“In the movie,” Skink said, “there’s that scene near the end, all those children escaping the rooms in the basement at the Inn. Did that really happen?”
I cringed a little. I’d never been able to make it through the whole movie, but I’d seen enough to know it was a loose interpretation of the truth—a Hollywood version with lots of special effects and pretty girls in makeup playing the patients.
“No. Violet and I were the only two kids in the Inn that night. It was just us.”
Skink was quiet for a while. He had The Book of Monsters balanced on his lap and was looking through it as we drove.
I kept my eyes on the road, slowed when I came to a sharp curve.
Skink, lit by the reading light, was tapping his fingers on the book. “What does she mean when she says she ‘transforms’ the girls?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
He nodded, closed the monster book, and looked around.
“So this is Fayeville, huh?” We were passing by a grocery store and a Dollar General. “I’ve actually never been here. Some friends and I in high school, we talked about coming down here and looking for the Inn, but my friends chickened out, said it was haunted and cursed.”
I forced a smile. “I’m sure it is.”
“In the movie, Fayeville looked bigger than this. A little more cheerful too.”
I shook my head and sighed.
We passed a gas station, the post office, Fayeville General Store. We drove by another gas station with a Dunkin’ Donuts attached. A vape shop. A sign for the town dump and recycling center.
At a bend in the road, I slowed. There, on the right, was a falling-down sign for the Hollywood Drive-In.
One giant screen was mostly intact, but big squares of it were missing, showing only wooden scaffolding behind. The screen on the other side had completely collapsed. The ticket booth was boarded over with plywood tagged with graffiti, the driveway chained off.
“How much farther?” Skink asked.
“We’re almost there.”
Passing the drive-in, we continued down Main Street for another mile, then turned right onto Forest Hill Drive. At least, I thought it was Forest Hill Drive. The GPS told me it was, but no street sign marked it. The trees had grown, nearly overtaking the entrance to the dirt road, making it hard to spot.
The road was in terrible shape: hardly a road at all. More like a dried-out old riverbed. The van bumped slowly over the rocks, and I swerved around the worst ruts and a fallen tree partially blocking the road.
“Are you sure this is right?” Skink asked.
“No, I’m not sure of anything,” I said irritably, peering through the pouring rain, trying to make out something, anything familiar.
I slammed on the brakes, sending Skink jolting forward, stopped by his seatbelt, hands braced on the dashboard.
“No worries,” he said. “Just a little whiplash is all.”
A heavy rusted chain drooped across the road. An orange and white sawhorse with a faded ROAD CLOSED sign was on its side beneath it. There were NO TRESPASSING signs posted on the trees beside the road.
“Guess we walk from here,” I said.
I pulled the van over, turned the engine off. Then I stepped into the back, grabbed my backpack, and checked to make sure it had everything I might need. I grabbed my rain slicker from the little closet, then got the holster for my gun and slipped it on over my shoulder before putting on the rain jacket.
“You don’t think you’ll actually need to use that, do you?” Skink asked as I clipped the gun into the holster. He’d gone pale and looked much younger. Strangely, with his face so serious, I saw his father in him for the first time. They had the same eyes, the same worry lines on their foreheads.