Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
PAST
The music made the air vibrate. Zoe felt the rhythm reverberate from the ground up to her legs, soaking into her bones. The strobe lights pulsed, slicing through the darkness in jagged bursts, revealing the dingy nightclub in disjointed glimpses.
Shadowy figures dancing. Sticky floor. Dark corners. Leather booths.
It was a messy club—not the kind for a nice night out, but the kind where people danced as if their lives depended on it, with sweat dripping down their backs and mascara running down their cheeks.
Zoe was feeling messy too as she moved and danced, chasing some kind of resolution she knew deep down she would never find here.
A nameless guy had his arms wrapped around her waist and was kissing her neck. She allowed herself a moment of fancy.
She was supposed to be celebrating. She had gotten into Quantico.
But the pleasure in the pit of her stomach felt hollow.
Her eyes scanned the dimly lit club. For a second, she saw Rachel.
Then another burst of light and she saw Rachel again.
Every glimpse of her was the same—she stood motionless, unblinking, her skin almost slimy like her flesh was hanging off her bones.
Zoe clenched her teeth and her nostrils ballooned.
Rachel was dead. Rather than her absence, it was her secrets that loomed over Zoe’s life.
Her blood ran hot and heavy in her veins.
This is what her mother had left her with—lack of closure and guilt.
She had no right to convince a little Zoe to not go looking if anything happened to her and to do everything in her power to cover it up.
Silly little Zoe had fallen for it and tampered with her mother’s crime scene.
How dare Rachel now haunt her?
Zoe couldn’t breathe. She dragged the man she was making out with outside the club.
A blast of cold air hit her face and a chill skipped up her sides.
She almost tripped over a crack in the pavement as she pulled him into a dark alley.
They were kissing again. She didn’t even know his name.
She was young and stupid. And she deserved to be, after her mother made sure to rob her innocence, because she loved her secrets more than she’d loved her daughter.
But even this distraction failed to silence the chaos building inside her.
“This isn’t working for me.” She pushed him away and decided to go back in, when he grabbed her by the elbow.
“Come on. Don’t be a tease.”
“Sorry. But I’m not interested anymore. Find someone who is.” She took one step away when he grabbed and twisted her arm, slamming her against the brick wall.
“You little slut,” he sneered, his grip tightening on her arm. “Who do you think you are rejecting me like that, huh? I’ll do whatever the hell I want to do.” He pressed his lips onto hers, shoving his tongue down her throat.
She slammed her hands against his chest, trying to push him away but he was strong. She struggled against him for a minute and then something snapped inside her. Her teeth bit his tongue.
He yelped, staggering back and peeling away from her.
Instead of running away, she struck him across the jaw with her elbow.
He tripped and landed on the ground. She could have walked away then.
Instead, she swung her leg into his chest over and over again.
He curled into a ball to absorb the blows, moaning in pain. And she got high on it.
This feeling was intoxicating. This is what she was seeking at clubs, in alcohol, with strangers.
Whatever this liberating feeling was. When someone came around the corner, she broke out of her daze.
Her attacker was whimpering, still on the ground.
But he deserved it. It felt good to fix something, to dispense a little justice.
She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her top and walked away. Her legs were still shaking.
What had she done? Why did it feel so good? And why did she know she would do this again?
Rachel’s ghost appeared. Zoe walked past it, not even sparing her a look. But this time she heard Rachel’s voice carry in the wind.
“Don’t become this, Emily.”
Mothers.
The bond between a mother and a child is disturbing.
Calling it pure is an insulting simplification.
It’s a quiet, consuming need that blurs the lines between love and possession.
It isn’t just maternal devotion. It’s ownership, dependency, something far heavier than affection.
A bond forged from the undeniable—one life carved from another, flesh stretched, insides rearranged to make room, to grow, until the split is inevitable.
Separation isn’t just an event; it’s a brutal tearing, a before-and -after written into the body itself.
How do you come back from that? How can you exist as separate entities?
Zoe stared at the picture of Dawn’s daughter. The girl who died at Fun House after someone sabotaged the ride’s mechanics.
“What do you want now?” Dawn came into the room clad in a robe, looking frail.
“We need to talk.” Zoe sat across from her and locked her fingers tight. “Is the prototype a simulation of the big fire?”
She didn’t need to wait for Dawn’s reply. Her face gave it away. Surprise mingling with shame. “How do you know that?”
“Because someone used the prototype… on Annabelle.” She didn’t know how else to frame it. “How does it work?”
