Page 40 of Death is My BFF

Blood pulsed in my ears.

To my horror, everything and everyone was frozen in time.

Unmoving, as if someone had pressed Pause on a remote. It was dead silent too. I turned back to David in disbelief and waved my hand in front of his face. I leaned across the table, slid off his glasses, and stared him in the eyes, desperately hoping that this was a prank.

“David?” I dashed around the table and tried to shake his shoulders, but he wouldn’t budge out of his locked position. “David, what’s going on?”

As my chest constricted with each sharp intake of oxygen, I took in my surroundings. The people, the bright lights, and the numerous rides—they were all motionless.

There was a shift in the air. I wished I hadn’t noticed because now I could feelthem. The eyes at the back of my head.

Finding the will within, I turned around. A shudder rang through me like a metal nail grating down my spine. Advancing toward me was a boy with eyes so familiar I instinctively lurched away from them.

He hadthoseeyes. Those violent, otherworldly eyes trapped somewhere between a cat’s and a serpent’s. The ones I drew over and over on my canvases. A thick, jagged scar slashed horizontally through his one eyebrow, directly over the lighter chromatic green eye. He couldn’t have been older than thirteen, yet he had the aura of an adult. His back was perfectly aligned, his strides calculated, his stare sinister.

The boy neared and fear engulfed my brain, clouding out all other thoughts. He strode past me, indicating with a subtle movement of his head to follow him.

I obeyed.

VII

As the captivating boy guided me across the carnival, I was bewitched, stripped of any voluntary movement. Whatever spell he’d put on me dulled my will to fight him. My mind was no longer my own.

We approached the entrance to a fun house the size of three large trailers, containing whimsical colors, textures, and quirky, motorized animals. Colorfully painted cartoons with exaggerated expressions covered the exterior walls, and by the entrance stood a creepy motorized clown. It shifted side to side, waving.

The boy stopped, eerily facing the shadowy doorway. He turned faintly in my direction and scrutinized me with those hypnotic mismatched green eyes. His cold features sharpened into a callous, almost hostile expression that slanted his lips into a cruel grin, before he withdrew into the darkness of the building.

Come to me.

Helpless to resist, I followed. I stepped through the threshold and let the darkness consume me.

A door slammed and the spell shattered. The awareness of where I was threw me into a panic. Grappling for the door, I couldn’t regulate my breathing. There were no handles on the shadowy metal walls. No escape.

My thoughts crowded together into a hectic tangle. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been to enter this fun house alone.No. Theboy.The boy compelled me to this point. I needed to find a way out and get far, far away from that hypnotic creature.

The sensation of being watched pricked the back of my neck. I moved too quickly, too fearfully, stumbling over the uneven floor.

My hands desperately traced the sides of a hallway as guidance. The loud, quirky music playing stuttered, then shut off completely. I could now only hear the sound of my heavy breathing and the faint buzz and clicking of mechanics.

Menacing laughter thundered through the silence. Startled, I flattened myself against a wall and held my breath. That laugh was far too husky and masculine to be the boy’s. Boots lumbered closer.

The relentless sensation of fear settled deep into my gut, threatening to hurl up my dinner.

Pushing off the wall, I tumbled into another room that was so humid and dusty, it was hard to get enough oxygen. A single lightbulb swung from the ceiling, forming the ominous shadow of the boy along the wall. I watched in horror as he morphed from darkness to corporeal, shadows peeling away from his young yet eerie, sinister face.

I was held motionless.

A distant memory unfurled itself from a cobwebbed corner of my subconscious. It was then that I looked at the boy differently.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

The boy tilted his head up. A gloved hand darted out from the darkness to snatch the chain attached to the lightbulb and yank it down with a click. My eyes widened as light slanted over a bone-chilling clown standing behind the little boy. Soulless obsidian eyes bore into mine, heavy layers of makeup exaggerating a vile smirk, as its lips slowly stretched upward.

“Let’s play,” the clown hissed.

An enormous force pitched into my body, knocking me backward. I lost my footing, stumbled into thick curtains, and fell a great distance. My head hit the ground. Hard.

I wrenched awake in an awkward position on the floor, having evidently lost consciousness. As my vision swam, a room with crooked floors and buzzing, flickering neon lights spread out before me. The room was freezing. Each breath smoked the air; my skin burst into gooseflesh. Disoriented, I peered at the mirrored walls, which were rotating slowly, like a carousel.

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