Chapter Text
This hospital is Tara’s coffin, and this private floor the incompetent police force stuck her on after surviving the first attack, now dark without power and largely void of any life, is the final nail to the lid of it.
Richie, the only person who’s come to help, now lies in an unconscious heep on the ground; his arm was stabbed and he hit his head soundly on the tile after he fell. The shrouded, masked form of the Ghostface copycat hovers near him, not yet giving chase to Tara.
Trapped in her wheelchair, Tara pushes down a long corridor towards the elevator as fast as her body will let her. Adrenaline and pain medication are not enough to suppress the agony that surges through her broken body with the movement. The left wheel wobbles and her grip is slick between her thick bandages and the blood that seeps through them, impeding her already minuscule progress greatly. Frustration, at herself and this fucked up situation shes unable to escape from, burns in her veins and makes her feel even more feverish. She screams through each push, blinks through her tears.
Tara hears her attacker, probably her killer, answer Richie’s phone after it begins to ring. Maybe she has a chance, if the caller buys her time. “Hello Samantha,” his distorted voice says, “Richie can’t come to the phone right now due to his impending death.”
She’s almost halfway to the elevator, approaching the literal light of it at the end of the dark hallway. The red glow of the emergency light above it blinks at her, mocking.
“This is what happens to people who stick their noses in business that has nothing to do with them.”
There's a pause, then she can hear a heavy step behind her. Another. Slowly heading in her direction. Her heart beats impossibly faster, and for a second she confuses the blood thumping in her ears for hastening steps.
The killer continues, “Or, should I carve up little sis again instead? Tell you what, you can choose. I’ll only kill one. Who do you want to die?” The footsteps continue at a leisurely pace, making ground significantly faster than she does.
Pick Richie, Tara wants to scream, but she just wails like a frightened animal, fear of her impending doom catching any words in her throat.
As their distance closes, she can now hear her sister on the other end of the call, in hysterics. “Why are you doing this?” she shouts.
“Come on, Sam, didn’t daddy always say it was a lot scarier when there was no motive?” The masked figure reaches Tara, dumping her out of the wheelchair. She hits the floor with a pained howl, the tile hard and unforgiving against her frail body.
The elevator is a mere 50 feet away, but it may as well be miles in her broken state.
“Now choose. Or I kill them both.”
Sam cries through the speaker, “I… I can’t.”
“Please, please,” Tara begs, screams, wails for mercy, not sure if her pleading is for the attacker, her sister, or maybe even God. Just pleading desperately for the chance to live to anyone willing to listen. She crawls towards the elevator, rewarded with mere inches of covered ground with each agonizing pull of her throbbing body. The pain overwhelms her, and she has to fight the inky blackness that grows in her vision. Her only saving grace is the pure flight response that is flooding her veins, and the cold of the tiles that are a shock to her feverish skin, keeping her conscious.
The voice of the attacker, who now lingers over her, seems angered at Sam’s indecisiveness. Tara catches the silver flash of a Buck knife in her peripheral.
“Really? You can’t save your own sister? All you have to do is say ‘kill Richie’.”
This, she agrees with. A fresh wave of tears hits Tara as her sister flounders on the line. Just say it. Say it.
The masked assailant retreats when Richie groans, stirring from unconsciousness. Sam’s voice melts away with the distance. Tara doesn’t look, doesn’t care, as the man is beaten once more.
30 feet.
“You want to know why I’m doing this, Sam? Maybe it’s because you’re a selfish bitch who can’t even make a decision to save the life of someone you love! I suppose I’ll just have to make the choice for you,” the killer growls.
Tara begins to beg with renewed ferocity, able to plead the case for her sparing life in a way that the unconscious Richie can’t. “No, no, don’t kill me! Please, I just want to go home! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry for whatever I did!”
The distorted voice laughs, cartoonishly evil. “Oh, Tara, you sound so fetching when you beg. Such a nice girl.”
