The footsteps grew louder. Shit. Russ was heading down the hallway. Patrick froze, afraid to even blink in case Russ heard his eyelashes flutter. A trickle of cold sweat traced its way between his shoulder blades as he pressed them against the wood. Marking the spot where the axe might bury itself if Russ decided to chop through the door like Jack Nicholson inThe Shining.But Patrick dared not move, terrified he’d give his presence away.
Below his elbow, the doorknob rattled.
It was the longest minute in Patrick’s life. He couldn’t see a thing as Russ attempted to enter the cellar. He was only a consciousness suspended in darkness, the vibrations from the shaking door passing through him like shock waves. Maybe he was already dead. If Patrick let himself relax, Russ would open the door and walk through him as if he were a ghost.
Just when Patrick thought he was going to spontaneously combust from the stress, the footsteps moved away. He doubled over, gagging on a silent scream of fear and relief.
When he managed to get his breathing under control, his determination to find theSlashermachete returned. But there was no way he was descending into the cellar in total darkness. He hadn’tcome this far, only to break his neck on the stairs. How could he turn on his flashlight without the light giving him away?
Patrick had never been good at pivoting when plans went south. He liked all his avenues determined well in advance. To get himself out of this dilemma, he needed to channel his inner Final Girl. The trouble was that he didn’t think he had an inner Final Girl, despite all the classic slashers he’d watched. In those movies, the Black characters tended to die first, so he’d always identified as an unsuspecting victim. Like Clare.
Think, he berated himself. Thinking was one thing he was good at. What would Nancy Thompson do? Sidney Prescott? Or Jordan Knox?
As soon as he thought of Jordan, the solution came to him. He unbuttoned his Oxford shirt, stripping down to his undervest. It was identical to the white tank tops Carrie had worn when she’d played Jordan at the Rialto. When they’d had two shows a night on busy summer weekends and no time to do laundry, the theater’s manager bought her the Fruit of the Loom three-packs at the Main Street department store.
Patrick smoothed the ruined Oxford shirt along the crack of the door. There. That would hide his activity from Russ. Feeling accomplished, Patrick turned on the flashlight.
The open staircase plunged into a black hole. He should’ve known the cabin would have the classic creepy cellar. Bad things happened when people went down stairs like these. People who went into basements in horror movies rarely came out again.
Carrie did, he reminded himself, and only her reputation had suffered. As long as he didn’t find any dead mothers, reel-to-reel tape players, racist brain-swapping neurosurgeons, boilers stoked by scarred custodians in striped sweaters, or secret passages inhabited by naked, feral women, he’d be okay. How creepy could it be?
Very, it turned out.
Patrick stepped off the wooden steps and onto the ground, thecoldness of the unfinished concrete seeping through the soles of his deck shoes. The walls were unfinished, too, nothing but skeletal wooden frames and semi-opaque plastic sheeting. His nose itched from the musty smell of untreated lumber and cement.
He nearly jumped out of his skin as he took another step forward and a hanging cobweb swatted his face. Clawing wildly, he discovered it was the string from a naked lightbulb. He tugged until it clicked, but the light didn’t turn on. The power was still out.
He abandoned the lightbulb and passed through a doorway, sidestepping a large dehumidifier, and shone the flashlight around. He was met by row after row of industrial shelving units. At the last second, he pulled his lips out of the whistle he’d been about to issue. Russ might be able to hear him upstairs.
Patrick couldn’t believe his eyes. He knew there wasSlashermemorabilia in the cellar, but he hadn’t expected so much of it. Stunned, he found himself drawn to a clothing rack in the far corner instead of starting his search for the machete. Several coats in the Slasher’s signature red buffalo plaid hung on the rack, in various states of wear and tear. Patrick thumbed through the hanging garments, reverently brushing his hand over Derek’s bloodstained football jersey and Heather’s fringed leather jacket, shredded in the back where the Slasher had stabbed her. There had probably also been multiples of that jacket, but some stylish actor or crew member must have nicked the original.
As Patrick got to the end of the rack, a dark shape loomed out of the corner of his eye. He swung his flashlight to the left, and did a double take as he spotlit the glossy cardboard face of the Slasher. A couple of standees leaned against the wall, next to a stack of large boxes. The top box was open, a black T-shirt spilling out between the flaps. Patrick picked it up out of curiosity, and discovered it hadSlasher Summerprinted on it in a font that looked like dripping blood.
Holy shit. There weren’t just movie props down here. He’dfound a hoarder’s dream of festival swag. Another time he would’ve stuffed his pockets with fridge magnets and pens and squishy axe-shaped stress toys, all printed with the Slasher Summer logo.
There was no sign of the machete, however. Shit. Someone must have reorganized the artifacts after Carrie had disrupted them. Patrick searched the shelves feverishly, wondering if he’d missed it. Most of the props were innocuous, like a pile of generic school backpacks and outdated textbooks, but Patrick spotted one of Cindy’s red-and-white cheerleading pom-poms and the baseball cap the doomed hunter had worn in the first scene.
Patrick moved on to the next shelving unit—and halted.
Tiffany’s head sat at the end of the aisle, her face peeking out from the shadows.
Patrick jammed his fist into his mouth to stop himself from crying out. His eyes widened in horror as they scalded with tears. No! He’d only just left her. Ranger Russ and his axe couldn’t have caught up to her so quickly. Is this what Russ had in store for all of them? Transforming them into props for hisSlasherreboot, to compensate for the time he’d never had with the Jumpscare Society? First Freddy and now Tiffany. The kills were getting increasingly brutal. Just like a movie.
Tiffany gazed accusingly at him, tendrils of blond hair framing her pallid face. “Oh God, I’m so sorry, Tiffany,” he whispered, holding back the urge to vomit again. It was all his fault for organizing this reunion, for insisting they come to the cabin. Jason had been right. They should’ve met up someplace else. Someplace with less history. Just because Patrick’s memories of Cedar Lake were mostly good, didn’t mean they’d been good for everyone else.
Against his better judgment, he moved down the aisle toward Tiffany’s head. Through his wet, blurred vision he noted how smooth and rosy her cheeks were. Tiffany had great skin, but this was too perfect.
Like a model.
Patrick snorted back snot and tears. Itwasa model. Cindy’s head,chopped off by the Slasher after he catches her and Derek having sex in the woods. Under the flashlight’s fuzzy beam, it looked much more realistic close up than it had on-screen.
Patrick wiped his eyes and continued the hunt with renewed resolve. Tiffany might still have her head, but who knew for how much longer with Russ on the rampage. He couldn’t get distracted from his main goal. His friends’ lives depended on it. He urgently searched every shelving unit, mentally cataloguing each item, until he found himself back at the clothing rack.
The flashlight found another waxen face, tucked behind a long garment bag. The striped blanket wrapped around it had fallen away, revealing a long nose and glassy, bulging eyes. Patrick didn’t recognize the profile. A replica of nerdy Ralph, maybe? Patrick had assumed the actor had played the corpse, but maybe they’d used a dummy since his body had bobbed facedown in the lake.
The dummy was slouched against the wall. Patrick crept closer and tugged at the blanket to uncover the rest of the face.
He staggered backward as if he’d uncovered a ticking bomb.
