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Chapter 3: Fright Night
Aleks nodded as she took hold of Zach's hand, "We should get going than..."
She found herself looking towards Brooke and the others, nodding as well before she frowned more.
"I just want to get the hell out of this place...go home."
She was more and more alert with each second, and her feet ached.
***
Tracy looked at him, tilting her head as he spat at her. "You don't get it...Terrance was mine, we both knew it. He could have his dalliances all he wanted, but we both knew who he chose at the end of the night."
She ripped the knife out of his gut, before taking a step back and allowing the skin to rip across the back of her neck.
"I'm merely the one who starts this little show, someone else is coming for you. And you won't make it out alive." She commented, reaching her hand with the knife up and slicing it down across his shoulder for a moment.
She wanted to see him bleed, see him die right now.
"Its your time to die, and right now you will."
She stepped backwards and off the porch for a moment, before she looked over her shoulder briefly before turning to face Micah once more. She pulled out her phone, sending her text.
'I've had my fun...he's all yours.'
-Aleks, Tracy
Noah
Noah cracked his neck, and nodded, moving closer. He looked at the two women.
"So do you have anything to use as a weapon?"
______
Drew
"The only line I crossed is the stretch marks on your mama's thighs."
________
Sawyer
She put her hand on her chin as she looked at him, "What kind of promises? Who'd you promise?" She asked.
She studied his features, he looked old. Older than he was probably, like stress, and guilt, and bad decisions, had been making him deteriorate.
'All things in good time.'
Micah was only dimly aware of the sound of her phone buzzing.
All he knew was that he hurt. And he was tired.
And, dammit, he was scared. He had been here before. That night in the park, he had hovered at the door to death, seeing the world around him go hazy and dark, only for to be snatched back to life at the last minute.
What had his life been since?
What had Tracy's life been? If all she had been able to manage was dreaming of revenge, dreaming of blood... Vengeance for her murdered paramour.
How delightfully tragic. Shakespearian, almost, and almost as contrived.
Vengeance was empty, of course. That's what all the stories said. That's what Hamlet said, after all. He should know, he'd embodied the dumb Danish prince for a good two months. Hamlet had gotten his revenge, and lost so much else...
Tracy would find this hollow too. She would live her days pining for a ghost, surrounding herself with more and more...
But this was no story.
He dragged himself across the ground, blood on his front, tears on his face, all the screams dashed to pieces in his throat. So tired...all he wanted was to rest. Just to close his eyes, to sleep...
Perchance to dream.
He could die, he supposed. Living was hard, after all, and long and tiring. Easier to rest...
In my heart there is a kind of fighting, that would not let me sleep.
But there were others. That's what made it hard. His mother... God, what would this do to her?
Had Terrance's mother cried when she learned? Did Fitz Smith even have tears in him to cry? Terrance didn't seem to think so. But Micah knew what his mother would do when she learned... He could say less of his father. But he knew they would now both, truly, be alone.
It's only in stories that death brings people together. Micah had deluded himself into believing it...
But death only drove people apart, cleaved them aside, cast them off in treacherous shards.
Lord, we know what we are, but not what we may be.
Leslie... What would become of her now? She needed a friend, she needed to learn to laugh, she needed to learn the world wasn't so cruel, so suspicious as all that...
Unless the world was. And he'd been the poor, plain fool who didn't see it.
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love goes there.
He owed Carl a date.
There was too much! Too much to live for, too much to do, too many who would miss him! Mother and friend and boyfriend...three, maybe, but they were his, and he had never let himself know the worth of having them. What did Tracy Lewis have but ghosts?
Though know, 'tis common. All that lives must die, passing into eternity.
It was looking at him. A creature from a nightmare, black-cloaked, white mask. It leered at him, looking down like he were a sickly animal lying on the side of the road.
"No..." he told it, "No! I...I won't let you, I..." he shook his head, feeling hot tears there, "I won't."
Death. The undiscovered country, from which none borne return.
The killer bent down to regard him, as if he'd actually been listening.
"What does my death do?" he asked, "For anything?"
The killer considers that for a while, long and hard. Micah lay there, bleeding, panting, feeling cold fingers clutch at his heart.
