[That translates about as well to text as it ever will. He's in too much pain to manage anything more than that. He holds his hand against his belly, blood trickling between his fingers. The light from the windows of the cabin lights up just enough of the Delta for him to see how much he's losing; the upholstery of the car seat is rapidly turning red — black, in the dark — beneath him, and the front of his shirt is soaked. His eyes slip shut as he begins to breathe through his nose, counting to ten in his head.
Inside, the movement under the floorboards stops then starts again, soft and monotonous. It follows Quentin as he moves to the kitchen where the remains of a long-abandoned dinner are spread out across the splintery table. Flies hover over a glass salad bowl filled with browning lettuce and a dish covered with aluminum foil. Pulling the foil back reveals a nest of squirming white maggots, wriggling through moldy bread and rotting lunchmeat. At the center of the table is a blender filled with blood red sludge, ostensibly the remnants of a Bloody Mary given the glass bottle of vodka across from it.
There's an audible thud under Quentin's feet as something crashes to the floor in the cellar, followed by a low, miserable whimper.
—Then Ash's phone vibrates in his hand, snapping him back to reality.]
Im ok Just dizzy Theres beer in the fridge I think Can you grab me a can On your way out
no fucking way I wouldn't even trust the vodka in here just one minute
[ He's not finding the kit or anything like it, though his mind is racing to think of what might be useful around camp that he'll regret not grabbing while he's here. Time isn't on their side, though, if Ash's wound is as bad as it sounds. He just needs another minute.
[ Of course that noises scares it down to thirty seconds. Wake up, Ash, he's calling direct. His voice is low, careful as he starts to eyeball the floor, looking for a vent, a door, a hole in the wall... ]
[His thumb slips, leaving a red streak across the screen. He's so dizzy. Shit.
The phone almost vibrates out of his hand, and Ash sluggishly pulls his eyes open; he wasn't even aware he had closed them. Quentin's voice sounds distant, even when he puts the phone up to his ear.]
Yeah, stuff, [he slurs into the speaker. He doesn't hear the thumping downstairs, deep under the cabin.] Same — same thing that's in the cabin. It's out here, in the trees...
[He trails off, shuddering when he hears the wind outside. The branches of the thin, barren trees around the cabin are rustling, and the sound is creaky and lonely and awful. They look like long fingers, just like the ragged tears in his clothing look like they were left by claws.
[ The sloppy speech is disconcerting. Quentin pauses to look out the window for the car, but hands--branches stretch across the space between them a little farther than he remembers. Whatever. It's fine if they just keep talking. ] Yeah, about that--what's in the cab--Â
[ The voice from below rises up. Quentin's drops low, gaze snapping down to the wood. ]Â
[But Ash doesn't hear him. He's starting to slip away again, eyelashes fluttering, the phone slowly beginning to edge out of his hand.
"I hear you! I'm not stupid!" the voice yells, almost childishly offended. It's a girl, and from the sound of it, she's around Quentin's age. Her voice is hoarse and scratchy like she's spent too much time screaming with very little payoff, and she tries to sound like she's bigger than she actually is when she shouts up to Quentin defiantly. "Who are you? Where's my brother?"]
Ash? Ashley answer me. [ But the line is quiet and hissing, and the voice below him comes through stronger. Quentin backs to the perimeter of the room, call still running in his hand even as he lets it fall to his waist. Brother, huh? ] Is that who's out in the woods? Your brother? Who are you?Â
[ The same thing inside the cabin as there is outside. Maybe a name will give him an idea of what to do--or how much danger they're in. ]
[In the Delta, Ash’s head dips. His body progressively sags back against his seat, his legs nearly sprawled on the car floor, as the tinny voice in his hand continues to buzz up at him. Quentin could be calling from the bottom of the ocean for as close as he sounds right now, but Ash can make out the framework of a question, something about the cabin… and something else. His stomach roils with nausea, as much from dark, abstract thoughts as blood loss. His body trembles, has been more or less continuously since he pulled himself up off the driveway leading up to the cabin and into the enclosed confines of the Delta, but the distant realization that Quentin could be talking about someone else makes his muscles lock up in borderline paralytic fear.]
Ch-Cheryl…
[The phone finally slides out of his slack fingers, landing somewhere on the ground with a soft thud.
“Ashley? You know Ashley?”
Rapid footsteps echo downstairs as the girl runs to the front of the cellar and quickly ascends the staircase. She appears under the trap door in the corner of the living room a few seconds later. She’s exactly as young as she sounds — fresh out of high school by the looks of it — with a sharp profile and dark, morose eyes. Her long chestnut hair falls over her face in tangles as she peers up at Quentin from the gloom with suspicion and something dangerously close to hope, holding the door open as far as it will go against the heavy wrought iron chains locking it down, about fifteen inches off the ground.
“Get him— no, just— just get me out of here.” The chains rattle and bounce as she pushes against the door, grunting with effort. “Before it comes back, PLEASE!”]
[ Cheryl. The name is familiar as deja vu, and--after he recovers from the shock of the trapdoor banging ajar--her eyes evoke a face Quentin knows very well. Her brother. Her brother. ]
Ssshhhhhit-- [ He hangs up on Ash and scrambles to the fireplace for a poker. Imagine having the Entity drag your fucking little sister here. Imagine her dying because your friend couldn't get her out in time. Not a great look for a new survivor. Quentin skids to one knee next to the door and shoves the poker through the iron fixings for the chains. ] Hey, don't worry. I got you, Ash is right outside. Take it easy, can you--hold up, can you shove with me on the count of three?
[ His leverage and hers should be able to wrench this thing open. ] One--two--three--
[The girl pushes up on three, the top step creaking as she balances her weight and that of the door she’s holding on it. With their combined effort, they manage to wedge it open another inch — enough to fit an arm through, but nothing bigger. Her cheeks redden with effort while the bolt Quentin is working on twists in its hole, enough to draw up a few splinters of wood, but it remains stubbornly fixed in place. She lets the door drop with a frustrated groan.
“It’s not gonna work!” Her voice sounds thick and shaky like she’s trying not to cry. Her cheeks are still red when she pops back up, looking at Quentin through the opening. She closes her eyes for a moment, breathing deep through her nose. When she opens them, she seems much more composed, enough to speak steadily and precisely like she’s trying to recall a distant memory. “There’s… keys to the cabin. Ashley picked them up outside, then he gave them to Scott, and—”
Her eyes snap back to Quentin’s face, wider now.
“Do you see them anywhere? They’re attached to a big metal ring.”
She shimmies on the step, trying to get a better look around Quentin at the rest of the room.]
[ He goes for the table, the spot by the door, all the kinds of places you might stash keys. ] Okay, I'll--hang on, I'm checking the bedrooms!
