The Fear Zone 2

by K. R. Alexander

  I realize that they were the kids standing next to us on the playground yesterday. Small world.

  “We just got here,” Jeremy says. “Do you guys want to go on some rides together?”

  “I was actually feeling kinda tired,” Kyle says. He glances at me. Ever since he got out of the hall of mirrors, he’s been even moodier than usual. “I think Deshaun and I are going to go home. But you all can hang out together?”

  Andres and April both cast him a confused look, then nod slowly. Caroline seems on the fence. I don’t say anything; I don’t want to admit it, but going home right now sounds perfect. I have a horrible feeling that if we do anything else—even a game—I’m going to hurl again.

  “If that’s what you want to do,” Andres says, sounding a little defeated.

  Kyle doesn’t meet his gaze. “Yeah, I’m not feeling too hot. You know I’m not a ride person.”

  “Okay, well,” April says, trying to sound cheerful. She looks at me, then gives me a quick hug and kisses me on the cheek. “Have a good night. Feel better. I’ll text you later.”

  I nod. It feels awkward leaving like this, but I’m also incredibly grateful to Kyle for taking the fall. I know he’s not having the best time, but I also know he would have stuck it out if not for me feeling so nauseated.

  We part ways, Kyle giving Andres a quick goodbye hug, and then Kyle and I make our way through the crowded lanes of the carnival, neither of us saying anything.

  It’s not until we’ve passed under the archway and stepped out into the cool night air that I break the silence.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I say. Even talking makes my stomach twist, which makes me grateful that Kyle’s never been the super-talkative sort.

  He shrugs.

  “I wasn’t really feeling it, anyway.”

  I glance over to him.

  “Are you jealous of Jeremy?” I ask.

  “No,” he says quickly. “Why?”

  “It’s just that you seemed kinda upset when he showed up.”

  Kyle doesn’t answer at first.

  “Jeremy’s everything I’m not,” he says. “He’s outgoing and cheerful and athletic.”

  “And you think Andres would like that more?”

  “I don’t know what I think. I just know I can’t compete with that.”

  “You don’t have to,” I say.

  Kyle just shrugs again.

  We make our way home, passing by houses with toilet-papered trees or flickering pumpkins. Trick-or-treat ended a few hours ago, but we occasionally cross a group of kids in costume, eating candy from bags and buckets or trying to scare stragglers. I want to comfort Kyle, but I can’t think properly with my stomach doing somersaults.

  When we reach the house, we say goodnight and go to our rooms.

  I head to the bathroom and remove the zombie makeup, then take some stomach meds for good measure.

  We’ve gone all day without any sight of the clown. No notes. No nothing.

  Another year, and the clown is still gone.

  Another year, and we’re still safe.

  I walk around my bedroom, quickly checking all my defenses just for good measure, making sure the crystals are still under the mattress, and the salt still beside the windows and doors. Then I light a candle and some incense, trying to cleanse the air like I’ve read about. Just in case.

  Because even though I know we’re safe, I’m still not willing to believe it.

  I text April that we’re home, that I hope they have fun. She responds with a kissing emoji. And then I turn on my game system and play for a while, until my stomach stops feeling gross and I start feeling tired.

  Eventually, I turn off the light and close my eyes. I can hear Kyle watching a movie in his bedroom. A part of me wonders if I should go in there, but I know him better than anyone else. Like me, he gets in his head really easily. And like me, the best thing to do in that case is to just leave him alone, even though I feel guilty doing it.

  But it’s okay. He only had a bad night. The clown is gone.

  We’re safe.

  We’re safe.

  I wake with a start.

  I’d been having a nightmare.

  It was night.

  In the graveyard.

  And I had been running from something.

  Something with burning blue eyes and sharp teeth.

  I try to remember what it was, but the harder I think about it, the more the nightmare fades.

  “Just a dream,” I whisper to myself. Just a dream.

  I close my eyes and roll onto my side, trying to get back to sleep. I have a math quiz in the morning. Heaviness starts to settle in …

  Chills race down the back of my neck. I’m being watched. I know it.

  My blood goes cold. A part of me wonders if it’s Kyle, playing a prank, but the moment I think that, I realize he’d never do something that mean. Especially not on a night like this.

  You have to face your fears, I tell myself. We learned that lesson the hard way.

  I open my eyes and turn to face the window.

  Just in time to see two pale blue eyes watching me, a needle-sharp smile glowing in the clown’s shock-white face.

  I blink.

  The clown vanishes.

  But there, in the frost on the window, are scratched three terrifying words:

  When I wake up the next morning, I know that something is wrong.

  I know this as surely as I know that the sky outside is clear blue. Because the moment I wake up, I’m covered in sweat and panting like I’ve run a thousand miles.

  Like I’ve spent those thousand miles running from a clown.

  The very thought sends chills down my arms, a cold that makes my sweat turn to ice. I can’t remember my dreams, but that doesn’t mean I’m not scared by them.

  Sometimes, it’s the things you can’t see that are worse.

