The Late Night Horror Show (20 page)

He was right. There was no denying it. And even as she recognized this, something primal inside her fought against it. She didn’t want to go back out there. Not yet. Not ever. Didn’t want to have to face the ghoulish sight of all those reanimated corpses. The reality of it was so unlike the movies. No movie ever made could accurately convey what it felt like to fight for your life against forces beyond your control.

She heard something from out front.

A creak of clumsy footsteps on the wooden porch.

Jason started toward the door. “Out of time. We’re going right now.”

He was right again.

Brix followed after him, then picked up her pace and brushed past him to seize the doorknob, turn it, and pull the door open. A badly decayed walking corpse missing most of the flesh from one side of its face stared dumbly right at her.

It reached for her with a shriveled, shaking hand.

Brix shot it in the head and ran outside.

Chapter Seventeen

The first thing she was aware of as she struggled toward consciousness was the sound of running water somewhere nearby. She thought she was somehow still in the woods and had fallen asleep close to a rushing creek. But then some other things occurred to her, memories that were fuzzy at first but soon gained crystalline clarity. The clearing. The house. The rich kids with their rich-kid names. Her failed attempt to talk Rick and Grant out of venturing into the woods. And the last thing she remembered was the scream that rang out of the woods. Lashon frowned with her eyes closed, not yet fully awake.

Because, no, wait…that was
not
the last thing she remembered.

The
last
thing she remembered was a sudden sharp sting in her side, followed by an immediate and overpowering wooziness. She had then stumbled away from a smiling Ashley, taking two or three clumsy steps before dropping to the ground. There had been a final moment of bleary consciousness before everything went black. She had looked up and seen Ashley again. And there had been something in her hand. A little plastic tube, which she now belatedly realized had been a syringe. And whatever it contained had been very powerful, because she had gone from wide awake to out inside of five seconds.

Lashon’s eyes snapped open.

She was no longer in the clearing in the woods. She was in a bedroom, presumably inside the house where all those young people had been hanging out on that porch. And the source of the running water wasn’t a creek, but rather was issuing from an open faucet on the other side of a closed door to her right.

Lashon tried to sit up, but the effort made her head ache fiercely. So she stayed flat on her back and stared at that closed door, wondering what was happening on the other side. It sounded like someone was running a bath. She turned her head and saw another closed door opposite the foot of the bed. No one else was in the room with her, but she assumed that wouldn’t remain the case for long.
 

Which meant it was imperative she get up and attempt an escape while no one was around to stop her. She was still weakened from whatever drug she had been injected with, but she had to somehow fight through it, get up, and get moving. She had no clue regarding the bigger picture of what was going on here or why Ashley had drugged her, but she was a smart girl, smart enough to know it wasn’t a good idea to hang around and try to find out.

So she braced her hands on the mattress and tried again to push herself up. This time her head hurt even worse and a sudden tide of nausea made her sick. Her teeth chattered and a thin sheen of sweat formed on her brow. But she didn’t give up. The stakes were too high. So she gritted her teeth and redoubled the effort. By the time she finally got herself into a sitting position, her heart felt like it was going a million miles an hour. Still, she had made progress and couldn’t stop now.

She glanced at the side of the bed.

Next step, swing your legs over—

She heard the loud squelch of a faucet being shut off and the sound of running water abruptly stopped. Lashon’s heart started beating even faster. Someone was in there. And any moment now whoever it was would come into the bedroom. She had very little time left to make this happen. Setting her teeth again, she extended her right leg toward the side of the bed. This triggered another surge of nausea, but she remained determined. She got her right leg over the edge of the bed and shifted her hips in order to start swinging her other leg around.

And that was when the bathroom door swung open.

Ashley stood there, framed in bright light, with her hands on her hips. She was naked and had a big hunting knife in her right hand. The lack of clothes and the weapon were startling enough, but the change in the young woman’s demeanor was even more surprising. Gone entirely was the open, friendly Ashley who had greeted her so warmly after her catty exchanges with Mercedes. She wasn’t smiling at all, for one thing. Her expression was very hard and there was a dead coldness in her eyes that made Lashon want to whimper.

Ashley strode into the room, brandishing the knife. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Lashon cringed away from the blade, which cut through the air maybe three feet from her face as Ashley waved it at her. “What have you done to me? Why did you drug me?”

“So you wouldn’t get away. Obviously. What are you, stupid?”

Lashon frowned. “But…but you were going to help me.”

Ashley laughed at this, but there was no warmth in it at all. Her eyes remained just as cold and dead-looking. “I guess we fooled you then. Like we’ve fooled so many before you.”

“I thought you were nice.”

“You thought wrong.”

Lashon’s frown deepened. “But…those guys…Rick and Grant…they were gonna look for the guy who chased me. Why would they do that if…”

Ashley arched an eyebrow as Lashon trailed off. “What? You don’t get it yet?” Another cold laugh. “That guy with the chainsaw. That was my brother, Barry. He likes to play at being Leatherface while chasing girls through the woods. It’s how he gets his kicks. You’re not the first he’s chased right back home. And you’re not the first we’ve pretended to help.”

“Why would you do that? What’s the point?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It’s
fun
. We live in the middle of nowhere, for fuck’s sake. We’ve gotta make our own entertainment.”

“But…your friends. They all seemed so…”

“So normal?”

“Yeah.”

Ashley smirked. “More playacting. We’ve had a lot of practice. And, oh yeah, those other people you met. They’re not exactly my friends, really. They’re my brothers and sisters. And the names they gave you were all fake. Mostly.”

“And you all live out here together?”

