Drip. Drip. Drip.
It was like the damn tap was mocking her. Tori really wished Beck was home right now. Instead she was here, alone. She placed her hand carefully on the wall and felt for her light switch as she descended the stairs to the basement. She wished she'd never let Beck talk her into buying this place. He'd said it had character, and while it was pretty sometimes, most of the time Tori thought it was damn scary. Today was one of those days.
Beck was out with Andre and he'd left Tori here on her own. Now she was pretty sure the basement tap was broken and if she didn't fix it now it would annoy her all night.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The tap went on and through the small window in front of her, the only source of light in the room, she could see the clouds begin to darken. It would be storming soon and she wanted to get out of this damn room before it happened.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It just kept going. Tori, having made it down the stairs, was trying to find the tap in the dark. There should still be a flash light on the bench next to the tap from last time Beck fixed it, so all Tori had to do was find it. Easier said than done.
The room was almost completely dark now and Tori had never felt so cold. She could hear the faint sound of Thunder in the distance and knew that in a few hours the storm would be over her head. But that wasn't what disturbed her. A feeling disturbed her. It was completely ridiculous but she felt like she wasn't alone. She felt like there was someone in the room with her. But that was ridiculous! ... Wasn't it?
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Maybe she should just leave it, she thought but her feet found their way forward anyway. She refused to be scared in her own house. There was no one here but her and she shouldn't have to feel so afraid in her own home. It wasn't going to happen. So she straightened her back and kept moving in the general direction of the dripping noise, hoping desperately that she would find her flash light all ready.
She was almost there, she could see the shape of the sink in front of her, like it was teasing her. But suddenly, she couldn't go any further. She wasn't sure why, but she just couldn't move. She couldn't. It felt like her feet were stuck to the cement floor of the basement, and her whole body was rooted in place. She looked around. "Hello?" She called and felt movement to her left.
She whipped her head around quickly to see something dart past. She wasn't sure what it was, it moved much too fast for that, all she knew was that it moved fast. The room grew colder and Tori's stomach felt like it was doing back flips. "Hello?" She whispered timidly and the shape whipped around her again. She tried to follow the movement as best she could, but the thing was damn fast. "Beck? Andre? If you two are pranking me, its not funny." The shape whipped past her again. "Guys?" She all but whimpered. The room felt like it was freezing. She shivered and hugged her arms to her chest. A feeling of terror was coursing through her veins and dread was pooling in her stomach. She'd seen horror movies that began like this and when she'd said that she'd wanted her life to be like a movie, this was not what she'd meant.
The room grew impossibly colder and Tori felt like she was going to faint. She felt movement behind her, but she couldn't turn around. Shivers were running down her spine and she was trying her hardest not to buckle on the floor and start crying. Betraying tears pooled in her eyes and she found herself shaking in fear. She could feel hot air, no hot breath, on her back and suddenly something touched her shoulder.
She cried out in shock and jumped up in the air, and around to face whatever had grabbed her. There was nothing there. But then.. then she saw something. It looked like a puddle. Must be from the broken sink, she thought and tried to convince herself that there was nothing to be afraid of. But there was something about the water that she couldn't ignore. It was thick, too thick to be properly conceived as water, and it was dark. Almost black, even. But something told Tori that if she were to shine a light on the puddle it would be a deep crimson red.
Horror and revulsion tumbled over her in waves and Tori found herself trying not to gag. The basement was filled with a stench that was far beyond anything she had ever smelt before. It was the kind of smell that made your eyes fill with tears and made you want to hack off your own nose. To say it was disgusting was a severe understatement and the smell was currently all Tori could smell in the room. She fell to her knees as the stench overwhelmed her and blinked back her tears to see a dark figure standing in front of her.
She wanted to scream, to yell until there was no breath left in her, but she found that she couldn't breathe. The stench filled up the entire room and burned her lungs. She choked severely and the figure in front of her laughed. It was a cruel and cold laugh, but it sounded familiar. It was male she knew that much, but she'd never heard anyone she knew laugh so coldly before. "Who are you?" She managed out in between gags and the figure stepped forward.
