The entity that seems to be causing all the commotion in the Chicagoland area is everywhere according to Soarshe's locator spell, and as far as she's concerned that's not good. She immediately picks up her cell phone and calls the others, Intel included. Still no answer from Justin or Kayte; something that is weighing heavily on her mind. During her conversation with Intel he mentions that the media is reporting another female victim was found in a residential area of Wicker Park. What made this one unique is that the body wasn't hidden this time... it was left out in the middle of the street. Of course when Saorshe tells Cherice of this she is absolutely livid. Everyone agrees to meet at SubT that night to discuss their plan.
Around 9am Saorshe receives a call from her friend Sister Sunshine, a powerful wicca, whom she's been trying to get into contact with for days.
"I need you to look into someone where I work. The sooner the better." Saorshe says matter-of-factly.
"Really? Why the rush?" Sunshine asks.
"There's been some supernatural happenings at the library, and all the evidence points at a particular person being behind it. I need you to do your... magic, as it were, to prove me right."
"Ahh. You think someone is after your family tomes, eh?"
"Possibly. That's another issue I want you to look into."
"For you, anything. The when is another question. I'll keep in touch."
Jack lies in bed completely exhausted from the previous night's activities. Just when he finally closes his eyes to sleep his cell phone goes off.
"What now Saorshe?" he mumbles.
"It's me, Cherice. I'm sure you were told about the new attack."
"Yeah. I heard." he says while sitting up.
"This is going too far. We need to do something about it because it's getting out of hand."
"I agree."
"Good, because I need your help on this."
"You know that I'll do whatever I can to stop this from continuing."
Liam, regardless of lack of sleep, showed up to work early for a change in order to put the finishing touches on the mystery parts the strange man ordered last week. Now that they're nearly done he wonders exactly what they could be used for because these definitely don't belong in the engine of a vintage Chevy Nova.
Before everyone else arrives for their shift he does a little Googling, and finds a bit of information that is wholly unsettling... according to myth, werewolves can possibly be affected by a transformation the night before and the night after a full moon. His natural reaction is to panic since the full moon is tomorrow.
Saorshe, Liam, Jack and Cherice converge on SubTerranean in the early evening only to discover that their host, Intel, isn't on until much later. A few brief words from Jack about checking out the crime scene of the latest victim are spoken and the quartet heads off in Liam's car to investigate.
They reach Ludovico Street deep in the heart of the residential area of Wicker Park. It's nearly dusk, and even though it's a weekend they all notice that no one is around. No kids, no traffic... nothing. It's a ghost town most likely brought on by the heinous crime that was committed right in the middle of the street where they stand. A few large traffic cones connected by crime scene tape cordons off the area where the body was found; the chalk outline still visible on the blacktop.
The first thing Saorshe does is use her Sight ability, which allows her to see any supernatural shenanigans in the area. A barely visible trail of orange light floats in the air past her and toward the houses on her left, but it dissipates before she can figure out where it was leading.
At the same time both Jack and Cherice notice some movement beside them; someone ran and hid behind a large tree on their right. With a subtle nod from Jack they both head off to see who is watching them; Jack heading right for the tree while Cherice sneaks around the back. What they find is a 6-year old boy, pale as a sheet and shivering from the night air.
"Oh my... are you alright?" Jack says as his paramedic side takes over and he rushes to the child's side to see if he's okay.
"The bad men... The bad men came for her..." the child whispers.
"'Bad men'!? What 'bad men'?" Cherice asks with the bedside manner of a great white shark.
"The bad men... ugly... mean... scared me..." the child mumbles before going silent.
Saorshe and Liam walk over to see Jack holding the freezing child in his arms. She takes off her jacket and drapes it over the boy like a blanket. She kneels next to the boy and says "I heard you say something about the 'bad men'? Who are the 'bad men'?"
The child just continues to shiver as Jack explains, "He's in shock. He must've seen the murder happen."
"And now he's catatonic. Wonderful." Cherice continues.
Saorshe grins and looks around her for something small. She sees Liam's key ring dangling off his index finger and snatches it from him.
"Umm, those are mine." he protests.
"Gimme a minute." Soarshe says as she places the keys in her palm and holds them in front of the child. She mutters an incantation and a moment later the keys begin to float in the air.
"Wow!" the kid says snapping out of his trance. "How'd you do that?"
"Magic. What's your name sweetie?" Saorshe asks.
