I didn’t want to think about it.
“I’ll take them back,” Maddie said, sounding disappointed. “You and Zack go check out our cabin, make sure it’s clear.”
“You sure?” I asked.
She gave me one of her ‘I’m-not-a-damsel-in-distress’ looks. “I’ll be fine. They may be under the influence, but if there’s a killer hanging around, they’ll sober right up.”
“No killers around here,” Zack said. “I can sense it.”
“Are you sure you haven’t been drinking?” Maddie asked.
He smirked, but no, he hadn’t been drinking. We’d just been sitting around, doing nothing but babysitting these grown-up college students.
Maddie stood up. “All right, partiers, let’s go.”
Freddy stopped strumming. Jason got right up, albeit a little wobbly.
“Be careful,” Zack said to Maddie, and leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.
“Ooooh,” Freddy crooned.
“Come on,” Maddie said, rolling her eyes.
They left in the direction of the lodge.
“Wait, I gotta pee,” Jason said. He frolicked toward the lake.
“No—not in the lake!” Maddie said.
Freddy laughed raucously.
I stood up and stretched.
“Don’t look, Maddie!” Zack yelled as Jason unzipped his pants.
She flipped Zack the bird.
I dragged him toward our cabin. As we went up the road, the sounds of Freddy’s stoned laughter faded, but I could still hear their voices.
Maddie really got stuck with the shit-end of the stick, I thought.
On the front steps, Zack and I stared at the leaning cabin. It was once meant for the male campers, but it hadn’t been inhabited for over thirty years, years before I was even born.
“Geez,” Zack said, “talk about creepy.”
I didn’t answer, just kind of stared at it, cursing Octavius under my breath.
“It’s creepy, right?” Zack asked.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
But we dealt in all things creepy; it was our job. As loudly as my senses were telling me not to enter the old, abandoned cabin, I had to ignore them.
Then again…would it be so bad to sleep outside, under the black, starless sky?
Probably.
“If we were ever going to get murdered,” Zack mused, as we stepped up the three stairs onto the cabin’s crooked porch, “it would be in this place.”
“I feel like you said the same thing at the Monster Games.”
“It’s possible,” Zack replied. “I say that a lot. Only because I think we’re going to die a lot.” He shrugged.
I shrugged back. “Yep. But we’re still here, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know, dude. I ask myself that question all the time. Are we really here? And just what the hell does here mean?”
“You gotta quit watching those Matrix movies.” I shook my head.
He turned to me, making strong eye contact. “You never know… We could all be in the Matrix. Like, with computers and slow-mo, flying bullets.”
I shook my head again and pushed the door open.
“It’s so much worse at night,” Zack said.
He was right. We’d examined the inside of the cabin when we brought our luggage inside, and it was pretty bad then—all cobwebs, and old, moldy bunk beds—but now it seemed like something you’d see in a horror movie.
It was amazing what the sun going down could do.
I turned on an electric lantern sitting atop a dresser without drawers. The artificial light didn’t do much but accentuate the shabbiness of the place.
“Well, we’ve slept in worse places,” Zack said. “Like your apartment…”
“You love my apartment,” I said. Since the counselors were all wasted, I figured it was as good a time as any to start unpacking our suitcase full of weapons. “You’re there more than you’re at your place.”
“That’s only because my dad’s an asshole,” he argued. He took his Ray-Bans off and hung them on his shirt collar. “Damn, I gotta piss.”
“You know where the bathroom is,” I said. I took a handgun out of the luggage, released the magazine, made sure it was full.
“It’d probably liven the place up if I peed on the floor,” Zack said.
I picked up a stake. “You pee on the floor, and I’m using this on you, man.”
Zack chuckled. “Joking. Calm down, killer.”
He stood on the other side of the bunk bed, leaning up against the wooden frame. I feigned a lunge toward him, wanting to keep a lively mood in this place. I mean, it had been the home to a series of brutal killings.
He stumbled back. “Cut it out, or I’ll—”
The floor beneath him creaked. No, it groaned, like some wounded animal. Both of our heads snapped down as we looked to the wood boards.
“That can’t be good,” I said.
Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Zack noted, “It’s loose.”
He stomped, testing the strength of the plank. Another loud groan.
“Sounds like it’s hollow or something,” he said. “Does this place have a basement?”
“I doubt it,” I said.
He stomped again.
It did sound hollow.
Zack thought he might learn more if he jumped and hit the floorboard with both feet. The problem? This place was old. Really old. Zack didn’t weigh much, but—
“Aw, shit!” he yelled.
The boards gave way beneath his soles, cracked right in the middle. Zack disappeared in a flurry of dust and splinters.
I dropped the gun on the old mattress, my jaw hanging wide open, and rushed to the new hole in the floor. The dust was so thick, I nearly hacked up my lungs. Once I got control of my breathing again and waved some of the cloud away, I called out for Zack.
He didn’t immediately answer.
My first thought was that he’d died. That he’d fallen God knew how many feet below the ground and landed on his head or snapped his neck. It had certainly sounded that way.
