This chapter was added in after the original story - Enjoy and VOTE, COMMENT!

I open my eyes and look up at the gnarly face above me, "Is she gone?" I whisper, afraid that if I tilted my head up to check Emily would still be there and figure out our ruse.

Jasper turns his gore covered face towards where Emily ran off, then back to me to say, "Yep, she's long gone."

I let out a short laugh and reach a hand up for him to help me back to my feet. The fake guts smell disgusting, and I have no idea how Jasper managed to get the filth all over his face without gagging. That's true dedication to his craft right there. They smell like mold and melted plastic. I'm sure with how old the control room looked the guts were well past their best-by date.

"Let's get this shit off me," I say, trying my best to not get more of the red gunk on my skin. A ton of the mess has already stained my skin. Jasper goes around to my back and detaches the gut bag, allowing me to peel it from my body and drop it in front of me. As I do Chase appears from the other side of the mound with the hatch I crawled out of. "You get it?" I ask.

He lifts a hand above his head, in it is my phone, "Got every second." He shouts over to us. I grin, he recorded the entire event, video proof we got the last laugh.

"Excellent," I say kicking dirt over the pile of guts on the ground.

My stomach is totally stained with the red dye, but there is nothing here except the wilderness, so I can't really clean it off. I decide to button what I can of my shirt back up so we can head home and show Emily the video. Three of the five buttons on my shirt are broken, leaving only one at the top and one in the middle intact. I button them up and tuck the bottom into my pants. I sure hope the video is worth ruining my top.

Jasper takes the old jacket off and peels the fake scars off his face. While he's cleaning up Chase asks, "Shall we go back?" He moves alongside me and wraps an arm over my shoulder.

"I think we should," I say.

As a group, we head in the same direction Emily ran off. I kind of hope she fell entirely for it and is back home crying or some shit so we can show her the video. It would be a bit of a buzz-kill if we find her just ahead realizing how dumb she was for running.

I look back at the discarded props and the hatch. This place sure is an odd location for a haunted house. I wonder what happened to it and why it went inactive without anyone knowing about it. The cave is only a mile or two from the edge of the town, but the way it was built up this place felt like an expensive high-end hotspot. A bigger question is that if it was shut down, why did the owners leave all the props and computers down there? I'm sure that stuff would have fetched a good amount of money back in the day.

There are no signs of it ever being used as an attraction on the surface—like a well-groomed hiking trail or old decorations. But that may be because, by the looks of it, because the place was shut down decades ago. If it wasn't for Ronny and Lisa finding the old tunnel and Emily's dad, the place may have remained hidden for years to come. The cave is genuinely terrifying and I wonder how it must have been when it was opened. I also wonder why it closed. Maybe that slide was the knife that killed it. I could see terrified people getting seriously hurt on that.

The walk back to town takes about fifteen minutes through the forest. Jasper can't stop talking about the look on Emily's face, the fact that she ran off with that terror in her eyes, or that he's going to relish every moment of her horrific defeat for years to come. What we did was pretty cruel though, and I don't think he sees that. I'm not sure if there are years to come after what we did. She did kind of deserve it, though.

We all agreed that the fact we haven't seen her at all during the walk back proves the poor girl probably ran all the way back home. The idea of her cowering in her room crying her eyes out becomes more of a possibility. But what if she takes it too far and goes to the police? I can just imagine her trying to talk Larry or Jean into going out into the forest to kill the devilish abomination that ripped all her friends apart. Gosh, maybe we should hurry back before she does something dumb.

I personally hope she's just at home freaking out. There is no need to take this prank to the authorities because if that happens the entire cave will be swarmed with people by night's end and it'll lose its charm. I feel with all the attention it'll only lead to one result, some dull person is going to come up with the idea to cement the place up and shut it down for good. It'll ruin a perfectly good spot to scare the fuck out of others. It should stay our little secret.

We make it to the clearing of Dean-Jay's farm. The plot is empty because the harvest was last week, but it gives us a great view of reddening horizon. Thin strips of clouds spread across the sky and each one is stained a varying shade of red by the setting sun. If we weren't trying to get back to town to stop Emily from doing something stupid I'm sure this would have been a good place to rest and watch the sunset.

We can't muddle around, so all three of us hop the low wooden fence and enter the field to head towards the tree in its center. Dean-Jay is an old, nice man. So, he's not the kind of grouch to chase kids off his property with a pitchfork when they dared take a shortcut through his land, especially after the harvest when there was nothing there to damage.

Actually, I'm kind of surprise he hasn't already started setting up hay bales for some kind of pumpkin patch or maze, he loves doing those in the fall and it's a way to charge an entry fee and get money even during the off season. I look over the field. The earth is brown and flat right up to the forest on the side we came from and the small red barn on the opposite side.

Right in the middle is the tree Mr. Jay's father named The Willow. It's an ancient oak that was so massive and out of place when his father cleared the land to set up the farm, that he couldn't bare part with it. His father left the tree there decades ago and called it a good omen. He claimed it helped bless the land with bountiful harvests. The tree has become a symbol of the Dean-Jay collective and even appears on a few of their brand logos. Now, thirty-five years later, the tree hardly ever grows leaves and the ones that do sprout fell off with the first hint of winter.

In this case, the beast has been barren for a couple weeks already. Its wicked branches are spread out in a low cone. The area below is unturned dead grass covered in the fallen leafy remains from the tree. Due to the shade it does provide, Mr. Jay never farms under its canopy, leaving the large area unscarred by a plow.

