A/N: Part TWO BEGINS. What the what? It gets weirdo weird on us now. We get to the castle and the nutso futso. Thanks for reading.
Stardust, my fantastic reviewer, in fact it does, currently, appear Leon is winning or has won? Or will keep on winning? Haha. Poor Chris is in trouble now.
And you'll see why soon enough.
This tale is seat of my pants peops. Please feel free to review with your thoughts or hell, suggestions, the castle is full of funky madness. Who should cameo in as a bad guy? What's in there!?
I don't know until I write it down. Honestly.
DISCLAIMER: RESIDENT EVIL IS SOLELY OWNED BY CAPCOM. ALL CHARACTERS USED HERE DO NOT RESEMBLE ANYONE LIVING, DEAD, OR UNDEAD. *cough*
Part Two: The House on Haunted Hill
Chapter One: In Which We Find A Boy Who Can't Drive, A Question of Who is Still Alive, and A Curly Tail
The Jeep raced down the road.
In the passenger seat, Jill sat cradling her gun. They were both dressed in black, like cat burglars or something. Like thieves. Like monochrome warriors. Leon wore a tactical vest and boots and gloves, black and black and black. Jill wore the same. In the back seat, Vicki, Heather, and Rebecca wore black turtlenecks and yoga pants and boots.
They absolutely WOULD NOT stay behind.
The Mod Squad apparently.
The dark road spread out before them.
Jill said, quietly, "I'll pick the gate when we get there. Stay together ok!? There's...a pig monster or something...around there."
Vicki jerked. Rebecca squeaked. Heather asked, hoarsely, "...a what?"
Jill nodded, "Yeah. Exactly."
Leon cornered the Jeep sharply, zipping along fast and desperately. "We're almost there. Jill, it'll be ok."
She glanced at his profile in the moonlight. "...you can't know that."
He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it, gently, "That surly old bastard is a bad ass, Jill. Remember that. He's not a baby. He's not a wimp. He's not some faceless dude in loafers lost in a haunted house here (*cough*). He's Chris Redfield. He can handle an empty castle with a crazy ex-wife."
Jill held her eyes on his face. He finally glanced over amid her silence. "What?"
"Why him? Why not you?"
Surprised, he glanced at her again, "I don't know, Jill. Do you?"
"No. She's trying to hurt me. Not you. Why?"
"Again...I don't know. When we find her, I'll find out, I promise you that."
"Where the hell has she been all this time?"
"I don't know that either." Quiet. Scary. He shook his head, "I don't know anything."
Jill closed her eyes, sighing, "Me either."
There was a brief flash of light of headlights from the other side of the road. Leon glanced at her again, "...you're mad at me."
Surprised. It surprised him to see it was kinda true. He blinked, watching her a little. She said, "...no I'm not. Watch the road."
"Why are you mad? You blame me for this?"
She shrugged. She shifted in her seat. "Watch the road, Leon."
"I am." He glanced back at her again, "Answer me. You blame me?"
"...she's your ex-wife."
He laughed, loud, and startled the girls in the back seat, "He fucked her in the bathroom, kid, not me. How is this my fault!?"
Jill huffed out a breath, angry now, "I don't know, ok? I don't think it's your fault...exactly. But how is any of this mine? Really? It isn't. But I still feel guilty. She took Chris to hurt me. She hurt me because of you. So, ipso facto, it's your fault too."
"...what the fuck? How does that make sense at all?"
"Watch the road, Leon!"
"I'm watching the fucking road, Jill. ANSWER ME."
"She followed you here! And now she has my best friend in the world! How is it NOT your fault!?"
He started to shout back at her.
And from the back seat, Vicki shouted instead, "OH MY GOD!"
A flash of light.
He jerked the wheel.
It didn't matter.
The semi hit them broad side. The world was white and light and fire. It was screaming metal and screaming people.
And darkness.
There was a snuffling near her leg. She jerked. She racked her head on the ceiling and gasped.
She was in a tiny cage.
She was in a tiny dog...kennel.
Jill blinked.
She shifted.
She touched the bars of the kennel.
The room around her was nothing but horror.
