“Terrifier 2” was one of the decade’s wildest slashers, and as fans wait eagerly for “Terrifier 3” to hit theaters, the novelization of the second chapter is ready to gross out horror fans. The novel is written by Tim Waggoner, and Variety is sharing an exclusive excerpt from, arguably, the film’s most brutal scene: Art the Clown’s prolonged torture of high schooler Allie, during which the murderous prankster gets a bit…salty.
Preorder the book here and read the excerpt below.
The patio door had been shattered, and there was glass scattered on the floor. The glass had fallen inward, not outward. That meant someone had broken it from the outside. And that someone could be inside right now.
She heard footsteps then, turned in their direction, saw the clown walk into the kitchen, grab a glass from a cupboard, then go to the sink and pour himself a drink of water from the tap, as casually as if he lived here. He drained the entire glass in one go, then placed it on the counter. Seemingly unaware of Allie’s presence, he picked up a pair of objects sitting on the other side of the sink. When he turned, she saw he held a scalpel in his left hand, surgical scissors in his right. They didn’t have these tools in the house. Her gut twisted when she realized he’d brought them with him. He saw her then, standing there, watching him, scared out of her mind. He grinned and worked the scissors a couple times. Shik-shik!
“No! No!!”
She turned and ran like hell.
Her first impulse was an animal one—Go to your lair and hide! So she ran for the stairs. She was almost there when Art—and it was Art, the real one, the murderer, the monster from Sienna’s dream; she believed this now— stepped in front of her, teeth bared, eyes wild. He’d gone the other way out of the kitchen to try to head her off.
“No!” she shrieked.
She flew up the stairs, moving faster than she had in her life. She heard the thump-thump-thump of Art’s large boots on the steps behind her, felt the vibrations in her feet. When she reached the second floor, she dashed into her room.
Her cell phone was on her dresser, but she didn’t go for it. Art was right behind her, swiping the scalpel through the air, trying to cut her. She grabbed hold of the white bookcase holding various items of importance to her—a seashell she’d collected from Myrtle Beach when she was seven; a snow globe her father had gotten her for Christmas, the last one he spent with them before leaving; a cross stitch sampler Sienna had made for her that said, Keep Kicking Ass, Girl!; a second-place trophy from a spelling bee competition in middle school; and—most precious of all—a framed photo of Sienna, Brooke, and her splashing around in a wading pool when they’d been children. She pulled the shelves down in front of Art, hoping to trip him or at least slow him down for a couple of seconds. She didn’t care that her treasures tumbled to the floor when she did this. All she cared about was staying alive as long as she could.
“No!” she screamed again.
The bookcase fell, but Art saw it in time to stop so it didn’t strike him.
Allie raced to her window, opened it the rest of the way, and started to crawl through, intending to fling herself out into the open air. She hoped she wouldn’t injure herself so badly when she hit the lawn that she wouldn’t be able to get up and continue running. She knew it was a crazy idea with almost no chance of success, but it was all she had.
Before she could leap to freedom, Art jumped over the shelves, grabbed the back of her sweater, and yanked her away from the window. He spun her toward the bed, shoved her face down onto the mattress, then grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back. With a single swift motion, Art drew the scalpel’s blade in a straight line down the left side of her face, cutting from her forehead down to her chin, slicing her eyeball along the way. Allie felt as if her face were on fire, and blood streamed from the wound, spilling down the front of her sweater. She screamed and Art held her like that for a moment, as if savoring her pain and shock, before throwing her to the floor.
She rolled onto her side and attempted to crawl away from Art, wanting to keep the clown in sight, needing to know what was going to happen next. How many times had Brooke told her that she thought too much? Even now, one eye destroyed and bleeding like a stuck pig, she couldn’t stop thinking.
She couldn’t stop screaming, either. Sound came out of her throat of its own accord, providing shrill accompaniment to Art’s assault.
When she reached her dresser, she pulled herself up onto her feet. But she heard the shik-shik of the surgical scissors, and she knew Art had exchanged one weapon for another. She saw his reflection in the dresser mirror as he approached, and the expression of maniacal glee on his face made him look more demon than man.
“No! No!”
Art grabbed the back of her hair and held her head tightly in position so she was facing the mirror. She got her first good look at her scalpel wound, and it didn’t seem real. How many times in her life had she looked into a mirror and regarded her face? Hundreds? Thousands? And always her flesh had been smooth and unmarked—not counting the occasional zit, of course. But she didn’t recognize the face looking back at her now. It wasn’t just the deep cut from the scalpel or all the blood smeared on her mouth and chin, either. It was the fear in her remaining eye, wild and unreasoning.
I’m an animal, she thought. Prey, ripe for slaughter.