[ A closet quarter-full of women's clothes. Bags stashed near the front d--aha. His head is starting to feel dreamy, the dreadful surreal feeling of something dangerous being close, but Quentin focuses on hurrying back to the trapdoor, shoving the key into the lock. What kind of rental cabin keeps chains like this? ] Almost got it.
Cheryl, right? You said--you said something's coming? What's coming?
[The composure Cheryl fought hard to regain dissipates the longer Quentin spends searching for the keys, and by the time he returns to the living room, it's hanging on by a sliver. Her glassy eyes grow the size of dinner plates when he approaches the door with the metal ring, keys jingling as he walks.
She's about to reply when something in the front yard bangs and crashes to the driveway. Her eyes shoot back up to Quentin, then to the keys dangling in his hand.
"Get me out of here!"
It takes Quentin a few tries, a few keys. Cheryl eyes each one he goes through a little hungrier, a little more eager; the face of a starving young woman who's gone days without eating or drinking. Every so often her gaze nervously darts to the front door, keeping time with the feet dragging their way across the old, decaying porch.
When Quentin fits the final key into the lock and turns, the bar releases with a click. The chains go slack. They fall away when Cheryl pushes against the door a final time, and it bangs against the floor as the one in the living room tumbles open.]
QUENTIN, NO!
[Backlit by the porch lights, Ash looks even more washed out, bathed in a harsh white glow that makes the blood caking his shirt stand out. His already grey face gets a little paler when he spots Quentin at the trapdoor—
—Right as a pair of hands seize Quentin by the ankles and yank him backwards.
Ash's feet bang against the floor and he screams like he's the one who fell as runs to Quentin, just in time to watch him disappear into the hole before the cellar door flips itself back down with a sound like thunder. He's still screaming his name and trying to pry the door back open as Quentin is plunged into fetid darkness, tumbling belly-down the stairs at an unnatural speed.]
[ His heart starts to trill when the lock gives at last, already imagining a family reunion, already puzzling over where they're alike and where they diverge. And when Ash bursts in--thank god, he's not as bad as he sounded! Everything's coming up Quentin until the sickly light from outside hints at Ash's face falling. Then, he doesn't see much. His head hits the stairs hard enough that he isn't sure if the crack of noise is above him or inside his skull.
[ He's on the dirt-packed floor of the cellar before he can even scream. The noise of pain finally bursts out of him straight onto the ground, kicking up a cloud of dirt that he sucks back in violently. It's supposed to be air that helps him kick back hard against whatever's holding him--but it's fucking dirt. The cough tears at his throat and the sore blooms around his torso, but he does manage to kick like a fucking horse. They're trained to act under this kind of duress. ]
Ash! [ He yelps into the dark, scrabbling to get his knees under him and crawl away from it. It. ] Cheryl! Cheryl, it's okay, hide!
[It's the most hysterical Ash has ever sounded, at least in front of Quentin. No matter how hard he tries, he can't get the door to budge, not even an inch. He doesn't give up, continuing to hammer on it with his fists and pull on the ancient metal handle like his life — and Quentin's — depends on it.
Hunched on the ground several feet away with her back to Quentin, Cheryl's thin frame shivers uncontrollably. Her head is tucked down, chin touching her collarbone as she rocks back and forth, almost in tune to Ash's pounding and the flickering of the single lightbulb acting as the cellar's sole source of illumination. It casts the cavernous room in a dirty orange light, spreading long shadows against the soggy earthen floor and the gourds hanging from the walls in the back, swaying gently in the dark.
"Please..." she whines and shudders, keeping the worst of her sobbing at bay. "Don't let him hurt me..."
She's still vibrating even when the pounding eventually stops as Ash pulls himself away from the door, getting to his feet on autopilot. He drags his hands down his face, digging his nails into his jaw as his heart hammers in his ears, loud enough to drown out whatever incoherent noises are coming from downstairs.]
[ He's halfway up the stairs, half on his hands, to meet Ash's efforts when his eyes adjust to the light and--Quentin stops, twisting over his shoulder to look back. Ash wants him out. Which means--which means Ash will get him out. Guilt twists his stomach; he's never heard Ash like that, never. But Ash knows what he's doing. So does Quentin. The only person here that doesn't know is Cheryl.
[ Quentin moves back down to her, wiping the blood from his nose on the back of his hand--then on his shirt--in an effort to look less like a maniac. As he would with someone just as fragile, as he would with any person new to this place, he warns her as he crouches behind. ]
We're doing our best. Ash is up there, he's gonna get us out. Trust me, he's a beast.
[ A swaying shadow makes him start. Why the hell is anything swaying? He's watching the discolored light bulb, scouring the discolored light for the threat that dragged him down here, when he wraps an arm around Cheryl to pull her shoulders to his chest. ]
Ash's eyes dart back and forth over his fingertips, quickly scanning the room for something, anything to break the door down with. He remembers dropping the shotgun when he threw the book in the fireplace, right before he walked out the front door and everything — everything — went to hell, but it's gone, and even if it wasn't, it's not what he needs right now. (Never thought you'd say that, huh?) Scotty had the axe, but that's gone too. Maybe he took it with him when he left the cabin and tried to take his chances in the woods, but Ash didn't see him leave with it. Did he?
His mind reels with the implication like it's been slapped, the ground feeling more unsteady under his feet. But he doesn't fall. No. Not now.
The gun, gone; the axe, gone. Quentin, gone. But isn't he forgetting something?
In the back of his head, a voice whispers that there's still one place he hasn't checked yet.
The workshed.
Downstairs, Cheryl lets herself be pulled in by Quentin, but she doesn't go boneless. Her body is a tightly wound coil, feverishly warm against Quentin's chest, but she doesn't resist him, and she doesn't look up.
"Ash won’t help us."
Her voice is hoarse and hollow. Across from her, the gourds continue to sway, as though guided by a gentle breeze, but there isn't any wind down here — just empty, stale air that carries the underlying smell of dust and decay.
And blood.
"He's a murderer," she says emphatically, hushed, drawing the word out like it's a particularly salacious piece of gossip.]
[ The little things might go unnoticed--have gone unnoticed--but they're starting to cling together and look a lot less little. The dancing decor. The sick, stiff feeling of Cheryl against him, even the tightness in her stomach when he loops an arm there too to pull her up. The rusty, too-familiar smell that makes his teeth buzz in his skull. All little things, until she sets the cherry on top: murderer.Â
[ Quentin stills, grip on Cheryl loosening so that he can move around to her shoulder and try to catch her eyes. ] Hey.Â
[Little clouds of dust fall from the ceiling as Ash scurries to the front of the house. With her face obstinately buried against Quentin’s shoulder, Cheryl’s voice sounds that much quieter, the little noise she makes before she answers Quentin nearly swallowed up by Ash’s heavy footsteps as he runs back outside.
