It’s a funny thing when you see the world in a different light. When we arrived I thought this place was pretty cool: tons of rides, food stalls, flashing lights and loud music, the smell of popcorn and cotton candy filling my nose. Now, the whole place seems like a walking nightmare. And instead of the sweet smell of cotton candy, I smell blood and decay.
“You good, man?” Daryl steps to my side, and Brown Eyes gives us both a quick nervous glance.
“Yeah,” I reply. “Why?”
Daryl frowns, his eyes looking me over. “The blood.” He gestures at me, his hand still clutching his two-by-four.
I look down at myself, seeing blood splattered down my jeans and across my T-shirt. I suck in a breath, feeling a mixture of things, but mainly feeling dirty. I look at Brown Eyes and see that she’s in the same predicament as me, though I wonder if she knows.
“I’m, I’m fine. It’s not mine.” I look into the shadows between two stalls; nothing jumps out, so we quickly move forward. “What’s going on, Daryl?”
“No clue, man. People just started going crazy after that fight. The police turned up and tried to separate them. They had someone in the back of their car, and he just started going mental. After that, I don’t know. Everyone was either running or fighting.”
As we pass the shooting stall, I realize how unarmed I am. Daryl has his shitty piece of wood, but I’ve got nothing. “I need to be armed. I need…I dunno, something.”
Daryl grabs me by the shoulder and pulls me to a stop. He nods to the pellet guns on the rack—the ones I had earlier used to win Brown Eyes her pink teddy. I shrug: a pellet gun is better than nothing, I guess, and if nothing else I can smack someone with it.
“Hey?” I whisper to Brown Eyes.
She stops and looks back at me, her eyes wide and frightened but her jaw strong and determined.
“Let me grab a gun.”
Her eyes go even wider upon hearing my words, but she nods an
okay
and I climb up onto the stand and jump down the other side before she can say anything else. There are lots of guns, but they’re all chained to the stand, so I rummage around underneath the counter to try and find a spare but still come up blank. When I stand back up, Daryl and Brown Eyes are nowhere to be seen.
“Daryl?” I whisper-shout. I lean over the stall and look around. I can see someone in the distance, but nothing and no one close by. “Daryl?” I shout-whisper again, my words dying out as the fairground music stops abruptly. Seconds later the lights go out and the entire fairground is plunged into darkness.
“Shit,” I whisper.
I look around, my eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness, my senses becoming more aware of everything and nothing all at the same time. The only lights are the ones still coming from the top of the patrol car, which continue to flash on and off as if the fair is still going.
A growl to my left makes me pull my head back inside the stall, and before I even know I’m doing it, I crouch down under the counter, blending my body into the darker shadows. Minutes go by before I hear someone—or something—getting closer, and I nearly stand up to see if it’s Daryl. It’s the smell that hits me first and makes me know it isn’t him. Sure, the guy has been known to stink on occasion—doesn’t every guy?—but this is unlike anything I’ve ever smelled before. I gag on the taste of it in my mouth, the smell making me retch. I shake my head to clear the stench from my nose, and try to man up to it all, a grimace covering my face as I thankfully hear the steps receding.
I wait another minute before slowly extracting myself from my hiding position, peeking up over the top of the stall. It’s gotten even darker, but thankfully the police lights are illuminating enough for me to see that my way is clear. It also shows me that on the other side of the fair is another shooting stand, but this one is bows and arrows. I don’t know where Daryl and Brown Eyes have gone, but I need to get one of those bows and some arrows, no matter how cheap they seem: it’s better than nothing, and I’m a damn good shot with an arrow.
I stand fully up, preparing to climb back over the stall and head over to grab my bounty, but my foot slips on one of the metal chains holding the crappy guns to the table and I trip, grabbing the table behind me for balance. I breathe a sigh of relief just in time for nine glass bottles to clatter and fall from their stand. I wince and pray that the sound just seems incredibly loud to me, but when a low chorus of moans and growls echoes around the fairground, I know I don’t have much time.