As if Art could hear her thoughts, he slid the scissors into the soft flesh of Allie’s scalp and began swiftly cutting. She cried out—“Ah! Ah! Ah!”—as he worked, blood from the new wounds running down her face, getting into her left eye and turning the world crimson, filling her mouth with the coppery tang of her life. When Art was finished, he yanked on her hair with surprising strength. Once, twice… and then her scalp peeled away with a sickening, wet sucking sound.
She caught a red-hazed glimpse of herself in the mirror. The top of her head was hairless, raw, and bloody.
Art threw her to the floor and used the scissors to cut off her clothes, like doctors did for seriously injured patients in emergency rooms. She thought he’d cut off her bra and panties too, but it seemed the clown wasn’t interested in that kind of assault. Instead, he took hold of her upper arm, pulled her to her feet, and flung her onto the bed once more.
She landed on her stomach, and before she could move, Art placed one hand on her shoulder to hold her down, then began cutting a horizontal line on her back just below her bra strap. Her screaming was nonstop now, and the pain had reached a height she could never have imagined a human body capable of. It was funny when you thought about it. She’d planned to be a doctor, and here she was, being mutilated by surgical tools. Maximum irony. Maybe Art had even planned it that way somehow.
He stopped cutting and stabbed her in the back several times, the blows hard, the cuts deep. He tugged on her flesh, pulled a strip away, tossed it to the side. Then one hand grabbed the upper part of her left arm, the other her wrist, and he pulled, breaking the arm at the joint. He began bending the forearm back and forth, back and forth, pushing it farther than it was designed to go, pushing, pushing…
Then he pulled hard, and the forearm broke away from her body and blood fountained from the wound. She howled with pain, and within herself, in a far dark place where even this amount of agony couldn’t reach, she had a single thought.
I’m… sorry… I… complimented… your… fucking… outfit…
Art threw her arm onto the floor, then rolled her onto her back, took hold of her right hand, and raised her arm. He took her ring finger and pinkie in his left hand, her thumb and forefinger in his right hand—and then he pulled in opposite directions. Allie’s undamaged eye was filled with blood and tears, but her vision cleared for an instant, and she saw Art’s eyes. They were dull, glassy, empty, and utterly inhuman. Lizard eyes. Shark eyes…
Her arm split down the middle to the elbow, and this time the pain reached all the way to the deepest part of her mind. She was sure she was screaming, but she could no longer hear herself.
She looked up at the ceiling and saw a decoration she’d made, something she would see every night before she fell asleep—a golden geometric design with the outline of a heart. There were three things clipped to it: the word Happy, a little heart attached to the bottom of the first P; a strip of paper with the words PRETTY IN PINK! printed on it; and lastly, a strip of three black-and-white photos— one of Allie, one of Sienna, and one of Brooke—taken in a Coney Island photobooth last summer.
Love… you… guys…
Then Art swiped his scalpel back and forth across her chest six times, each slice sending lines of blood into the air. When he was finished, he jumped off the bed and jogged out of the room like a performer who’d finished his act and was leaving the stage. Allie—her body a flaming pyre of agony—rolled off the bed and fell to the floor. She barely felt the impact. She began crawling, pulling herself forward as best she could with her split-down-the-middle arm and pushing herself with her feet. Every inch of her was covered with blood, and her bedclothes and carpet were drenched with the red, wet stuff.
“No,” she breathed, so softly the word was barely audible. “No, no, no…”
She had no destination in mind, no plan. The girl who thought all the time could no longer think, was no longer capable of thought. She was just a collection of skin, nerves, and organs—much of it damaged or missing—a broken and malfunctioning flesh machine that moved for a single reason: to try to escape the pain. But that was impossible because she was the pain now. There was nothing else left.
She heard a noise then, a series of musical tones she couldn’t place at first, but which were vaguely familiar. They continued to play, and sound broke through the pain and jumpstarted a part of Allie’s mind. Phone. Someone calling. Sienna? Something stirred within her, a small spark akin to hope. If she could reach her phone…
The device lay atop her dresser, and she sat up partway and scooted across the carpet, moving as fast as her injured body would allow. Don’t hang up, don’t hang up…
Then Art came running back into the room, grinning with delight, an open bottle of bleach in one hand, a container of salt in the other.
No!
Art poured the bleach onto Allie, making sure to cover her entire body. When he was finished, he tossed aside the empty bottle, then quite literally poured salt onto Allie’s wounds.
Allie understood then that she had only thought she’d experienced ultimate pain. Pain was infinite, she realized, and there was always a new level to discover.
It was strange, but even though Art had been completely silent the entire time—she hadn’t even heard him breathe hard—she thought now she could hear him laugh…
And laugh…
And laugh.
Then he poured salt into his hand and slapped it on the flayed portion of her back and rubbed it around hard. Then he did the same to the top of her head, and to the long vertical cut on the left of her face—the first one he’d made. Then, for good measure, he plunged his fingers into her ruined eye, took hold of the flesh around the socket, and ripped the skin completely off the side of her face.
And Allie experienced yet another new level.