Chapter 10
“You’re so good-looking,” I’d said, pushing his hair back from his forehead. I ran my fingers over his perfect thick eyebrows, down the neat slope of his nose. Then I came to his lips. “Your lips. How do you have such beautiful lips?”
He smiled as I kissed him. Not with teeth. He rarely smiles with teeth. He doesn’t like his teeth, which is stupid because they’re magnificent. Orthodontics would have been a mistake, making ordinary what nature ordained to be special.
“Stop.” His cheeks went red.
His beard was rough against my skin, but I didn’t care.
“Stop what? Complimenting you?”
“Yes. I don’t know what to do with positive feedback.”
“Too bad. You’re the most attractive human being on the planet and you need to know.”
“That’s not true! Stop.”
“Stop what. Kissing you?”
“No,” he said. “Not that. Never that.”
He stands in front of me in the doorway, looking at me like I’m a stranger, the slight wrinkles on his forehead evidence of time gone by.
Of memories and change and loss. The innocence of who we were and what we had, tarnished by everything that came after.
By where we are now, amid such violence.
Cruelty and carnage. Unfathomable tragedy.
I never could have imagined it ending like this, back when I was just learning how it felt to see him up close, exploring the novel topography of his face. I never could have imagined it ending at all.
I can’t move, can’t trust the ground below me not to swallow me up, to prove that every fear I’ve ever had was valid, that actually I wasn’t afraid enough.
Ravi holds the doors open, and the crowd starts to pour out onto the lawn.
As predicted, the sight of Vicky’s head and the man’s dead body incites complete pandemonium.
Some people turn around and run back inside, others take off across the lawn, others toward the lake, the woods.
I see them in streaks. Formal wedding attire ripped.
Hair messy. Faces flushed and sweaty and terror warped.
“Stay together!” Ravi calls out, but no one’s listening anymore. A wild-eyed woman in a tattered gown plows past him and knocks him back. I catch the door.
“Ravi!” His name feels heavy in my mouth. Strange and unwelcome.
“I’m fine,” he says, holding his ribs.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry…” I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for. I move to help him, but he dodges me. The flames gnaw closer, and I can feel the heat at my heels.
He takes a step back, receding into the reception hall. Another step. He turns away from me. He’s going back for her.
Tanya stands rigid on the dance floor with her stilettos in her hands, her makeup and hair somehow still flawless. She’s wide-eyed and ranting, incoherent. “There. It’s out…out there. But I didn’t…No. No. It’s happening. Why is this happening?”
“Willa.” Danny’s at the bottom of the steps. “Willa, come on.”
He reaches out to me. I stare at his outstretched hand. Do I take it?
Smoke fills my lungs, stings my eyes. I look back at Ravi. I know there’s nothing I can do for him. His fate is out of my hands. It’s no longer bound to mine. We never said our vows. Death won’t be what parts us; we’re already parted.
I cough into the crook of my arm, stagger down the steps toward Danny. I take his hand and let him lead me away.
“Where’s the crazy guy?” I hear someone say.
Again, a great fucking question. My eyes are beyond irritated from the smoke, and there are people everywhere—running crawling screaming crying praying—and Danny’s got me sprinting to keep up with him, to keep my hand in his, so I can’t concentrate on the frenzied scene blurring around me.
The string lights on the deck explode from the heat of the fire, and the sound of the glass globes bursting exacerbates the mayhem.
“I don’t see him anywhere. The…the…” I don’t know what else to call him. “The Eyeball Man!”
“We don’t want to,” Danny says. “Let’s go.”
Another guest runs past us. “The cabins! Get to the cabins!”
“Not that one!” Danny shouts.
It’s the cabin where Steph is. Where Jace is, too, probably. Or maybe not. We didn’t see him. Maybe he’s still alive. Maybe we should stop to check. Maybe we should…
It’s a sixth sense, one I didn’t know I had, one I wish I’d never had to discover.
The eyes. They’re on me again. All of them. The mask is covered now. Too many to count.
He stands ahead of us on the path. Out in the open. Unafraid. Only danger is so confident that it’s transcended danger. Only death itself.
He picks up his pace. He’s not running, not really. He’s skipping. He has enough momentum to launch into the air, to click his heels.
He’s gleeful. He’s having the time of his life.
One of his eyes comes loose and falls off the mask into the dirt.
Danny shoves me from the path, and we run toward the nearest cabin. By some miracle, the door’s been left open, swinging in the wind.
It’s not until we’re inside, door shut and locked behind us, that I realize what a terrible fucking idea this is. There’s no hiding from the Eyeball Man. He’s seen us.