"Mikey." the child beams.
"Mikey, I need to know where the 'bad men' came from. Or where did they go?"
The child slowly points at an abandoned house across the street, which is in the general direction of the supernatural trail she was following. "They came from there" Mikey says. "All the other kids say it's haunted."
The two-level house looks run down as it obviously hasn't been occupied for decades. There's a "FOR SALE" sign swinging on the lawn that's so severely sun bleached that it's barely readable.
Cherice takes one look at it and says, "Shit, it looks like Michael Myers' house." She turns to the others as she takes out her sword, "Let's do this."
Seeing that the kid is recovering, Jack tells him, "Mikey, go straight home and lock the door. Don't come back out no matter what."
Mikey nods and runs off down the street without looking back. Jack on the other hand goes to Liam's car and returns to the group with his M4 Carbine in hand.
The four head to the house, and as soon as they step onto the front porch a shiver runs up their spines. "Oh yeah, this has to be the place." Liam quips.
The front door opens and they all step inside. The foyer is dusty and filthy. Leaves from seasons past have crept in under the rotting front door and litter the stained floor. A hanging lamp swings in the slight breeze from the open door. There is an old bulletin board filled with moldy notes and faded fortune cookie fortunes nailed to the wall next to them. Jack takes a closer look at the notes and sees one that looks newer than the others written in red ink... or something like it.
"Spoken aloud, the path you shall unlock." Jack reads to the others.
"What does that mean?" Cherice asks.
"Damned if I know." Jack says as he grips his gun tighter.
They advance into the dining room. There is a long table in the center of this sparse room, nearly 10 feet long. 6 chairs are upside down, restaurant style, on top of the table. Everything is covered in a thick layer of dust. Saorshe notices that someone wrote the word "ALL" in the dust long ago, as it is barely visible now.
Behind the dining room is the kitchen. Refrigerator, stove, dusty counter tops, cabinets, sink; all the usual amenities you'd find in any common kitchen. On the far side is a door that leads outside to the driveway that runs along the side of the house. The only thing that sets this kitchen apart is the dried blood that adorns the stove, the handles of the fridge and some of the cutting utensils that are strewn about the counters. There are also a trio of undead stooped in the corner, apparently eating the remains of a dog.
Jack gets hit with a strong case of the willies and backs out of the room without realizing what he's doing. Liam and Saorshe reveal their blessed weapons as the undead move in to attack. Cherice attacks first by slicing the head clean off the first creature. Liam slices one clean in two vertically. Saorshe uses her telekinesis to throw the kitchen knives at the last one, which does the job just fine.
Jack enters the room after the fracas is over. "Sorry about that. Fight or flight response. Flight won."
"Some soldier you are." Cherice jabs.
"Yeah yeah." Jack mumbles under his breath.
Using her Sight power once again, Saorshe sees a supernatural aura around the refrigerator. She opens the fridge door, but there's only rotten remains of food long since expired inside. She opens the freezer door, which reveals a severed hand on the top shelf frozen in a pointing gesture toward the back of the unit.
"That's creepy." Jack says.
"Take a step back everyone." Saorshe says in a serious tone. With a flick of her wrist the fridge slides forward across the linoleum. The wall behind the fridge is marked with dried blood, the word "LAMBS" spelled out for them all to see.
"Nice." Liam says. "Next room!"
A staircase that leads upstairs splits the first floor in two. On one side is the dining room and kitchen, on the other a library and living room. They head into the library. A large desk sits in the center of the room, but the chair that would be behind it has been knocked over. All the available wall space is taken up by bookshelves filled to capacity. On the far side of the room is a pair of sliding doors that looks like it leads into a patio in the backyard.
Saorshe naturally heads right for the books. There's a nice selection, some vanilla, some not. She finds some spell books, some rare demonic tomes and even a first edition Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens! "SCORE!" Saorshe squees. She takes the spell books, tomes and the first edition and places them on the desk. "I'll pick these up on the way out."
In the meantime, Jack and Cherice are checking out the living room. Two old, ratty couches sit along the far wall. There's a coffee table covered with old, dusty magazines from the early 90s in between them. A television sits in the corner across from them that looks as if someone took a baseball bat to the screen multiple times.
