Chapter Text
Prologue
“It began as a prank… and ended in murder.”
“Fantastic choice, I love this one,” Zachary Riggins said as he rung up the YA horror novel for the woman across the counter.
“It’s trash,” the woman replied, “Low brow horror. It’s for my stepdaughter.”
“Uh…” Zach replied awkwardly. “That’ll be $6.95. Thank you for shopping at Barnes and Noble,” he told the woman as he slid the book and her change across the counter. She turned to leave without responding. “And have a nice night,” Zach added, flipping the bird to the woman’s back as she walked out the door.
A few moments later, an announcement came over the mall loudspeakers. “Attention shoppers, the Arcadia Bay mall is now closed. The Arcadia Bay mall is now closed.”
“Fucking finally,” Zach groaned. He had the late shift tonight, and the long shift after today’s football practice had been exhausting. Zach started cleaning up when he got a text.
Logan: You still at work?
Zach: Yeah
Logan: Since when do you work late?
Zach: Since my mom spent her last paycheck on lottery tickets instead of the gas bill
No further replies came, so Zach went back to cleaning up. Hopefully another thirty minutes of this and he could head home and get some sleep. Or he could see if Juliet was up. Or that other Blackwell girl, Victoria. Zach mulled over his options until he heard a thud from outside the store. He walked into the hallway between stores.
“Hello?” Zach called. He looked around until he heard another bang from behind him. He turned to see Samuel, the Arcadia Bay High School janitor who also did night shifts at the mall walking towards a maintenance area.
“Have a nice night, Zach,” Samuel said.
“You too Samuel,” Zach replied, shaking his head as Samuel vanished behind a door. Zach paused to take a breath when he felt an arm around his neck.
“What the fuck?” Zach cried out as he reached up to grab the arm, but it was already pulled away.
“Gotcha!” Logan Robertson laughed, standing behind Zach with a shit-eating grin and two slushies.
“You asshole,” Zach said.
“Does a slushie earn my forgiveness?” Logan asked, handing one to Zach.
“As long as its blueberry,” Zach replied.
“Dude, how long have we been friends? Of course it’s blueberry.”
“What are you still doing here anyway?” Zach asked.
“Trying to afford my shitty apartment,” Logan shrugged. He’d graduated from Arcadia Bay High School at the end of the last semester, and his parents had kicked him out shortly afterward. “Alyssa asked me to cover her shift. You need a ride?”
“That would be awesome, thanks,” Zach replied.
“I need to finish closing up. Meet you back here in fifteen?” Logan asked, waving his hand to try and get rid of a fly that was buzzing around his head.
“Sounds good. Thanks bro,” Zach said. He pulled out his phone and leaned against the wall as Logan started to walk away.
“What?” Logan suddenly called out, turning back towards Zach.
“I didn’t say anything,” Zach replied. Logan looked weirded out, the fly landing on his neck adding to the creepiness factor, before turning and leaving. “Weirdo,” Zach laughed quietly to himself as he sent texts to Victoria and Juliet before heading back into the store to finishing closing up.
Zach was finally done restocking books that annoying little children had left strewn across the store. He grabbed the security gate at the front of the store and pulled it down. Like always, it got stuck about a foot from closing. “Motherfucker,” Zach swore as he gave the gate two useless pulls. Before he could use his foot to slam it closed, he heard a thud from behind him.
A book had fallen off one of the shelves in the book aisles. Zach sighed and walked over, picking up and reshelving it. Just as he did so, he heard another thud. “Hello?” Zach called, starting to get spooked. “Logan, I swear to God if you’re messing with me.” He didn’t hear a reply, so he went to investigate the second thud. He found another book lying in the aisle. He was about to put it back when he heard what sounded like his slushie tipping over from the front counter. Zach felt his heartrate spike.
