Page 48 of Scaredy Cat
“Run, Persephone.” He leans closer when he says it, the mask brushing my face. “Run and hide, but don’t you dare involve anyone else in our game. If I find you, if I catch you…?” He strokes the knife along my skin, just under the small wound he’s made that burns under his attention.
“I’ll finally take my prize, and I’m not sure you’ll like what Itake.”
20
For a few seconds,we both stand there, staring at each other, before he releases his grip on my hoodie so I can stumble backward a step. The wind blows my hair around my face under my hood, and my eyes remain locked on the leering wolf-skull mask that has haunted me all season. At my side, my fingers flex around my flashlight, which makes my stalker glance at the impromptu-weapon with a sigh.
“Don’t hit me with that again,” he warns. “You don’t want me to break it.”
“It’s a new one,” I breathe, unable to stop the words from coming out of my breath. “Your face broke my last one.” He shifts his weight at that, and I can’t tell if the tip of his head is from frustration or amusement, though I doubt it’s safe to rely on it being the second.
“No one’s on the fourth or fifth floor,” my stalker informs me slowly. “If you can evade me for an hour, I’ll go.”
“Why should I believe you?”
He scoffs. “Because I have no reason to lie to you, Scaredy Cat.”
“What about Arugula?”
“We’ll address that when we get there. You have to win this game first.”
A part of me wants to not run. A very stupid part of me wants to stride forward and rip off his mask, call his bluff, and demand answers. But the other part of me is smarter. The sting of the cut on my jaw has my fingers itching to touch it, but I remain rooted in place as I suck in deep breaths of cold air.
“Can’t run if you don’t move,” I say slowly. “And you’d better give me some kind of head start.”
“You’re asking for a lot.” But he does move to the side to lean on the remains of the doorframe to take us back inside of the sanitarium. “You get thirty seconds, babe.”
“Should double that.” I move to walk past him, keeping as much space between us as possible. “For your cat sitter who—” My bravado fails and my words follow when he suddenly grabs my hoodie again, this time pulling me to a stop in the doorway.
He doesn’t say anything, just studies me through the black mesh eyes of the wolf mask. But just as I’m sure that he’s going to tell me he’s sick of my shit and cut off my finger, my stalker leans forward until the mask brushes my hair. “Forty-five, cat sitter,” he purrs in my ear. “Nowrun.”
Once he releases me, he doesn’t need to repeat himself. I bolt for the stairs, not looking back at him as I hurry down to the fourth floor.
I don’t know what to do.
With a glance down the staircase, I half-consider going down another floor to find Zack or the seance lady. Maybe Whiny Dave will be there, and he’s secretly a vigilante who can scare off my stalker. Surely he wouldn’t really hurt me…right?
But he doesn’t seem to have an issue with hurting other people, and I’d never be able to live with myself if he really did go down another floor and take out his frustration on another influencer here.
Realizing I’ve been standing still for a few seconds, I silently curse myself over my time-wasting indecision. Without really giving it much more thought, I bolt out onto the fourth floor and bring up a mental map of it. Unlike the third and second, there aren’t any surgical suites here. Most of the rooms are now storage for furniture the owner moved out of the first floor and hallways for the group tours that filter through here all day.
“Okay…” I jog down the hallway and think, hoping I can figure something out before he appears and sees me running. That will be a clear hint as to where I am, and I don’t want a rematch to see if I can outrun him.
Somehow, I think it will end the same way it did at Mill House.
I duck into one of the rooms that leads out to the long balcony where the empty frames are the only things left of the windows that used to enclose the space for the tuberculosis patients to soak up the sun’s rays. Yet again, I have no idea howthe sunwas supposed to cure anyone, but who am I to argue with long dead doctors?
When I find the adjoining room with the least amount of moonlight filling it up, I sidle up against the dark walls and move to the doorway facing the hallway I just came from. This isn’t my idea of a good hiding place, but I want to know where he is before I go anywhere else.
Waiting is torturous, when every single noise—real or imaginary—is turned into something worse in my head. My mind whispers that he’s close, that he’s somehow gotten around me in the puzzle of the sanitarium hallways and rooms, and he knows where I am.
He can’t, I promise myself silently.He didn’t see me. He doesn’t know I’m here.
It’s another ten seconds before he walks by, though he doesn’t seem hurried or like he’s particularly worried. I can’thelp but wonder how he knows I didn’t go down to the third floor.
I wait until he passes, holding my breath, not moving a muscle. His steps are too quiet for me to really track, so I move to peek down the hallway, though I feel stupid sticking my head out.
Luckily, he’s already moving into one of the rooms a few doors down. One that I’m pretty sure doesn’t connect to the one I'm in. God, I wish he’d make some kind of noise so I can figure out when I can go or where he might be heading.