Liam and Saorshe enter. "Shall we check the upstairs?" she says as she walks into the room. Just then two undead rise from behind the second couch. Jack squeezes the trigger of his gun and unloads a full clip into the first one. It falls dead. Cherice runs in and beheads the second with little effort.
"Sure, let's check out floor number two!" Cherice says as she sheaths her katana.
They head up the rickety stairs to see long streaks of dried blood smeared along the walls, windows and railings. When they reach the top of the stairs on the second floor they can distinctly make out that the smearing was made by human hands, as there are bloody handprints all over the carpet. At some point someone died a gruesome death right where they are standing.
Across from them is a bathroom that separates the larger bedrooms from the smaller ones. Saorshe makes her way across the hall to it with Jack in tow. She enters to see it's a standard bathroom and shower. There is water dripping from the cabinet door under the sink and a breeze coming from somewhere unseen is making the shower curtain ruffle in an ominous manner.
As Saorshe reaches for the shower curtain she notices that Jack is staying outside the room. "You okay?"
All Jack can say in reply is "Flight."
"Pussy." Cherice says from the hallway.
Saorshe pulls back the curtain to see that the tub is covered in nasty rust and lime stains. It's pretty nasty.
She then reaches for the cabinet door under the sink that's leaking water. Once she opens it a flood rushes out accompanied by the mummified corpse of a child. She steps back to avoid getting soaked; only her feet were accosted by the rush of water.
"Told you." Jack quips. "Flight."
Saorshe moves in to examine the corpse. She can't tell what sex it is, but it's in the fetal position and covered in clothes that have begun to fall apart with age.
"Looks like someone tore its eyes out and nearly ripped the skull in half doing it." Jack says in a doctor-like tone.
Saorshe touches the child in order to use her psychometry ability, and is given horrific visions of blood, violence and death. She steps back in a daze.
"You okay?" Liam asks.
"Yeah" she says. "But something bad happened here. And not like 'bad', I mean really damned bad... does that make any sense?"
"I've given up on things making sense ever since I met all of you." Jack jokes before heading off to the master bedroom.
The others enter the room leaving Jack out in the hallway. "You can all go first, I got your back" he says as he holds his gun up with shaking hands.
They see that the master bedroom is a very large, spacious area that the parents of whatever family used to live here would have occupied very comfortably. A king sized bed rests along the far wall with a nightstand on each side. There's a large horizontally rotating mirror in the corner next to a door that leads into a bathroom and a long vanity table covered with old make-up and the like on the other side. There's also an armoire that has been broken to pieces next to a pair of sliding doors that lead out to a balcony.
Jack has entered the room cautiously and heads for the balcony doors as Liam heads for the bathroom.
Inside the bathroom Liam can see that the room is of the same design, only smaller. Personal grooming items litter the sink, both for a woman and a man. A small pair of scissors used to trim a beard or moustache is among them... caked in dried blood. In fact, there are droplets of dried blood all over the sink that seem to form a trail to the faucet. The hot water knob in particular.
Liam turns on the hot water, and after a few moments sickly brown water begins to spill out into the sink. A few moments more and the hot water kicks in creating a steam bath. As it rises past the mirror above the sink words begins to form on its surface. Liam moves in closer to see "TO THE" written on the mirror.
"Got another message" Liam says over the sounds of the water.
Jack opens the sliding doors cautiously as Liam shows the others the words on the mirror. He steps out onto the balcony that overlooks the driveway, and almost immediately the rotten wood beneath his feet begins to give way. He falls through the hole his weight creates and lands in a heap on the driveway below.
The others rush to the doors to see a hole in the balcony floor, and beyond that is Jack on the ground beneath. "I'm okay. Luckily it wasn't a long fall. My ass hurts though" Jack says reassuringly. "The kitchen door is right here, so I'll be up in a minute or two."
The others head for the hallway. There is a door leading to another large room across from them. A few moments later Jack joins them in the hallway, although he's limping slightly.
"And I'm back." he jokes.
"You first" Cherice says, motioning for Jack to enter the spare room.
"No problem."
"C'mon children. Let's go." Liam says, clearly annoyed. He heads into the room, but Saorshe stays in the hall.
"There's some seriously bad mojo going on in there. I can feel it" Saorshe warns.
"There's nothing to be afraid of in here. It's clear" Cherice says. She refers to the yet-to-be assembled bed that rests in pieces on the floor. There's also a large mattress resting upright against the far wall next to a partially open closet door. "Oh wait, the closet is open. I'll check it for creepy crawlies."