“Okay, very funny asshole. I’m spooked, okay?” Zach called out as he made his way to front of the store. He saw his slushie on the floor, what was left of the blueberry spilling out on to the floor. But there were red drops in it as well. Was that… was that blood?
Zach heard a step from behind him and spun around. He came face to face with someone taller than him wearing a skull-faced mask and a black robe with skeleton bones printed on it, a bloody knife in their hand. They stabbed the knife towards Zach and he screamed.
Thankfully, the book Zach was still holding had caught the knife. Zach dropped the book and sprinted for the front gate. He managed to roll himself under it just before Skull-Face slammed himself against the security gate. “Help!” Zach called out to the store, but there was no reply. He sprinted down the mall hallways towards the Halloween costume store where Logan was working. “Logan!” Zach screamed as he ran. “Logan, help!” Zach burst into the costume store, but there was no one to be found. Fuck, if that asshole had gotten Logan…
Zach heard running from behind him and ducked behind the store’s counter before Skull-Face could see him. He pulled put his phone and dialed 911. “911, what’s your emergency?” a woman’s face came over the phone.
“Hello, hi. I’m at the Arcadia Bay mall, and…” Logan glanced over the counter and saw Skull-Face running through the halls.
“Hello?” the woman over the phone called as Logan trailed off. Suddenly, Skull-Face looked up and locked eyes with Logan.
“Fuck,” Logan swore, dropping the phone and moving farther into the store as Skull-Face ran towards the entrance. He hid between the shelves, trying to see if he could make a break for the front door. He crept along a wall until he saw a fucking skull out of the corner of his eye. He almost screamed until he realized it was one of the stupid Halloween decorations. Zach bit his lip to keep from making any sound as he crept past a row of skulls.
Suddenly, Zach felt an arm grab him from behind. A second later, he felt a flash of cold pain across his stomach as a knife was dragged across it. Zach screamed as he threw his head back, head butting Skull-Face and sprinting further into the store. Zach held his bleeding stomach as he tried to open a service door, but it was locked. Zach swore quietly to himself and crouched down behind another shelf.
Zach took a second to look at his stomach. It wasn’t too deep, he reasoned to himself. If he got to a hospital soon, he’d be fine. He looked up as he heard a noise further in the store, and he saw Skull-Face prowling the aisles. Realizing that Skull-Face was going to walk past him in a few seconds, Zach looked around for a weapon until his eyes settled on a fire extinguisher mounted to the wall.
A moment later, when Skull-Face came around the corner, Zach smashed the fire extinguisher into his face and sprinted out the front door of the costume store. “Help!” Zach screamed, making his way to the food court. There was always someone here working late. He needed help, he wasn’t sure he could outrun the killer with this fucking gash on his chest. Zach saw someone sitting at a table and ran towards them, but then screamed as he realized the person was dead with a slashed throat. Zach finally got to the giant tree at the center of the mall and looked down each hallway, but he saw no one. “Help me!” Zach screamed with futility. Suddenly, he saw Skull-Face sprinting towards him again.
Zach turned to run, but he was woozy from blood loss, exhaustion, and fear. “Help!” he screamed again. He didn’t make it far before he felt a sharp pain in his back and collapsed to the floor. He screamed and tried to crawl forward, but he felt a strong hand grab his leg and pull him backward. Skull-Face flipped Zach over as Zach continued to scream before plunging his knife into the center of Zach’s chest.
Zach cried out in pain, reaching up towards Skull-Face to try and do… something. He just managed to grab the mask and pull it off. Revealing the face of Logan Robertson.
“Logan?” Zach choked out, feeling blood in his mouth. “Please. It’s me, it’s me,” Zach cried out, starting to choke on his own blood. Logan just stared down at him with a dead expression, his eyes almost glazed over. Suddenly, a bullet hole opened in Logan’s forehead, and the over boy collapsed on top of Zach.
