Page 15 of Are You Scared, Krowe?

"I might not have been there all those years ago, but I can see the guilt in your eyes. I can feel it." Gianna laughs. "It's stifling, honestly. Don't you know your remorse won't change anything?"

"Mom?" I swallow. "What is she..."

Gianna shifts her attention to my sisters. "Leave this town and don't ever return. Not to the smoldering ashes, not to the wasteland that remains, not ever. Do you understand me?"

"My family..." Sadie shakes her head, her gaze cutting to me in confusion.

"It's too late for them. It's not for you.

.." I watch her look up a moment before there's another whoosh, and a gust of wind spreads fire through the air.

When it lands, it takes more of the cornfield up in flames.

The smoke is thickening, casting a dark cloud over the fairgrounds.

"Go to the abandoned house on the hill. The woman there will help you escape.

Everyone else..." She turns her attention to my mother. "They're doomed."

"Mom!" Sophie cries, wrapping her arms around Mom's middle and clinging to her.

The wind is faster and louder, full of screams and panic as the cornfield burns.

We are about to be trapped.

Sadie tears our sister from mom, wrapping her in her arms and hefting her onto her hip. And then, she runs.

I have half a mind to run after them, but I'd rather them escape. Maybe if I give them a lead, I can try to escape after.

I reach for Mom, preparing to pull her behind me. But she seems stuck to the ground, her feet unable to move, and she doesn’t look at me. Her gaze is fixed on the scarecrows behind the stage.

“John?” Her voice trembles, and Gianna smirks at whatever my mother sees. When I turn my attention to the scarecrows, I know it in my gut.

I don’t know how she does it, but Gianna rises into the air; her feet lift off the fucking ground, but I can’t be properly horrified by that because she pulls the hood off the first Scarecrow.

A head of jet-black hair falls forward onto the chest of whoever’s strung up there, and I know immediately it’s Hector. I can’t see much of his face, but it’s pretty clear he’s dead by the gaping hole on the top of his skull and the corn skewers shoved into his ears.

I stare transfixed, horrified, and unable to move as Gianna moves to the next.

The hood reveals Uriah, whose head doesn’t fall forward this time.

Gianna holds him by the throat, letting us see her handiwork…

the thick black thread crossing his lips, forming a series of three X’s…

one in each corner of his mouth, and one in the center.

Dried blood crusts on his chin and throat, and I can’t quite tell what killed him.

I don’t get a chance to think about it, either, because she moves to the next victim.

I know it’s Owen before she ever pulls the hood off his head. I didn’t expect that she was capable of such savagery, though.

Where Owen’s eyes once were, now all that greets me is two large, empty sockets.

I thought seeing the inside of my friend’s skull was bad, but that wasn’t as remotely horrible as this. This is fucking…

Faintness sweeps through me, and I think I sway a little. Mom grabs hold of my arm, but I don’t know if it’s to try and keep herself from falling or me.

“I’m glad you’re here for this, Christine. It’s so… poetic.” Gianna laughs. “Do you get it?”

Mom blinks, but she’s unable to take her eyes off the last scarecrow, the one whose hood is still fixed in place… the one who is dressed in the sheriff’s uniform my father was wearing earlier today.

“Hear no evil…” Gianna prompts, gesturing for mom to continue.

The man who lit the match on the cornfield appeared over Mom’s shoulder in a single instance, and I watch my mom’s eyes close in resigned acceptance as he places a hand over her mouth.

“Speak no evil.” He says, answering for her.

“See no evil.” Gianna laughs coldly, ripping the hood off the last figure… my father.

It’s him, but something is wrong. His face is slack, and his neck is stretched too far; it doesn’t fit his body. Perhaps because, as she illustrates a moment later, it’s no longer attached.

The painted man backs away from my mom, telling her, “Think fast,” as Gianna lifts his head off the stake and tosses it through the air, right at my mother.

She doesn’t have a chance to do anything but catch it or get hit by it, and she doesn’t even realize what it is until she catches my father’s decapitated head in her hands.

I watch in horror as confusion and shock turn to disgust as she realizes she’s holding her husband’s head… and then grief, outrage, and pain a moment later when she turns it entirely and gets a look at his face.

It’s droopier than it was when I left him in the field earlier, and his eyes are flat and dull, lifeless.

Mom screams, and the noise is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. The closest I’ve ever come to hearing anything like that was last night, when Gianna realized what was going on.

I grip Mom by the upper arm, forcing her to drop my father’s head and let it roll to the ground. Her feet are clumsy, and I have to drag her to get her to move.

Gianna and her friend step in my path, barring our exit, but I don’t stop. I veer to the left, trying to dart past them.

It does nothing; they move in a strangely fluid sort of tandem, barring our exit once more.

They’re fucking ghosts, right? I didn’t think ghosts even existed, let alone that they could harm people, or touch them, or even be seen. But if they’re ghosts, they’re not real. And if I can’t go around them, I’ll just have to go through them.

