The patrol car drove up to the largest of the buildings, the brief flash of headlights across its face revealing what looked like a massive manor house that would have seemed more at home on an English countryside or in a Jane Austen movie than tucked away in a web-shrouded forest in northern California. Staring out the side window, I could see a thin but bright shaft of yellow light streaming out of the slightly ajar front doors, though there were still no signs of anyone else being anywhere around. I turned back to look at Ruby, but she was still silently weeping, apparently oblivious to the fact that we had stopped and the twins were now coming around to get us out.
We were shuffled up the stone steps and through the front door. Once inside, I felt myself freeze for a moment—this place…what was this place? Not a police station. We were in what had probably been the front hall of a luxurious home or…well, whatever Greenheart Home actually was. But now everything seemed old and abandoned with years, possibly decades, of disuse.
Wallpaper, likely once a bright cream color, hung from the walls in tattered strips of yellow and black. The chairs and small tables that loitered at the edges of the hall all looked faded and warped by time and moisture—Rotting teeth in a head full of peeling, discolored skin and stale, dead-smelling air. I had time to think that we were being led into a corpse, a corpse that was maybe still hungry after all these years, and then Champ was shoving me forward.
“Hurry up, bud. You’re not our only stop tonight, and we’re already behind schedule.”
They guided us down the hall before putting us in a large, soggy parlor off to one side. I went to complain, to demand a phone call or to see some sign that they were actually police officers, but something inside held me back. It would just make things worse. I already knew these twins were wrong, that this place was wrong, and that bad things were going to happen to us if we didn’t get away. To keep playing dumb, to keep begging for reassurance than the lies the twins were telling us weren’t lies at all…it would just let them know how weak and scared I was. Give them something else to smirk and laugh about.
So I kept quiet, doing my best to stay between them and Ruby as she shuffled into the room without complaint. Her reaction to all this, as well as what she had been saying in the car, were scaring me as much as anything. She had to just be in shock or still suffering from the pill’s effects, but that didn’t make it any less jarring to see her acting so…so broken. When they closed the door with promises to return shortly, I gently grabbed Ruby and squeezed her arms.
“Are you okay? You still with me?”
She glanced up and nodded, sniffling. “Yeah, I am. I just…this is all fucking with me a lot. I keep feeling like there are things I should know, but I can’t keep hold of them.” Wiping her nose, she gave a bitter laugh. “Maybe it’s all in my head, y’know? But it’s like the rest of it. It feels really fucking real.”
I pulled her closer into a quick hug. “I know. Let’s just find a way out of here, okay? Either this is part of their game or it’s real. Either way, escaping is probably the best thing at this point.” I looked back down at her. “Agreed?” Then trying to smile, I added. “Penguin?”
Her eyes brightened slightly and she nodded. “Yeah. Fucking penguin.”
We spent what felt like several hours trying to find a way out of that room. The only door was locked and didn’t budge no matter how much we pushed and pried. The windows were no better. We took turns hitting the glass, throwing things at them, using everything we could think of to either open or break one of the three large windows in the room’s outer wall. Nothing worked. There weren’t even signs of us scratching the glass or chipping the stained wood of the window frames. We eventually turned to looking for a weak spot in the wall or floor we could break through, but they were no better than the windows. We never raised our eyes too high, but I guessed from the height in the hallway that the room’s ceiling was also high and likely as impossibly durable as everything else had been.
Only after we had collapsed onto the floor in exhaustion did the door open again. It was Chip and Chomp returning, as promised, and they had brought someone new with them. A woman that…
I recognized her.
My body seemed to go still, with even my heart falling silent as she entered the room and met my gaze. I had seen this woman before. I had the image of her sitting in my room, of her telling me…something. That we knew each other, that all of this was wrong. That we were all in danger.
That she was my wife.
