For several long seconds after the masked figure stepped into the living room, no one breathed.

  It was not the ordinary kind of silence.

  Not the silence of a room waiting for someone to speak.

  Not the silence of a house settling after a party.

  This silence had weight.

  It pressed itself into the walls, into the blood-slick hardwood floor, into the throats of the survivors huddled together in the center of Emma Roberts’ living room like the last cluster of passengers clinging to wreckage after a ship had gone down.

  The massacre had transformed the room into something obscene.

  Furniture lay overturned or splintered. A glass coffee table had been shattered so thoroughly that the floor glittered with broken fragments, each tiny shard catching the low light from a crooked lamp like scattered ice. The white sectional couch was ruined now, one arm smeared dark with blood, a cushion half on the floor as if someone had tried to use it for cover and failed. A decorative bowl of candy had spilled across the room at some point during the violence, bright wrappers mixed grotesquely with drops of blood and footprints and the heel marks of people who had run out of places to run.

  Bodies lay where the night had left them.

  Skeet Ulrich was crumpled near the fireplace, one arm bent at a bad angle, his expression frozen in the kind of disbelief that made death look almost offended. Rory Culkin had fallen near the hallway, sprawled awkwardly beside the wall as though he had hit it on the way down. Timothy Olyphant lay half behind the ruined coffee table, one hand still stretched outward, fingers stiff, as if he had been reaching for someone who never made it back. Mikey Madison was near the kitchen entrance, her dark hair spread around her head like a halo soaked in red. And farther back, partially obscured by the overturned end table and the ruined lamp, Emma Roberts herself remained still in the house that was supposed to have been safe.

  The air smelled like copper.

  And sweat.

  And smoke from something electrical that had shorted out during the chaos.

  And beneath all of it, faint and awful, the smell of a party that had died badly: spilled liquor, perfume, candle wax, food gone cold.

  The killer stood just inside the doorway.

  Knife hanging loosely in one gloved hand.

  The twisted white face of the Scream-Face mask gleamed in the dim light, the expression frozen forever between a scream and a grin. The black hood fell around the figure’s shoulders in heavy folds. Nothing about the posture was rushed. Nothing about it looked feral or out of control.

  That was somehow the worst part.

  The killer was calm.

  Studying them.

  Watching.

  As if this moment, too, had been part of the evening’s entertainment.

  The survivors had instinctively drawn together without discussing it, without even seeming to realize they were doing it. Terror had arranged them into a loose, uneven semicircle, all of them facing the doorway, all of them trying at once to look brave and to hide behind one another.

  David Arquette had drifted forward first, almost without thinking, placing himself half a step in front of Courteney Cox and McKenna Grace with the reflexive, slightly hopeless energy of someone who had spent a lifetime playing men who thought protection alone could stop knives. One side of his face was bruised. There was blood on his shirt sleeve that wasn’t entirely his. His breathing was shallow but deliberate, like he was trying to control it by force.

  Courteney stood just behind his shoulder, one hand gripping the edge of a toppled dining chair so tightly her knuckles had gone pale. Even now there was something steely in her face, something sharp and appraising, as though one part of her mind was still taking notes through the terror. Her hair had fallen partly loose. A streak of blood ran across her wrist. Her expression was not panic exactly.

  It was anger trying very hard not to become fear.

  Jamie Kennedy stood a little left of center, chest rising and falling too fast, his eyes darting between the mask, the bodies, and the exits as though his brain still refused to stop storyboarding the room in horror-movie logic. He looked like a man who had spent his whole life making jokes about these situations only to discover that none of those jokes came with instructions for what to do when the killer was actually in front of you.

  Drew Barrymore had both arms folded tightly around herself. Her face was pale, but her eyes were locked on the killer with a strange, searching intensity that suggested she was noticing something the others weren’t. Not understanding it. Just noticing. Her lips parted once, like she was about to speak, then closed again.

  Liev Schreiber stood near the edge of the group, blood on the cuff of his sleeve, his expression pinched into focused disbelief. He wasn’t trembling. He wasn’t speaking. He looked like a man trying to solve an equation with too many dead variables.

