Chapter 6: The Final Performance

Chapter 6: The Final Performance

The terrible laughter subsided, leaving a vacuum in its wake. The oppressive silence of Beasts O’ Field Court rushed back in, heavier and more menacing than before. Kian lay on the damp earth where Liam had pinned him, his body limp, his breath coming in ragged, whimpering gasps. Beside the dying fire, Elara was curled in a tight fetal ball, Chloe holding her, both of them trembling uncontrollably. The psychic storm had passed, leaving behind a wreckage of shattered nerves.

“That’s it. We’re done,” Liam said, his voice a raw, jagged edge of sound. He got to his feet, his body screaming with adrenaline. Every instinct, every fiber of his being, was screaming at him to get his sister and her friends into his truck and drive until the tires melted. “Chloe, get Ela up. We’re leaving him if we have to.”

The words were brutal, but they were necessary. He looked down at Kian, no longer seeing Chloe’s brilliant, frustrating boyfriend, but the source of the infection, the willing vector for this place’s madness.

But as Liam turned to haul Elara to her feet, a blur of motion erupted from the ground.

Kian was not broken. He was reforged.

He shot up from the ground with a coiled, unnatural speed, his previous catatonia vanishing as if it had been a costume. His eyes, no longer vacant, burned with a terrifying, incandescent clarity. He had seen the punchline at the heart of the universe, and it had set him free. Before anyone could react, he lunged for the log, his long, pale fingers snatching the deck of cursed cards.

“Kian, no!” Chloe screamed, scrambling towards him.

He just laughed, a sound utterly different from the pained hysterics of before. This was a laugh of pure, joyous, liberated insanity. He spun away from her grasp and fled, not towards the relative safety of the truck, but deeper into the cul-de-sac, towards the dark end of the court where the trees pressed in.

“The Patron got us good!” he cried out, his voice ringing with triumphant glee as he ran. He held the cards aloft like a holy relic. “Oh, she got us so good! This was never about the documentary! This isn’t a rehearsal!” He skidded to a halt, turning back to face them, his silhouette stark against the darkness. “This is the real show!”

Liam didn’t hesitate. “Stay with Ela!” he yelled at Chloe, and sprinted after Kian, the heavy tire iron now clutched in his hand. He wasn’t going to reason with him. He was going to incapacitate him and throw him in the back of the truck like a sack of feed.

But Kian was fast, fueled by a manic energy that Liam’s sturdy frame couldn’t match. He scrambled away, laughing and crying all at once, tears of ecstatic revelation streaming down his face. He dodged Liam’s desperate lunge and darted into the driveway of the mustard-yellow house, the one with the impossible Ford Chimera.

With a startling, simian grace, Kian leaped onto the hood of the dusty car, then onto its roof. He stood there, arms spread wide, the deck of cards clutched in one hand. He was on his stage. The rusted, non-existent car was his podium. He had found his spotlight.

Liam and Chloe, who had followed despite the order, stopped dead at the edge of the cracked asphalt. The truck’s headlights, left on in their haste, cut across the scene, illuminating Kian in a harsh, theatrical glare.

“Don’t you see the beauty of it?” Kian yelled, his voice echoing in the dead air. “She didn’t want us to tell jokes! She wanted us to get the joke! And I do! Oh, I finally do!”

As he spoke, Liam’s gaze was drawn past him, to the arc of silent houses. His mind, desperately trying to impose order on the chaos, started counting again. The original twelve. The thirteenth, the bruised-purple one that had appeared after his own joke. He scanned further. There, next to it, was another house he didn’t recognize—a sickly, pale-green one, its windows like long, vertical scars. It must have appeared when Elara read her card, and in the ensuing panic and madness, they had failed to notice. Fourteen.

And as Kian raised the cards to the sky, a deep, resonant hum seemed to fill the air, a vibration that started in their teeth and settled deep in their bones. The darkness at the very end of the cul-de-sac, the space between the fourteenth house and the impassable wall of ancient trees, began to churn. It was not a building being built, but an absence being filled. Shadows twisted and coalesced, folding in on themselves, solidifying like cooling wax. Lines sharpened. A roofline etched itself against the starless sky. A porch materialized from the gloom.

A fifteenth house now stood where only empty space had been seconds before.

It was different from the others. It was made of a wood so dark it seemed to drink the light. It had a single, high-peaked roof and a wide, unadorned porch. There were no picture windows, only a single, solid-looking front door and, above it, a small, square window where a porch light fixture of tarnished, yellow brass hung, dormant and waiting.

Chloe let out a thin, mewling cry of pure terror. This was the final straw, the last vestige of the rational world crumbling into dust.

“We’re going,” Liam said, his voice flat and dead. He grabbed Chloe’s arm, his grip like a manacle. He turned his back on Kian, on the impossible fifteenth house, on the entire mad stage. Survival was all that was left. “Now, Chloe. We are leaving now.”

“Kian!” she screamed, her voice tearing, trying to pull away. “We can’t just leave him!”

“He’s already gone!” Liam roared, yanking her with him, pulling her back toward the campfire where Elara was slowly, unsteadily getting to her feet, her face a blank slate of trauma.

On the roof of the Ford Chimera, Kian paid their frantic escape no mind. He had found what he was looking for. He had found his real audience. He turned his back on his friends, on the life he was leaving behind, and faced the new, dark house. Its silence was not empty; it was expectant. It was waiting.

He stood tall, a performer taking his final bow before it had even begun. He looked down at the card on top of the deck, his manic smile softening into one of serene, absolute purpose.

“For my final piece,” he announced to the silent, waiting house, his voice clear and steady. He raised the card. “A man asked the universe…”