"I was there, in the room, when Sidney killed Jill Roberts."

.

.

.

THE CAR ride to the Meeks-Martin residence was silent, awkward and a little bit suffocating, Layla thought. She sat in the passenger seat of Dewey's car staring out of the window, while her adoptive father drove with both hands on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. They had been driving for long enough to almost have reached Mindy and Chad's house, and not a word had been spoken between them.

Layla had been in many awkward car drives with Dewey (most notably, the one after he and Gale had told her they were getting a divorce) but this was different. This was a palpable tension that hung heavy in the air, like a thick fog that refused to dissipate. She had tried to start a conversation a few times, but Woodsboro's retired sheriff's monosyllabic responses made it clear that he wasn't in the mood to talk.

She glanced over at him, taking in his profile. His jaw was set in a tight line, and his knuckles were white from gripping the wheel so tightly. It wasn't often she saw Dewey drive with his fingers tight around the wheel, and she knew that his previous nerve damage made it painful to do so. She didn't even want to begin to ask what Ghostface being back meant for him. He'd lost so much to the masked persona, and she couldn't even imagine what was going through his head.

As they drove on, the silence became more oppressive, suffocating. Layla fidgeted in her seat, tapping her foot against the floorboard. She glanced at Dewey again, hoping he would say something, anything to break the tension. But he remained stubbornly silent. Finally, they pulled up in front of her friends house, both of them furrowing their eyebrows at the familiar grey car that they had just seen parked outside their own house. Dewey turned off the engine and turned to her. His expression was unreadable.

"I'm coming in," he said, his voice low and gruff.

Layla nodded, opening the car door and stepping out onto the sidewalk. As she grabbed her hoodie from the back seat of the car, she looked back at the man and paused for a second as she noticed the tremor in his hands and the way he was scuffing the sidewalk with his combat boots.

"Everything's going to be okay," she replied tentatively. Both of them knew she was trying to help, but that her words fell flat. She didn't believe them and it was very apparent that Dewey wasn't so sure either.

He didn't answer, just stared straight ahead. Layla sighed, knowing better than to push him for any comfort in return. He'd always been so great at keeping her calm, but she understood that this was a lot more for him than it was for her. She slung her hoodie over her shoulder and headed inside, leaving Dewey to trail up the driveway behind her.

Things were different this time, Dewey thought. Much different.

_____

"So let me get this straight," Chad started, one hand resting on Liv's knee. Wes, Dewey and Layla were sitting on the other side of the couch, a little crammed together. Layla's knees were pulled up to her chest and Dewey sat on her other side, his elbows resting on his knees as he sat with his head in his hands. "You're saying that you're the daughter of Billy Loomis, and, what, that one of us is the killer?"

Sam nodded, her eyes running over Layla for a second before she addressed the rest of the teens that she had told her big secret to. Amber was scowling at her, like always, while the rest all seemed genuinely shocked by the news. Wes looked almost devastated at discovering the babysitter he used to have a massive crush on was related to a previous Ghostface.

"The killer told me he knew my secret," Sam replied, Layla finally looking up and meeting her gaze. She knew how bad that looked for her, since she was the only other one that knew for definite about Sam's lineage. "He attacked Tara to lure me back here."

Chad continued talking before any accusations could be thrown Layla's way, which the brunette was very grateful for. She knew that if Sam wasn't about to start accusing her of being a killer then Richie definitely was - the man had been itching to do so ever since he discovered that she had known for years about Billy and Sam's connection.

"But then why immediately go and murder some douche-nozzle that was stalking Liv?"

"And why does it have to be one of us?" Wes asked, instantly feeling a sense of protection over his friends. He had grown up with them all, especially the Meeks-Martin twins and Layla, and he doubted that any of them would ever do such heinous killing. "What about Deputy Dewey here? Maybe he's the killer... No offence."

Layla elbow Wes, the boy hissing and rubbing at the spot as he raised his hands in defence. She pulled a face but Dewey simply shrugged, knowing that he wasn't the killer and rather being happy that the boy was questioning others.

"None taken, but what's my motive?"