  Scott Foley, by contrast, looked offended on a spiritual level. There was fear there too, certainly, but it had been joined by a kind of exhausted resentment, as if the entire evening had finally crossed a line from absurd into personally irritating. He kept glancing at Skeet’s body and then back toward the killer like he still half expected someone to yell cut.

  Melissa Barrera stood between Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown, one arm unconsciously out in front of them even though they were all roughly the same age and none of them were children. Protective instinct didn’t care about logic. Her jaw was set. Her eyes burned. There was blood on the side of her neck where someone else had grabbed her earlier in the chaos. She looked furious enough to lunge if fear and common sense weren’t holding her in place.

  Mason was trying to keep his breathing even and failing. His hands flexed uselessly at his sides. He kept glancing from the killer to the floor and back again, his expression caught somewhere between shock and the desperate need to make this make sense. Beside him Jasmin looked smaller than usual only because she was very still. Her eyes, sharp even through fear, kept moving, cataloguing details, testing them against every rule the genre had ever taught her.

  Jenna Ortega stood slightly apart from the others without meaning to, not because she trusted the space around her but because something in her had gone inward. Her face had settled into a tense, unreadable calm. She stared at the killer with the unnerving focus of someone trying to memorize every inch of a nightmare so she could survive it later. One sleeve of her shirt had been torn. There was dried blood near her elbow. She did not seem to notice either thing.

  Jack Quaid’s mouth kept twitching with the impulse to say something wildly inappropriate. Nervous comedy was fighting for its life against genuine animal terror and losing by a narrow margin. He had one hand pressed to his ribs where he’d taken a hit earlier. Every so often he swallowed hard and glanced sideways at the others as if checking whether anybody else was seconds away from losing their mind too.

  McKenna Grace looked devastatingly young in that moment, no matter how old anyone knew she actually was. She stood close to David and Drew, eyes bright with fear, shoulders tight, lips parted just enough to suggest she was breathing through her mouth because breathing through her nose would force her to smell the blood.

  Asa Germann’s face had gone cold in the way some people’s faces did when fear stopped reading as panic and hardened into suspicion. He watched the masked figure not like prey watched a predator but like a witness stared at a lie. His gaze kept narrowing. He did not trust this stillness. He did not trust the posture. He did not trust the performance.

  Liana Liberato looked as though the trust had already been ripped out of her. She was white-knuckling the edge of the couch cushion she’d somehow picked up during the confusion, still holding it absurdly like a shield she’d forgotten to drop. Her expression had that raw, open quality of someone whose fear was no longer just fear of dying. It was fear of realizing she had been wrong about the room. Wrong about the night. Wrong about who had been safe.

  And a little behind the others, close enough to belong to the group and far enough to feel separate from it, Isabel May stood utterly silent.

  There was blood on the hem of her jeans.

  A cut near her wrist.

  A strand of hair stuck to her cheek.

  But her eyes were on the killer and had not moved once.

  Unlike the others, she was not looking wildly from body to body or searching for escape routes or glancing at the windows. She was simply watching. Studying. As if some very quiet part of her had understood that the truth of the night was standing in the doorway and that if she looked away for even a second she might miss it.

  No one spoke.

  Outside, somewhere far away, a dog barked once.

  Then the sound disappeared into the dark.

  Inside the house the only noise was breathing.

  Uneven.

  Shallow.

  Human.

  The killer tilted their head slightly.

  Just slightly.

  A curious little motion.

  Almost thoughtful.

  Drew’s eyes narrowed.

  She didn’t know why.

  Not yet.

  But something in the gesture made a small cold thread pull through her stomach.

  It was too familiar.

  Not the mask.

  Not the knife.

  The movement.

  As though the person beneath the costume had forgotten for half a second to act like a monster and had moved instead like themselves.

  Scott noticed Drew looking.

  “What?” he whispered, barely audible.

  Drew didn’t answer.

  Because she didn’t know what to say.

  Because what she was noticing still sounded insane even inside her own head.

  Beside them, Jack finally cracked first.

  Not loudly.

  Just a strained whisper that escaped before he could stop it.

  “So,” he murmured, voice unsteady, “I’m officially not having fun anymore.”

  No one laughed.

  Even he regretted it immediately.

  Melissa shot him a look without taking her eyes off the doorway.

  “Shut up,” she whispered.

  Jack nodded once.

  “Yep.”

  David shifted his weight a fraction forward.

