Slashtag, p.29
Slashtag, page 29
“Always lift with the legs,” Shawn says with a smile, before climbing the rest of the way into the room.
I follow him into an octagonal spire with stained glass windows covering the majority of each wall, save for one, which has a stone fireplace complete with a crackling fire. Each piece of glasswork is intricately arranged to form a picture representing one of the sins. In the center of the fireplace wall is a tapestry of a man, his head cast away from a pair of eyes staring down upon him with contempt. I assume this one represents disobedience.
The sun must be setting. Intense light pours through three of the glasses, making one half of the room much more colorful than the other. Opposite the fireplace, there’s a curving staircase along the wall, leading to a thick wooden door with four glowing insignia carved into stone. There are another four interspersed among them, which have all gone dark—a pig, a spider, an eyeball, and a knife.
“I think we just came in through the exit, like for after we destroy the mind totem,” Shawn says, noticing the door as well. “I mean, it’s not like we solved any sort of riddle to get in here. We just used brute force and your sister’s clue. I bet that lock was meant for us as a path back into the hotel afterwards.”
Beneath the blindingly colorful windows, the walls are lined with desks filled with books, papers, crosses, dozens of old packets of Now and Later candies, and a few dozen replicas of the sin statues. The only thing missing in the room is Arthur himself.
I head to one of the desks, searching for anything that looks out of the ordinary, my hands nearly shaking at the prospect of finding another of the dozens of letters He’s sent me over the past two decades.
“His mind totem is a book, right?” Shawn stands next to a stack of maybe twenty leather-bound tomes.
“Yeah, this’ll definitely be easy to find,” Britt says.
“Maybe you deserve a little challenge, since you all cheated to get here,” Shawn says.
I turn around and see Shawn hunched over so that old man Arthur can whisper into his ear.
“I had such wonderful games planned.”
“Shawn, if you can hear me, you need to get away from Wilson right now.”
“Shawn’s not here,” he says with a grin, revealing a mouth full of rotten teeth.
I glance over at Britt, who is sifting through books near the far end of the room.
Right now, Shawn’s attention is on me. I figure the best plan is to keep it that way while Britt locates and destroys the totem.
“Arthur,” I say, trying to appeal to the spirit inhabiting my friend. “You’re more creative than this. What’s the fun in just beating us to death?”
“Ha!” Shawn barks out a laugh that’s like no sound I’ve ever heard him produce. It’s malicious, condescending, threatening—all the things Shawn isn’t. “Do you know how many decades it’s been since I’ve been able-bodied enough to do the work myself? It will be my pleasure to take you apart piece by piece.”
Shawn takes a heavy step toward me. Floorboards creak beneath his weight. I match his stride, retreating but still keeping his attention.
“So you’re going to kill us, and then what happens? Your spirit’s still trapped here. What if we could free you from this place?”
He laughs again, driving home the point that Shawn isn’t home right now. “Where would I go? I spent forty years trying to get back here. This is my home.”
Shawn takes another heavy stride in my direction. I once again step back but feel myself press up against a desk. He slowly raises his stoney hand over his head, ready to bring it down over me. I know I don’t stand a chance against his physical strength, but as long as he telegraphs his moves, maybe I can keep away from him long enough for Britt to make more progress.
When he brings his mutilated fist down, I leap to the side, though it turns out he’s faster than I expected. I only just make it out of his way before he smashes his hand into the desk behind me. Wood splinters fly everywhere as the table collapses under his force. I land on my hands hard and feel the wound in my right palm split open again.
I try to shake it off, pulling Kiki’s cleaver from the bag with my good hand. “Please, Shawn, I don’t want to have to use this against you.”
Shawn laughs. “Against who? I can feel your friend inside. He knows you’re too weak to finish the job, even if you had the chance.”
Against the right person, I absolutely could kill. I could even enjoy it. Against Shawn? I honestly don’t know.
Shawn holds both of his huge arms out to his sides. His full span takes up almost half the room. It reminds me of Freddy Krueger in the first film, with arms stretched out so long they fill an entire alleyway.
Without warning, Shawn charges at me, taking up as much space as possible to prevent me from getting away. I try to duck under him, but a knee comes out of nowhere and knocks me back. He then wraps me up in a giant bear hug, lifting me off the ground and squeezing until I feel my back, ribs, and everything in between crack and compress.
I’m face to face with him now. His eyes are dull and blank. His rotten-candy breath makes my stomach lurch. The white fireworks dance around the edges of my vision, and an involuntary hiccup escapes my lips as he finds one last pocket of air to squeeze out of me.
The both of us jerk hard to the side, and the immense pressure releases when I fall to the floor. Britt is standing over Shawn, meat tenderizer in hand.
“I think I found the totem,” she says, as Shawn fumbles around on the floor, pressing his hand against the back of the head. Britt runs to a desk and grabs a book. “This is it!”
Shawn shoots back to his feet in an instant and grabs her by the neck from behind. He climbs up onto one of the desks, easily dragging Britt up along with him.
