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Sheila wiped her glasses, and while they were off her face, she observed the blurred image of her surroundings. To her left stood a booth selling elephant ears and corn dogs; to her right, a small tent hosting midway games. Near the booths, a display case the size of a video game hosted a life-sized figure of an elderly woman huddled over a crystal ball. Sheila’s shaking hand held up her cell and swung it around. “Is this real? Are you seeing this?”

“I’m approaching mine.” This from Laurie who had spotted the carnival in her hometown after Sheila and Alice had reported identical ones in theirs.

Ding. Sheila read her text from Alice—an image of the entrance to the exact same carnival, the Carnival of Blood, with the word “outside” accompanying it. She didn’t blame Alice for not entering. Her friend must have thought her brave, but Sheila, standing in the middle of the tents, felt dumb.

What person enters a carnival that suddenly appears? Sheila had just finished her daily jog around Maple Lane. At the start of her exercise, she noticed the lot on the east side of her neighborhood was empty. The stretch of land was now a wide expanse of weeds and broken cement from a torn-down strip mall. Now, in less than two hours, a functional carnival operated on the same plot of land.

Certainly, Sheila’s neighbors couldn’t see the lights or hear the music because nobody from Maple Lane was there. Only her. Stranger yet, she spied no workers anywhere. These places were supposed to be places of joy, laughter, and delight. But strolling around here, empty of life but with rides in motion and the smell of cotton candy, was disturbing.

Asami had told her and the rest of the Final Girls the entire story of how she had battled Gepetto, the Puppet Master, at her local carnival. How many of her friends had died, and how she had almost lost her life, until she killed her adversary. He wasn’t human, not anymore at least. Yet Asami had still managed to end his life.

Sheila approached an attraction housed inside a double-wide trailer with a facade out front. A sign beckoned to enter to view the Things to Astonish—an exhibit of the bizarre. No, she had heard what Asami had found there and wouldn’t enter. The traps Gepetto had set in his attractions proved his cruelty.

A typical person wouldn’t have believed Asami’s story about Gepetto, but Sheila wasn’t typical. She had confronted her own inexplicable madman in Frankie on the streets of Maple Lane. Legend said the townspeople had fried Frankie in the boiler room after they caught him kidnapping teenagers. The people of Maple Lawn had formed their own mob justice, not willing to leave it to the police. But born of evil, Frankie had not completely died the night he burned. He returned in people’s dreams.

With her friends and the people of Maple Lawn, Sheila had defeated Frankie. Even when he had grown an extra set of arms with pincers at the end like some maligned insect, she had driven her knife into his heart. She had vanquished him with the help of the good people of Maple Lawn who had allowed her entrance to their homes, giving her weapons and advice on how to defeat him. Yes, many had died, many of her friends, yet the neighborhood together had triumphed in the end, hoping never to see Frankie’s burnt face in their dreams again.

Sheila hurried past the Things to Astonish trailer. If Asami’s carnival was back, did it also mean Gepetto was alive? And if Gepetto was alive, what did that mean for her and the people of Maple Lawn? Worse, the exact same place had materialized in Alice’s and Laurie’s hometowns. And still no word from Asami.

Out of breath, Laurie’s voice through from Sheila’s phone. “I’m in. Same carnival. No one here.”

Her voice jolted Sheila out of her reverie and caused her to halt. Ahead stood a small grove with trees—an entrance sign declaring it the Forest of Horror. Without the sign, the odd clump of flora resembled a Christmas tree lot. Sheila recalled Asami’s story again. Many deaths had happened there. She turned and hurried for a trailer nearby bearing the sign “Office.”

Ding. Another Alice text. Sheila read it as she jogged. “Did you enter, Laurie?”

“Yes, I entered,” replied Laurie.

As if there was any doubt. Brave Laurie who had marched toward her masked supernatural terror with a bow and arrow. Yes, Sheila believed Laurie when she told her Hans wasn’t a normal man. Laurie had received a lot of criticism for saying Hans was supernatural, but not as much as Asami. Her neighbors had all turned on her, thinking her encounter with Gepetto drove her to be delusional. Sheila was lucky. Maple Lawn knew about Frankie and had taken care of him together. No one had doubted her story and any stranger who asked was met with the same made-up testimony. Whereas people were suspicious of Laurie and Asami, they supported Sheila. Her neighborhood, together, had defeated Frankie.

She made it to the office door and spoke into her cell. “Anyone heard from Asami yet?”

As if by saying her name Sheila had conjured her, Asami spoke. “I just joined. Girls, you aren’t going to believe this but—”

“The carnival’s back,” interrupted Laurie.

“Oh. My. God. How did you know?”

Sheila entered the trailer, not surprised the door was open. “Where have you been? Turn on your video.”

Laurie’s voice rang from Sheila’s cell. “The carnival’s appeared in all our hometowns. We’re all checking it out.”

Ding. Alice’s text.

“Alice, I’m fine,” said Asami. “Why is it back?”

Sheila stepped into the office and reached for a light switch. No joy. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

Asami’s voice wavered. “But Gepetto never visited your towns, only mine. Why has this hellhole returned near everyone’s homes?”

Laurie answered Asami’s question with one of her own. “You said when the carnival first came to your town, it wasn’t weird? Your neighborhood visited it, true?”

Sheila turned on her phone light while waiting for the answer. “Yes. Crap, it’s how he killed all my friends! His puppets wandered around with their little knives—”

Ding.

“—and hunted us down.”

Sheila moved her phone to show off the office. Laurie and Asami were now talking at the same time, and she couldn’t understand either one. She focused instead on the interior of the trailer, hunting for any clue as to why this place existed. Filing cabinets, trunks, and a desk made up the small room. Everything was neatly arranged except for a piece of paper sitting on the desk. Sheila crossed the room toward it.

Laurie reported her status. “I’m at the clown car, and it’s over a manhole to the sewer just like in your story. Everything here is identical to what you’ve told us.”

“I’m walking around on the outside.” Sheila heard Asami, taking deep breaths. “I can’t go in. I think you should leave, too. Stay outside like Alice.”

Ding. Alice’s reply. Sheila didn’t stop to read it. Instead, she skimmed the paper on the table, narrowing her eyes on the last few lines.

“Did you hear me?” Asami’s voice had a pleading tone to it. “Laurie? Sheila? Get out now!”

Sheila gasped at the bottom of the document. “You have to see this.”

She pointed her phone at the paper to allow the others to read it. The title proclaimed itself a contract between someone named Razorface and “the four powerful, unrepentant souls in hell.” Words followed, but the sentence at the bottom was twice as large as any of the legalese printed above. It read: I swear to finish what I started on Earth before I was interrupted and sent to hell. I promise to murder the group known as the Final Girls.

At the bottom were the signatures of Hans, Gepetto, and Evelyn, Alice’s adversary. But the final name made Sheila tremble.

Frankie.