Sidney froze in her tracks.
He was here.
He had broken the sanctity of what she had thought was a safe place.
But maybe she was just seeing things.
She took a deep breath and tried to keep up with the choreography.
And then, she saw him again.
Weaving all across the stage in a haphazard pattern, trying to get to her.
Fuck no, she thought. She wasn't seeing things. It was clear as day.
It was him.
Sidney panicked and ran for the exit door, but a performer blocked her off; he was just doing the choreography as directed.
Then she turned and saw the ghost mask headed straight for her.
Sidney dodged the swipe of his knife as she felt it whizz past her arm, just grazing her.
She yelped and ran for the other side of the stage, weaving in and out of frenzied performers dancing their macabre dance, dodging them, searching for the killer in all of the madness.
She ran around a column, but there he was again!
Coming for her.
The black eye holes of the ghost mask were so evil, so soulless.
She ran past him as he grabbed at her, running for dear life, tears starting to find their way down her face.
Gus started to stand up, seeing that something was clearly wrong, but he wasn't too sure…
Sidney slammed into the back wall, losing her footing, and then kept running, avoiding all of the performers and their wild hand gestures.
Where was he? her mind raced. Where was he??
And then, she spun around to come face-to-face with the ghost mask.
Sidney let out a hellish scream.
The ghost-masked figure grabbed her arm in a talon-like grip but Sidney managed to wriggle free, and she collapsed on the ground in a heap.
"Hold it!! Hold it!!" shouted Gus, and suddenly all of the design mechanisms and the music stopped. The performers all froze and took off their masks, looking down at Sidney in bewilderment.
Sidney frantically looked around for any sign of the ghost mask, but he was gone.
Sidney felt the tears come streaming down, and she slowly rose to her feet.
Everyone was staring skeptically at her.
It was too much to handle.
Fighting back more tears, Sidney sprinted through the exit door off of the stage and into the darkness of the wings.
Sidney ran down a flight of stairs and into a small basement-like area that was cramped with props.
It was dark and quiet. An exit door led out onto the sidewalk. It was the perfect place for Sydney to gather herself and really process what had happened.
It was really him. She had really seen him. Or did she?
Am I losing my fucking mind? she thought. Maybe.
Maybe she was. Maybe all the stress that had been going on in her life lately was causing her to see things that weren't there. But she had sworn she had heard footsteps running off the stage seconds after the ghost masked killer grabbed her.
Was it really him? Had he snuck into the theater and tried to kill her while she was in her art form , her very own safe place away from the trauma?
It truly was following her, she thought. Her past was coming back full force to haunt her. What was she going to do? Fight, she heard the small voice in the back of her mind say again. Fight like you've never fought before. It was time for the sick bastard to become afraid of her instead of the other way around. She couldn't run anymore. That much was true.
No matter what she did, he would be there. No matter where she went or where she hid, he would find her.
The only person she felt that she could trust was Dewey, but her mind was so wracked with terror and doubt that she was actually starting to suspect him as well. After all, he flew all the way across the country just to be near her again; Was it really to protect her? Or was it to come after her and kill her after gaining her trust?
No, Sidney thought. It had to be Cotton. He was the only one with a motive strong enough to want Sidney dead, but how did Cotton sneak into a university building after hours? she thought.
He had to have broken in.
Or maybe, it wasn't him.
Wracked with all of these racing thoughts, Sidney leaned against a column to support herself.
Could it be Mickey? She thought. He was obsessed with horror films, but so was Randy. And Randy turned out to be someone she could trust dearly.
She thought she saw Mickey at the frat party, mostly the whole time while Cici was being murdered. But it was possible that he could have snuck out when nobody was watching.
Anything was possible.
It could be anyone.
Even the people closest to her.
She learned that from Billy.
It had to be Cotton, she thought. He was the only one that Sidney could fathom would be this angry with her-angry enough to want her dead.
She had to tell Gus that she just couldn't do it. It was too much pressure. now she was either going crazy or the killer knew exactly where she was at all times and he'd be there at the next rehearsal, and the next.
She couldn't risk that. She had to be done with everything until it was over. She had to be done with Derek. She had to completely forsake her college experience and her romantic life.And most of all she had to fight. Now.
The killer was getting closer, and she couldn't run forever.
Suddenly, the exit door banged open, and Derek came rushing in.
"Good evening, madam, your escort has arrived," Derek said.
"D-Derek," Sidney stammered. "What-what are you doing here? What happened to Mickey?"
Derek immediately saw the intensely distressed look on Sidney's tear-stained face and his eyes grew wide with concern.
"We swapped, Mickey had to work on a project. What happened?" he asked.
He reached for her face, and she pushed his hand away, stepping back.
"Derek…don't," she said, wiping a new tear off of her face. "I..I need to be alone, okay?"
