Dread
Vincent awoke with strong feeling of dread in his gut.
He looked around the room he was in, and found nothing strange or out of place, but the feeling still persisted.
He slipped out of bed, and walked across the room, his pale skin aglow with moonlight.
He shivered slightly, noticing the air's cold pressure against his bare chest, leaving goose bumps on his exposed flesh.
He didn't bother to find a shirt, walked to the window and glanced outside.
The scene looked normal, like nothing had changed over the six-hour period of his slumber.
He opened it slightly, and took a great gulp of air, the scents of the outdoors tingled in his nose, but he smelled nothing out of the ordinary.
The feeling of fear grew sharply, and he instinctively reached for his gun, but didn't find it at his side, because he had taken it off before he had went to bed.
He looked around again, trying to feel out what it was that was causing him such discomfort, and again he found nothing that would arouse his suspicions.
He crept silently to his bedside table, and picked up his trusty handgun, its weight a small reassurance to his growing dread.
He cocked the gun, and slipped noiselessly out of his room, shutting the door with a soft, barely audible 'click', and walked softly down the hall.
As he went, he glanced around trying to find this invisible specter that was stalking his mind.
As he walked to the first door in the hall, he heard a slight sound of something brushing against something else, and he froze.
He felt the terror rise in his blood, but he didn't see anything in the hall, but he could have sworn the sound was so close to him.
He unfroze, and tried the door handle, and to his great surprise, it pushed open without any effort.
He froze again, not wanting to see what was behind the door, his mind drifting to thoughts of finding dead bodies, or other loathsome and horrid sights behind the door.
But as he hesitated by the door, he heard the rustle of something behind the door, causing him to jump back slightly.
"What is this? Why do I feel so afraid?"
Then something else caught his attention, and that was the small gust of wind that was blowing into the hall from the room, carrying a smell he had hoped that he wouldn't smell. He decided that he needed to look, that he needed to see what it was that he was so afraid of, so he pushed the door open with one quick push.
He eyes widened in shock, and he gave a gasp.
The scene in front of him was gross.
Blood covered the walls, and limbs where strewn around the room, reminding him strangely of a puppet shop he had once walked into when he was a Turk.
Two bodies where hung from the ceiling by their chests, for they had both been decapitated.
Vincent stared, and then he had a terrible realization, and ran over to the bodies.
He checked them, and found that neither of them belonged to Avalanche members, which made him give a sigh of relief.
Then he saw it.
On the desk in the corner, was one of the heads, and stuck in it with a bloodied knife, was a single piece of blood soaked paper, with a few words written on it.
"You all will die." It declared in a slanted cursive writing, that looked oddly familiar to Vincent, but he wasn't sure why.
Then he noticed that the breeze was coming from the window, which was opened, leaving the curtains to flutter in the wind.
"So that's what the brushing sound was." He thought, still not willing to believe that the two bodies in the room where really there.
He went to the window, and shut it tightly, locking it and turning back to find that the bodies still hovered in all their ghastly splendor from the ceiling, blood oozing onto the carpet.
He needed to warn the others, so he ran to the room across the way (Cloud's) and knocked loudly on the door.
He stood, and waited, listening to what was going on behind the door, and then heard a soft sigh, and a trembling voice cry out softly "Aeris", and then quiet sobs, and all he could do was stand there.
He tried the handle to the room, and it opened with a sigh, as he let himself in.
He looked down, and found Cloud tangled in his blankets, as if he'd been thrashing around in his sleep.
"No... Don't die... please!" Cloud muttered in his sleep, shifting violently enough to make him fall off the bed.
Cloud stirred a moment on the floor, but fell back into his nightmare filled slumber.
Vincent walked over to him, and placed a single hand on Cloud's shoulder.
"Wake up Cloud... I have something to show you..." He said, shaking the sleeping blonde carefully, so that he didn't hurt him.
Cloud moaned and turned away.
"Aeris... don't leave... me..." He cried, reaching out in his sleep, catching Vincent's pant leg.
Vincent shook him again, this time a little harder.
"Wake up buddy, please!"
Cloud grunted, and his eyes slowly opened.
"Uhh... Is that you mom?" Cloud asked, looking up at Vincent with bleary vision.
"No... It's Vincent." He replied, backing away from Cloud.
"What the hell are you doing in my room?" Cloud asked, his voice angry, yet grateful for being woken from his dreams.