Gianna laughs when I stand face-to-face with her, pushing forward despite the resistance of her body in front of me. She doesn’t separate into pieces to allow me to pass; she isn’t hollow. Instead, her mouth curves into a wicked grin as I try to push through her.

“You want to be inside me so bad, don’t you, Krowe?”

I don’t miss the inuendo.

“So bad you’ll do anything. So bad you’ll resort to dirty tricks. Well, I have a few tricks up my sleeve, too.”

This time, when I shove against her, I go through her… I sink past the flesh and bones that are no longer there, and I cease to exist.

I become her, and I become nothing.

My body disappears, and when I try to look at myself, lifting my arms and spreading my fingers, I see nothing.

I am nothing.

The world around us has disappeared and all there is is darkness, stillness. It’s not the comfortable kind, but the kind where you know something lies just before you, watching, stalking, hunting…

“Gianna!”

I can’t even hear my own call for her. I don’t know if I did call for her, or if I just thought about doing it.

“Are you scared?”

I can’t open my mouth to say yes, and it’s not my pride that stops me from admitting it. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to burn to death. I don’t want to be left in the dark.

"You don't have to worry about that when you're with me."

Gianna?

"Trust me, Scarecrow, you're gonna be popular tonight."

It’s not just fear. Whatever this is, it goes beyond something as simple as fear. This is… terror. This is a poison seeping into my veins, leeching into my bones, a rapid overtaking of everything in me.

“Just try and have fun tonight, okay?”

There’s nothing fun about the pain stabbing through me. It reaches in through every inch of me, twisting, burning, eating, corroding.

Gianna!

“Let go and it'll all be fine.”

I can’t let go, though. I’m holding too tight to whatever is left of my life.

“Gianna!”

"Hear that, Jackson? She's got a name. Gianna.”

White-hot fire pokers seem to lance every part of my body; the body I no longer see. I feel it, though. I feel it, and I wish I didn’t. It’s excruciating. I can feel myself shaking, trembling despite the heat and the sweat dripping down me.

“Maybe you oughtta scream it as you cum."

“Gianna!”

"Fuck, Giannnnnnaaaaa!"

All at once, the pain ceases, I can breathe, and I’m me again… just in time to watch as Gianna’s friend drums his fingers down my mom’s chest, slowly tapping as he dips between her cleavage.

I feel sick, and just the thought of seeing my mom’s tits makes me want to vomit. But the touch isn’t sexual, it turns out. Instead, he traces a path down the center and then veers left, tapping through her clothing in a rhythm like a heartbeat. It’s fast, scared.

“I’m sorry!” Mom cries, shaking her head just the slightest bit as he drums against her chest.

“Sorry?” Gianna laughs. “Hear that, Spade? She’s sorry. Does that help bring you back to life?”

The painted ghost turns to Gianna, his smirk deepening. “Nope. But this? Well, this is the most alive I’ve felt in years…”

“Your heart stopped beating when she lured you out to the field with her boyfriend and all his awful little friends. What do you think is fair to take from her in return?”

“Mom?” I choke, trying to understand what the fuck they’re talking about.

Somewhere, in the back of my head, the name Gianna called her friend is ringing a bell.

Spade.

“Her son?” Gianna suggests, gently brushing a strand of sweat-drenched hair from my face. The motion is surprisingly tender, and that’s horrifying all by itself.

“No. He’s condemned anyway,” Spade laughs. “I want something much more symbolic.”

I realize how I know this man a second too late.

As he curls his fingers, I recognize the name… Aiden Spade. The man my father and his friends left tied to the stake… the reason they tried to cancel Hollow Night. The one whose heart gave out on him.

His fingers sink into my mother’s chest like it’s nothing more than paper, bringing blood to the surface to drip down fast and thick, saturating her yellow top. I watch her eyes roll as she tries to fight the pain and then snap open as she screams.

“Please!” Mom begs. “Stop!”

“Mom!”

I want to help her, but there’s nothing I can do. I may be back in my body, but it’s like Gianna’s got me on a leash. I can’t move.

“Easton!” She gasps, her eyes locking on mine for a moment. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

I don’t quite know what she’s apologizing for, and I guess I never will, because all I can do is reach out for her as Spade clenches his fist around something and she struggles to breathe, her face freezing in agonizing shock.

And then he retreats with his prize clenched in his hand, blood dripping down his arm as he holds it up for me to see with a triumphant smile.

I know what it is, despite never seeing one before. The tubes that stick out from the organ are still dripping blood; one of them shoots it through the air like a last, desperate attempt to get it to the right places. But it doesn’t matter.

Mom stays upright, a gaping hole in her chest and shock on her face as it goes slack, until all that’s holding her up is the ghost behind her with his arm around her neck. When he releases her and steps away, she crumples to the ground.

Aiden admires his work for a moment, her heart still clenched in one hand. And then he drops it, letting it fall on the dirt right next to her lifeless body.