Page 193 of Stay Scared

I stop beneath the camera. “Owen, keep this live.”

His voice comes through the monitor instead of the dead attraction speakers. “You’re hurt.”

“I can still move.”

“Rook is behind you.”

“I can hear him.”

A door slams below the midway.

Owen’s image appears in a smaller window beside mine. He is inside the projection booth with Mark, the analog field camera near his shoulder while cables cover the desk. Mark stands beside the magneto phone with one hand pressed against the bruise on his cheek.

Owen glances toward a control outside the public frame. “I can kill every camera ahead of you. He would lose your route.”

“So would you.”

“I can follow through the gallery.”

“You stay with the feed.”

His eyes return to mine, the muscles around his mouth tightening. “You look frightened.”

“I am frightened.”

Rook has a knife. Ash remained inside a condemned carriage with him. My hip hurts every time my foot strikes the floor, and the cuts in my palms have started bleeding again.

I keep going anyway.

“I’m still running.”

Owen watches me through the screen. “The feed stays yours.”

“Then keep watching.”

“I will.”

Footsteps strike the passage below, and I run.

The blackout has killed Crimson Night’s programmed movement. The animatronics stay dead, and music has vanished from the midway. Only emergency screens remain, opening bright windows through the dark.

The red room lies beyond the old ticket corridor, and Rook knows that route.

Soon enough, he will understand exactly where I am leading him.

A screen above a ruined game stall switches to the camera behind me. Rook emerges from the service doorway wearing the beaked mask, Ash’s original Voice hanging from one hand by the strap and the knife filling the other.

Ash stays behind while Rook looks directly toward the camera.

“She left him inside the ride.”

I keep moving.

“He offered himself for her,” Rook says. “She ran.”

I turn while walking backward. “What did you do to Ash?”

“He made a choice.”