Cherice opens the door slowly only to see that the closet is filled with basic storage nonsense like brooms, totes and the like.
Liam walks over to the mattress and pushes it over. It falls to the floor, the side that was up against the wall is facing up revealing a bloody pentacle painted on it's surface. Almost immediately four undead rise from the symbol through the mattress, brought into being by some otherworldly force. They move in to attack Liam en masse. Liam manages to cleave one in half, but another lands a severe blow to his face. He hits the ground as Cherice goes in for the kill. She decapitates one as Jack starts taking pot shots at another from the corner. Saorshe casts Bolt of Light from the doorway, which strikes the bullet riddled undead. The impact throws it across the room and out the window. Cherice impales the last undead through the throat, and twists the blade popping it's head clean off.
"No sweat." Cherice says as she heads out of the room. "I said the room was clear."
Saorshe heads into the room to help Liam off the floor as Jack heads off after Cherice. "You good?" she asks Liam.
"Yeah. A little sore, but I'm good" he replies. "Let's catch up with the bad ass and the scaredy pants."
The other half of the upper floor has two smaller rooms, most likely for children, and one larger room across from them. The door to the larger room is locked from the inside as it would seem.
"You want me to shoot it open?" Jack asks.
"No. There's no telling what's on the other side. For all you know there could be a survivor in there." Saorshe reasons.
"I'm just wondering where the doorknob is." Liam points out.
"Magically sealed most likely." Saorshe replies.
"Maybe the clue to opening the door is in one of these smaller rooms." Cherice says.
They all agree and head to the nearest one. The first small bedroom is a fully furnished child's room. Toys are strewn about, crayon drawings adorn the walls and a racecar bed sits int he far corner. The bed itself is covered in dried blood.
"This must've belonged to the corpse in the bathroom." Cherice says with little tact as she steps deeper into the room. She looks down at her feet to see that the toys aligned in such a way that they are spelling out a word. "These toys are spelling out 'SLAUGHTER'."
"Plenty of that going on here already. Let's move on" Jack says.
They head to the next smaller room, a child's room as well, only this time it's one of the most nightmarish sights they've ever seen. It's almost out of a Hellraiser film... chains ending in bloody hooks hanging from the ceiling with chunks of rotten meat dangling from their points. Pentacles have been drawn on the walls in fresh blood. A sacrificial altar rests along the far wall covered in burning candles and a carved open corpse of a man whose innards have been removed and is leaking blood all over the carpeting. His eyes still look alive even though he obviously is not. The air reeks of death.
Saorshe steps away from the door, sick to her stomach. Jack starts to sweat profusely, obviously getting a flashback brought on by all the carnage before him.
Cherice enters and describes what she sees under further inspection. "There are occult daggers all over the place. Some look like they were used to carve open this poor sap. Actually, there is one still in him."
"Can you bring me one?" Saorshe asks. "I might be able to glean some information off of it."
Cherice exits the room with one of the daggers in hand, which she passes to the pale white witch. When she touches it she uses her psychometry to read the knife.
"All I see is fire and death." she says in a disappointed tone.
Back at the locked door they all contemplate the situation.
"Did we miss something?" Liam asks.
"The downstairs patio through the library." Jack adds. "I can go check it out real quick."
"I'll go with you." Saorshe says as they head down the stairs.
In the meantime, Cherice tries to pry the door open with her sword, but it won't budge. Liam even attempts, in a futile gesture, to shoulder slam the door. Still nothing. He then notices Cherice staring at the corpse of the child in the bathroom.
"Poor kid." she mumbles under her breath.
"Did you just express sympathy for someone else?" Liam mocks.
"I am capable of feeling sympathetic. I'm not dead dead you asshole."
A few moments later Jack and Saorshe return.
"There was another message on the patio. A shredded sun umbrella left a shadow on the ground that spelled out 'WILL BE'" Saorshe explains.
"So we have 'ALL', 'LAMBS', 'SLAUGHTER', 'TO THE' and 'WILL BE'" Cherice says.
"And there was that message I found in the foyer that said 'Spoken aloud, the path you shall unlock.'" Jack adds, then suddenly something dawns on him. "I knew something seemed familiar. When I annihilated that demon chick back at the hospital with Kayte, it said something to me before it died."
"Which was?" Saorshe asks.
