Scary Stories to Keep You Awake

The Face: Deathbringer

-A CONTINUATION OF THE FACE: COLD JULY-

Kevin seemed to be the only person severely affected by Mrs. Tenby’s death. We were all shocked by her murder, but I’m ashamed to admit that none of us had a reason to miss her terribly. Despite this, we took the day off from filming to regroup.

The next day we filmed the chase through the woods. Our actor, Megan, was thrilled to be a part of our movie. And I was thrilled that I’d get to make my first kill as The Face.

Filming went as planned. Megan ran, I chased her, cameras rolled and we made progress. Eventually, we came to the point where I was to catch Megan and slit her throat. Not really, of course. I would hold the knife up to her neck, then the camera would cut away and Mac would slap some of his infamous fake blood (now the right color) on her throat. Everything went exactly as we’d planned it, and the end result was absolutely fabulous.

“You need to be careful with that knife,” Megan told me when we were finished. “I think you actually cut me.”

“Sorry,” I replied as she walked off to clean herself up. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, I had just gotten a bit overexcited. I loved this job!

Megan didn’t return to film with us the next day. Jimmy walked four laps around the new location asking where she was, what she was doing and why she wasn’t there with us. Nobody had any idea.

It wasn’t until two days later that we found out where she was. Mac brought a copy of the newspaper to the clubhouse and frantically pointed out the front page.

There was Megan’s picture, prominently displayed under the headline, Teen found murdered after home invasion.

“What?!” Jimmy said when he saw the article. “Why Megan? Aw, man, I should have called her or something!”

“That’s not the scary part,” Mac said, flipping the page. “This is."

Apparently, Megan’s killer had been caught on tape by a home security system. The next page featured a clear picture of her killer.

“No way,” I said. “That’s not possible!” But the more I looked at the photo, the more I began to realize I was seeing the truth. Megan’s killer was wearing The Face costume.

Filming progress immediately ground to a halt. Two people who had been involved with the project had been murdered, one by our killer character. Now nobody wanted anything to do with us.

Naturally, Jimmy was distraught by these circumstances. “We can’t just give up!” he kept insisting. “We have to do something.”

I couldn’t sleep at all knowing that a real killer had stolen my costume for use in a murder. I couldn’t look at The Face costume the same way, and eventually I had to get it out of the house. Kevin took it back, and eventually he took to leaving it at the clubhouse.

Eventually, Jimmy decided that if none of our actors wanted to work for us, we would just have to do the whole thing ourselves. “We can do it,” he insisted. “We’ll just have to improvise.” I didn’t see how we could, considering half of us were running cameras during filming, but I really wanted to finish this film. It was like an obsession for me; I loved playing as The Face, and I wanted everyone to see him in our finished movie.

Mac was apparently our next person in line to be killed. He was a good candidate since his parents were away for the weekend, so we were allowed to do whatever we wanted at his house.

Problem was he couldn’t really run from me, considering his heavy frame, so we decided that he wouldn’t see The Face coming at all. Matt poured his heart and soul into finding a way to make that work, and we finally found it.

When we started the cameras, he was sitting alone in his room playing Doom. We had one camera next to his computer pointing at him and the window behind him, the other pointing at the computer screen and focusing on what he was doing.

On Jimmy’s signal, I eased open Mac’s bedroom window and crawled inside like a spider. Mac, naturally, was too focused on his game to see what I was doing. Slowly I snuck up behind him, drawing my prop knife when I got close enough. On Jimmy’s next signal I pounced.

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Onscreen, Mac got clobbered by an enemy. In real life, I drew my knife across Mac’s throat. We paused the camera, painted Mac up with his fake blood, then finished filming by panning across our gory mess we had made.

It took us an hour to clean up all the blood.

It took us all day the next day before we found Mac lying on his bedroom floor in a puddle of real blood. A game-over screen was still displayed on his computer monitor.

Now even the guys didn’t want to continue filming. Jimmy and I were the only people who wanted to finish the movie, but we couldn’t do so because nobody would help. The clubhouse remained empty for weeks, The Face costume still inside because everyone was afraid to touch it.

July sixteenth I was sitting in my room brooding about the situation. I was itching to finish the movie, but I knew we couldn’t. I was upset about Mac’s untimely death, but at the same time I was annoyed because it prevented me from finishing my role as The Face. I wanted that role, but I was terrified to play it because apparently a real killer was playing the same role!

Anyway, I was sitting there when I heard my door open and shut behind me. I figured it was my dad checking on me, and I didn’t give it much thought until I heard a gravelly voice right next to my ear.

“You want to play?”

I turned toward the voice only to see The Face mask staring me down.

I was up and out of there like I had sat on a hornet. It was The Face! The real one! He was wearing my costume and holding my prop knife. And he was between me and the door.

I did the only sensible thing I could think of and dove out the window. Thankfully, it was open at the time and I landed safely out on our back lawn. I looked back to see if The Face was following me, and I was alarmed to see that he was already climbing out behind me. I got up and ran toward our neighbor’s house as fast as my legs could carry me.

This only seemed to delight The Face, who cackled at me as I fled. “Run run run!” he called after me. “You can’t hide from me!”

“The heck I will,” I muttered as I dove into our neighbor’s shrubs.

I waited there for as long as I dared, hoping that The Face hadn’t seen where I hid. I couldn’t see him, and I couldn’t hear him. I had no way to tell if he was looking for me or not, and I wasn’t about to leave my hiding spot to find out. My heart was racing, I was hyperventilating, and I was sure he could hear me breathing.

I don’t know how long I stayed that way, but eventually I heard a whisper next to my ear.

“What’s the matter? You don’t like me anymore?”

He had been right behind me the whole time!

I flew out of that bush like a sparrow and ran back to my house. Behind me I could hear The Face’s awful cackle. “Go ahead!” he called. “I’ll just wait for you to come back to me!”

Like I was going to do that!

I got in the house and immediately locked all the doors. My parents simply stared at me the whole time as if I was crazy. Hah! I wasn’t going to waste time explaining to them, I was going to survive!

My efforts were in vain, though. The killer never made a reappearance that night. In fact, he didn’t appear for three more days.