  It was not a heroic move.

  Not really.

  More like the body deciding before the mind did.

  If the killer rushed them, he was going to try something. Anything. The sheer stupidity of that fact did not cancel the fact itself.

  Courteney caught the motion.

  “David,” she said under her breath.

  A warning.

  A plea.

  A habit.

  He didn’t look back.

  Mason leaned subtly toward Jasmin.

  “Do we run?” he whispered.

  Jasmin swallowed.

  “To where?”

  He had no answer for that.

  The front door was blocked.

  The hallway was a death funnel.

  The kitchen had no clear exit without crossing open space.

  Every piece of survival logic they had possessed at the beginning of the night had been slowly dismantled until all that remained was instinct and the awful awareness that horror movies always looked easier when you were watching from a couch.

  Jamie’s gaze flicked again to Skeet.

  Then to the killer.

  Then to Neve’s supposed body upstairs, though he couldn’t see it from here.

  His brain was snagging on details he hadn’t had time to process. Things that felt wrong but not wrong enough yet. The sequence of kills. The timing. The way the night had seemed to fold around certain people and spare others. The way the killer stood now, not panting, not limping, not wild with adrenaline.

  Waiting.

  As if for a cue.

  And then, because Jamie Kennedy had always had the kind of mind that hated silence more than danger, because there was something about this particular quiet that felt like mockery, because the dead around him deserved more than one more frozen second of staring—

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  his nerves cracked.

  “…Why?” he asked.

  His voice sounded smaller than he expected.

  Thin.

  Not weak, exactly.

  Just human.

  The killer did not answer.

  Jamie frowned, almost offended by that.

  He gestured helplessly at the room.

  At the ruined furniture.

  At Skeet.

  At Emma.

  At the blood streaked across the floor like the night itself had been dragged through the house by force.

  At the survivors gathered together like the final leftovers of a story that had chewed through everybody else.

  “No, seriously,” Jamie said, louder now. “Why the hell are you doing this?”

  Still nothing.

  The mask stared back at him.

  Empty.

  Patient.

  Around him the others remained rigid.

  Melissa’s jaw tightened.

  David took another involuntary half-step forward.

  McKenna made a small choking sound and covered it quickly.

  Courteney’s grip tightened on the chair.

  Drew kept staring at the killer’s posture, that tiny thread of familiarity pulling tighter and tighter.

  Jenna’s eyes narrowed.

  Asa’s suspicion sharpened.

  And Isabel—

  Isabel did not move at all.

  The silence stretched so long it became unbearable.

  Jamie could feel something boiling in his chest now, hotter and uglier than fear.

  Frustration.

  Grief.

  Shock trying to turn itself into anger because anger was easier to stand upright inside.

  “Say something!” he snapped.

  The killer remained still.

  Jamie threw a hand toward the bodies.

  “At least give us the speech,” he said, voice cracking. “Isn’t that what psychos do? Isn’t this the part where you tell us we all represent something stupid? Fame, trauma, reboots, fandom, whatever the hell this is?”

  Nothing.

  His face twisted.

  And then all of it finally tore loose.

  “WHY?!” he shouted.

  The word hit the room hard.

  It slammed into the walls.

  Echoed off broken glass and blood and ruined wood.

  Somewhere in the house, something upstairs shifted with the vibration, a small creak from settling beams or a body or a trick no one had uncovered yet.

  The killer reacted.

  Not with a rush.

  Not with a knife.

  Just a slow tilt of the head.

  Then, very deliberately, the gloved hand rose.

  Fingers touched the chin of the mask.

  And began to lift.

  The mask lifted slowly.

  Not dramatically.

  Not with the theatrical flourish people expected from horror movies.

  Just a quiet, deliberate motion.

  The gloved hand hooked beneath the chin of the Scream-Face mask and tilted it upward. The white plastic slid over the nose, over the eyes, and finally cleared the face beneath.

  For a heartbeat, no one processed what they were seeing.

  The mask hung in the air beside the killer’s head.

  The person beneath it blinked once in the dim light of the ruined living room.

  And suddenly the shape of the night rearranged itself.

  Because the face beneath the mask belonged to Neve Campbell.

  For several long seconds, no one spoke.

  Scott Foley stared first.

