Fear of the unknown is ironically quite a well known concept, at least among psychologists and horror writers. It’s what Marcie loved so much about horror. The best parts of any scary movie was always well before they revealed who’s under the mask or where the monster comes from. When the final girl unravelled the mystery it really sapped the fun out of it. But then again, if they never unveiled the monster, she’d never get to marvel in the ingenuity of practical effects. She’d never get to see Matthew Lilrd act his ass off if Stu Macher was never revealed as Ghostface #2. So maybe, there were really two best parts, suspense and the reveal.

  But movies weren’t real life. When it came to reality, she couldn’t stand suspense or not knowing. Her missing memories were an obvious annoyance, but this discomfort went back even further.

  For their entire retionship, every ‘can we talk’ text from Hunter twisted her stomach in knots. Every day apart from him when he went off to Berkeley, she had to hold in a million questions about where he was, what he was doing, and who he was with.

  She hated how cagey Papa was about why decided to become a cop. He was the one who gave her ‘the talk’ when she was only six about how she should always speak in clear english if she was ever stopped and she should always always have her ID on her so she could prove she was a documented natural-born citizen. Then suddenly one day, there he was, booting up for the police academy with no expnation.

  And Grant. After all these years she still never got an answer as to why one day he decided she was his mortal enemy. Even having him around in the st week, she couldn’t find the right way to ask or the right time to corner him about it. He just seemed so sad and defted now, it felt awful trying to interrogate him. For so long, Grant was the vilin of her story, the so-called friend who commits the 3rd-act betrayal and is revealed to be working with the killers. Now, he was something else, something she was hesitant to unmask.

  What nobody talks about, is the fear of what is already known. Marcie’s real fears, the ones that ate her alive and kept her awake for the st three nights, were her fears of what she already knew. Less suspense and more anticipation. And it was so much worse.

  She no longer had a fear of death. The afterlife was real and she couldn’t hold back the anxious thoughts that assured her that she’d be back in that endless nothingness again soon. She feared the dark, not for what could be in it, but what she’d experienced inside of it. The Void’s all encompassing darkness brought a pain like she was disintegrating one cell at a time. She feared her hunger and her capacity for violence, not for what she might do or who she might hurt, but what she knew she had to do.

  Tonight, she’d be the monster in the dark.

  She was going to kill Martin Gillman. And if she could manage it, the Void too.

  It was all part of Milton’s pn. After Hunter briefed him on the call he got from Basil, he got everyone down to business. It was immediately apparent why Milton was the leader of the Watch. He delegated tasks to each member of the watch with such command. Everyone knew exactly what they were doing.

  A team, led by Mr. Ruiz set to drawing symbols on the floors in the halls. They were some sort of magical traps and Marcie caught Mr. Ruiz chuckling to himself and said that if his mother saw him now, she’d call him ‘brujo’. Marcie didn’t even want to think about what her Mama would call her if they met again.

  Susana, Luisa, and another small crew spent the morning lining all the windows and doorways with salt, rosemary, and holy oils. Apparently, they had a whole stockroom full of all that somewhere within the house.

  Mrs. Ruiz and Ale were in the Chapel, healing the st of the injured. Any who’s wounds were too severe were advised to go home to their families. Whatever Basil saw it was messy, according to Milton. It didn’t take much investigating over the st 3 days to understand that Josias was Marty's first victim. Marcie put it together the moment she heard. Milton was determined to ensure that he would be the only victim, though Marcie read a note of doubt in his sour face when he made the decration during a debrief with the whole group.

  She had her own doubts. The Watch was down about a quarter of its members after the incident downtown. And if the whole watch couldn’t stop just Marty, what chance did they stand now against both Marty and the Void.

  Watching the st three days unfold, Marcie felt a cwing guilt in the pit of her stomach. The Watch rushed to prepare for war and all she was told to do was stay out of the way and make sure Annabelle was never able to even get another look at her. She had no idea how the police hadn’t already bust down the door to hunt down a kidnapped girl, but they never showed. Still, that same guilt gnawed at her at the thought that somewhere in this house, that girl was probably sitting in a bedroom scared and alone, even if she would never admit it to anyone. Not to mention, Hunter was off somewhere on a wild goose chase to find a magician.

