Page 24 of Fed By Fear

The room is still black and expanding by the second. The chainsaw’s rumble grows louder. Where am I supposed to go in a room full of nothing?

This feels like one of those dreams where you’rerunning for your life but the ground is too soft to move forward or everything ends up in slow motion. It’s all just black.

The first sliver of light flashes to life ahead.

I aim my strides toward it, not caring what it is as long as it can get me away from the threat of having my freaking vagina chainsawed open. A white door forms against an invisible wall. I don’t know where it leads, but running around in here isn’t getting me anywhere.

A border of green flowers surround a wooden letter G. I shoulder it open, shutting myself in and flipping the lock. Shoving my back against the door and closing my eyes gives me a few seconds to catch my breath. My body begs me to drop to the floor and sleep. I’m taking up running as a hobby when I get out of here. This is pathetic. An incessant nudging from my brain insists I keep moving.

When I open my eyes, a visceral reaction clenches through me. I’m not anywhere in the haunted house or close to some new exit.

I’m in my childhood bedroom.

Chapter 7

Githany

A magenta blow-up couch in the corner, a purple and blue lava lamp on the nightstand, and rainbow room dividers leading to the bathroom. This is the room I grew up in. The pink and white canopy bed I begged my parents for sits centered against the far wall. I wanted to sleep under a canopy so badly. Canopies seemed so whimsical in fairytale movies. It ended up being so hot in there I tore the gauzy fabric down in the middle of the night.

This decor is from a very specific time in my life. An eight-year span. And during those eight years…

My gaze shoots to the closet.

If the room is the same now as it was then, there’s a good chanceitis in the closet. Top shelf. Brown box.

Githany. A familiar whisper is uttered from behind the door.

My parents bought new decorations for this room after the incident. They thought it would help.

What would have helped is burning that box. I doubt even flame could penetrate the board and planchette. I can still see the letters arched across the wood. Theyesandno. They’re branded behind my eyes. I can never remember the message that was spelled out. We were too busy giggling to pay attention. Each of us thought the other was moving it. We never stopped to consider it could be real.

The board didn’t even belong to me. It was from one of the other campers. I don’t even know how it ended up in my possession. It took me weeks to figure out it was here.

Out of all those girls, why was I the one chosen? That’s a mystery I may never figure out. The rest of the girls present for the game are long gone. All dead or missing. There’s no proof that their deaths were related to the game, but I know they were. It’s too big of a coincidence not to be. The reality is, I’m cursed.

The dead bother me daily, and still, I’ve never run into anyone from that night. I’ve looked, even tried a small seance a few years back. An idiotic and beer-driven idea. My words were a beacon for the dead. Especially deceased campers. The patch of woods I worked the spell in is now a mess of lost souls. Which means I ruined one of my favorite nature spots and still didn’t find out anything new. All I know is something terrible happened that day and I’ve never been able to escape it.

I suppose I should be grateful I got my dark ability instead of a horrific death. Though I did get the dead themselves. Every day, lurking about.

Outside of this nightmare reality I’m in, the real board is buried in the backyard of my childhood home. It didn’t want to be hidden away. I could feel the anger. My hands blistered from tip to wrist when I slammed the shovel into the dirt. All ten nails split when I pressed the box into the earth. I had to do it. Leaving that game in the house when I moved away was not an option.

Thanks to that game and its fury, I started my firstday of college unable to even hold a pencil. The nails healed, but I still have scarring from the blisters.

A scratching rakes across the other side of my closet door. The slow dragging of nails scraping down wood.

As a child, I never left my closet door open when I slept. Children seem to have this instinct to keep their closets closed at night. What is it that plants the seeds of fear in us so young? Who decided closets were where monsters hide? I hated that closet even before the board took residence on one of the upper shelves.

More scratching assaults my ears. This time accompanied by a deep wheezing.What the hell is in there?

My lava lamp continues its hypnotic formations. The contents bubble up and fall back down, its pace unaffected by the horrors outside the glass. If something comes out of the closet, I might be able to throw the lamp at it. I don’t know how easily those things break, but the liquid inside has got to be hot enough to do some damage.

Fists pound against the inside of that door, rattling the NSYNC poster on my wall and sending CDs tumbling off my dresser and onto the pink shag rug.

I can’t stay here.

I didn’t see anything else in the pitch black before my childhood door showed up. Only darkness. Still, there has to be some other way. If I have to, I’ll crawl around in that giant room in the dark until I find one. My door appeared. Surely something else will take shape if I search hard enough.

Hunt is out there somewhere. I’ll have to be clever if I want to avoid running into him again.