October 30, 1988

6 hours remain

Donnie and Gretchen descend the stairs, back into the throng of the party. They hold hands. They've broken a mild sweat. One of them is doomed and he knows it. She doesn't feel like a dead girl. She feels so alive, so full of human flaws and flawlessness that he knows doing it once won't unlock the secrets of the universe. Her face is flushed. She's breathing hard. He clutches her hand tightly, tracing the slender bones under the skin with his thumb. She pulls away, promising to be right back. She disappears into the bathroom.

He wishes he'd thought of that. His head is spinning, or maybe that's his body. The sick feeling again.

A spear comes out of his chest. It leads him to the fridge, where the memo has changed once again. Now it reads:

FRANK WAS HERE WENT TO GET BEER!

The letters jag all over the board. He turns around, can see everybody's spears now. They zigzag and curve around and through each other, a perfectly choreographed dance that fills the air with radiant futures. The sound in the room is gone again. Music silenced. He steps back to the stairs. Watches as another portal turns the corner, stops a foot away. Offering itself.

He crouches down, ignoring another spear as it bumps against his foot, followed by a drunken Godzilla suit. He thrusts his head into the bubble, watches as his eyes fly away from his head, shooting him into the next world and beyond...

Gretchen regarded him with amusement. He was kneeling, his face a foot away from her breasts. "What are you doing?" Wondering if he wanted to... Again...?

But he grabbed her arm instead, sudden alarm spreading across his features. "Come with me," he said. When she didn't respond immediately, he pulled her by the hand. They both ran out the back door, picking up Ronald Fisher and Sean Smith on their way out.

Cellar door...

"Where are we going? Donnie!" Gretchen yelped as they flew towards the shed. Donnie didn't answer her question, only asking Ronald and Sean if they'd brought their bikes with them. They nodded. Blank with confusion.

"Look, we gotta go," he told them as he unlocked the shed door.

"Where?"

He was hyper-focused. "You ever seen Grandma Death?"

"Why, is this about the book?" Gretchen asked, pulling her jacket tighter.

"No, it's Frank."

" Donnie..." Ronald was looking with consternation at the abandoned party scene. Thinking of the hot older chicks he was missing.

Donnie shoved bicycles at them. "Time is running out! We gotta go."

The four wheeled into Old Gun Road. It was a quarter to two by Sean's digital watch. The trees were living up to the season, stretching their brittle, clawed shadows over the roads. The moon guided their midnight flight through the neighbourhood, offering just enough light for navigation. But Donnie seemed to know exactly the right paths to take, even when the clouds obscured the moonlight and they were travelling in near darkness.

They pulled up in front of the Sparrows house. Donnie gazed at it in awe. "Roberta Sparrow. Grandma Death," he repeated to himself in a hushed voice. He put up his hood.

Sean didn't like the looks of the place. "Donnie, nobody's here. Let's just forget about it."

"Cellar door."

"What?'

Donnie pointed to the side of the house.

Gretchen followed him inside. Ignored Sean and Ronald's panicked expressions. Wondered where he was taking her. Trusting him anyway.

Donnie peered into the aging darkness of the cellar. Barrels and crates were stacked against the walls. Everything with a liberal coating of dust. He couldn't see any gems in plain sight, and the boxes had labels on them like 'COAL TENDER' and 'ABELMAN'S HOMEMADE JAMS'. Withered, lumpy things hung from the ceiling, knocking gently against his head as they explored. Paintings of indeterminate quality leaned against various objects. He examined an old mirror resting against the opposite wall. It was cracked and stained, barely reflecting his face.

A deep, ominous chord struck the room. He jumped, saw Gretchen over by an ancient piano. She grinned, tapped out a tune.

He turned back to the mirror, wondering if it could help him find what he was looking for. Tried rubbing a clean patch on it; a shard fell out of the frame. Donnie bent over to pick it up; glimpsed movement in the corner of the glass.

He fell sideways, just avoiding the point of the knife. Behind him, Gretchen was struggling. "Oh my God! Donnie! Donni-i-ie!" she screamed. Legs flailing.

Their unknown assailants held them by the throats, dragged them back into the starlit outdoors. Donnie felt himself pushed to the ground, then sat on, arms pinned to his sides.

"Why the fuck are you here!" growled a voice from above. To his left, a muffled shout. "Donnie!"

Sean and Ronald started in terror.

"Hey!"

"Oh my God," Roland moaned.

Gretchen's attacker shoved her as hard as he could into the road. She hit the dirt semi-conscious, the air knocked from her lungs. Coughing, breathing dust. The hulking figure turned to confront Donnie's trembling pals, ripping the stocking off his head.

"You're dead!" Ricky Danforth snarled.

"Shit!"

"Leave him alone!"

