It all happened in seconds. A sound like thunder filled the air. Wendy's head exploded into a mess of gore. Blood splattered across Henry's shirt and face. Wendy's body grew stiff, then began to spasm. Henry dropped it in his panic, and it fell to the ground with a thud. Blood flowed from what remained of her head.

Henry half expected her to stir and get up from the ground. She was a ghost story, after all. They seemed so invincible. Except he had just learned the same lesson everyone in Paradise eventually does. The Ghost Stories can be killed. Stevey drunkenly turned around and saw Wendy's body.

"Bloody Hell, wha-"

His words were cut off by a second bang. A hole appeared in his shirt, and blood began to run from it. Stevey looked down with surprise. The sound had been a gunshot. Someone had shot Stevey. Stevey looked up again and met Henry's eyes.

"Oh… run."

He tried to take a step, then he fell to the ground. Henry didn't need to be told twice. He ran down the alley and made it only 3 feet. There was another gunshot, and Henry felt an agonizing pain lance across his body. He looked down and saw blood soaking his own shirt. He'd been shot in the chest.

Henry fell to the ground, clutching at the gunshot wound in his chest. He screamed as blood leaked through his fingers, coating them red. He could taste iron in his mouth. It still hurt less than the harpoon had. It's hard to beat the raw pain of a spear in your stomach. Trust me, I'd know.

Five feet away, Stevey tried to get to his feet. Blood had soaked completely through his shirt in large patches. He stood uneasily before falling back to his knees. He looked up, meeting Henry's eyes, and smiled. How could he smile while in so much pain?

"Ah, shit. It's been a minute," he croaked, "Gonna have to change the sign."

He fell flat onto the street, and blood grew out of him in a halo. Henry felt his own mind growing fuzzy. His head lulled down. He had to fight to look up again. When he did, he saw that a man loomed above Stevey.

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He was tall, but not inhumanely so like the Knight. He stood a few inches over six feet. He wore a dark brown duster over a black button-up shirt. A black cloth ski mask, sewn with the design of a skull, covered his face completely. He breathed heavily through his mask. Henry noticed the scoped hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. He must have been the shooter.

The Skeleton Man reached under his dirty duster and fished out a black steel tomahawk. His eyes met Henry's, holding his gaze for a few moments. He put a large combat boot on Stevey's back, then lifted his head up by his curly hair. Blood ran from Stevey's mouth, but his eyes were still alive. He looked terrified.

Without making a sound, the Skeleton Man lifted the tomahawk and began to savagely hack at Stevey's neck. Blood sprayed across the street, coating Henry's face further. It didn't take long for Stevey's head to come free. The Skeleton Man lifted it eye-to-eye and admired it like a trophy. Then he turned his gaze back to Henry and casually tossed the head towards him. It rolled and stopped a foot away. Stevey's dead eyes stared blankly towards Henry.

The Skeleton Man slowly approached Henry, twisting the tomahawk in his hand. Stevey's blood still dripped off it. It fell to the concrete below. Drip, Drop. Drip, Drop. When the Skeleton Man reached Henry, he slid the tomahawk under his chin and lifted his head up. The Skeleton Man's eyes were gray and liftless behind his mask. There was no pity there. They danced with the slightest hint of bloodlust. This thing enjoyed the killing. This was his Ghost Story, but what was it? He couldn't remember.

The Skeleton Man's gray eyes shifted over the bodies and then made their way back to Henry. In a sinisterly cold voice muffled by his cloth mask, The Skeleton Man said, "I am not impressed."

It could speak. They weren't supposed to do that. They weren't supposed to be intelligent. Except... there was Wendy. If his Ghost Story was like hers, a chill ran up Henry's spine.

"I want better. Do better," the Skeleton Man growled.

It finally clicked for Henry what his Ghost Story was. It was the villain from a movie he and his dad watched when he was a boy. How had he forgotten it? The Skeleton Man was the slasher who hunted humans for sport on a ranch surrendered by an electrical fence. In the movie, it was smart and set clever and brutal traps. As a boy, the movie terrified him.

The Skeleton Man removed its tomahawk from Henry's chin and let his head lull again. Henry looked up at the monster just in time to see its tomahawk rise up into the air. The skeleton man sank it into Henry's skull in a single blur of motion. Henry didn't even feel death this time. It came too quickly. Henry Becker died for the second time in three days.