[ 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."]
[ Ash can't even work up the conviction to say he's not a killer. It wouldn't exactly be a rousing assurance even in the best of times. Now, with Cheryl's heckling and cloying, cooing ribbons of laughter, it's as good as damnation.
[ Still, Quentin's protective instincts haven't had time to adjust to this revelation, so when the chattering thing speeds toward Ash, Quentin reacts. Reaches across the man for the rumbling chainsaw and screams (from the surprise of touching it, from fear, from exertion with his bruised and shaking limbs) as he wrenches it up by the handle. Using Ash's arm to pivot, he shoves the blade towards Cheryl. Anything. Anything, just shut up. ]
[Cheryl's skittering lunge, Quentin's desperate grab for the chainsaw — it all happens so fast, leaving Ash nearly no time to react. His feet are like cement blocks for as useful as they are right now, but he is able to force some feeling back into his hands, enough to compel them to try to wrest the chainsaw back from Quentin.
Try being the operative keyword, because all he really ends up accomplishing is driving the blade sharply up, right as Cheryl pops up from under his nose like a jack-in-the-box.
The blade impales Cheryl from underneath her chin. She opens her mouth and ejects a furious spray of blood onto Ash and Quentin. Her teeth shift and whirl in her mouth, and Ash comes to the distant realization that what he's seeing is actually the rivets of the blade spinning, the gears grinding noisily. It sounds a bit like a clogged garbage disposal, stuck on many layers of bone, sinew and muscle it can't easily digest.
Ash doesn't hear it — or much of anything, really. Not the roar of the chainsaw's engine or the way it sputters before it finally stalls out, not Quentin's screaming, not Cheryl's gurgled cackling. Were it not for how raw and ragged his throat feels, he wouldn't even be aware that he's screaming.
But he stops, winding down the same way the blade does. It finally ceases spinning, and Cheryl's body falls forward. Ash watches her head snap up and open, revealing the pinkish-grey hue of her brain, before she hits the ground in a sprawled heap with a wet splat. It's a sound that's haunted Ash's dreams before; hearing it aloud offers an entirely new dimension of terror separate from all the nights he's woken up screaming.]
Cheryl?
[His voice is very calm, very quiet. His large brown eyes are like marbles set within a sheet of blood. Ash stares, almost dazed, waiting for Cheryl to get up. She doesn't.]
Cheryl? [he tries again, softer, his grip on the chainsaw's handle going slack. It falls out of his hands and lands on the ground somewhere beside his and Quentin's feet, in the pool of blood forming around Cheryl's body.]
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no subject
[ 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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[ Still, Quentin's protective instincts haven't had time to adjust to this revelation, so when the chattering thing speeds toward Ash, Quentin reacts. Reaches across the man for the rumbling chainsaw and screams (from the surprise of touching it, from fear, from exertion with his bruised and shaking limbs) as he wrenches it up by the handle. Using Ash's arm to pivot, he shoves the blade towards Cheryl. Anything. Anything, just shut up. ]
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Try being the operative keyword, because all he really ends up accomplishing is driving the blade sharply up, right as Cheryl pops up from under his nose like a jack-in-the-box.
The blade impales Cheryl from underneath her chin. She opens her mouth and ejects a furious spray of blood onto Ash and Quentin. Her teeth shift and whirl in her mouth, and Ash comes to the distant realization that what he's seeing is actually the rivets of the blade spinning, the gears grinding noisily. It sounds a bit like a clogged garbage disposal, stuck on many layers of bone, sinew and muscle it can't easily digest.
Ash doesn't hear it — or much of anything, really. Not the roar of the chainsaw's engine or the way it sputters before it finally stalls out, not Quentin's screaming, not Cheryl's gurgled cackling. Were it not for how raw and ragged his throat feels, he wouldn't even be aware that he's screaming.
But he stops, winding down the same way the blade does. It finally ceases spinning, and Cheryl's body falls forward. Ash watches her head snap up and open, revealing the pinkish-grey hue of her brain, before she hits the ground in a sprawled heap with a wet splat. It's a sound that's haunted Ash's dreams before; hearing it aloud offers an entirely new dimension of terror separate from all the nights he's woken up screaming.]
Cheryl?
[His voice is very calm, very quiet. His large brown eyes are like marbles set within a sheet of blood. Ash stares, almost dazed, waiting for Cheryl to get up. She doesn't.]
Cheryl? [he tries again, softer, his grip on the chainsaw's handle going slack. It falls out of his hands and lands on the ground somewhere beside his and Quentin's feet, in the pool of blood forming around Cheryl's body.]