"Beck?" She choked in disbelief as his face came into view... only it wasn't his face. It had the same features as Beck's did, and it looked like Beck, but the features seemed too alien to be his. "Beck?" She asked again and the face smiled at her with a grim satisfaction. Its cold lifeless looking eyes were staring at her unblinkingly and Tori wished more than ever that she'd let the fucking tap drip.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It was still fucking dripping! It was surely mocking her now, wasn't it?
"Toooorrrriiiii." The thing groaned in a nasally rasp and took a step forward.
Tori took a step back. The stench was making her feel light headed and the last thing she needed was to pass out down here with this thing.
"What are you?" She choked as the smell got impossibly worse.
The thing opened up its mouth. It's teeth were rotted and it's breath smelled like rotting flesh. "Toooorrrriiiii." The imposter crooned and Tori noticed something hanging off to her left. It was skin. A whole lot of it. She could make it out just enough to see who it belonged to. Robbie? She wondered and had to tear her eyes away. Robbie was dead and his skin was hanging up in her basement. Tori's eyes filled with tears and she was sure she was going to pass out soon. "Toooorrrriiiii." It crooned again and brought her attention back to it. Tori kept backing up. The thing followed her every move and soon enough Tori's back collided with the sink that she had come down here to fix. It was still dripping. She pressed herself against the sink and the creature stopped just in front of her so that it's cold dead eyes were looking straight into hers. It was then that she noticed that the creature didn't have Beck's eyes, its eyes were red and they were glowing. It's teeth were jagged and menacing and the thing looked like it was just waiting for a chance to rip the skin right off of her bones.
She swallowed hard and pressed herself as close as she could get to the sink. She wished that it would swallow her up and hide her from this monster. She monster roared at her and involuntarily found herself jumping in fear. Her hand landed in the sink, which was now almost full, and found that her hand encountered a warm liquid. No, she thought as she pulled her hand out of the sink, please no! But as she lifted her hand to her face she saw that her hand was covered in the almost black liquid she found on the floor before, her hand was covered in blood. As she tilted her head up she realised that the tap had never been the thing that was dripping. As she looked up she could see Cat's lifeless body strung up like meat in a butcher's store her blood dripping out of her at a steady pace.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"No." Tori whispered and looked back at the monster in front of her. It was having fun with her, taunting her. Making her realise every little horror before it finished her off. It smiled nastily and turned away from her to flick on the light switch. It was then that she saw everything. The entire basement was covered in blood and the bodies of her friends: Cat, Andre, Robbie and even... oh God. "Trina?" She asked but of course the lifeless corpse gave no response. But that wasn't the worst of it. She thought as the thing came into view. She noticed little stitch lines on the arms and back of the creature. It took a while for her brain to process it but the creature was... no, no, no, no, NO!She felt her knees go weak. The creature was wearing Beck's skin!
She barely held back her screams and was only betrayed by the tears that ran down her face. The monster was pleased. He'd tortured her. He'd made her feel more pain in the past few minutes than she'd ever felt in her entire life. The skin walker took a step forward and Tori knew that this was it. She knew she had no chance to fight back, knew she could never win and didn't really know whether she wanted to. Her friends, her sister, and her soulmate were all gone, what was the point? She could hear the faint dripping of Cat's blood in the back of her mind and shut her eyes waiting for death to come. But it never did. Instead a loud bang, rang through the basement. It was so loud that Tori could hear it over the incoming thunder and she slowly opened her eyes.
The skin walker screamed a scream of uncontrollable rage and whirled around to the doorway where Jade was standing with a shotgun in hand. The monster charged at her and she shot it again and again. It's flesh burned where the bullets collided with it and Jade charged at it. She looked like an ancient warrior as she did so and Tori, despite their differences, had never been so happy to see anybody in her life. "Here!" Jade yelled and threw an axe in Tori's direction. Tori barely caught it and had trouble holding onto it as it felt like it weighed a ton. Tori's whole body was trembling as she joined the fray between Jade and the creature. Tori brought the axe down hard between the monster's shoulder blades, cutting through Beck's outer layer of skin with ease and burning the monster's skin where it touched it. But when she pulled the axe out she saw that it had done very little to the skin walker's skin underneath Beck's. "The head." Jade shouted as she landed another punch in the creature's jaw. She was wearing things on her hands that were like brass knuckles, only they were made of the same metal as the axe was and wherever she punched the creature it's flesh would burn.