It was hanging carcasses of meat. It was blood, old and new. It was pieces of offal strewn along the floor and sinks filled with rusty tools. Scythes on the wall, axes piled in the corner, screwdrivers and saws and knives. Three eye balls were laying on the floor outside her kennel...looking at her.
Jill made a small sound of fear.
The room was mostly stone. It was old and musty and smelled damp like a basement.
She could make out a crusty window high above the floor covered in mold and three layers of dust.
Jill closed her eyes. She opened them again.
She closed her eyes.
She opened them again.
Still there.
Still here.
Still where?
A nightmare.
The snuffling near her leg had her jerking again.
But it wasn't a pig monster.
It was a dog.
It was a pug dog.
It had big eyes and was watching her. It's fawn face and black mask was curiously gazing at her. She gazed back, considering. "...who are you?"
It's collar jingled. She reached tenderly forward. The dog let her check the tag: Bob.
"Bob?"
The pug perked up, licking her face through the bars.
"Ok...Bob? Can you help me out of here?"
Bob the Pug looked confused. He licked her face again and panted. He actually kinda looked happy.
Cute and useless, figured.
Jill shifted to press on the door of the kennel.
It just...opened.
She blinked.
She blinked again.
She crawled from the kennel and rose.
She was naked.
Stark naked.
And flecked in blood.
Terrified, she started shaking. Bob the Pug came over and bumped her hand with his head. She clutched his floppy bacon ears and was comforted. "Right. No freak outs. No way. Where is Leon? Where are my girls?"
No response.
Did she expect the dog to answer?
Why not?
She was in a castle, it seemed, in a cellar filled with blood. She was naked and accompanied by a pug. Their car had been rammed by a semi in the middle of the night on the way to save her former boyfriend from the clutches of her current boyfriend's presumed dead sorta ex-wife.
It all made sense.
It made no sense at all.
Jill walked forward in the bloody dungeon, shaking like a leaf, freezing and hoping to find anything to throw on. She grabbed a knife from the pile of tools on the sink. She kept it in front of her as she eased toward the staircase that waited.
It was the only way out of the bloody dungeon.
With Bob beside her, she eased up the stairs, turning the corner and anticipating a pig monster at any moment.
At the top of the stairs, a single mattress lay on the floor with a book on it, a bowl of dog food beside it, and a sheet draped across the stained surface. She grabbed the sheet and fashioned it around her like a towel.
Why was she naked!?
She didn't want to know. She touched between her legs but she couldn't feel that she'd been...abused.
Terrified, she looped the sheet over her breasts in a make shift dress or something, and eased through the narrow hallway to the door that waited.
She pushed it open and peeped outside.
A garden.
Just a garden in the sunlight. Kinda in the sunlight. It was dreary, overcast, and brown. Brown like fall. Brown like the edge of winter. A large tree waited, shooting up high and proud with mostly naked branches.
Jill turned in circles, looking for threats.
But there was only the garden, a swirling staircase up to the second floor, a huge wall at least two stories high to stop her from climbing to escape, and the door she'd come from.
Apparently, it was up the stairs or back to the dungeon.
Jill hurried up the little stairs to the next level of the castle. She tried to take in the whole thing as she went but it was impossible. It was enormous. It was a tower of fear. It was stone and steel and bloody body parts.
Horror beat in her blood as she eased into the door that waited.
No pig monster.
Just a bedroom.
Faded but clean, with a settee and a bed in good red and gold brocade. A four poster beauty of mahogany, it sat beneath an enormous portrait of a handsome man. He seemed to be watching her with big dark eyes and a moustache on a square jawed face. She shivered and moved forward toward the bed.
A door waited on the other side of the bed beside a ticking grandfather clock. A big mahogany wardrobe set by the wall near the foot of the bed.
Jill moved toward the door. She reached for the handle and it opened on its own.
Jill jumped back, brandishing the knife.
And Heather emerged. She was...kinda Heather. But not Heather?
She wore a maids uniform in black and white. She had her purplish hair braided and swirled behind her pretty face. She smiled, emptily, and laid some clothes on the bed. "Hello, mistress, the master has asked me to bring you...these things. For you...to wear for him."