  His brain visibly stalled, like a computer encountering an error message it didn’t know how to resolve.

  “…No,” he said quietly.

  Not angry.

  Not outraged.

  Just confused.

  Melissa Barrera’s reaction came next.

  Her breath left her in a harsh burst.

  “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Beside her, Mason Gooding blinked rapidly as if his vision had gone wrong.

  He leaned slightly toward Jasmin.

  “Wait.”

  He pointed.

  “Wait. Wait.”

  His voice cracked slightly.

  “That’s—”

  Jasmin finished the sentence for him.

  “Neve.”

  Her tone was flat.

  Not surprised.

  Not calm.

  Just stunned enough that her brain had switched temporarily into narration mode.

  Across the room Liana Liberato slowly shook her head.

  “…No.”

  The word came out barely louder than a breath.

  It wasn’t denial.

  It was something closer to betrayal.

  Jamie Kennedy rubbed both hands over his face.

  Then dragged them downward like someone trying to erase the entire night.

  When his hands dropped again he looked exhausted.

  “Oh come on.”

  Courteney Cox let out a single sharp laugh.

  It wasn’t humor.

  It was the sound of someone realizing the punchline of a very long joke.

  “You’re kidding.”

  She stepped slightly out from behind David now, her eyes narrowing at Neve like a reporter looking at a witness whose story had just collapsed.

  “Please tell me this is a bit.”

  David Arquette looked devastated.

  He wasn’t angry.

  He wasn’t even scared in that moment.

  He looked like someone had kicked the air out of him.

  “Neve…”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “What are you doing?”

  Drew Barrymore let out a soft, disbelieving exhale.

  Then she gave a tiny shrug.

  “Well,” she said.

  “That’s ironic.”

  Everyone looked at her.

  Drew gestured vaguely at the room.

  “I die first in the original movie.”

  She pointed weakly toward Neve.

  “And now you’re Ghostface.”

  Her eyebrows lifted.

  “Full circle, I guess.”

  Jack Quaid let out a short, nervous laugh before he could stop himself.

  “Okay,” he said quickly.

  “Okay.”

  He pointed between the survivors.

  “So we’re all seeing this, right?”

  McKenna Grace was staring at Neve like she had just discovered gravity might stop working at any moment.

  “You killed them,” she whispered.

  Her voice trembled.

  “Why?”

  Asa Germann hadn’t moved at all.

  He had been watching Neve since the mask came off, his eyes narrowing further with every second.

  “…I knew something was wrong,” he murmured.

  Jenna Ortega stood with her arms folded loosely now, studying Neve with that same unnerving focus she’d held since the beginning of the standoff.

  After a moment she spoke.

  “…I knew it.”

  Everyone turned toward her.

  Mason frowned immediately.

  “You did not.”

  Jenna shrugged.

  “I suspected.”

  “You suspected Neve Campbell was the killer?”

  Jenna tilted her head.

  “I suspected someone was.”

  Scott Foley let out a dry breath of laughter.

  “Well,” he said.

  “I guess that narrows it down.”

  Liev Schreiber finally spoke.

  His voice was calm.

  Measured.

  Almost analytical.

  “This explains the staging.”

  Everyone glanced toward him.

  He gestured faintly toward the room.

  “The timing of the attacks.”

  The bodies.

  “The fact that the killer kept disappearing.”

  He looked back at Neve.

  “You were inside the house the whole time.”

  Neve didn’t answer yet.

  She just watched them.

  The mask dangled loosely from her hand now.

  Her expression was strangely calm.

  Not manic.

  Not hysterical.

  Just tired.

  Behind the others, Isabel May had not spoken once.

  She stood very still, her gaze locked on Neve with the kind of attention people usually reserved for puzzles they were afraid to solve.

  Everyone else was reacting.

  Everyone else was speaking.

  But Isabel was simply watching.

  Trying to understand something she couldn’t yet name.

  Jamie finally dropped his hands from his face.

  He looked up at Neve again.

  His voice was quieter now.

  Not shouting.

  Not panicked.

  Just tired.

  “…Neve.”

  He gestured weakly at the bodies scattered around the room.

  At Skeet.

  At Emma.

  At the blood streaking the floor.

  “Why?”

  The question hung in the air.

  For a moment, it looked like Neve might answer calmly.