Zach turned to see Nick Prescott, the sheriff for Arcadia Bay and Pan Estates, standing there with his gun drawn. Zach tried to call out for help, but all he could get out was a gurgle through the blood in his throat. Zach reached out weakly towards the sheriff before everything went black.
Chapter 1
Dear Max,
I hate you.
No, not mean enough.
Dear Max,
I wish we never met.
Fuck, that was too mean.
Dear Max,
Go fuck yourself.
Love,
Chloe
Perfect.
Chloe Price looked over the note one last time. Chloe liked to think that the scribbled out failed attempts and the fact that the note was sloppily torn from a notebook added to the sense of not caring she wanted to convey. Chloe didn’t want Max to know how much the other girl had hurt her. Max leaving Chloe had been a death by a thousand cuts. Chloe wanted this to be a dagger in the fucking heart.
Chloe dropped the note in the shoebox sitting in front of her. It landed on top of a pile of Max’s crap Chloe had been finding around her room for the last several weeks. She’d even managed to not cry like a little bitch when she found the last few things, so, you know, progress. Chloe looked at the box for a long moment before acting like a lovesick idiot and pulling stuff out to look at it. Oh well. She wouldn’t have the box after today, so what harm could one last look do?
Chloe first pulled out the pirate mix tape she and Max had made when they were little. The little drawings of them as pirates adorned the disc. Next, she pulled out a crappy little handmade bracelet. Max was five when she had really understood what Valentine’s Day was. However, she’d figured it out in August. She’d promptly felt so bad for not giving Chloe anything for that year’s Valentine’s Day that she made the bracelet immediately and gave it to Chloe. Chloe had worn the stupid thing until it threatened to break apart. Finally, Chloe pulled out a polaroid picture of herself when she was thirteen. The bottom was signed “Love, Maxine” with a heart over the i. Chloe hated the ways her eyes stung when she looked at it. The picture was the one and only non-government official document Max had ever signed with Maxine instead of Max. It was also the first time Max had used the name Maxine instead of Maxwell.
Chloe wanted to keep the picture more than anything else in the entire shoebox. But she knew if she did that, she would never truly get over Max.
She probably wasn’t going to be able to do that anyway.
Chloe wiped her eyes and dropped the picture back in the box before closing the lid (more gently than she would have liked). She ran her hand over all the stickers on the lid, remnants of a thousand fads she and Max had gone through together, before her alarm jolted her out of her reverie.
“Fuck,” Chloe swore softly as she stood up and turned off the alarm. Another shitty day at her shitty school in this shitty town she would never escape. And now she didn’t even have Max to help her get through it.
Chloe grabbed some of her clothes without really thinking about it before managing to drag herself to the bathroom to brush her teeth and run a comb through her hair. She briefly contemplated taking shower before deciding Fuck it and not bothering. When she got out of the bathroom, Chloe heard and smelled her mom making breakfast downstairs. Chloe briefly considered staying for breakfast, but that meant seeing David, and fuck that.
Chloe grabbed her backpack and the shoebox before making her way downstairs. She had the front door open before her mom shouted, “Chloe, wait!”
“What?” Chloe asked, turning to face her mom. She’d expected her mom to look exasperated, but instead, Joyce just looked scared and exhausted.
“Don’t use that tone with me,” Joyce replied tiredly. “Stay and have breakfast with us. Please.”
Chloe’s first thought was to say no, but the look on her mom’s face guilted that idea out of her before she could verbalize it. “Okay,” Chloe sighed.
“Thank you,” Joyce said, managing a weak smile.
“Is everything okay, mom?” Chloe asked as she walked to the dining table. And there was fucking David, great.
“You should sit down,” Joyce said gently. Well, that was a bad sign. Bad luck and shitty people were a fact of life in Arcadia Bay, which meant that something that warranted this level of fear from her mom must be really bad. Chloe nervously sat down across from David.
“What happened, mom?” Chloe asked. If something had happened to Steph or Mikey. Fuck, if something had happened to Max...