I looked over at Ruby and saw the same confused recognition on her face that I felt sure was on my own. She knew her too. This was only confirmed when the woman...what was her name?...why couldn’t I remember more?...ran across the room and started hugging us. Ruby was crying again, but this time it seemed like happy tears—I heard her saying over and over again “I thought you were dead…I thought you were dead…”
I went to respond when the woman turned back to me, and before I could react, she kissed me deeply on the lips, pushing her tongue past my own with a desperate strength that I first took only for passion. I felt myself responding immediately, and then something hit the back of my throat. Pulling back slightly, the woman quickly leaned forward and whispered in my ear.
“Just swallow.”
Those words seemed to freeze the moment, dangling me, confused and terrified, over some dark chasm, not sure of which way I should turn to land safely. Did I trust this strange woman, who for all I knew, was part of this whole thing just as much as Swan or the twins?
But then she pulled back, her eyes finding mine, and I had the briefest of flickers…some feeling or memory beyond the last few nights of finding her in my house uninvited. She smiled at me and nodded slightly.
“Please. For me.”
So I did.
I immediately heard a screeching sound overhead. As I raised my eyes to the ceiling, I had time to see thicker patches of darkness moving among the shadows before everything fell away except for the terrible, furious noise. I felt like I was drowning in that sound. My last memory was recognizing Ruby and Jenna’s screams as their voices joined the rest, pouring into that endless black sea as it pulled me under.
I woke up back at home the next morning, and as I slowly sat up in bed, my first thought was that it had all been a nightmare. A long, strange and terrible nightmare. I looked over, half-expecting to see Jenna laying next to me. When she wasn’t there, I got up, wincing slightly at how sore I felt. My leg and back muscles protested and all my joints ached—it was as though I had worked out for five hours while fighting off a bad flu.
Still, I had this need to see Jenna, to make sure she was all right. Maybe she was making coffee in the kitchen? No, no sign of her there. In the bathroom or outside? No sign of her or any car but my own in the driveway.
My heart started thudding as I went back inside and looked for my phone. I would just text her and see how she was doing, where she was off to.
But she wasn’t listed in my phone. I looked through my text messages, my emails, my social media profiles…nothing. There was no sign of her anywhere.
I was feeling nauseous now, my head swimming as I began wandering through the house looking for signs of her. Decorations, books, clothes, a toothbrush…something that would show me that she was real and that all the horrors from the past few days had been a bad dream. But there was nothing.
Finally, I thought and pulled my phone back out. George and Ruby. They could help me. They’d know if I was married to Jenna or going fucking crazy. They could help me figure out…
I couldn’t find George on my phone either. I tried Ruby, but she was gone too. My phone wasn’t empty—I had business contacts and a few acquaintances, but my wife and my two best friends? It was like they didn’t exist at all.
My knees groaned in protest as I sank down onto the living room couch, my head held between my hands. What the fuck was this? Was I really going crazy? Had I dreamed up an entire life that didn’t exist? People, memories of people, that were never really there?
No. That was impossible. And out of all the impossible things I had seen…or dreamed…or whatever…in the past few days, this was the one I refused to accept.
Jenna…Ruby…George…They were real, and I was going to find them.
The county courthouse was a twenty-minute drive, and it was only as I was about to turn into the parking lot that I realized I didn’t even know what day it was anymore. Looking at my phone again, I saw it was Monday morning. Good, everything should be open.
It took ten minutes of wandering, but I finally found the records office for marriage licenses. The surly old man that sat behind the desk heavily hinted I could have just gone to their website and not wasted his time, but it only took him a few minutes to find and provide me with a copy of my marriage license. John Armitage and Jenna Freer, married over six years ago.
I was about to thank the man and leave when I had a thought. Maybe she had died and I was having trouble coping. Had a mental breakdown or something. I asked him to check for a death certificate for Jenna, then for Ruby and George, but there was nothing.
My mind raced as I was crossing the parking lot back to my car, and I was so preoccupied that I almost didn’t stop as a deputy’s patrol car passed in front of me. I waved her down and asked where the sheriff’s office was. When she pointed to the large brown building directly behind the courthouse, I started walking that way immediately.
Once inside, I asked at the front desk if they had any record of a missing person’s report for Jenna Freer in the past few years. The receptionist, who had initially been friendly, seemed to blink when I said the name. Instead of looking it up, she looked at me again more closely.
