Let's get creepy.
Ch. 1
"There's no way she'd still be alive."
"It's a movie, dude."
"I know that. I'm just saying, her arms are lopped off and she's still running."
"You sure talk a lot for someone with strep."
Maggie gave a dry, throaty cough. The other girl scrunched up her nose and leaned to the other side of the couch.
"I swear to god, if you get me sick-"
"Then it's your own fault. I told you to stay away from me."
"And let my ailing friend housesit all the way out in the boonies by herself? What kind of person would I be?" She swilled the last bit of her beer and dropped the can into a pile at her feet, more than a little drunk now. "You know you appreciate the company."
It was true. Shay could be obnoxious, especially when she drank, but she was a good friend for spending the night with Maggie out here. Craig, the family friend that Maggie was housesitting for, lived almost twenty minutes from town, and it got lonely sitting around watching TV all day and night. The only company that she had had all weekend before Shay came was Tito, and Maggie didn't necessarily care to spend time with him.
Plus, the house was old and just a little creepy. Craig was an enthusiastic hunter, and there was a taxidermied animal in just about every room in the house. On the first day, Maggie had almost screamed when she saw the opossum on the bathroom counter. Mr. Opossum now lived in the laundry hamper, or at least he would until Maggie's stay was over.
"Did you hear that?"
Maggie looked over at Shay and saw that she was sitting upright. The other girl grabbed up the remote and muted the TV.
Silence.
Maggie waited a moment, then relaxed back down into her pile of blankets. She coughed a little. "It's prob'ly just Tito. His chain drags on the porch when he moves."
"It sounded like scratching," Shay said, still frowning.
Maggie pulled her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. It was almost two in the morning. "He scratches on the door sometimes. I think Craig actually lets him in the house when people aren't over, which blows my mind-"
"It didn't sound like a dog. There! There it is again!" Shay sat up on her knees and peered around Maggie into the dimly lit kitchen. "Can't you hear that? It's a tapping noise now."
Maggie scowled and turned the TV off. She knew that her hearing was a little muffled, what with all the mucus clogging her up, but this wasn't the first time she had watched scary movies with Shay. "That's it," she told her firmly. "We're going to bed. I'm not playing this game with you."
"I'm not playing!"
"Well then, we better go upstairs and lock ourselves in tight. Come on." Shay sat still while Maggie gathered up her phone, blankets, and cough medicine, then grudgingly got her own things and followed her up the stairs.
"Maggie! Maggie, someone just broke in!"
Shaken from sleep, Maggie sat upright and fumbled over the nightstand for her glasses. She got them on and turned over to squint against Shay's cellphone light. "What?" she hissed. "Are you-?"
"They broke the window, I heard the glass-!"
Thump.
They both started at the noise from downstairs. Shay covered her mouth, her eyes enormous.
"Call the cops," Maggie breathed, a film of sweat already breaking out on her skin. "Now." Shay's hands shook as she misdialed the number once, then twice. Maggie threw the blankets back and placed her socked feet on the floorboards as softly as she could. She crept over to the door to make sure it was locked, then stopped and listened hard. Someone was definitely moving around downstairs.
Shay had finally dialed the number and was whispering to the dispatcher when the footsteps started up the stairs. Maggie hurried away from the door, straining to keep her steps quiet, and pulled at Shay's elbow. She was afraid that the intruder would hear her talking.
The footsteps kept coming.
"Closet," Maggie half-mouthed, half-breathed. She pulled Shay off the bed and pushed her toward the door. It wasn't big enough for them both to hide in, but it would at least muffle Shay's call.
"I need the address-"
Maggie herded the other girl into the closet and rushed the address in the same half-mouthing way. Shay repeated it into the phone, her voice catching. The hunting jackets and winter coats hanging around her quivered with her trembling. Maggie closed the closet door as much as she could before the old hinges threatened to squeak, then dropped to the floor and crawled beneath the bed.
She could see under the door now, but not clearly. There was a shape moving in the hallway. Maggie bit her lip to keep from whimpering when the shape came closer, the footsteps louder. The shape became two as it approached, and then the shapes defined themselves as shoes.
They stopped right outside the bedroom door.
