Scream No More

Tara had nearly gotten to the point where she could hear a phone ring without the urge to jump clear of her skin. Two murder sprees. Her friends dead. Other friends responsible. It made her want to be a Luddite, living in a cabin somewhere. No phones, no computers, no way for some psychotic fanboy to reach her unless he sent a singing telegram.

But that would be giving in. So would cutting herself off from her friends… family, really… just because they were as tangled up as she was in this legacy of murder and evil and obsession, this incestuous psychodrama that made no sense, but seemed like it would ensnare her over and over again. Her body seemed conditioned to know that it would happen again, the way trees evolved to know forest fires were bound to happen and survive or thrive or something like that. She wasn’t doing too well in that class.

The solution, her therapist insisted, was to throw herself away from the death-urge and into living. Get out. See the world. Socialize as much as possible. And keep her phone on her, like a normal person, because the odds had to be a million-to-one that the next call would be from a killer. They weren’t even making Stab movies anymore. The star got canceled for something or other.

So when the phone rang, she let it do its ringtone for a moment. Tara grounded herself, remembering that she was in the middle of Milwaukee. It was broad daylight, she was on a busy street, walking to her bus stop with a million people who would defend her if a maniac jumped out in a Halloween costume and tried to slash her.

Tara let the paranoia win a little bit. She ducked through the gate that bordered the sidewalk, into a nice, quiet park. Families playing, kids on a jungle gym, lovers having picnics. Nice. Normal. Bucolic. No chance of someone walking up beside her and shiving her in the ribs before losing themselves in the crowd.

Tara hated to think like that. But she’d rather think like that and be alive than not think like that and…

She buried the thought. She wouldn’t die from lack of paranoia; she’d just feel like it. And her phone was still ringing.

She sat down heavily on a park bench and took her phone from her purse and told herself the day would come when pressed Answer didn’t feel this way: “Hello?”

“Tara Carpenter?”

No, don’t admit that. Don’t say you’re Sam’s sister. You can get out of all of this if you just don’t engage.

Ridiculous, intrusive thoughts. She had to be normal. Because maybe if she convinced other people of that, she could get back to feeling that way. “Speaking.”

“Hi, this is John Fisher of the Chicago Press. I have a story here that involves you and I was wondering if I could get a comment before we go to press?”

Tara’s thoughts zig-zagged. It wasn’t him, that one-voiced monster that wore different faces like they were different masks. But it was a reporter. And if he was contacting her, it had to be about the killings. No other reason anyone should care about her. She wanted to tell him to fuck off, but if he had something…

They weren’t perfect victims, her and Sam. They weren’t Sydney Prescott or Gale Weathers, even. She remembered how Sam had killed Wayne. He’d deserved it, but it’d been merciless, cold-blooded. Something only the two of them could understand, not the world.

Did this guy know that? Or about Sam’s real father? Suddenly, she needed to know. “What do you want me to comment on, exactly?” Tara asked, feeling absurdly like some noir character, dancing around a detective’s leading questions.

“The Ghostface killings in 2024, they were perpetuated by the Baileys in retaliation for the death of Richie Kirsch in 2023, correct?”

“More or less.”

“Richie Kirsch who, also in 2023, hospitalized you in an attack in Woodsboro?”

“This is a matter of public record. What do you need to ask me about?”

“I was just wondering if you had any idea why three people would care so much about the death of some dumb fuck who couldn’t even kill a little girl properly?”

Him. It was his voice now. Someone else had decided to become him, wear the mask, wield a knife, and they were calling her, making her listen to the voice of death all over again—

“Fuck you!” she screamed, a torrent coming loose because there was no convincing herself she didn’t have flood waters in her mind, not when she could see him in every shadow, in every spot of white, in every glint of metal… “You know it’s pathetic at this point? It’s sad. There’ve been a dozen of you psychos and you all think you’re special, that you’re going to get away with it and make your big statement, but you’re all just a bunch of pussies running around with your muumuus and your knives! You’re so fucking, fucking bankrupt that you can’t even come up with someone you want to kill, you’re just co-signing some stupid serial killer meme! It’s bullshit, man! You’re going to die like all the rest!”

“You think so?”

“Fuck yeah I do. I don’t care how many of you there are this time. There are four of us and we’re un-fucking-breakable!”

“Beg to differ, sidekick.” God, he was snide. Evil and scary and fucked-up and smug about it. How could someone be such a bastard and take joy in it? “Richie Kirsch, Wayne Bailey—like father, like son. Two faggots who lost because they thought they had to play by the rules. Dress up in a little theater-kid outfit and wave a knife around? I agree. It is pathetic. That’s why I’m not wearing a mask and I’m not carrying a knife.”

