A/N: This story, at the time I'm writing this, already has over a hundred views. Guess this fandom is really big, huh? Anyway, story time! Hope you like sardonic humor…
Chapter 4: The Scarred Wraiths
I woke up to stinging pain in my left arm. I groaned and sat up, leaning against the wall of the room I'd been sleeping by. It wasn't anything new. Every night I'd woken up at least once to the wound, and every time I'd regretted not bringing my first aid kit. Sometimes I was concerned water hadn't been enough to clean it out, but judging by the fact that I could still use my arm at all, I'd done a well enough job to be mostly functional. But tonight, when I rubbed my arm over the bandage, my hand came away wet. At first I panicked, because I thought I'd managed to reopen the cuts and now I was bleeding out. But it felt cold, and when I brought my hand into the light, I saw the substance was black. It was ink.
Now I was confused. This was the one room I'd seen that hadn't had ink drips anywhere, and looking around now, I still saw none. Had I gotten ink on it yesterday and just hadn't noticed? But it wouldn't still be dry then, would it? My arm throbbed again and I grunted in pain. On the other side of the room, Bendy stirred from reading his book (I had no idea where he'd even gotten it, only that he'd produced it a few days ago after another mapping excursion), noticing I was awake. "Somethin' wrong?" he asked, sounding genuinely concerned. I shook my head, picking my jacket up off the floor and putting it on. "No, just my arm again." I put the ink stain out of mind. Whatever it was, it was probably unimportant. Walking over to the food corner, I pretended to be scrutinizing my choices. "Should I have soup, soup, or soup? What do you think, Bendy?" Bendy chuckled. "I'd go with soup."
"Excellent choice, buddy," I said, reaching for a can. I handed Bendy an inkwell (after he told me that even though he could eat and drink normal thing, ink was all he really needed and was better for him, I'd stocked up on it from supply closets) and after we were done eating, we packed some supplies and headed out. "Alright, we're going down a level, right?" I nodded. "We've mapped the whole floor and it's the only stairwell that isn't blocked or flooded. Hopefully we'll find another stairwell that goes further down, or better yet, up."
"Sounds good to me," Bendy said. He slung his Gent pipe over his shoulder, and together we headed towards the stairwell.
We arrived and headed down to the next floor without incident. We began mapping the area around the stairwell. Down one hall we found a massive statue of Bendy, which he said was because some of the workers worshipped him. "I try to avoid those ones. Usually they're more than a little crazy… especially Lawrence. God, I hate him." I didn't ask who he was talking about, but I made a mental note to look into it later. We kept going, hacking down the ink torso things - Searchers, according to Bendy - relatively easily.
After a couple hours, we took a break, looking over what we had. "I think we should go a bit further before heading back." Bendy nodded. "Yeah, I think there's a supply closet a bit further down that way." He pointed. I stared. "How do you know that?"
Bendy shrugged. "I'm not sure. I told ya, I know some stuff about the studio. Mostly it's when I see something, I just remember stuff about it. Probably from my soul donor. But other times, it's like… I dunno… like I'm in some place in real time, seeing what's going on."
My eyes widened. "The cutouts. You can see through the cutouts." Bendy shrugged again. "That's probably what it is, yeah. I've never tried doin' it on purpose, though. Gives me one hell of a headache." I processed this for a moment. "We should get going," I said after a bit. I got to my feet and we kept going.
After a few more minutes, I was ready to head back. I turned to Bendy to tell him and froze. Standing at the end of the hallway behind him was a humanoid figure, and as it got closer, stalking forward, I saw more detail. It was made mostly of ink, with gleaming blood-red eyes. Its face resembled a skull, and the teeth were actually white. With a jolt, I realized that those must have been the person's real teeth. Then I noticed sharpened white bones sticking out of various places, looking like they'd been turned from painful handicaps into weapons. One such bone was jutting out of the back of the figure's right wrist, which was raised threateningly. "Bendy," I said, "we need to run." He turned to see what I was looking at and paled. "That's not good," he muttered, before we bolted down the hallway.
I heard a scream, similar to the Ink Demon's but sounding disturbingly more human, followed by quick footsteps chasing behind us. To my horror, every couple minutes I would hear another scream followed by more footsteps. The creature had been calling for help, and now others like it were pursuing us. This is not good. I saw a door on the right and, grabbing Bendy by his wrist, I dove into the room, slamming the door behind us. Bendy pushed a bookshelf in front of the door as slamming noises began to emanate from the other side. Bone spikes shot through the door, before being pulled out and thrust through somewhere else. They were breaking down the door. I backed away from it only for my back to hit a desk.
After a few minutes, however, the bone spikes stopped appearing, and the noises of the monsters faded. Sighing in relief, I turned around… and saw another one in the corner of the room. I screamed and backed away. "Wait a minute," Bendy said, "I think this one's dead." After a moment, I realized he was right. It was slumped against the wall, unmoving, and its eyes were dim, not glowing like eyes of the ones outside. There was a hole in its chest, presumably the cause of death. I approached it, looking it over. I noticed that the bones were jutting out in the exact same places as with the first one; elbows, knees, shoulders, backs of the wrists. Why would that be if the spikes were random, a result of a not entirely successful transformation? Unless… I looked closer at the areas the bones came out of and paled.
On the inky skin of the creature were stitch marks. Someone had made these things like this, deliberately tore their bones out and left them like that. "What the fuck…" I gasped. Bendy leaned over my shoulder and gave a noise of surprise and disgust. "Well… I gotta admit, that's a new one." I stood up, turning to the desk I'd bumped into before. Maybe there was something in here, from whoever had killed the thing. I opened one of the drawers to see a tape player, an old one from the time period the studio was operational. I hit play.
"Day five of our evaluation. After several vivisections of various ink beings, we have determined about 40% of the humanoid ones still possess some sort of skeletal structure. To determine whether or not this is functional or purely vestigial, a remnant of their human forms, we moved several bones from their structure. Some of them expressed discomfort and a few others attempted to kill themselves. Most of them appear to have gone insane, becoming extremely aggressive. A total of fifty humanoids were operated on. We've taken to calling them Wraiths. Will continue to monitor behavior."
I stared at the tape, processing the information. One of the excursion teams that Bendy had talked about had done this. They really had been treating this place like some sort of lab experiment. Anger boiled in my chest. I picked up the tape to throw it in anger and noticed a note taped to the back. It was stained with ink, but I could clearly read it.
"We have been gifted we must share this gift pull out their insides they will join us and together we will call upon Him and he will save us if we convert the sinners convert convert convert"
The note trailed off there. Now my anger had been replaced with terror. The man had said most of them had gone insane, but it was one thing to hear someone speculate that and another to see proof firsthand. Not to mention I had a feeling I knew who "He" was. Specifically, "He" took the note from me and read it, his expression becoming even more concerned. "Welp," he said after few moments, "these guys sound fun. Looked fun too. Somethin' tells me they ain't gonna be reasoned with." I gripped my ax tighter.
And then, suddenly, a vent cover on the floor burst outward, and a black hand with a white spike jutting from the back of its wrist gripped the side of it. The Wraith began to pull itself outward, staring with its unblinking red eyes as we watched it, frozen in shock and fear.
And then it lunged.