Page 55 of Terror Tuesday

A fraud. No personality. Annoying. Cold as ice.

“I have a word!” I scream, my voice ricocheting down the stone corridor, tears spilling over onto my cheeks. “Asshole!”

Somewhere ahead, another door slams with finality. The sound of dread.

Reality settles in as the air shifts. He’s not just stalking me. He’s trapping me with the worst of myself written on the walls. Weakening me before he slaughters me?

Is this like the wordHUSHhe carved on Naomi’s belly?

Will he mark me with these labels, too?

Swiping at my nose with the back of my hand, I point the sharp end of my knife toward the far end of the hall. The hooded figure shifts behind the iron window in the door. With careful steps, I approach, but halt near the end.

On a wall, plastered onto the surface, are copies of ripped pages from my diary.My words.Scraps of pages of mecalling myselfthose very names. Paragraphs discussing how theywere all right. My eyes blur as they well with burning emotion. Every passage I read cuts me deeper.

“Do you believe them?” The voice shatters me back to reality.

“Wha-what?” I whisper.

“Do you believe what you wrote? Do you believe what people say about you?”

It takes a long moment to swallow back any ego I have left. But finally, I’m able to speak. “Yes.”

“You’re weak.”

His words hit harder than the insults.

I gasp and spin to face him. “Fuck you.”

“You’reweakfor believing them. You already know the truth.”

“What is this? Fuck you—you don’t know anything about me!”

A haunting laugh floats off the walls. Even though I’m infuriated, heated by his words, I shiver at the sound. “Don’t I?”

He’s read my diary and is using it against me. “Just because you read somewords?—”

“I see you, Chrysalis. But more than that,Isee who you can become.”

His masked face disappears from the window, vanishing into the darkness beyond, and I rage. Everything within me heats, my blood boiling. He gets me to admit the worst about myself, then saysI’m weak?

He doesn’t know who he’s testing. I’ve survived much worse than this…

Every injustice I’ve faced surfaces until I’m seething. No one should’ve ever treated me this way.

With a shoulder shoved hard against the door, it rattles. Another few pushes and the lock slides ajar. My breaths are heavy with fury and exertion.

I burst through into a darkened passage. A tiny cavern lined with skeletons. Up ahead in the distance, a few flickering flames dance across an altar…made entirely of skulls and bones. Atop the pile of rubble is a laptop, standing open.

“Where are you?” I ask through gritted teeth, but there’s no answer. He could easily be hiding behind one of the old stone coffins.

Curiosity urges me forward to press play on a video sitting ready on his computer. It’s a second until I realize exactly wherethe footage is from: a security camera inside an escape room from Terror Tuesday. The footage my brother had to give up? No…this appears to be from a different angle than the cameras I saw.

Was this from Vanq’s hidden camera?

A sick animal sound chokes the back of my throat when I spot Naomi’s group entering. It’s the motel room. As the girls explore, none of them notices a round man, covered in black, emerge from the shadows. Not until he revs the chainsaw and slices through the first of his victims. Then, they scatter in terror, but are unable to flee, despite their struggles to pull the doors open.

The scene cuts to the rain outside. A hooded man attempts to enter one of the cottages without success. Squinting my eyes, I peer at him until I recognize Vanq… He’s doing something to the lock on the last door. Seemingly frantic, he tugs on the handle, but it’s not budging, and he goes back to work on the keypad again using some tools I don’t recognize.