Chapter Twenty Seven

Chapter Twenty Seven

I found Con in a big circular room. The lights were off in there, and I wouldn’t have seen him if his pale corpse-like face hadn’t stood out so starkly against the dark. He was tall, thin, and as still as a statue.

And he was crying.

“I’m sorry, Henry,” he said in a hoarse whisper, tears running down his cheeks. “I didn’t want it to be this way.”

I sighed. That was the last thing I wanted to hear from him. “Wow, Henry, where did you get that horsebutt?” or “What do you think of my haunted house? Isn’t it cool?” were things I could have worked with. Try to distract him, deescalate the situation until we were able to work things out peacefully. But “I’m sorry, Henry. I didn’t want it to be this way,” didn’t give me any wiggle room to change the subject. It was as blunt and cold as Splatsy’s business end.

Speaking of which, I had Splatsy in warhammer form, but I prayed to the whoopie cushion in the sky that I wouldn’t have to use her. What Paura had said outside was getting harder and harder to dismiss, though. I really didn’t know what Con was capable of anymore. He’d already attacked Ethan, maybe even caused him permanent harm. What right did I have to think he wouldn’t do the same to me if I gave him the chance?

There had to be a way to end this without killing him. I would hurt him if I had to. Wounds would heal, even if our relationship didn’t. But I didn’t know if I had it in me to kill him—and I didn’t want to find out.

“It’s not too late,” I said as gently as I could. “You can stop this. Come home with me and—”

“And what?” Con snapped. “Everything will go back to normal? I’m a murderer, Henry! What do you think will happen if I go home now?”

“I won’t let anyone hurt you!” I promised. The words sounded dull in my ears. I would protect him, but how safe did I think I could keep him with Cousin Gumdrop on his trail? And if Grandpa Teddy found out I was helping a wanted criminal…at best, I’d be fired. At worst, I’d be made a criminal just like Con.

But I would do it anyway. Because he was my brother.

In the dim light, I could faintly see the sad smile Con gave me. “I know. That’s the problem with you, Henry. You never stop fighting for the people you love, even when the ones you love are the bad guys.”

“You’re not a bad guy,” I insisted. “Whatever’s going on, whatever it was that made you do this, we can work it out. I swear, I won’t let Cousin Gumdrop do anything to you.”

“I’m not the one I’m worried about getting hurt.”

I paused. “What does that mean?”

He shook his head. “I can’t say any more. He told me not to.”

“He told you?” I asked. “He who?”

“I wish I could tell you, but I don’t know. And if I say anything else, he’ll…”

I took a step forward, a fire rising up inside me. “Talk to me, Con! No more secrets! If someone’s messing with my brother, it’s my responsibility to flatten his head!”

For a long minute, Con was silent. We stood facing each other in the dark, circular room. The music and the sound effects ringing through the hallways sounded like they were a dimension away. I thought I could see pain in Con’s eyes. There was more going on here than he wanted to admit, or could admit.

“This is your last chance,” he finally said. “If you don’t leave, I’ll kill you.”

I sighed. “Fine, we’ll do it your way. But no matter what you say or what you’ve done, you’ll still be my brother.”

“Please, Henry,” he begged. “Just go! The door is unlocked. I won’t hurt your friends. Forget you ever met me and—”

“And since you’re family, it’s my job to help you, whether you want me to or not!” I raised Splatsy into a fighting stance. “So get ready, because I’m about to give you the most loving beatdown you’ve ever gotten!”

Con went still again, and his eyes turned cold. “I’m never going to convince you, am I? Fine. Just remember that I tried to avoid this!”

With that, the lights turned on. The sudden brightness blinded me, and I reflexively closed my eyes. It was only for a split second, but when I opened them again Con was nowhere to be seen.

The walls—or rather, wall—of the circular room were painted with a series of pictures. Shadowy figures with gleaming eyes and evil grins were frozen in strange poses, each one a little different than the last. The entire room groaned, the floor lurched beneath my hooves, and slowly the wall began to spin.

“What are you most afraid of, Henry?” Con’s voice echoed from nowhere.

The wall spun faster, and the lights started to flicker on and off. My heart began to beat faster. The black, skeletal figures were flashing past so quickly now that they looked like they were moving. I was surrounded by a dozen dancing, grinning demons.

They’re not real, I had to remind myself. It’s just another trick the spookhouse used to scare people.

No matter where I looked, I thought I could see Con in the corner of my vision. When I spun to look, though, he was never there. Always just inches out of my sight.

“You always act so brave, but I can see right through that.”

“Quit it, Con!” I yelled. “You don’t want to hurt me!”

He ignored me. “You’re more scared than you’ll ever admit. You don’t even realize how scared you are most of the time. But I can help you with that.”

Suddenly, the dancing pictures turned into Zombiesauruscorn Rex.

“I can make all of your worst fears come true! I can help you confront them face to face!”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” I said, looking right into Zombiesauruscorn Rex’s putrid yellow eyes.