“He killed his friends. Scott, Shelly…”
She grabs a fistful of Quentin’s shirt and clenches as she makes that funny little noise again that makes her voice rattle, like she has something caught in her throat. Like she’s trying to talk through a mouthful of dirt.
“I watched him do it,” she whispers, a secret between her, Quentin and the dirt motes floating in the air around them. “I saw him.”
Ignoring the searing pain in his gut, Ash sprints down the driveway with his sights set on the rickety shed in the corner of the yard. His feet skid out from under him, and it’s by sheer dumb luck that he catches himself before he hits the ground, pushing himself to keep going keep going keep going—
“I saw what he did to Linda,” Cheryl continues lowly as her other hand slithers up Quentin’s other shoulder. Her fingers are like claws, the thin fabric of Quentin’s shirt a flimsy barrier against her nails as she grabs hold of him. “The love of his life.”
Her shoulders shudder as she makes that noise again. She’s laughing. In her voice is the impression of a grin, all teeth bared.
“He used to play with her hair and plant little kisses on her head…”
The workshed’s door is already open, like it’s been waiting for him. Once inside, Ash gropes around for the light switch, finding the ball-chain cord and nearly yanking it off the old light bulb it’s connected to.
He knows, even without seeing or how he’s supposed to know, that what he’s looking for is sitting on the shelf above the workbench.
“…Right until he cut it off her pretty. Little. Neck.”
Cheryl’s grip on Quentin tightens. Her voice is getting progressively louder, each word ground out through a mouthful of black mold and clenched teeth. Do you understand? her nails seem to ask as they dig into Quentin’s shirt, scraping. Do you really?
The light bulb sways in the workshed, casting shadows that dance with it, and once it settles it illuminates the shelf and the old chainsaw sitting on it like a sickly yellow spotlight. Ash gingerly hefts it up off the shelf, testing its weight.
It feels good. It feels right. And when he tugs on the start cord and the engine roars to life, goddamn if it doesn’t inspire something he hasn’t felt in a good long time.
Hope.
“He KILLED HER,” Cheryl screams, voice cracking and distorting. “JUST LIKE HE’LL KILL YOU. HE’LL KILL ALL OF YOU.”
She tears her face off Quentin’s chest. Her eyes are bone white and rimmed with tumorous pink, empty and inhuman.
“AND THEN YOU’LL COME TO US.”
With that, she plunges her mouth into the side of Quentin’s head, catching his ear between her teeth, and pulls.]
Edited (fixed the most embarrassing typo ever) 2022-10-19 20:45 (UTC)
[ By the time Cheryl summons the image (muddled, semi-anonymous, but he's seen Ash under strain and blood-soaked enough for his mind to conjure up a woman in his hands, a knife, sweat and grit teeth--), he's realized he needs to get away. By that time, though, it's too late. He breathes stop like she'll listen, like she can even hear him over her own voice. No as his fingers wrench at her palm (not Ash, he can't believe that Ash--). No, stop as she twists in and her breath is on his ear and it feels dizzingly like he's dreaming (oh god oh god is he dreaming?)-- ]Â
ASH! [ Wailing, wobbling, melting into a pained sob as blood bursts and runs into his inner ear, down his neck. Both his arms shove between himself and Cheryl to shove her off. With a killer, it would be a futile effort. Maybe it's still a futile effort here, but Quentin isn't known for all efficiency all the time. His steps stagger for the door. The distinctive, intimate sound of--is that Bubba? Billy? oh god, oh jesus christ--a chainsaw somewhere out there sends him into a white panic. ] Ash, please, Ash, please--!Â
[Cheryl chuckles behind Quentin as he stumbles forward, painting his sneakers with blood as he struggles to hold back the worst of it. She rises to her feet, slow and steady like she has all the time in the world, turning her head to hock a mouthful of blood and a lumpy, red piece of viscera to the ground. It lands somewhere in the dirt across from the table Quentin lurches into like a glob of mucus.
The table wobbles and comes dangerously close to tipping over. Instead, it showers Quentin with garbage — piles of old newspapers, their pages yellow and brittle but greasy and soft, like old skin — and upsets the antique phonograph resting on the edge of it. The needle drops on the record before the crank handle begins to spin itself in frantic, jerky sweeps. The warped notes of a jaunty tune crackle to life from the bottom of the horn, a warbling echo that fills the cellar.
The lightbulb begins to die, ebbing intermittently. Laughing, Cheryl saunters forward. Her face is split in a grin so sharp her gums are visible, bits of Quentin's flesh still stuck to her teeth. Each time the light goes out, she gets a little closer to Quentin. And each time she gets a little closer to Quentin, the more he can see how rapidly her face is starting to decompose, her skin losing color, her hair turning grey and stringy, her flesh beginning to slide off her cheeks in mottled clumps as she follows him to the foot of the stairs.
All of this while Ash takes a deep breath, sets his jaw, and doubles back to the porch.
His knuckles vibrate as he squeezes the handle, his heart beating a mile a minute in his throat. At no point should any of this be possible, but it is. Excluding the generators, he's never found a machine that works in the Fog or any of its realms. The cars in Springwood are dead. The security cameras in the Gideon Meat Plant are tuned to static. The phones in Haddonfield can only pick up dead air.
But somehow this is real, and you know what? Ash will fucking take it. Screw the red flags, he'd take this over an axe any day. The thought snags on something in his brain and mindlessly loops itself over and over, just like the record in the cellar when the needle catches on the vinyl. Itsrealitsrealitsrealitsreal—]
QUENTIN!
[He screams as loud as he can, hoping more than anything that Quentin can hear him over the engine, that Quentin can still hear anything at all, as he runs past the threshold and straight to the hatch door.]
[ His only advantage is that Quentin has been through enough trials that he can recognize this feeling. This panic--even the suffocated feeling of his shirt pasted against his chest with blood. It's like the trials, it means he has to pull it together. Quentin struggles for good draughts of air, pull it together. He can bring the screaming down to just plain moaning, aimless and continuous--low enough that it's not like an effort to make it happen, but loud enough to focus on that instead of the thing, that thing with a mouthful of him. He tries for a handful of the papers on the table, like they'll tell him something about what happened here, but they disintegrate in his hands and cling in the creases of his palms. The feeling makes him gag--and the abrupt warbling tune scares a coughing fit out of him.Â
[ And the lights start to go.Â
[ Keep it together, as he wheezes and shuffles back. Keep it together when Cheryl flickers closer to him and Quentin's careful keening pitches up abruptly. The melting woman in front of him, the maddening mechanical noise behind and above--the next time the bulb flickers out, the plea makes it out of his mouth, desperate: ] --keep it together, christ--oh sh--! [ In the dark, she's close enough that some piece of her fucking face falls and slides down his arm, so he swings an elbow out to make space.Â
[ His heel hits one step, catches on another, and the benefit to falling is that while it might bruise the shit out of his ass and sides, it frees up Quentin's legs to kick out--or at least to put as a wedge between himself and Cheryl. Chainsaw-roaring rattles his teeth. There's a monster just upstairs. There's a monster down here. This isn't a trial, so who knows where he's going when he dies? Childish, Quentin kicks and covers his ears, one hand digging into his hair and the other scraping along muscle and skull. ]
[Ash's heart sinks like a lead ball in his ribcage as he crouches and listens to the absolute chaos unfolding down below. Between Quentin's wailing and the disjointed trill of the Charleston, it's hard to say which is more horrifying.