  Marcie’s blind resolve and frankly off-putting enthusiasm she’d for finding her killer and regaining her memories was gone. Before she first had their run in with the Void, she stupidly thought this was going to be like Only Murders in the Building or Knives Out. All of it was amounting to something more like Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks was the only show growing up that gave her genuine nightmares. Somehow, investigating her death had gotten too real and she was just dragging everybody down into her mess.

  Grant had finally given in to Marcie’s appeal for him to get out for his own good, to go home and check on his mom and take a couple shifts at Vinny’s. Tío drove him home and Marcie made sure Tío talked Grant into staying home until this all blew over. Of course that idiot didn’t listen. The evening before the attack was supposed to take pce, Grant pulled up in his mom’s beaten up Toyota Corol while Marcie and Tío waited in the white lily fields.

  He bound over to them, something cttering in the bag he had slung around his back. He threw a duffle bag to the ground, making a THUNK and accompanied by more cttering, unzipped the bag, then pulled out a metal baseball bat.

  “I dug these out of the closet,” Grant said proudly.

  Marcie and Tío each picked one up and felt the cold metal in their hands.

  “Bit small aren’t they?” Tío said.

  Their familiarity hit Marcie as she felt the vinyl tape of the grip. “Oh. My. God. These were your Little League bats.”

  Grant nodded, “Not just mine.”

  Marcie couldn’t help herself. All the memories were coming back.

  “Where’s—,” she fished around in the bag and pulled out exactly the bat she was looking for. Eyes twinkling she brandished a bat that had a sizable dent in it. “Ahh! Lucille!”

  Tío raised an inquisitive eyebrow, “Little League? Now when the hell did you get into baseball?”

  “Did it for a year when I was eight,” Marcie answered offhandedly. She was too busy caressing her old friend. She had almost completely forgotten that summer. Grant had been doing Little League for two years already and Hunter’s dad forced him into it because he thought it would ‘toughen him up’. Marcie, feeling left out, demanded to join as well. Much to the coaches displeasure, she absolutely could not be convinced to join the softball team instead. It had to be baseball and it had to be with Hunter and Grant. She was the only girl on the team…and the only non-white kid for that matter.

  “Yeah and you could’ve been great if you didn’t get banned,” Grant chided. “You had our best batting average that year.”

  Marcie snorted, “Stickin’ it to Curt was worth the ban. He was lucky I didn’t put Lucille through his skull.”

  Tío’s brows got fully lost in his hairline at that. “Do I even want to know?”

  “We lost our first game to Mendocino and Curt started mouthing off that we only lost cause we had a girl on the team—,” Grant offered.

  “So I took Lucille to his bike the next day when I saw him riding to the field. He cried, I got banned from the league, I went home happy,” Marcie shrugged, but her face fell a little. What she also remembered was when Curt’s mother showed up cursing out Mama and screaming at the coach that ‘she knew this would happen’ after they let her join.

  Tío caught the change in her and fshed her a smile that reassured her that he was proud to have a niece capable of vengeful destruction of property. “And…Lucille?”

  “Walking Dead, Volume 17, Issue 100,” Marcie rattled off like a spell. “There’s this dude named Negan and he has this baseball bat wrapped in…”

  Grant suddenly tapped her shoulder to get her attention. His eyes widened to the size of dinner ptes and his entire body tensed.

  Turned around, Marcie saw a mass of shadow twisting into the air. The sun was still setting, but all its light was being swallowed by the present darkness. Grass and flowers all withered and wilted as they were touched. Wind blew through the tall grass, carrying a voice that sounded like a hiss.

  Marcie stayed behind the perimeter of white lilies that lined the house. They were magical or holy in some way. They never wilted, stood tall even after being walked over, and were always in bloom. It was the boundary between hallowed and unhallowed ground. As long as they all stayed within the lilies, they’d be safe, Tío assured her.

  The Watch had come out of the house to join them, surely picking up the scent of the imminent danger. Susana and Luisa, Ale and Bruno, Mr. and Mrs. Ruiz, and Milton stationed at the head, were all there ready to defend the house. Grant passed back the bag of bats, though there weren’t many left and not many people even deemed them viable weapons. That didn’t exactly inspire confidence in Lucille.

  When the shadows settled, the flora all around it had been made into dust. Standing before them was the Void with the Necronomicon in its hands and at its feet was Martin Gillman, no sign of any protruding tentacles or extra limbs. Still he looked half alive.