Maggie covered her mouth, her face twisting up when the doorknob was twisted left and right. She looked to her right, trying to see Shay in the closet, but the blankets hanging over the edges of the bed shielded her from view.
The door rattled in its frame like someone was shaking the doorknob, and then the shoes under the door moved backward.
Maggie jumped at the noise of a shoe colliding with wood. She clenched her sweaty fists tighter, nails biting into her palms.
The door flew open with the second kick. It bounced off of the wall so hard that it almost shut again, but the intruder pushed it open. Maggie watched in horror as a pair of dirty converse sneakers stepped into the room.
Maggie held her breath, praying that Shay had had enough time to finish the call and was holding hers too.
The sneakers moved purposely toward the bed. Maggie cringed when she heard the blankets and pillows being yanked aside. They fell to the floor, and suddenly she had a clear line of sight to the closet. She still couldn't see Shay, but she couldn't hear her either. Maybe she finished the call. Maybe the intruder wouldn't find them. Maybe the police would get here and everything would be okay.
The sneakers turned to face the closet, and Maggie almost screamed. They strode right over, and then the door was yanked open.
Shay did scream. Maggie opened her mouth, and she would have made a sound if she could. The intruder fell on top of Shay, and Maggie could see that it was a person in a white hoodie. The clothes in the closet thrashed around as Shay fought the intruder, shrieking all the while. Something flashed in the intruder's hand, and Shay's screams jumped an impossible octave.
"Go to sleep," a man's voice cut deep and ragged through all of the noise. There was a strange sound, a wet and metallic shiiick, and Shay gave an inhuman sort of squeal. The wet sound happened again, then again, and again, faster and faster, and Maggie understood too well what the man held in his hand. A horrible heat washed over her, and suddenly all of her muscles were coiling and tensing without her willing them to.
Run, instinct was telling her. Run now.
The man was still stabbing at Shay, the awful metallic sound filling the room, when Maggie rolled out from under the bed on the side opposite the closet. The sound stopped as she scrambled upright and bolted for the door, and she looked over her shoulder to see the hooded man jumping up to follow her.
She flew into the hall, almost slipping on the hardwood floor at the top of the stairs. She heard the killer's footsteps, slow and even, behind her. She rushed down the stairs and straight to the front door, colliding hard with it.
Her fingers twisted at the deadbolt, but it refused to turn. Like everything else in the house, the lock was old and required a certain technique that Maggie had struggled with every time.
Footsteps on the stairs.
"Maggie…" the killer called softly to her.
Maggie shoved away from the door, tearing for the kitchen. He knew her name, god, he knew her name. She rushed into the room, giving a hoarse yelp when she stepped on a shard of glass. The pain brought her back then, and she lost a good deal of the steam that had her moving quickly. Body trembling, she twisted her head left and right for a way out, but the shattered window was the only way. Maggie hurried over to it, making strangled noises as she stepped over the broken glass. She reached up to grip the sides of the window and haul herself outside, but immediately cut her hand on a jagged sliver still jutting from the frame. She gave a strangled cry and cradled her hand against her chest. Sticky warmth spread across her pajama top.
The footsteps changed from the hollow thunk of the stairs to a more muffled stepping, and Maggie knew the murderer was in the downstairs hall. She gave up on trying to crawl through the window and started yanking open drawers, looking for a knife, but there wasn't enough time. The best thing that she could find before the killer's shadow was on the kitchen doorframe was a can of Ajax powder.
Without no other decisions left to her, Maggie turned and threw herself into the walk-in pantry.
The killer came into the kitchen not three seconds after. He held a long knife in his hand and, though it was too dim to see, Maggie knew that it was steeped in blood. He looked at the broken window. Then his head turned to the pantry, and the rest of his body slowly followed.
Cowering between the shelves of preserves and jerky, Maggie knew that he could see her. She trembled violently, clutching the bleach powder in her hands as he took a step forward.
"Come on out, Maggie May," he said, rasping the pet name her mother had always called her. Glass crunched under his sneakers, and he stepped into pantry doorframe, reaching for her.
She flung the open Ajax can in his face.
