Clowns can haunt your dreams,
but sometimes they can be real.
The Dead will find you.
You can’t escape from them.
After the sun goes down,
they own the streets of Oasis.
No one is safe.
The Dead love their games.
The Dead Game by Susanne Leist
THE NIGHTMARE
Linda felt caught in a nightmare that she couldn’t escape from. It felt too real to be a nightmare but she couldn’t wake up.
She chose the Fun House.
She stepped into a room full of mirrors that made her multiple
reflections appear distorted and unreal. She couldn’t figure out why
she’d run into the Fun House if in every horror movie the victims were
always portrayed as being terrorized there. She hoped this wasn’t
another game of The Dead. She was determined to locate an exit, but
found only mirrors and more mirrors; they made her dizzy. Her distorted
reflections stared back at her—as if they were distinct entities, united
against her, instead of her own creations.
She ran until she crashed
head-first through a mirror, into a dark place with no beginning or end.
The whole experience felt unreal to her—as if she were lost in a
different dimension. Behind this mirror, she encountered a man with a
white mask and empty holes for eyes, laughing at her. When he touched
her arm, she realized that he was real and not just a reflection.
She fled from the laughing
man, going deeper and deeper into the dark unknown. She looked back and
noticed creatures following close behind her. Some were bats and some
were dark shadows, but all were reaching for her. She hoped that these
weren’t the same shadows from town that had been haunting her for weeks.
She hit something hard and
fell down. So maybe this place did have an end. She raced away with her
hands out, hoping to find the mirror that had caused her to enter this
dark hell. Ahead of her in the distance, she glimpsed a shiny surface.
As she got closer, she realized it was the mirror, patiently waiting for
her. I hope this wasn’t a trap.
She decided to step through the mirror and worry about the
consequences afterward. She had always been afraid of the dark. She
wondered how these creatures knew her fears—unless it wasn’t real, but
just a figment of her imagination. She stuck her hand out and found that
it flowed right through the glass. She followed her hand and crawled
through the mirror.
She found herself back in
the house by the sea. She was in the main hall, looking up at a long
flight of stairs. She raced up the stairs and ran through the deserted
rooms. The house was empty of any people or furnishings. All she could
hear were her heels clicking on the shiny wood floors.
Fearing that she was caught in an endless loop like
the one at End House, she hurried back down the stairs, all the way
down to the basement. Since the top two floors were empty, she decided
to try the basement—even though basements were also popular in horror
stories, which was exactly what she was in.
The basement was empty. The floor she was standing on
began to rotate around and around. She reached up to grab hold of
something to help her climb off the revolving circle, but there was
nothing: the walls were wet and slippery. As she tried to escape, she
found herself falling deeper and deeper into the dark hole. The only
thing she remembered before she lost consciousness was the sound of a man’s evil laughter as he chanted the words over and over, “It’s not over. I’ll be back.”
The Dead Game by Susanne Leist
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