“Britt Holley,” he spits into her ear, as if it were some sort of derogatory term. “Of all the treats provided to me in this offering, no candle will be as sweet for me to extinguish as yours.” He then drives her head forward, smashing her face through one of the stained glass windows. She shrieks in pain and drops the book to the floor, her hands flying up to brace her impact.
Much like the rest of the windows in the hotel, each piece of glass is housed in a frame of wrought iron, twisting through the picture like a set of spiked prison bars that have taken on the life of a vine. One of the iron tendrils comes to a sharp point just beneath Britt’s chin. She’s got her feet pressed against the bottom of the window and is doing everything she can to keep her head from being impaled on the spike.
It’s do or die.
I scramble to the book, groping at it with my wounded hand while keeping the cleaver ready to strike. There’s only one chance for me to stop this now. I wind my arm back and hurl the book at the fireplace as hard as I can.
My hand is so slick with blood that the book slips from my fingers. It’s flying through the air but not at the speed I had hoped. It hits the floor only a foot shy and slides the rest of the way home. It only barely breaches the fireplace threshold before bursting into bright blue flames.
A raspy voice cracks out of Shawn. “No, no!”
Britt seizes on the moment, shoving backward and freeing herself from his grasp.
He stumbles off the desk, spinning like a puppet with its strings all knotted up. When he falls to the ground, old man Arthur remains, contorting in agony on his feet. He coughs out little belches of black smoke, then stumbles forward onto his knees. The loose hanging skin on his face begins to melt, turning white and then eventually clear as it drips to the floor in thick ropes of goo. Just like when we destroyed his body’s totem, he eventually reaches a point where he can no longer hold his form and simply pops like a water balloon.
The three of us lie on the floor, without enough energy to even call out to each other for what feels like at least five minutes.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
From: Lucy.K@Krentler.media
To: Board@Krentler.media
CC: Operations@Krentler.media
Subject: Day 2 Summary- Updated
Members of the Board and Slashtag Crew,
I’ll be the first to admit we had some hiccups in the mind totem phase of the program. Due to an unforeseen outside intervention brought on by our own team member, Todd Menuscha, the subjects were able to destroy the second totem by 8:48 p.m. They only found 4 of the 7 statues and made their way into the chapel without finding any of the 5 clues that were supposed to lead them there. At least we had one confirmed death, with Kiki ending herself in a PVI positive manner, and between the Envy possession and the fight in Sutter’s Sanctum, we have nearly made up for lost time regarding the Pain Volume Index. Instead of nitpicking things to improve, let’s head straight to the analytics:
In the last 3 hours, there has been a sharp incline in viewership, most recently coming in at 74.6 million.
Much of the viewership uptick actually came from viral buzz regarding April’s communications with Tawny. #hacktag became the top trending hashtag on Social, bringing in over 5 million new viewers. We had initially predicted the meta angle had potential to be a draw, but we had no idea our viewers would be this engaged by contestants breaking the fourth wall.
The most watched player has bounced around, shifting from Kiki to Britt, and then finally Tawny with 39% of Spotlight viewers tuning in to her feed.
Due to the particularly violent nature of our brief second phase, we have reached 71% PVI, despite only one subject death during this time. This still puts us well on track to reach our target within the next 5-14 hours.
I wish we could say this leg of the production was more of a success, but we feel confident that we will still clear our target PVI and then some. Let’s not let a few ants spoil the picnic. In the meantime, Todd and April are still unaccounted for, and until they are apprehended, everything we’re working for is still at risk.
Let’s tighten up this ship and steer us into the final act with a bang.
Lucy
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
“I’m confused,” I say, watching the spirit of Arthur Wilson melt for a second time on screen.
“About what?” Todd asks.
“There were no possession statues in that tower, right?”
Todd nods. “Sutter’s Sanctum, right.”
“I thought it was implied before that the statues were basically pre-programmed artifacts that had been, like, imbued with magic or something. No one else has been able to talk as Wilson or act like they’re directly under his command earlier. Why can he do that now?”
“Oh, that.” Todd bites his lip and concentrates for a second, finding his words. “So here’s the thing. Ghosts don’t really work the way you think they do. It’s not like a person has some lingering spirit that just wants to go around messing things up. I don’t really know the best way to describe it. It’s like they’re robots, and as long as you have the remote control, you can make them do pretty much whatever you want.”
“So you’re saying Arthur Wilson was resting peacefully until Krentler dug him up and turned him into a dancing murder puppet? Wilson isn’t even in control of his own actions?”
“Technically, Renshaw is the Spirit Wrangler. He does all the actual programming. Programming is a weird word for it because their essence is still there and has some input, but for the most part, yeah, he has to do whatever he’s told.”
“That’s sick, you know that? Even for someone like Wilson, you don’t just go around enslaving spirits.”
Todd looks offended. “It’s not like we resurrected the spirit of Gandhi to murder everyone. Besides, Wilson’s so evil, he’d probably be doing the exact same thing if he had his own choice.”
“It doesn’t matter how evil they are, it’s not cool to just summon up someone’s soul and split it up into three totems.”