"All will be lambs to the slaughter!" Liam figures out.
The sound of a locking mechanism releasing echoes throughout the house. The door before them slowly opens. The orange glow of fire spills out into the hallway, surrounding them in a surreal light. Their jaws drop at the sights that await them inside.
"Aw, shit." Cherice exhales.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Around 9am Saorshe receives a call from her friend Sister Sunshine, a powerful wicca, whom she's been trying to get into contact with for days.
"I need you to look into someone where I work. The sooner the better." Saorshe says matter-of-factly.
"Really? Why the rush?" Sunshine asks.
"There's been some supernatural happenings at the library, and all the evidence points at a particular person being behind it. I need you to do your... magic, as it were, to prove me right."
"Ahh. You think someone is after your family tomes, eh?"
"Possibly. That's another issue I want you to look into."
"For you, anything. The when is another question. I'll keep in touch."
Jack lies in bed completely exhausted from the previous night's activities. Just when he finally closes his eyes to sleep his cell phone goes off.
"What now Saorshe?" he mumbles.
"It's me, Cherice. I'm sure you were told about the new attack."
"Yeah. I heard." he says while sitting up.
"This is going too far. We need to do something about it because it's getting out of hand."
"I agree."
"Good, because I need your help on this."
"You know that I'll do whatever I can to stop this from continuing."
Liam, regardless of lack of sleep, showed up to work early for a change in order to put the finishing touches on the mystery parts the strange man ordered last week. Now that they're nearly done he wonders exactly what they could be used for because these definitely don't belong in the engine of a vintage Chevy Nova.
Before everyone else arrives for their shift he does a little Googling, and finds a bit of information that is wholly unsettling... according to myth, werewolves can possibly be affected by a transformation the night before and the night after a full moon. His natural reaction is to panic since the full moon is tomorrow.
Saorshe, Liam, Jack and Cherice converge on SubTerranean in the early evening only to discover that their host, Intel, isn't on until much later. A few brief words from Jack about checking out the crime scene of the latest victim are spoken and the quartet heads off in Liam's car to investigate.
They reach Ludovico Street deep in the heart of the residential area of Wicker Park. It's nearly dusk, and even though it's a weekend they all notice that no one is around. No kids, no traffic... nothing. It's a ghost town most likely brought on by the heinous crime that was committed right in the middle of the street where they stand. A few large traffic cones connected by crime scene tape cordons off the area where the body was found; the chalk outline still visible on the blacktop.
The first thing Saorshe does is use her Sight ability, which allows her to see any supernatural shenanigans in the area. A barely visible trail of orange light floats in the air past her and toward the houses on her left, but it dissipates before she can figure out where it was leading.
At the same time both Jack and Cherice notice some movement beside them; someone ran and hid behind a large tree on their right. With a subtle nod from Jack they both head off to see who is watching them; Jack heading right for the tree while Cherice sneaks around the back. What they find is a 6-year old boy, pale as a sheet and shivering from the night air.
"Oh my... are you alright?" Jack says as his paramedic side takes over and he rushes to the child's side to see if he's okay.
"The bad men... The bad men came for her..." the child whispers.
"'Bad men'!? What 'bad men'?" Cherice asks with the bedside manner of a great white shark.
"The bad men... ugly... mean... scared me..." the child mumbles before going silent.
Saorshe and Liam walk over to see Jack holding the freezing child in his arms. She takes off her jacket and drapes it over the boy like a blanket. She kneels next to the boy and says "I heard you say something about the 'bad men'? Who are the 'bad men'?"
The child just continues to shiver as Jack explains, "He's in shock. He must've seen the murder happen."
"And now he's catatonic. Wonderful." Cherice continues.
Saorshe grins and looks around her for something small. She sees Liam's key ring dangling off his index finger and snatches it from him.
"Umm, those are mine." he protests.
"Gimme a minute." Soarshe says as she places the keys in her palm and holds them in front of the child. She mutters an incantation and a moment later the keys begin to float in the air.
"Wow!" the kid says snapping out of his trance. "How'd you do that?"
"Magic. What's your name sweetie?" Saorshe asks.
"Mikey." the child beams.
"Mikey, I need to know where the 'bad men' came from. Or where did they go?"
The child slowly points at an abandoned house across the street, which is in the general direction of the supernatural trail she was following. "They came from there" Mikey says. "All the other kids say it's haunted."
