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

“Was I not clear before, Rachel?” Felicity said. She was in my face suddenly, pointing a finger at me like it was a knife. “You want to confess to a crime that doesn’t even exist? You’ll be the only one, because none of us will back you on that. You go against the club, and we go against you.”

“Are you seriously threatening her right now?” Freddie said.

“Guys,” Thayer cried.

But neither of them contradicted Felicity. Not Thayer, and not Freddie.

I looked at Bram. Just the sight of him was enough to strike up rage in me, pounding in my head. It tried to burst through me, break through my skin with its ugly talons and be unleashed. It was his fault that this had happened. He was the one who’d made us put on the masks.

I imagined his lifeless body on the floor instead of Saundra’s. My pounding head was filled with the dark fantasy that he’d been killed instead of her.

“Enough.” Felicity flicked Bram’s lighter open and a flame sparked to life. She dumped it in the hole she’d kicked into the ground. It landed on her mask and a small fire roared to life. The smell of burning rubber was instant. I looked down at the mask, the hideous, shriveled white face staring up. But soon the whole thing was ablaze, curling and bubbling.

The sirens were so close now it was like they were inside my head. The cold scratched at my cheeks, tickling them raw. I was dizzy. I felt so utterly powerless. Who knew the game would end up like this? I looked around to see if anyone else was feeling this awful, too. But all I saw were monsters.

I bent over and vomited into the snow.

 41

I WAS BACK in my old house, in the same kitchen, in the same nightmare. He was there. We thrashed on the floor but no matter how hard I fought, we always ended up in the same position: with me on my back and the masked figure on top of me, his knees pinning me in place, one hand busy restraining my arms, the other pointing the knife at me.

The dream had always been the same but this time was different. This time, I stopped struggling. And when his knife came down, I let it pierce my chest. He put his whole weight into it, leaned down to meet me, his rubber face only inches from mine. But no matter how deep the knife went, I felt nothing. He was the one letting out the guttural moans. Blood seeped first from between his waxy white lips, then poured freely from his eyes, dripping onto my face.

I woke up with my sheets tangled around my legs and my face wet. When I brought my hands to my cheeks, I was sure they’d come away red. But it was only sweat. Or tears.

I took a deep breath, but it caught in my throat when I looked at the foot of my bed. Standing there was Matthew Marshall. And next to him was Saundra.

The two stood side by side, staring at me like the world’s most screwed-up wedding cake topper. The only movement came from the blood that oozed out of them, trickling at first, then in waterfalls.

“Scream,” Saundra said.

She placed one knee on the bed and then the other, moving toward me while dripping blood on my blanket. She crawled until she reached me, her eyes bugging out of her face, her smile wide, teeth stained red.

“Just … SCREAM.”

So I did.

I screamed so loud my mother came into the room to stop me. She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. Or maybe I shook of my own accord. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if I had been dreaming or if they were ghosts or if I’d died and gone to hell. I wasn’t sure of anything except that when I looked toward the foot of my bed, Matthew and Saundra were gone.

“It’s my fault,” I said, my words waterlogged with tears and snot. My mother searched my face, concern and confusion coloring hers.

I needed to be clearer. She needed to understand. “It’s my fault they’re dead!”

“Oh, honey, no.”

“Yes, it is. First Matthew, now Saundra. Saundra died because of me. Saundra died—”

Mom’s tight embrace cut me off in midsentence. She shushed me and pushed my hair back and whispered words of comfort in my ear.

But she didn’t understand.

In a cruel twist of fate, Saundra got what she’d always wanted: She was the hottest topic of conversation at school. A few people speculated that she was high (because why else would she be up on the roof?) and that she must’ve tripped and fallen. Some suggested that she had flung herself through the skylight in some, I don’t know, final act of dramatic anguish. But most people believed something else. That there was a person in a white rubber mask on that roof with her. That they pushed her.

There were a lot of people in masks that night. Everybody had seen them. But some people swore that when Saundra landed in the middle of the grand foyer, they’d looked up and seen a ghostly, unmoving face staring down at them.

I believed all and none of it, picturing every possible way Saundra could’ve fallen until I couldn’t think of anything else. I was physically at school, but walked the halls like something out of a Romero movie, my zombie shuffle on point without even trying.

We were called into an assembly to discuss what had happened to Saundra. It wouldn’t be the only one. Before he took the stage, AssHead pulled me aside and said there would be another assembly for Saundra, a proper memorial, and that if I wanted to speak at it I should.

“I know how close you two were,” he said, frowning.

I must’ve vaguely nodded because AssHead answered with “Great,” and then took to the stage to talk about Manchester losing one of its