Page 53 of Fed By Fear

The man’s eyes veer toward her. His fear is immediately evident. I imagine she’s smiling. The way she did with Kristy. All those sharp teeth on full display.

“It’s not really me,”I want to say.“I would never.”

I almost believe it. Even as this other me punches her fist through the windshield.

“I couldn’t.”

Her hand collars his throat. He’s jerked forward, his body taking the rest of the shattered windshield with him.

“I would never.”

She slams his back down on the crushed hood.

“I’m sorry.”

I can only cry as she rips off his handsome face. Eyes are torn from their sockets. Teeth wrenched from wailing gums.

She ignores the rest of his body, focusing all her efforts on the same spot. Her unnaturally long fingers dig deeper into his facial cavity as he thrashes. The sounds coming out of him are awful. Cries so pitiful and broken. Like a fawn lost from its mother. They do not sound right coming from a grown man. The weight on my chest intensifies.

I close my eyes, waiting for those noises to stop.

The last sound is a wet gurgle. The silence of the night takes over.

When I open my eyes, she’s staring my way. She looks more like me than before. Me, but dipped in blood.

Staring at the naked, blue-grey version of myself sets a waterfall of emotions tumbling through me. Each onefights to surface, clinking off my ribs like stones. Shame, hatred, self-loathing, relief, confusion, and fear. Fear that this might all be real.

The man is dead. Whoever finds him will think he hit a deer and was ejected through the windshield. They’d never guess it was some demon summoned at a summer camp.

I’m limp as the wind drags me through the door and back into the room.

Back to the doors.

Madness peers down at me, his dual faces pinched in thought. His form snakes around me as more tears burst free.“I have to go through all of them?”

He nods.“I will be with you.”

And so we do.

Every door. All the girls from camp. More of the counselors. Two paramedics and a police officer.

The killings become increasingly more random.“How are they all connected?”

“By touch.”

That doesn’t make any sense.“They’ve all touched? Me?”

He shakes his heads.

“The board,”I muse.

They all came in contact with the board.

Everyone? When I woke up in the hospital, the board was gone. They thought it was one of my belongings. The counselors sent it home.

With my parents.

I’m filled with a surge of panic. How many doors are left? Something I missed before becomes glaringly apparent. The next door has two numbers. Twenty-two and twenty-three are carved next to each other. Two people died at the same time. I, I?—