The clown has taken over our entire town.
Soon, it will spread to the rest of the world.
“Do you think Caroline will be okay?” April asks nervously as she looks down at the carnival.
“I’m sure of it,” I say. If only I could sound more convinced. If only I truly believed that any of us will be okay.
We don’t go up to the front door. We stand a few feet away, as if worried the house might reach out and pull us in, watching as Caroline runs up the hill, the clown children close behind.
I don’t want to tell April about how I got here, about the horrors I saw and overcame in the haunted fun house. I will someday, but not now.
Caroline is fast—faster than me or April, for sure—and in no time at all she is here, her pursuers lagging farther down the hill. The clown children pause halfway up the hill while Caroline catches her breath beside us, April supporting her.
“Deshaun,” Caroline says breathlessly. “You’re back.”
I nod grimly, reaching out to give her shoulder a quick squeeze. April isn’t paying attention to the exchange. She isn’t paying attention to either of us.
“They’re giving up,” April says.
The clown children stand there, watching us, smiles painted on their faces and their eyes all glowing demonic blue.
“No,” I reply. “They’ve trapped us where they wanted us all along.”
We watch as the clown kids disband. But they don’t walk back down to the carnival. Instead, they spread out around the hill, forming a ring around us. Blocking any hope of escape.
Caroline and April and I look up at the house. To the flickering neon sign.
HOUSE OF HORRORS.
It always has been one. At least for Kyle. Now, I can only imagine the nightmare waiting for us.
The front door opens.
“We can do this,” April says. “We’re together.”
I nod and squeeze her hand. “I’m not letting go,” I reply.
She takes Caroline’s hand, and together the three of us make our way up the creaking front porch and into the heart of the clown.
We’re greeted with a long, shadowed hallway. Light comes from candles flickering with blue flame. The light dances on the walls, making everything move eerily.
We slowly make our way down the hall, pausing at shadows, flinching from the creepy dead objects on pedestals: skulls and mummified hands and taxidermy bats.
At least I hope they’re dead.
Farther on, I notice windows along one wall, but as we get closer, we realize they aren’t overlooking the town.
“Are those … ?” Caroline gasps in fear.
I stop short.
Five windows sit on one side of the hall, each revealing a room the size of a closet. And within each, cocooned in spiderwebs, are Jeremy and his brother Caleb, the redheaded twins Kerrie and Kevin, and pigtailed Eliza. They all float in space, suspended by thick wisps of thread, their eyes open and glassy, their mouths caught in silent screams.
“It looks like they’re covered in spiderwebs,” April whispers.
“No,” I say, peering closer at the pink weave. “I think it’s cotton candy.”
“Are they dead?” Caroline asks. “Can we save them?”
April smacks her fist on the glass; the sound reverberates down the hall, making me shudder. Well, the clown knows we’re here now.
But the wrapped-tight Jeremy doesn’t move or blink or register us in the slightest. He just floats there, suspended in cotton candy, staring into space.
“The clown is draining him,” I whisper as things click. I look to the other kids—they’re all just as pallid and gaunt as Jeremy. “All of them. It’s feeding on their fears, just like it’s feeding on the fears of everyone trapped in the carnival. I bet if we get these guys free, we’ll have a better chance at defeating the clown.”
“How do we get them out?” April asks.
I look around and grab one of the items from the nearest pedestal, a skull cast from solid metal.
“I don’t think that’s going to work …” Caroline says nervously, backing away a few steps.
“It has to,” I reply.
I step back, shielding the others behind me, and toss the skull toward the glass with all my might.
It seems to fly in slow motion.
But it doesn’t shatter the glass when it hits.
Instead, it disappears.
“What?” April asks.
I step forward, pressing my hand to the glass where the skull had—or should have—hit. The glass is solid. So what happened to the skull?
From down the hallway comes high-pitched laughter.
We all look over to see the clown prowling toward us, tossing the metal skull in the air as it walks.
“Naughty little children,” the clown says. “Trying to break my home. Trying to steal away my friends.”
It stops tossing the skull.
“But you’ll be my friends too. You’ll play with me. Forever and ever.”
It tosses the skull toward us, and as it does so, the skull grows a body, becoming a towering skeleton that races toward us, its metal footsteps making the whole hall shake.
“Run!” I yell.
April and Caroline and I turn and run back down the hall. Only it’s no longer the hall from before. Now other halls and doorways branch out around us, each of them with a sign on top: DANGER IN THE DEEP; HALL OF MONSTROUS MIRRORS; ENDLESS ELEVATOR; TUNNEL OF TORTURE.
None of those sound fun, but one seems less terrifying than the others.
“Come on,” I say, squeezing April’s and Caroline’s hands as I lead them toward the hall of mirrors.
We run through the door, which immediately slams shut behind us. I fully expect the skeleton or the clown to knock the door down, but we’re greeted with nothing but silence.
Silence, and pitch-black darkness.
Then there’s a flash of light, and we shriek in shock as hundreds of reflections stare back at us.