“Max is fine,” Joyce replied quickly, to Chloe’s simultaneous relief and annoyance that it was that easy to see through her. “But last night… There was a mass killing at the mall.”
“Shit,” Chloe replied, noting that David didn’t even bother to chide her for her language. “Anyone… Was there anyone that I…”
“I don’t think so,” Joyce said. “But one of the victims was from your high school.”
“Who?” Chloe asked immediately. Outside of Max, Joyce and David didn’t really know anything about her friends. If the victim was Mikey or Steph…
“Zachary Riggins,” David replied instead. Chloe instantly felt relieved, then guilty at her relief. She hadn’t really known Zach personally, but she certainly knew of him. He was captain of the Arcadia Bay High School football team and one of the most popular guys in school. Chloe was obligated to hate him out of principal, but that didn’t mean she thought he deserved to die.
“Did you know him?” Joyce asked gently.
“No, not really,” Chloe shook her head. “Did they catch whoever did it?”
“Better than that, they shot the bastard dead,” David said before taking a bite of bacon. “Name was Logan Robertson.” Now that surprised Chloe. Logan had graduated from Arcadia Bay High School earlier that year at the end of the previous semester. As far as she knew, he and Zach were tight.
“I would feel better if David drove you to school and home for the rest of the week,” Joyce said.
“What, no!” Chloe replied immediately. “I have plans tonight.”
“Chloe, please,” Joyce begged. Chloe was prepared for a justification from her mom, about how David could keep her safe and how the two needed to bond. Instead, Joyce just said, “I’m… scared.”
“I… Okay,” Chloe sighed.
“Thank you, honey,” Joyce said, hugging Chloe and kissing her forehead. Finally, Joyce seemed to notice the box. “Were you going to go see Max?” she asked carefully.
“Just to give her back her crap. And then I’m never going to see her again,” Chloe said with feigned nonchalance. She ignored the pained look on her mom’s face.
“I say good for you,” David said, tipping his mug towards Chloe, which made her instantly want to go back on all her plans. “I never understood what you saw in him.”
“Her,” Chloe immediately corrected. God, she hated that about David. They had almost come to blows about it multiple times. Despite having never met Max before she started using she/her pronouns, David consistently “slipped-up” when referring to her. Chloe might hate Max now, but that didn’t make Max any less of a woman.
“Right, she,” David said. Chloe could tell he wanted to roll his eyes. He’d actually done that once, but the resulting multiple nights on the couch as a punishment from Joyce had put a stop to that.
“David, do not talk about Maxine that way,” Joyce scolded. Despite what Max had done to Chloe, Joyce still had a soft spot for her. Like mother like daughter, Chloe supposed.
“I’m just saying, Max’s entire personality was ‘camera’,” David said. “I’ve known Max for almost three years, and I can’t tell you single other thing about ‘em. Well, other than… you know.”
Chloe wanted to respond with all the wonderful things about Max. She also wanted to yell at David for the way he danced around using pronouns to refer to Max so he never had to call Max “she” and for his generally shitty attitude. But her mom would say she was being paranoid and take David’s side, and Chloe really just wanted to stop talking about Max altogether right now.
“Can we head to school?” Chloe said instead.
“Works for me,” David said, downing the rest of his coffee before standing up. Chloe looked away before he kissed her mom and was out the door before him. She was standing by the passenger door to his car when he got outside.
“Chloe, before we go,” David said as he walked up to the car, immediately eliciting a groan.
“Can we not do this?” Chloe replied.
“Chloe, listen to me,” David said. He walked over to Chloe and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a cannister and handed it to her. “It’s pepper spray,” David said. “I know you and I may not see eye to eye on a lot of things, but this is a dangerous town, and I want you to be safe.”
Chloe looked down at the cannister. “Uh, thanks,” she said. It was a surprisingly touching and practical gesture.