“Zack?” I called out again, stifling another cough.
More silence.
I raced back around the bunk, my steps cautious because I didn’t want the floor caving in on me as well, and grabbed the lantern. Coming back around, I heard a series of small coughs followed by Zack’s weak voice.
“Uh…Abe? Good news.”
“What?”
“I don’t have to pee anymore.”
I shined the light down the hole, and even though I didn’t have to pee myself, the sight was enough to make my bladder let loose.
11
Secret Serial Slasher’s Secret Cellar
“I think my leg’s broken,” Zack said. “And my ass bone. Is there such thing as an ass bone?”
I didn’t answer his question. Couldn’t answer his question. Not because I didn’t know the answer—we do, in fact, have an ‘ass bone’; I believe it’s called the ‘coccyx’, which is a funny name in and of itself. But the word ‘coccyx’ was the furthest thing from my mind right then.
A pile of dust and debris covered the majority of Zack’s body. In the vast cavern beneath the cabin, that pile looked as small as the dust bunnies that one might find beneath the furniture when performing their annual spring cleaning.
“Zack, is that…is that…?” I couldn’t even finish. The word just wouldn’t leave my lips. So I pointed instead. My finger was shaking.
His face had already taken on a chalky look, but when he turned to follow where my finger pointed, his flesh paled even more. I’d never seen him move so fast in all my time knowing him. I’d probably never see him move that fast again.
“Holy shit!” he yelled. “Is that a fucking head?”
It was.
As much as it pained me to, I said, “Hold on, Zack. I’m coming down.”
The drop was only about five feet, so I pulled one of the bunk’s ladders off the frame and lowere
d it into the hole.
“No! Don’t come down here, get me the fuck out!” he yelled.
“Just hold on,” I said.
I really didn’t know what was going through my mind. The thing I’d pointed at was actually a head. A human head.
As I descended the ladder, Zack said, “Dude, there’s a bunch of them down here. They’re all staring at me! Bodies, too.”
“Don’t stare back,” I said, grunting and trying not to choke down any dust and dirt that was still floating in the air. “It’s not polite.”
“Screw you, Abe.”
I hit the floor, which was actual ground: packed dirt like in an old basement, and I shined the light as I spun all around. The place was huge. It sloped downward to the left, extending much farther than the width of the cabin, going deeper into the woods. If Zack had fallen on the other end of the cabin, he would’ve dropped fifteen feet instead of five, and he wouldn’t be worrying about the severed heads on the shelves, because he would’ve busted his and probably died.
The weird thing about this place (besides the severed heads and piles of headless bodies, that is) was its appearance. The place’s edges looked like they’d been chopped away with an axe. This hidden room lacked all professionalism; it was a safe bet that whoever had done this wasn’t worried about the room’s design.
And I had a pretty good idea who’d done this. It didn’t take a genius to piece that together. The problem was that I didn’t know when he had done this, and that worried me the most.
I bent down and helped Zack out of the heap of rotten wood and dust. He brushed himself off, and flexed his legs.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Really, Abe? I just fell through the friggin’ floor and came face-to-face with a wall of decapitated heads. Do you really think I’m okay?”
I shrugged. “I mean…we’ve been through worse. The penis-tentacle—”
“Hit you in the face, not me. I haven’t been through worse. No way!”
Zack, apparently experiencing a rush of adrenaline, turned toward the wall and picked up a head by its brittle hair. He shoved it in my face, instantly driving me back a few steps.
“Dude!” I said, cringing.
The head wasn’t old. It was fresh.
My stomach rippled with nausea.
Then Zack did something completely unwarranted. He put his fingers on the head’s lips, and raised his voice to a terrible falsetto.
“Yeah, Zack,” he said, giving voice to the head. “This is pretty bad. Worst thing you have ever seen.”
Then in his own voice again, “I know, Curly. Abe’s an asshole, isn’t he?”
Again in the head’s falsetto, “Yes, he is, Zack!”
“Okay, cut it out,” I said. “It’s weird.”
“No weirder than stumbling upon a serial killer’s personal quarters after falling through the floor!”
I turned away. We could’ve argued about this until the sun came up, but right then didn’t seem like the best time. I went around the corner, following the sloping earth.
I didn’t get very far before I found a sight that made me stop.
As I shined my light on the bodies on the floor, their clothes were illuminated: bright orange.
Prison jumpsuits.
12
Dead Prisoners
I bent low and examined the body. Its jumpsuit, covered in fresh blood, had ‘Stonehenge Prison’ stenciled across the breast.
Someone better call the sheriff, I thought, and tell him the search is off.
Zack, groaning, looked on with me. He was still holding the head of some dead prisoner; I worried he might start trying to find the matching body.
It was all too much. Maddie was back at the lodge with the drunkards, but if she’d been with us, maybe she’d be able to answer one of the many questions currently on the tip of my tongue.
I turned away from the bodies, and faced the vacant eyes of the heads on the wall.
Zack moved the head’s lips and said in his falsetto, “I don’t like this very much. We should get out of here.”
He answered in his regular voice. “I agree.”
