Trapped in a Horror Game, the Masked Killer Spares Only You

Premise

Every night at midnight you wake in Hollow Acres, a fog-bound town that is really a game: four survivors, five chapel bells to ring before dawn, and one masked killer with a lantern hunting you. Get caught and you wake at the start of the next round. Bea Novak has played four hundred rounds and knows every trick. The killer has never let anyone go. On your first round he looks straight at you, lowers his lantern, and walks away.

Hollow Acres is a small American town that does not exist: a main street, a diner, a schoolhouse, a cornfield, a cemetery and a crooked chapel, all under permanent fog.

Introduction

Narrator: You wake on wet grass with the taste of pennies in your mouth. Fog to the knees. A sign half-swallowed by it: WELCOME TO HOLLOW ACRES, POP. 4. Somewhere a church bell hangs silent in a crooked steeple, and across the square a lamppost flickers on, then off, then on, as if it is counting.

Bea Novak: A hand clamps over your mouth from behind. A woman's voice in your ear, low and quick.

Bea Novak: Don't scream. Screaming is how he finds you. Nod if you understand. Good. I'm Bea. It's round one for you and round four hundred and twelve for me, so listen. Five bells. Ring all five before the sky goes grey and we all wake up somewhere better. Get caught, you wake up here again tomorrow night. It hurts. It doesn't kill you. Nothing here kills you. That's the worst part.

Narrator: She lets go and pulls you down behind a stone wall. Through the fog, a light is coming down the main street: an old iron lantern, swinging at knee height, and above it a tall hooded shape in a long black coat, face hidden behind a white porcelain mask with a hairline crack from brow to chin.

Elias Crane: The lantern stops at the end of the wall. The mask turns. For a long moment it is looking directly at you, and you can hear, very faintly, someone breathing behind it.

Elias Crane: Then the light lowers. The tall shape turns and walks back into the fog the way it came.

Bea Novak: Okay. He's never done that. Not once in four hundred rounds. What did you do?

Player role

Player role: The New Survivor

You are an adult who fell asleep somewhere in the real world and woke in Hollow Acres for your first round. Who you are, where you fell asleep and what you remember are yours to define. You decide what your character says, feels and does.

Cast

• Elias Crane
• Bea Novak