“I’ve gotten a number of anonymous gifts,” I explain, “ever since my parents’ death.” I click on the Nightmare Elf’s Filmeo account. There’s no other information listed about him, or any other videos posted. I click on the link to e-mail him. A form pops up, asking for my name and e-mail address.
“You’re not seriously going to send him a message, are you?”
“If the person who posted this video isn’t the real killer, he’s at least had contact with him.”
“Ivy.”
“What?” I turn to face her again.
She’s looking at me like I’m a full-on freak, her eyes bulging, her lips parted like there’s something hairy in her mouth. “We have to show this to the police.”
I ignore her and continue to type.
Dear Nightmare Elf,
If this is really you, what did I put on my plate on that first night at the Dark House, when all of the winners were gathered at the dining room table for dinner?
Yours truly,
Ivy Jensen
P.S. If you wanted to come back for me so badly, why did you wait so long?
I read the message over several times, thinking how silly that first part sounds, but also confident that it will answer my question. No one besides the killer, Midge, and the other contest winners would know what I put my plate; I didn’t get that specific in my police statement.
I position my cursor over the SEND tab, my heart absolutely racing. And then I hit SEND.
“I can’t even believe you just did that,” Taylor says. “Did you e-mail Movie Marvin too?”
“I did, but I didn’t get any response.” Not from any of my e-mail accounts, not even when I posed as an indie filmmaker looking to have a trailer made. “I’m thinking it’s because I showed that video to the police.”
“We have to show this to the police,” she says yet again. “I mean, we’re talking about a major piece of evidence.”
I clench my teeth and look away.
“Ivy? Okay, you’re acting a little One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—and not in a good way.” She stares at my balled-up fists.
I take a deep breath, my adrenaline pumping. But somehow I also feel calmer than I have in months, more confident than ever before. “I can’t go to the police,” I say. “The killer wants me to do this on my own.”
“Well, um, duh. Of course he does—so he can chop you up into a million pieces and throw you into a sinkhole.”
“I’ve given the police seven years,” I tell her, “and what have they done for me so far? My parents are dead. Five people are missing and assumed dead, including a boy I really care about—the first person I’ve opened up to since my parents’ death. What more could the killer possibly take from me?”
“Only your life.”
I focus on the video again. It’s paused at a close-up of my eyes, back when there was a spark in them—when I laughed, and had friends, and looked forward to tomorrow. “I’ve spent the majority of my life feeling dead, fearing death, or wishing I had died.”
“This isn’t a game, Ivy.”
“It is to him. And he wants to play. But this time I refuse to lose.”
“Okay, seriously? It’s time for some tough love. Let’s push the pause on the intensity button, shall we? We need to think things through.”
“I’m intense for good reason.”
“Okay, but too much intensity and people wind up storing chicken carcasses under their beds. Didn’t you see Girl, Interrupted? What you need is some Handyman Harry.” She holds up a keychain doll: a bearded little guy wearing blue-jean overalls and work boots. She presses his gut to make him talk.
“Hey there, hottie,” Handyman Harry says. “Do you want to see my big screwdriver?”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Not what, who.” She winks. “I won him during freshman orientation for having the loudest belch. The loudest boy belcher got Harry’s sister, Handygal Harriet.” Taylor follows up with a burrito-and-soda-worthy belch so loud that it almost sounds fake. “Pretty impressive, wouldn’t you say?” Taylor continues to press the doll’s belly.
A series of terrible pickup lines play out of Harry’s mouth: “Hey, baby, how about we build a future together? We can start with my hammer and some nailing”; “Hey, angel, does your crack need some caulking?”; “Do your shrubs need pruning?”
Taylor pretends to make out with the doll—with tongue—finally shoving it down the front of her sweatshirt. “Oh, Handyman Harry!” she purrs, tossing and turning on the bed, her eyes rolled back, her body quivering.
I can’t help but laugh, even though I don’t want to. And the harder I try to stop it, the stronger my giggles get. My stomach aches as tears streak down my face. Ironically, this is the worst time of my life and yet I haven’t laughed as hard in years.
From the Journal of E.W.
Grade 7, August Preparatory School
LATE AUTUMN 1971
I just found out that some kid who used to go here killed himself. His name was Ricky Slater, and I’ve been assigned to his old room. Tray across the hall says that I’m the first person to sleep in Ricky’s room since the suicide. He said that the room had been closed off for painting and refinishing, as if that would make everything nice. Too bad it doesn’t work that way.
Gramps once bought Mother a pretty yellow sundress, but that didn’t change squat. That same night she crawled into my bed and told me a ghost story—about a twelve-year-old boy named Johnny who’d lived on our property a hundred years ago, and died when the house went up in flames.
“Johnny was an angry, angry boy because of it.” I can still hear Mother’s little-girl voice.
I was six years old, and couldn’t sleep after that. When Mother saw how scared I got with Johnny’s story, she made a habit of visiting my room each night with a different, more horrifying tale about him.
“He may have died that day,” she’d say, “but he’s still here, in this house. Ever feel someone’s eyes on you when you’re in the bathtub or reading a book? That’s him. That’s Johnny, watching, studying, learning all of your habits. He talks to me, you know. He tells me how angry he still is and what I could do to make him feel better.”