“Yep.”

Lashon wasn’t sure why she kept asking the girl all these questions. Mostly, she guessed, because Ashley was willing to talk and the longer they talked, the longer they were putting off whatever unpleasantness these people undoubtedly had in store for her.

“What was that scream I heard?”

Ashley giggled. It was a weird and unnerving sound coming from a mentally unbalanced, naked girl with a knife. “Oh.
That.
My brothers did find somebody out there in the woods. A stranger. Some middle-aged, pudgy guy.”

Lashon got a sick feeling in her gut.

The guy who saved me.

She swallowed hard. “Is he…”

“Dead?” Ashley smiled in a way that was as unnerving as the giggle had been. “No. Not yet. But he’s probably wishing he was right about now. My brothers had to rough him up some and now they’re, uh…
working
on him.”

“What do you mean?”

Ashley kept smiling as she came a step closer and waved the knife around some more. “You know,
working
on him.
Doing
stuff to him. Fun stuff.” Yet another step closer and another slow wave of the knife. Then she jabbed the point of the blade at Lashon’s face, making her gasp and cringe backward as Ashley laughed at her reaction. “I’m gonna start working on
you
pretty soon.”

Lashon’s eyes misted with tears as she shook her head. “No…no…”

Ashley knelt in front of her and crossed her arms over Lashon’s knees. Lashon felt the girl’s bare breasts push against her legs. The girl lightly poked the tip of the big knife against her stomach. She was still wearing the ruined black camisole top, but she could feel the sharpness of the blade through the fabric. She held her breath and stared down at the knife. Then she made eye contact with Ashley, holding her gaze for several long, silent moments, knowing they were both thinking much the same thing—how little pressure it would take to push that blade through the fabric and into her flesh.

Ashley poked the tip of the knife against her belly a little harder. “Time to take your clothes off.”

“No.”

Ashley smirked again. “Didn’t you hear me filling the tub? I’m gonna put you in it and do some stuff to you in there before I start cutting on you. So you’ll need to be naked.”

Lashon made no move to remove her clothes. “What kind of stuff?”

Ashley poked at her stomach a couple more times with the knife. The second time the tip of the blade did pierce the fabric and she felt the cold steel against her flesh. Ashley didn’t pull it away this time, apparently content for the moment to let Lashon feel its potential lethality so intimately. “Well, not sex stuff, if that’s what you’re thinking. At least not to start.” Another of those unnerving giggles. “No, I have this little game I like to play with the girls we get. It’s called the Drowning Game. I fucking
love
the Drowning Game.”

Lashon’s breath started coming in quick gasps as she edged toward panic. She tried to speak, to beg the way people in her current position probably always did, but the words wouldn’t come. In their place, strangled, inarticulate croaks.

Ashley laughed as she struggled. “That’s it. That’s good. I like that panicky shit. Girls are the best for that. That’s why I always play
this
game with them. I like the screaming. It just goes on and on and on sometimes. What I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna hold you under the water until you start to lose your breath. Then maybe I’ll pull you back up and let you get your breath back so we can start the game over.” She gave the knife another little push and Lashon felt it slice into her skin. It hurt.
Bad.
“Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just hold you under until your mouth opens and your lungs fill with water. Maybe you’ll never come back up. Alive, that is.”

Lashon at last found her voice. “What’s wrong with you people? Why would you do this?”

Ashley pulled the knife away from her stomach and licked a speck of her blood off the blade. “Hurting people is fun. That’s why we do it. You’d see that if you ever tried it yourself.”

Lashon couldn’t help thinking back to that night she’d punched Greg in the face. Twice. As hard as she could. She’d never done anything like that until that night. Had never thought of herself as a violent person. It had surprised and frightened her. She had been under so much pressure then and Greg had gotten on her very last nerve one time too many. Yes, she’d felt bad about it almost immediately after, but when she was being ruthlessly honest with herself, she could admit to having derived a very brief, nasty sort of satisfaction from hurting him. But that was different from what this unhinged girl was talking about. Wasn’t it? An unplanned outburst like that was worlds apart from torture and murder.

Yes. Obviously.

But maybe you’re getting what you deserve,
she thought.
Maybe this is some kind of weird cosmic justice or payback for what you did.

She recognized this as an irrational notion.

But the knowledge made her feel no less guilty.

For the first time since that awful night, she wished she could see Greg again and give him the sincere apology he deserved. She didn’t want to reconcile with him. But, yes, he deserved that gesture from her at least.

Now, though, it almost certainly would never happen.

Ashley abruptly poked the knife at her again, harder than any of the previous times. The blade pierced the lacy top and cut her, drawing blood again as she cried out and Ashley laughed.

“Did that hurt?”

Another helpless, frustratingly pathetic whimper. “Y-yes.”

“Good. I’m thinking maybe you should start practicing your screaming before we start the Drowning Game. Get your lungs good and warmed up.”

Another hard poke from the knife.

Another cut. More blood.

Ashley was yelling at her with each jab. “Go on, bitch! Scream! Fucking
scream!
”

The door to the bedroom came open and the guy Lashon had initially known as Grant poked his head in. His wavy brown hair now looked a little less perfect and he had an abrasion on one of his cheeks. Apparently the “middle-aged, pudgy guy” had put up a fight.

He looked at Ashley. “Hurry up and play your stupid little game. We all want a turn with this bitch, ya know.”

Ashley flipped him off with her free hand. “Get the fuck out of my room, Dylan. You’ll get your goddamn turn. Don’t rush me.”

Dylan snorted. “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t damage her too much before the rest of us can have some fun.”