The light strobes again, but this time when I look into the mirror, I’m not standing with April and Caroline at my side. Even though I can feel their hands in mine, I stare at myself surrounded by darkness.
Then another flash, and there are kids around me. Bullies from school. Laughing and calling me terrible names.
I squeeze my eyes shut and squeeze my hands, holding on to my friends for dear life.
This is all the clown’s doing. None of this is real. None of this real.
“Come on,” I say aloud. “We have to keep going. We have to find—”
“Kyle?” April asks.
I skid to a stop at the sight of Deshaun, April, and Caroline in front of me. In front of us.
For a moment, I think it must be another trick. Another mirror. Another twisted reflection.
The mirrors have already tried that trick, many, many times.
But then Andres squeezes my hand and lets go and runs forward with a happy yelp, right into April’s arms, and none of their eyes turn blue, none of them become walking nightmares or living dolls or any of the other terrible things we’ve seen in this maze of horrors.
“Andres!” April calls, squeezing him in tight.
And before I know what’s happening, Deshaun is wrapping me in a hug so tight I can barely breathe.
His arms don’t become boa constrictors. His jaw doesn’t dislocate and try to devour me.
Instead, he jumps up and down, spinning me around, laughing so hard he might actually cry.
When he finally does step back, there are tears in his eyes.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he whispers.
“Neither did I,” I reply.
“What happened to you guys?” Caroline asks after prying April off Andres long enough to hug him.
My answer lodges in my throat. I look to Andres, who comes over and takes my hand.
“Kyle battled his inner demon and won,” Andres says.
I take a deep breath. It’s
far too easy to remember how it felt to lose myself, far too easy to remember how it felt to have Andres’s neck between my hands.
“It was the clown’s own fault I won,” I say. “It got me, for a while there. It had me thinking I was no better than my father. But that’s what undid its power. It tried to make me turn on Andres. And he’s, well …” I feel myself blush. “He’s been one of the best things to happen in my life. Seeing him there reminded me of that. Reminded me that I’m not alone.”
“And that you’re loved,” Andres says. He squeezes my hand tight.
“Aww, we all love you!” April says. She runs over and nearly tackles me with a hug. Soon, Caroline and Deshaun and Andres are wrapped tight around me.
I know I’m not the only one crying.
“Well, isn’t this sweet,” comes a voice.
The clown’s voice.
“Five best friends, together at last. But I think you forgot someone. You forgot ME.”
The huddle around me unfolds. Still holding hands, we form a line and come face-to-face with the clown.
It towers above us, easily fifteen feet tall, as though it has been stretched like taffy. Its arms and legs are thin and tipped with clawed hands, like spider legs ending in talons. Its head is skeletal, smeared with black diamonds over its eyes and bloody red lipstick, its teeth jagged and cracked, sharklike. Around us, the hall is transformed into a circular room of mirrors. The floor and ceiling too are mirrored.
The clown is everywhere we look, reflected a thousand times.
What is more terrifying is that our own reflections are nowhere to be seen. After being subjected to all the terrible reflected versions of myself, the absence makes me fear the worst.
“Do you like my little amusement park?” the clown asks. Electric-green drool dribbles down its lips, hissing when it hits the mirrored floor. “I was getting so lonely. I wanted a place where all my new friends could play.”
“They aren’t your friends!” I shout. I don’t know where the bravery comes from, but I take a step forward, anger burning in my throat. At what the clown had made me do. At what I let it make me believe. Never again. “None of us are. You’re alone, clown. You’re alone, and once we’ve finished with you, you’ll be dead.”
The clown’s eyes dart to me, spearing me in place.
They look so much like my father’s.
And the moment I think it, the clown starts to change. Becomes more human.
Becomes my father. Although a monstrously large version.
“That’s rich, coming from you,” my dad says. His voice burns in my mind. It takes all my concentration to prevent myself from believing it’s really him. “You think I don’t have any friends? Please. You’re the one who nobody loves. You’re a mistake, Kyle. You’re a mistake, and everyone knows it. That’s why they don’t love you. That’s why you should end them.”
As he talks, I feel myself sinking. The sensation begins in my chest as my heart sucks down to my feet, as my lungs deflate, as my thoughts cloud and darken. And I feel it, the serpentine whisper of doubt that slithers through my spine, repeating everything my father says, confirming every terrible word.
Except …
I feel Andres’s hand in mine. Just as I feel April beside me, and Deshaun beside her, and Caroline beside him. All five of us, connected. Together.
These are my friends.
It’s not just a friendship of convenience. No. Banishing the clown may have brought us together and bonded us, but it also made us something no one could touch and nothing could change.
It made us family.
A spark fills me, a tingling warmth that lifts me out of the depression, out of the doubt.
The darkness subsides, and I’m back in the mirrored room, and the clown is still just the clown.
“Did you really think that would work again?” I ask. “You’ll never turn me against my friends. Never.”
Andres and April both squeeze my hands.
The clown just cackles.