“You her husband?”
Frowning, I nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s right.”
Her gaze had grown cold as her lips thinned to a pale line. “Just have a seat, sir. I’ll have someone with you shortly.”
I wanted to ask more questions, but decided to not rock the boat until I had more information. It was only a couple of minutes before a large man with a graying fringe of hair and a wearily angry expression came through a side door and told me to come on back. We walked silently through the back corridors of the sheriff’s office until we arrived at a small cluttered office that said “Inv. Shine” on the door. Moving behind the desk, Investigator Shine gestured for me to sit down in one of the guest chairs.
“So, Mr. Armitage. What can I do for you today? Got some new information for me?”
I raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about? Do you know me?”
Shine’s expression grew harder as his face began to redden. “What kind of bullshit game are you playing at?”
Raising my hands, I tried to keep my own rising anger out of my voice. “Look, I think I’m having some memory problems or something. I don’t know if I was in an accident or what, but I can’t find my wife and I’m just trying to get help. If you know me, or if you know her, please tell me.”
The investigator’s eyes stared at me like flat, black stones, and it was several moments before he gave a quick nod. “Fine. I’ll play along. But so you’re aware, I’m recording this conversation.”
I shrugged. “That’s fine.”
“Okay. So to answer your…not at all absurd question…yes, I know you. I’m the one that investigated your wife’s disappearance four years ago. Ring any bells?”
I shook my head, trying to focus on what he was saying instead of the growing unease roiling in my belly. “No. I remember Jenna, but I don’t remember everything. And…look, I know how this sounds, but…I have two friends, two of my best friends, George and Ruby, that I can’t find either. It’s like I’ve lost all contact information for them and I can’t remember how or why that would be.”
Shine’s eyes narrowed as he leaned forward. “Are you saying they’re gone now too?”
Shaking my head, I met his gaze. “I don’t know. But you know them? They’re real?”
The man looked more uneasy now. “Yeah, I met them. Interviewed them about your wife’s disappearance. They claimed you were at home with a bad cold or something when she went missing, but that was about it. None of you had any real idea of where she might have went, just that she was suddenly gone. As you may…or may not…recall, I thought it was bullshit. That one or more of you did something to her and the others were helping to cover it up.” He glowered at the memory. “But I could never find her or any solid proof to confirm my suspicions.”
“I wouldn’t ever hurt Jenna.”
He nodded, clearly unconvinced. “What about Ruby and George? Would you maybe hurt them? To shut them up?”
Sitting back, I just looked at him baffled for a moment. “What the fuck are you talking about? I came to you for help.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe they were feeling guilty, you decided to off them so they couldn’t talk, and now you’re in here to set up an insanity defense just in case we find the bodies.”
“That’s…” I shook my head again. “No, I didn’t hurt them. Just tell me, did you ever find any link between Jenna and something called ‘The True Horror Movie Experience’?”
Shine stared at me. “Buddy, the only thing I can link to your wife’s disappearance, or your friends if they’re gone, is you.” Leaning forward, he gave me a small, conspiratorial smile. “So why don’t you tell me more about what you think might have happened to them?”
Standing up, I started backing toward the door. “No, I don’t think so. Thanks for your time.” Shine made no move to stop me as I left, but as I was striding down the hallway toward the front lobby, I heard him call out after me.
“You can keep running, John, but it won’t work. It’s just a matter of time.”
When I reached my car, I was shaking so bad that I couldn’t even start the engine. Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe even crazy enough to have hurt them? That didn’t feel right or true, but could I trust my instincts if I was really fucking crazy?
I started crying, the stifling heat of the car’s interior seeming to dry my tears as they rolled down my cheeks. I missed Jenna so much. I missed them all so much, and I didn’t know what to…I suppressed a shiver at the change in the air. It was as though the temperature had plunged thirty degrees in an instant. Looking around, I felt a moment of vertigo as I saw I wasn’t in my car any more.
I was back in the room with Swan. As I stared at her bewildered, she met my eyes and gave me a warm smile.
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Credits
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