White powder burst everywhere. Maggie's eyes immediately began to sting as a light cloud of bleach drifted back into her face, but the killer got the worst of it. He gave a howl of pure agony as his face was absolutely plastered with the stuff. He reeled backward, scrubbing violently at his eyes, and through her own tears Maggie saw the knife leave his hand. It clattered to the floor as he doubled over, one long arm outstretched and searching for the sink.
With a surge of fresh adrenaline, Maggie made a rush for the knife and snatched it off the floor. The handle was slick and warm, and it made bile rise in her throat, but she clutched it tightly nonetheless.
The blinded man was fumbling desperately with the sink knobs when Maggie took the knife in both hands and stabbed him in the shoulder. He roared and whirled around, swinging a fist. It was a blind punch, but it grazed the side of her head. She stumbled under the blow, the bloodied handle of the knife slipping away from her as she tripped forward. The killer leapt back at the sink and cranked the water on, leaving Maggie to drag herself upright and stagger into the living room.
Tito was at the back door when she reached it, barking and clawing at the glass. She yanked the blinds away from the sliding door and watched the Newfoundland snap wildly at her under the porch light, the chain attached to his collar straining against his two hundred-pound weight. Another dead-end.
"Ungrateful little bitch."
Maggie spun around to see the killer standing hunched in the kitchen doorway. He gripped the doorframe in one hand, his long knife in the other.
She let out a breathless squawk as he shoved off of the doorframe toward her. She lunged around the coffee table, running circles around the furniture to keep a distance between them. The killer snarled when she grabbed up the TV remote and hurled it at him, missing by hardly a few inches. He chased her around the couch once more, then promptly leapt right over it. Maggie let out another soundless shriek as she felt the fingers of his free hand grasp for her trailing hair.
Maggie thumped up the stairs when she reached them. She made it halfway up before the killer snagged the back of her shirt and wrenched her toward him. Her arms flailed for something to grab hold of, but she was falling too quickly.
She tumbled helplessly backward, her head meeting the floor with a crack at the killer's feet.
Cold. It was so cold.
There was a sharp pain in her belly, like someone was jabbing her. What was happening?
The world was swaying, and she felt a hot pressure in her face like she was upside down. Her nose was brushing against something soft, something that smelled like sweat and dirt. She cracked her eyes open, fighting the pain in the base of her skull, and saw the back of someone's legs in the dim light.
"Aah," she wheezed when the person carrying her lurched suddenly. Their boney shoulder was what was hurting her belly. She wriggled a little, and the person stopped moving. Blood rushed in her ears as the world flipped, giving her a brief view of the moonless night sky cluttered with tree branches. The ground came up under her feet, but she wasn't ready to stand yet; she fell, landing on her shoulder in the tall grass. There was an awful pain in her wrists when she tried to move her hands, and she realized that they were bound behind her.
She gasped as she was roughly turned onto her back. The killer loomed over her, his hood still drawn up around his face. He pounced on her, sitting hard on her abused belly and pinning her beneath him. He drew the long knife out of his hoodie pocket and pressed the bloodied edge up under her jaw.
"Don't scream, and don't run," he growled. "Not unless you want to go to sleep for real. Understand?"
Maggie nodded, making the gesture as small as she could to keep from being cut. The killer seemed satisfied with that and took his knife away. He stood up and pulled her onto her feet.
"Walk," he said, shoving her forward. She stumbled a little, but caught herself. She walked.
Without a moon in the sky, and with all of the trees in the way, it was difficult to tell what time it was. Maggie wasn't sure how long she had been unconscious. It was still horribly dark, and without her glasses she found herself twice as badly off. She tripped over roots and tangled grass constantly, and one time fell so hard on her front that she barely avoided smashing her nose flat. The killer had laughed at her, a dark and gritty sound, then hauled her upright and pushed her forward again.
They walked for hours, and then the sky started to turn pink through the trees. Maggie was limping by then, her feet bloody and torn by rocks and stickery branches. She didn't dare stop, though, for fear that the killer would stab her with the knife that she knew was hovering behind her back. Her head continued to throb, and the cold burned her suffering lungs. Sweat stung the slice in the palm of her left hand.