He sees everything.
And he won’t hesitate to smoke us out.
If he wants to kill us, he’ll kill us. He’ll find a way.
I remember his hand around my neck. Squeezing. He could have killed me then. He didn’t. He might have, if Evan hadn’t intervened. Or maybe he enjoys toying with me. He could have killed me in the woods earlier, or when I was in the cabin with Steph.
Maybe he’s saving me for last. Maybe I’m special. Maybe I’m his final girl.
Cassie’s voice in my head. Nothing gives you perspective like a true crime doc. And if that’s too real, a nice classic slasher bloodbath. A reminder it could always be worse.
The irony. I’d laugh if I remembered how.
Danny stalks the interior of the cabin, making sure every window is closed, the thick burlap curtains drawn.
What’s the point? The killer knows we’re in here.
“Okay,” Danny says. He takes my face in his hands, the way he did when he first kissed me. He presses his forehead into mine. “We’re getting out of this. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, but I don’t believe him. What future is there? What’s beyond these walls? I can’t see it, can’t imagine it. I’m not sure I want to.
Danny wraps his arms around me, pulls me into his chest, and I can hear the fitful beating of his heart, the air rushing in and out of his lungs. He smells of sweat and smoke, with a vague hint of woody cologne.
“You like sushi?” he says.
“What?”
“Do you like sushi?”
I lean back to get a better look at his face. He’s serious. “Why are you asking?”
“When this is over, I’ll take you out. We’ll fly to Japan.”
“Japan?”
“I’ll take you to Japan,” he says. “To my favorite sushi spot. Have you ever been to Tokyo?”
“No…”
“Ah,” he says, flashing his crooked smile. “It’s settled. We’re going to Tokyo. You’ll love it.”
My first thought is Archimedes. I’ll need a cat sitter if I go to Tokyo. He won’t mind. He’ll likely prefer the sitter to me.
If I die tonight, who will take care of him? Who will know that he’s all alone in my apartment?
This gets me. My tears flow hot and free.
“Hey. Hey.” Danny with his awkward laugh. “It’s okay if you don’t like sushi.”
“I don’t,” I tell him. “I told you I wasn’t cool.”
“I like how you are.”
“Will you still take me to Tokyo?”
There’s a knock at the cabin door.
He holds me tighter.
“Will you still take me?” I ask again. I shut my eyes, and I try to picture the two of us on a plane, queuing up the same movie at the same time so we can watch it together.
I try to conjure the image of me falling asleep on his shoulder, under the same blanket.
But I can’t. All I can see are the backs of my eyelids. Darkness. Nothing.
Knock.
Knock.
Knockknockknockknockknockknock.
A moment of quiet, just as violent in its own way. Just as brutal.
Then—
Glass cracking.
Glass shattering.
I open my eyes to a gloved hand pulling back the burlap curtain.
Danny drags me away from the broken window, farther into the cabin.
The Eyeball Man climbs inside. His footsteps are heavy as he comes toward us, boots crunching on shards of glass, clunking on whining floorboards. He holds his hammer up high. He flips it around, slides it back into his utility belt, and pulls out the bowie knife instead. It’s covered in blood.
Danny charges forward, trying to outrun, or to outmaneuver. He keeps his promise; he doesn’t leave me. He tries to bring me with him, but my hand slips from his grasp, and he loses his footing.
The Eyeball Man is prepared. He lifts his knee as Danny falls, and it collides with Danny’s skull.
He’s out when he hits the floor. His limbs twitch.
I’m alone. Death is staring at me with all its eyes, and I’m alone.
Fight, flight, or freeze. Die fighting, die running, or die still.
I’m not at peace with what’s about to happen. I’m not ready. I’m so scared it’s spilling down my leg. I’m so scared. I’m so fucking scared and so fucking sad.
My life doesn’t flash before my eyes, only all the reasons why I must not deserve it.
The massive, masked figure, the faceless villain who is no one so he gets to be everyone, everything—my reckoning, my heartache, my fear, my punishment, my end, my bleak, bleak fate—takes two assertive strides toward me.
His gloved hand finds my neck again. He sets the tip of his blade between my eyes. He applies pressure.
“Look,” he says. “Looooookkk at me.”
It doesn’t hurt. Blood flows down my nose, over my lips, into my mouth, down my chin.
He wheezes. He laughs.
I’m not his final girl after all.
I’m not special.
I hear the knife move deeper. I hear a snap. A crack. A squish. A scream that must be mine but it’s above me. No. Behind me. I see nothing. I feel nothing. No. That’s not true. I’m cold. I’m so cold and so cold and