The two-level house looks run down as it obviously hasn't been occupied for decades. There's a "FOR SALE" sign swinging on the lawn that's so severely sun bleached that it's barely readable.
Cherice takes one look at it and says, "Shit, it looks like Michael Myers' house." She turns to the others as she takes out her sword, "Let's do this."
Seeing that the kid is recovering, Jack tells him, "Mikey, go straight home and lock the door. Don't come back out no matter what."
Mikey nods and runs off down the street without looking back. Jack on the other hand goes to Liam's car and returns to the group with his M4 Carbine in hand.
The four head to the house, and as soon as they step onto the front porch a shiver runs up their spines. "Oh yeah, this has to be the place." Liam quips.
The front door opens and they all step inside. The foyer is dusty and filthy. Leaves from seasons past have crept in under the rotting front door and litter the stained floor. A hanging lamp swings in the slight breeze from the open door. There is an old bulletin board filled with moldy notes and faded fortune cookie fortunes nailed to the wall next to them. Jack takes a closer look at the notes and sees one that looks newer than the others written in red ink... or something like it.
"Spoken aloud, the path you shall unlock." Jack reads to the others.
"What does that mean?" Cherice asks.
"Damned if I know." Jack says as he grips his gun tighter.
They advance into the dining room. There is a long table in the center of this sparse room, nearly 10 feet long. 6 chairs are upside down, restaurant style, on top of the table. Everything is covered in a thick layer of dust. Saorshe notices that someone wrote the word "ALL" in the dust long ago, as it is barely visible now.
Behind the dining room is the kitchen. Refrigerator, stove, dusty counter tops, cabinets, sink; all the usual amenities you'd find in any common kitchen. On the far side is a door that leads outside to the driveway that runs along the side of the house. The only thing that sets this kitchen apart is the dried blood that adorns the stove, the handles of the fridge and some of the cutting utensils that are strewn about the counters. There are also a trio of undead stooped in the corner, apparently eating the remains of a dog.
Jack gets hit with a strong case of the willies and backs out of the room without realizing what he's doing. Liam and Saorshe reveal their blessed weapons as the undead move in to attack. Cherice attacks first by slicing the head clean off the first creature. Liam slices one clean in two vertically. Saorshe uses her telekinesis to throw the kitchen knives at the last one, which does the job just fine.
Jack enters the room after the fracas is over. "Sorry about that. Fight or flight response. Flight won."
"Some soldier you are." Cherice jabs.
"Yeah yeah." Jack mumbles under his breath.
Using her Sight power once again, Saorshe sees a supernatural aura around the refrigerator. She opens the fridge door, but there's only rotten remains of food long since expired inside. She opens the freezer door, which reveals a severed hand on the top shelf frozen in a pointing gesture toward the back of the unit.
"That's creepy." Jack says.
"Take a step back everyone." Saorshe says in a serious tone. With a flick of her wrist the fridge slides forward across the linoleum. The wall behind the fridge is marked with dried blood, the word "LAMBS" spelled out for them all to see.
"Nice." Liam says. "Next room!"
A staircase that leads upstairs splits the first floor in two. On one side is the dining room and kitchen, on the other a library and living room. They head into the library. A large desk sits in the center of the room, but the chair that would be behind it has been knocked over. All the available wall space is taken up by bookshelves filled to capacity. On the far side of the room is a pair of sliding doors that looks like it leads into a patio in the backyard.
Saorshe naturally heads right for the books. There's a nice selection, some vanilla, some not. She finds some spell books, some rare demonic tomes and even a first edition Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens! "SCORE!" Saorshe squees. She takes the spell books, tomes and the first edition and places them on the desk. "I'll pick these up on the way out."
In the meantime, Jack and Cherice are checking out the living room. Two old, ratty couches sit along the far wall. There's a coffee table covered with old, dusty magazines from the early 90s in between them. A television sits in the corner across from them that looks as if someone took a baseball bat to the screen multiple times.
Liam and Saorshe enter. "Shall we check the upstairs?" she says as she walks into the room. Just then two undead rise from behind the second couch. Jack squeezes the trigger of his gun and unloads a full clip into the first one. It falls dead. Cherice runs in and beheads the second with little effort.
"Sure, let's check out floor number two!" Cherice says as she sheaths her katana.
