I'm not the only one in my reflection.

Part twenty-seven

As she opens the door, Katherine takes a few steps before Ghostface tackles her to the ground, pushing her back.

Landing face-first on the hard floor, the impact knocks the air out of her lungs, and she instinctively pushes herself away from the attack. Less than a second later, a large kitchen knife is thrust into the floor where her head had been.

With a shriek, Macher tries to crawl away, but the Ghost straddles her and punches her in the face, immediately raising his knife, ready to bring it down and end the daughter of the legendary Roman Brider.

But the brunette is no slouch herself. She swings a punch at the assailant's stomach and, with a sudden upward thrust of her body, she slams her forehead into the neck of the man in the suit, cutting off his access to oxygen for a few precious seconds.

Sidney's niece immediately takes advantage of the situation and begins to turn around, using her free knee to strike Ghostface between the legs. Even if the person under the mask was a woman instead of a man, as she had assumed, a kick between the legs would still be painful for anyone, especially considering the force she had used.

Crawling away, the former redhead gets up and runs to the door, literally jumping over Quinn's bloody, dead body with multiple wounds. She sees that, as Samantha had said, the Ghost has closed half of the locks, several of which can only be closed with a key. The key that she had left in her and Carpenter's shared room.

She ducks away, avoiding the Ghostface's swing. In her peripheral vision, she sees the attacker's momentum carry him slightly to the side, causing him to slam his shoulder into the door, but he ignores it and immediately begins running towards her, holding the knife menacingly pointed at her.

— Are you even going to ask me "what my favorite scary movie?" — Samantha's girlfriend asks Ghostface, playing a game of tag with him, frantically trying to figure out what to do.

She dives into the Ghost's legs as he tries to attack her again, and he accidentally rolls over her, landing on his back with a muffled thud. She jumps up and runs away to a safer distance.

Even if she manages to run into her bedroom, somehow avoid being stabbed to death by a masked man in a small space like her bedroom, and grab her keys, she'll have to use one hand to open the locks and the other to fend off the Ghost's attacks.

Oliver's niece changed direction, heading towards the kitchen, when a small vase on a side table flew into her side, causing her to groan in pain from the impact and lose her balance for a moment.

— Who cares about movies!? — Ghostface's altered voice boomed out in a furious tone, and he appeared next to the girl in two steps.

Katherine dodged the knife attack again, spinning on the spot, and instead of a fatal wound to her neck, she only received a small, bleeding scratch on her collarbone.

Her balisong, even though it was too short to really compete with a kitchen knife, was still useful to the girl. She waved it, scaring the Ghost away from her, potentially preventing it from carrying out another attack.

Only Macher had forgotten how sophisticated this killer in a suit and mask could be. He feinted with one hand, the one with the knife, and with the other he smashed a damn glass bottle of dishwashing liquid over her head!

Reeling back, Leslie's daughter found herself backed against the kitchen stove, Ghostface pressed against her from the front, a knife at her throat. He was slow, just breathing heavily, but she could feel his eyes staring at her through the eyeholes in the mask.

— Does this remind you of anything, Katherine? It's almost the same way your old girlfriend died.

— Don't yawn! — The brunette shouted, disorienting him with her scream, and then hit him on the head with a frying pan, which she had managed to grab by the handle and pull off the burner.

She hit him a second time, and then hit him again somewhere in the vicinity of his body as he fell to the floor. She grabbed the handle of the refrigerator and yanked the door open, hitting the masked man in the head with it.

Sam's beloved picked up the balisong she had dropped, not noticing the kitchen knife on the floor, which the Ghost had also dropped, stunned by the frying pan.

Stu's niece jumped over him and ran to the front door, frantically trying to open the locks that were chains or simple latches. There were two locks left that required a key.

She was rudely interrupted by being pushed back again, literally pressed her face to the door, putting his hand on the back of her head. Ghostface waved his hand and stuck the tip of the knife into the wooden surface of the door, a few millimeters from the girl's eye.

She squinted her eyes at the blade and cursed in Russian. — Нихуя себе (Holy shit).

— You're really crazy if you stayed here with me voluntarily. — The masked man growled in an unnatural, altered voice, and, shifting his grip on the knife, he attempted to thrust the blade into Katherine's bicep.

Macher grabs the glass bowl containing Samantha's stun guns and swings back blindly, hitting Ghostface right where she intended - on the head.

She grabs the handle of the balisong and jabs it into the middle of the Ghost's thigh, slowing down his speed and making it harder for him to pursue her.

There was a sudden, loud knock on the door, as if someone had slammed into it with all their might.

— Katherine! — Oliver shouted, continuing to pound his fists against the wooden surface of the door, trying to kick it open by hitting it over and over again.

— Hold on a little longer, Katherine, we'll be there soon. — Chad shouted back, also applying pressure to the door, but unlike the other man, he was trying to break it down with his shoulder, hitting it again and again.

The brunette leaps away from the door as Ghostface lunges at her with a growl, seemingly oblivious to the wound on his leg. Several shards from Sam's broken glass bowl pierce her arm, but she ignores her injuries just as the attacker ignores his own wounds.

— It looks like our tete-a-tete won't last long. My friends are here. — The girl pointed with a grin, pointing to the door, behind which the screams of the Carpenter sisters joined the voices of the two men.

— There's plenty of time to gut you. — The masked man said in response, and briskly pushing away from the door, he ran towards his victim, holding a knife ready.

— If you wanted to kill me, you would have killed me when you had the chance, and you did have the chance. — Sidney's niece shouted back, writhing her body to avoid the Ghostface's knife. — You don't want to kill me, or you can't. But I'm not limited. — She extended her hand with the balisong, aiming it at the Ghost's abdomen, but only managed to cut through his clothing as he quickly retreated.

As the keyed locks began to give way to the collective blows of the two men on the other side of the door, and were about to break and allow people inside the apartment, the masked man had to find a way out, past the girl with the knife, who was determined to kill him.

It seemed that their roles had changed.

Ghostface, keeping Roman's daughter in his line of sight, began to retreat towards Quinn's room with slow steps. He quickly and discreetly reached into his cloak, pulled out another mask, and threw it at the girl across the room. Then he ran as fast as he could towards the window.

— Stop! — Samantha's girlfriend shouted, and a second later she started running after the man in the costume, but she was still too late. — Stop, you motherfucker!

The Ghost took a running jump through the window and, breaking it, fell out. He landed on his ass on the trash cans and, rolling painfully from them to the floor, ran to the exit from the alley.

Katherine, breathing heavily, followed the maniac's retreating figure and slowly turned around, hearing a loud crack behind her. Through the open doorway of Quinn's room, she saw the front door wide open, several broken locks lying on the floor, and Oliver and Sam rushing into the apartment with wild eyes, with Tara and Chad standing behind them.