Tara felt a sharp jab. Like someone had poked her in the chest, hard, with two fingers joined together. Then she heard the report, sharp, metallic: bang! And people were looking around, stopping what they were doing… they were looking at her.

Tara looked down. She couldn’t quite see the hole in her sternum, but she could see the blood pouring out of it, soaking into her top, turning the peasant blouse into a solid, clinging web over red breasts…

Another jab. Tara squawked. This time she saw it, the bullet impacting her right breast, exploding it like a water balloon filled too full. Leaving behind a ruin of crimson pulp, like an orange after someone had squeezed all the juice from it. She could only stare in disbelief, her eyes switching from the one perfect mammary she still possessed to this chunk taken out of, twisted muscle fibers and ragged skin seeming to float in the gap that had opened up in her flesh.

People were screaming, running. No one was coming to help her. They were all just running.

“Help… someone help…” Tara tried to say, but there was no air to say it with. She could feel the muscles of her throat working, but it was like she’d been teleported to outer space. There was nothing for her flaring nostrils to pull in, nothing to fill her lungs with. One of them was in pieces, shredded along with her breast…

Gravity had become funny. It was pulling at her, gently ushering her down to the ground, but she was floating upward too, detached from it. Like she was falling, but the world wasn’t sure which direction she should go in.

Another gunshot—was it? So hard to hear…

It was. It was and it took her in the midsection. What did it take away from her? Her kidney, her womb? She could see a length of intestine kicked up by the impact, squirming loose of her convulsing body. Time waited until she blinked and then jumped around. Blood was spreading on the ground, it was all over her, and her breaths were pushing more of that intestine out through that sucking wound, like it was a log floating in a lake of blood.

The next gunshot she didn’t even hear. She felt it as a tingle. Tara didn’t think she could lift her head, but somehow she saw the pool of blood at her groin, knew the bullet had entered her phallically for a split-second before ripping her apart. She was still a virgin. All she’d known from that part of her was masturbation, a few fingers while she made out with a guy and tried to decide if he was the one. Now it was all empty space, nerves disconnected at both ends. If there was anything to feel from what the bullet had done there, she was too far away, at a million miles’ distance, on a long road trip. And she didn’t think she’d ever come back around to find out what her body was complaining about as it quaked, as it bled, as it evacuated its bowels and turned a shade of white that needed empty veins to be achieved.

***

The paramedics pronounced Tara Carpenter dead on arrival. Three hundred police and federal agents swept the park. They found nothing until, seven-tenths of a mile from the body, a closed textile mill was searched. On the fifth floor, four MK 248 Mod 0 .300 Winchester Magnum shell casings were found. The killer had not attempted to hide them. They’d been lined up in a neat row on the windowsill the killer had made his shots from. CCTV footage was scrutinized, but no one was seen entering or exiting the mill. A few suspects were seen in the vicinity carrying items that could’ve concealed a long-range rifle, but after interrogation, all were released. The city’s own surveillance cameras verified their alibis.

The FBI’s Recursive Offense Task Force, a division assigned to copycat murders and crimes of a ritualistic or socially repeatable nature, was pulled from their usual duties and given the Tara Carpenter case, aware that follow-up attacks would most likely target the remaining survivors of the recent Woodsboro and New York killings. Sydney Prescott and Gale Weathers were already out of the country and beyond the FBI’s jurisdiction.

Assistant Director Romano, whose purview the ROTF fell under, said with confidence that the killer or killers had no doubt brainstormed their crime through social media and that the newly prominent Cyber Crimes Division, given an addition two hundred million dollar endowment by the Senate Budgeting Committee, would soon produce a suspect, followed by a conviction. This crime spree would not end with American citizens forced to defend themselves.

Privately, though, the agents of the ROTF were less confident. As the wife of Senior Agent Billy Cameron recalled him telling her one night while getting ready for bed, “These freaks always seem to have a pathology. They don’t just want to kill people; it’s like they want to star in their own private horror movie. But if one of them really didn’t care about all that? If he only wanted to hurt folks and he decided these four particular people had to die? A guy like that could do a lot of damage and all we could hope for is getting lucky enough to catch him in the act.”

His wife, school teacher Meredith Cameron, remarked to the man interviewing her that her only hope at that moment was that whoever caught the killer in the act was not her husband.