  Marcie shuddered when she saw him twitch like a suffocating fish flopping on the docks. He vomited water and moaned in hoarse pain as he rose unsteadily. Marty’s curly hair was drenched and fell over his face like kelp, but Marcie could still see his eyes and the sight of them unnerved her. They bulged out of their sockets, like overinfted balloons. They were red with near to bursting blood vessels. Each one shifted in different directions as he lurched forward.Then in an instant, he torpedoed forward. The whole crowd outside the Chapel house tensed. Marcie gripped Lucille tighter. Next to her, she could sense Grant’s screaming desire to run. As much as she wanted to run too, she gave him the most reassuring nod she could muster.

  Bat raised, Marcie prepared to fight to her second death if she needed to. Marty was getting closer. Closer. Closer.

  The moment Marty fully closed the gap, he let out a painful screech. His body caught fire! Out of nowhere, fmes consumed his flesh. He barrelled forward towards the house and flew past Marcie before she could even get a swing in. The fire didn’t burn the ground beneath him, and the embers that trailed off of him weren’t hot to the touch when they nded on Marcie’s clothes. It was like this fiery punishment was for him and him alone.

  The Watch didn’t seem quite sure what was happening either, except for Miton who had already sprung into action. Sharp teeth sank into Marty’s torso and Milton in canine form dragged him to the ground with the full weight of his body. Mr. and Mrs. Ruiz rushed to join the fray, shifting and pouncing and completely ignoring the engulfing fmes. Marty’s gurgling screams rang through the night as he was forced downward.

  “Now Marcel!” Tío yelled.

  Things were still going according to pn. She could end this now. Marcie rushed over to where Marty was pinned to the ground, the closer she got the more she felt the heat of the fire. Though, it wasn’t hot enough to burn. Even as she stood directly over Marty, it was more like sitting near a lit firepce. She raised Lucille up, high enough to get good leverage.

  All she had to do was kill him. All she had to do was bring the bat down.

  His eyes pleaded with her, and for a moment, she thought she saw Marty. The real Marty, alive in there. And even though he was a fucking asshole in life, he was still a person. He didn’t deserve this because nobody deserved this. Just as nobody deserved what happened to her. But that pleading look wasn’t asking her to stop. It was asking her to finish it. It was asking for mercy.

  She couldn’t look. She averted her eyes anywhere else, which was when she caught sight of the Void. It hadn’t moved from its standing position in the grass, but it had the book raised. Even though it had no eyes, Marcie felt that it was staring back at her coldly.

  So Marcie narrowed her eye as a challenge. Whatever the Void thought they’d accomplished, it was over. They’d subverted whatever weird vision Hunter’s friend Basil had.

  Marcie brought the bat down.

  Ubi ambulo, Deus non

  A gust pulsed out from where the Void was standing, so strong that it nearly uprooted the grass and the flowers all the way out to the house. Marcie didn’t even have time to brush the blowing hair out of her face before she was clutching her chest. She yelped, having to use all her strength to remain standing.

  Not again. Not now, goddamnit.

  Marcie’s body felt as though it had been ravaged by wasps. Trying to keep herself upright while this stupid book was sapping her life away solidified the thought that God must fucking hate her.

  The Void took his first step forward. Then another, all the while reading its spell over and over. The Void, inching ever closer, didn’t feel like Marty. The Void was not a wild beast or a natural predator. This monster felt like silent wrath. It walked with the heavy steps an angry father takes after a child misbehaves, deepening fear as it came slowly, like it’d been given a mission from heaven to show Marcie a little piece of hell.

  She couldn’t move much between the shocks of pain shooting up her body, but she could see Grant just enough out of the corner of her eye. He rushed over to clutch her shoulder and hold her up before she completely fell to the ground.

  Another step and the Void was already crossing the line between grass and lily. As its shadowy body touched the earth, death followed. The lilies shriveled and burned underneath and spread like disease. Marcie’s muscles felt like they were trying to tear out of her skin. She was fighting to keep from splitting apart.

  Sound and time moved in swirling incongruity. She felt the movement of dogs around her rushing the demon. Her eyelids were heavier than stone, her bones were more brittle than bird’s, and she became ash in Grant’s arms.

  The only thing she could think to do before fading was to follow the pn. The heat from the burning Marty still warmed her skin. She lifted the bat and swung down with all the strength she could muster. Before she could even tell if she made contact, exhaustion whisked all her remaining consciousness away. And then the world went bck again.