And yet he knows, he knows with every cell in his goddamn body that what he's hearing has nothing on what he can't hear. It's barely perceptible over the music, but Ash swears he can make out something like scraping and hissing down there, like a feral animal dragging itself across the floor. It doesn't matter what it actually is, or if he's imagining it entirely — once it forces itself into his head, it's laser-branded there for good. He sees a rapidly decomposing corpse with broken nails and fish belly-white eyes that shine in the dark, blood squirting from the hole in her neck where Ash had once shot her as her larynx compresses with sibilant laughter. He sees Quentin, curled in on himself, trying to hold the looping coils of his guts in as the laughter gets louder and louder—
"WE'RE GONNA GET YOU," Cheryl's voice — not of an individual anymore but a collective — sings along with the music. "WE'RE GONNA GET YOU..."
And louder and louder—
"NOT ANOTHER PEEP, TIME TO GO TO SLEEP..."
To hell with that.
Ash sucks in a mouthful of air and exhales just as quickly. His breath only trembles a little, same with his voice, but it's not like he can hear it over the rumble of the chainsaw.]
I’M COMING, QUENTIN!
[He plunges the blade into the top of the hatch. The wood is stubborn at first, but Ash is more stubborn, and with a little persistence and a steady hand, the blade starts to move. Wood shavings spray out from the hole in twin crescents as he saws down, guiding the chainsaw firmly and precisely.
Once he's reached the bottom, Ash stands back and kicks the door in, breaking it into two chunks of wood that plunk down the steps. What little light there is barely reaches the staircase, but that doesn't stop him from hurrying down it anyway, his gaze dark and fierce as he holds the chainsaw like a sword, ready to meet whatever lunges at him.
A crumpled figure slowly materializes on the bottom step. Ash runs down to it, trying not to think about how the stairs groan and wobble a bit under his feet, just enough to be concerning. The dissected Quentin in his mind's eye isn't the same Quentin squirming at his feet, thank God, but there's blood rolling down his face, and he looks the same way Ash felt when he first came down here by himself, gleefully unaware of the nightmare that awaited him.]
Qu—
[A mournful whine interrupts him before he can get another syllable out. Sweaty-faced and wide-eyed, Ash whirls to his left, raising the chainsaw defensively. He spots a small shape huddled on their hands and knees behind one of several support beams around the cellar, shaking uncontrollably.
"D-Don't— don't let him hurt me again," Cheryl hiccups in her real voice, as inconsolable as the final time she and Ash ever spoke on the road to the bridge, hugging in the dirt as the Delta's high-beams washed over them. "I thought you wanted to help me, Quentin. You promised you'd help me!"]
[ He has no idea where any sound is coming from anymore. The spitting chainsaw, the aching doors, the dischorus droning from wall to wall, and his own screaming--it all slurs together and feels suffocating. He can't tell where to go, how to move, where is safe. He curls in on himself tighter, away from the vibration of Ash's steps pounding down the steps and the machine stink that wafts down with him.
[ For a bright second, eyes straining upwards, Quentin is able to fight his terrified instincts. It's Ash. His Ash. He's--oh god, he left Ash bleeding in that car, and Ash came back for him.
[ Quentin fumbles to get his feet under him, bloody hand slapping to the wall and the other reaching for Ash's arm to pull himself up, but that pivot towards Cheryl has him clinging wholly to Ash's elbow to stay upright. ]
No! She's-- [ Lying? What if she isn't lying? Her plea hooks in his ribs, even if he can only hear it through one ear. He's going to cry. He's already crying. His fingers twitch loose from Ash's arm. ] --your sister? Ash, she's--what did you do?
[Ash rips his eyes away from Cheryl to look back at Quentin, aghast.]
Nothing! I didn't do anything!
["Yes you did!" Cheryl wails as she shields her face from Quentin and Ash with her hands, her shoulders rising and falling in quick, jerky motions. "You locked me down here! You abandoned me!"
And there it is. It's a dirty trick, the knife to the heart he saw coming a mile away, but that doesn't make it any less painful. Ash's breath starts to hitch again. His heart feels like a panicky bird trapped in his chest, trying to free itself, drumming along with the chainsaw's engine.]
I didn't—
["Don't lie!" Cheryl's voice cracks, shrill with anger. It's the kind of tone she used to take when she and Ash would argue when they were kids. "I heard you and Scott talking, after you buried Shelly," she continues, low and venomous. "You were going to take Linda and leave me here to die!"]
I didn't have a choice. [Though his eyes are trained on Cheryl, Quentin is the one Ash is really talking to. His gaze quickly darts between the two of them, more often than not going to the ragged chunks of flesh on the side of Quentin's head. Sweat rolls down his face, plastering his bangs to his forehead in messy dark curls, but his mouth is so dry. He swallows hard.] Linda, she— you killed her, Cheryl.
["No, Ashley. You did."
Something flickers out of the corner of his eye, and Ash turns his head just in time to see the film projector in the corner of the cellar switch on. He watches, entranced with horror, as the reels begin to spin and a grainy image that could have been plucked straight from his memories plays on cellar wall: him and Linda, upstairs in the living room, fighting over the ritualistic dagger Scott had found with the book and the recorder in the basement. It had been just after Scott had finally bled out, leaving Ash well and truly alone.
Ash watches himself twist Linda's wrist behind her back. He pushes her. She falls and lands on the dagger, the blade going straight through her spine, vomiting blood and milky white bile out of her mouth in a silent movie scream.
"You killed her," Cheryl repeats, her voice a million miles away. "She was dead the moment you found that book. All of us were."
The images keep coming, one after another. Ash watches chunks of Shelly's torso and one of her severed arms twitch obscenely on the cabin's blood-splattered floor. He watches himself jam his thumbs into Scott's bone-white eyes. He watches himself, on his back on the living room floor, pick up the shotgun and take aim at the front door, shooting Cheryl in the shoulder as she tries to force her way inside.
