Chapter 13. DEVIL’S NIGHT
(Sienna)
The week flew by, and Ander continued to ignore me with each passing hour we spent together in the lab. Reed had noticed that we weren’t working as a team, but he gave us some space, perhaps hoping that the situation would naturally improve over time. I didn’t see it happening anytime soon. The tension between us was so thick you could practically cut it with a knife.
As soon as the hour ended, Ander took his things and left the lab without saying goodbye. Rude.
I grabbed my phone to text Maggie about our plans for tonight, but I noticed a message from Noah.
Noah
Are you ready for tonight?
Me
I still don’t know what you’ll be wearing.
Noah
It’s a surprise.
Me
Okay…I’ll see you later at the fair.
Noah
See you later, princess.
Today was Halloween, and Noah invited Maggie and me to join him and his friends at the Annual Devil’s Night Fair on campus. Stanford’s Social Events Committee organizes a horror festival every year, and this year, they set up a house of mirrors, a Ferris wheel, a fortune teller, and a haunted house. The pamphlet I took from the reception at Aster Hall showed that there were also several stands selling food and drinks.
I loved dressing up, so Halloween was the perfect distraction after an intense week of classes, homework, and the stress from working in the lab. Maggie opted for a Harley Quinn costume, while I dressed up as a fallen angel for the occasion. I wore black leather pants, a tight black crop top with long sleeves, Saint Laurent Jane over-the-knee black leather boots, and a pair of black feather wings. I styled my hair down in waves and complemented the final look with smoky black eyes and black lips.
Someone knocked at the door when I was about to leave my apartment. I didn’t expect anyone because we had agreed to meet at the front of the fortune teller attraction. I swung my door open, and a delivery guy stood on the other side with a black dahlia and a note.
Shit .
“Miss Moore. Urgent delivery.” He handed me both items and left.
As I looked at the dahlia and the note, my blood ran cold. The note said:
They won’t be able to protect you. You can’t run away from me.
Maybe it was me, but that note didn’t feel like a hazing prank. It felt personal. Someone had been stalking me. I threw the flower and the note in the trash and left the apartment. On my way out, I spoke with security, who advised me to call the cops. I planned on calling them in the morning. Maybe if they talked to the flower company, they could trace who had delivered them. Perhaps it was Ander trying to scare me so that I would leave the research team. But on the other hand, it didn’t make any sense. Why would he send a black dahlia with a note? The other one I found on my bed was placed there even before I accepted Reed’s offer.
When I arrived at the Devil’s Night Fair, I made my way to the fortune teller tent. Noah, Zayn, Ander, and Maggie were already there, plus some people I recognized from Noah’s birthday party. Maggie looked amazing in her costume. Noah was dressed as a samurai, Zayn as a Viking, and Ander as the devil.
“It suits you,” I said to Ander.
He snorted.
“You look hot, girl,” Maggie exclaimed.
“Yes, you do,” Noah said, kissing my cheek sweetly.
“I want to go inside the house of mirrors, but I’d like to visit the fortune teller first. Sienna, wanna come with me?” Maggie asked.
I had never been to a fortune teller before but always believed they were a scam. However, I let Maggie guide me inside the tent. She liked anything related to zodiac signs, numbers, and signs sent from the universe. I didn’t believe in those things, but she quickly guessed I was an Aquarius when we met. Not sure if there was any truth to it, but I was kind of surprised.
The old lady welcomed us, inviting us to sit on chairs across a round table. A crystal ball was placed in the middle, and she held a deck of tarot cards between her hands. The whole setup made me laugh, but I went along just to please Maggie.
“Welcome, dears. Please have a seat, and let’s begin. Who wants to go first?”
“I’ll go first,” Maggie responded excitedly.
The old lady shuffled the cards and asked Maggie to cut the deck. She picked three cards and placed them on top of the red velvet tablecloth, pointing at the first card.
“The Wheel of Fortune. Reversed. It means that what goes up must come down. Karma might come calling, my dear.” She pulled a second card from the deck. “The Hanged Man. It would be best to put your plans on hold until you get a better perspective. Take it as a non-action period. It’s wise and necessary for you to step back and look at the big picture.” The last card was the Page of Wands. “I think the message is pretty clear, my child. You’re heading down the wrong path. Karma always finds us, and if you don’t put a stop to it, it will be over for you.”
Maggie sat there in silence, absorbing everything the woman said to her. She looked pale as if she really understood what the fortune teller was saying.