She paused alot. She sounded...dumb? No. She sounded...like a doll. Like a doll.
"It would please him if you would wear it."
"...Heather? What the hell is wrong with you?"
Heather smiled emptily, "The master is good. You will be happy here."
She left the room without another word.
Jill stood blinking.
Bob woofed softly.
"Yeah...I feel the same way." Jill turned to the bed. The clothes were antiques? Something. A peasant top in white with fitted and flaring sleeves. A pretty little cameo waited in the center of the top near the square neckline. The lacy bottom spilled into a tiny fringed skirt beneath in rich sheer purple. Jill whipped off the sheet and dressed quickly. With no bra, it was boob city, but she preferred that over wearing a skinny little sheet.
She tucked her feet into the knee high buck skin brown boots that came with it.
Dressed, Jill moved to the wardrobe that waited by the wall. She eased open the door, hoping to find...something...anything useful inside it.
Nothing useful. Just a little hair tie made of silk.
She picked it up and turned to the small oval mirror hanging on the door.
She froze.
She stared.
She made a small sound of fear.
Her dark hair was ice blonde. She bound it with the hair tie in a sleek ponytail.
She touched it, trying to see if it was real. Was any of this!? She was terrified here in this castle. She was lost. She wasn't herself. Where were her friends? What was happening?
How did she get out?
Where was Leon?
Where were Rebecca and Vicki?
Where was Chris?
Why was Heather not Heather anymore?
Why was the basement cellar full of dead bodies?
Who's dog was this with her?
Was she the only one still alive?
She froze.
She put a hand to her chest.
She felt it like ice in her chest.
Were they all dead?
Aloud, she whispered, "...no."
Because her mind just wouldn't accept that.
She picked up the knife. She breathed.
And she opened the door into the hallway. The only thing she knew for sure? She wasn't going to wait in this room to find out.
She was about to find out if she was a hero. Since she might be the only here storming the castle to save the day.
Leon shifted.
It was dark.
It smelled like wet ass and rotten milk.
He blinked. His eyes adjusted to the dark.
He was bound to a chair in a dark room. The panic clawed at his throat. The dark was thick and deep. He couldn't tell if he was alone. He tried. He shifted and the lighter in his pocket reminded him that the dark wasn't always bad.
He'd loved Jill in the dark. Atop her, inside her, watching her eyes. The dark wasn't all bad. The dark didn't rule him.
He wasn't afraid anymore.
He breathed, checking to see if he could feel anything on him broken. Nothing. He had a pounded head but he seemed fine otherwise.
The room was nothing but dark and a door.
It opened.
Alyssa came in twirling a knife in her hands. "Hello handsome, thought you could escape me huh? Leave me in the woods to die?"
He watched the knife. He watched her face. "Hoped is a better word. Hoped. You crazy bitch, where's Jill?"
She smiled, all teeth, "Dead. Like you'll be soon enough. I'm gonna chopped off your dick and fuck you to death with it."
"Yeah? You can add it to my fucking balls that you already have in your trophy case, you malicious cunt. Untie me and let's see how god damn tough you really are."
Impressed, she eye balled him, "Not afraid?"
"Of you?" He laughed, lightly, "You kidding? That shipped has sailed, bitch. I owe you years worth of crazy. Untie me. And let's see what revenge looks like."
She shrugged. She stepped forward and cut his hands free.
She put her mouth next to his ear, "I enjoyed her screams while I killed her. I stuck my knife in her pussy and fucked her bloody for you. She squealed like a pig."
And he headbutted her.
Why not?
The world was a mess. His crazy ex-wife was now a psycho killer. Why not kill her?
She reeled. He rose and kicked the chair underneath the seat up into his hands like a baseball bat. He swung it, struck her broad side, and sent her into the wall like she was nothing.
She laughed, bleeding, and sprung off like a hell cat.
He hit her again with the chair when she grabbed for him and set her to all fours on the floor.
