My first Resi/scary fic. I hope you all enjoy the first chapter. Please read and review (it starts a little slow but by the second chapter, we'll have plenty of action!)
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Groaning; I opened my eyes. I instantly shut them again as light painfully jabbed into them and increased the already painful headache that was starting to reveal itself to me. I took a moment to use a trick my uncle had taught me; focus on the pain and concentrate, hard, on its source. The source, I realised, was a painful patch on the back of my head. I must've hit it on something. Typical; I'm always injuring myself out of clumsiness, I thought. I finally found the strength to open my eyes; and found another face staring down at me: short(ish) brown hair, eyes like twin pools of green ocean and a small, appealing nose and mouth.
"…meh…what happened…?" I sighed.
"Don't you remember?" she asked; voice little more than a whisper.
"Remember what…?" I asked. I trailed off as a sat up and looked about myself. I was lying on the floor of a bus or coach. The seats around me were completely normal, but up to four rows behind the driver's seat, they were mangled and crushed: pushed up against the inside front of the bus where it had crumpled around a tree. I groaned again: this time from exasperation. Just my luck to be involved in a crash on my last day of high school….
"Can you stand?" the girl (well young woman, really. We were all fifteen or sixteen in my year).
"I can try…" I muttered "work with me here…"
--
With a little help, I levered myself to my feet and leaned on a seat beside me for support. The girl looked me up and down (rather judgementally) and I shifted uncomfortably. Her eyes settled on my own, murky brown pair for a moment. I looked down at myself: I wore a pair of dark blue jeans, a keychain and a black t-shirt saying 'fast-food' (featuring a dog chasing a cat). My hair used to be long, but I'd had it cut the previous weekend so it was very short (around two or three millimetres thick) which is not very long. The girl's hair was rather eccentric and 'emo', with pink highlights. Her Black jeans were slightly scuffed from kneeling beside him, and her figure-hugging pink t-shirt was half-hidden under a little black jacket.
The strange thing was; although memories of the crash were beginning to filter back into my mind, I couldn't remember her being there or who she was.
"Who are you?" I enquired, bluntly. I tried to be polite but sometimes (as with my actions) I could be rather clumsy. I wasn't really a sociable type. She didn't seem to mind, however. She smiled and answered:
"My name is Kathy." Her voice seemed to be returning. It wasn't a girlish or squeaky voice; she was confident and this showed in her voice, along with a hint of melancholy sadness. I deemed that she was hiding something.
"I'm Mike; Mike Taylor." I told her. Now that I had told her my name, something seemed to click in my mind, and I remembered her now: a quiet girl who had been sitting at the front of the bus when it crashed.
"I thought…" I began, out loud.
"Thought what?" she said innocently.
"I could've sworn that you were thrown out of the front of the bus in the crash. You went right through the windscreen."
"And how did you see that? Were you staring at me…?" She seemed suspicious and flirtatious at the same time, her eyes sparkled at me. I fumbled with words again:
"N-no, I just happened to glance over at you when we crashed…" I muttered.
"Well maybe I did. I can't remember much. I probably got up and climbed aboard again." She sighed and I noticed a small bruise under her hairline, from an impact. She probably had amnesia.
"We'd better help the others…" I sighed. I suddenly realised that there was something seriously wrong here: we were the only two people on the bus. Belongings and articles of loose clothing were strewn around but there was no-one else and no people for that matter.
"Where is everyone?" I exclaimed; suddenly scared. It was sunset outside, and I couldn't see very far on all sides. The bus had somehow ended up in a wood. All around; tall imposing trees gazed at us, and the ground was thick with fallen leaves. There was a visible path, some kind of animal track, which wound its way between trees and off into the woods. Behind us, there was a steep embankment (and I mean steep! It was almost vertical) which we had driven from. By some miracle; the bus had remained upright, all through its ordeal.
"Good question." Kathy muttered, looking around as though she, too, had only just noticed the lack of survivors or bodies.