Ash makes a helpless noise from the back of his throat as he watches himself dig a hole behind the cabin. Watches as he swings the shovel at Linda's body as it crawls after him in the dark, watches her head roll off somewhere in the dirt as her body falls on top of him and pins him to the ground, spraying his face with dark red blood. Her bare legs are still kicking. He can't look away.]
[ The touch returns with a vengeance when the music shifts and there's video. If Quentin has learned anything here, it's that there's no reason to watch any movie here unless you know the source. He hisses when the light cracks through the dark and averts his eyes--but Ash isn't moving. To turn the thing off, Quentin would have to venture into the dark, closer to whatever has a grip on him--a grip on this place. To race up the stairs, he'd have to turn his back on it and abandon Ash. To get a better grip on Ash, he'd have to reach closer to that stinking, growling chainsaw, so Quentin tries to just shake him.
[ At the elbow. At the shoulder. At the jaw where his hand leaves tacky, bloody marks as Quentin whinces: ] No. No, we'll talk later, come on. Come on, I'm sorry, come on! [ Ash is fixed on the screen. Grudgingly, unhappily, hands fisted in Ashley's shirt, Quentin looks. This is a mistake.
[ His hands tighten, weight leaning into Ash almost dangerously, then jerk away just as soon as Quentin is sure he's not going to faint. Throwing up isn't out of running, though, as he crashes back against the stairwell, stutter-steps up the stairs. ] Nnn--you--Ash, what the fffffng--what the fuck, you killed them.
[He can't even say it. Ash shakes his head again, more forceful this time, the only thing he can do with both hands occupied. His eyes are glassy as he looks at the grainy projection of himself on the wall, cowering with his back pressed against the front door of the cabin. He looks terrified, all red-cheeked and sweaty and teary, just like he's sure he does right now.
Pretty funny. He's the one with the chainsaw.
The projection begins to bleed. It skips a frame, holding on Linda's body laid out on the table in the workshed. She looks so peaceful, like she could be sleeping. Streaks of red trickle down the top of the image, the hazy white light gradually darkening, bathing the walls in muddy red.
"Linda died alone," Cheryl's voice snarls at him in the dark, each word venomous and brutal, warping into something monstrous but still recognizably Cheryl. The shotgun, gone; the axe, gone; his little sister, gone. "You're the reason she's suffering. Her and Shelly, even Scott."
Just hearing her name makes Ash's throat close up as a new, fresh wave of grief steamrolls over him. Watching himself do those things to Linda hurts just as bad as remembering it. It's even worse when all he can do is stand here and take it.
Just take it, like Linda did when it finally came for her. Like Scott and Shelly did.
But before them, there was Cheryl.
"They're all down here with us, Ash," Cheryl says next to his shoulder, far too sweetly. "Watching you die again, and again, and again."
He whips his head just in time to see a flash of Cheryl's gums — pink and shiny, flecked with bloody drool — as she appears by his side in a flash, surging forward on all fours. She rises to her feet like a marionette, yanked up by invisible strings with ugly, jerky fluidity.
"SHE MISSES YOU, ASHLEY. SHE MISSES YOU SO MUCH."]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
@pharmacy
Ha ha
[That translates about as well to text as it ever will. He's in too much pain to manage anything more than that. He holds his hand against his belly, blood trickling between his fingers. The light from the windows of the cabin lights up just enough of the Delta for him to see how much he's losing; the upholstery of the car seat is rapidly turning red — black, in the dark — beneath him, and the front of his shirt is soaked. His eyes slip shut as he begins to breathe through his nose, counting to ten in his head.
Inside, the movement under the floorboards stops then starts again, soft and monotonous. It follows Quentin as he moves to the kitchen where the remains of a long-abandoned dinner are spread out across the splintery table. Flies hover over a glass salad bowl filled with browning lettuce and a dish covered with aluminum foil. Pulling the foil back reveals a nest of squirming white maggots, wriggling through moldy bread and rotting lunchmeat. At the center of the table is a blender filled with blood red sludge, ostensibly the remnants of a Bloody Mary given the glass bottle of vodka across from it.
There's an audible thud under Quentin's feet as something crashes to the floor in the cellar, followed by a low, miserable whimper.
—Then Ash's phone vibrates in his hand, snapping him back to reality.]
Im ok
Just dizzy
Theres beer in the fridge I think
Can you grab me a can
On your way out
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I wouldn't even trust the vodka in here
just one minute
[ He's not finding the kit or anything like it, though his mind is racing to think of what might be useful around camp that he'll regret not grabbing while he's here. Time isn't on their side, though, if Ash's wound is as bad as it sounds. He just needs another minute.
[ Of course that noises scares it down to thirty seconds. Wake up, Ash, he's calling direct. His voice is low, careful as he starts to eyeball the floor, looking for a vent, a door, a hole in the wall... ]
Hey. You said there was stuff in the woods?
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[His thumb slips, leaving a red streak across the screen. He's so dizzy. Shit.
The phone almost vibrates out of his hand, and Ash sluggishly pulls his eyes open; he wasn't even aware he had closed them. Quentin's voice sounds distant, even when he puts the phone up to his ear.]
Yeah, stuff, [he slurs into the speaker. He doesn't hear the thumping downstairs, deep under the cabin.] Same — same thing that's in the cabin. It's out here, in the trees...
[He trails off, shuddering when he hears the wind outside. The branches of the thin, barren trees around the cabin are rustling, and the sound is creaky and lonely and awful. They look like long fingers, just like the ragged tears in his clothing look like they were left by claws.
A voice calls out from underneath Quentin's feet.
"Hello? Who's there?"
It sounds frightened.]
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[ The voice from below rises up. Quentin's drops low, gaze snapping down to the wood. ]Â
...There's a person in here.Â
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"I hear you! I'm not stupid!" the voice yells, almost childishly offended. It's a girl, and from the sound of it, she's around Quentin's age. Her voice is hoarse and scratchy like she's spent too much time screaming with very little payoff, and she tries to sound like she's bigger than she actually is when she shouts up to Quentin defiantly. "Who are you? Where's my brother?"]
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[ The same thing inside the cabin as there is outside. Maybe a name will give him an idea of what to do--or how much danger they're in. ]
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Ch-Cheryl…
[The phone finally slides out of his slack fingers, landing somewhere on the ground with a soft thud.
“Ashley? You know Ashley?”
Rapid footsteps echo downstairs as the girl runs to the front of the cellar and quickly ascends the staircase. She appears under the trap door in the corner of the living room a few seconds later. She’s exactly as young as she sounds — fresh out of high school by the looks of it — with a sharp profile and dark, morose eyes. Her long chestnut hair falls over her face in tangles as she peers up at Quentin from the gloom with suspicion and something dangerously close to hope, holding the door open as far as it will go against the heavy wrought iron chains locking it down, about fifteen inches off the ground.
“Get him— no, just— just get me out of here.” The chains rattle and bounce as she pushes against the door, grunting with effort. “Before it comes back, PLEASE!”]