I dive over the stall and run as fast as I can, my sneakers digging into the hard summer ground and sending up dust behind me. I leave behind the sound of moans and the clatter of bottles and cheap guns falling and grit my teeth as I push harder and faster to get to the bows and arrows. Shadows move around me, and as I focus on one, more appear. My stomach lurches of its own accord, giving me the impression that now would be a perfectly normal time to freak the hell out—if not wholly inconvenient. The thought of Brown Eyes and my best friend needing my help keeps me strong and moving forward, toward my weapon.
I reach the stall, place one hand on top, and throw myself over the other side of it. I shoulder slam into the ground and try to stop my momentum from knocking over the stand and causing too much more noise. I can hear growls coming from all around me, and I try to slow my breathing and make it as quiet as possible, hiding under the stall—almost mimicking my previous position.
Reaching my hand around the ground, I feel numerous bows and I carefully pull one to me. It feels good in my hand—strong—even though I know it’s probably made of cheap wood. I know it will fire if I need it to. With my other hand, I root across the dark ground, feeling for arrows, finding several in a box. The points are pretty blunt, but hopefully with enough power behind them they can still do some good.
I look around me in the darkness for something I can use to carry the arrows, but it’s too dark, and I don’t dare get my iPhone out to use the built-in flashlight. I shuffle out from under the stall when my breathing has returned to normal and I don’t hear any movement close by. The cop car’s blue light reflects off the back of the stall, and I can see a small brown backpack, which would be perfect to carry the arrows, hanging near a coat.
I peek over the top of the stall, my blood freezing in my veins when I see a dark shadow lurch from around the police car. In the flash of blue it’s clear that this man is missing most of his face. I gasp involuntarily and he pauses mid-lurch, lifting his nose in the air before finally turning in my direction with a low growl.
“Shit,” I mumble. I glance back at the bag, knowing that if I stand up and make a grab for it, I’ll be giving away my position. But what choice do I have? I can’t carry around a handful of arrows, and I need to find Daryl and Brown Eyes quickly.
A long, piercing scream makes up my mind and I abruptly stand and grab the backpack off the hook. It snags on something on the wall, and for a few precious seconds I don’t think it’s going to come free. When it does, I’m pulling so hard that I collapse backwards into the stand and knock a ton of things over. The faceless man growls louder, his growl joined by several more, each echoing around me. I grab handfuls of arrows and thrust them into the bag before throwing it over my shoulders and sliding it onto my back as I start to run.
The faceless man is nearly upon me by the time I climb over the other side.
But I’m not worried about him anymore.
I’m worried about the other ten or so monsters that have come out from wherever they were hiding—each one a new horror to see.
Another long, piercing scream sounds out, and I throw caution to the wind and run in the direction of it, dodging reaching arms and bodies that try to stop me as rotten smells invade my senses and make my eyes water.
I run, passing several dead bodies that litter the ground that I try not to look at too closely, past blood-smeared stalls and overturned food carts, until I come to the House of Glass—the place the screaming is coming from.
Bodies surround the place, both dead and alive—well, sort of alive—and I’m about to go in search of my friends somewhere else when I hear Daryl’s loud ass shouting. Another scream and I’m almost certain that they are both inside the House of Glass. A noise behind me makes me turn just in time to see long, gangly arms reaching for me, and I duck and run to the entrance.
I slam into the doorway, skidding to a halt as my eyes adjust to the dimness inside. I take a breath and try to ignore the pounding of my brain as a migraine begins to throb behind my eyes. My hand still clutches onto the bow, but in here it won’t be any good: there’s not enough space to be able to shoot it properly. I pull an arrow out of the backpack, feeling the point and knowing it’s not really sharp enough for what I want—not unless I put a helluva lot of strength behind it. Passing the bow over my shoulder, I travel further inside.