The tangled forest eventually began to clear, but only after a grueling uphill climb that left Maggie with more than one bruise on her knees. She heard a truck trying to start, and then voices. Her heart fluttered at the sounds, but then the killer promptly wrapped an arm around her and pulled her tight to his side. The tip of his knife prodded her ribs warningly, and she looked down to see him holding the weapon inside his hoodie pocket.
"Don't you say a fucking word," he hissed down into her ear.
They skirted a trailer park, then several rundown houses. Maggie began to recognize the area when they came across a wide dirt road, and she knew even without her glasses that they were near the old coal mines. Her grandfather had lived up here until three years ago, when he'd been moved to a home.
Home. Home had to be twenty-five miles off by now! Maggie bit her lip, her eyes welling up. The killer dug his fingers into her arm when her shoulders started to shake, but she didn't make a sound. She couldn't.
They passed the junction that would have taken them into town, then her grandfather's empty house. They continued into a neighborhood full of beat-up and abandoned houses.
The killer led her up to a two-story house at the edge of the woods. It might have been a beautiful thing once, but it had long since passed the point of repair. Paint that had probably been white now flaked off of the paneling in gray sheets. The windows and front door were boarded up with graffitied plywood, and the front porch was falling in. Remnants of a wrought-iron fence surrounded the cluster of grass and weeds that served as a lawn.
They walked around the back of the house and up onto the crumbling back porch. The back door wasn't boarded, and the killer pushed it open. He forced Maggie inside and shut it behind him.
In the little light that filtered through the cracks in the plywood, Maggie saw with her limited vision that the inside of the house was just as bad as the outside. Garbage, old clothes, moth-eaten furniture, and graffiti littered the place. A small mattress was pushed up into the corner of the room. Empty beer cans and liquor bottles surrounded it.
Maggie made a startled sound when the killer clamped his hand on her shoulder. He marched her over to the wall opposite the mattress where a radiator was rusting, and then forced her down next to it.
"Don't move," he threatened, and then he was going over to the piles of things next to the dirty mattress. He brought back a length of coarse rope, and a silent sob wracked Maggie's chest. What was he going to do to her?
The killer put the rope down beside her and drew the knife from his hoodie. He forced her to lean forward, and she cringed, thinking that he was going to stab her. The knife blade, cool and crusted with blood, settled itself between her wrists; there was sharp, popping sound, like a zip-tie breaking, and then the pulsing pressure on her skin was gone. She tried to bring her stiff arms in front of her, only to have the killer push the knife up against her throat.
"I said don't fuckin' move!" he snapped. The blade nicked her skin, and Maggie froze. The killer grabbed her hands roughly with one of his, then put the knife down beside his shoe and started binding her wrists with the rope. He knotted the remaining short length to the radiator and grabbed up the knife again.
Maggie watched fearfully as the killer inspected his work, tugging on the knots and making her wince. He muttered to himself, walking around her and tapping the knife's blade against the side of his thigh. She caught a glimpse of his mouth in the darkness of the hood, and she realized that something about the shape of it wasn't quite right. Before she could get a better look, the killer turned around and brandished his knife at the air in front of him.
"Don't tell me what to do," he hissed, his hushed voice rising enough for Maggie to hear. Her skin crawled as he swore a string of curses at someone that she couldn't see, and then stalked over to one of the boarded-up windows. He gripped the sides of his head and broke into a fit of gravelly cackling. The word schizophrenic came to mind, and the thought made Maggie despair even more.
"… because she's gonna say yes!" The killer was almost shouting now. He pointed the knife at the wall, his arm quivering with anger. "I'll show you, I'll show you right now." Maggie quailed against the cold, rough metal of the radiator as the killer whirled and stomped over to her. He dropped onto his knees and grabbed hold of her hair with his free hand, holding the knife against the skin beneath her eye with the other.
"Maggie May, I gotta show this fucker." He whispered the words as though he were confiding a secret. "But first, I gotta show you somethin'…" He let go of her hair and fished in his hoodie pocket, withdrawing her glasses. He rammed them on her face, then reached up to his hood and pulled it back.
Maggie's lips parted in slack terror, eyes glossing. There wasn't enough air in the room, or maybe her lungs just wouldn't expand.