Then it was my turn. She shuffled the cards, and I cut the deck, placing a few cards to my right. She then picked three cards, put them on the table, and turned the first one—Nine of Wands.
“Watch your back,” the lady said. “There will be challenges thrown in your way.”
The second card showed the Moon. The Moon foreshadowed a problematic, unclear path ahead.
“Things may not be what they seem. Therefore, you must proceed cautiously.” A danger ahead, watching my back. How much did she get paid for all this bullshit?
And finally, the last card: the Two of Cups.
“Love is in the air. It looks like you’ll meet someone soon who will turn your world upside down,” she claimed.
“That’s Noah for sure,” Maggie interjected.
“Well. I think I’ve heard enough…thank you, but we need to leave.” I grabbed Maggie’s hand and dragged her toward the exit. Definitely a waste of money.
“How was it?” Noah asked.
“A lot of bullshit.”
Noah and Maggie laughed while she gave him a summary of everything the fortune teller had told us. I was eighteen; of course, I would fall in love with someone eventually. I didn’t need a fortune teller to tell me that. The whole thing was ridiculous.
On our way to the house of mirrors, I noticed that Zayn was staring at me. We hadn’t had a chance to talk since I discovered at The Cave that he was friends with Ander and Noah. There wasn’t much to talk about. We hooked up, and that was the end of the story, but at least it would be good to clear the air between us. You know, rip off the Band-Aid. Still, I couldn’t get him or the moment we shared in New York out of my head. The way his fingers curled inside me. I could still feel his hands gripping my ass while he fucked me against the wall.
I bought tickets for all of us, but we were separated into two groups. Maggie and I entered with the first group; the boys joined the second one except for Ander, who decided to skip the attraction. He said he would wait for us at the exit so we could all go to the haunted house together.
It had been quite a while since I ventured into a house of mirrors, but this one differed from the ones I remembered from my childhood. It was set with a Halloween theme. Spiderwebs were draped in every corner, and screams echoed from the speakers hung around the space. The flashing lights switched in no particular order from bright blue to bloody red and dark green.
At some point, a group of people pushed us, and by the time I stopped spinning, Maggie’s grip on my hand had slipped.
“MAGGIE!?” I shouted. She was nowhere to be seen.
I kept moving forward, sometimes walking into a mirror and smacking myself in the head. It could have been over five minutes when I saw someone’s reflection in one of them. I quickly turned around, trying to see where it came from. Seeing their face or where they were with all the changing lights was impossible. The figure stood only a few steps away from me, hidden in the shadows. The stranger was wearing a black hoodie, black trousers, and a mask, very similar to the ones from the movie The Purge .
“Hi. Sorry. Have you seen a girl dressed as Harley Quinn?” They didn’t respond. In fact, they didn’t move an inch, their body eerily still.
I initially thought they might have entered with my group, as there were fifteen of us, but I didn’t recall anyone dressed in black. Maybe the stranger was part of the show, an actor, although something was frightening about the way they stood still, not answering my question.
“Thank you anyway. She’ll probably be waiting for me at the exit.”
I stepped back, accidentally bumping into a mirror. Simultaneously, they advanced, the red lights reflecting off something they held in their hand.
A fucking knife .
All my senses told me to run, and I obeyed. I kept running and turning at every corner, trying to find the fucking exit. I could hear them getting closer, their boots hitting the ground.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Suddenly, I saw the exit. I ran out of the attraction like I’d seen the devil to jump straight into the arms of another one. I crashed into Ander’s chest with such force that he dropped his phone.
“What the fuck, Sienna! Since when has a house of mirrors been scary?”
“Oh my God. Someone was chasing me with a knife!” I yelled at him. I was shaking.
“Calm the fuck down. It was probably an actor. Jesus . You’re having a panic attack.”
I couldn’t breathe, my ears were clogged, and my mouth tasted like metal.
Ander held me while moving us away from the exit.
“Let me know if you’re going to throw up. I wouldn’t want to end up covered in your vomit again.”
It took me a few seconds to process what he said, but I couldn’t help but let out a nervous laugh when I did. Suddenly, the panic and fear I’d felt just moments ago slipped away, if only for a minute. He still remembered what happened when we were kids, but I guessed it was one of those experiences burned into your memory. Ander didn’t have a change of clothes, so he spent the rest of the day smelling like sour milk.
“Maggie came out a few minutes ago. She went to the bathroom but will meet us at the haunted house. I told her I’d wait for you and the guys to come out.”