Todd scrunches up his shoulders and scratches the back of his head. “We should probably talk about that.”
“Jesus, what now?” I say.
“We sort of made up the totems for the sake of the game. It’s more fun for the audience if it feels like there are clear boxes to check off along the way. The amulet is really the only thing that matters.”
“You’re saying Arthur still has the ability to possess people and chop them up? Destroying those totems did nothing?”
“Well no, that’s what I’m trying to explain. We programmed him to stop doing those things after those prop totems were destroyed.”
“But you also changed the rules to have him just directly possess people when you felt the story called for it. Who’s to say you won’t just change the rules again?”
Todd shrugs. “I dunno. Continuity?”
I shake my head and pull up the tablet. “I have to tell everyone this.” I open up Britt’s phone messenger and type up the first of three warnings I’m going to send to each of them, then freeze as I stare at the last message I sent out to the trio. “There’s something else that doesn’t make sense to me.”
“What else is there?”
“When I gave all three of them the hint to head to the chapel, only Tawny and Shawn said they received it, though I’m seeing right here in my chat log that Britt got it too.”
Todd’s eyes meander around the room. “Okay, so maybe she missed it.”
“I don’t think she did. Todd…” I say, doing my best impression of a mother getting ready to scold her child. “Why would she purposely ignore a hint that would get them to jump ahead in the game?”
Todd scoffs like a petulant teenager whose hand just got caught in the cookie jar. “Okay, so she might know a little bit more than the others.”
“How much inside information does Britt have?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“If you want to know so bad, why don’t you look up her file already. It’s right there on the home screen.”
I like to think I’m pretty darn good at controlling my anger. But the way Todd keeps drip-feeding me critical information makes me want to jab him with the stun gun. “I didn’t even know there was anything worth looking at!”
I find the app he’s talking about. It brings me to a list of the participants, and I click on a tab that reads: Subject #2: Britt Holley. Inside, there are dozens of files on her background, her many television shows, social media analytics, and so on. I keep scrolling until I find an .mp4 video file, the thumbnail of which shows security footage of William Krentler’s office. I tap it, and the thumbnail blows up to fill the screen. Krentler is sitting at a large marble desk in a spacious office. A glass door swings open from the side of the screen, and Britt Holley steps into frame.
“Hi, Mister Krentler,” Britt says.
“Britt, so good to see you.” The elderly man rises from his chair and meets her halfway around his table to give her a formal hug. “Have a seat, sweetheart.” He gestures to a chair on the other side of the desk and returns to his. “How’s the family?”
“Everyone’s great. My mom says hello.”
“Give her my best as well.” He shifts in his seat, leaning forward and putting his arms on the table. “I want to thank you for meeting with me, I know how busy you are these days.”
Britt replies with an exuberance of enthusiasm. “Aww, of course. I wouldn’t be so busy if it weren’t for you.”
“I’m sure you would have done just fine on your own without any help, but that’s very sweet of you to say. I wanted to talk to you today about a new opportunity. It’s a groundbreaking new series, a combination of a reality competition and a horror film. The cast is made up of the top celebrities in each of their fields, competing to survive a three-day weekend full of murder and mayhem. That’s where you come in. I want you to be the heroine who makes it out alive and becomes the official face of Social.”
Britt resettles in her chair, framing her body away from the glass door. “Just to be clear. Is this a regular kind of production, or is it something for you know who?”
Krentler nods slightly. “There will no doubt be danger involved, though if we can trust anyone to make it out on top, it would be you. Of course, you would have every possible advantage.”
Britt thinks on it for a second, staring at her manicured nails. “How are you going to explain the deaths of the other contestants?”
A smile comes easily to the old man’s face. “You let us worry about that. What do you think?”
I turn off the video, having seen enough. “Great. So you’re saying this whole thing’s been rigged for her to win from the beginning?”
Todd waffles to explain. “That’s kind of a hard question to answer.”
“It really shouldn’t be.”
“Yes, it’s rigged, but no, she can’t win. You know that third totem? The Amulet of Duriel?”
“What about it?” I ask, already knowing where he’s going.
“It isn’t technically in the hotel. The Amulet’s down here. Renshaw actually needs it in order to control Arthur.”
“There’s no way for them to win the game? You’re just going full Cabin in the Woods and killing everyone?”
“I mean, it’s a priceless artifact. They can’t just let somebody come in and destroy it.”
“Why did you wait until just now to tell me this?” I demand. I’ve gotten too loud, lost my cool. I know this because the door to the server room comes swinging open before he gets a chance to respond.
A woman who looks to be in her mid-forties stands in the doorway, a gun in her hand. She has black hair, thick black eyeshadow, black clothes, and firetruck-red lipstick.
“Well, look what I found,” the woman says, stepping into the room. “Must be my lucky day. I always knew you were a gutless beta cuck, Todd, but holy shit, why would you get in bed with a cripple?” Her voice is raspy, full of vocal fry.
“Charlotte, good to see you, as always,” Todd snivels. “There’s no way I could talk you into pretending you didn’t just find us, is there?”
