CHAPTER 13
“The best kill is the kind that awakens the soul.”
—Not The Notebook
With John’s help, we’re able to add a little more detail to the sketch of the level we’re currently on, and after a few more corrections and a lot more question marks, the map is as detailed as it’s going to get.
We spend a few minutes studying it, murmuring about possible exits, but my attention is drawn to fervid whispering a few feet away.
“—I know, but—”
“—she is the one who—”
Jennifer and Billie keep their voices low so I can’t catch the end of their sentences, but Billie can’t hide that deadly glare she shoots at me every now and again.
The way they whisper in the dark, the comforting hand Jennifer places on her shoulder, reminds me that we’re missing two people (that I care about).
“Dani and Colette should’ve come back up by now,” I say once Laurie places the final question mark on the map and puts the pen back down onto the desk.
Nobody answers at first. Yes, our goal is to stay alive, but we want to make sure the others are safe, too.
We’ve already lost too many people tonight.
Then Wes starts nodding along to whatever plan he’s constructed in his head, and though I have a feeling I know what that plan entails, it still makes the space under my ribs constrict when he says, “I’ll go downstairs. ”
“Wes—”
“You’re right. They should’ve come back by now. What if they’re hurt? What if there is an exit down there that we don’t know about? We need to check.”
“Then I’ll come, too—” I say, and immediately get a backhand to the tit.
“Ow! Jesus, Laurie.”
When I turn to glare at her, she has her most serious face on. The one she usually reserves for when I try to girl math my way through dropping two hundred dollars on skincare.
“You’re not leaving me again, and I’m sorry, but I don’t want to go back down there and see…
” She points to the ground. I know she’s referring to what lies on the level beneath us, but the line of her finger lands directly over where the coat check attendant’s foot just so happens to be, unnaturally still and splattered with red droplets. “That.”
Jennifer and Billie rejoin our group as Laurie and I engage in a stare-off, and John makes room for them to join the discussion, clearing his throat. “Do you want me to—”
Interrupting, Wes says, “You should stay here. With whoever stays behind,” and I shift my glare from Laurie to him.
“You’re not about to say he should stay here and play protector, right?”
He holds my gaze for a moment before he looks away with a sigh and mutters, “I’m not going to now.”
I roll my eyes, crossing my arms over my chest as a droll voice cuts through the unhappy silence. “I’ll go.”
My neck almost cracks from how quickly I whip my head around to gape at Billie. “It’s probably better for a woman to get them anyway.” She shrugs. “Would you trust a man by himself?”
I’m not going to pretend that she isn’t 100 percent on the money with that point. If I was hiding down there and a guy walked in, shoes covered in blood, a broken chair leg in his hand, it wouldn’t put me at ease. I’d probably stab him with my beer bottle first and ask questions later.
She pins me with an acidic look. “Not to mention we want to follow the rules, right?”
The tone is unnecessary, but the sentiment is correct.
“I don’t think I can go back down there,” Jennifer says quietly.
She’s back to gripping her arms again, eight white circles surrounding the skin where her nails dig into her flesh. Her dark eyes are wide, rimmed with darker lashes and unshed tears, and I immediately lose some of that confrontational energy that Billie seems to stir up in me.
“That’s fine,” John says, reaching out and laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. It’s probably warm and comforting, and I remember again that—before the chaos—their date had looked… successful.
“It’s fine, right?” John says, turning his attention to the rest of us. He maintains such a calm tone that I find myself nodding, even though an uneven split of the group leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I know I’m the one who pointed out Dani and Colette were still missing.
I know I’m the one who implied we needed to find them.
I am still very much in favor of trying to get out of this mess with as many living people as possible.
I just wish we didn’t have to split up again to be able to do that.
But since we have two willing volunteers and any further argument on my part will only earn me another swift punch in the boob, the plan is settled.
After a few minutes of group discussion, it’s decided that while Wes and Billie go down to the basement bar, the rest of us will move to the mezzanine.
If Stu returns with an exit then we’ll get them and get out, and if he doesn’t, we’ll be able to watch the staircases to make sure no one can follow them down.