Maybe he's imagining it, maybe it's a fever dream, maybe he's gone already, but it seems as though Ghostface tells him, "Nothing," just before yanking him back by the ponytail he was so proud of, and sliding his knife along his neck.
He feels his life pour out of him, hot and red and much ado about nothing.
The stars twinkle down on him as he lay dying and, spontaneously, he remembers something else, not from Hamlet, but from a not-long-ago night on the lake.
How far away the stars seem...
Hundreds of them, there seemed to be tonight. Thousands! And fading all the same, one by one before him...
And how far is our first kiss...
He can almost feel Carl's lips on his, can almost taste moonshine and soda and weed and the soft, woodsy smell of him. He falls in love again, and feels almost content...
And oh! How far my heart.
Death is never easy. But Micah thinks of it as a brief transformation...
Somehow, that helps.
-Goodnight, Sweet Prince
Tracy watched the entire thing go down, and she just made her way slowly over to Micah's body.
She knelt down over it, placing her hands on his throat and coating her own in his blood.
"Goodbye, Micah. You'll be missed."
She said, watching the life drain from his eyes and making sure he was good and dead before she looked up at the killer and nodded once. "Time for my screams than." She said, clearing her throat as she scooped Micah's body up into her arms and tossed the knife into the woods as far as she could, who cares who found that.
She looked up before letting out a blood curdling scream that tore through the entire camp, her peak performance she might add as she sat there and held onto Micah's body while screams just continued to rip through her throat.
"HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME!"
But inside, oh on the inside she was smiling and laughing at her revenge being had, on Micah for Terrance. But man this was a bittersweet memory right now, and she found herself letting the fake tears fall down her cheeks as she held onto the very dead corpse.
-Tracy
"Well, Aleks has this lamp," Brooke proffered the appliance, "But, honestly..."
A scream ripped through the silence.
"Oh, no," moaned Zach, "What now?"
***
"Oh merciful Jesus," gasped Fitz, "In the name of God, that's another scream."
He turned to Leslie, "It sounded like a woman. Certainly not your friend. We ought to go."
***
Theodora got to her feet, stepping toward the window at the faint, but still present, sound of cries.
She turned to Teague, wordlessly asking a thousand questions at once.
***
She had gotten lost. She didn't know how... She'd never had any great skill for directions, and in the dark, with the blood running hot and fear in her mouth, it was harder still to keep things straight.
But she heard the cries, new cries, tearing through the darkness to her. They were close, closer than the cries from the cabins.
Gathering her coat around herself, she hurried on, pushing between trees, ducking under low branches. She dare not call out and run the risk of being spotted, just in case...
Phyllis emerged into the tiny glen and felt her world fall apart.
The girl sobbing on the ground might as well have been invisible where she was concerned. All she could see, all there was to see was the body on the ground. The boy.
Her boy.
"M-Micah?" she whispered, barely audible, "Micah, baby..."
She hadn't called him 'baby' since he was one. It hadn't seemed right to raise her son with pet names. Pet names devalued people, made them feel like less than themselves...
"Who...who did..." the words curdle on her lips as her legs go out from beneath her. Her son's face is expressionless as a stone, his eyes fixed open and staring at the sky above...
"No!" she says louder, "No, you...you can't...Micah, please..."
She didn't ask her son for things, not anymore. She never begged...
"Please, don't...don't..."
No more words can come to her. She kneels there in the mud, sobbing 'don't, don't, don't..." over and over, dousing her son's body with her tears.
-Brooke, Zach, Fitz, Theodora and Phyllis
Teague wordles drew his gun and nodded to Theodora.
"Stay behind me," he said, before he calmly walked out the door.
***
"You're a sick, sadistic son of a bitch!"
***
The knife barely missed him. Fortunately, he ducked before it did.
Pedro titled his head as he brought out his flashlight. It was a Buck 119 Special, covered in blood. Combined with all the chaos that he had heard that night...
It was happening. He was in a Slasher movie.
"Joder," he said out loud, a little too loudly.
Theodora looked to Howard, "Nobody leaves."
You shouldn't have let Zach go. Though whatever rational sensibility still remained to her pointed out that those were a girl's screams. Not that that made things any less distressing.
She followed Teague out the door and into the night.
***
Howard nodded at the Vice Principal, lowering himself into a seat beside Audrey.