"You got stabbed a billion times, got dumped by your famous wife and crawled into a bottle," Wes replied, no hesitation in his voice as Layla closed her eyes, shaking her head as she leaned her head against her knees. "I think it's safe to say you're on the suspect list."

There was an awkward silence for a moment as everyone looked at Dewey, no-one (including Layla) arguing what Wes had just said. It was true, even if brutal.

"Well, maybe you're the killer!" Dewey replied, his voice softening a little. "Because that cut deep."

Amber pulled out her phone and typed away at something, causing Layla and Wes to look at her suspiciously. They were all in the room and Tara was asleep - so who was she typing to? 

Richie noticed this too, but instead decided it was the perfect time to try and throw in Layla to the suspect pool. He crossed his arms, leaning forward a little as he made eye contact with the legacy's daughter.

"And what's your alibi, Layla?"

"Excuse me?" Layla asked, feeling uncomfortable as all of her friend's turned to look at her. She knew that it wasn't their fault that they wanted to hear Richie's reasoning, but it stung a little that no-one immediately jumped to her defence.

"Sam said the killer knew her secret," Richie replied, instantly causing her friends to shuffle. Mindy's jaw dropped a little as Layla glared back at the man, the sudden realisation floating through them all that Layla had known about Billy Loomis' illegitimate daughter for a lot longer than ten minutes. "You've known for years."

"Back off, fuck-face," Layla replied, anger boiling in her as he accused her of trying to kill the love of her life. "I'd never hurt Tara!"

"Layla can't be the killer," Chad replied, nothing but certainty in his voice as he stood up for his best friend. "She literally got a call from the killer this morning!"

"Or so she said," Richie replied before Amber cut them all off. Layla glared at the boy as she sunk into her seat a little more. Wes reached his arm out, tapping her lightly on the knee to reassure her that he believed it wasn't her. If there was anyone that Wes genuinely believed could never do this, it was Layla Torres.

"That douche-nozzle is connected," Amber interrupted, her eyes still latched on to her phone screen. "I googled him."

Wes and Layla shared a look, realising that they both had been suspecting Amber for something that she hadn't been doing. They almost both felt ashamed for a second at assuming their friend was doing something dodgy right in front of them.

"His mom is Leslie Macher, Stu Macher's sister."

"Who's Stu Macher?" Liv asked, having been very out of the 'Stab' and Woodsboro killings loops. Layla didn't blame her, if she had moved to a new town and found out that half the locals had been terrorised more than once by people in a Ghostface mask, she wouldn't have wanted to know more either.

"He's Billy Loomis's accomplice," Dewey replied, thinking back to the boy that had dated his sister. The worst part - he'd actually really liked Stu before everything went down. Him and Tatum had been so great for each other, until they weren't. "A real loony tune."

Layla took her adoptive father's hand and squeezed it reassuringly. She knew that thinking about Tatum upset him more than he'd ever admit to any of the teenagers in the room. She didn't want to keep making Dewey relive the worst moments of his life.

"Okay, okay," Sam replied, pulling the conversation back on track. "So the first three attacks are all on people related to the original killers..."

"Oh, my God!" Mindy exclaimed, jumping to her feet as she wailed her arms around frantically. Everyone looked at her in shock, not having expected that reaction out of any of them. "He's making a requel!"

Layla wanted the ground to swallow her up and kill her.

"A what?"

"Or a legacyquel," Mindy continued, almost ignoring everyone's confusion. "Fans are torn on the terminology..."

"God! Please speak English," Chad snarked back at his twin, causing Mindy to scowl and throw her middle finger up in his direction.

Layla had always loved her group of friends. They had been through everything together, from their awkward pre-teen years to their almost-graduation period, and everything in between. But with all of the Ghostface attacks, an unease was beginning to settle in her as she watched how each of them reacted to Mindy. She didn't know who she could trust anymore.

"Remember the stab movie that came out last year? The one that I took Layla to see and she fell asleep?"

Layla rolled her eyes, knowing that Mindy was never going to let her forget that. She had refused to go see it originally, having never wanted to see any of the films that they had made. Her dad had even been made into a side character in one of them, something that she was venomously disgusted by.

