff,” I heard the bartender say.
“I believe that, Patty. Oh, I believe that real good,” he allowed.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Same thing that always happens: shit. I was supposed to meet a Stonehenge Prison bus at noon, just outside of town.”
She looked on with interest.
“Well, the bus shows, but there ain’t no
prisoners. I ask the driver, ‘What happened?’ and the guy tries to speak, but no words are coming out. Then he coughs and spits blood all over the steering wheel! Next thing I know, he’s passed out—or dead, for all I know. Look the guy over and see has a shank in his side. Poor fella was bleeding like a damn stuck pig. The bus was trashed. Back window was shattered. Radio was ripped out of the console, wires dangling. Blood everywhere. A dead guard’s feet sticking out in the aisle.”
By this point of the sheriff’s story, all the locals were listening; a few of the older guys had pulled their chairs over. All they needed was a campfire.
“The driver is still unconscious and in critical condition up at Mercy Home Hospital,” the sheriff informed them. “Prison got in touch, said there was supposed to be half a dozen prisoners on the bus. Bad dudes, too. Murderers. Rapists.”
Patty said, “That’s terrible. You think they’re hiding around here?”
“God,” the sheriff said, taking a big gulp of his whiskey. “I hope not. An anonymous tip said they was heading north.”
“Why ain’t you out there catchin’ ‘em?” a fat guy asked.
“Ain’t my jurisdiction, Lou. Otherwise you know I would be.”
“Well, as long as they ain’t staying here,” Patty said.
“They ain’t,” the sheriff said. “If they do…” He made a gun with his thumb and index finger, “BANG!”
Patty jumped at this outburst, and tittered.
Zack and Maddie were looking now, the ATM having finally spat out Zack’s card. It was all scratched with little plastic shavings curled up at the ends of the gouges. The ATM had had a good meal—an expensive one, too. Sixty bucks.
“Did he say…escaped prisoners?” Zack wanted to know.
I grabbed his and Maddie’s arms, and ushered them out the front door while everyone’s attention was on the sheriff.
Once the door banged closed behind us, I told them what I heard.
“Of fucking course,” Zack said.
Night of the Slasher Page 3
