Chapter 24

There was a clanging sound in the distance. “Stay here,” Steve said, walking out of the room, taking hold of a lamp. Everyone ignored him, following him out soon after.

The clattering grew louder, as footsteps rapidly approached them. The person rounded the corner, making Steve hold up the lamp, ready to attack. It was Lucas.

Lucas screamed. “It’s me! It’s me!” He said.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you, Sinclair?!” Steve said.

“I’m sorry.”

“I could’ve taken you out with this lamp.”

“Sorry, guys. Sorry. I was… I was biking for eight miles. Give me a second. Shit. We’ve got a code red.”

“What?”

“Dustin. I’ve been with Jason, Patrick and Andy and they’ve gone, like, totally off the rails. They’re trying to capture Eddie, and they think you know where he is. You’re in terrible danger.”

“All right, yeah, that definitely sucks, but we’ve got bigger problems than Jason right now,” Dustin turned to Max and Claudia, who were stood at the very back of the group, holding hands.

——————————

They’d filled Lucas in, and went back to the Wheeler house. In the basement, Max sat at the desk, writing something, and everyone else sat on the couches.

“Any idea what she’s writing?” Dustin asked.

“Maybe I should be writing something,” Claudia said .

Steve grabbed a hold of her hand. “No one needs to be writing anything, alright? We’re gonna figure this out.”

Robin and Nancy came running down the stairs. “Okay, so,” Nancy said. “We have a plan.”

“Thanks to Nancy’s newspaper minions, we are now rock-star psychology students at the University of Notre Dame.”

“I’m now Ruth.”

“And I’m Rose. Claudia, you’re Delilah.”

“Why couldn’t we just keep our normal names?” Claudia asked.

“Nice GPA,” Dustin said.

“So we called Pennhurst Asylum and told them we’d like to speak with Victor Creel for a thesis we’re co-writing on paranoid schizophrenics-“

“To which they said no.”

“But we landed a three o’clock with the director.”

“Now all we have to do is charm him and convince him to let us talk to Victor.”

“Then maybe we can rid Max and Claudia of this curse.”

“Yeah, about that,” Steve said, “We’ve been doing our Victor Creel homework and, uh, we got some questions.”

“Lots of questions,” Lucas added.

“So do we. Hopefully Victor has the answers,” Nancy said.

“Wait a second,” Steve said, “Uh, where’s mine?”

——————————

“Nancy, you’re out of your mind if you think I’m babysitting again,” Steve followed Nancy into her room.

“Okay, first of all, they’re not babies anymore, and Max is in real danger, she needs people around her.”

“I know but why does it always have to be me? Why can’t I go with you guys and Claudia stay with Max?”

“You know why, Steve,” Robin said, walking into the room with Claudia behind her. Steve did know why. As much as they were trying to convince Max, Eddie and Claudia that they’d be okay, they had no idea what they were up against. If these were Claudia’s last moments, she’d want to be with her girlfriend.

“I just can’t do anything here, Nance. Maybe I can be helpful with this asylum director dude. I don’t know. I could, like, then on my, like, my charm.”

“Not the kinds charm we need.”

“Ouch.”

Claudia was done listening to Steve complaining, and instead decided to head to the bathroom. Robin followed behind her shortly after.

She looked into the mirror, her nose bleeding again. Surely she hadn’t been cursed. She hadn’t seen Max’s nose bleed. Maybe she was just coming down with some sort of illness, something that could be treated by a doctor.

She was proven wrong very quickly, when a deep and raspy voice called her name from outside the bathroom. She didn’t want to listen. She knew what this was. The chiming of a clock. “Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered. She looked back up into the mirror, to see a clock behind her, presumably the one Max had seen.

The voice continued to call out her name. “Claudia.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the sound, until-

“Claudia?”

It was Robin. She looked up at her girlfriend, and fell into her arms, tears pouring from her eyes. “Robin, I had one. I had a vision. That fucking clock, and this voice, I-“

“Sh, sh. It’s okay. I’m here, alright? It was just in your head. That’s what he likes to do, he likes to get in your head. He’s gone. He’s gone.”

“Am I gonna die?”

Robin placed her thumb on Claudia’s chin, moving her face to look up at her. “I won’t let you.”