They head up the rickety stairs to see long streaks of dried blood smeared along the walls, windows and railings. When they reach the top of the stairs on the second floor they can distinctly make out that the smearing was made by human hands, as there are bloody handprints all over the carpet. At some point someone died a gruesome death right where they are standing.
Across from them is a bathroom that separates the larger bedrooms from the smaller ones. Saorshe makes her way across the hall to it with Jack in tow. She enters to see it's a standard bathroom and shower. There is water dripping from the cabinet door under the sink and a breeze coming from somewhere unseen is making the shower curtain ruffle in an ominous manner.
As Saorshe reaches for the shower curtain she notices that Jack is staying outside the room. "You okay?"
All Jack can say in reply is "Flight."
"Pussy." Cherice says from the hallway.
Saorshe pulls back the curtain to see that the tub is covered in nasty rust and lime stains. It's pretty nasty.
She then reaches for the cabinet door under the sink that's leaking water. Once she opens it a flood rushes out accompanied by the mummified corpse of a child. She steps back to avoid getting soaked; only her feet were accosted by the rush of water.
"Told you." Jack quips. "Flight."
Saorshe moves in to examine the corpse. She can't tell what sex it is, but it's in the fetal position and covered in clothes that have begun to fall apart with age.
"Looks like someone tore its eyes out and nearly ripped the skull in half doing it." Jack says in a doctor-like tone.
Saorshe touches the child in order to use her psychometry ability, and is given horrific visions of blood, violence and death. She steps back in a daze.
"You okay?" Liam asks.
"Yeah" she says. "But something bad happened here. And not like 'bad', I mean really damned bad... does that make any sense?"
"I've given up on things making sense ever since I met all of you." Jack jokes before heading off to the master bedroom.
The others enter the room leaving Jack out in the hallway. "You can all go first, I got your back" he says as he holds his gun up with shaking hands.
They see that the master bedroom is a very large, spacious area that the parents of whatever family used to live here would have occupied very comfortably. A king sized bed rests along the far wall with a nightstand on each side. There's a large horizontally rotating mirror in the corner next to a door that leads into a bathroom and a long vanity table covered with old make-up and the like on the other side. There's also an armoire that has been broken to pieces next to a pair of sliding doors that lead out to a balcony.
Jack has entered the room cautiously and heads for the balcony doors as Liam heads for the bathroom.
Inside the bathroom Liam can see that the room is of the same design, only smaller. Personal grooming items litter the sink, both for a woman and a man. A small pair of scissors used to trim a beard or moustache is among them... caked in dried blood. In fact, there are droplets of dried blood all over the sink that seem to form a trail to the faucet. The hot water knob in particular.
Liam turns on the hot water, and after a few moments sickly brown water begins to spill out into the sink. A few moments more and the hot water kicks in creating a steam bath. As it rises past the mirror above the sink words begins to form on its surface. Liam moves in closer to see "TO THE" written on the mirror.
"Got another message" Liam says over the sounds of the water.
Jack opens the sliding doors cautiously as Liam shows the others the words on the mirror. He steps out onto the balcony that overlooks the driveway, and almost immediately the rotten wood beneath his feet begins to give way. He falls through the hole his weight creates and lands in a heap on the driveway below.
The others rush to the doors to see a hole in the balcony floor, and beyond that is Jack on the ground beneath. "I'm okay. Luckily it wasn't a long fall. My ass hurts though" Jack says reassuringly. "The kitchen door is right here, so I'll be up in a minute or two."
The others head for the hallway. There is a door leading to another large room across from them. A few moments later Jack joins them in the hallway, although he's limping slightly.
"And I'm back." he jokes.
"You first" Cherice says, motioning for Jack to enter the spare room.
"No problem."
"C'mon children. Let's go." Liam says, clearly annoyed. He heads into the room, but Saorshe stays in the hall.
"There's some seriously bad mojo going on in there. I can feel it" Saorshe warns.
"There's nothing to be afraid of in here. It's clear" Cherice says. She refers to the yet-to-be assembled bed that rests in pieces on the floor. There's also a large mattress resting upright against the far wall next to a partially open closet door. "Oh wait, the closet is open. I'll check it for creepy crawlies."
Cherice opens the door slowly only to see that the closet is filled with basic storage nonsense like brooms, totes and the like.
