Scarlet-Stained Secrets

Fox News Washington, September 1st, 1994: The Scarlet Bay Prison in Spirit Falls is a prison, torture chamber, and a place it takes a miracle to get out of. This is the place where serial killers ruled the roost and screams of raw terror could be heard at all hours of the day from below. The place where your status depended on how many you’d wounded, how much blood you’d spilled. Purely the sight of the magnificent building can make you turn and run the other direction. This isn’t just a run-down prison. It’s a fairytale, a horror scene, and the history behind it is not for the faint of heart. 

Scarlet Bay closed in 1992 because of an accident involving six kids on a tour and a hundred-year-old padlock. Today marks the 2 year anniversary of the day two brave souls died at the hands of the Serial Sculptor. As well as the 2 fatalities, one girl was taken into custody and one is now considered a hero. Scarlett Medina, 14, recently saved two of her friends from the clutches of a killer. A simple tour of the building turned fatal after Adison Renner, 15, captured and killed two girls, Sasha Reyes and Lidia Arnold, in an almost magical fashion. There was no way to get the girls out of their cells, so the building was demolished after the accident. This is Maxwell Bren, reporting on the scene of a two-year-old crime that still haunts our town today. Our hearts go out to the families of Sasha and Lidia.

If you ask any resident of Spirit Falls what happened in the Scarlet Bay prison on Spetember 1st of 1992, they’ll tell you. Even if they weren’t alive back then, they will know the story.

Addi Renner, the “Serial Sculptor”, killed Sasha Reyes and Lidia Arnold, and I saved Devon Delaney and Miles Ferris. I’m a hero. Someone who escaped the grip of Addi Renner and took my best friends with me. Scarlett Marie Medina, the savior, the miracle girl. 

I’ve been on the news and more talk shows I care to remember. I’ve been in newspapers and tabloids, gone to barrels of telethons and important meetings. All the crap that comes with fame. Everyone had heard of me, and Spirit Falls was proud to have me.

Me and my “big heart of gold”, me and my big brain that helped get my friends out of the trap that it seemed Addi set for them. They were proud and flaunted me like a medal or a trophy. Look what we have. See how amazing she is? See how smart and how brave? Do you have a thing like this? Do you have a brown-haired, blue-eyed miracle girl to display on your shelf? We don’t think so. 

A thing like this indeed. Everyone wanted a picture, and it seemed like life would be like this for a while for my family. We found comfort in knowing that it would eventually die down and life would be the same.

But nothing would ever be the same for me.

Think about it. Think about how, in the middle of it all, I was terrified to the core. Think about how I saw my broken friends and knew it wasn’t much longer. Think about how my heart was racing, and Addi’s smile as she looked me in the eye and said, “No one will ever know, Scar. No one will ever know.”

Even if I grow to be eighty, and it’s been 66 years since Scarlet Bay, I will never forget. I will never forget the terror and the adrenaline, the faces of my friends as we raced away and as they swore never to say a word. I didn’t want this fame or this attention in the beginning, but now, it’s what I live for. I need people feeding me the lies of how good, how brave, how heroic I was. Need them telling me, “You did this, Scarlett.”

So, you know that saying, “15 minutes of fame”? This was more like 15 million minutes. Brutal.

Did I enjoy my 15 million minutes of fame? Yes and no. I loved the attention and the bright lights, the people I met and the things that I saw. I liked the people praising me and showing me like a prize heifer. I loved the feeling of being a hero, and looking into my friends’ faces and seeing trust. But what I didn’t like was knowing that I didn’t deserve this. Heck, I deserved to be in that prison I rescued Miles and Devon from, the prison where Sasha and Lidia will sit, forever white and frozen.

I’m no small-town sweetheart. I’m more of a devil, actually. The secrets I have and the things I know are enough to turn you to strawberry-banana jello. 

The things I’ve done are enough to turn George Washington into strawberry-banana jello.

Let’s start with Sasha, shall we? Do you think you could stand seeing your best friend looking like papier-mache in a prison cell? Watch her grow pale and realize she will always be like that, stuck behind a padlock with no key, with her hands stiff around solid steel bars? Wait for it to dawn on you that someone is dead, someone you loved and cared for, someone you’re seeing in front of you right now? Could you live with that knowledge?

How about Lidia, clawing at the wall with blood staining her feather-white hands? Living in a bubble of denial while right outside a girl you grew up with is no more? Knowing that another one, a girl you trusted, a girl who knows where you live, is a killer in your bubble reality? Could you ever go to sleep at night thinking you’re safe with that information in your head?

What about dreaming of the situation as if you were the killer? Wondering who to spare and how to sculpt the ones you didn’t? Using your inhuman power to not care, and zombify two people forever without giving a frick? And for a minute, thinking about how they were all wrong, all the reporters and writers and mayors who trusted you and praised you for being the opposite of who you are? 

What about living through a vicious cycle of waking up, getting praise, restoring belief in yourself, going to bed and losing that belief? And for a while being torn between the papers’ reality and yours, before you come to the conclusion to just live as they tell you? What about that?

If you’re not jello from the neck down already, I’ve got one last question:

What about knowing that the dreams are real, not the papers. Knowing deep down that you don’t belong in the bubble of glory you live in, and the girl that they least expect to does? 

What about knowing that you killed your friends, and left an innocent girl and her family with a scarlet-stained legacy they don't actually deserve? Knowing you made yourself the hero in a situation where you were anything but? Could you live with that?

Because I do.