The inside of the bus was a pocket universe of shock, smelling of sweat, terror, and the faint, citrusy ghost of the disinfectant wipes Leo had inexplicably produced from his pocket. Ethan sat slumped in a driver's seat he was never qualified to occupy, watching the ballet of chaos unfolding outside through the giant windshield. It was like switching from a gritty, first-person horror film to a sterile, procedural drama.
"Well, this is a mood shift," he muttered to the steering wheel. "From 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' to 'Law & Order: Motel Victims Unit'. I hope there's a musical number."
The parking lot was now a carnival of officialdom. Police cruisers formed a haphazard barricade, their red and blue lights painting the motel's beige facade in strokes of frantic urgency. Officers in tactical vests moved with a purpose that Ethan's own flight had sorely lacked. He saw them converge on the entrance to their wing.
Then came the sound. Not the chainsaw's demonic roar, but the sharp, percussive POP-POP-POP of gunfire. It was clean, clinical, and terrifying in its own way. A few seconds later, two officers emerged, half-dragging, half-carrying the Man. The pristine white mask was gone, presumably shot to pieces, but Ethan couldn't see the face beneath; his head was lolling, and a dark stain was spreading on his shoulder. Alive, but neutralized. The chainsaw was left inside, a piece of evidence too grotesque to carry.
"Huh," Ethan mused, drumming his fingers on the wheel. "So you can stop him with bullets. Good to know. File that under 'Solutions I Didn't Have Access To'."
A paramedic, a woman with a kind, tired face, boarded the bus and started moving down the aisle, dispensing foil blankets and soft, reassuring words. When she got to Ethan, she looked him over. "Are you hurt, son?"
Ethan looked down at himself. His clothes were stained with grime from his various rolls and dives, his cheek was still red from Ray's slap, and he was pretty sure he'd pulled a muscle in his shoulder during his belt-buckling heroics.
"Physically? A solid six out of ten. Emotionally? My sense of self-preservation has filed for divorce and is seeking full custody of my common sense. So, you know. Could be worse."
The paramedic gave him a practiced, slightly confused smile and moved on.
The investigation began in earnest. Detectives, looking tired and rumpled in their trench coats, started herding them off the bus one by one to give statements. Ethan watched Ray go, then Leo, both of them looking like little boys sent to the principal's office for a crime they didn't commit.
When it was his turn, he was led to a makeshift interview area set up in the lobby of the motel's untouched wing. A detective with a face like a crumpled paper bag and a name badge that read 'GARRISON' gestured for him to sit on a plastic chair.
"Ethan Graves? I'm Detective Garrison. Can you walk me through what happened tonight?"
Ethan took a deep breath. Where to even begin? The demon house felt like a lifetime ago.
"Well, Detective, it started when the quiet, economical 'Mistwood Motor Lodge' experience was abruptly upgraded to the 'Deluxe Murder Spa Package' without our consent. I'd like to speak to a manager about the unexpected charges."
Garrison stared at him, his pen poised over a notepad. "Just the facts, son."
"Right. Facts." Ethan leaned forward. "Fact: A man wearing a mask that would be rejected by a minimalist art critic for being 'too blandly terrifying' decided to perform unscheduled demolition on the guest rooms using a garden variety chainsaw. Fact: He was surprisingly committed to his work. Fact: My friend Ben is still in Room 217, and I'm fairly certain he didn't stop for a nap."
The detective's expression didn't change, but he scribbled a few notes. "You saw him attack Benjamin Miller?"
"I saw him turn a perfectly functional door into a modern art installation dedicated to splinters. The screaming from inside was a pretty clear review of his work."
"And how did you escape?"
"Ah, the great escape," Ethan said, warming to his subject. "It was a three-part strategy. Phase one: pants the killer. Phase two: blind him with his own fashion accessory. Phase three: run like a gazelle that just realized lions have power tools. It was less of a plan and more of a series of increasingly desperate Hail Mary passes, but hey, the scoreboard says we're not dead, so I'm calling it a win."
Detective Garrison blinked slowly. "You… unbuckled his belt?"
"A moment of inspired improvisation. I figured even a faceless murder-bot might be briefly inconvenienced by a wardrobe malfunction. It turns out, I was correct. You're welcome."
The detective asked a few more questions, each one met with a layer of sarcasm so thick it was practically a defensive wall. Finally, he closed his notebook with a sigh. "You can go back to the bus, Mr. Graves. A crisis counselor will be around shortly."
"Terrific," Ethan said, standing up. "I'll be sure to bill my health insurance for 'acute exposure to over-the-top horror tropes'."
He walked back outside, the cool night air doing little to clear the surreal fog in his brain. The scene was winding down. The body bags were being wheeled out. A somber-faced officer was talking to Professor Nolan, who was nodding along as if reviewing a mildly disappointing syllabus.
Ethan's crew was huddled by the bus door, wrapped in their foil blankets like a group of traumatized baked potatoes. They looked at him as he approached.
"How'd it go?" Ray asked, his voice hollow.
"I think I confused him more than the actual killer did," Ethan replied, shoving his hands in his pockets. "He kept asking for 'facts'. I told him the fact is, this place is going to get a one-star review on Yelp. The Wi-Fi was terrible even before the dismemberments began."
No one laughed. The adrenaline had faded, leaving behind the cold, hard reality. Ben was gone. Others were gone. The horror hadn't ended with the gunshots; it had just changed shape, morphing into grief and a thousand unanswered questions.
Leo looked at the motel, then at Ethan. "You were… actually pretty brave in there. At the end."
Ethan snorted. "Brave? Leo, I peed a little when I saw the fire extinguisher. I wasn't brave. I was just out of other options. Courage is what you have when you don't fully understand the odds. I understood them perfectly. I was just slightly more afraid of dying than I was of that guy. It was a very narrow margin."
He looked past them, at the dark, silent woods that bordered the motel. The police had their man. The case, for them, was neatly wrapping up. A lone, psychopathic killer. A tragic, but explainable, event.
But Ethan's mind kept circling back to the details the police would dismiss. The unnatural stillness of the Man. The blank, almost administrative nature of the violence. The way he moved, not with rage, but with a kind of… purpose. It felt familiar. It felt like the house. It felt like the cult.
The killer was caught, but the story felt far from over. It felt like a single, bloody sentence in a much longer, much darker chapter.
"They think this is the end of it," Hazel said quietly, as if reading his mind.
Ethan finally cracked a genuine, weary smile. "Of course they do. They have a guy in cuffs and a plausible narrative. Case closed. But we know better, don't we?"
"Know what?" Lina asked, her voice small.
"That this," he said, gesturing to the entire scene, the cops, the ambulances, the motel, "isn't the source. It's just a symptom. This wasn't an ending. It was a forwarding address."
He looked back at the bus, where Professor Nolan was now calmly sipping from a paper cup of water, utterly detached from the carnage he had miraculously survived.
"And I have a really, really bad feeling about where the mail is being sent next."