This was not the time, he knew. There was too much going on, the specter of Maggie hanging over them all... But maybe it was the thought of her, of her sadness, the things she'd never said, had never reckoned with that ensured he had to tell her.
"Audrey..." he began heavily, "There's something I must tell you."
***
Tina pressed her back against a tree, pressing her eyes shut.
Not Eli. Some screaming bitch. Maybe he's okay. Maybe he's alright.
Her palm was sweaty and slack against the grip of Kellerman's gun. She told herself once, a hundred times, a thousand that she could use it if it came to that.
Wouldn't be the first promise she'd broken, though, even to herself.
And it had been bitching holding the gun on the Maddox twit's head. While it lasted.
"Okay..." she told herself, turning the gun over in her hands, "Okay, Miss T. You've got a good head on your shoulders. You've got wits. You've got your courage, 40 proof of it. You can do this."
She moved out from behind the tree, and very nearly popped a shot at the first person she saw.
"You?" she demanded, looking her niece's insalubrious boyfriend up and down, "Go fucking figure."
She noted the piece at his side, scowling, "That hasn't been you firing potshots off all damn night, is it?"
***
Eli stopped at the crest of a path that was barely a path. A twisty, overgrown wain that went up a steep rise at what had to be the edge of the camp.'
"Aw, fuck..." he panted, clutching at a stitch in his side, "Aw, dammit. Fuck, that hurts."
He lifted a sweat-matted face to the heavens and, in doing so, found a familiar and offending odor meet his nostrils.
"Hell."
Fortified with new resolve, Eli continued along the path, coming to a spot where trees were sparse, and grass overgrown...
More than one type of grass.
"Deanna!" he called out, spotting the tiny figure curled up on the ground, joint in hand, "Seriously? I'm shitting myself looking for you, and you're sitting here blowing a fucking doobie! You are just a complete..."
But as he got closer, he noticed how bloodied and bruised she was. The gun at her side. And over there, standing over her...
"Oh no..." he breathed taking a step back, "Oh, hell no."
-Theodora, Howard, Tina and Eli
As they walked, Teague said, "If I see the sumbitch that's causing all this trouble...he's a dead man."
No hesitation. There wouldn't be a judge or a jury. No...Teague would make sure this bastard could never hurt anyone ever again.
***
"What is it, Dad?"
***
Lance shook his head.
"Haven't had to. You?"
***
Carl heard the screaming, and he came running from his cabin as fast as he could.
And soon he was face to face with Tracy, and Dr. Hendricks, and...
'No.'
"Micah? Micah!" He sobbed. He couldn't be dead. This couldn't be happening...
Deanna looked up when she saw Eli approach, "Shit cuz, welcome to the reunion."
She chuckled. shoving at her brother to rouse him. "Eli found us first."
Part of her wondered whether that was a good thing or not, but at least she could spend some quality time with the family right? Pfft, their family was so fucked up it didn't even matter. She looked from her brother to her cousin, keeping her gun raised up.
"Sorry cuz, I'm gonna be keeping Kieran close and all...considering he is the one who found me."
***
Tracy released Micah's dead body, shaking her head as she took a stand and shook her hands.
She was coated in his blood, how the hell was that possible.
"I just...I was running away from the gunshots...and I found his body..."
She didn't know what to say after that, instead she played the victim card.
-Deanna, Tracy
"You won't see me stopping you," Theodora said softly, "We ought to have sounded the alarm the second Deanna Wilcox went missing. We knew something wasn't right..." she paused, "I've been a fool. a proud fool. Or a scared one, and that's almost as bad."
***
There was no point dancing around the point.
"I almost shot Phyllis Hendricks tonight," he told his daughter bluntly, "Mr. Evans knows. He...he was good enough to take the gun off me."
***
"You might need to soon enough. I get it off the grapevine that my nephew's back."
Tina cocked her head to the side, "DeeDee's disappearing act starts to make sense."
She moved in a tight circle, "You haven't seen my kid, have you?"
***
Eli took a step back, "...found you?"
His blood had turned to ice, and it was slow to thaw. He looked from his tiny, bloodied cousin to his other, almost as bloodied cousin.
"Oh, I bet there's a fucking wild story behind this one."
