I could feel myself starting to sweat. Calling it an uncomfortable situation would’ve been selling it short.
“Please don’t tell me you’re planning on shooting that fucking waitress.”
“Waitress?” he chuckled. “That’s not a waitress.”
“Well whoever she is, please don’t do some dumb shit.”
“Relax,” he said, zipping his jacket back up. “I’m just trying to give you peace of mind. Don’t you have a gun as well?”
“Of course I don’t. Do I need one?”
“More than you know.”
“Oh my God.” I said, burying my face into my hands.
“There’s a lot of heat in here.” Shawn continued.
I turned back around, seeing that at least five more of the restaurant patrons now had masks on and were staring over at us.
“Fuck, this is freaky.”
Shawn stood up and threw a crumpled twenty dollar bill onto the table. “Let’s get outta here.”
“And go where?”
“Take a guess.”
“What? How the hell am I supposed to know?”
Instead of answering the question, he just walked off.
We left the building and headed back onto the streets. I don’t know if it was just me, but I could feel a tension rising in the air. Almost like an invisible pressure on my body. It was weird.
“So let’s say that this cult hypothetically exists… what’s it got to do with us? And why don’t I remember any of it?” I asked.
Shawn smiled. “You should’ve asked that question at the beginning.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Anyways, it’s a bit complicated.”
“I figured.”
“And I’m not sure if I remember everything myself. But let me start from where I think the beginning is.”
According to Shawn, this is allegedly what had happened:
You see, we’d stopped using the tree-house much during the latter years of junior high. I don’t know, I guess we thought it was lame that age.
Nevertheless, we decided to go there one day, after months of not being there at all. This was in the August of 2008. The point where I stopped remembering anything. That day we went up there, we found a mask lying in the corner. One of those plastic theater masks. Shawn said that he remembered its expression being a disturbing one. So much so that he found it hard to look at. He couldn’t fathom why somebody would produce such a thing.
“And guess what you went and did with the mask?” He asked.
“What?”
“You put it on and tried to scare me, like a fucking asshole.”
I could believe it. I was a bit of a rascal back then. But what he told me next was a bit less believable. As soon as I put it on I apparently stopped moving. He thought it was part of my act at first, but I never dropped it. I just stood absolutely still, not saying a single word. Even as he tried shaking me out of my sudden trance, I wouldn’t budge. Eventually, he decided to get help. But before he went and climbed down the steps, he looked out the window and saw somebody staring up at the tree-house from the ground. A person wearing a mask, standing at the edge of the clearing. Stifling an instinctive scream, he crouched down and began observing. Soon enough, this person was joined by others. At a point, the masked people had formed an effective perimeter around the tree. This is when he started freaking out. He tried everything to get me to stir, but I wouldn’t budge. Eventually, he tried taking the mask off. But he couldn’t. For some reason, it was stuck to my face like glue.
We didn’t have cell phones back then , so he couldn’t just call somebody. He glanced back out the window but couldn’t see anybody there. He tilted his head down and figured out why. They’d all moved to the base of the tree.
He backed away and grabbed the knife and baseball bat he’d hidden in the floorboards. His only line of defense. He could hear the people beginning to climb up. He dashed over and swung the bat at the head of the person who made it up first.
To his horror, his swings didn’t seem to yield any effect. He watched as the person’s head violently rocked to the side upon impact, and he could hear something crack. But they didn’t stop. They just kept pulling themselves up into the tree-house. In a last-ditch effort, he took out his knife and stabbed them in the shoulder. Instead of blood seeping out from the wound, it was some kind of sand-like substance. That had no effect either.
Soon enough, three of the masked people had made it up. Shawn dropped his weapons and backed himself into a corner. They stood still for a moment before turning their heads towards me, while I was still unmoving. One of them reached out and put a hand on my head, before chanting out some inhuman dialect. This is when he supposedly passed out.
“This sounds like some fucking fever dream” I said, interrupting him. “I’m pretty sure I would’ve remembered something like.”
“Let me finish the story.” He responded.
“Why? Does it get even more ridiculous. Let me guess, a fucking spaceship landed next.”
He sighed, sounding more frustrated than before. “You’re in denial. I get it. Looks like I’ll have to do something drastic to bring you back to reality.”
"Well that doesn't sound very promising."
He abruptly stopped in the middle of the street.
He looked behind us, and I followed his gaze. Two police officers were standing some distance behind us. They had also stopped in their tracks, staring intently at us.
Shawn took out his pistol and aimed it at them.
“Dude? Please don't-“
He fired a shot before I could finish my sentence, striking one of the officers straight in the chest. I put my hands up in horror.
“You’ve lost your mind," I said, starting to panic. "What the hell did you just do…”
“Look at them,” he said, nearly shouting. “Where’s the blood?”
Curious, I squinted. He was right. The shot had hit the officer close to point-blank, but there was no blood stain. Instead, some kind of yellow-brown substance had started leaking from the wound.
It almost looked like… sand.
But that wasn’t even the most disturbing part. The cops didn't react at all. In fact, nobody did.
The streets weren’t packed by any means, but there were a good dozen people in the vicinity. None of them even glanced over at us.
“Goddamn,” Shawn said, looking around. “It’s gotten worse than I thought.”
---
Credits
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