I’d beg her to stop talking about him. Sometimes I’d even pretend to be asleep. But it didn’t matter. She was there, every night, whispering in my ear, waiting for me to cry. Only then would she leave me alone, which in some way was even worse, because I’d look around my room—at my stuffed lion and the nutcracker doll on my desk—and think they were possessed by Johnny’s spirit.
People are saying that this school is haunted by the ghost of Ricky Slater. I wonder if Nana and Gramps knew that when they signed me up, and if they might’ve even requested that I get Ricky’s room.
I’ll bet anything they did. They knew about my mother’s nightly ghost stories, but they didn’t do crap to stop them.
EVEN THOUGH I GOT A hotel room, Taylor insists that I stay in her dorm.
“Let’s just sleep on stuff, okay?” She opens up the futon and dresses it in pear-patterned sheets. “We won’t make any major decisions until after we get some shut-eye. Oh, and PS, sorry if the cushions smell like pickles. Sometimes I get a craving, and one time I spilled a jar.”
We wash up and get changed—me in sweats and her in lipstick-kiss-patterned footie pajamas—and then crawl into our beds. It’s just after one in the morning, but instead of going off to sleep, Taylor rolls over to face me. “I’m really glad we did this—that you called me, that I called you back, that you came here.”
“Because I’m so much fun to be with, right?”
“More fun than I’ve had in weeks, to be honest. Sad but true. I mean, no offense.”
“None taken.”
“And now inquiring minds want to know: do you blame me too?”
“Blame you?”
“For leaving the Dark House. For not taking Natalie with me, for not hiding somewhere—in the woods, maybe—and trying to warn you guys
as you arrived.”
“A lot of people would’ve done the same,” I tell her. “Escaped from the Dark House, that is.”
“Would you have done the same?”
I bite my lip, thinking back to how scared I was that weekend. “Part of me thinks that even if I’d wanted to bolt, I never would’ve made it out of there. I would’ve been paralyzed by my fear.”
“By the time Natalie even crossed my mind, I was already deep into the woods. That message I wrote in the closet—get out before it’s too late—just tells you how much of a coward I was. It was done on a whim, while I was hiding from Midge. I’m surprised you even found it.”
“But I did find it. And I never forgot it. I knew something about it wasn’t right.”
Taylor shrugs. “I should’ve done so much more.”
“You did the best you could at the time,” I say, channeling my inner Dr. Donna.
“It was a full day and a half before I was able to get help,” she says. “After I escaped, I still wasn’t in the clear; someone was chasing me in the woods.”
“Did you see who that someone was?”
“No, but eventually, when I got far enough away, I hid behind a fallen tree, my cheek pressed against a sharp twig, trying not to move. I stayed like that for hours, exactly as you describe—paralyzed by fear. I didn’t move again until daylight.”
“On Saturday,” I say to be sure. “The day we went to the amusement park.”
“Exactly.” She nods. “It took a long time to find the road, and even longer to get picked up. But I did. A couple of truckers found me. They didn’t speak English. Neither of them had a phone. And I didn’t want to risk having them stop their truck. I just wanted to get away. They brought me to a bus depot and paid for my ticket. I ended up in Minneapolis, where I called the police. But I didn’t know where the Dark House was—not really. And I just kept thinking about all of you guys, wondering what was happening.” She looks away, her eyes filled with tears. “It seems like all I’ve been doing lately is wondering what if.”
“But hindsight is twenty-twenty, right?”
“So you don’t hate me?”
I get up from the bed to bring her a box of tissues. “Of course not. Far from it.”
“Well, that’s a relief, because I was so afraid to meet you.”
I sit down beside her and blot her tears with a tissue. “Well, I’m really glad that we did meet—that you changed your mind about getting together.” Because this is the closest I’ve felt to anyone since Parker. And it feels good to be the strong one for a change—even if it’s just in this moment.
I WAKE UP TO A buzzing sound. My cell phone vibrates against the floor. I have a new e-mail message.
I sit up in bed. It’s three a.m. Taylor’s still asleep. A smiley face sleep mask covers her eyes; the front of it reads HAPPY NAPPER.
I reach for my phone to check who the message is from. The brightness of the screen stings my eyes and I have to squint.
But still I can see it: the Nightmare Elf’s name in my in-box.
My heart tightens. The phone slips from my grip, clanking to the floor, waking Taylor up.
She pulls down her sleep mask. “What is it?”
“He wrote me back.”
She sits up, clicks on her night table light, and then comes to join me on the futon.
The e-mail’s subject line reads TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS. I click to read the message.
Dearest Ivy,
How nice to hear from you. I trust this finds you well.
To answer your first question, you didn’t really put too much on your dinner plate on the night of your Dark House arrival, despite the feast that had been arranged—the very same meal served in Nightmare Elf III: Lights Out. The smallest mound of macaroni and cheese was all.
Your other question intrigues me, but I think I’ll answer it at another time.
—The Nightmare Elf
I clasp my hand over my mouth, feeling my entire body shake.
