ماسک روح زده فصل 22

The Haunted Mask - Chapter 22

Carly Beth’s legs trembled as she made her way to the mirror in the front entryway. Her hands still frantically searched her throat as she stepped up to the large, rectangular wall mirror and brought her face close to the glass.

“No line!” she cried. “No mask line!”

Sabrina stood a few feet back, her expression troubled. “I—I don’t understand it,” she muttered, staring at Carly Beth’s reflection.

Carly Beth uttered a sharp gasp. “Those aren’t my eyes!” she screamed.

“Huh?” Sabrina stepped up beside her, still staring into the mirror.

“Those aren’t my eyes!” Carly Beth wailed. “My eyes don’t look like that.”

“Try to calm down,” Sabrina urged softly. “Your eyes—”

“They’re not mine! Not mine!” Carly Beth cried, ignoring her friend’s plea for calm. “Where are my eyes? Where am I? Where am I, Sabrina? This isn’t me in here!”

“Carly Beth—please calm down!” Sabrina urged. But her voice came out choked and frightened.

“It isn’t me!” Carly Beth declared, gaping in open-mouthed horror at her reflection, her hands pressed tightly against the grotesquely wrinkled cheeks of the mask. “It isn’t me!”

Sabrina reached out to her friend. But Carly Beth pulled away. With a high-pitched wail, a cry of horror and despair, she flung herself through the hallway. She pulled open the front door, struggling with the lock, sobbing loudly.

“Carly Beth—stop! Come back!”

Ignoring Sabrina’s pleas, Carly Beth plunged back into the darkness. The storm door slammed behind her.

As she began to run, she could hear Sabrina’s frantic cries from the doorway: “Carly Beth—your coat! Come back! You forgot your coat!”

Carly Beth’s sneakers thudded over the hard ground. She ran into the darkness beneath the trees, as if trying to hide, as if trying to keep her hideous face from view.

She reached the sidewalk, turned right, and kept running.

She had no idea where she was going. She only knew she had to run away from Sabrina, away from the mirror.

She wanted to run away from herself, away from her face, the hideous face that had stared back at her in the mirror with those frightening, unfamiliar eyes.

Someone else’s eyes. Someone else’s eyes in her head.

Only it was no longer her head. It was an ugly green monster head that had attached itself to hers.

Uttering another cry of panic, Carly Beth crossed the street and kept running. The dark trees, black against the starless night sky, swayed and shivered overhead. Houses whirred past, a blur of orange light from their windows.

Into the darkness she ran, breathing noisily through the ugly, flat nose. She lowered her smooth, green head against the wind and stared at the ground as she ran.

But no matter where she turned her gaze, she saw the mask. She saw the face staring back at her, the ugly, puckered skin, the glowing orange eyes, the rows of jagged animal teeth.

My face… my face…

High-pitched screams startled her from her thoughts.

Carly Beth glanced up to see that she had run into a group of trick or treaters. There were six or seven of them, all turned toward her, screaming and pointing.

She opened her mouth wide, revealing the sharp fangs, and growled at them, a deep animal growl.

The growl made them grow silent. They stared hard at her, trying to decide if she was threatening them or only kidding.

“What are you supposed to be?” a girl in a red-and-white ruffled clown costume called to her.

I’m supposed to be ME, but I’m not! Carly Beth thought bitterly.

She ignored the question. Lowering her head, turning away from them, she started to run again.

She could hear them laughing now. They were laughing in relief, she knew, glad she was leaving them.

With a bitter sob, she turned the corner and kept running.

Where am I going? What am I doing? Am I going to keep running forever?

The questions roared through her mind.

She stopped short when the party store came into view.

Of course, she thought. The party store.

The strange man in the cape. He will help me. He will know what to do.

The man in the cape will know how to get this mask off.

Feeling a surge of hope, Carly Beth jogged toward the store.

But as she neared it, her hope dimmed as dark as the store window. Through the glass she could see that all the lights were out. The store was as dark as the night. It was closed.