Tori took a moment to wipe her sweaty palms on the legs of her jeans and took a deep breath as she waited for her chance. She knew what she needed to do, now she just had to figure out how to do it. Jade and the creature were feinting back and forth both switching between the offensive and defensive and the creature seemed to have forgotten all about Tori's presence. If she wanted to she knew she could leave now and never come back. She could leave Jade here and escape. But she knew she wouldn't. She didn't know how Jade had known to come to her rescue, or how she knew how to kill the thing, but the fact was; Jade was helping her, saving her. There was no way she'd leave her to deal with this now. Tori saw her opening to kill the monster and she took it. She swung the axe up in the air and brought down in the middle of the skin walker's neck.
The axe was sharp so the monster's flesh sliced apart with ease. Tori had a little trouble when it came to the bone but whatever was on the axe that burnt the monster helped her to cut though the bone. The monster's scream was deafening and sent tremors through Tori. Usually she would've been appalled to hear something cry out in this much pain but she found she took pleasure in hearing it scream. It was getting exactly what it deserved Tori thought as she brought her blade down on it's neck one last time, it killed the people she loved, it deserved to die.
Black ink like blood spurted out of the monster's neck and covered Tori and Jade. It was thick and it was the most putrid thing Tori had ever smelt. Just having it on her made her feel like she needed to have a thousand showers. The monster twitched once and then it stopped moving completely, it's red eyes going slack. Beck's face was almost no longer existent on the monster's body with Jade burning away most of his flesh to hurt the monster and somehow it was better for Tori that way. She didn't want to see his face on the face of a monster, she couldn't bear it. She looked at Jade, who still looked like some kind of ancient warrior, and dropped the axe. It was over. As much as it hurt, especially knowing she couldn't save any of the people who were now nothing more than mutilated corpses, she knew it was over now. "We have to get out of here." Jade said grabbed Tori by the arm. "Go upstairs and pack anything that you want to take with you, I'll take care of this. Go." Jade said and ushered Tori out of the basement.
Tori shivered as she walked up her stairs and got her things together. She knew she was never going to come back to this house and Tori didn't know what to think about that just yet. Her body was still filled with the adrenaline of the fight and the shock of seeing most of the people she loved hung up like Halloween costumes. She cleaned as much of the monster's blood off of her and she could and changed her clothes, all the while fighting off the urge to hurl. To think, she'd just gone down to fix a dripping tap, and this was how the night had ended up. It was mind boggling.
When Tori came down the stairs Jade was waiting for her. She'd cleaned the monster's blood off of herself too and was standing there with all of her weapons cleaned and reloaded. "Come on Vega. We only have a short while before the other hunters my dad called get here."
"Hunters?" Tori asked trying to understand what the hell that meant.
"I'll explain on the way out." Jade said with a sigh, "Now hurry up Vega!" Tori obliged and quickly followed Jade out of the house and to her car.
Once they were in the car and driving away from the house Jade started talking. "My family and I are called hunters. We hunt the things that go bump in the night. My parent's have tried to keep me out of the family business but I've still learnt things. I've learnt enough to know when shits going down and how to stop it. I knew as soon as Robbie and Cat disappeared that there was something going on. I just didn't know enough to act until tonight, I guess I wasn't too late after all." She looked sideways at Tori and then back to the road, "I take it you know what that thing was?" Jade asked and Tori nodded. It was skin walker, an evil being who murders its victims, takes their skin and assumes their identities.
"I thought so," She said and then sighed, "I'm sorry I wasn't able to save him Tori. I really am."
Tori said nothing and just stared out the window. She could still see the house on the hill that she and Beck used to call home. She couldn't help it when she started crying silently in the front seat. The life she knew was over, the people she loved gone, now she had nothing. Nothing but Jade West and her stories about hunters. She knew it was selfish, after all she was alive, but in that moment all she could think about was everything she'd lost in that basement. In a way she had died in that basement, because she knew she was never going to be the same again.
A/N: So I know that according to legend a 'skin walker' is technically a person with the supernatural ability to turn into any animal he or she desires but for the purpose of this story to work I changed it. I don't really know why I wrote this story, it was just a vague idea that came to me one day, but I hope you liked it and enjoyed reading it, despite all the gory bits. :D