Book Five, Chapter 12: Tamara

I could hear footsteps and Ted screaming as someone dragged him along the floor. I had a gun that Antoine had given me and enough Hustle to be able to use it.

I climbed out of the treehouse in what probably looked like a very clumsy crawl. I managed to land on my feet and point the gun in the direction of the open door, where I could see a mysterious figure standing.

He still held Ted’s foot as he dragged him.

I took a shot.

And I missed.

I couldn’t have missed. I had devoted so many points to Hustle that I should have been able to pick up a firearm and hit anything in a storyline, but somehow, I had missed. If I had hit and it had not been fatal, I could understand that, but missing… made no sense.

That either meant that the figure had higher Hustle than I did, or he had a trope that protected him from gunfire.

I shot again. All I saw were the sparks that flew in the distance as my bullet hit something other than my target.

“Let go of him!” I screamed.

The figure didn’t care. I couldn’t see his face; he was just a silhouette, but I could tell he was taller than me. At that moment, I was afraid to unfocus my eyes so I could look at him on the red wallpaper.

Luckily, for a reason that I didn’t understand at the moment, the dark silhouette of his head turned, and in the blink of an eye, he was out the door, which he slammed behind him loudly.

He left Ted screaming and hollering on the floor.

Kimberly and Dina were down from the car lift treehouse.

“I need a flashlight,” I said. “That was definitely the killer.”

I had left mine up in the treehouse. Dina grabbed it for me.

I did the thing that I often saw in action movies where cops put a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other so that they could shine the light wherever their gun was pointed.

“We need to go outside,” I said.

“With the killer?” Kimberly asked.

“It’s where the story is going,” I said, which, of course, was pretty much the only reason we ever did anything, but in this storyline, it was something my character would care about, too.

Kimberly prepared her gun and flashlight similarly to how I did.

“I didn’t take all those self-defense and firearms training courses because I thought I was going to be running after killers,” she said. “It was for when the killers ran after me.”

Her Hustle jumped up two points, as did her Mettle and Grit. Her hand, which held her firearm, steadied.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Ted, grab the camera and follow us,” I added.

“He grabbed me,” Ted said. “I thought he was going to kill me.”

“Well, he didn’t, so it’s time to work,” I replied. I had to have earned that promotion somehow; being a hardass was a good reason.

We crossed the garage toward the door we had entered in the direction the killer had gone, and as we did, we heard someone outside yelling. It wasn’t a scared yell.

Kimberly started to say “Antoine” but disguised it as a gasp and then said, “It’s Sheriff Stone.”

Outside, he was yelling, “Hello, Miss Madison, are you here?”

If he was in character outside, that meant that he was On-Screen, and we were also On-Screen, which meant that something was about to happen that involved all of us.

Kimberly rushed out the door.

Dina and I were right behind her, and Ted had found the courage to get his camera and follow us lightning-quick.

Antoine stood at the edge of the field and continued screaming.

“Sheriff Stone!” Kimberly cried out.

Antoine turned to us, and that’s when we saw the killer.

He stepped out of the shadows like he was coming out of thin air.

He stepped up behind Antoine.

“No!” Kimberly screamed, and we all ran in that direction.

“Get down!” I screamed and raised my gun.

Antoine had good reflexes and was already on edge, perhaps more so than might be expected. As we got closer, I could see in the moonlight that he was sweating and gaunt.

He rolled out of the way before the killer could get behind him.

And there, by the light of the night sky, I got my first look at Benny.

Not Benny the Haunted Scarecrow that I would know from the sequel, not a ghost or magical thing at first glance.

The red wallpaper just called him Benny.

Where I had expected some sort of supernatural flying creature, he was just a man. He held a sickle and wore the head of the scarecrow that had been hanging in the fields. He had gardening gloves on and heavy work boots. Of course, he wore Benny Harless’ coveralls with the name tag that I recognized.

Antoine managed to run away over toward us. He had his gun drawn, and he was ready to fill the supposed Benny with lead. Benny was quick, however, and ran immediately into the cornfield, disappearing quickly.

“We have to get out of here,” Kimberly said.

Something that I couldn’t tell her because we were On-Screen was that this Benny did not have the same trope that had prevented the previous one from killing her and me. That had been called Judgment Call, and it was conspicuously absent from his loadout here.

We had always wondered whether or not we could die in this storyline. We wondered whether the Judgment Call made by Benny, the haunted scarecrow we knew, would apply to this story.

It appeared we were wrong. That trope would not protect us.

This Benny was not the mysterious god of the cornfield. This Benny was a slasher, and we could be next.

“Where is your car?” Antoine said.

“It’s down the road at the trailhead,” I said. “With him out here, we’ll never make it.”

“Then we make a stand,” Antoine said.

As he said that, the wind started to blow and howl, and the sunflowers, corn, and wheat became dancers in the moonlight. Was Benny waiting to attack us from within them, or had he used his Slasher Teleportation, and was he waiting behind us right now?

“Over there!” Dina yelled. Her outsider’s perspective was great for this; it allowed her to notice anything new or unusual immediately.

As soon as I could turn my head, he was gone.