  Her mouth opened slightly.

  Her expression softened.

  Like someone preparing to give a thoughtful explanation.

  Instead—

  She exploded.

  “Why? WHY?!”

  The sudden fury in her voice hit the room like a slap.

  Everyone flinched.

  Neve’s eyes burned with something raw and exhausted and furious all at once.

  She gestured wildly around the living room.

  “Because I’m exhausted!”

  Her voice cracked with thirty years of buried frustration.

  “Thirty years of this!”

  She pointed at them.

  At the house.

  At the bodies.

  At the entire absurd nightmare of the evening.

  “Sidney this.”

  “Sidney that.”

  “Sidney Prescott the survivor.”

  Her laugh came out bitter.

  Sharp.

  “My own kids call me Sidney.”

  The room went very quiet again.

  Neve lowered her hand slowly.

  Her breathing steadied.

  Her voice dropped to something colder now.

  “I’m not Sidney.”

  She looked directly at Jamie.

  Then at Courteney.

  Then at the rest of them.

  “I’m Neve.”

  No one spoke.

  Because for the first time that night—

  the killer sounded like someone telling the truth.

  The room held its breath again.

  Neve stood in the doorway, the Ghostface mask dangling loosely from her hand like an accessory she had grown bored with. The knife remained in the other hand, though she held it almost casually now, the blade catching faint glints of light from the broken lamp behind the couch.

  For a moment she simply looked at them.

  Not like prey.

  Not like enemies.

  Like colleagues.

  Like people she had spent years sitting beside at convention tables, panel discussions, reunion photos.

  The silence stretched long enough that the house itself seemed to lean inward to listen.

  Then Scott Foley spoke again.

  “…We saw you die.”

  His voice had regained some steadiness now. The shock was still there, but it had hardened into something sharper—suspicion, maybe.

  Neve glanced toward him.

  Then she smiled faintly.

  “I thought I gave myself away,” she admitted.

  The smile widened slightly.

  She nodded toward the staircase behind the survivors.

  “But when none of you checked the body…”

  She shrugged lightly.

  “…I knew I was safe.”

  Several people turned instinctively toward the stairs.

  Even though they couldn’t see the upper landing from here, the implication hung there like another body waiting to be discovered.

  Liana frowned.

  “But we saw the stabbing.”

  Her voice was small.

  Confused.

  She looked genuinely upset by the contradiction.

  Neve chuckled softly.

  “Did you?”

  She pushed away from the doorway and took a slow step into the living room.

  The survivors instinctively tightened their semicircle.

  David shifted forward again.

  Melissa raised her chin slightly.

  Mason’s hands flexed at his sides.

  Neve didn’t react to any of it.

  She moved with the relaxed confidence of someone who had already rehearsed this moment.

  “Earlier tonight,” she said, “I set up a little prop in the hallway.”

  Jamie blinked.

  “…A prop?”

  Neve nodded.

  “A motion-detecting Ghostface decoration.”

  Recognition flickered across several faces at once.

  Jack let out a low groan.

  “Oh my god.”

  Neve continued.

  “It’s one of those cheap Halloween figures that jumps when someone walks past.”

  She held her hand out flat and mimed the motion.

  “Sensor triggers.”

  “Arm swings forward.”

  “Knife pops out.”

  Scott stared at her.

  “You’re kidding.”

  Neve shook her head calmly.

  “But I modified it.”

  She lifted the knife in her hand slightly.

  “The costume was adjusted to resemble Scream-Face instead of the standard Ghostface mask.”

  She tapped the blade lightly with one finger.

  “And I replaced the plastic prop knife with a retractable stage blade.”

  Jasmin’s eyebrows lifted.

  “You’re serious.”

  “Completely.”

  Neve mimed stepping backward.

  “When I backed into it…”

  Her hand flicked downward.

  “The motion sensor triggered.”

  She made the stabbing motion again.

  “Blade extends.”

  “Blood packet bursts.”

  “Everyone screams.”

  Jamie stared at her.

  His expression slowly collapsed into disbelief.

  “You stabbed yourself with a Halloween decoration.”

  Neve shrugged.

  “Actors improvise.”

  Mason shook his head slowly.

  “That is the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.”

  Jasmin tilted her head thoughtfully.

