At it again, yes indeed. This is going to be a bit of a long-term project; an attempt to take the best of the Hellraiser films and rearrange them into one cohesive whole, while initially being as loyal to the original content as possible. Pieces will be put in different spots on the playing board, and obviously things will play out differently, but many characters are starting from the same place as they did in their respective films. I'm drawing mainly from films 1-4, with a little bit of 5 and 7, and ignoring 8 and 9 entirely.

This should be interesting. Alright, I'll shut up and let them do the talking. Please let me know what you think!


The walk to the car felt like one of the longest Kirsty had taken in a long time. It couldn't have been more than ten feet away, but the silence that hung in the air was suffocating, like a scarf caught in a pair of turning cogs. She kept looking up at the other woman and opening her mouth, then closing it again, glancing back at the doors further and further behind her. She'd done this three times before finally reaching the passenger door, and she got in without a word.

She had been promised it wasn't a long drive – 15 minutes at the most – but that didn't really help. Kirsty looked at the woman driving again and took a breath. She couldn't find any words in her thousands of questions. They piled on top of each other in her head, struggling to get out, pushing at her throat to the point of clogging it.

"I'm sorry about your father." Kirsty was pulled out of her circling thoughts and finally found her voice.

"I, ah, thank you. I mean, I appreciate…"

"It's okay, you don't have to talk until you're ready." The woman, Joey, smiled at her, that quiet half-smile Kirsty saw often from her father the weeks after her mother had died. "I can't imagine what it's like. Do you want me to put on some music?"

"That would be great, thanks." Joey turned the radio on to some summer station, and frothy pop bubbled out of the speakers. Kirsty wasn't paying attention to the words, but the background noise – the reprieve from the hospital's silence – was enough to help her find words again. "I do appreciate this, though. You didn't have to come all the way out here."

"I wanted to." Joey turned the volume down as she exited the parking lot and veered onto the highway. "We're both looking for people, and your story… your story sounded an awful lot like mine."

"How so?"

Joey didn't answer immediately, her eyes trained on the street. The roads were mercifully low on traffic, and they started for the address Kirsty had given her over the phone. Kirsty was looking forward to being home, and far away from the Channard Institute.

Finally, Joey spoke again. "One of my friends… her ex went missing a few weeks ago. She asked me to look into it."

"Because you're a reporter."

"I was a reporter." Joey changed the station. "Anyway, she asked me to look into it, and we did some investigating, collected evidence. We found this... we found something."

"You can't remember either?" Now Kirsty looked at her with less skepticism and more open interest. Joey shook her head.

"I remember it felt important, and it was small enough to carry. We brought what we found back, and she was messing with the one… the thing while I went out to get dinner. I came back, and…"

Kirsty could finish this part of the story. "Whatever it was did something, and there was a flash of light, and your friend was gone, along with the thing." Just like her father.

"You handled it better than I did," Joey said, offering another half-smile; this one seemed a bit more humorous, though. "Calling the police, I mean. I just ran out and started shouting her name in the streets. "Terri! Terri!" It was ridiculous." Joey laughed a bit and shook her head, but it was short-lived. She looked ahead, frowning. "I hope she's alright, wherever she is." Kirsty nodded; she had been hoping the same throughout her stay in the hospital.

They drove in silence for a few more minutes before Joey spoke up again. "I have a question, actually. Why did you post it online? Not that I'm not glad you did, but why not trust the police?"

"They kept trying to explain it away." She shook her head. "Said he must have been abducted and I'd gone into shock, things like that. They didn't believe me. I was just hoping somebody would know what I was talking about." They 18-year-old pushed a few strands of hair from her face. "They thought he'd struck me in the head and run off. But he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't."

"Neither would Terri. We'll find them." Kirsty felt a hand on her shoulder, and for the first time since her father's disappearance, she smiled a bit at the woman next to her.

"We will." She wanted to believe it. She would promise herself that; she would believe it, even if it took time. She felt more comfortable than she had in a long while, driving home with a stranger as the sun was setting.


Doctor Philip Channard was a man of science and inquiry. He dealt in questions, answers, and facts. These were the facts: Kirsty Cotton had checked herself into his institute following the disappearance of her father, Larry Cotton. Larry had gone missing from the attic of his brother's house. His brother Frank had willed it to him. Now Larry's wife Julia lived in the house alone, even though Frank wasn't dead.

Frank also owed the doctor a generous sum of money, as well as a particularly valuable box. The box had to still be inside the house, even if Kirsty insisted that she could remember nothing of what she'd seen beyond her father vanishing in a flash of light, and nothing suspicious being in the room after the event. She couldn't describe the box to him; she just referred to it as a "thing".

Doctor Channard allowed her to check out of the hospital after one more round of evaluations, routine and nothing of suspect. He watched her walk out with somebody she'd described as a friend, and although he had his doubts, he let her. She didn't know what the box could do; and while he suspected she might make fine bait for what lay within, it was too soon for him to make his next move.

The doctor looked through her file, the papers and exam results laid out on his desk. One form caught his eye, and he picked it up before reaching for his phone. He added a new contact, saved, and closed it again.

He would have to reach out to Mrs. Cotton soon.