Page 1 of Enter if you Dare: Part Two

Cave

Red. He shouldn’t be that red.

No, no, no. His blood is pooling on the ground.

I grab my head—no, no, no.

Cipher is bleeding.

Valli is screaming, but it doesn’t sound right. It’s all wrong. I know that sound; I heard it when I was eight.

Don’t focus on the blood or think about her. Don’t let memories swarm up of her small hands, of how much blood there was, or of her little lifeless body.

This is how the Scarecrow came to be.

He is alive in me; I can feel it, feel him rise to the surface. The part of me that is not human—the fragment of me that saves people, protects them.

“Cipher!” Valli screams, and he focuses on that. “Cipher, stay with me.”

I can’t move as my mind shifts somewhere dark, somewhere death cannot reach me. A place where there is no screaming, and a voice tells me he will fix this.

Someone shouts for an ambulance.

More people have entered my cornfield. I need to get them out; they cannot be in here. This is mine.

When Rowan moves, my brain shatters like glass hitting the hard ground, and the darkest part of me steps out.

I don’t remember crossing the space, but suddenly I’m in front of Rowan, my hands fixed around his throat. His chokes and gasps swim beneath my palms, feeding my need to see the fight leave his body.

Noa is shouting something, but it’s merely noise.

“Cave, no! We need him alive.”

Do we really?

Valli is the only other person who can talk to the darkness inside me. But not this time. We must eliminate the threat—I won’t let anyone take them from me.

I could crush his windpipe right now; it would take seconds. The Scarecrow always knows what needs to be done. He has helped me since I was eight and couldn’t save my sister. We became one and the same until Valli. She helped separate the two, and look where that got us.

The face of my enemy is purple, eyes bulging, and there is something satisfying about the way his body convulses.

Don’t kill him. We can use him to eliminate every threat.

I release him; I need him alive. He gasps, clawing at his throat.

Behind me, Valli is screaming Cipher’s name, and the sirens are getting closer. The world still moves, even though everything has ended for me.

I don’t wait for the ambulance to arrive; instead, I grab Rowan by his shirt and pull him like a rag doll toward the parking lot. He tries to fight me, but I feel nothing—no pain, no remorse. Nothing.

“Cave, what are you doing?” Noa shouts behind me.

I point back toward the cornfield, and he must listen because he doesn’t follow us. None of them need to see what I’m about to do.

Rowan screams and struggles as I drag him along the gravel path, creating a body-shaped trail as I walk, and when I finally reach the parking lot, there is a figure leaning against a truck, waiting.

White face paint, red lips. It’s the fucking Jester.

“Well,” the Jester says, in a voice that’s almost musical yet wrong to my ears. “This is interesting.”