I can hear Daryl shouting and Brown Eyes sobbing, but I don’t immediately find them. Instead, I’m forced to travel through the maze of glass walls. Things eventually go quiet. It’s dark and confusing as hell in here. Every now and then I bump into a glass wall, my face slamming into the warm sheet of glass that I thought was a doorway.
I try not to panic, putting every thought I have into finding Daryl, because wherever he is, I know he’ll have Brown Eyes and I know he’ll look after her for me. I bump into the wall again, and curse under my breath. A bloody hand slams onto the other side of the glass, a face appearing seconds later.
The face is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before—bloody, with chunks of nose missing—and for a minute all I can do is stare. The face—the man—snaps at me, his teeth trying to bite through the glass. I gulp, knowing what I’m seeing but not quite believing it because up close this is even more horrifying. It head-butts the glass and growls, and I hit the other side—partly in anger, partly in fear. It—he—doesn’t care, though; he head-butts again and again until the skin on his forehead splits and blood seeps out. Every time he slams his head against it, fresh blood splatters onto the glass.
I take a step back, feeling intensely claustrophobic—and yeah, wanting to get away from the freak cracking his skull open in front of me. I reach out and fumble my way around another confusing glass corner, seeing movement once more on the other side of the glass, but this time the movements aren’t jerky and freakish, this time I can see that it’s Daryl: his orange hair is like a beacon to me even in the dimness.
I bang on the glass and yell to get his attention. He’s facing the opposite way, and is walking backwards. I bang again and he glances over his shoulder toward me, his eyes going wide when he sees me. In his arms is Brown Eyes, and in front of them another one of the freaks with a gaping wound in its neck.
“Matty!” Daryl shouts to me, the panic evident in his voice.
“Daryl,” I yell back, and feel my way along the walls to try to get to them, but with every corner turned, I seem to be getting further away from them. Panic courses through me and I shout in frustration.
I can hear her crying loudly. I can hear the growls of the . . . people, and I can hear Daryl yelling for me to help, but I can’t damn well find my way to them. I slam a hand against the glass, imitating the freak from earlier. I turn on my heel and continue to scramble around in the glass maze, every once in a while the stench of rot filling my nostrils and making me turn in a different direction.
I turn a corner and my foot slips in something on the ground. I stop but don’t look down, knowing what it is but not wanting the clarification of it.
“Daryl?” I whisper hoarsely, still not wanting to look down.
No voice comes back to me, so I say it again, quieter this time. “Daryl? Brown Eyes?” I squeeze my eyes shut, take a breath, and reluctantly look down to my feet.
Brown Eyes stares back up at me, her complexion paler than snow, and her lips have a blue tinge to them. Blood bubbles sluggishly out of a hole in her neck, and for a second I think she’s okay, that she’s not really…dead. But when I look at the rest of her body, I see the real horror: an empty cavity where her stomach once was, her intestines trailing out of her like worms exploding from a can.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the image, only opening them when I hear a shuffling sound. I grip the arrow in my hand tighter, ready to slam it into the body of whatever comes at me. Daryl comes around the corner, his hair matted to his head, his movements awkward, and his stare vacant. He growls at me, baring bloody teeth and wrenching a sob from my chest.
“Daryl, man, what the hell happened to you?” I don’t know why I ask—I know he won’t answer. But I do.
He cocks his head to one side in an animalistic gesture and reaches for me. I drag a hand down my face, wiping away silent tears and sweat. He trips on Brown Eyes’s body, stumbling into me, mouth snapping, and I catch him, holding him at arm’s length. He fights against me, the scent of death thick on him.
“Daryl, man, I love you.” I reach back and slam the arrow tip into the side of his head just as his face gets too close to mine. He stops immediately as I feel the arrow pierce his skull and embed in his brain.
He collapses against me, and this time I cradle his dead body against mine, sliding down to the floor and sitting amongst the blood and body parts.