"Oh, yeah! The one the Knives Out guy directed, right? I actually really liked that one," Liv replied with a smug look, pleased that she finally knew something about what Mindy was talking about for once.

"Of course you did. You have terrible taste"

"I hate you," Liv muttered, causing Chad and Layla to share a quick smile, the banter feeling somewhat normal for them at this point. It was maybe the first glimpse of normal that Layla had felt in days.

"The point is, the hard-core stab fans hated it," Mindy continued, finally beginning to get to a point. Layla loved her friend, and she'd never wish for her to change - although she did wish that Mindy sometimes just made her point quicker. "You go on 4chan and Dreadit, all they're talking about is how stab 8 pissed on their childhoods... How they crammed in social commentary just to make it elevated, how the main character's a Mary Sue."

"What's a Mary Sue?"

"You really don't want to know," Wes replied to Richie, rolling his eyes as Amber piped up too.

"What's wrong with elevated horror? I mean, Jordan Peele fucking rules!"

Layla knew what her issue with elevated horror was: it was something that Tara and Amber watched together, all the time. With her current suspicions that Amber had been crusing hard on her girlfriend, and thinking about all the times that they were broken up while Layla was in New York, she couldn't help but wonder if that crush had ever been reciprocated.  

Mindy eyed Layla as she noticed the way she was scowling at Amber, making a note to bring that up to her friend later.

"Obviously, but that's not stab!" She continued, waving her arms around as everyone stared at her like she had gone insane. "Real stab movies are meta slasher whodunits, full stop!"

"Come on, it's just a movie," Sam replied, getting agitated by what Mindy was hinting at.

"No, it's not," Mindy replied, a smirk on her lips as she mirrored how her uncle Randy had once been. "To some people, the original is their favorite thing in the world! The movie that made them love horror. That Mom or Dad showed them when they were ten that bonded them together! And God help anyone who slightly fucks with that special memory... who makes a movie they think disrespects it."

She paused for a second, waiting for her dramatic conclusion.

"It sounds like our killer is writing his own version of Stab 8, but doing it as a requel!"

Silence for a moment.

"Which is?" Dewey asked, sighing in disbelief.

Mindy sighed in annoyance in return, looking around and noticing that none of her friends seemed to be leaping at the idea in the way that she was.

"See, you can't just reboot a franchise from scratch anymore. The fans won't stand for it: Black Christmas, Child's Play, Flatliners... that shit doesn't work! But you can't just do a straight sequel, either, you got to build something new... But not too new, or the Internet goes bug-fucking nuts. It has to be part of an ongoing story line, even if the story shouldn't have been ongoing in the first place! New main characters, yes, but supported by and related to legacy characters."

Wes, Dewey and Layla shared a look as she continued.

"Not quite a reboot, not quite a sequel! Like the new Halloween, Saw, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters... fuck, even Star Wars! It always, always goes back to the original!"

As she sat with her friends while Mindy made her grand announcement, Layla couldn't help but look at them with suspicion. Which one of them was keeping something from her? Which one of them was lying? Which one of them might have tried to butcher Tara and called Layla?

She wanted to confront them, to demand answers. But she was afraid of what she might find out. She didn't want to lose her friends, didn't want to destroy the relationships that had meant so much to her for so long. She didn't want to know if one of them was the killer, because that would make it all too real.

"Are you telling me that I'm caught in the middle of fan-fucking-fiction?" Sam asked, her voice livid. 

"Not just in the middle, Sam... You're the star."

There was a moment of silence before Liv interrupted, confusion still on her face as she tried to keep up with everything that Mindy had been saying. She was worried for herself, especially after Vince had been killed... she slept with him, so surely that meant that she was now connected to the originals?

"So, not to put too fine a point on it, but, according to requel rules... who's next?"

Mindy shrugged, looking around at them all. Her eyes flickered between Chad, Dewey and Layla before she answered Liv's question. 

"Going by the pattern, whoever it is has to be connected to someone that came before."

