To say I was surprised is a bit of an understatement. But after a couple of minutes of shocked silence, a few deep breathing exercises, and falling heavily into a chair, an explanation was brought forth.
To put it simply, this had all been an elaborate game. One ‘lucky’ participant willingly signs up to be the main character in a horror story. The side characters are always the same, and the protagonist is always missing from the list of party invitees at the start. It’s an incredibly high-budget production, and an extensive number of waivers are supposed to be filled out prior to the event, because, as we’ve seen, there are pretty much no rules. Minor injury is permitted, and you have free range over the house—you just can’t kill anyone, or leave the premises. It was the ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure.
“You alright man?” Ander asked, squatting down so we were eye level.
“Is your name even really Ander?” I asked in a quiet croak.
A warm smile spread softly across his face. “No. But we are contractually obligated to insist t you call us by our character’s names. We wouldn’t want to break the fiction,” he laughed.
I nodded hollowly. Although relief had seeped back into my bones, so did embarrassment. It was ridiculous that I had ever though any of it was real. The sudden drop in adrenaline had made my body feel heavy, and I was officially drained.
In the doorway, Forrest reached into his pocket and pulled out something small, square, and black—a walkie talkie. He pressed the button and spoke into it. “Hey, uh, we’ve hit a bit of a snag down here. You might want to meet us in the dining room.”
At first, I had been confused as to who he had been talking about. But when she arrived, it made perfect sense—though the last I had seen her I had been frantically feeling for a pulse in her wrist, there was Fawn, looking as healthy as ever. Her shirt still had a circular spread of scarlet from her puncture ‘wound’, but there was no longer a fire poker protruding from her chest.
“What’s going on?” she asked the room.
“Nothing in my jar,” Ander answered, motioning to the red mess within his container. Though I was relieved to know that it most likely wasn’t human organs that swam within the jars, I had no desire to ask what the substance truly was. I know blood when I smell it.
“Well that sucks,” she said casually. Then, she turned to me, and smiled a customer-service smile. “There’s our special guest. You’re doing really well, better than most we’ve seen. How are you liking it so far?”
I opened my mouth slightly, faltered, then closed it again. Forrest gave her a slight nudge and shook his head. “Let’s talk in the next room” he said quietly, and the two walked out.
Ander must have seen the way I had looked at Fawn, because he suddenly spoke up. “I suppose it’s worth mentioning that Graham is fine too. He cut himself a deal so he only works the early shift. Beheaded, replaced with a decapitated dummy, and he’s home for dinner. Lucky bastard.”
I nodded. Of course. There had never been a meal of lung, nor a crude decapitation. Just a story I had fallen for, wholly and completely.
A few moments passed. “What’s taking William so long?” Wendy asked with a yawn. “If he plans on picking up where we left off, he’s really cutting it close.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Greta added with a nod.
“I’ll go check on the old man,” Ander said. “Want to come with me Sam? You look like you could use the walk.”
Although my knees felt weak even when sitting in the chair, I agreed. The two of us left the room in search of William.
Wandering the halls with Ander felt strange, since the tone had shifted so drastically from the last time, when Ander had dragged me into the spare room and showed me Fake Wendy’s jar. It had been so shocking, to find out that there had been a case of mistaken identity. Little did I know that everything that had happened up to that point had been a lie.
“It was a rubber ball under the armpit, by the way.”
I furrowed my brow at the shape of Ander walking in front of me. “What?”
“If you were wondering why you didn’t feel a pulse on Fawn. Rubber ball under the armpit does the trick. Cuts the blood flow to the wrist. Oldest trick in the book.”
I nodded absentmindedly. Of course. How could it have been anything else?
We passed through the parlor, where the body, which I now knew to be fake, still lay underneath the sheet. Ander, a true professional, didn’t even spare it a second glance before stepping around it. I, however, hesitated.
“Wait.”
I knelt down, feeling silly as my hands trembled. Ander watched as I peeled back the sheet.
It was remarkable. I had never seen a headless body, but I was sure the differences between this dummy and a real one were few and far between. The skin had torn so perfectly, the elasticity pulling back on itself so it bloomed like petals around the raw edge. The stump and everything that lie within it, despite being a new sight, seemed disturbingly familiar—as though the body will always recognize something that lies within itself, even if the mind cannot.
Gently, I pressed a finger to the open wound. It came back red and cold. Amazingly real.
“Let’s go. The others are waiting,” Ander said patiently. I couldn’t help my incredulity, but I slowly stood up, and continued with him. We walked down a few more hallways, one’s I hadn’t been down next (perhaps they came later in the story), until we reached a dead end. It was remarkably difficult to find, but I supposed that was the point. They wouldn’t want a customer stumbling upon a direct line to the organizers of the game, lest the spell be broken.
It was shabby looking door to a broom closet. Ander raised a hand and knocked on the wood. “William? Have you gotten ahold of them?” We waited, but there was no answer.
“Maybe he’s already on his way back,” I said. “It takes kind of a long time to get from the dining room to here.” I honestly just wanted it to be over. I was done. I wanted to be out of that house, away from the unwrapping party, and these people I had come to know and then un-know over the course of a few hours. Maybe once I was out of that madhouse I would be able to figure out how exactly I ended up there in the first place.
Ander turned the antiqued doorknob, but it didn’t budge. “What the hell...” he said, trying to force it harder. When it still didn’t give, he pressed his shoulder up against the wood and gave it a shove. “William?” He called out again, before once again banging against the door.
“Here, let me help,” I said, noticing that his slight build wasn’t doing much. We lined up, facing each other. “One, two,” I started, as be both reared back.
“Three.”
The door burst open. I saw what I had feared—the image of a man, slumped down on the floor, in front of an old-fashioned telephone mounted onto the far wall. The receiver hung low by the cord, the resonate buzzing of the dial tone the only sound to be heard.
Only, the man wasn’t the one I had expected.
It wasn’t William who lay on the floor of the closet. No, the face was unmistakable.
It was Graham Willoughby.
The real Graham Willougby, I figured, since we had seen the headless doppelganger laying in the parlor moments before. His eyes were slightly open and glazed over, suggesting unconsciousness, and his chin had fallen heavily upon his chest in a bent position.
Part of me was hesitant to act. Was this just a leftover stunt from before the party had gone wrong? Or was this a last ditch effort for the actors to deliver on the premise of their company? One final scare for the night?
But then Ander took a step back. I turned to look at him, and there I saw something that chilled me to the bone—for the first time ever, I saw what fear truly looked like on that man’s face.
“Ander,” I said shakily, trying to keep the sound of desperation out of my tone. “Ander, is this part of it? I don’t care about the game or the story, just tell me.”
He wasn’t speaking, his mouth quivering as he stepped back again. I followed his eyes to where they were traveling, down from Graham’s face and along his body.
And then I noticed it.
He was dressed oddly. He hadn’t just changed clothes from his costume. There was something that felt strange, almost discordant in the way he looked. More than just the clothes, the proportions of his very being just seemed off, like a fun-house version of the man I had briefly known. He was wearing khakis and a sweater, which was an odd choice, seeing as it was a muggy July night—
And that was when it hit me. He looked disturbing because his bottom didn’t match his top.
The detached body of Forrest Jakobe, still clothed in the outfit that matched his sister’s, lay still and dead upon the floorboards, proudly wearing Graham Willoughby’s head like a crown.
---
Credits
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