Tara tries to pull herself up to crawl on all fours and her hand slips, too slick from her tears and blood, causing an excruciating stab of pain to shoot up her injured arm as she drops uselessly to the ground. She looks back and finds the assailant hovering over Richie’s still body, his phone now on the tile next to his head.
“Listen to him die, Sam, and know you caused this.”
Richie seems to rouse just in time, confused in his fogginess. He immediately pales at the blade being brandished over him. “Wait, this isn’t how it’s supposed to–”
He cuts himself off with a scream as the knife buries into his gut, then his chest, again, again and again.
Tara begins to move, taking this as her opportunity to escape. She pulls herself onto her knees, clenching her teeth and putting her weight primarily on her good leg. She fights to stay balanced against the trembling of her body, moving slowly. Her ears are filled with the sound of flesh being mutilated and screams, and then Richie gurgling and choking on his blood. Soon, he goes quiet. Dead. Bile rises in her throat.
20 feet.
The numbers on the screen above it start going up. Someone’s coming.
Footsteps make their way towards her, purposefully slow.
15 feet.
The elevator doors open, revealing Sam and the former sheriff, Dewey Riley, gun at the ready. He immediately shoots down the hallway at the assailant, causing his cloaked form to retreat into a room.
Her chest deflates, tears becoming ones of relief. She collapses on the ground and her sister quickly hurries over to her. “Tara, holy shit. Thank fuck you’re okay.” She hesitates for a moment as she catches the sight of Richie, and Tara turns to observe the carnage.
His eyes bulge, glassy and lifeless, staring down the hall in their direction, blood dripping from his mouth and pooling out of his wounds. They leak slowly, no doubt most of the volume already in the sizable puddle that’s formed around him. His throat was stabbed multiple times, as was his chest and stomach, his pink intestines now eviscerated from the gaping gashes in his abdomen.
This time Tara does throw up on the tile, her throat now burning with acid. Sam covers her mouth and gasps, grief tearing through her with a violent sob. “Oh my god, Richie…”
Riley hesitates as he approaches the corpse, covering his nose with the back of his free hand from the strong, metallic odor of blood. He steps into the puddle, slowly and quietly, as to not make noise. One step. Two. He then surges forward all at once, aiming his gun around the doorway that the killer ducked into.
Ghostface lunges at the former sheriff before he can shoot, tackling him and sending them both against the counter of the empty nurses station.
“Go!” Riley shouts as he fights to push away the knife of his adversary, spurring the petrified sisters into action. Sam pulls her up onto her feet, hands anchored under her arms, and supports her as they make their way to the elevator. By the time they turn around to observe the victor of the tussle, Riley unloads three bullets into the assailant’s chest, throwing him backwards into a wall. He crumbles to the ground, limp, lifeless.
Satisfaction cools Tara’s veins, and she wishes the former sheriff would put a few more bullets in.
He wastes no time in jogging back to the elevator, pressing the button for the ground floor with trembling hands. He shifts his weight awkwardly, then sticks his arm in the gap when the metal doors begin to close. Riley steps back out of the threshold, and Sam gestures wildly for him to come in, confused.
“We have to shoot him in the head. If we don’t, they always come back.”
Tara opens and closes her mouth, eyebrows furrowed. Even through the haze of pain clouding her mind, she wonders why he didn’t do it while he already had him at the receiving end of his revolver.
Sam stares at him incredulously. “Who gives a fuck!”
Dewey’s lips lift into a forced smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes. “I’ll meet you down there.”
The metal doors slide closed. The killer was shot in the chest three times, in the heart, should be dead, but she gets the gnawing feeling that Dewey isn’t going to meet them.
It’s quiet as the elevator hums, rumbling for a moment as it begins to make its journey downwards.
“Richie, he… saved my life. I’m sorry, Sam.” Really he was out cold on the ground the entire time, but he did save her by virtue of just being there and delaying the killer. The hand around her shoulders, keeping her upright, squeezes her arm. Tara winces, the skin bruised.