A knife glinted in the fading streetlamp above.

"Don't fucking move! Don't fucking move!" Ricky screamed, neck veins pulsing.

"Oh, man..."

Donnie kicked and twisted, finally managed to get an arm free. Somehow avoiding the knife, he reached up and tore off the nylon mask. Seth Devlin blinked down at him, panting. Drool or sweat smeared across one cheek.

"Fuck!' He jolted once on Donnie's chest, forcing his breath out. Ricky turned away from Ronald and Sean, yelled a warning to his friend. "There's a car!"

Gretchen rolled over, coughing.

"Get the hell out of here now! Seth, there's a car coming. Let's go!" Ricky forgot about threatening Roland and Sean, self-preservation instincts overriding all else. Seth hissed in Donnie's ear. "I have a bigger knife now..." Held it poised in the air.

Ricky was panicking. "Come on, let's go! He called the cops!" He ran off into the night.

"Did you call the fucking cops!" Seth screamed. Spitting with over-fuelled rage.

Donnie hit a patch of oxygen. "Deus ex machina," he gasped. Seth jumped up and down on him, waving the knife in meaningless shapes through the air. The erratic patterns of a corrupted system. "What did you just say? What the fuck did you just say!"

"Our saviour-"

Roberta Sparrow stands in her driveway. White hair blowing magnificently in the sudden gust of wind. Twin headlights blaze across the road, illuminating the whole scene in one enormous panoramic snapshot of fear and pain. Seth's monster mask lying forgotten on the ground. A beer can, crushed underfoot. These are the things our lives bear witness to, and vice-versa.

The car speeds towards them. Seth threatens Donnie with a knife. Their friends have left them here, as well they should. They know not what they are doing. Yet they do it for a purpose.

Grandma Death stands in the road, watching. Waiting. The headlights catch her in time and the tires swerve through the gravel, searching for another target. Gretchen Ross lies coughing in a maelstrom of light and sound.

Donnie twists his head, ignoring the blade digging into his neck. Sees the future. Screams anyway.

"GRETCHEN!"

"Donnie-"

Thumpitty-thump. A rabbit noise. Only this time it's the sound of rubber and metal striking flesh and bone, and while one could argue they perform basically the same function, to Donnie it's a supernova in his skull. A tear in the universe.

The car keeps going, does a neat U-turn in the middle of the road. Pointing back the way it came. Headlights fixed on tragedy. Donnie barely notices that Seth has fled, having played his part.

He runs over, no no nonono, kneels by her side. She's not moving. He brushes her long brown hair from her face, sculpted marble in the moonlight. He doesn't want marble. He wants...

"Gretchen?" A broken sound. Doesn't know where it's coming from, knows it can't be him. Whimpering. "Gretchen...? Gretchen." A car door slams in the night. "Wake up, Gretchen."

Footsteps on the rocky path. Big, bulbous red shoes. A man in a clown suit, sad/funny face now twisted in horror. "Frank..."

Donnie thinks he can see Gretchen's body heat coming out of her, floating into the air, just like the spears. Only it's not just coming from her chest, it's coming from everywhere and he doesn't know how to stop it. Shakes her limp form. Runs the back of his fingernails down her cheek. "Wake up."

Wake up.

"What did you do?" The clown's voice, high-pitched with fear. More fear than Jim Cunningham could ever imagine. "What the fuck did you do, man?... You killed her, Frank!"

More footsteps, from the driver's side this time. A ratty grey suit of fur, misshapen and dishevelled. The headpiece, glinting malevolently/benevolently from its owner's fingers. A handsome, human face without the mask. Long dark hair. An expression Donnie would not have recognized if he had been looking up.

The litany continued into the darkness. "Gretchen, wake up. Wake up. Wake up... Gretchen... Gretchen..."

Frank's voice.

"Is she dead?"

Not Frank. Scared, losing it. A human voice. Couldn't be him. Couldn't...

He could be Frank.

The guy was freaking out. "What were you doing in the middle of the road, huh!" he screamed. "What are you thinking!" Hysterical.

Donnie stood up from the body. Pulled at something in his hand. Ka-click.

Frank stopped yelling when he saw the pistol in Donnie's hand. His eyes widened. Just an easier target.

Bang.

The rabbit headpiece flies to the side of the road, turning over once to gaze at the stars. Frank's head snaps back, spitting red at the sky, his body following its own graceful arc to the gravel. The ratty fur bristles slightly in the wind. The clown stumbles back from both bodies, in shock.

Donnie waves the pistol at him. In agony. "Go home!" he cries. "Go home and tell your parents everything will be okay... Go!"

The clown takes off, stumbling in his oversized shoes. Roberta Sparrow slowly turns from where she was frozen in time. Donnie's letter flapping in one hand.