“You’re welcome,” David said simply. He climbed into the car, and Chloe followed a moment later. “It’s allowed at school, by the way. I checked.”
“Seriously?” Chloe asked. That seemed like an oversight on the school’s part.
“As long as you only use it in self-defense,” David told her pointedly as he reversed out of the driveway.
“Sure,” Chloe replied absently, already imagining some days she could ruin with this. She pretended not to hear David’s sigh.
Chloe looked out the window on the way to Arcadia Bay High School. Her shitty, poor town rolled past the windows. This wasn’t the first mass killing the town had seen. Far from it. It seemed that happened every twenty or so years. “Once a generation,” people called it. The last one had happened in 1994, two years before Chloe had been born, at Camp Nightwing. A counselor had snapped and grabbed an axe, using it to kill seventeen campers and fellow counselors before vanishing. Before that it was Ruby Lane, who had suddenly killed several of her friends at a party before taking her own life, and before that it was the Milkman, who had killed multiple housewives before being shot and killed by the police. The long, sordid history went back to the founding of Arcadia Bay. The town had a cursed foundation, so Chloe figured it made sense that what had been built on it was rotten to the core.
David barely had time to tell Chloe where to meet him after school when they arrived. Chloe hurried away, wanting to spend as little time with her step-douche as possible. Thankfully, she saw the two people she was looking for hanging out in front of the school.
“Hey Chloe,” Steph waved. Steph was a senior, like Chloe, and while the two had always been friends, Steph had been the one Chloe had leaned on when Max had pulled away. The two were now closer than ever.
“Hi Chloe,” Mikey said as she walked up.
“What’s up nerds?” Chloe said, leaning against the wall next to Steph.
“We were talking about the murders last night. You hear about them?” Steph asked.
“Yeah. They’ve got my mom really freaked out,” Chloe replied.
“Same with my dad,” Mikey said. “He didn’t even want me to go to school today.”
“And you insisted on coming anyway?” Steph asked, raising an eyebrow. Mikey shrugged.
“I like learning,” he replied.
“Nerd,” Chloe teased. “How’s Drew holding up?”
“He says he’s okay. They were on the football team together, but I don’t think they were close,” Mikey shrugged.
“Did you hear what people are saying about the murders?” Steph asked, pulling out her phone.
“Is there more to it than Logan murdered Zach and some randos?” Chloe asked. Steph responded by showing her phone to Chloe. Chloe was instantly bombarded with a stream of posts about the murders, but the one that caught her eye was an image that simply said Rachel Amber Lives over a black and white drawing of a one-handed woman, blood still dripping from the stump of her left wrist.
“God, not this Rachel Amber crap again,” Chloe groaned. “Every time something a bad happens in Arcadia Bay, it’s always the witch’s fault.”
“She reaches from beyond the grave to make good men her wicked slaves,” Steph chanted with a stupid grin on her face while Chloe rolled her eyes.
“She’ll take your blood,” Mikey added.
“She’ll take your head,” Steph continued.
“She’ll follow you until you’re dead!” the two finished as one. The two grinned at each other and then looked at Chloe.
“I’m not clapping,” Chloe said, although she couldn’t help but grin back at the theatrics. Rachel Amber had been a woman from the original colony that had turned into Arcadia Bay and Pan Estates. Chloe figured she must have pissed someone powerful off, because she’d been accused of witchcraft and hanged. But for some reason she was missing her left hand when she was hanged, and at the time the colonists believed that she’d sacrificed it to Satan. They believed that doing so had allowed her to possess people from beyond the grave. It was a common sentiment in Arcadia Bay to blame the regular killings on her, but Chloe had always figured it was people trying to find any explanation for the shitty world they lived in.
“You’re no fun,” Steph complained as the three began to make their way into the school. “Ever since-“ Steph stopped herself before continuing.
“Since Max?” Chloe provided as the three walked into the school and approached the security checkpoint.