“Is that true?” Taylor asks. “About the mac and cheese?”
“True.” I nod. There’s a sharpness in my chest, making it hard to breathe.
Taylor gets up to grab her laptop off her desk. Meanwhile, I reach into my bag for a sachet of lemon balm. I hold it up to my nose, concentrating on its ability to soothe.
“What the hell?” she shouts, sitting beside me again.
There’s an error message on the computer screen. Taylor tries refreshing the page—it’s the Filmeo account; I can tell from the URL. But the video’s gone. The account appears to have been deleted.
“What happened?” she asks. She goes back to the original e-mail message, copies the link, and then pastes it into the browser. But the error message is still there. “We should call the police. They might be able to trace the e-mail address—or the server, that is—to find out where this person’s located.”
“I’m assuming they’re already doing that. I mean, they have the e-mail address from the Movie Marvin video.” The police tried tracing the original Nightmare Elf e-mails from a year ago as well, only, for whatever reason, they weren’t able to pinpoint a location.
“Let’s just go talk to them.” She gets up and returns to her bed, closing the laptop.
My phone vibrates again. It’s another message from the Nightmare Elf. The subject line reads: RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY.
I click to open it up. The words Do you like a wet seat? make my head spin.
“What is it?” Taylor asks.
I look up in her direction, but then my eyes fix on the window behind her. Rain pounds against the glass.
“What?” she persists.
I get up and bolt out the door.
IVY RUNS FROM MY ROOM—yet again. I follow her out—down the stairs and through the lobby—calling after her in my loudest whisper to avoid waking anyone up.
I push through the exit doors. Ivy is a good distance in front of me. There are streetlamps shining over the parking lot, but it’s still hard to see. It’s raining out. The droplets pelt my eyes, making me wish I had my sleep mask, or at least an umbrella.
Ivy moves like a contestant on Supermarket Dash, weaving through cars (in lieu of store displays), trying to find her own car (instead of a prize-winning box of Cheerios).
“Ivy?” I call, once again.
She stops in front of a small dark sedan a couple of rows over. I hurry closer, able to see that the windows of the car are open.
She swings open the driver’s side door and reaches inside to retrieve something from the seat.
“What is it?” I ask, standing right behind her now.
“My windows weren’t open,” she mumbles.
“Well, I should hope not. This isn’t exactly Punta Cana. I’m freezing my ass cheeks off.”
She snags a flashlight from her glove box and shines it over a bright red envelope. The front of it reads FOR APRIL, WITH LOVE, in black block lettering. “He’s here,” she whispers; there’s a tremor in her voice.
I take the umbrella sticking out from the side door compartment. I open it up and hold it over us. Meanwhile, Ivy aims her flashlight all around—over cars, at windshields—before going to tear the envelope open.
“Hold up,” I say, stopping her a moment by grabbing her wrist. “This is tangible evidence. We shouldn’t even touch it. We should just bring it to the police.”
She ignores me and continues to rip it open, her dampened fingers unable to work fast enough. Finally, she pulls out a card. “An invitation.”
“To where?”
She reads it over, her jaw clenched, her nostrils flared.
“What does it say?” I ask.
She turns it over so I can see.
YOU’VE BEEN CHOSEN ONCE AGAIN
What:
To claim your leading role as the star of Return to the Dark House.
Where:
On set, at an undisclosed location.
When:
Filming begins as soon as you’re ready to
commit to the project.
RSVP:
Respond via e-mail within 24 hours. Include your phone number, and you will receive a call from the director with all the details.
PS:
If you tell, your costars’ roles will be cut.
“There’s something else,” she says, pulling out a 4 × 6 photograph. It’s a picture of five dolls. They’re all lined up against a crude cement wall: a guy doll dressed in dark clothes, with lots of silver jewelry; a girl doll with weird patchy hair and shrouded in dark layers; two more guy dolls (one holds a guitar; the other one reminds me of a surfer dude with his scruffy blond hair); and a pretty dark-skinned girl with a smiling face.
“These represent the missing contestants, don’t they?” I say, more as a statement than a question.
“And if we want to save them, we have to go to this.” She nods to the invite. “We have to follow his rules or else their roles will get cut.”
“Meaning?” I ask, fearing I know the answer.
Ivy pulls out her phone and opens it up to the Nightmare Elf’s last e-mail. She hits REPLY.
“Holy Hell!!” I pull her fingers away from the screen. “Haven’t you ever heard of impulse control? Let’s talk about this.”
“What is there to talk about? Are you with me on this or not?” She raises her eyebrow, à la Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
“By ‘with me,’ do you mean not calling the police?”
“By ‘with me,’ I mean saving the others once and for all.” Ivy glares at me like a possessed vampire junkie on blood-flavored crack.
“Look—” I take a deep breath. “It’s three o’clock in the morning. We’re standing in the middle of a rainstorm, in the middle of a parking lot. And I’m not even wearing public-viewing-worthy PJs.” I flash her the hole in one of my kisses, right over my left butt cheek.
“So…”
“So, let’s go back inside, change our clothes, get some shut-eye. We can rethink things in the morning when we’re not so saturated.”