  “…And somehow the most impressive.”

  Courteney rubbed her temples.

  “I cannot believe this is my life.”

  Scott gestured toward the staircase again.

  “…Then whose body is upstairs?”

  Neve glanced up the stairs briefly.

  “A stunt double.”

  Jamie groaned loudly.

  “Of course.”

  Jack rubbed his face.

  “You hired a stunt double for your own murder?”

  Neve smiled slightly.

  “Professionalism matters.”

  Melissa stepped forward half a pace.

  Her anger had finally boiled over.

  “You killed them,” she said sharply.

  Her voice trembled with fury now.

  “Emma.”

  “Skeet.”

  She gestured around the room.

  “Everyone.”

  “Why?”

  Neve’s smile faded.

  The air in the room shifted again.

  Because now the conversation had reached the real question.

  She began pacing slowly across the living room.

  Not rushed.

  Not nervous.

  Just thoughtful.

  Her footsteps echoed faintly across the blood-streaked floor.

  “Every person who died tonight,” she said softly, “had something in common.”

  She stopped near Skeet’s body.

  Looked down at him for a moment.

  Then gestured toward him.

  “Ghostface actors.”

  Her gaze moved across the room.

  “Legacy killers.”

  “Sequel material.”

  Her eyes lingered on several of the survivors now.

  Jamie.

  Melissa.

  Jenna.

  Jack.

  “People who keep the franchise alive.”

  The room went very still.

  Liev folded his arms slowly.

  “You’re eliminating the mythology.”

  Neve tilted her head slightly.

  “Exactly.”

  Jasmin spoke quietly.

  “You’re trying to end the story.”

  Neve spread her hands slightly.

  “You people are the franchise.”

  The words landed heavily.

  Because looking around the room, it was impossible to argue with that.

  The survivors represented decades of horror history.

  Actors from multiple generations.

  The past.

  The present.

  The possible future.

  Neve’s gaze swept across all of them.

  And then she smiled faintly.

  “So I’m burning it down.”

  No one spoke.

  Outside, faint and distant at first—

  sirens began to echo through the night.

  Someone had called for help.

  The sound grew slowly louder.

  Closer.

  David noticed first.

  His eyes flicked toward the window.

  “Police are coming.”

  Neve heard them too.

  She didn’t seem concerned.

  If anything, she looked relieved.

  Jamie took a cautious step forward.

  “You’re not getting away with this.”

  Neve looked at him.

  Then she laughed softly.

  The sound was almost affectionate.

  “Oh Jamie,” she said.

  “You still think this part is about getting away.”

  The sirens grew louder.

  Closer now.

  Red and blue flashes began to flicker faintly through the front windows.

  The survivors exchanged uncertain glances.

  Because something about Neve’s tone had changed again.

  The explanation was ending.

  And something else was about to begin.

  Neve slipped the Ghostface mask slowly back over her face.

  The twisted white expression returned.

  Watching them.

  Smiling.

  And for the first time since the reveal—

  the survivors realized something terrifying.

  The killer had been explaining things.

  But she had never once sounded worried.

  The sirens wailed closer.

  And Scream-Face tilted her head.

  Almost playfully.

  The mask settled back over her face.

  The transformation was immediate.

  The tired actress who had just been speaking calmly about identity and exhaustion vanished beneath the twisted white grin of Scream-Face. The long black hood swallowed the rest of her expression, leaving behind only the frozen, exaggerated scream that had haunted horror fans for decades.

  For a moment, no one moved.

  The sirens outside were louder now.

  Red and blue flashes strobed faintly through the front windows, spilling across the ruined living room in brief pulses of color. Each flash painted the blood on the floor a different shade.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  Melissa took a careful step forward.

  “You’re done,” she said.

  Her voice was steady now.

  “You hear that?”

  She nodded toward the window.

  “Police.”

  The mask didn’t respond.

  David shifted forward again, placing himself slightly in front of the others.

  “You can’t run,” he said.

  His voice sounded stronger than it had earlier.

  The arrival of the sirens had changed something in the room. The survivors still looked shaken, still looked terrified, but the sound of approaching help had given them something they hadn’t had all night.

  Time.

  Hope.

  Scott folded his arms.

  “You’ve got about sixty seconds,” he added dryly.