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Ssshhhhhit-- [ He hangs up on Ash and scrambles to the fireplace for a poker. Imagine having the Entity drag your fucking little sister here. Imagine her dying because your friend couldn't get her out in time. Not a great look for a new survivor. Quentin skids to one knee next to the door and shoves the poker through the iron fixings for the chains. ] Hey, don't worry. I got you, Ash is right outside. Take it easy, can you--hold up, can you shove with me on the count of three?
[ His leverage and hers should be able to wrench this thing open. ] One--two--three--
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“It’s not gonna work!” Her voice sounds thick and shaky like she’s trying not to cry. Her cheeks are still red when she pops back up, looking at Quentin through the opening. She closes her eyes for a moment, breathing deep through her nose. When she opens them, she seems much more composed, enough to speak steadily and precisely like she’s trying to recall a distant memory. “There’s… keys to the cabin. Ashley picked them up outside, then he gave them to Scott, and—”
Her eyes snap back to Quentin’s face, wider now.
“Do you see them anywhere? They’re attached to a big metal ring.”
She shimmies on the step, trying to get a better look around Quentin at the rest of the room.]
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[ A closet quarter-full of women's clothes. Bags stashed near the front d--aha. His head is starting to feel dreamy, the dreadful surreal feeling of something dangerous being close, but Quentin focuses on hurrying back to the trapdoor, shoving the key into the lock. What kind of rental cabin keeps chains like this? ] Almost got it.
Cheryl, right? You said--you said something's coming? What's coming?
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She's about to reply when something in the front yard bangs and crashes to the driveway. Her eyes shoot back up to Quentin, then to the keys dangling in his hand.
"Get me out of here!"
It takes Quentin a few tries, a few keys. Cheryl eyes each one he goes through a little hungrier, a little more eager; the face of a starving young woman who's gone days without eating or drinking. Every so often her gaze nervously darts to the front door, keeping time with the feet dragging their way across the old, decaying porch.
When Quentin fits the final key into the lock and turns, the bar releases with a click. The chains go slack. They fall away when Cheryl pushes against the door a final time, and it bangs against the floor as the one in the living room tumbles open.]
QUENTIN, NO!
[Backlit by the porch lights, Ash looks even more washed out, bathed in a harsh white glow that makes the blood caking his shirt stand out. His already grey face gets a little paler when he spots Quentin at the trapdoor—
—Right as a pair of hands seize Quentin by the ankles and yank him backwards.
Ash's feet bang against the floor and he screams like he's the one who fell as runs to Quentin, just in time to watch him disappear into the hole before the cellar door flips itself back down with a sound like thunder. He's still screaming his name and trying to pry the door back open as Quentin is plunged into fetid darkness, tumbling belly-down the stairs at an unnatural speed.]
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[ He's on the dirt-packed floor of the cellar before he can even scream. The noise of pain finally bursts out of him straight onto the ground, kicking up a cloud of dirt that he sucks back in violently. It's supposed to be air that helps him kick back hard against whatever's holding him--but it's fucking dirt. The cough tears at his throat and the sore blooms around his torso, but he does manage to kick like a fucking horse. They're trained to act under this kind of duress. ]
Ash! [ He yelps into the dark, scrabbling to get his knees under him and crawl away from it. It. ] Cheryl! Cheryl, it's okay, hide!
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[It's the most hysterical Ash has ever sounded, at least in front of Quentin. No matter how hard he tries, he can't get the door to budge, not even an inch. He doesn't give up, continuing to hammer on it with his fists and pull on the ancient metal handle like his life — and Quentin's — depends on it.
Hunched on the ground several feet away with her back to Quentin, Cheryl's thin frame shivers uncontrollably. Her head is tucked down, chin touching her collarbone as she rocks back and forth, almost in tune to Ash's pounding and the flickering of the single lightbulb acting as the cellar's sole source of illumination. It casts the cavernous room in a dirty orange light, spreading long shadows against the soggy earthen floor and the gourds hanging from the walls in the back, swaying gently in the dark.
"Please..." she whines and shudders, keeping the worst of her sobbing at bay. "Don't let him hurt me..."
She's still vibrating even when the pounding eventually stops as Ash pulls himself away from the door, getting to his feet on autopilot. He drags his hands down his face, digging his nails into his jaw as his heart hammers in his ears, loud enough to drown out whatever incoherent noises are coming from downstairs.]
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[ Quentin moves back down to her, wiping the blood from his nose on the back of his hand--then on his shirt--in an effort to look less like a maniac. As he would with someone just as fragile, as he would with any person new to this place, he warns her as he crouches behind. ]
We're doing our best. Ash is up there, he's gonna get us out. Trust me, he's a beast.
[ A swaying shadow makes him start. Why the hell is anything swaying? He's watching the discolored light bulb, scouring the discolored light for the threat that dragged him down here, when he wraps an arm around Cheryl to pull her shoulders to his chest. ]
I've got you. We gotta go.
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Ash's eyes dart back and forth over his fingertips, quickly scanning the room for something, anything to break the door down with. He remembers dropping the shotgun when he threw the book in the fireplace, right before he walked out the front door and everything — everything — went to hell, but it's gone, and even if it wasn't, it's not what he needs right now. (Never thought you'd say that, huh?) Scotty had the axe, but that's gone too. Maybe he took it with him when he left the cabin and tried to take his chances in the woods, but Ash didn't see him leave with it. Did he?
His mind reels with the implication like it's been slapped, the ground feeling more unsteady under his feet. But he doesn't fall. No. Not now.
The gun, gone; the axe, gone. Quentin, gone. But isn't he forgetting something?
In the back of his head, a voice whispers that there's still one place he hasn't checked yet.
The workshed.
Downstairs, Cheryl lets herself be pulled in by Quentin, but she doesn't go boneless. Her body is a tightly wound coil, feverishly warm against Quentin's chest, but she doesn't resist him, and she doesn't look up.
"Ash won’t help us."
Her voice is hoarse and hollow. Across from her, the gourds continue to sway, as though guided by a gentle breeze, but there isn't any wind down here — just empty, stale air that carries the underlying smell of dust and decay.
And blood.
"He's a murderer," she says emphatically, hushed, drawing the word out like it's a particularly salacious piece of gossip.]
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[ Quentin stills, grip on Cheryl loosening so that he can move around to her shoulder and try to catch her eyes. ] Hey.Â
Whattayou mean? What're you talking about?Â
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“He killed his friends. Scott, Shelly…”
She grabs a fistful of Quentin’s shirt and clenches as she makes that funny little noise again that makes her voice rattle, like she has something caught in her throat. Like she’s trying to talk through a mouthful of dirt.