I held Ander’s arm while he comforted me. It felt really good. We stayed like that while my heartbeat slowed to a steady pace, enjoying our closeness with my eyes shut tight. It reminded me of the many afternoons I rested my head on Ander’s lap while we watched a movie, and he caressed my hair.
Noah and Zayn came out together from the house of mirrors, suddenly breaking the spell.
“What are you doing?” Noah asked. One look at his face, and I was sure that he was pissed seeing me holding Ander.
Ander noticed and, pushing me away, said, “Someone scared the shit out of your girl in the house of mirrors. Sienna came out screaming and shaking like a tiny kitten.”
His words triggered a surge of anger within me, and I snapped, “Obviously, I was scared! That person had a fucking knife!”
“Well, I’m sure he was just an actor. Shall we go to the haunted house, or are you too scared to join us?” Ander raised one eyebrow, challenging me with a mocking smile.
I fixed my gaze on him, lips pressed tightly together.
“Lead the way.” I was scared, but I would never back down from a challenge.
We all walked toward the haunted house, where Maggie stood waiting for us. I was still shaken by what had happened at the house of mirrors, but I relaxed when Maggie told me she’d also seen them once I described to her how they looked.
“I thought it was pretty scary, too!” She giggled.
We all got our tickets and headed toward the main entrance, where a guy dressed as Michael Myers welcomed us. He went through the safety rules, with particular emphasis on the rule, “Do not touch the actors.” We started walking through the different rooms, hearing the screams of other people who had entered before us. It was dark. I was second to last, with Zayn following me and Noah in front of me. We were in the third room, which looked like Regan’s room from the movie The Exorcist —minus the possessed girl on the bed.
At that moment, Zayn whispered in my ear, “We need to talk.”
I looked around, meeting his eyes with surprise.
“This is neither the place nor the time, Zayn.”
“Yes, it is. This can’t wait any longer.” And he yanked me backward, placing a hand on my mouth and moving us to the room we just came from. He closed the door and pinned me to the wall.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I whispered when he removed his hand.
“I want to talk to you. I was going to do it at the end of the night, but I can’t wait any longer.”
I gave him a confused look. What couldn’t wait? It had been a few weeks since we met at The Cave, and he’d had plenty of opportunities to sit down and talk to me. Why now? What had changed?
And out of the blue, he kissed me. Liquid heat ran through my body as I returned the kiss because as much as I wanted to deny the truth, I really liked Zayn from the moment I met him in New York. Something dark about him kept pulling me toward him every time I was in his presence. It was very frustrating to be around him and Noah at the same time because I liked them both. Everything was getting fucking complicated. Did Zayn have no boundaries?
I broke the kiss, and without hesitating, I slapped him.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I said in disbelief. “For fuck’s sake, Noah’s your best friend!”
“I don’t know, Sienna. I hate seeing you with him so much that it’s driving me crazy. You were mine first.”
The audacity.
“Let me be very clear. I’m not yours, and I’m not Noah’s. I’m not a car or a book you possess.” I was fuming. “I can’t fucking believe this. First, you left that restroom and didn’t even think about asking for my number. And now I’m yours? Fuck you, Zayn.”
Zayn’s eyes glittered with anger, but his gaze involuntarily flicked down to my lips.
“I thought I’d never see you again, but the last thing I could have imagined was that you’d be here too. And now I have to fucking see you with Noah around campus when all I want to do is kiss you.”
He raised a valid point. I was leaving New York, too, but seeing him again before I had to leave would have been nice. No strings attached. And now I was fucking confused. I really liked him, but now the magic of that moment was gone, and we had to face the reality. I was seeing Noah, and even though we hadn’t talked about being exclusive, Zayn was one of his closest friends. Feeling guilty enough about returning his kiss, I said, “I guess you’ll have to get used to it.” The last thing I wanted was to become the type of girl who came between two friends. I turned around and walked away, looking for the rest of the group.
Zayn didn’t follow me.
Everything was dark, no screams, no ambient sound… weird . I moved at a quick pace, the hairs on my arms up as I kept crossing every room…but there were no actors. Where the fuck is everyone? No Jason Vorhees from Friday the 13 th , Pennywise from It , or Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street … Had they closed the attraction?
The floor creaked a few feet behind me. Maybe Zayn decided to join me after all. Perhaps he wanted to apologize for the kiss…although I had kissed him as well. However, as I turned around, I screamed at the top of my lungs. It was the same stranger I saw at the house of mirrors, and terror took over my body. I started running, unable to find the exit, jumping from one set to the next, hitting tables, pushing chairs, and opening doors.