  For a split second, I consider texting Deshaun. I don’t know what I’d say, though. I had a bad dream. I think the clown is back.

  There’s no use scaring him over nothing.

  I flop back in bed and stare at the ceiling, trying to slow my breath and let the sun warm me. Birds chirp happily outside. Downstairs, I can hear my little brother, Freddy, singing at the top of his lungs while he eats breakfast.

  After Deshaun and Kyle left last night, we hung out with Jeremy and his brother’s friends for another hour or so. We went on a few more rides, and Andres played the balloon dart game, like, a dozen more times until he’d won enough to get a big stuffed giraffe that he was planning on giving to Kyle. Then the two groups separated. Jeremy’s group stuck around to go on a few more rides. Caroline and Andres and I walked out the front entrance and stared out at the hills of the graveyard in silence.

  I didn’t realize my hands were shaking until Andres took one and Caroline took the other.

  Clouds had rolled heavily through the sky, and a cold breeze rustled the trees. But the graveyard was silent.

  We stood there for a while, watching the shadowy hills, until a group of kids loudly left the carnival behind us. Caroline’s dad drove us all home, and I came in the house to see Freddy still running around in his donut costume, my mom apparently having given up getting him to bed. I had no such problem; even after showering off my zombie makeup, I still felt like the walking dead. I fell asleep immediately.

  Now awake, I stare at the ceiling. It’s hard to believe that two years have passed. It feels like it was yesterday. The clown hiding behind every dark corner. The nightmares manifesting as reality.

  I reach over and fumble around in my nightstand. Static leaps through my fingers when I find the piece of paper.

  I unfold it and stare at it in the morning light, fear creeping through my heart as I read the words I’ve long since memorized, the note that started this nightmare: Meet in the graveyard. Tonight. Midnight. Or else.

  Except this time, when I read the note, my heart stutters over the words that simply can’t be real.
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br />   I jolt in shock and sit upright.

  That can’t be right. Those aren’t the right words. Not the words I’ve read hundreds of times since finding the note in my locker.

  Did someone, maybe Freddy—?

  But no. I read the note over and over again, and there’s no mistaking it. It’s the same handwriting. The same creepy black marker. It’s most definitely the note from two years ago. Only different.

  Someone has changed the note.

  But how?

  Who?

  From my closet, I hear an unmistakable giggle

  and jingle of bells.

  “It’s happening again,” April gasps.

  “What is?” I reply. “And why didn’t you text me you were on your way?”

  She’s practically out of breath, and she’s early. We normally meet at my house and walk to school together, but today she arrived twenty minutes early.

  I’m still in my pajamas, and my brothers are racing around the house, yelling and throwing old socks while my parents try to wrangle them to get ready for school. Clearly, they’ve nearly depleted their store of candy from last night. But my annoyance at my sugar-high brothers is short-lived. Panic is clear on April’s face, and I know there’s only one thing in the world that would make her look this scared and run all the way to my place.

  “There wasn’t time to text,” she says. She holds out her hand and reveals a crumpled note.

  My heart stops when I see it. I know that note well. I received a similar one two years ago.

  “Why did you keep that?” I ask, my voice shaking.

  “Look at it,” she says, pushing it closer to my face.

  “I don’t want to,” I reply. “I already know what it says.”

  “No,” she insists, “you don’t.”

  And she uncrumples the note, holding it out to me.

  I read it three times before I can say anything. Every time I read it, my heart drops another foot closer to my toes.

  “Did you do this?” I whisper.

  She shakes her head.

  I’ve known April for years. We’ve been through more than most friends ever have. I know when she’s pulling my leg. And I know with absolute certainty that this isn’t one of those times.

  “I found it this morning,” she says. “Something felt wrong when I woke up, and I don’t know … I grabbed it from the nightstand and, well, you see what it says. It’s changed. What do you think it means?”

  I read it over again, even though I don’t need to. The words feel burned into my brain. They met in the graveyard … Now they are mine.

  Did the others meet up without us? I can’t imagine Caroline and Kyle and Deshaun heading to the graveyard, but who else could it be talking about? The questions make fresh panic spike through my veins.

  “Have you contacted the others?” I ask.

  She nods. “I texted them all on my way over. They’re all fine.”

  “Did you say anything about the note?” I ask, trying not to be insulted that she had time to text them, but not me.

  She shakes her head.

  “I didn’t think it was something to text.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I just … I don’t know what to do, Andres. What if it’s coming back?”

  I step forward and wrap her in a tight hug. Immediately, she starts sobbing onto my shoulder.

  Hector runs past, stops, and whistles. I yell at him to go back inside. He giggles and ducks away before I can swat at him.

  “I’m sure—” I begin to say, but I stop myself. I don’t like lying. Especially not to April. And right now I’m not sure of anything.

  “Here,” I continue instead. “Come inside. I’ll get ready and we can figure it out on the way to school. Just … don’t tell anyone else about this yet, okay? Not until we know for sure what’s going on. We don’t need to scare anyone.”