"I'd better call 999…" I sighed. Kathy shook her head dismissively and held up a mobile phone. The signal bar was empty.
"There's no signal anywhere in this bus, or within ten metres of it. I've tried."
"Maybe we could climb the embankment to the road."
"Too steep…" she dismissed. I felt a lump rise in my throat; I was scared.
"Maybe we could follow that trail. It might lead to a hill or somewhere with signal…" I suggested. Kathy smiled, warmly.
"I guess that could work. Let's go…"
--
We struggled with the emergency rear door but it was jammed, and there was no hope of getting out through the front; that was lost in a mass of metal piping and ruptured seats.
"How did you get in and out?" I asked her. She sighed, guiltily and held up a broken tree branch.
"The skylight: there was a tree branch sticking in and I climbed out, but when I came back in to check if you were awake yet, the branch snapped."
"No worries…" I told her. I'd seen something.
I picked my way to the front of the bus and reached into the driver's compartment. There was an emergency fire-axe in a glass case that had (by some miracle) survived the crumpling of the front. I reached into the already-broken glass case and unhooked it. It was heavier than I expected, but I soon got used to it after a couple of swings in mid-air.
"Move." I instructed Kathy, returning to the back. She sat on a seat and I swung, hard, at the rear door. After three bone-jarring blows, the flimsy metal buckled and was smashed off its hinges.
"Nice one." Kathy congratulated, genuinely admiringly. I flushed slightly: I'd never been the sportiest of guys. Although I sometimes went running e.t.c (the bare minimum to stay healthy, really), I never played football or anything else if I could afford not to. This resulted in me being pretty weak when it came to, for example, swinging axes at doors.
"Are we going?" she asked, as I hesitated by the door.
"One minute." I said, suddenly. I ran back to where I had been sitting on the ride and grabbed my bag. Inside it was a bottle of soft drink, a couple of packets of crisps and my phone, which was currently on standby mode. I slung it across my back and, letting the axe rest comfortably in my right hand, I hopped out of the door. Kathy exited the coach, too.
--
Outside the coach, it was beginning to become darker. The sunset was drawing to a close and the trees all around us cast long, menacing shadows across the forest floor, and our feet crunched the thick blanket of dry leaves underfoot. Around us, the woods were eerily silent. There was no sound of any animals or people. Even the road (at the top of the steep incline) was silent. That was weird: there had been several cars around shortly before the accident. I looked back at the bus, and found that the front was bent round, almost in a 'horseshoe' shape around a thick oak tree. The tree itself had not moved from its position at all. Sparks still fizzled from the ruptured blue bonnet of the vehicle, and I heard the patter of oil dripping onto the leaves below it.
"We need to get further back from the coach: it could go off at any minute" I whispered. I don't know why I was whispering but it seemed natural in the silence of the woods. She nodded and we began to follow the track to the east of the wreck. All around us, the trees stretched off in every direction except back, by the wreck, where they abruptly stopped at the roadside. Also despite the silence, there was the feeling of not being alone. Sure, Kathy was there, pale-faced and tired-looking, at my side, but this was different. It was like there was some kind of presence here in the forest. I shuddered.
"You feel it too?" Kathy hissed, concerned. I nodded.
"There's something here…" I told her, quietly.
"I know. Let's just see where this leads."
Eventually, as predicted, the path curved upwards and we soon found ourselves atop a small hill. There were no trees up here, and we took the opportunity to get our bearings. We could see the road, but there seemed to be no cars or lights whatsoever along it; as far back as we could see. In the distance, I could just about make out some apartment blocks in the city (our destination), but it was difficult because night was setting in. I took out my phone and dialled the emergency services number. It was re-assuring to hear the loud dialling tone in the silence, and then slightly eerie, as it kept ringing for a whole minute or two before finally there was a click and an automated message began to play:
"We are sorry, but your call could not be connected: this number has not been recognised."
I stared at the phone. By Kathy's expression, she had received the same message.
"How can you not be connected to the emergency services?" I said, exasperated.