One of the lower branches has something hanging from it. If I recall that's the branch that used to have a tire swing on it. The branch cracked last fall, which made Mr. Jay decide to take down the tire to prevent more damage.

Hanging is a long, limp figure. There are distinct hair, arms, legs, and a chest—it is a girl. Jasper and Chase see the body too. Both are instantly suspicious of its intent. We all know Dean-Jay to be a man of many wonders and I wouldn't put it past him to hang a dummy in the tree to scare people who cross his farm. He is well aware the plot is common to foot traffic after the harvest.

We approach carefully. Jasper stops talking about Emily. It's not so much the fact that the dummy is there, I think Mr. Jay has in fact done this before. It's more the thought that it wasn't there when we crossed the farm on the way to the cave three hours ago.

As we get closer the reality of it becomes more obvious. The girl is small, has blond hair, a white tank top, and jeans. It's either a coincidence or the figure is Emily.

"You fucking kidding me?" Jasper says, jogging the last few feet to the dangling body and poking at its legs. "This is stupid Emily; we're not falling for your shit again."

It indeed is Emily, in the flesh, hanging from the tree by her throat. The rope around her neck is the same rope that was used by the tire. I remember something about Mr. Jay being unable to detach the rope and just wrapping it around the branch after removing the tire. Below her is a knocked-over log like she used it as a stool before kicking it out from under her.

One of her hands is trapped under the rope next to her throat while the other is loose to her side. "Pretending to hang yourself, really?" Jasper says, pushing her body and watching the eyes for the second they open.

I slowly circle Emily until across from me is Chase. His eyes are looking up at her neck, at the purple marks on her throat and how pale her face is, "Jasper..." I hear Chase say, "I think she really did it."

"What do you mean?" Jasper says, backing away. I move around and look up at her face, at her throat. Her head is kinked to the side and the rope, even with her fingers under a part of it, is tight on her neck.

I freeze. No. Is she dead? Is she really dead? Why would Emily do that? Why would she hang herself? This could be a joke, another prank. It has to be, she can't really be dead. She has to be faking it.

My eyes water up as Jasper, looking at Chase, shouts, "Cut her down, Cut her down now!"

Chase is quick on that, going for the tree and using his height to easily get up on the branch she is hanging from. Jasper moves under her body and wraps his arms around her, lifting her up to relieve the stress on her throat. I drop to my knees and look down at my hands. I did this. She's already dead. I helped drive her to suicide. How could a joke go so terribly wrong? We'll be called murderers for this. Chase snakes his way to the rope and reaches down to undo the knot which kept it in a noose.

Jasper tries to lift her up higher. He uses his feet to prop the log up on the flat side and uses it as a stool to get a higher and better hold on Emily, this helps. Chase, hanging from the branch, works on the knot from above. They manage the get the rope to budge. Whatever they are doing is working, but it hardly matters, she's long gone. Her finger twitches.

I stand up, blinking the tears away and look at the finger to make sure. It moves again. Hope. She's not dead. She's still alive. "Jasper!" I shout, "She's not dead, look at her finger!" It twitches again and he looks down to see it himself. I wipe the tears off my face using my shoulder and start to go over to help keep her up.

Chase tugs on the rope, having it almost off her neck. This is unexpected and the log wobbles. Jasper tries to steady it, but the log rolls over. Instinctively he tightens the hold on his girlfriend as he begins to go down. The fall is only a foot, maybe two, for Emily's lifted up body, but with Jasper holding on there is a deafening snap from her throat as his weight compiles with hers.

Her fingers slide out from under the rope while Jasper lets go and hits the ground with his shoulders. Her body swings several times before Jasper reaches up and stops it. The rope tightens on her throat further than ever, before something gives way and the entire knot unravels dropping her on top of Jasper.

Silence, even the crickets stop chirping. Jasper rolls around on the ground moaning while holding his arm as Chase jumps off the branch and goes to Emily. Chase does what any person who's watched a doctor show would do, puts a finger on her neck.

He doesn't say anything but moves his finger around several times before taking it away. "She's not breathing."

No, this isn't fake. This is real. Why would she want to kill herself like this? Why would she hang herself? It makes no sense, it was a joke, it was fake—she should have known that the second she saw the costume room when set it up. Hell, she prepared the whole thing. Why did she have to hang herself for it?

"We, we, killed her," I say looking away, not wanting to see her body any longer. It is our fault. We made her think something horrible happened. She just took us into an old haunted house, but we made the nightmare come to life. It's our fault. She's dead because of us.

"Oh God," Jasper cries out. I look back up to see he's gotten out from under her and is leaning over her body holding his arm close to his chest. He uses the fingers of his good hand to run them across her forehead.

Chase stands up and steps away. He backs against the tree. He asks, "What do we do?" He pauses, then says, "We did this. What do we do?"

We can call the police, we can call her parents, or we can pretend we have no idea where she went. But everyone knows Emily didn't have suicidal thoughts, so if we call the police they'll know. She is popular and always happy, so there is no way Larry would mark this off as a suicide right away. He'd call it a murder off the bat and try to track down those who did it... us.

"We should hide the body," I speak, almost without thought. Where? We all know where, the cave, the haunted house. No one even knows the place exists, better yet there is a pile of fake bodies in it already, a perfect place to add one more. No one will know the difference, "This will be our little secret, no one will ever know where she really went..."

The boys both nod in agreement as the sun crests the horizon and darkness approaches.

There happy? It seemed from the comments on part 3 everyone was disappointed that everything was fake.  It was like you guys really wanted someone to actually die.  YOU HAPPY NOW? Vote if you ❤,  Comment maybe too!