Don't Scream 2 Read online

  "Dave does not sound like that."

  "Who do you think it is, then?"

  But I couldn't reply. My throat was too dry. My heart throbbed in my chest. The darkness swirled and shifted around me. I lurched forward.

  Amy caught me. "Adam? Adam, are you okay?"

  I pushed her away and ran out of the room.

  The hallway tilted and lurched before me, as if we were at sea. I ran away from the stairs, into the master bedroom. Fumbled with the lock until it clicked into place. As I stood in the darkness, leaned against the wall, the memories came flooding back.

  Sitting against the door. Waiting for Bryan to come back. Crying. Sobbing. Screaming. And after the sun went down, the darkness settled in... I could swear it was moving. That they all were moving. Every time I opened my eyes, they seemed an inch closer. When Mr. O'Mara finally rescued me from the room, I could've sworn it was just a few feet away from me. Mouth open. Lips curled back. Watching me with those dark, fiery eyes.

  But it didn't finish me off then. Even when I knew death was certain, it waited. It knew this moment was coming. Why kill me in an instant, when it could torment me for a decade first?

  Thump. The footsteps were closer, now. Coming from the hallway.

  They didn't sound so heavy, anymore. They almost sounded... human.

  Enough of this. Heart pounding, I pulled out my phone to call 9-1-1. But it was already lit up with a text from Dave, five minutes ago:

  I saw it in the window. Get out of there.

  My heart stopped.

  We'd left Dave in the backyard, when we broke in through the back door. The taxidermy room didn't face the backyard.

  The master bedroom did.

  I heard muffled shouts from the other side. Amy's voice — and Dave's. I fumbled and slipped against the lock. My hands were too sweaty. Or it was stuck.

  A low growl echoed behind me.

  "Help!" I shouted. I pounded against the door, frantically. Just like I had over a decade ago. Hot tears ran down my cheeks. "Help me! Please!"

  "We're trying!" Amy's voice came through the wood, along with muddied syllables from Dave. The doorknob turned underneath my fingers. The door shook.

  It didn't open.

  "Help!" I screamed.

  Click, click, click. The distinct sound of claws against wood filled the room. The floor shook under my feet.

  I turned around.

  The faint light from the moon outlined its hulking silhouette. It slowly stalked across the room, toward me, until I could smell its rotten, fetid odor. Hear its tongue race across its lips. Feel its hot breath against my face.

  I screamed.

  The door snapped open behind me.

  Amy wrapped her arms around me, and yanked me out into the hallway. Dave shined the flashlight into the room.

  It illuminated a taxidermied black bear.

  Perfectly still. Perfectly dead.

  "Shhh, it's okay," Amy whispered in my ear. "We're going to leave now, okay?"

  "So that's what I saw," Dave said, with a laugh. He walked right up to the bear and shined his light over it. Even from my distance, on the floor of the hallway, I could see how fake the thing looked. Black fur, matted with dust. Glass eyes — maybe even plastic. Yellow, wooden teeth. "It's actually kind of cool."

  "Are you okay, Adam?"

  I let out a shuddering breath. "Yeah. Sorry. I just... freaked out for a second." I pulled myself up, brushed my pants off. So much for not looking like a coward.

  She pulled me into a hug.

  Then we descended the stairs, piled into the car, and left. As we drove up the gravel driveway, I watched the mansion recede into the distance. The vines that crawled up the columns would soon grow into the windows, the floors. Nature would fill the entire house, reclaiming its territory.

  The animals would be back where they belonged.

  OPEN HOUSE

  I've been house-hunting for two years.

  It's absolute torture. Every day, I go online and comb through the listings. Every time I click on a house I like, there's something wrong with it. I check out the satellite image and—bam!—it's next to a railroad. Or a sewage treatment plant. Or I scroll down to the details, and the property tax is half my salary. Or the description has those three awful little words: "House sold as-is."

  Translation: there is something very, very wrong with this house.