Lank, black hair spilled out of the killer's hood, falling longer than hers by a good six inches. It framed his lean face like curtains, contrasting heavily with the whiteness of his skin. Not pale, but white like a corpse. There was a leathery and uneven texture to it, too, like the flesh of a burn victim.
He smiled down at her when her eyes traced his disfigured nose, the corners of his lips pulling up to meet a set of dark and jagged scars that cleaved halfway up to his ears. But it was his enormous eyes, and the way they glittered at her with only the most remote sliver of sanity, that had every hair on her body standing straight up.
His eyelids were gone. There was blackened scar tissue surrounding the sockets, marking separate burns on top of the one that had melted his nose.
The killer's lips twisted up further, and Maggie barely registered his voice drawling low and soft to her.
"Aren't I beautiful? I can make you beautiful too, maybe. When you've earned it." His gleeful expression vanished, replaced by a thunderous look in the blink of an eye. He tilted his head down to look at her hard, and the angle cast shadows over him that transformed his face into a grinning skull.
"Wanna know somethin', Maggie May?" his voice deceptively soft. "No matter how good you are, no matter how kind and sweet, this world is gonna fuck you." He pressed the cold flat of the knife into her cheek harder as the enunciated the last two words. "And you're so fuckin' sweet. A goddamn saint. It was only a matter of time before you got what you deserved."
Maggie cringed when he took hold of her face in his hand. His grip wasn't tight, but his fingers were cold and boney. The dark expression on his face turned mischievous, and he trailed the knife down to rest against her lower lip.
"How did we meet?" he asked, tapping the blade against her gently. Maggie looked down her nose at the knife and shook her head as carefully as she could. The killer pressed the blade down, parting her lips until he could touch her front teeth with the tip. It took everything in her power to not pull away from the crusted tang of blood.
"Think, Maggie May. You need to get the answer right, because if you don't I'm gonna carve my name on the roof of your mouth. Sound good?" The look of shock and horror on her face made him toss his head back and laugh. He stroked her cheek with his free hand, shooshing her. "Shh shhhh, it's okay. I'm gonna give you a hint first. Think, think. We were at the park."
Maggie was absolutely certain that she didn't know this psycho personally, but had she seen him somewhere? At the park, like he said? She thought hard, but it was difficult with him tapping her front teeth with that filthy knife. She stopped looking down at the weapon and closed her eyes, sweat already beginning to bead in her hairline. Christ, god, think!
The last time she had gone to the park had been that evening with Shay over a week ago, and… yes. Yes, she did remember something. A guy in a white hoodie, homeless-looking. He had been digging through the trash that some picnickers had left behind. Shay had stopped tossing the frisbee and pointed him out to her.
"Dude. Fucking gross," she had said, her face a mixture of disgust and amusement. Maggie remembered watching the guy shovel the scraps into his hood like he was starving, remembered how guilty she had felt.
"Don't laugh," she hissed at the other girl. "It's not funny."
"He can't hear me."
"It doesn't matter, it's not funny!"
Maggie looked from Shay to where the guy was crouching and was startled to see him watching them. He dropped something half-eaten from his hand and stood up. Shay muttered something about going home, but Maggie ignored her. They had two paper bags with them, full of a sandwich and a half and the last can of beer. Plus, there were plenty of other people at the park still, enough to come to their aid if the guy ended up trying anything weird.
She raised an arm and waved to him, drawing a hiss out of Shay. "Hey! Did you want to play frisbee with us?" The guy didn't move, and he didn't say anything back. Shay grabbed Maggie's arm.
"Dude, don't," she said. "I don't want him coming over here."
Maggie shrugged her off. "He's hungry. I'm gonna give him the sandwiches when he comes over."
"Then why the fuck did you ask him to play fucking frisbee?!"
"Because it would have been rude to-"
"Well, fucking look at that. Doesn't matter 'cause he's walking away."
Maggie turned back and saw the guy disappearing off into the woods that bordered the park. She gave Shay a sharp look, then snatched up the bags and ran after him. By the time she reached the lining of poplars and cottonwoods, though, he was completely out of sight. She called after him. No answer came from the woods, and so she left the bags on a nearby picnic table.
