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The room comes into focus a piece at a time, and it isn’t until the last piece clicks into place that I realize why I suddenly don’t feel so great.
A masked figure kneels on the floor. Which, given the location, is completely normal. So is the blood-spattered mask he wears, and the knife dark with blood that he holds in his hand.
All normal things for a haunted barn-turned-slaughterhouse, even if this just looks like a regular storage room without any decorations other than the red lighting.
The body he leans over is just as normal, with its myriad of stab marks that slowly stain theSUNY Plattsburghhoodie the ‘victim’ is wearing.
But this isn’t a part of the haunted house.
And the person on the floor isn’t an actor.
Evan-fucking-Davids stares up at the ceiling, choking out gasping breaths as his hands search for something, anything, on his chest to make the bleeding stop. He turns to me, eyes wide, and one hand comes toward me, eyes begging for help as his lips move in the same pattern over and over again, blood trickling from them to stain his red-lit skin.
Help me. Help me. Help me.
“Evan?” I breathe, forgetting for a moment that there’s someone else in the room. “Holy shit,Evan—”
I dive forward, or start to just as the man in all black rises smoothly to his feet, shakes his head, and slides his gloved fingers over the blade to clean it.
For some reason, for some stupid reason, my eyes stay fixed on the blade, on his gloves, and finally on the mask itself. Until the man takes a step toward me and every cell in my body has the same idea.
Run.
Chapter16
Ihave to find Nic and Nolan.
Hell, I’ll take finding anyone as I scramble down the hallway, too afraid to look over my shoulder. My stomach reels, heart speeding up like a terrified rabbit’s in my chest. I scream, wordlessly at first, then manage to turn the sound into something more productive, until I’m begging anyone for help.
Except it all just blends right in. My screams mesh with the others coming from all parts of the barn, and I can’t findanyoneas I run down the red-lit, cement-floored hall with my heart in my throat. Surely there has to be someone here.
A quick glance over my shoulder shows me exactly what I don’t want to see. The man in the white mask walks confidently after me, eating up the distance with strides that are worth at least two of mine.
Fuck.
The knife glints in the red light, and I can feel goosebumps crawling up my skin. I don’t have a lot of time before I end up like Evan; so, I have to find someone.
Anyone.
My hands land on a closed door and I grab the handle, shoving on it so hard I hear the door groan. There’s something pressed against it from the other side, but the door isn’t locked, so I keep trying.
After all, thanks to me cornering myself at the end of the hall, I don’t have anywhere else to go. Another shove gets the door open a few scant inches, but it’s not enough for me to crawl through. One more shove, then another, and finally,finally,I can cram my body through the opening, shimmying through the doorway into the darkness beyond.
When I’m almost through and prematurely celebrating it by taking a deep breath, however, a gloved hand grabs my wrist, yanking me hard back against the barn. I shriek, stumble, and pullharder, trying to make him let go.
The white plastic mask he wears appears in the opening I’ve made, one that’s too narrow for him to fit through, and I swear I hear a soft curse from behind it as he reaches his other hand through, aiming for my hoodie.
“No!” I scream, my free hand coming up to slam his wrist back against the door. This time he definitely says something, though nothing pleasant or informative judging by the garbled sound. I’m finally able to rip my wrist free of his other hand, staggering back as I do while I cradle my wrist to my chest to inspect it for injury.
Nothing. He hasn’t cut me, and other than grinding my bones together with his strong grip, I’m fine.
But,fuck,I’ve put myself in a bad situation. This side of the barn backs up against the woods, and even though I look to both sides of the building, all I see are the barn walls or tall sheets of plywood nailed together, to keep people out of the woods I’m currently at the edge of.
Screaming won’t help, either. Not with—
Theslamon the door makes me flinch, and I take a step back when I see that masked man doing exactly what I had just done, using his body weight to open the door faster than I had. It should take him a few times…but it doesn’t. With only two shoves he has it open enough that he can walk through, and I see the hilt of the knife in a sheath at his belt as he stares at me, hood up and mask so fucking creepy in the low light from the barn.
There’s a moment where I just stare at him. I take a breath in, and I swear he does the same, like he’s staring at me and trying to figure out what to do.