"Yeah; and how can the number not be recognised!? What's complicated about 999?"
I smiled at Kathy's outburst.
"What's funny?" She barked, making me jump out of my skin. "I don't think our situation is funny in the slightest!"
"Nothing, I was yawning." I muttered. Mentally, I cursed myself for such a crap answer, but she seemed to go with it.
"Well whatever. I've tried a couple of other numbers but they're all the same: 'not connected'. What now?" She asked. I shrugged, but then I spotted something in the trees not far off, on the other side of the hill.
"There's a house over there." I told her. She turned and, true to my words, there it was.
"Let's go use their phone. If that doesn't work…we panic." Kathy muttered, half to herself. I smiled at that.
"Okay. It's getting dark and I don't want to get lost in these woods, they go on for miles by the look of things. Let's head to the house.
We continued along the path, into the trees towards the old, cracked slated roof that was just under half-a-kilometre into the trees.
--
There was definitely something watching us; I was sure of it by now. I couldn't figure out what but it felt like something huge and nameless, ancient and it was everywhere. I shuddered again and swung the axe up into a two-handed grip.
"How old are you, Mike?" Kathy said, breaking the silence. I was glad of the distraction from the situation.
"I'm seventeen in two weeks; you?"
"Sixteen." She said, matter-of-factly.
"Why do you ask?" I asked her, suspiciously. She shook her head:
"Just wondering."
"I see."
We stopped as we came to the gates of the front garden. The brick wall that surrounded the house, though covered in ivy, looked sturdy and the only way in that we could find was the large, ornate, iron gates that were around twice our height. These were made up of carvings of plants cast in solid iron, and were not locked, but strangely enough; someone had pushed a wheelbarrow and a couple of garden chairs up against the inside to form a crude barricade or something. The sight of this drastic measure taken to keep outsiders out set my skin tingling, but we simply shoved against them a few times and the chairs and barrow gave way and we entered. The garden itself was not wide but rather long. It was around fifty metres to the front porch of the house, but the walls were only ten or so apart. The cracked flagstone path led us past old, dying plants, over the weed-infested lawn and up to the wooden steps at the front of the house. The house itself was not exactly a forest or country mansion. It appeared to have three floors (four counting the attic) and was large but not big enough to qualify as a manor. We ascended them and saw the front door. It was old and rotten, but firmly locked (we tried the handle) and rusted in place. I knocked a few times but there was no reply. I took an experimental swing at it with the axe, but the door simply rattled and the tool bounced off the wood and causing flakes of light blue paint to flutter down like azure snowflakes. The door seemed to be locked and barricaded from the inside.
"Damn." I grunted; tugging the axe free from the slight nick it had made in the thick door.
"It's weird how they've gone to all that effort to barricade everything. What's so precious that they need to pile furniture up against their front door to stop people getting in?" Kathy mused. I slumped against the wall, head in hands.
"Don't act like that." She hissed, suddenly angry. I jumped again as she broke the silence.
"Kathy, we're lost. We can't just wonder round in the forest all night trying to get to the road again. It's dark already and there is no way into this house which probably doesn't even have a working phone!" I snapped. She smiled and pointed above our heads to the roof of the porch. A single bare bulb was casting an orange spotlight over me and the door.
"There's electricity." She told me. "Besides, there is a way in."
She walked over to the side of the porch and pointed. I got up and looked down at the garden next to the wooden decking. Beneath the weeds that churned up around the front wall of the house, there was a trapdoor. A cellar!
"We can't just barge into someone else's house!"
"You said it yourself; this place is derelict." She said, hand on hip.
"Actually, I don't think I did say that-" I began.
"Do you want to get help or not?" she sighed, head in hands.
"Fine…" I replied, hefting the axe and hopping over the railing to the lawn below.
I raised the axe above my head and brought it down with a clang on the chain that held the doors shut. After two blows, the rusted chain snapped and the doors fell open. A cloud of dust billowed from the hole before me, and I could've sworn I saw a figure dart into the shadows in the room below me.