Mindy looked around the room, pointing dramatically between Dewey, Layla, her brother and herself. Layla tensed a little, a chill running down her spine as Mindy made the connection Layla had been dreading. Layla knew that Mindy was referring to Layla's father who had been connected to the very beginning of the Woodsboro killings, but she had a fleeting thought that it also might involve that night at the hospital when Jill Roberts was killed.

"I'm starting to regret coming here," Dewey muttered to Layla, whose smile in return didn't quite reach her ears.

"Jesus, my mom was a character in one of them!" Wes exclaimed, his eyes wide as he reached for his phone in his pocket to text his mom. Mindy sighed, rolling her eyes as she snapped at the boy from taking away her guess about who was going to be next.

"No one cares about the shitty inferior sequels, Wes. You're safe. With Randy as our uncle, though, you and I are probably screwed," she replied, casting a glance at her twin. Chad furrowed his eyebrows at her, sitting up a little in his seat at the idea that he was next.

"Wait, what?!"

"If you're making a requel, you'd wanna finish off what the originals started to keep the fans hooked!" She continued, ignoring how uncomfortable everyone in the room had became from her monologue. Her head tilted to Dewey as she looked at him with a shrug. "Look, old man, I mean this in the best way possible but you're high on the chopping board."

"Mindy, please..." Layla began, her eyes shut for a second as she ran a hand over her face. She knew what her friend was saying was true and logical, but Dewey was like a father to her and it was the last thing that Layla wanted to think about.

"Dewey's the only one here who has had a run in with a previous ghostface and lived to tell the tale. It's plot armour, and no offence dude, it's becoming a bit unbelievable. It's a legacy kill - that would be the goal of any horror movie requel killer."

Dewey and Layla shot each other a quick nervous glance as she looked down at her hands. It was a moment that was so fleeting, that almost everyone had missed the interaction between the two. Almost everyone.

"What was that look for?"

All heads turned back to flicker between Dewey, Layla and Richie - since the man had been the one to catch the shared exchange between the dysfunctional father/adoptive daughter duo. Layla and Dewey looked at each other for a second before Dewey immediatley fell into his protective nature, crossing his arms and almost challenging the man.

"Nothing."

"Dewey, it's okay," Layla replied, realising that she was probably best to tell them all before someone else ended up dead. She knew it had been Sidney's kill, but it connected her in a way that none of their friends were connected. "Dewey isn't the only one who has came face to face with a previous killer."

Layla tried to rationalize her feelings. Maybe it was just her imagination, her anxiety getting the best of her but the nagging feeling that revealing this was going to come back to haunt her was growing stronger with each passing second. She had to tell them though, before someone else died.

"I was there, in the room, when Sidney killed Jill Roberts."

"No, that can't be true - you were at the police station, my mom told me that," Wes replied, his whole body turning as he looked at the girl that was sitting beside him on the couch. She refused to meet his gaze and a sense of betrayal overtook him as he realised that those in the hospital room that night had been lying to everyone for a decade about the truth.

"Your mom lied to you, Wes," Dewey replied, his voice a little tighter as he didn't take his eyes off of Layla. "We all agreed to keep it off the record that Layla was there. No police reports, no mention in Gale's books, no public references EVER to her being there that night."

No-one knew what to say to that. Layla felt the stares of her friends making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She looked around for a second, seeing looks of betrayal and pity and something inside of her finally broke.

She stood up hastily, grabbing her hoodie from where it had been thrown on the coffee table and started heading out of the room. Everyone started to complain and protest, including Dewey who also rose to his feet.

"I've got my phone, I'm fine," Layla snapped, her eyes flickering to Sam who was looking at her with suspicion still. Another flare of anger spread up her as she turned to head out of the house. "I'm going for a fucking run to clear my head, before anyone else accuses me of trying to kill my girlfriend and wearing the mask of the bitch that killed my dad."

There was a heavy silence as the door slammed behind her, everyone sheepishly avoiding each other's gaze as her words settled in. Richie's eyebrows furrowed as he noticed the empty spot that was now on the coffee table next to where her hoodie had been.

"What the fuck, did she just steal my earphones?"