Page 22 of Girl, Haunted

Her laptop came to life. Ella plugged in the USB stick she’d torn from the monkey’s innards and a ‘New Device Found’ message popped up. Ella clicked it and a new folder appeared,complete with a single file entitledLiveFeed6.According to the data, the thing was ninety gigabytes in size.

'Got you,' she said. Ella held her breath as she double-clicked the icon. The laptop whirred and clicked like it was considering whether or not to cooperate. Then, with a final belch of static, the screen blinked to life.

The screen flickered to life, and suddenly Ella was staring at an empty room in glorious low definition. The final chamber of the Screamatorium, devoid of life and looking about as scary as a kindergarten classroom.

Ella checked the timestamp on the camera feed. It was dated four days ago at 8AM.

‘This footage is ninety-six hours long,’ Luca said as he tapped the screen. ‘That’s Thursday morning. Van Allen died Saturday night.’

‘On it,’ Ella said. She began skipping through in choppy intervals. A few minutes here, an hour there, and it was all just a whole lot of nothing. Finally, at four PM on the same day, a group of people in costumes barged into the room and slammed the door behind them.

‘Finally, some action,’ Luca said.

Not much happened. A few minutes later, the group exited the room, then the nothingness returned. Ella skipped forward a few hours, then found a carbon copy of the same with a different group.

‘Why are they in costume?’ Luca asked.

‘Redmond said, ‘Some punters dress up, according to the guy who worked there. Makes it more immersive or something. Can’t you just skip to Saturday night?’

‘Can't risk missing anything. Our guy might've cased the joint earlier.’ Hours ticked by in fast-forward. Ella's eyes burned, but she didn't dare look away. This was their best shot at catchingthe bastard, and she'd be damned if she'd miss it because she needed to blink.

Then, like a beacon in the night, Van Allen walked into the shot. He did a quick sweep of the room, tidying up the scattered props and straightening the crates. Ella checked the timestamp – just after midnight.

‘There. That’s his nightly routine I mentioned,’ said Redmond.

She skipped ahead to the next day, and it was a carbon copy of the day before. Long stretches of emptiness punctuated by brief bursts of guests – some costumed, some not – stumbling through. Then, another sweep by Van Allen, and finally, they hit Saturday night.

Ella leaned in closer, her nose almost touching the screen. This was it. The home stretch.

At first, it seemed like another carbon copy of the days before. Ella was starting to think their killer had somehow slipped through the cracks when the final group of the day crashed into the last room at around 9PM.

But as Ella watched, her heart suddenly slammed against her ribs.

'Hold up,' she grabbed Luca's arm. 'Did you see that? One of them just hid behind those crates.'

'What? Where?' Luca squinted at the screen.

Ella rewound the footage a few seconds and played it in slow motion.

There it was, clear as day. A man in a black balaclava with a white face painted on it, slipping behind the crates as the rest of the group made their exit.

‘Holy sh…’ Luca said. ‘You’re right. He just went right behind those crates.’

She replayed it a few more times. The figure was tall, at least two inches taller than the rest of the group. As well as the strangebalaclava-mask hybrid concealing his face, he was dressed in a black trench coat that reached his knees.

Redmond said, ‘That’s gotta be our man. Keep going.’

Ella slowly skipped through the next few hours, and what she saw made her skin crawl. The killer's mask was just visible in the darkness, twitching occasionally like some nightmarish Jack-in-the-box waiting to spring. She watched him twitch and shift in the shadows, fully aware of the inevitable just on the horizon. Ella felt like she was intruding on something intimate, something not meant for human eyes.

And then, at 12:18 AM, the door creaked open once more.

Van Allen, right on schedule.

Ella's knuckles went white as she gripped the edge of the desk. She wanted to scream, to warn the stranger on the other side of the screen, but she could only watch, helpless, as Van Allen went about his routine, oblivious to the danger that lurked just feet away.

‘Jesus,’ Redmond said. ‘I can’t watch this.’

Then the killer began to move.

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