  So when I saw a beautiful, 2500-square-foot house for $250K, I was thrilled. Honestly, I didn't even check out the other photos. When I saw the attractive bay windows and brick façade, I was sold.

  "I found the house!" I squealed, running out to hug Dan.

  "You say that every week," he grumbled.

  "No, seriously, I found it! It's incredible! And there's an open house tomorrow!"

  We drove over to 15 Watcher Lane the next day. As we turned into the long, gravel driveway, Dan frowned. "Are you sure the open house is today?"

  There weren't any "FOR SALE" signs or yellow balloons. And as we neared the house, I realized there were no cars in the driveway, either.

  The house also looked like it had aged quite a bit since the photographs on Trulia were taken. The paint was flaking. Scrubby weeds poked through the sidewalk. A few shingles were missing from the roof.

  It reminded me of going on a date with a guy from an online dating site. He looks so handsome in the photo, but when you meet him he's ten years older and bald.

  I pulled out my phone. "Nope, the open house is definitely today. One to three PM."

  We pulled up to the garage and parked. Dan got out of the car first, tentatively walking down the sidewalk as if it'd burn him. I followed, pulling on my red coat. I noticed the door was missing the lockbox that most for-sale properties have.

  Dan knocked, several times.

  No one answered.

  "Maybe they scheduled it, and then just forgot," he said.

  I glanced around the property. It was nearly invisible from the road; large shrubs dotted the edge of the front yard. When we first pulled up, I thought they were a nice privacy feature. Now, however—standing here alone, on the doorstep of an empty house—they seemed foreboding.

  Like they were meant to conceal.

  "Hey! It's open," Dan said. I turned around—he'd pushed the front door open a few inches. Inside, the house was dark and shadowy.

  "Oh, no. We can't just go in."

  "We drove almost an hour to get here. Might as well take a look around. It is supposed to be an open house." He stepped inside; the wood creaked in protest.

  Click.

  We both froze.

  It came from inside the house. And sounded like the shutter of a camera. Or, more accurately, the skeuomorphic shutter sound that a phone makes when you take a picture.

  "Let's get out of here."

  We ran to the car. As soon as we were inside, I pressed the locks. We pulled back down the gravel driveway, my heart pounding in my chest.

  I took one last look at the house before we reached the main road.

  There was a flutter of motion in the downstairs window.

  "Dan?" I said, my voice trembling. "I... I think there's someone in there."

  We both stared as a figure—tall and thin, barely more than a silhouette behind the glass—pulled the curtains shut.

  With a screech of tires, he pulled out onto the main road. The house disappeared behind the row of shrubs.

  ***

  Later that night, I was scrolling through the listings again. After clicking on a few more ugly houses, I pulled the tab back up for the house we'd visited. "Hey, Dan! Want to check out the inside of 15 Watcher with me?"

  He laughed, uneasily. "You're still interested in it?"

  "Maybe."

  He joined me on the sofa. I clicked on the first image. Up came a photo of the dining room. A dark cherry wood table, with chairs lined up around it, and the bay window beyond.

  "Wait."

  At the very edge of the bay window, I saw somethin
g. A bit of red. Barely poking into the window's view.

  The same color as my jacket.

  Heart pounding, I clicked to the next photo.

  It was also a photo of the dining room. But this time, out the window, there were two people standing on the sidewalk. A woman in a red coat. A man in a black hoodie.

  "That's... that's us," I said.

  I clicked to the next photo.

  It was a photo of the foyer. The front door hung halfway open, and I could see Dan stepping inside. And—behind him—the back of my head.

  I clicked to the next one.

  The door was closed. Through the window, I could see a blur of red and black, as Dan and I hurried away. But at the very bottom of the photo, there was something.

  Something pointed and silver.

  The edge of a knife.

  SIREN SONG

  by Blair Daniels & Craig Groshek

  I woke up at 3 AM to someone singing outside my window.

