A/N: So, I've recently started paving my way into Rose Red fanfiction, and I am loving every second of it. In the words of Anne of Green Gables, "there's so much scope for the imagination" within the story. This is my second attempt at Rose Red fanfiction. My other one is a series of one-shots being posted under one title, with chapters being posted every Friday until it's done. I wrote this story in such a way that if I felt compelled to write a sequel to Rose Red featuring the condos and the continuing evil, this would be the prologue to that story. However, right now, it's just a standalone story, but the creativity is brewing in my mind to possibly extend it. It all depends on how far I can plot it out in my mind.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters or ideas created by Stephen King. I borrowed them for the entertainment and amusement of my audience.
SUMMARY: The closure that had been denied him for so long had been found when he had seen with his own eyes the complete absence of that terrible house.
GENRE: Horror
RATING: PG-13
DATE: August 13, 2013
::~*~::
Rose Red Condominiums: Now Leasing! The cheap, plastic banner fluttered in the early autumn breeze as it hung from the newly constructed ten-story building. Steve leaned back against the grille of his Ford F-150, his eyes studying the brand-new condominium complex on the other side of the freeway. He was parked on the roof of a parking garage, finally setting eyes on the finished complex, something he'd avoided doing for so long, and would have continued so had curiosity not gotten the best of him. He sought to play it safe by keeping, what he hoped, was a safe distance. Wondering what had possessed the property group to christen the building with that ill-fated name, he shook his head at the folly of people. When Rose Red had stood as private property, very few people had been allowed in. Granted there were always trespassers; it came with the reputation, but Rose Red was, for all intents and purposes, closed to the public and had been for decades. While the house no longer stood, the reputation was still there and the property managers knew they would expect a lot of interested tenants for that reason alone and, when you were in the market to make money, you had to bank on where you could make that money the quickest. The name was their guarantee. Steve wished he had had the foresight to write that into the contract.
Staring at the complex, his mind drifted over the last five years, since that fateful weekend. It was funny how thirty-six hours of terror could instill five years' worth of nightmares into an individual. While the nightmares had become less and less frequent as time passed, they were still there. So often people spoke of dreams and nightmares and how they faded upon awakening, but he only wished he were so lucky. His nightmares stayed with him. The images burned into his memory as though they were happening right in front of him. He kept seeing their faces, but not as he first knew them…alive and healthy. No, he only saw them as corpses, with rotted and decaying flesh, skeletal figures, raspy voices…he shuddered in spite of the September heat. No more how hard he tried, he couldn't remember them as they had been, only as what they had become. He felt guilty, as though he were betraying their memory by not remembering them properly.
The survivors. He stayed in touch with them and they occasionally met for meals, each finding solace in the life found within the others. Sometimes they spoke of how they all met and the events that led to the bond between them, but mostly they just caught up on each other's lives since that weekend. Over the years though, some had drifted away. Cathy had made herself quite at home in the "Bible Belt" of the South, managing a small Christian bookstore. Emery, realizing for the first time in his life that he was now firmly in control of his own life, had sold everything from his childhood home, including the house itself, and had moved down to Portland, where he was studying accounting at Portland State University. Annie still lived at home, but Steve had used some of the money he'd received from the sale of Rose Red to pay for her schooling at the Gatt School. He'd even gone so far as to open a generous trust fund in her name to help with the cost for as long as she went there. Rachel had finally decided to move out of her parents' house. While she could list any number of reasons why, Steve knew that she wanted to give Annie some place to go where she could feel safe, and Annie was frequently found guesting in Rachel's small studio apartment when she wasn't at the school or at her parents' home. Steve felt a small twinge of guilt at his relationship with Rachel and how soon after that Memorial Day weekend he had started seeing her. He had waited for a few months out of respect for Joyce's memory, but how much mourning could he have expected to do for someone who had clearly shut him out of her life the closer she got to Rose Red? No matter how far they all went, when Memorial Day rolled around, they all met back in Seattle and memorialized the occasion by hoisting a drink to the memory of those who never made it out of Rose Red.
"Steve? Are you ready to leave?" Rachel's voice echoed softly behind him. He smiled at her soothing presence. They had come with him, but, sensing this was something he needed to do by himself, a form of closure that neither of them could fully understand, they had gone to an ice cream parlor on the street below to wait for him.
He turned around to see Rachel and Annie walking across the empty parking spaces towards his truck. He unlocked the doors so they could all climb in. Despite his initial misgivings about doing this, he came to realize it was what he needed. The closure that had been denied him for so long had been found when he had seen with his own eyes the complete absence of that terrible house. He only hoped that those who had gone missing within its twisted corridors, or died on its grounds, had finally found the peace they so deserved.
He shifted the truck into gear and turned it around, turning his back on his heritage once and for all. Unfortunately, his eyes couldn't quite leave it alone until it passed completely from his sight and the sight he found in his rearview mirror so startled him he almost drove the truck right into a lamp pole. Luckily, Rachel was so focused on making sure Annie was safely seated in the backseat that she didn't notice and, in the single blink of an eye, the vision was gone. Steve shook his head, wondering if his overactive imagination had played a cruel joke on him. He didn't even want to lend any thought to what awaited the future residents if the evil of Rose Red still existed. Rachel turned back around in her seat and smiled at him as she strapped her seatbelt across her body. He smiled in return, determined not to speculate upon the ethereal, white figure he had just seen floating in the window of an upper floor of one of the condos.