“I wasn’t gonna say it,” Steph said awkwardly, handing her bag over to a security guard to search before rubbing her arm.
“You can say it. I’ve been kind of a bitch since Max left,” Chloe sighed as she handed over her bag and walked through the metal detector.
“I miss her too,” Mikey added, the three joining back together through the checkpoint. The guard who had searched Chloe’s bag tried to give her shit about the pepper spray, but David was there and put a stop to it. Chloe figured that it was a nice change that her mom’s husband being the head of her school’s security was helping her instead of sucking.
“I don’t miss her,” Chloe lied as they walked into the school. “I’m just fucking pissed about how things ended.”
“So what are you going to do with all her stuff?” Steph asked, nodding at the shoebox.
“Leave it on her doorstep and walk away. And then I never have to think about her again,” Chloe replied, part of wishing she could forget about Max that easily. From the look Steph and Mikey exchanged, they didn’t believe her either.
“How are you getting to Pan Estates?” Steph asked.
“I’m working on it. I didn’t know David was going to drive me today,” Chloe sighed as three arrived at her locker. A few lockers down was Zach’s. It was adorned with photos and good-byes from people that him known him better than Chloe and her friends. Standing in front of the locker was the school’s resident ambassador for Christ, Kate Marsh. She had her hands clasped together and head bowed.
“I didn’t know they were friends,” Mikey said softly as Chloe shoved the shoebox in her locker.
“Kate would pray over a Prescott’s grave,” Chloe replied, slamming her locker door. “They probably weren’t friends.” Kate seemingly finished praying, opening her eyes and noticing the three of them.
“Hey guys,” Kate said, walking over. “How are you holding up?”
“Didn’t know him,” Chloe shrugged. Steph and Mikey had the tact to not be so blunt and mumble that they were fine.
“Neither did I, really,” Kate said, glancing back at the locker, “But it’s okay to be upset about a fellow student dying.”
“I grew up in Arcadia Bay. I’m used to bad shit happening,” Chloe shrugged, knowing the same was true of the other three. Arcadia Bay was incredibly poor and had a shockingly high crime rate for the region of the country it was located in, to the point that multiple economists and sociologists had made study of it in an attempt to explain just how the town came to be so shitty. That had to a variety of different and contradictory conclusions, but the people of Arcadia Bay had a different explanation. The town was cursed, and that was all there was to it. And people had a habit of not making it out of Arcadia Bay. Zach was a good example of that. Chloe had always figured he’d be one of the few people to make it out, get a nice football scholarship and escape to some big college. Figured that Arcadia Bay just wouldn’t let him go.
“We can’t just accept that things are horrible. We have to try and change them,” Kate replied. “I’m organizing a vigil at Blackwell tonight before the football game with some people from their Christian Club. Do you guys want to come?”
“Nope,” Chloe replied immediately, turning to leave before Steph grabbed her arm.
“Weren’t you looking for a chance to talk to Max? She might be there,” Steph whispered.
“I don’t want to talk to her, and I definitely don’t want to go to Blackhell,” Chloe whispered back. “I just want to put her shit on her porch and walk away.”
“Well, it’s a free ride to Pan Estates,” Steph replied. “Come on. Woman up, look Max in the eye, give her that box, and then leave and never look back.” She stared down Chloe until Chloe broke.
“Fine,” Chloe groaned before turning back to Kate. “We’ll go.”
“You will?” Kate asked, surprised but happy. “That’s great! I mean, the reason we’re going isn’t great, but it’s great that you’re coming,” she smiled. “If you help me bring stuff, I can get you a ride on the buses with the band and football team.”
“Great,” Chloe sighed. Kate told them where to meet her after school before leaving for first period.
“I’m proud of you,” Steph told Chloe once Kate had left.
“Just one more time,” Chloe said, more to herself than Steph or Mikey. “I just have to see Max one more time.”
And then they’d never see each other again.