  Her voice sounded so close—just inches from my open window. But when I peered out, I didn't see anyone there.

  "Hello?" I called out into the night.

  No reply.

  It was kind of ironic that someone was singing. I’m a songwriter, and the last thing you want to hear after a long day of writing is more music. As I started to close the window, I caught a few of the words. Something about ‘the true heart underneath.’ Sung in a haunting minor key.

  I climbed back in bed. When I woke up two hours later, I drank no less than three cups of coffee and sat down at my desk to write.

  Unlike the day before, the words came easily to me, somehow jump-started by the eerie song. I began singing to myself:

  You waited all those years

  Underneath the stones and tears

  All alone, cold and still

  Until the day we find you well

  My pen scratched across the page. The lyrics came fast and swift to me, flowing out like blood. In just a few hours, I'd recorded the entire song, and uploaded it to my channel with the name "Underneath."

  The views, and comments, poured in at an astonishing rate. "Best song I've heard in years. You got tons of talent" wrote one user. Another said "this song reminds me so much of some of my darkest days, but in a good way. Great song." As I scrolled through, my pride swelling, I came upon a comment unlike the others:

  Haveh ex turnet escution klanchet

  What was that? Latin? It wasn't any language I recognized. I would've thought nothing of it, but then my eye caught on the user's name. Savannahgirl125. That was one of my "fans" — she commented on every single one of my videos. Nice, typical stuff. Telling me I was super talented, I should release an album, and the like.

  She'd never made a weird comment like this one.

  I shrugged and closed my laptop. Maybe her cat walked across the keyboard, I told myself. Of course, that made no sense; the comment wasn't random. It had spaces and “words,” even if they were nonsensical words.

  But I didn't think any more of it. Instead, I walked out the door to run some errands.

  ***

  When I got back an hour later and checked the video, I couldn't believe it. The video had almost eighty-thousand views. In just a few hours.

  My excitement, however, was quickly deflated by the comments.

  There were more like Savannahgirl's. Dozens of them. All saying nonsense words. Some of them repeated the words in hers — I saw "haveh" quite a few times. Most were just single sentences, but some were whole paragraphs of nonsense, filling up the screen.

  I copied some of the words and pasted them into a translation site. But when I clicked submit, the site said: no language found.

  Riiiiing.

  My thoughs were interrupted by my agent, Dan. "Violet! I saw your video, Underneath. It is blowing up! Someone wants to buy the rights to it. Someone big. Are you ready? It's —"

  "Have you looked at the comments?"

  "No. Why?"

  I sighed and paced the room, eyeing the laptop with fear. "There are these weird comments, all over the place. They look like they're in a different language, or something."

  "Trolls, then."

  "No, I mean... dozens of people are posting them, Dan. It's about half of all the comments on the video. And other people are replying to them, with more nonsense language."

  "Okay, well, that doesn't matter. You need to meet me for lunch so we can go over this deal. Okay?"

  "Uh, sure. Okay."

  I walked into the cafe with a heavy heart. As an artist, you want to interact with your fans. As a female artist, it gets scary sometimes, with all the creeps out there. What if someone was trying to scare me? What if a group of my fans had banded together for the sole purpose of freaking me out?

  "Violet?"

  I turned around — and froze.

  Dan was sitting at one of the booths by the window. He was smiling and waving, dressed in his usual gray T-shirt and ripped jeans.

  But there was something behind him.

  A dark, blurry shadow. It started at his shoulder and grew up towards his head, dissipating into the air as if it were a cloud of smoke. But as he moved — as he bobbed his head, waved his hand — it moved with him.

  I sat down across from him.

  "What's behind you?"

  Dan glanced back, then turned towards me. "Nothing."

  "No. There's something behind you. Like smoke. Or a shadow."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "There's something behind you. There's something —"

  I stopped.

  It was gone. Dan was staring at me, a concerned look on his face. The area behind him was perfectly clear and bright. No smoke. No shadow. No darkness.

