Even if you are a little late, you’re not worried; The Amity Midway has been part of town and your life for… Well, as long as you can remember. The owners -- Beverly and Henry -- probably made it a point to know all the local kids, at least in passing. Local kids made for a good pool of employees. You especially; you went to school with their daughter, Ripley. You wouldn't exactly say the two of you are friends now — or ever were — but Bev and Hank know you. They like you. They'll understand.
Your bike breaks squeak as you pull up to the bike rack beside the midway's main entrance. There's a steady enough trickle of people walking in and out; tonight wont be dead, but it shouldn’t be anything crazy either. You walk your bike into the rack and chain it up, then head through the Amity Midway’s main entrance and right on back towards the haunted house.
There’s almost a crowd outside the haunt. Weird.
You jog up closer to the crowd and the front of the haunt. Usually you would keep on around to the back, but this was odd. Did everyone else show up late too?
“Hey!” The familiar voice of your fellow haunt worker and friend, Ashe, calls you away from the crowd. “You’re not going to believe this.”
You’re smiling before you even see her. Ashe always had a flair for the dramatic and it was easy to see why she wound up dragging you into this line of work. True crime, urban legends, conspiracy theories, even ghosts; Ashe was all about it.
“We got a ransom letter… kind of.” Ashe tugs you through the crowd, towards the haunt’s main entrance. The crime scene tape wasn’t real, but someone — you’re guessing Ashe — has roped off a square around the doorway. And nailed up there on the right, this supposed ransom note.
You can see the cutout letters as you stand up from ducking under the tape, though you can’t read it quite yet. And is that a plastic baggy pinned underneath it?
What do?
You grab the note and start to read it.
You ask Ashe, “Did you touch any of this, right?”
The note is whatever. WHAT is in that baggy?
Voting ended onOct 30, 2024