Sam is fighting tears, her lip quivering. They streak down her face without her permission. “I thought I could delay that fucker for long enough if I didn’t choose.”
Tara nods numbly, her mind haunted by the expression on his face in the instant before being stabbed.
It was the look of someone who was betrayed.
It’s one she knows well since her dad left, and then Sam after him, seeing it etched into her mother’s face at every painful reminder of them.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, he was going to say. Despite how her instincts scream that he’s anything but, she will let her sister believe the man she loves died a martyr. She will spare her the pain of being betrayed by someone you let into your heart and intertwine with the intimate fibers of your life. The pain that Sam left her with years ago. She has long forgiven her, and has no intention of leaving her with the same emotional scars.
The elevator beeps once more as they reach the ground floor and the doors open. They step through, finding red and blue bouncing across the hospital walls through the glass of the entrance. It’s just as empty as the private floor was, and Tara wonders why she wasn’t included in whatever evacuation took place. They slowly limber towards the doors, and each raise the hand they’re not desperately clinging to each other with as they exit, to signal their passivity.
The cops point their guns when the doors slide open initially, but quickly lower them when they take in their very not-Ghostface appearances. The tension that was still coiled in Tara’s chest releases as the night sky comes to view.
Freedom.
A police officer speaks on the radio, escorting them beyond the barrier of police cruisers. “Tara Carpenter and her sister are now accounted for.” He then addresses the pair, “Any more people in there? The killer?”
Her sister pipes up, looking over her shoulder to watch the entrance. “Yeah. Dewey Riley, should come back any minute now. He shot the bastard three times and stayed behind to make sure he's dead.”
Tara adds, “We were on the fourth floor, the private floor. There’s at least two victims from what I saw up there. A security guard, and…” she hesitates, her heart squeezing with sympathy for her sister.
Sam’s expression hardens and she finishes for her. “Richie Kirsch.”
The officer speaks into his radio once more. “Dewey Riley and the copycat confirmed inside—suspect potentially dispatched, shot three times according to witnesses.” The three of them watch the entrance for a minute, then two, but the heroic figure of the former sheriff never appears.
The officer shouts some orders and the police eventually breach the building, clearing the scene for ambulances to arrive.
Tara’s given more medication through an IV and her wounds are retreated. Sam refuses to be looked at, not injured and not wanting to leave her side.
The police won’t tell them so, but they know Dewey is dead, and that his, Richie’s, and apparently Wes and his mother’s killer is still on the loose. To hear from Sam that Wes is also gone is too much for her heart to bear. Tara finds herself crying pathetically enough over the loss of one of her best friends and the traumatic events of these past two nights that the two overly attentive medics decide to leave her alone.
She wishes Amber were here, to scoop her up in a firm hug, to kiss her forehead, to comfort her. She wishes yesterday night never happened, that her girlfriend came over like Tara wanted, that she woke up today in her arms instead of at a hospital that she still has to stay at despite almost being killed within its walls.
Her sister tries to console her, to her credit, glued to her side with a warm hand on hers at all times, but she seems to be far away and trapped in her mind; lost within the lands of grief. Her brown eyes are wet with unshed tears, locked to the asphalt outside of the open doors of the ambulance rig and not noticing, or just not caring, Tara observing her.
Tara wishes Sam never had to see his body. She doesn't love him like she did, yet every time she closes her eyes his mutilated corpse flashes across her eyelids, like a snuff film on a projector. That could’ve been her, cold and dead on the ground. She lived, again, at a serial killer’s morbid hand of mercy. He chose to kill Richie instead of her, for some reason she couldn’t fathom. The words the copycat said to her sister ring in her head. “You’re a selfish bitch who can’t even make a decision to save the life of someone you love!” It seems, whoever they are, have a very personal grudge against her sister. It was almost defensive of Tara.
By the time her sister tries to start a conversation with her, tearing her from her thoughts, she’s too loopy from sedatives and the exhaustion that now settles in place of adrenaline to understand her mumbled words. She can only give a weak “what?” before drifting into unconsciousness.