Eye Candy

“Jade, come with me,” Marlie says, reaching over and taking my arm.

I’m hesitant to leave the two biggest, strongest men, but I go with her. Kaity has everyone talking calmly, telling ghost stories.

“Hi, everyone,” Marlie says, her voice calm. “It’s just an outage, we’ll be back online soon. Unfortunately, the front door has locked down, for safety reasons, so the police will be over soon to unlock it and you can all go home. I’ll be giving you all a full refund.”

People tell her not to worry, thank her, ask questions, and we finally sit down. My knees are shaking a little, but I slowly calm down a bit when I focus on people’s ghost stories.

Music flares to life out in the main area, blasting a song over the speakers. What the hell? The power is out, how is that possible? Marlie flashes her light to me, and whispers, “What the hell is happening?”

“Does that mean the power is back on?” someone asks.

“Why are the lights still out?” another demands.

Marlie and I stand, moving out into the main living area and to the speaker playing the music. Marlie switches it off and I glance down at the cord and realize it’s attached to an extension cord. I lift it and follow it, and it leads all the way to the locked back door. Someone is controlling it from outside. This is definitely a setup. I turn around and realize Marlie is no longer with me. I’ve gone farther than I thought.

I swallow, flashing my phone around, feeling so uneasy my skin prickles. I start following the cord back out into the main living area when suddenly someone shoves me. I go sailing across the floor and land on the ground, my phone skittering from my hand. A loud, evil-sounding laugh rings out through the hall. It sounds like it’s being played on some sort of device.

“Who’s there?” I cry.

Nothing.

The laughter rings out again.

I scurry backward until my back hits the wall. I try to look around for my phone, but I can’t find it. What the hell is going on? Who is doing this? I start crawling in the general direction of the hall when a heap of fake cobwebs comes sailing down over me. I scream and try to flick it off but I can’t untangle myself from it. My arms and legs flail around as I try to get it off me, but it’s sticky and there is so much of it.

I scream again.

“Jade!”

Oliver’s voice comes closer, and I cry out to him, still trying to untangle myself from the mess that’s been thrown on top of me. My breathing is tight, my body is wound up, and I am getting more worried with every passing second. Oliver reaches me and I see his flashlight before he mutters a curse and gently tells me to stay still. He unravels the web off me and when I’m free, I throw myself into his arms. “S-s-s-s-someone is in here, Oliver. They p - p - pushed me. And the cord for the stereo is going outside. Someone turned it on from out there.”

“Yeah, we figured as much. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m just . . . shaken up. It’s okay.”

“Come on,” he says softly. “Let’s get back out into the main area where we aren’t trapped in a hall, or in the dark parts of this place.”

“Sounds good to me,” I whisper.

He pulls me close by hooking an arm around my waist and guides me out toward the hall. A loud, piercing scream echoes through the hallway, making me jump.

“It’s okay,” he says, squeezing me tighter. “Whoever is doing that is doing it to scare us. This whole thing is a ploy to scare us all.”

What if it’s not, though? What if it’s someone’s crazy past coming to catch up with them? What if it’s my past coming to catch up with me? After all, it was me who was pushed just now, and the evil laugh . . . No. I’m over-thinking; that’s natural in this situation. Terry is long gone. Whoever this is, it has nothing to do with me.

But how far is whoever doing this willing to go?

*

“The police still ain’t here,” Kenai mutters, pacing the main area ten minutes later. “I can’t find a single fuckin’ person in this place who isn’t supposed to be here, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t here. Without a flashlight, they could slip past me and I wouldn’t even know.”

“I don’t like the idea that someone is walking around, taunting everyone,” Marlie says, tucking herself closer to Kenai.

“No, but I don’t think they’re out to hurt anyone, just scare them,” he murmurs, wrapping an arm around her.

“We can’t be sure of that. We have a lot of people in there who have really messy pasts. It could be anyone, they could want anything, what they’re doing could just be a distraction to get us—”

Something comes barreling down the stairs, so loud and so heavy is smashes to the ground with a loud crash. Then something starts popping; little lights shoot out from whatever landed. Sparklers of some sort. I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s making a sound like gunfire and lighting up the room.

“Fuck,” Kenai barks, jerking Marlie to a corner protected by a wall.

Oliver pulls me there, too.

“What the hell is that?” Oliver yells over the popping sound.

“Don’t know unless I see it,” Kenai bellows.

Frantic shuffling and voices can be heard from the room everyone is in. We’re not going to be able to contain them much longer if we don’t control this situation soon. The evil laugh I heard from the hallway comes out over some sort of speaker system, probably the one we use, and fills the now-quiet space. Going on and on, the horrible sound makes my skin crawl.

“I’m callin’ the cops again,” Kenai growls, pulling out his phone. “Fuck me, I don’t even have my gun.”

“I don’t feel safe, Kenai,” Marlie says. “This doesn’t make me feel good, at all . . .”

“We’re goin’ to sort it. I promise. It’ll be okay.”

The laughter stops, and I tuck myself into Oliver’s side, trembling. He puts an arm around me.

“I think we need to go look again,” Oliver says. “Whoever it is is in here.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Kenai says. “Find a weapon of some sort first, maybe something heavy. I don’t know who the fuck is out there.”

“I’m coming with you,” I say to Oliver.

“And I’m coming with you,” Marlie insists to Kenai.

“No,” both men say at the same time.

Marlie and I huddle closer, not bothering to argue. The two men disappear and we stay close, listening to shuffling sounds, scurrying, and strange noises. We sit like that for over twenty minutes, and when they don’t come back, I get nervous. “They’re not back, Marlie,” I whisper. “I don’t like it. What if they’re hurt?”

“Me, either. We need to go and check.”

“Is that safe?”

Marlie shakes her head. “I’ve had worse, and to be honest, I have forty people in there. If anything happens to any one of them . . .”

“Okay, I know, let’s go.”

“You can go in the room, Jade. You can help Kaity. You don’t have to be out here.”

“No,” I say, reaching for the phone she hands me that has a flashlight. “I’m coming.”

“If anything happens, anything at all, scream as loud as you can and run.”

I nod, swallowing the nerves building in my belly.

“I’ll take upstairs,” I whisper.