“Well,” it says, “I had to try. Perhaps now I’ll just have to try harder.”
“We aren’t scared of you,” Caroline says.
“Yeah,” Deshaun pipes in. “We’re onto your tricks. You can’t scare us anymore.”
And maybe it’s my imagination, but I swear the clown shrinks.
“You’re nothing,” April says. “You thought you could scare us. You thought we’d fall for it again. But we’re friends. We stick together. No matter what.”
I know it’s not my imagination this time. The clown is shrinking.
And when I look around, I see its reflections freaking out—they shake their heads, or scream silently, or shudder violently—and I know that this is working. This is working.
“No,” the clown says. “No, stop.”
We step forward as one.
“You’re nothing,” I reply.
The clown shrinks, faster and faster.
And now it’s crying. One by one, the reflections wink out.
“Now who’s the scared one?” Andres says. We take another step.
“We’re together,” April says. “You’ll never separate us.”
“We’ve defeated you once,” Deshaun says. “And we’ll do it again.”
The clown is normal height.
We take another step, its wailing so loud it almost makes me feel bad. Almost.
“It’s just you versus us now,” I say. “Not even your reflections are here to save you.”
And it’s true: The room around us is completely dark. No reflections, no mirrors, just empty black space. The clown buries its face in its hands, wailing and sobbing wordlessly.
“You’re through,” April says.
We take another step forward.
But then I realize it’s no longer sobbing.
The clown is laughing.
“Stupid, stupid children,” it says through its laughter. It slowly lifts its head from its hands. The grin on its face slices it clean in two, and its eyes burn brighter than ever. “To believe that would work on me again.
“That only worked before because I needed you. Because I was lonely. But I’ve made new friends. Friends who don’t fight back.”
The clown spreads its hands wide.
From the darkness come Jeremy and his brother and his brother’s friends. The five of them form a line in front of us. Their faces are smeared with paint, and cotton candy hangs from their bodies like spiderwebs. Like the clown’s, their eyes burn blue.
We all take a step back.
“And that means, stupid children, I don’t need to play with you anymore. In fact, I think I’ve grown bored of you. I think it’s time to destroy my old toys, don’t you?”
It stands tall. The flames in its eyes promise destruction.
“I hope you run fast,” the clown says. “Because if they catch you, you’re dead.”
The clown flicks its wrists, a conductor gesturing to a choir.
As one, Jeremy and the others run forward.
There’s nowhere to run.
The moment we turn, we come face-to-face with mirrored walls. They circle us, blocking us in. We slam our hands against the panes, hoping to find some exit, some clue, while we watch the other kids run toward us in reflection. But it’s not just the kids running toward us now—their fears begin to manifest in the mirrored room. Skeletons crawl out from the shadows, rats scurry from the cracks, and bats swoop down from the rafters, while the floor wobbles with quicksand. In that quicksand, I see shark fins slicing impossibly through the floor.
Behind all the terrible nightmares, the clown cackles, rising up twenty feet high.
“What are we going to do?” April asks. “We’re trapped!”
We cower against the mirrors, looking around, trying to find an exit. But there’s nothing—the walls curve all around us, trapping us within, with the clown cackling in the center like this is all a one-ring circus and it’s the ringmaster.
Jeremy and the others slow whe
n they’re a few feet from us. Monsters swarm around them. My heart beats so fast it feels like it’s going to punch out of my ribs. Caroline squeezes my sweaty hand and April’s grip trembles.
This is the end.
We’re trapped with our former friends and all their fears.
And this time, they don’t just want to scare us.
They want us dead.
The kids take a menacing step forward.
“I’m sorry I dragged you all into this,” Kyle whispers.
“Shut up,” I reply. “This isn’t your fault.”
“But if I hadn’t given in to my fears …” he presses.
“We all gave in to our fears,” April says. “You can’t blame yourself. You shouldn’t be ashamed for being scared.”
“You guys are the best friends I could have asked for,” Kyle says. “Thank you for always being there.”
I squeeze his hand, but I refuse to believe this is the end.
I refuse to believe Jeremy and the others are past saving. Even as skeletons and bats and rats swarm behind them, as flames flicker in the mirrors. Even with the clown behind them, cackling in glee.
And then I see it.
The ropes.
So thin I barely notice them at first, not through the monsters rearing up in front of us.
But there they are—thin pink strands that stretch from the kids in front of us to the clown’s fingertips.
“I have an idea,” I call out. “I’m going to make a distraction. And when I do, I want you guys to sever those ropes. I think they’re what’s fueling the clown and keeping the kids under control.”
“But—” April says.
“No time,” I reply.
Before anyone can stop me, before I can think that this might be a horrible, horrible idea, I run, screaming at the top of my lungs, away from Jeremy and the mind-controlled kids. Away from my friends.
As one, the kids and their fears turn toward me, and I can only hope that I was right about this.
“What is he talking about?” Andres asks beside me as Deshaun runs, full speed, away from the kids.
But I know.
The Fear Zone 2 Page 13