  She sniffs and nods and follows me inside. I leave her in the kitchen with my mom, who’s packing lunches—it’s probably the safest place in the house from my brothers’ wildness.

  I run upstairs and grab my clothes from my room, yell at my brothers again, and make my way into the bathroom. I fill the sink with water and wash my face. It’s the quickest I’ve ever gotten dressed and ready for school. And that’s including the days I’ve slept in or when my brothers hogged the bathroom until the last minute.

  As I drain the water and turn to run back downstairs, I freeze.

  No.

  It must be my imagination.

  It must be April’s paranoia getting to me.

  But I could swear, just for a moment, from the corner of my eye, I see a gray fin circling in the emptying sink.

  It takes all my self-control not to say anything to Kyle when we walk to school together. I want nothing more than to tell him what I saw on the window last night, but I don’t want to worry him. It already seems like he has enough on his mind, and besides, it was all probably just my imagination and fear over the whole two-year-mark thing. Kyle walks silently at my side. I mean, he’s normally pretty quiet, especially in the morning and especially if he hasn’t had any coffee—which is the one thing my parents won’t budge on, so he always has to grab a cup from the café on the way to school. But today he seems even more withdrawn. Even after the coffee.

  I’m in a similar state. It took forever to fall back asleep after seeing the clown last night, and when I did, my sleep was riddled with old nightmares.

  Dreams from the time, years ago, I was lost in the graveyard at night. The very graveyard that—years later—led us into this mess. Dreams where I was chased by the ghosts that lingered in old tombstones. Dreams where no matter how hard or fast I ran, I couldn’t escape.

  The ghosts were always there.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  “BOO!”

  I nearly jump out of my skin as a kid runs past me from behind, laughing with his friends as they hustle toward the school.

  Kyle finally seems to jolt out of his introspection. He glares at the kids as they scamper off.

  “Little jerks,” he growls.

  I just sigh and wish I could be as happy as they are. Scaring because it’s fun, and not being scared for their lives.

  I watch the kids run off around the corner. A moment later, there’s a loud, short scream that I recognize immediately as April’s. Kyle and I look at each other, and then break into a run.

  Andres and April come into sight from behind the fence. Andres is suppressing his laughter and April is bright red.

  “It isn’t funny!” she says loudly.

  “I know, I know,” he says.

  We slow our jog when we near them—clearly, the kid managed to scare her.

  Andres smirks at us. “But,” he says, “it kind of was.”

  April’s face is starting to lose a little of its reddish tint, but she’s still upset—and the moment she starts talking, it’s clear why.

  “It’s back,” she says.

  Andres stops giggling immediately. He takes a step closer to Kyle, who takes his hand on reflex. I want to reach out to April to comfort her, but I’m in too much shock to move.

  “What’s back?” I ask. Even though I know. The words scratched onto my window flash through my mind: TIME TO PLAY.

  I know.

  “No,” Kyle whispers. He takes a step backward and stumbles over the curb. Andres helps steady him, and I step closer to help. Kyle shakes his head. “No, no, it can’t be back. We banished it. It’s over.”

  April swallows.

  “I don’t want to believe it either,” she says. “But this morning … I found this.”

  She holds up a crumpled note. I know it all too well. Or rather, I should know it all too well.

  When I read it, it’s clear that someone has changed the words.

  The clown changed the words.

  Kyle grabs the note and studies it.

  “What’s this?” he asks. “Is this some sort of joke?”

  “No,” April says. Tears
well in her eyes. I look between Kyle—my best friend—and April—my girlfriend—and can’t decide who to comfort. So I just stand there, silent, feeling completely powerless to help at all. Powerless, just like two years ago.

  “I don’t believe it,” Kyle says. He forcefully hands her back the note. “You rewrote the note. To—I don’t know, get us all to be together again. Is that it? Because we’ve grown apart, you thought it would be cute to pull a prank. Maybe do another trip to the graveyard just for fun. Well, I’m not buying it. It isn’t funny.”

  April tries to stutter out some sort of response, but his tirade washes over her, and the moment he’s done, he pushes away Andres’s hand and storms off toward the school.

  Andres looks between Kyle and April, just as lost as I am.

  “Sorry,” Andres says. “He’s just … He didn’t …” He stalls. Looks back as his boyfriend abandons us. “Sorry.”

  Then Andres runs after Kyle, calling out for him to stop.

  April stands there, tears running freely down her cheeks.

  “I believe you,” I say after a moment. Probably too long a moment. “Last night, I saw—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says angrily. My gut drops—the dismissal stings. She wipes her eyes fiercely and sniffs. “It’s already done what it wants to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you remember?” she asks, looking at me with watery eyes. “We only defeated it when we banded together. And now all it took was one note, and we’ve fallen apart. Who knows what it will do next?”

  Wind whispers through the trees. The rattle of branches.

  The growl of my name.

  I swear I feel the clown watching from the bare treetops, but I don’t look. I won’t look. I shudder and take April’s hand. She doesn’t squeeze back.