"There's something I need to tell everyone... Come." He said, holding out his hand to help Cloud to his feet.
They walked out, and Vincent knocked on Cids door.
After six tries, Vincent decided that he'd just have to use the tried and true method of getting everyone awake.
He started to yell, and bang on doors, figuring what he needed to show everyone was more important than waking everybody up in the gentlest way possible.
Soon everyone was out of their rooms, and looking at Vincent with looks of hatred, anger, curiosity, rage or any combination of these.
"I have some bad news..." He said, shoving the door to the room with the bodies open, while the others looked on in their pajamas.
Everyone had very different reactions to what they saw.
Finally when all the commotion settled down, Barret looked at Vincent.
"What the hell happened here?" He asked, his gruff voice full of anger and other emotions that where hard to put names on.
"I found this when I went looking around... I had this bad feeling, and when I went to see what might have caused it, I found this..." He waved his hand at the bodies, and shook his head.
"There's a note on the desk stating that we 'will all die'..."
Tifa clamped onto Cloud's arm.
"Who do you think did this?"
Cloud didn't say anything; he just looked at the scene with an unreadable face.
"We should probably leave then." Red XIII said, his voice somber and quiet.
"Yeah... Let's get the fuck outta here 'fore we all turn up like them two..." Barret growled.
They called the cops, and then left the house, opting to get a train from Midgar to Kalm.
They packed quickly, and left on the first train that could get them out of town.
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At the station, the tired team boarded, and had a long ride to Kalm.
When they arrived, they found an inn, and checked in.
It was already morning, and the group was dead tired.
They went to their rooms, and slept fitfully until noon.
When they woke, they grouped up at the park, and discussed what had happened the night before.
"Someone's out to get us..." Vincent said, looking at Cloud.
"Looks like... We'll have to be careful from now on..." Cloud replied, shaking his head.
"What're we going to do about this?" Yuffie asked, her voice small and frightened.
Cloud looked at her for a moment, and then shook his head again.
"We can't do much, until we know what we're up against."
"Cloud's right... We don't know who or what is after us, and we don't know what's going on... We'll just have to be careful." Red said.
"There's gotta be something else we can do besides sitting around and waiting for them to kill us?" Barret said, anger flooding his voice.
"Barret... We can't fight something that we don't know..." Vincent said.
"We did that all the time... What with all those stupid monsters we've fought!"
"They where just mere monsters... Nothing intelligent like humans... We could beat them because we could out smart them..." Vincent replied.
"Bull shit! We killed those fuckers 'cause we're strong! No dumb ass git gonna get us!" Barret said, crossing his massive arms over his chest.
"Even still... If we aren't careful, then what ever, or whom ever it is that left those bodies in the house is going to kill someone." Cloud said.
Vincent nodded with agreement, and turned to the group.
"I'll stand guard at night, because I don't need much sleep. When we go places at night, take someone with you to watch your back. I would really hate for someone to get hurt..."
"That makes sense." Yuffie said.
"Let's get to finding the asshole, and kill him 'fore he kills us!" Cid muttered, the cigarette in his mouth bobbing up and down as he did.
"What?" Tifa asked, looking at Cid with a slightly confused look on her face.
"I said, let's kill this asshole before he kills us! I'm not waitin' around for him to get me... Fuck that! No way am I lettin' this piece of shit get me..."
"We'll just have to make do with what we've got. We can't just blindly search for something that could kill us... That would be a bad idea. Let's see what happens if we wait." Vincent suggested.
"I don't want to fucking die man! We sit around, and we're all going to be dangling from the ceiling by our armpits! Screw that! I'm going to leave if you dumb jerks want to sit and die!" Cid said, stomping off.
"We have to have someone watch him... I don't like the idea of leaving him alone." Vincent said, watching as Cid disappeared from sight.
"I'll go." Red said, and looked to Cloud for confirmation.
Cloud gave a nod, and Red XIII ran off after Cid.
"This is scary." Yuffie said, her brown eyes aglow with fright.
"Don't worry... We'll find out who did this and make them pay." Cloud replied his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
The group went to the nearest inn, and got rooms for the night.
As the moon slipped across the sky, they sat and waited in silence hoping that Red would return with Cid.
There was a tapping at the window, and they saw Red standing outside with a dull look in his eyes. They let him in, and he sat looking at the group with an odd look.
"I lost him... His scent just vanished..." He said in the stillness of the room.