  Courteney glanced toward the front window again.

  “You’re surrounded.”

  The mask tilted.

  Just slightly.

  As if considering the claim.

  Jamie stepped forward now too, though he kept a careful distance.

  “You know what the funny part is?” he said.

  His voice had regained a little of its old sarcastic rhythm.

  “You spent thirty years surviving Ghostface.”

  He gestured toward her.

  “And now you’re about to get arrested dressed as one.”

  No response.

  Outside, a car door slammed.

  Voices shouted faintly somewhere beyond the front yard.

  Police radios crackled.

  Melissa noticed the movement first.

  “…Don’t,” she said sharply.

  Because the killer had reached into the long sleeve of the costume.

  For a terrifying second, several of them thought she was drawing another knife.

  Instead—

  A small black device appeared in the gloved hand.

  About the size of a car key fob.

  Courteney frowned.

  “What is that?”

  The mask turned toward her.

  Almost playfully.

  Then the thumb pressed the button.

  For half a second—

  Nothing happened.

  Then the house exploded into chaos.

  With a deafening clang, the overhead fire suppression system burst to life.

  Jets of thick white foam blasted from hidden nozzles in the ceiling.

  The reaction was instantaneous.

  The survivors screamed.

  Cold chemical foam sprayed across the room in violent bursts, flooding the air like an avalanche of white smoke. Within seconds visibility dropped to almost nothing as the foam splattered across the walls, the furniture, the floor, and the survivors themselves.

  Jack stumbled backward immediately.

  “Oh—what the hell—”

  McKenna shrieked as the freezing foam struck her shoulder.

  David tried to push forward toward where the killer had been standing.

  But the floor was already turning slick.

  His shoes slid.

  He grabbed the back of a chair to keep from falling.

  “Careful!” Courteney shouted.

  Melissa wiped foam from her eyes, trying desperately to see.

  “Where is she?!”

  Jasmin coughed as the chemical mist filled the air.

  “I can’t see anything!”

  Mason tried to move toward the doorway but immediately slipped on the coated floor and had to catch himself against the wall.

  “Jesus!”

  The foam poured down relentlessly now, flooding the room in thick waves that bounced and spread across the floor like snowdrifts.

  Within seconds the bodies were half-covered.

  The furniture vanished beneath white layers.

  And the doorway where Scream-Face had been standing became a shapeless blur.

  Jamie lunged forward blindly.

  “Don’t let her—!”

  His foot slid.

  He crashed into the arm of the couch and barely caught himself.

  Outside the sirens screamed even louder now.

  The police were arriving.

  But inside the house—

  the killer had vanished.

  Slowly, painfully, the fire system began to shut down.

  The foam jets sputtered.

  Then stopped.

  The room fell quiet again.

  Only the distant wail of police sirens remained.

  For several seconds no one moved.

  The survivors stood frozen, drenched in white foam, breathing heavily in the aftermath of the sudden chaos.

  Then Melissa wiped her eyes and looked toward the doorway.

  The space was empty.

  “…She’s gone.”

  Jamie staggered forward through the foam.

  “No,” he said.

  “No, no, no.”

  He reached the doorway and looked outside.

  The front yard was empty.

  The street beyond flickered with approaching police lights.

  But the killer was nowhere in sight.

  Behind him, Scott wiped foam from his face.

  “…How?”

  Liev looked toward the hallway.

  “The back door.”

  Jenna glanced that direction immediately.

  The hallway was open.

  Empty.

  The back entrance stood slightly ajar.

  Jack let out a stunned laugh.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Courteney shook her head slowly.

  “She planned this.”

  David stepped into the hallway.

  The back door swung wider under his hand.

  Outside, the night was dark and quiet.

  Except for one fading sound.

  Farther down the street—

  An engine roared.

  A motorcycle.

  The sound grew distant quickly.

  Then disappeared entirely.

  David stood there for a moment.

  Listening.

  Then he sighed and turned back toward the others.

  “…She’s gone.”

  Behind him, red and blue lights flooded the front windows as the first police cruisers screeched to a stop outside Emma Roberts’ house.

  Inside the living room, surrounded by foam and blood and broken glass—

  the survivors stood silently together.

  Because for the first time that night—

  the killer had truly escaped.