She drew a deep breath. “It’s a VR headset with a device that when put on simulates mild sensations like heat. Highly sophisticated, offering a full immersive experience. As if you were in the haunted house that night.”
“It’s total sensory immersion? It inflicts real-world trauma through controlled stress.”
Suddenly, Dawn turned a sickly pale as she began rubbing her chest with her palm.
“I still remember when it was presented to me. It was too much. Some people on the board were all for it. It was bold, it would get everyone talking. That’s what our company needed to stand out in a crowded market.
Build something rooted in a real incident.
But there weren’t enough votes. Most of them feared it was tasteless. ”
“If anyone found out about the prototype, your company would have gotten bad publicity,” Zoe said. “Why didn’t you just destroy it?”
“Because it was remarkable and involved the hard work of a lot of talented people. We kept it, thinking one day in the future we could salvage something from it or maybe consider releasing it after more time had passed.”
“How could you?”
Dawn’s mind was adrift. She lifted her eyes to her daughter’s picture.
A churn of emotions brewed in her tired eyes.
“Around three years ago, our company needed a big pivot. Something to drag it out of the financial mess it was in. This isn’t about AI or VR or whatever new tech is on the rise.
The reason is always psychological. People want to feel .
People today are disconnected. Lost in their screens, numbed by routine, afraid of real emotion.
So they chase intensity—horror, violence, chaos, all kinds of taboo behavior—anything that makes them feel something, even for just a moment.
That’s where immersion comes in. And now we have the technology to make that possible.
For people to feel completely at one with something, to totally forget who they are and live an intense experience. ”
“I meant how could you, given your daughter died in the fire?”
“It wasn’t my idea, Agent Storm. It was David’s.
” She struggled to maintain her composure.
“I wanted to create a game and he came up with linking it to the massacre. It was unique, it would put Pineview Falls on the map, it would benefit this wretched town. A homegrown product based on a homebound tragedy. It was a marketable idea.”
“You are making money off of her death.”
“You perceive it as me making money. I view it as all my hard work and this family’s legacy being saved.
My daughter’s death isn’t about increasing my yearly bonus, Agent Storm.
I don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that.
” She was furious now. “I have more than enough money to walk away from all of this and live out the rest of my years in luxury while making sure that David can afford to buy another property in Aspen. Her death is saving our family, our purpose. That’s way more important than us sitting around moping about how she was killed.
This way she gets to do something for us from beyond the grave. ”
The words felt flimsy to Zoe. “How do you relive that violence?”
A bitter laugh. “When I discovered what had happened that night, I spent months thinking and researching what she must have gone through. I learned how the biochemical mechanisms of the body respond to fire, the injuries from falling, the effect on the heart from the stress. I had gone positively mad.” She poured herself a stiff drink, blinking rapidly.
“But the more I read about it, the better I felt. I don’t know why.
It was almost therapeutic. And when I tried the prototype, when I played the game, I finally came close to being with my daughter in her last moments.
I felt I was there. With her.” She took a huge gulp without hesitation.
“And now once again some asshole is ruining my daughter’s legacy. ”
Everyone in Pineview Falls was invested in the massacre. But how many of them knew of Zoe to send her Michael’s hair? She needed Aiden—to her surprise—but he was at Jackie’s with Lisa, following up on a hunch. “Why would Annabelle steal this prototype? Was she being poached by your competitors?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she stole it for ethical reasons.” She rolled her eyes.
“She wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Other parents lost their kids in that accident too. How do you think they would feel about you making a video game out of it?”
She smiled sadly. “Absolutely gutted. But those who spend their lives worrying about not offending others never make it big. And morality is not the warmest blanket on cold, winter nights.”
She opened her mouth to say something but noticed Dawn’s trembling hand around the sculpted glass and her teary eyes still locked on her daughter’s picture.
She could see Dawn was torn, but she couldn’t comprehend the path Dawn had taken.
Perhaps, she operated in a different world.
Maybe after losing the most important thing, nothing else mattered.
An idea came to her. “I’m not into video games but I believe there are levels? ”
“Yes.” She frowned at the line of questioning. “Based on difficulty.”
“And these levels take place in different locations in the game?”
“Yes. The game is based on the massacre but we had to make the game more interesting and dynamic. Keeping one location throughout would not be enjoyable; it traps the player and diminishes their reward for reaching the next level.”
Zoe already knew the answer to her next question. “Where is the final level in the game set?”
“Fun House. The grand finale.”
She shot up from her seat and dialed Lisa’s number. When she saw Dawn watching her, she moved away, out of earshot. Lisa answered the phone in two rings.
“Lisa? I think I know where Jackie is.”