“I watched him do it,” she whispers, a secret between her, Quentin and the dirt motes floating in the air around them. “I saw him.”
Ignoring the searing pain in his gut, Ash sprints down the driveway with his sights set on the rickety shed in the corner of the yard. His feet skid out from under him, and it’s by sheer dumb luck that he catches himself before he hits the ground, pushing himself to keep going keep going keep going—
“I saw what he did to Linda,” Cheryl continues lowly as her other hand slithers up Quentin’s other shoulder. Her fingers are like claws, the thin fabric of Quentin’s shirt a flimsy barrier against her nails as she grabs hold of him. “The love of his life.”
Her shoulders shudder as she makes that noise again. She’s laughing. In her voice is the impression of a grin, all teeth bared.
“He used to play with her hair and plant little kisses on her head…”
The workshed’s door is already open, like it’s been waiting for him. Once inside, Ash gropes around for the light switch, finding the ball-chain cord and nearly yanking it off the old light bulb it’s connected to.
He knows, even without seeing or how he’s supposed to know, that what he’s looking for is sitting on the shelf above the workbench.
“…Right until he cut it off her pretty. Little. Neck.”
Cheryl’s grip on Quentin tightens. Her voice is getting progressively louder, each word ground out through a mouthful of black mold and clenched teeth. Do you understand? her nails seem to ask as they dig into Quentin’s shirt, scraping. Do you really?
The light bulb sways in the workshed, casting shadows that dance with it, and once it settles it illuminates the shelf and the old chainsaw sitting on it like a sickly yellow spotlight. Ash gingerly hefts it up off the shelf, testing its weight.
It feels good. It feels right. And when he tugs on the start cord and the engine roars to life, goddamn if it doesn’t inspire something he hasn’t felt in a good long time.
Hope.
“He KILLED HER,” Cheryl screams, voice cracking and distorting. “JUST LIKE HE’LL KILL YOU. HE’LL KILL ALL OF YOU.”
She tears her face off Quentin’s chest. Her eyes are bone white and rimmed with tumorous pink, empty and inhuman.
“AND THEN YOU’LL COME TO US.”
With that, she plunges her mouth into the side of Quentin’s head, catching his ear between her teeth, and pulls.]
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ASH! [ Wailing, wobbling, melting into a pained sob as blood bursts and runs into his inner ear, down his neck. Both his arms shove between himself and Cheryl to shove her off. With a killer, it would be a futile effort. Maybe it's still a futile effort here, but Quentin isn't known for all efficiency all the time. His steps stagger for the door. The distinctive, intimate sound of--is that Bubba? Billy? oh god, oh jesus christ--a chainsaw somewhere out there sends him into a white panic. ] Ash, please, Ash, please--!Â
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The table wobbles and comes dangerously close to tipping over. Instead, it showers Quentin with garbage — piles of old newspapers, their pages yellow and brittle but greasy and soft, like old skin — and upsets the antique phonograph resting on the edge of it. The needle drops on the record before the crank handle begins to spin itself in frantic, jerky sweeps. The warped notes of a jaunty tune crackle to life from the bottom of the horn, a warbling echo that fills the cellar.
The lightbulb begins to die, ebbing intermittently. Laughing, Cheryl saunters forward. Her face is split in a grin so sharp her gums are visible, bits of Quentin's flesh still stuck to her teeth. Each time the light goes out, she gets a little closer to Quentin. And each time she gets a little closer to Quentin, the more he can see how rapidly her face is starting to decompose, her skin losing color, her hair turning grey and stringy, her flesh beginning to slide off her cheeks in mottled clumps as she follows him to the foot of the stairs.
All of this while Ash takes a deep breath, sets his jaw, and doubles back to the porch.
His knuckles vibrate as he squeezes the handle, his heart beating a mile a minute in his throat. At no point should any of this be possible, but it is. Excluding the generators, he's never found a machine that works in the Fog or any of its realms. The cars in Springwood are dead. The security cameras in the Gideon Meat Plant are tuned to static. The phones in Haddonfield can only pick up dead air.
But somehow this is real, and you know what? Ash will fucking take it. Screw the red flags, he'd take this over an axe any day. The thought snags on something in his brain and mindlessly loops itself over and over, just like the record in the cellar when the needle catches on the vinyl. Itsrealitsrealitsrealitsreal—]
QUENTIN!
[He screams as loud as he can, hoping more than anything that Quentin can hear him over the engine, that Quentin can still hear anything at all, as he runs past the threshold and straight to the hatch door.]
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[ And the lights start to go.Â
[ Keep it together, as he wheezes and shuffles back. Keep it together when Cheryl flickers closer to him and Quentin's careful keening pitches up abruptly. The melting woman in front of him, the maddening mechanical noise behind and above--the next time the bulb flickers out, the plea makes it out of his mouth, desperate: ] --keep it together, christ--oh sh--! [ In the dark, she's close enough that some piece of her fucking face falls and slides down his arm, so he swings an elbow out to make space.Â
[ His heel hits one step, catches on another, and the benefit to falling is that while it might bruise the shit out of his ass and sides, it frees up Quentin's legs to kick out--or at least to put as a wedge between himself and Cheryl. Chainsaw-roaring rattles his teeth. There's a monster just upstairs. There's a monster down here. This isn't a trial, so who knows where he's going when he dies? Childish, Quentin kicks and covers his ears, one hand digging into his hair and the other scraping along muscle and skull. ]
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And yet he knows, he knows with every cell in his goddamn body that what he's hearing has nothing on what he can't hear. It's barely perceptible over the music, but Ash swears he can make out something like scraping and hissing down there, like a feral animal dragging itself across the floor. It doesn't matter what it actually is, or if he's imagining it entirely — once it forces itself into his head, it's laser-branded there for good. He sees a rapidly decomposing corpse with broken nails and fish belly-white eyes that shine in the dark, blood squirting from the hole in her neck where Ash had once shot her as her larynx compresses with sibilant laughter. He sees Quentin, curled in on himself, trying to hold the looping coils of his guts in as the laughter gets louder and louder—
"WE'RE GONNA GET YOU," Cheryl's voice — not of an individual anymore but a collective — sings along with the music. "WE'RE GONNA GET YOU..."
And louder and louder—
"NOT ANOTHER PEEP, TIME TO GO TO SLEEP..."
To hell with that.
Ash sucks in a mouthful of air and exhales just as quickly. His breath only trembles a little, same with his voice, but it's not like he can hear it over the rumble of the chainsaw.]
I’M COMING, QUENTIN!
[He plunges the blade into the top of the hatch. The wood is stubborn at first, but Ash is more stubborn, and with a little persistence and a steady hand, the blade starts to move. Wood shavings spray out from the hole in twin crescents as he saws down, guiding the chainsaw firmly and precisely.