He turned to Dee, "Get up!" he grabbed her by the arm, hauling her to her feet, "Are you out of your fucking mind? What is this, a camp-out?" he rounded on Kieran, "You couldn't just leave us all be, could you?"
***
Phyllis was only dimly aware of voices around her. The girl...it was Tracy Lewis, she knew, but none of that seemed to matter. And someone else...
Carl. Carl who had only moments ago asked her leave to go out with her son. As if anything she said would've made a difference...
"Found him..." she echoed Tracy, her voice hollow, "He was alone?"
Her son, her precious, beautiful son, who had coveted company all his life, had always strove to be around people... Had died alone.
The thought would've hurt like fire, if she could still feel.
-Theodora, Tina, Eli and Phyllis
"That makes two of us." Teague took a deep breath, "We should have never come here."
***
Audrey's eyes widened.
"What? Why? Why'd you bring your gun?"
***
Lance shook his head. Great. Just great...
"Guess I get to keep that promise I made."
***
"No...No..." Carl fell to his knees, tears coming to his eyes.
"Micah...no..." he sobbed, voice cracking. It felt like a bullet in his heart.
"That's a crime to lay on Harold's doorstep," muttered Theodora, "Even so...they said we couldn't get out of it, but I'm sure if I'd kicked up enough of a storm with the louts that own this place... I pride myself on my resolve, Edward, on my determination. Where the hell was that? Now a good woman is dead, and Lord knows where everybody else is..."
She slowed down, "We must get out of here. At the soonest opportunity."
Though, even as she said it, she felt the ugly sinking feeling that 'getting out of here' was already impossible.
***
"No, no...not my gun. Ed..." Howard paused. Somehow, even now, it felt wrong to shirk Teague's title, "Principal Teague thought it best I go armed, when we went looking for you all. Earlier in the evening, I...I had found something in Dr. Hendricks's things. I was confused, frightened...for myself and for you. And angry, Audrey...angry most of all."
***
"What promise?" asked Tina, "Oh...this about that ra-ra shit you tried when he called her?"
That had only been last night. Sure, she'd been piss drunk, but it still felt like a lifetime ago.
-Theodora, Howard and Tina
"We're camping in the Common Hall. Come first light, We're getting out of here."
***
"Why? What did you find?"
And what was her Dad doing going other people's things?
***
"Yeah..." Lance swallowed and asked, "How much of a chance do you think I'd have, man to man?"
"Man, huh?" Tina had a biting comment to that, that this kid was barely a man at all. And, really, he wasn't much, she'd observed so before, about the same time he'd sent her on a one way trip to Jupiter.
"Well, he's got about this much on ya," she left her hand hovering in the air a little over his head, "And he's muscled like a bull..." she noted his bare arms, "Eh, you could take him. It'd be a messy thing, probably come down to teeth and spit. That's how all fights ended up when I was a kid."
She shrugged, "Don't matter, though. I see the bastard, he's getting a bullet in the brain before you can even crack those milky white knuckles."
"Get in line," replied Lance.
His mind went back to earlier that evening...about how Tina had ended up on top of him...
"Can...we talk about earlier?"
"What?" she asked sharply, "Oh. That."
She quickened her pace.
"Thanks for the dope. Real unicorn shit."
"Thank you, but that...wasn't what I was talking about," Lance cleared his throat and continued, "If anything happened that was inappropriate, when you fell on me, I really am sorry."
He may be a Rapper, but he DID respect women.
"What happened?" snapped Tina, maybe too brusquely, "Nothing happened! Don't be an idiot. What, you think I got all moist in the nethers because you knocked my ass in the mud? I'm not that moist..."
She paused, hastily correcting herself, "I'm not that easy! If I had a problem with your ass, I would've said it already. And I have. That, before, that was..."
She cleared her throat, "That wasn't nothing."
"Ok... I'm sorry for bringing it up," Lance raised his hands in surrender.
Leslie heard more screams. A woman's. Still curious, she rushed ahead of Fitz, hoping, begging she'd find Micah.
And she did. In his sobbing mother's arms.
Tracy Lewis and the stranger faded into the background. Leslie entered a tunnel vision she was familiar with when she angry, acted with conviction. But in this instant, shock and denial was all she felt.
