Chapter 7
Nadia
The Barn
The haunted fair seems desolate this late at night. At eleven, only two hours remain until closing, and the thought of finally getting to go home is a relief.
I stagger out of the slaughterhouse after eventually finding the exit, with no one else in sight as I made my way out. My breath rasps in my throat as I fight to keep the remaining pieces of my sanity intact.
The biting fresh air outside should feel like freedom after that suffocating house, but dread snakes through every inch of my chest, threading itself with an underlying anxiety around every beat of my heart.
No one is outside the haunted house. Not Eveline or her men, and certainly not the attendant supposed to give my card a stamp.
The night is growing eerier, mist curling low on the ground and clinging to the foliage, making it impossible to tell if it’s natural or another part of the scheming tricks the haunted fair has added. My eyes sweep the area, desperately to find someone.
But there’s no one here. Only suffocating emptiness with the raw wind tearing its way through branches.
With the moon hanging low, half-hidden by the canopies overhead, I let its weak glow guide me toward the tents marking the food court. A sense of doom wraps around me with the gut feeling that something is utterly wrong, even when I can’t quite put my finger on it.
When I arrive, my heart sinks to the bottom of a deep lake as if bound by a boulder.
The tents have all been closed up, a jarring contrast to the lively activity of scare-actors and fairgoers that filled the space hours before.
Now, the food court is smothered in darkness, except for a handful of lamplights spilling weak, pale light across the center.
The courts were supposed to stand open until the fair closes, so where is everyone?
Where is Eveline?
A shiver needles down my spine, and my breath fogs in the air as I hug myself tight, attempting to regain some bodily warmth.
A sizzling heat drips over my skin, the feeling of unseen eyes tracing me. The air presses in with the weight of someone who isn’t here, but they have to. I shudder, the prickling certainty of being observed clawing inside me. I bite my tongue hard, copper tinging my taste buds.
Farther ahead, a single smaller tent has been lit up, indicating some sign of life. I move toward it, anxiety knotting tighter with each step closer.
There is no one by the tent as I arrive, so I peek behind the curtains, desperate to find someone. Anything.
I don’t like this at all.
“Hello?” I ask, voice trembling, though I can’t tell if it’s from the cold or the fear.
No answer, so I try again. The space is sparsely decorated, with a few shelves put up here and there toward the walls of the tent, all kinds of liquor filling them.
A counter with barstools is strategically placed right by the entrance, an inviting space for visitors to get a drink for unwinding after all the jump scares.
“Hello? Where is everyone?”
Silence hangs in the air, unsettling in the way it creeps into my marrow with the promise of something being off.
I breathe in deeper, shuddering, when suddenly someone brushes against my back, almost making me lose my balance. I yelp, turning around in haste.
There’s the porcelain mask again, cracked in places all over with two empty, hollow sockets where the eyes should be. The woodsy scent tinged with sandalwood fills my nostrils, sending my careening heart into something calmer. Relief floods through me. Finally, someone I know. Sort of.
But, there’s something else mixed with the previous two scents. It smells like the metallic and rotten odors inside the slaughterhouse. I do my best not to gag.
“Oh fuck. You scared me.”
He remains silent, staring at me through the dark holes of the porcelain mask and tilting his head in the same way he did back at the circus. I shift my weight to my other foot, a nervousness starting to take root deep within my soul.
“W-what are you doing?”
No reply.
Fight-or-flight instinct takes over me, and I stumble backward, closer to the bar counter. He steps forward, not saying a word.
What is he doing?
“Do you know where everyone is?”
His staggered breathing resounds underneath the mask, feeling too artificial and fake. When he takes one step closer to me, following me like in a back-and-forth dance, the unease cripples inside me along with doubt.
I don’t feel comfortable around him anymore. The soothing presence who helped me from my panic attack is long gone, and really, what did I expect?
I don’t really know this stranger.
My spine hits the bar, stumbling into one of the stools that overturns and cracks upon impact. It catches me by surprise, but the stranger remains collected, only keeps staring at me through that mask.
He’s so goddamn tall.
Before I can comprehend it or even begin to prevent him, he wraps his arms around my waist and lifts me onto the bar counter.
He’s so close I can feel his heart pounding underneath the clothes he’s wearing: the same dark ones as inside the slaughterhouse.
But there’s an added detail to it that makes my heart stutter, because there, on his shoulder, are specks of something dark.
Is it blood?
Is that why he smells distinctly of metal?
“W-what are you doing?” I repeat, begging him for an answer.
And where before I felt safe in his arms, I don’t anymore. He’s an ominous presence ready to devour me whole unless I run as far from him as I can.
“I don’t know where the others are,” he whispers in my ear, lifting his mask so it’s slightly above his lips.
I can feel the ghost of his breath along my earlobe, forcing a shiver through me that I attempt to ignore.
“But I do know that the park is still open, and we should play.”
I cock an eyebrow, unsteadily breathing out, “Play what?”
“Play a game of tag.”
“Why? Isn’t that a child’s game?”
He scoffs. “Not the way I play it.”
He waits for my confirmation, and I eventually nod, hesitantly. Not knowing where this will all take me.
“There’s a barn over there,” he points toward the left, where a red building is poking out from behind the trees. My god, this fair is huge.
“No one will be coming there soon,” he whispers. “They’re on the other side of the fair.”
And he would know, considering he’s a scare-actor here.
I swallow, desire coursing through me that I want to ignore. He should make me feel unsafe, and he does, but for some reason, he also makes me feel alive.
In his presence, I’m no longer the scared Nadia, afraid of the world and everyone around her. No longer the person who couldn’t feel anything other than rage, regret, and sadness. With him, and in one night—which is fucking absurd—I feel more carefree than ever.
It’s utterly shameful and taboo, but it’s the truth.
“You don’t want to be caught by me,” he smirks, showing white teeth.
Then he drops the mask, letting it cover his face once more.
“Run along now, little fangs. If I catch you, I’ll fuck you raw, relishing in your beautiful screams.” He grunts, his hand stroking my cheek tenderly.
“I’ll feast on your fear and let it gush from you like the blood of a warm corpse. ”
The next second, he steps away, and I’m free to flee. Every instinct inside me tells me to run for the exit, but his dark promise has something inside me snapping, and instead of listening to the rational part of me, I ignore it. I’ll have time to think about what the fuck is wrong with me later.
Put it on my therapy bill.
A desire lingers deep within me. A spark of something filling me back with life after two years of feeling dead on the inside.
I run to the barn.