Once he's reached the bottom, Ash stands back and kicks the door in, breaking it into two chunks of wood that plunk down the steps. What little light there is barely reaches the staircase, but that doesn't stop him from hurrying down it anyway, his gaze dark and fierce as he holds the chainsaw like a sword, ready to meet whatever lunges at him.
A crumpled figure slowly materializes on the bottom step. Ash runs down to it, trying not to think about how the stairs groan and wobble a bit under his feet, just enough to be concerning. The dissected Quentin in his mind's eye isn't the same Quentin squirming at his feet, thank God, but there's blood rolling down his face, and he looks the same way Ash felt when he first came down here by himself, gleefully unaware of the nightmare that awaited him.]
Qu—
[A mournful whine interrupts him before he can get another syllable out. Sweaty-faced and wide-eyed, Ash whirls to his left, raising the chainsaw defensively. He spots a small shape huddled on their hands and knees behind one of several support beams around the cellar, shaking uncontrollably.
"D-Don't— don't let him hurt me again," Cheryl hiccups in her real voice, as inconsolable as the final time she and Ash ever spoke on the road to the bridge, hugging in the dirt as the Delta's high-beams washed over them. "I thought you wanted to help me, Quentin. You promised you'd help me!"]
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[ For a bright second, eyes straining upwards, Quentin is able to fight his terrified instincts. It's Ash. His Ash. He's--oh god, he left Ash bleeding in that car, and Ash came back for him.
[ Quentin fumbles to get his feet under him, bloody hand slapping to the wall and the other reaching for Ash's arm to pull himself up, but that pivot towards Cheryl has him clinging wholly to Ash's elbow to stay upright. ]
No! She's-- [ Lying? What if she isn't lying? Her plea hooks in his ribs, even if he can only hear it through one ear. He's going to cry. He's already crying. His fingers twitch loose from Ash's arm. ] --your sister? Ash, she's--what did you do?
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[Ash rips his eyes away from Cheryl to look back at Quentin, aghast.]
Nothing! I didn't do anything!
["Yes you did!" Cheryl wails as she shields her face from Quentin and Ash with her hands, her shoulders rising and falling in quick, jerky motions. "You locked me down here! You abandoned me!"
And there it is. It's a dirty trick, the knife to the heart he saw coming a mile away, but that doesn't make it any less painful. Ash's breath starts to hitch again. His heart feels like a panicky bird trapped in his chest, trying to free itself, drumming along with the chainsaw's engine.]
I didn't—
["Don't lie!" Cheryl's voice cracks, shrill with anger. It's the kind of tone she used to take when she and Ash would argue when they were kids. "I heard you and Scott talking, after you buried Shelly," she continues, low and venomous. "You were going to take Linda and leave me here to die!"]
I didn't have a choice. [Though his eyes are trained on Cheryl, Quentin is the one Ash is really talking to. His gaze quickly darts between the two of them, more often than not going to the ragged chunks of flesh on the side of Quentin's head. Sweat rolls down his face, plastering his bangs to his forehead in messy dark curls, but his mouth is so dry. He swallows hard.] Linda, she— you killed her, Cheryl.
["No, Ashley. You did."
Something flickers out of the corner of his eye, and Ash turns his head just in time to see the film projector in the corner of the cellar switch on. He watches, entranced with horror, as the reels begin to spin and a grainy image that could have been plucked straight from his memories plays on cellar wall: him and Linda, upstairs in the living room, fighting over the ritualistic dagger Scott had found with the book and the recorder in the basement. It had been just after Scott had finally bled out, leaving Ash well and truly alone.
Ash watches himself twist Linda's wrist behind her back. He pushes her. She falls and lands on the dagger, the blade going straight through her spine, vomiting blood and milky white bile out of her mouth in a silent movie scream.
"You killed her," Cheryl repeats, her voice a million miles away. "She was dead the moment you found that book. All of us were."
The images keep coming, one after another. Ash watches chunks of Shelly's torso and one of her severed arms twitch obscenely on the cabin's blood-splattered floor. He watches himself jam his thumbs into Scott's bone-white eyes. He watches himself, on his back on the living room floor, pick up the shotgun and take aim at the front door, shooting Cheryl in the shoulder as she tries to force her way inside.
Ash makes a helpless noise from the back of his throat as he watches himself dig a hole behind the cabin. Watches as he swings the shovel at Linda's body as it crawls after him in the dark, watches her head roll off somewhere in the dirt as her body falls on top of him and pins him to the ground, spraying his face with dark red blood. Her bare legs are still kicking. He can't look away.]
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[ At the elbow. At the shoulder. At the jaw where his hand leaves tacky, bloody marks as Quentin whinces: ] No. No, we'll talk later, come on. Come on, I'm sorry, come on! [ Ash is fixed on the screen. Grudgingly, unhappily, hands fisted in Ashley's shirt, Quentin looks. This is a mistake.
[ His hands tighten, weight leaning into Ash almost dangerously, then jerk away just as soon as Quentin is sure he's not going to faint. Throwing up isn't out of running, though, as he crashes back against the stairwell, stutter-steps up the stairs. ] Nnn--you--Ash, what the fffffng--what the fuck, you killed them.
You're a fucking murderer!
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[He can't even say it. Ash shakes his head again, more forceful this time, the only thing he can do with both hands occupied. His eyes are glassy as he looks at the grainy projection of himself on the wall, cowering with his back pressed against the front door of the cabin. He looks terrified, all red-cheeked and sweaty and teary, just like he's sure he does right now.
Pretty funny. He's the one with the chainsaw.
The projection begins to bleed. It skips a frame, holding on Linda's body laid out on the table in the workshed. She looks so peaceful, like she could be sleeping. Streaks of red trickle down the top of the image, the hazy white light gradually darkening, bathing the walls in muddy red.
"Linda died alone," Cheryl's voice snarls at him in the dark, each word venomous and brutal, warping into something monstrous but still recognizably Cheryl. The shotgun, gone; the axe, gone; his little sister, gone. "You're the reason she's suffering. Her and Shelly, even Scott."
Just hearing her name makes Ash's throat close up as a new, fresh wave of grief steamrolls over him. Watching himself do those things to Linda hurts just as bad as remembering it. It's even worse when all he can do is stand here and take it.
Just take it, like Linda did when it finally came for her. Like Scott and Shelly did.
But before them, there was Cheryl.
"They're all down here with us, Ash," Cheryl says next to his shoulder, far too sweetly. "Watching you die again, and again, and again."
He whips his head just in time to see a flash of Cheryl's gums — pink and shiny, flecked with bloody drool — as she appears by his side in a flash, surging forward on all fours. She rises to her feet like a marionette, yanked up by invisible strings with ugly, jerky fluidity.
"SHE MISSES YOU, ASHLEY. SHE MISSES YOU SO MUCH."]
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