Liam walks over to the mattress and pushes it over. It falls to the floor, the side that was up against the wall is facing up revealing a bloody pentacle painted on it's surface. Almost immediately four undead rise from the symbol through the mattress, brought into being by some otherworldly force. They move in to attack Liam en masse. Liam manages to cleave one in half, but another lands a severe blow to his face. He hits the ground as Cherice goes in for the kill. She decapitates one as Jack starts taking pot shots at another from the corner. Saorshe casts Bolt of Light from the doorway, which strikes the bullet riddled undead. The impact throws it across the room and out the window. Cherice impales the last undead through the throat, and twists the blade popping it's head clean off.
"No sweat." Cherice says as she heads out of the room. "I said the room was clear."
Saorshe heads into the room to help Liam off the floor as Jack heads off after Cherice. "You good?" she asks Liam.
"Yeah. A little sore, but I'm good" he replies. "Let's catch up with the bad ass and the scaredy pants."
The other half of the upper floor has two smaller rooms, most likely for children, and one larger room across from them. The door to the larger room is locked from the inside as it would seem.
"You want me to shoot it open?" Jack asks.
"No. There's no telling what's on the other side. For all you know there could be a survivor in there." Saorshe reasons.
"I'm just wondering where the doorknob is." Liam points out.
"Magically sealed most likely." Saorshe replies.
"Maybe the clue to opening the door is in one of these smaller rooms." Cherice says.
They all agree and head to the nearest one. The first small bedroom is a fully furnished child's room. Toys are strewn about, crayon drawings adorn the walls and a racecar bed sits int he far corner. The bed itself is covered in dried blood.
"This must've belonged to the corpse in the bathroom." Cherice says with little tact as she steps deeper into the room. She looks down at her feet to see that the toys aligned in such a way that they are spelling out a word. "These toys are spelling out 'SLAUGHTER'."
"Plenty of that going on here already. Let's move on" Jack says.
They head to the next smaller room, a child's room as well, only this time it's one of the most nightmarish sights they've ever seen. It's almost out of a Hellraiser film... chains ending in bloody hooks hanging from the ceiling with chunks of rotten meat dangling from their points. Pentacles have been drawn on the walls in fresh blood. A sacrificial altar rests along the far wall covered in burning candles and a carved open corpse of a man whose innards have been removed and is leaking blood all over the carpeting. His eyes still look alive even though he obviously is not. The air reeks of death.
Saorshe steps away from the door, sick to her stomach. Jack starts to sweat profusely, obviously getting a flashback brought on by all the carnage before him.
Cherice enters and describes what she sees under further inspection. "There are occult daggers all over the place. Some look like they were used to carve open this poor sap. Actually, there is one still in him."
"Can you bring me one?" Saorshe asks. "I might be able to glean some information off of it."
Cherice exits the room with one of the daggers in hand, which she passes to the pale white witch. When she touches it she uses her psychometry to read the knife.
"All I see is fire and death." she says in a disappointed tone.
Back at the locked door they all contemplate the situation.
"Did we miss something?" Liam asks.
"The downstairs patio through the library." Jack adds. "I can go check it out real quick."
"I'll go with you." Saorshe says as they head down the stairs.
In the meantime, Cherice tries to pry the door open with her sword, but it won't budge. Liam even attempts, in a futile gesture, to shoulder slam the door. Still nothing. He then notices Cherice staring at the corpse of the child in the bathroom.
"Poor kid." she mumbles under her breath.
"Did you just express sympathy for someone else?" Liam mocks.
"I am capable of feeling sympathetic. I'm not dead dead you asshole."
A few moments later Jack and Saorshe return.
"There was another message on the patio. A shredded sun umbrella left a shadow on the ground that spelled out 'WILL BE'" Saorshe explains.
"So we have 'ALL', 'LAMBS', 'SLAUGHTER', 'TO THE' and 'WILL BE'" Cherice says.
"And there was that message I found in the foyer that said 'Spoken aloud, the path you shall unlock.'" Jack adds, then suddenly something dawns on him. "I knew something seemed familiar. When I annihilated that demon chick back at the hospital with Kayte, it said something to me before it died."
"Which was?" Saorshe asks.
"All will be lambs to the slaughter!" Liam figures out.
The sound of a locking mechanism releasing echoes throughout the house. The door before them slowly opens. The orange glow of fire spills out into the hallway, surrounding them in a surreal light. Their jaws drop at the sights that await them inside.
"Aw, shit." Cherice exhales.
TO BE CONTINUED...
