My scream died in my throat, choked by the impossible sight of my own monstrous, green hands. The Red Car Man’s laughter peeled through the cemetery as his tail lights vanished down the road. I was alone, with only my horrifying reflection in a grimy puddle for company, a grotesque figure in a green suit, clutching a single, luminous green balloon.
The monstrous feeling receded like a tide, leaving me shivering in my own skin. The green faded, the stitches vanished, and I was just me again. Just a boy. I scrambled up and ran, not to the safety of my home, but away from it. How could I face my parents? How could I tell them their son was a monster who got his best friend taken?
School the next day was a blur of whispers. “Rohan’s family moved,” they said. “Happened overnight.” Only Maya, my other best friend, looked at me with piercing, unconvinced eyes. “Moved?” she cornered me by the lockers. “His mom called my mom this morning, hysterical. They don’t know where he is. What happened after you two left my house, Leo?”
“I… I don’t know,” I stammered, the lie tasting like ash. Her intense gaze felt like a physical weight, and a strange, tingling numbness spread up my arm. I glanced down. A faint, viridian tinge was coloring my skin under my watch. Panic flared. “I have to go,” I gasped, pushing past her and running, not caring where I was going.
I found refuge in the school’s old, forgotten music room. Dust motes danced in the slivers of light cutting through boarded-up windows. In the warped reflection of a tarnished tuba bell, I saw him staring back—the Green Suit Man. The change was happening again, but this time, I was aware. No, I thought, focusing on my reflection, on my own eyes inside the monster’s. Not this time. You’re not in control.
A flash of crimson outside the window stole my breath. The red car. It was parked across the street, a silent, gleaming predator. Its engine was off, but I could hear its voice in my head, a sibilant whisper that felt like ice water in my veins. “She has so much fear,” it hissed, and I knew it meant Maya. “A delectable vintage. Lead her to the gates tonight. Or I’ll come through her window instead.”
The threat against Maya was a switch flipping in my brain. The fear for myself was replaced by a cold, sharp rage. If I was a monster, then I would be a monster on my own terms. I stopped fighting the change. I let it wash over me, embracing the grotesque strength, the chilling calm. The balloon, which had materialized in my hand, pulsed with a soft, green light.
I didn’t use the doors. I tore the boards from the window and dropped to the street below, landing with a silent thud that didn’t feel human. I didn’t need to look for the red car. I could feel it, a cold spot in the world, pulling me forward. I walked through the sleeping town, a creature of nightmare on a mission, the balloon bobbing silently beside me, my only companion.
The cemetery was colder than I remembered. The Red Car Man was waiting, a formless shadow in the driver’s seat. “I knew you would see reason,” the voice echoed from the car itself. “Fear is a resource, my friend. You create it, I consume it. A perfect symbiosis.” The shadow gestured with a smoky tendril to the passenger seat. “A welcome gift.”
My eyes followed his gesture. It was Rohan. He was slumped in the passenger seat, his face pale and lifeless. “But he’s just an appetizer,” the shadow hissed, and then it dissolved, pouring like black ink across the seat and into Rohan. Rohan’s head snapped up. His eyes opened, glowing with the Red Car Man’s embers. “The car needed a new driver,” Rohan said, his voice a terrible fusion of his own and the creature’s. He pointed a trembling finger at my balloon. “And you… you’re the entertainment. That balloon… it doesn’t trap their fear. It contains your humanity. It’s the only thing keeping you from becoming a permanent resident in that suit.”
Catch the Prequel:
Srinidhi Ranganathan
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