There came what I can only describe as a hiccup in reality. The room seemed to jump a few inches, even though I couldn’t feel anything, and then the grinning shadow men were back on the wall. Everything was quiet for a few seconds, until…

“Ahh, I see now,” Con said.

The shadow men disappeared again, and this time what they were replaced with made my heart seize up in terror.

Legion.

He was exactly how I remembered him. Blue jumpsuit. Cheap rubber clown mask. Bloodstained butcher knife. Sometimes the blood was black, like a maiam’s, and other times it was blue, like mine. Twelve of them surrounded me. They didn’t dance like the shadow men, but their unnatural stillness was somehow worse.

One by one, the Legions vanished until only the one standing directly in front of me was left—and then he stepped out of the wall.

There was ice in my veins. Every traumatic memory I had of Legion flashed before my eyes. The way he’d possessed me, forced me to attack my friends, and nearly killed me countless times. Logic told me this couldn’t be real. Legion had many bodies, but I had destroyed this one. It was just Con using my greatest fear against me—and it was working. Just the sight of that goofy rubber grin was enough to fill me with the kind of terror that the spookhouse’s cheap tricks and traps could only wish they were able to invoke in people. I had to clamp my lips together to keep from screaming, but even that couldn’t stop the pathetic whimper that rose from my throat.

Legion came nearer, raising his knife—

And I walloped him in the face with Splatsy.

Instantly, the room died. The lights came back on, the wall stopped spinning, and the grinning shadow men were back where they’d been before. Con went flying from the force of my attack, and when he struck the wall and crumbled into a broken heap on the floor, he was back in his natural ghul form.

Con groaned and rolled over, blood leaking from his nose, and he looked at me with disbelieving eyes.

“I’m not the same girl who used to be afraid of zombie dinosaur unicorn princesses,” I said. ”I’ve seen what real evil looks like. I didn’t let it beat me then, and I won’t let your cheap imitations beat me now.”

Walking over to him, I got down on my horse knees.

“You’re right,” I admitted. “I am afraid. But I won’t let that fear stop me.”

Tears welled up in Con’s eyes, spilling down his face. “You’ve grown up since I went to college, sis.”

I smiled at him. A real, genuine smile. I had won. The nightmare was over. Now I could get him somewhere safe and think of a plan to clear his name.

Footsteps came from the other side of the room, and I looked to see Paura making her way toward us.

“I saw what you did,” she said, looking at me with new respect. “You did good.”

The moment she looked down at Con, his face contorted with pain. Just being looked at by her seemed to hurt him infinitely more than the impromptu nose job I’d given him a minute before.

“Why can’t you leave me alone?” he asked with his eyes squeezed shut.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Paura asked. “I might be a ghul, and Henry might be a klaon, but there’s one thing we have in common: we both love you, you freaking idiot!”

“But…But after what I’ve done…”

“We’ll think of something,” I promised. “But first, I need to know what’s really going on.”

Con looked at me, then Paura. I could tell he was still trying to be strong, but what little strength he had left would break apart if I applied pressure to the right place.

“Con,” I said, reaching out and taking his hand in mine. “Big bro. Please tell me what happened. Please.”

Paura took his other hand. “Please.”

Con’s lip quivered, and a fresh wave of tears spilled down his face.

“A couple weeks ago, I got a call,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know who it was from, but he told me that I had to go home.”

“What did his voice sound like?” I asked, leaning forward.

He shook his head. “He was using something to disguise his voice. It was all garbled. Almost like…I don’t know, like there were lots of people talking at the same time.”

“Legion!” I whispered, a horrible shudder running down my spine.

“He said that I was going to be a distraction,” Con went on, then gave me a guilty look. “And that you were the one I was going to be distracting. He never said what I was distracting you from, just that there needed to be a new corpse for you to find every morning.”

My grip on his hand tightened, and inside I felt like I was going to throw up. There it was. The whole, honest truth. Despite everything I’d said and done to convince myself otherwise, my big brother was a murderer.

“I didn’t want to,” he said, hanging his head in shame. “But he said that if I didn’t, then…”

“Then what?” Paura prompted him.

He looked up at her, his eyes wide with fear and red with tears. “He said he would kill you.”

Paura froze in shock, and then lunged forward to wrap him in a hug.

“Oh, you damn, gullible fool,” she said in between sobs. “I love you!”

“I love you too,” he said, returning the hug. “That’s why I had to do it. I knew they would find out I was the one killing people. I’d be on the run again, just like before. But if that’s what it took to save you, then what choice did I have?”

“You could have come to me!” I said. Tears falling from my own eyes now too. “Did you think I wouldn’t help you because…because…why didn’t you think I would help you?”

“I couldn’t risk it. If something went wrong, Paura would be killed. You know how it feels to be willing to die for the one you love, don’t you, Henry?”

Ethan…

Yes, I knew exactly how that felt.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat and rubbing my eyes on my sleeve, “as much as I’d love to stay here and keep feeling sorry for you, we need to get you out of here. Who knows what’ll happen if Cousin Gumdrop finds you here?”

“Oh, I think you know exactly what’s going to happen,” said Cousin Gumdrop.