Derek leaned in closely, trying to stare her in the eyes but Sidney kept looking away.
"Being alone is not the answer, Sid," Derek said.
"Yeah..well, I think it is," Sidney replied.
The seriousness in her tone of voice unnerved Derek.
It really sank in for him, and he took a second to process it.
"I need some distance," Sidney went on.
Derek took another pause, taking a deep sigh.
"Do I get a say in this?" he asked.
Sidney's jaw locked and another tear came rolling down her face.
"No," she said.
Derek nodded slowly, clearly deeply hurt.
"You got it," was his reply.
And then, he walked briskly out the exit door, leaving Sidney alone in the darkness.
"Alright, time to catch this son-of-a-bitch," said Gale, as she took a long drag of a cigarette.
Randy, Dewey and Joel were sitting on a stone wall in front of Gale as she paced back and forth outside the student center.
It was nearing late afternoon as the low-hanging sun cast shadows around a small grassy area near the quad where the foursome were sitting.
"All right, let's assume that the killer is repeating Woodsboro…" Gale started to say, but her phone that sat on a bench nearby suddenly rang.
Gale picked it up and put it to her ear.
"Yes?" she said.
A nasally voice could be heard from the other line.
"Tell Bob I'll call him back!" she exclaimed, and hung up the phone.
"Well, that doesn't explain the fact that someone has tried to attack and kill Sidney twice now. Why go after her if the killer is repeating Woodsboro? Sidney wasn't killed in Woodsboro," Dewey said.
"It wasn't for a lack of trying," Randy reminded him. "The killer is trying to finish what was started,"
"Sid's under protection, right?" inquired Gale.
Dewey nodded.
"When did she start smoking?" Randy asked.
"It was after those nude pictures of her were leaked on the Internet," Dewey replied.
Gale groaned.
"It was my head on Jennifer Anniston's body. Anyway," she went on. "There were more victims in Woodsboro before the home stretch. There was…Mr. Himbry, Tatum…,"
She exchanged an empathetic look with Dewey upon saying the name of his murdered younger sister.
"…My cameraman was killed after Tatum…" Gale said.
Joel suddenly stood to his feet.
"Listen, I don't want to hear about a dead cameraman, alright?" he protested. "Now I am warning you guys…I am a verb away from vacating these premises. I am not about to be carved up by a lunatic. I'm gonna go get some donuts, coffee, see if I can find some crack, X not Malcolm, and when I come back, you people better be talking about something more, let's say…Saved by the Bell-ish?"
Joel finished his rant, and walked off towards the cafe that was attached to the student center, leaving Randy, Gale, and Dewey speechless for a few seconds.
"He seems a little shaky," Dewey finally spoke up.
"Don't worry about him," Gale said, puffing on her cigarette again. "If the killer is following a pattern, maybe we can figure out who's next,"
"We shouldn't follow a killer's pattern. We were all involved in Woodsboro…could be any one of us," Dewey said morosely.
Gale scoffed at his defeated attitude.
"Well, what do you wanna do, bonehead? Just sit here and wait and see who drops next?" Gale protested.
Gale's phone rang again and she rolled her eyes.
"I don't know…phonehead," Dewey retorted.
Randy finally snatched the phone out of Gale's hand and put it to his ear.
"Gale's not here!" Randy yelled into the phone, exasperated.
"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" asked a deep foreboding voice.
Randy's eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat.
"You three look deep in thought," rasped the voice. "Have you ever felt a knife cut through human flesh and scrape the bone beneath?"
The killer snickered…it was a truly evil laugh that sent chills up Randy's spine.
"It's him," Randy said.
"Who?" was Dewey's confused question.
"The killer," Randy replied.
Gale and Dewey immediately started looking around frantically.
"He can see us," Randy said.
"Just keep him on the phone!" Dewey exclaimed.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know, just keep him talking,"
Dewey grabbed Gale's hand and ran in the direction of a few students standing around aimlessly.
"Look for someone with a cellphone," Dewey said.
Randy stood for a second, frozen, mesmerized but also petrified by the fact that he was talking to a murderer.
"Hi…" Randy said. "What's up?"
"They'll never find me…" the voice said.
"So? Let them have their fun," Randy replied. "So uh…what do you want?"
"Let's play a game, you geek…What's your favorite scary movie?"
Randy squinted, narrowing his eyes, focusing in on a girl talking into a cellphone.
"Showgirls," Randy said. "Absolutely frightening,"
Randy ran towards the girl, and spun her around.
"Hey!" she exclaimed, a flabbergasted expression on her face. "What's your problem?"
A deep voice resounded from the other end of her cellphone, but it wasn't the killer's voice by a long shot.
"Sorry…" Randy said, realizing that it wasn't her.
"So what's your favorite scary movie?" Randy asked. "No, wait…let me guess…Dorm that Dripped Blood? House on Sorority Row? Splatter University? Graduation Day? Final Exam? Am I close?"
