The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky (ebook reader for manga TXT) 📕

of every inch of the study as he took on the role of emcee for my benefit. He spun a copper-colored world globe and Bram promptly put a hand on it to stop it.

“Firstly, what is it that we do here at the Mary Shelley Club?” Thayer pontificated. “The simple answer is that we are horror aficionados. Appreciators of the technique of terror. Experts in the field of fear.”

“As I said way more succinctly: We like horror,” Felicity said.

“How long has the club been around?”

“A while,” Freddie said. “But no one is really sure how long. Bram and I both joined as freshmen. Thayer and Felicity came on as sophomores last year, when other members graduated.”

“You could say the objective of the club is to answer a simple question,” Thayer continued. “What scares people the most?”

“Which brings us to the contest,” Freddie said, casting me a secret smile.

I sat up straighter. If I’d had a notebook with me, I would’ve been taking notes.

Thayer cleared his throat. “To prove who amongst us is the most well-versed in the ways of fright, and to see which method of horror evokes the biggest reaction, we stage what we’ve come to call Fear Tests.”

“Fear Tests?”

“Each of us comes up with a horror scenario,” Felicity said. “It could be something original or a classic horror trope, maybe something you saw in a movie. And then we bring it to life.” She smiled with her lips closed but stretched wide enough to crinkle the corners of her eyes. If she’d been going for a diabolical look, it was working.

“We’re used to reading horror stories or hearing them around campfires or seeing them play out on a screen,” Freddie said, “but the only way to truly feel fear is to experience it, to make it three-dimensional.”

“Do horror movie tropes even work in real life?” I asked.

“That’s part of the challenge,” Freddie said. “Are all the things we see in horror films scary only because we’re trained to see them that way? The shrieking violins, the angles of the shots? The anticipated jump scares? Or can we elicit real fear when we strip all the extra stuff away? No music. No perfectly framed scenes. Just you and what scares you the most.”

I could feel goosebumps rising on my arms, but not from fear or anxiety. These were the excited kind. An electric thrill.

“We all get to direct our own Fear Tests,” Felicity said. “And everyone plays a part.”

“Kind of like being actors in a play,” Thayer said. “A scary play.”

“After your Fear Test is complete, we rate it,” Felicity added.

“Kind of like being in the Olympics,” Thayer said. “A scary Olympics.”

“It’s more like an exam,” Freddie said. “Like in school, your highest grade can be a hundred. We each grade you, then tally up the scores to find the average. We evaluate your technique—”

“Your panache!” Thayer cut in, plopping down next to me on the couch.

“—ingenuity. Basically we’re looking for something that makes your test stand out. Whoever has the highest rating wins.”

“Wins what?” I asked. I thought it was a pretty reasonable question, but it was met with silence. Felicity in particular looked at me like I was definitely not worthy of being there.

“Bragging rights,” Thayer said finally.

No cash prize. Nothing shiny to display on a shelf. I guess it made sense. What could you give to kids who already had everything?

“So the séance at the abandoned-house party … that was a Fear Test?” I asked. “Whose was it?”

“We all did that one together,” Freddie said. “Kind of like a kickoff to the contest. A warm-up.”

“All right, enough pleasantries,” Bram said. “Time for the rules.”

He stood. He’d hardly said anything the entire night, so now we were all hanging on his every word.

“We don’t talk about the Mary Shelley Club,” he said.

Thayer leaned close to whisper: “We’ve all heard the Fight Club jokes.”

Bram cleared his throat and proceeded with the rules. They were as follows:

The Mary Shelley Club is a secret.

Everyone gets one Fear Test that all members must help execute. You must perform the task that the leader of the Fear Test assigns to you.

You must pick your target before the test starts. That’s your eight ball. You may scare everyone else in the room, but if you don’t sink your eight ball, you’ve failed the test.

The game isn’t over until everyone’s had their turn.

Judging is left up to the other players’ discretion.

A member of the club may never be a target.

If you break any of these rules, your game is over.

A Fear Test ends when your target screams.

I tried absorbing it all, but even as I nodded along, I knew I wouldn’t have a full grasp of everything until I actually played. Which meant I had only one more question.

“When do we start?”

 15

TWO NIGHTS LATER, I stood in a dim alleyway in the East Village, facing a clown.

“Red or blue?” I asked, holding up the face paint palette. I was helping Freddie with his finishing touches.

“Red.”

The party at Trevor Driggs’s house had been going for an hour, and the rest of the club members were already in place for Thayer’s Fear Test. Freddie’s role wouldn’t take more than ten seconds, but he was going all out anyway. I knew they all really got into the club, but this still felt a little excessive.

The face-painting kit we’d bought at Abracadabra came in a cheap plastic molding, but it had all the primary colors. It also came with a little makeup wand, but after coating Freddie’s face in white, the little foam applicator was totally spent. My fingers would have to do.

I dipped the tip of my pointer into the red. I tried to keep my hand steady. I couldn’t tell if my nerves were from my usual social anxiety or the fact that I was about to participate in my first Fear Test. I hesitated, my finger hovering over Freddie’s face as our eyes locked. Or maybe it wasn’t either of those