"Micah!" She ran to Dr. Hendricks's, kneeling down beside her in the mud. Leslie opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out. Tears formed in her eyes and her face grew red, her fists clenching the grass in frustration. Leslie wanted to say something, to do something.
But she was powerless. Leslie couldn't do a damn thing. She was a pawn in some bastard's sick game, all of them were. And Micah, the only one of them who was worth a damn saving, was just a casualty.
Leslie held her face in her hands. She always had control. She always had agency. But she let this happen. She was too late. Hell, she didn't even know if she could do anything to save him. She didn't know, something Leslie had always prided herself on, knowing. But Leslie failed.
And now, she lost her only friend.
***
Kieran looked up at the newcomer. Helper? Killer? Some personage of death?
No. It was much worse. It was Eli.
Of all the people who hate my guts at this place, Eli happens to be strolling by. Just as I happened to stroll by where my sister was tied and beaten to a pulp. If Nicodemus was right about one thing, it was the cosmic forces at work. Or as sane people referred to it, bad luck.
He put his hand on Dee's gun, lowering it for. "Hey, Eli. It's been a while." Kieran struggled to get to his feet, clutching his side. It dawned upon him that by now he had lost a lot of blood.
Eli's sass rang in his ears. "Oh, I missed that. You'd think a near-death experience would shut a guy up but here I am, stumbling out of prison into your summer camp looking like over-cooked roadkill. That was shot. Anything's possible." He bit his lip, trying his hardest to suppress the pain.
***
Dave glanced at Sawyer, surprised she was persisting with such questions. He was so used to students asking him to break down Milton or maybe explain iambic pentameter so they don't stumble over themselves reading Hamlet.
This, though, it felt nice, talking about himself for a change. To a student, yes, but considering the adults he shared company with and how they talked about their problems, over what might as well have been a game of "spin-the-bottle"...it was refreshing.
"To myself, mostly," he answered, thinking best how to choose his words. "Really, they were to someone else but...well, I didn't make them to her. More like for her." Dave sighed. "She's not here to see it but I doubt she'd approve."
-Leslie, Kieran, and Dave
"Oh, forgive me for not breaking down sobbing," said Eli, "Are you weary from your travels? Should I get you an iced tea and a footstool, you psychotic shitheel?" he turned to Deanna, "What is he doing here?"' he turned back to Kieran, "What are you doing here?"
***
Tina rolled her eyes, "Oh, don't get your balls in a bunch. Jesus, you're a delicate dandelion seed, ain't ya? DeeDee's dumber than I thought, not seeing right through you."
But she softened somewhat at the abashment on his face, "Yanno, it's a sad scrap of a man who pretends to be something he's not. For sex. I should know. I've had my share of scraps. I gave up pretending a long time ago. I don't even lie about my age at bars. If a john don't like what he sees, he can fuck off. What do I owe him?"
-Eli and Tina
"Oh, me?" Kieran weakly pointed to himself. "I happened my way out of jail and was just strolling down the freeway, lookin' for a ride to Lakewood when I see my sister beaten six ways from Sunday and tied to a tree." He adjusted his back against the tree, trying his best to stand tall. "Or did I just interrupt one of GW High's trademark human sacrifices?" Kieran racked his brain for anything else. "And I got in a car accident. I hope that clears things up for you."
"So, you broke out of jail, stole a car, wrecked it, and then you just...found her tied to a tree? Are you fucking..."
But Deanna had been sitting pretty next to him. He turned to her, "Dee, what happened to you?"
Not wanting to keep his back to his cousin for any longer than was absolutely necessary, however, he made sure to keep an eye on Kieran.
Just in case.
Deanna yanked her arm away from Eli, "Chill out Eli, Kieran saved my ass." she walked over to her brother and helped him up. "And right now he's one of the only damn people I trust, and that's saying a lot coming from me."
She snapped out, keeping her gun in her hand as she held onto her big brother.
"And don't start with the whole we've been out looking thing...because someone abducted me shortly after we got here, when I ran off from Audrey and those stupid ice breakers. I had a bag thrown over my head than was beaten with a bat in a boatshed. And than tied to a tree like a fucking beauty statue."
She laughed morbidly at that, the irony of everything. "Whoever it was had me call for big bro to save me...I got to the point where I actually thought I was gonna die, so I did call out for my brother...and than I told the asshole I would shoot him in the face."