"Closer than you think…"
Randy recoiled with shock as he backed straight into another student, who gave him the finger.
"Sorry…" Randy said. He frantically searched around him, looking for other people with cellphones.
It felt like his heart was pumping a hundred gallons of blood every minute.
He swallowed hard.
"You won't find me, geek," the voice said. "Do you want to die?"
"Is that the best you can do? Because Billy and Stu were much more original," Randy said, and started running towards a slender, white man with a baseball cap who had a cellphone up to his ear.
He spun the man around.
"Hey, watch it buddy!" the guy exclaimed.
Randy held out his hand as an apologetic gesture and spun around again, searching for anyone who might be the killer.
"Wrong guy, dead boy," the voice said evilly.
"Am I close? Warmer? Colder?" Randy said.
The voice laughed…it was an all too chilling chortling. Almost demonic.
"Why are you even here, Randy? You'll never be the leading man…" the killer said.
"Fuuccckkk you!" Randy yelled into the phone.
He was pacing wildly across the quad, wandering aimlessly, searching the campus madly for any clue of where he could be.
And where were Gale and Dewey?
He didn't see them anymore either.
He was wandering closer and closer towards Gale's news van parked on the street.
"No matter how hard you try, you'll never be the hero and you'll never ever get the girl…" the disguised voice rasped.
"Oh yeah? Well let's redirect the moment, Mr. I'm So Original," Randy said. "Where's your innovation? Why copycat two loser ass high school dickheads? Stu was a pussy ass wet rag, and Billy Loomis, what the fuck?"
Randy had mindlessly wandered closer to the back doors of the news van.
"Billy Loomis was a rat-looking, homo-repressed mama's boy. Why not set your goals higher? Huh? You wanna be one of the big boys? Manson? Bundy? O.J?"
All of a sudden, the back doors of the news van flew open and a gloved hand suddenly grabbed Randy's head and snapped it backwards, heaving him into the van and banging the doors shut.
A nearby boombox completely drowned out the sound of Randy's muffled scream.
Nobody saw a thing.
Gale and Dewey were racing frantically around the side of the student center, searching for anyone holding a cellphone.
"Over there!" Gale shouted.
A young girl was sitting in a circle with her friends underneath a tree, holding a cellphone to her ear.
Gale ran up to the group of friends and snatched the phone out of the girl's hand.
"Hey!" she shouted, perplexed more than anything.
"Who is this?" Gale shouted into the phone.
"Who the hell is this?" a female voice proclaimed from the other end.
"Gale Weathers, author of the Woodsboro Murders," Gale said.
"Gale…" Dewey said, and took the phone out of her hand. "It's not him,"
He tossed it back to the totally bewildered young college student who caught it, and put it back up to her ear as her friends all stared at her in disbelief.
Gale and Dewey started running across the quad but then Dewey stopped, pulling Gale aside.
"White male suspect. 9 o clock,"
"My clock or your clock?"
"My clock," Dewey said.
Their eyes drifted over to the right to see a young guy in cargo shorts and a collared shirt, holding a phone to his ear. He disappeared behind a stone wall.
"You go at him from the back," Dewey commanded Gale, and then they both took off, Gale following behind the boy, and Dewey attempting to cut him off from the other end of the wall.
Dewey ran as fast as his useless leg would allow him to, and as Gale came around the wall from the other side, Dewey tackled the student onto the grass.
His cellular phone went flying.
Gale scooped it up. Dewey picked the boy up off the ground and heaved him into the wall, searching his pockets.
"Who is this?" Gale said into the phone.
An unfamiliar, older, female voice answered back.
"Damnit!" Gale swore, and shook her head at Dewey, who laughed sheepishly as the boy stared at both of them in complete shock.
"Can I help you??" He shouted.
"Sorry," Dewey said, dusting the grass off of his shorts.
The young man shook his head, snatched the phone out of Gale's hand, and put it back to his ear.
"No, sorry Mom, these two people just grabbed me…" the young man continued his conversation, leaving Gale and Dewey stumped.
"He's gotta be around here someplace. He's just playing with us," Gale said.
"Wait, where's Randy?" Dewey asked, looking around.
Gale's face dropped.
"Oh God, I don't see him," she said.
They both ran back towards where they had last seen him, shouting his name.
Joel suddenly appeared from around the side of his news van, carrying a coffee.
"Yo, who broke my window?!" he exclaimed, seeing the spider web pattern where his back window had been shattered.
Dewey ran towards the back door, and pulled them open.
Gale let out a blood-curdling scream and went to her knees.
Joel stood, frozen in complete shock.
It was Randy.
Deader than dead.
His throat had been slit from ear to ear.
His body was ravaged with stab wounds.
A ghost mask was lying on his chest