Yes. She remembered everything. Back in the cold, abandoned house, Maggie opened her mouth wider around the knife to speak.
"You did this… because I gave you food?" she whispered, confused and terrified. The killer pulled the blade from her mouth to lay it against her nose. He glided the flat of it back and forth slowly, an almost dreamy look in his unblinking eyes.
"You're just the light of everyone's fuckin' life," he said softly, but there was an underlying malice to his words. "Ms. Fuckin' Perfect. It didn't take me a week to figure that out. The way everyone looks at you, and you have so many goddamn friends. That one girl, though, she was a cunt. I really did you a favor. What was her name? Sheri? "
Maggie eyes welled hotly. "Shay," she croaked.
The killer giggled, a shrill and unexpected sound, and let go of her completely. He rocked backward, folding his long legs under him and resting the knife on his knee.
"That's right! Shay. I picked her first, you know. I was gonna take her to him after I'd killed you both, but all she did was scream. You, though…" he trailed off. Maggie watched him absently reach up to touch his bloodied shoulder, staring blankly at the floor. It was a moment before he lifted his gaze to her again, but when he did his eyes positively glimmered with madness. "You're gonna be perfect," he whispered.
Maggie swallowed, steeling herself for the answer to the question she was about to ask. "Perfect for what?"
The killer leaned forward, causing her to press back into the radiator. "For me, Maggie May," he grinned. He reached up and stroked her face, ignoring her when she leaned her head back as far as she could from him. His cold fingers trailed down her jaw and neck then, slow and careful. Maggie tensed when he cupped her breast through the thin pajama top.
He squeezed her hard, and she jerked.
The killer burst into a fit of laughter and leapt upright, knife in his hand. "You're gonna be my first proxy!" he crowed. He sliced the knife excitedly through the air a few times, stalking back and forth. "You'll go with me everywhere, do everything I want... And you don't get to go to sleep until I say!"
Proxy? Maggie didn't recognize that word. She watched the killer walk circles around the room, waving the knife and jabbering to himself. It was several minutes before he calmed somewhat and stopped pacing. He put the knife in his hoodie pocket, ran his fingers through his greasy hair. He turned his back to her and started talking to the imaginary person again.
"No, she'll be a good girl," he said. He was quiet for a moment, as though listening to someone else talk. "Sure, I fuckin' know. The big, white house by the park. Yeah. Yeah, I know..."
Maggie listened, wide-eyed, as the killer related details about her to the air in front of him. He knew what kind of car she drove, where she worked, what apartment complex she lived in. He even rattled off some of her roommates' names. A cold, leaden weight sunk in her belly a moment later when he started talking about her parents and her little brothers, how the youngest of them had just turned eleven and still slept with a nightlight. He knew that the spare front door key was inside the birdhouse by the kitchen window.
The killer talked a while longer with himself, occasionally getting angry and snapping curses, before falling silent and going over to the mattress. He kicked beer cans out of his way to get to a plastic bucket in the corner. Maggie watched him yank a rag out of it, dripping wet. He wrung the thing irritably, then threw himself down the mattress, muttering something too soft for her to hear as he folded the rag up and draped it over his eyes. He pulled a filthy blanket up to his waist and went still, one hand in his hoodie pocket where the knife was still tucked.
Maggie watched him, counting the minutes silently to herself as his breathing slowed. Her throat itched, and she needed to cough so badly that her eyes watered, but she choked the reflex back to keep from making noise. Twenty minutes. The killer hadn't moved once. Maggie stretched her fingers and felt carefully for the knots that secured her to the radiator, sucking in a breath when the moving around tugged at the gash in her palm. It was so quiet in the old house that she could have sworn she heard the wound reopen.
Her fingers searched and searched, but found nothing but straight rope; the killer must have looped the knot out of her reach. She bent over, stretching her stiff arms as far back as they would go to keep feeling for the knot. Not a minute more passed before the killer called softly to her, not moving an inch as he spoke:
"Maggie May, if you pull on that rope one more time I'll stab your whole fuckin' family to death."
Review for more chapters.