Help .
“SOMEONE HELP ME!” I screamed, nearly tearing my throat out. But there was no one; I was alone, hunted by a creep.
My legs ached. The sound of heavy boots approaching from behind caused me to hyperventilate. After what felt like an eternity, I finally saw the green letters “EXIT” above a door. I sprinted toward it with everything I had, my legs nearly giving out. Just before I was able to push the bar, everything went dark. Strong arms held me in place while someone else placed masking tape over my mouth and adjusted a sack over my head. Immediately after, my hands and ankles were bound with rope. My panic intensified. I fought back, but they overpowered me. I wiggled and kicked my legs so hard that I feared I would snap my ankles.
“Please, please stop,” I begged. But no one seemed to hear my pleas behind the tape.
I heard someone start a car—the roar of an engine drawing nearer. My body hit a hard surface, and the sound of a door closing above me reached my ears. Moving my hands, I tried to recognize where I was when I hit metal—the trunk. Someone had put me in the trunk of a car. Oh God. Are they going to kill me? Are they going to ask for a ransom? I couldn’t stop crying, and the tears kept rolling over my wet cheeks, my throat raw from all the screaming.
The car was moving, driving me somewhere. It couldn’t be too far from the Devil’s Night Festival because it only took a few minutes for the vehicle to come to a halt. I heard footsteps and the driver’s door closing.
Please, please God. Don’t let me die today.
Someone opened the trunk and grabbed my hands and legs. Two people. Two people were carrying me somewhere. I screamed for help, hoping anyone in the area could hear me. I was on my knees on the floor when I noticed I wasn’t the only person screaming and crying; there was also one to my right and another to my left.
“Take the sacks off their heads,” someone shouted.
As my eyes adapted to the sudden light, a room full of people came into view. Some of them were faces I recognized: Ander, Zayn, and Noah.
“Welcome to Stanford. Let the initiation begin!” a man with a shaved head exclaimed. Everyone roared in unison as if it were a Fourth of July celebration.
What the hell?
Noah approached me, and with a butterfly knife, he swiftly cut the ropes from my feet and my hands. I immediately removed the tape from my mouth.
“You are fucking dead! I’m gonna fucking kill the three of you!” I yelled.
Ander started laughing, and I lost it. I threw a punch to his face, but he easily dodged it.
“I thought I was being kidnapped, you sonofabitch .”
“That was the whole point. I assumed you’d heard about Stanford initiations. It was hilarious seeing you thrust and kick your legs like you had a chance,” Ander said, laughing like a fucking psycho.
“I tried telling them it was a bad idea, but they didn’t listen. I’m so sorry, princess.” Noah said as he tenderly kissed each wrist. Meanwhile, Ander remained in the background, smiling as if genuinely enjoying my suffering.
“Fuck you, Ander. The creep with the knife already scared me enough. When someone put the bag on my head, I thought it was them trying to skin me alive!”
Noah gave me a confused look.
“Don’t be a drama queen. The guy with the knife in the house of mirrors was probably an actor,” Ander explained.
“The same psycho from the house of mirrors was in the haunted house!”
“What do you mean? The Delta Kappa president paid the actors so you and Stacey over there would be alone. There was no one else in the haunted house,” Zayn interjected.
“Why do they think I came running and screaming toward the exit if we were alone? Did they think I feared the ambience and decorations? They were fucking chasing me!” I stood to face them, and they exchanged worried looks.
I knew what I saw.
“Look. You’re fine. Why don’t we all go inside and talk to Nate? He’s the president of Delta Kappa. The knife act might be a new thing planned to spice things up from the traditional stunt they did last year,” Ander suggested.
I was going to have a word with Nate because I almost died from a stroke. It didn’t feel like a prank.
My worries didn’t settle after having a chat with dearest Nate. He confirmed that The Purge act was not something that the Delta Kappa committee had planned. He dismissed it as someone attempting to frighten me or perhaps an actor overly immersed in their role. But why would an actor move from one attraction to the next one to scare me? Did I know the psycho? A shiver ran down my spine at the thought that it could be the same person who had sent me the dahlias with the notes.
“What are you gonna do?” Zayn asked.
“I’m calling the cops. Noah, can you drive me home?”
“I’ll drive you home, and I’ll stay. There’s no fucking way I’m leaving you alone tonight.”