Alyssa spit blood, her perfect face a mask of blood. "You never loved me like I deserved, you arrogant little shit. Your perfect fucking face, your perfect fucking body...your perfect fucking dick...all hiding something ugly and horrible beneath it. A liar. A fool. A cuckhold worshipping a girl who'll never love you. Once a fat kid, always a fat kid huh Leon? You think I can't see what's under that perfect face?...a fucking coward. A LOSER!"
He hit her again with the chair. He lifted it over his head and brought it down on her while she crawled.
She hit her belly, laughing, grunting with it as the chair shattered into splinters and mess. She rolled over as he grabbed her hair to finish her off and slashed at him with the knife. It caught his forearm and split it open. He knocked it out of her hands as she reared to stick it in his throat.
And he punched her so hard in the face it broke her teeth around his fist.
She went down on her back, still.
Out.
He was panting.
Shaking.
Breathing hard and fast.
He was lightheaded.
He dragged her by her hair and bound her hands and feet in a hog tie with the bonds she'd cut off him. He grabbed her knife from the floor.
Jill wasn't dead.
She wasn't dead.
She wasn't dead.
He kept saying it. He kept feeling it.
He was going to find her. He was going to save her. He wasn't a coward. He wasn't a loser. And he wasn't a kid afraid of the dark anymore.
He eased open the door to find a kitchen. It was a huge one that reminded him of an inn in medieval times or something. A huge brick oven, smoking and throwing the smell of roasting meat into the air. A long table fixed with herbs and vegetables and fruit. A few stools littered around and aprons hanging on pegs by the far door.
He eased forward, clutching the knife.
There was a rustle of sound.
He heard voices. He turned, he glanced around desperately, and he jumped into the narrow pantry that waited. He kept the door cracked and held his breath.
The door opened and Chris Redfield entered. Leon almost opened the door. Almost.
But his instincts said NO. DON'T. DON'T.
Chris tilted his head, listening. He wasn't alone. Heather was with him.
They walked to the door of the room where he'd been captured. They opened it. There was the sound of talking. Alyssa, shouting now, "He's GONE! He escaped!"
He watched them emerge back into the kitchen. "Find them! You fucking stupid fools! FIND THEM!"
Heather smiled emptily and went for the stairs beside the oven. Chris continued to stand there clutching something in his hand. Alyssa slapped him, and the big man did nothing but stare at her. "You imbecile! You moron! You idiot! Give me that thing!"
She grabbed the thing in his hand.
And the big man finally moved. Redfield twitched like a fly had landed on a horse.
He put his palm over her face and squeezed. She shrieked as he lifted her one armed from the floor to dangle her by her face. "PUT ME DOWN! YOU BUFFOON!"
He threw her. She went over the table, scattering fruits and vegetables. She dropped the thing she'd taken from him.
He knelt and picked it up, cuddling it like a child with a teddy bear. He stroked it's little yarn face. A doll?
Chris Redfield was playing...with a doll!?
He smiled at it, happy. He looked...stupid. Slow. Retarded? Yeah. He looked mentally retarded. It was FRIGHTENING.
And he whispered, "My dolly."
Leon narrowed his eyes at the doll in his hand. It was small and cute. It had on a dirty blue ball cap.
Leon stopped, breathing, the dolly. THE DOLLY. It was familiar alright.
The dolly was Jill.
From the floor where she rose, Alyssa shrieked, "GO FIND YOUR DOLLY, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! NOW!"
And the big dumb former asshole of a boss, went for the door playing with his dolly.
Leon blinked. He was shaking. He was afraid.
Ok? Yes. He was afraid.
What the fuck was this place!?
Go find your dolly, the cunt said. Go find your dolly.
One thing was at least true in this house of horrors: Jill was alive. Jill was Redfield's "dolly". Heather was a puppet. Alyssa was a psychotic bitch.
Where was Rebecca?
He didn't know.
But Jill was alive.
And he wouldn't stop until he found her.
He just hoped he found her before the hulking empty eyed shell of Redfield did.
He didn't want to know how Chris would play with a life sized dolly. He didn't want to know what he'd do to Jill.
And Leon was pretty sure it wasn't going to be a tea party.