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked. “You sure that fall didn’t knock another screw loose?”
Zack shook both his head and the one he held by the hair.
I slapped the head out of Zack’s hand; its cold flesh against my hands was terrible. It fell to the packed dirt.
“Hey!” Zack whined.
He was about to do the falsetto, but I stopped him with a warning look before he could.
Where is Maddie when we need her? She was always on Smack Zack duty. And a smack for Zack went a long way.
“Focus, man,” I said.
“Sor-ry! I did just fall down a hole, you know,” he said. He gave the head on the ground a longing look.
“Get over it,” I snapped. “We’ve got some serious shit to deal with right now.”
“You don’t say?”
I didn’t hit him, but I wanted to; instead, I just gave him my meanest glare. It was the same one Octavius would give me whenever I gave a feeble effort in our soul-slayer training (which was often, so getting the look down was a piece of cake).
Zack shrank beneath my stare, and nudged the head away with the side of his foot. It caught the slope, and rolled like a bowling ball all the way to the opposite wall, where we saw the outline of a door.
I didn’t want to find out what was behind that door, but I knew I had to, so I went right up to it and started running my hands up and down, looking for a doorknob.
Zack, now free of his decapitated friend, kicked around a bunch of trash that was piled up at the base of the slope a little ways from where he’d fallen.
The trash was deliberate.
Upon a second glance, I realized that it wasn’t trash at all. It was a place for someone to rest. An old, hole-ridden sleeping bag, a pillow as flat and saggy as a female gasling’s breasts, and a small radio that looked older than the heads sitting on the low shelves were all part of the pile.
Taking this in as I continued patting the wall just increased my anxiety, which was already at an all-time high. Maybe because my subconscious was telling me that Cageface shouldn’t need sleep, being a supernatural entity. That was something they didn’t really teach you in the Academy, but my mind couldn’t comprehend Cageface—or any monster, for that matter—brushing their teeth, saying their nightly prayers, lying down, counting sheep, and drifting off into the sweet unconsciousness of sleep.
“Dude,” Zack said. His voice cracked. He sounded like he was suffering from some sort of existential crisis, like he’d discovered just how small and meaningless us humans were in the grand scheme of the universe, of the multiple universes.
Doctor Blood was to thank for that perspective. After seeing the terrible abominations in his impossible doorway back in Helltown, I’d suffered the same type of crises.
“I saw,” I said. “Cageface likes to nap. Let’s forget about that.”
“I don’t like this place.”
“You’re just realizing that now? Or what?”
Zack shrugged. “I didn’t think…didn’t think it would be this bad.”
I bit my tongue.
“I was actually hoping it’d kind of be a vacation,” he admitted. “We needed one after the Monster Games.”
Even though that was half a year ago, we were still feeling the effects. For example, after being launched fifty feet through the arena’s wall when Doctor Blood tried using the Boogeyman’s soul orb power, my back now ached if I sat for too long. So yes, I guess we did need a vacation. But going to Pennsylvania, and staying at some abandoned summer camp that had been home to a series of gruesome murders hardly felt like a vacation.
“Well, it’s not,” I said finally. “Quit sulking, get over here, and help me find the doorknob.”
Zack slipped his hands into his pockets, slouching his shoulders. When he spoke, his voice was tense. “Do we really wanna fin
d it?”
I didn’t answer.
He limped over—really selling his injuries, I thought—and began running his hands over the packed dirt walls.
After a few minutes, he found the hidden knob.
The door moved soundlessly as it opened, and Zack and I gawked as we stared through.
Suddenly, I wished he hadn’t found it.
13
The Sleeping Slasher
The place looked like something straight out of Frankenstein. There was a metal table in the middle of the room that looked extremely cold. Hovering above was a cluster of lights one might see in an operating room, lamps to make the darkness completely nonexistent. On the far side of the room was a counter supporting an array of jars. Various bugs wound around the inside of the glass containers; dead toads, locks of hair, human teeth…old fingers, too.
Somehow, someway, my feet moved on their own accord.
Trust me, I didn’t want to go in the room; it was the last thing I wanted to do, but the place seemed to have its own gravitational pull. I thought back to the car wreck analogy.
“Is that—?” Zack said, pointing at the metal table and interrupting my thoughts.
For the first time since the door covered in dirt moved soundlessly open, I noticed that the table wasn’t empty.
Something lay upon it. Something huge.
How did I not see that? A pang of fear sliced through my entire being. “Yeah,” I said. “I think it is.”
“You don’t think it’s—” Zack said.
“I do, Zack. Unfortunately, I do.”
“Well, shit.” He crossed the room, the limp he’d possessed earlier gone.
“No—wait!” I shouted. But it was too late.
Zack grabbed the black tarp that was covering the lump on top of the table—which was undoubtedly a body—and pulled.
The smell hit us before we could figure out what we were looking at. Decaying bodies have a sharp scent, but this was so much worse. My stomach rolled greasily. I was pretty sure I was going to vomit; if not from the smell then from the view.
Night of the Slasher Page 6