  "Nevermind," I muttered. It must've been a trick of the light. Or my imagination. I was sleep-deprived, after all. Too much work. Too much coffee.

  "Okay. Can I finally tell you who wants to buy the song?"

  "Sure."

  "Chained Up!" he squealed.

  "Oh, wow."

  "Come on! Show more excitement! They're big in certain circles. This could be our big break."

  "I guess."

  "So what do you say?"

  Finally, a glimmer of excitement spread through me. This could be my big break. The chance of a lifetime. My song... being heard by millions of people.

  "Okay."

  After I signed some paperwork Dan had printed off, I went home, turned on the TV, and promptly fell asleep on the sofa.

  ***

  "A strange incident occurred just outside of Springfield this afternoon."

  My eyes fluttered open. I turned towards the TV.

  "While driving home from work, motorist Jeff Olsen saw a woman on the side of the road. He's here to tell us the story."

  A pale, middle-aged man flashed onscreen.

  "I was drivin' home from work when I saw an old woman, just sittin' in the yard behind the Catholic church. St. Monica's, I think it's called. Anyway, I pulled over, got out of my car, and went over to her. I thought she might be, I dunno, hurt or somethin'. I called out to her, asked her if she needed help. She didn't say anything, so I walked right up to her."

  "As I got closer, I realized she was diggin'. Just diggin' in the dirt with her bare hands. And the expression on her face... totally blank. Not lookin' at me no matter how much I tried to get her attention. Just staring into space. So finally, I tapped her on the shoulder."

  "She turned 'round and grabbed me by the arm. Then she lunged at me and bit me, real hard, right here."

  The man held his right arm up. It was swaddled in bandages.

  "I ran back towards the car. The woman... she started to chase me. Man, I haven't seen anythin' like it before. Was real mad. Rabid, almost. All the while, shoutin' somethin' in a different language. Somethin' I couldn't understand. But I got in my car, and I —"

  I turned the TV off.

  Shouting something in a different language. Like the comments on my song? Like h
aveh and those other weird words, that even the translator couldn't pick up?

  No. It had to be a coincidence.

  That night, I couldn't fall asleep. I went online and checked my video again, which was now up to over half a million views. As I scrolled through the comments, I noticed that most of them—at least two-thirds—were in the same strange, nonsensical language as the others.

  At 3 AM, I decided to take a drive to calm my nerves.

  It was a freezing cold night. I drove down the small-town roads, watching the shops and trees roll by. Everything was closed, at this hour, save for the QuickChek on the corner of Maple Ave. and Main Street.

  I’d get a snack there, then try to get some more sleep.

  I turned the radio on and scrolled through the stations. Some pop hit. A high tempo dance number. Some song in French. I pressed the seek button over and over.

  Until I heard my own voice.

  You waited all those years

  Underneath the stones and tears

  All alone, cold and still

  Until the day we find you well

  "No, no, no," I muttered. "They stole my song. They stole it!" In my anger, I sped right past the QuickChek and continued down Main Street. My headlights flashed over the General Store, the pharmacy... and then St. Monica's.

  I froze.

  Several people were standing there.

  Standing there in the dark, at 3 AM, in the patch of grass between the church and the cemetery. Only wearing pajamas, not coats, despite the freezing cold. Some of them were digging; others were just standing there, blankly staring at the side of the church. As my headlights rolled over them, they didn't even turn towards me.

  As I got closer, I heard the chanting.

  I could hear it clearly through the car windows. Haveh ex turnet escution. Haveh ex turnet escution...

  I pulled out my cell phone. I needed to talk to Dan. I needed to tell him what was happening. How it was all, somehow, seemed to be related to my song.

  The song I just sold to an incredibly popular band.

  I dialed Dan's number. It rang once. Then, a few seconds later, a familiar noise came through the window.

  Dan's Metallica ringtone.