But watching the stairs isn’t going to do much if the killer is already down there waiting for someone to walk into his trap, is it?
The thought has me standing behind the desk, stewing in my own discontent.
Wes is over at the booth with the map, talking through possible paths with Billie.
John and Jennifer study the keypad near the door like they’re going to absorb the code by osmosis, and Laurie is looking around the coat check as if the phone box may have been missed in our original search.
Spoiler: it’s still missing.
I open the top drawer again and pull out a handful of rubber bands to busy my hands as my mind runs through the best- and worst-case scenarios of our group splitting again. Every scene I imagine ends up aligning with a slasher that I know we don’t want to emulate.
Laurie appears at my shoulder, her voice low as she asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” When I look up from fashioning some knots with the rubber bands, she squints down at me and I shrug. “I didn’t mean to—”
“What?”
“Go full… Jamie. With the rules and the films. I’ll—”
“If you say ‘tone it down,’ I will punch you in the tit again,” she warns, inclining her head in the direction of my current critic and adding, “Billie’s a fuckwit. You’re a fucking star, baby girl. I would marry you if providence hadn’t tragically decided to make us both prefer dick.”
I swallow a laugh as she pulls more rubber bands out of the drawer, handing them to me as I start tangling them together.
“The only reason we’ve gotten through tonight is because you know the formula. You know what happens next.”
I do. And that’s why splitting up again is gnawing at me so badly.
We’re getting closer to act 2 now: the confrontation.
It’s usually my favorite part of the movie when I’m watching it from my couch, but living it is different.
There are a few things that are inevitably going to happen if we keep following the format this killer has set up:
It’s going to escalate. The kills are going to get more inventive, and no amount of rose petals are going to soften the effects of the violence.
We’re going to come face-to-face with him, and if he’s smart, he’s going to wear a mask.
The tensions are going to boil over between us—they already have—and the group is going to fracture… again.
We’re going to lose someone… We might lose a lot more people.
And that’s before we get anywhere close to the third act. Before we figure out who the monster is and why he’s doing this, and before the roles we’re meant to play are fully cemented.
This is playing out exactly as he wants.
“I know there’s at least one other person who doesn’t seem to mind you going full Jamie…” Laurie muses, pulling me out of my thoughts and drawing my eyes to the man standing on the edge of the dance floor with Billie.
“I like him,” she says, and it’s a little concerning that we both know who’s the him she’s referring to.
“Who?” My voice is a little too nonchalant when she turns her back to Wes and props herself against the front of the desk.
She bumps her shoulder against mine and I grin until my ankle grazes the arm of the coat check attendant lying behind me.
It’s hard to have boy talk when there’s a dead body in the vicinity.
“I don’t know if I should be thinking about that right now.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t,” she agrees, picking up another rubber band and passing it to me.
I didn’t realize it, but the knots have turned into braids.
Weaving the elastic is relaxing. As relaxing as any activity can be when you’re trapped and being hunted, so I keep doing it.
“But just because you shouldn’t be thinking about it doesn’t mean you won’t.
It’s called ‘attraction under aversive conditions.’ ”
I look back toward Wes, the way the cotton of his shirt shapes itself against the broad shoulders of his back. “Attraction under aversive conditions” does seem like an accurate description of what I’ve been feeling the whole night.
“Essentially, fear makes you horny,” Laurie continues, and nope, scratch that.
“Afraid and horny” is right on the money.
I just know that stripping Wes of his shirt would unveil a gift to humanity.
Like when Emma Stone has Ryan Gosling take his shirt off in Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Wes must feel my eyes on his back because he glances at me.
I drop my gaze down to where I’ve tangled my fingers into a knot and murmur, “I’ll have to look into it. ”
“I would’ve thought you’d know all about it, being a romance-obsessed horrorphile and all,” Laurie says teasingly when I hold out my bound fingers for her assistance.
“How do you know about it?” I ask.
“I was looking up historical social psychology studies.”
“Why?”
She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “For fun. I’m the smart one, remember?”