She shrugged some, looking between her brother and cousin.
"I get to choose this time...and my brother isn't going anywhere."
Eli gawped at her, "He...saved you? Him? The guy who almost killed you...and me?"
He shook his head, "So much for all those bold 'fuck yous' over the phone you wouldn't shut up about."
Things were still falling roughly into place in his head. Kieran was back...he'd broken out of prison, he'd had some weird series of undoubtedly sordid misadventures to bring him here... And he'd found Deanna who had, conveniently, been kidnapped and left here.
"Okay...even disregarding the dipshit idiocy of running into the woods when you know a killer is on the loose, why don't we just pause for a second to acknowledge the fact that your big brother is a homicidal psychotic! You...you're gonna sit here with that fucking blunt in your hand..." he swatted it out, grinding it out under his foot, "and tell me you were abducted and brutalized, and your abductor actually fucking asked you to call for your brother to save you..."
He gestured grandly to Kieran, "And wow! Here he is! That doesn't seem a little convenient to you? A little contrived? Almost like it was set up so that a certain serial killer could play the hero?"
"You know me, Eli," Kieran grunted through the pain. "I'm a jack of all trades."
He wagged his finger at Eli, treading the line consciousness, as he called him a "homicidal psychotic," giving him one point. "That...that is reasonable. I make bad company."
"That..." Kieran pointed his finger again at Eli, but this time not in his favor. "That, I disagree with. Not the contrived stuff. I'm..." He spit out some blood. "I'm still stunned two hours out of jail and you're the first two people I meet. But the kidnapping stuff..." Kieran blinked, as if to stay awake. "That's false." He realized that was weak but so was he, as he fell back to the ground, brutally hurt.
Deanna grumbled as she bent down and threw Kieran's arm around her neck. "Let's just stop the idle chit-chat and family drama shit...we're both fucked up bad right now and need proper medical care. And if this place wants to kill my brother than they'll have to go through me."
She turned her attention to Kieran, "And you...don't fucking quit on me, stand up and walk." she ordered.
Her gaze drifted towards Eli, "You gonna help me or what? He was shot...and pretty badly by the looks of it. I wrapped it up a bit, but not well enough it seems. And if the bullet is still in there, than I gotta get it out."
She lifted her brother up, holding onto him as she held her gun out in front of her. "Who else is out here? And what the hell is going on?"
"There is no talking sense into you, is there?" Eli shook his head, "If you had any sense, you'd have tied him to a tree and told him to wait for the paramedics."
He looked at Kieran, "I'm not touching you, cuz. Not that our last tumble wasn't memorable. I still have the love marks if you wanna see."
Deanna could gripe and bitch all she wanted. She was a stubborn thing when she wanted to be, which was often, but Eli could be stubborn too. It was perhaps the one consistent family trait. Not that Deanna was technically his family, but even so.
"Who else? Probably everybody and my mother."
Figuring neither of his cousins would much appreciate the wit (and one might well try and kill him for it), Eli continued, "Screams, gunshots..." he looked at the gun in Deanna's hand, "You probably know about those. Nobody's where they're supposed to be, and everyone's really confused."
He looked Kieran up and down, "You do know they're going to skin you alive, right? Hell, maybe I'll be generous and let Emma have first go," he turned back to Deanna, "I told ya, Dee. If you love him that much, leave him."
Noah
"odds are, nothing good." He said grabbing Brooke's hand, then the lamp.
"Brooke, grab Alek's hand, we stay together, and you both stay behind me."
____
Sawyer
Sawyer nodded in acknowledgment and placed a hand on the older man's shoulder.
"Well I'm sure they'd forgive you, we all make mistakes."
"I've got a knife!" offered Zach, holding up the weapon in question with such swiftness that Brooke hastily stepped back, "I mean, it's Aleks's knife, but..."
"Lovely, Zachary, now all we need is a decent sized stick," Brooke accepted Noah's hand with a little smile, shouldering the door open and peeking outside, "Okay, so...it's just down that way."
"Yeah, it's not far," said Zach, "We could run for it. Well, Aleks couldn't. But we could. Not that we'd leave her behind..."
"How about a very brisk walk?"
"That is also good."
-Brooke and Zach