Living in Twilight
By MarqueeMoonGirl
part FOUR
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"'August 6th, 1997'," Murdoc read from the guestbook. "'Frank and I arrived at the cabin late afternoon for a week-long rustic rest and relaxation in the mountains. What a delightful little cabin! After unloading the car, Frank wants to go out to dinner at a restaurant he heard about from one of the locals called 'The Place'. Let's see if we can get to the car without walking into those trees in the dark. I'll write down how our meal went when we get back. Josie H. '"
"So they went out after dark too. What happened to them?" asked Russel.
"Take a wild guess, Lards. The next entry is written in, I guess, the husband's handwriting." Murdoc said. "'I have to write this down. I feel like I'll go insane if I don't. Maybe I already am, I don't know. All I know for sure is that my wife Josie is dead.'"
The drummer and guitarist gasped again. "It killed her?" Noodle asked worriedly.
"'We were both waiting outside while I tried to unlock the door in the dark. We'd both seen the rules that say don't go outside after dark, but we ignored that one: it just seemed silly at the time.'" Murdoc continued by way of an answer. "'The lock was old and it took a while to open. I heard Josie give a little gasp, and I turned around. I'm still not sure if what I saw was real, but a horrible ghost-like thing was clutching her by her shoulders. She looked absolutely weak, but her eyes kept looking at me, begging for help.'"
In Murdoc's mind, 2D shuddered, remembering an unpleasant memory.
"'I couldn't move. Why didn't I move? I was scared. A ghost-creature had my wife. I'd never believed in ghosts, not even when I was a little kid. She couldn't move either, but I could tell that thing was doing horrible something to her. (Draining her?) Whatever it was doing to her, it was over in less then a minute. I could tell by the way she had suddenly wilted that she was dead, that it had used her up. I deal with death on an almost daily basis; I work in an inner-city hospital. I've grown used to it, or at least that's what I thought.'"
Noodle looked terrified.
"'The thing vanished, taking Josie's corpse with it. I rushed inside and locked the door, and then sat down on the sofa, thinking about what had happened and wanting to cry. I soon realized that I should've ran to my car and driven away instead, as the creature returned, without my wife, about half an hour later. This time I knew it was after me. For some reason, it couldn't enter the cabin; it would just drift in front of the window, looking at me. I kept the curtains open just long enough to draw a sketch of it, then shut them. Looking at that thing makes me want to vomit. Looks like I'm holed up in this dump until morning.'" Murdoc flipped past the drawing to find one more sentence written on the back of it in small letters. "'She's calling me, but it's still night: I'm going outside.'" He thumbed through the rest of the pages, but they were all blank. "That's all."
Noodle stared at the tablecloth, her face scrunched up in a miserable frown.
Russel gently patted her shoulder. "Noodle?"
"I'm…sorry, Russel-san." she said quietly and then ran to the sofa in front of the door and began pushing it out of the way.
"Noodle! No!" Russel grabbed the teenager away from the door. "You can't go out there!"
"Someone…Russel-san, someone needs me." She said, near tears. "I have to go. It could be Mr. Kyuzo! He could be in trouble! The Japanese government could've found out he let me liv—"
Grasping her shoulders and kneeling so he was at her eye level, Russel said slowly, "Listen to me, Noodle. Mr. Kyuzo isn't out there. It's the ghost, it's doing this to you. It wants you to go outside so it can take your soul. I know it's hard, but you need to stay here with the rest of us.."
The purple-haired girl looked at the floor, suddenly ashamed of herself. "You are right, Russel-san. I was not thinking logically." she said softly.
"Terrific. That thing can compel us to want to go outside." Murdoc said from the table. "Fuckin' thing's been toyin' with us all this time."
'...that's a bad thing, right?' 2D said.
'Hell yes it's bad.' Murdoc retorted, and then said aloud, "It might've pulled something like that on this guy." He held up the book. "He seems like a reasonably intelligent man; for him to leave the cabin during the night when he knows there's something bad lurking out there makes no fuckin' sense at all."
"That's true, man. We've gotta be really careful not to let our guards down." Russel suddenly looked tired and sat back down in the chair. "Jesus. This sabbatical bites."
"Yeah." Murdoc agreed, also sitting back down. "Next year, I choose where we go on vacation. And I'm thinking the Gates of Hell," he said.
Russel gave Murdoc a blank stare. "You're kidding, right?"
"Not at all. Their weekly rates are very reasonable, and they offer a kickass discount if you book early enough."
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'My baloney 'as a first name; it's O-S-C-A--" 2D sang in Murdoc's head.
'What are you; four?' Murdoc growled. 'Shut the fuck up.'
'But I'm bored.' 2D whined. 'There's nothin' to do in here and I'm tired of just watchin' all of you talk.'
---
It was approaching midnight as boredom began to set in for the rest of Gorillaz. None of them felt much like sleeping. Russel had taken an old paperback detective novel from the shelf in 2D's bunk and was lying on top of his bedroll trying to read it. Trying to focus on the book and not on the ghost-creature outside was harder then he'd thought it would be. Knowing that the cabin was not a refuge from the creature, that the ghost was teasing them by leading them to believe that they could wait it out until morning, when it could actually draw out any one of them anytime it wanted.
Sighing, Russel looked up at the Japanese girl to see how she was handling what had happened. Noodle was sitting cross-legged on her bunk, strumming her acoustic guitar inattentively and staring off into space. Meanwhile, Murdoc, in an attempt to temporarily forget everything that had happened on this trip so far, was slowly poring over a tall stack of skin magazines, direct from the airport terminal's newspaper stand, and was presently ogling Miss March.
2D had never been as mortified as he was then, knowing every dirty thought and every twisted sexual fantasy that ran through the bassist's brain as soon as he'd thought of them.
He gave the bass slayer a mental nudge to remind him of his presence. 'Murdoc, I love porn as next as the next fellow, but maybe we can look at something else?'
Murdoc's head snapped up, his mouth in a fierce glower 'For Satan's sake, give me some privacy, man!' Murdoc replied, furious. 'This is a fuckin' nightmare…' he added, shutting the magazine.
'At least you still have your body. Do you 'ave any idea what it's like just bein' a voice in someone else's head? It gets tiresome.' 2D shot back, somewhat annoyed.
'You have a fuckin' body, dullard. MINE.'
'But that's not the same.' 2D pointed out. 'Right now we're going halfsies on it.'
Backed into the proverbial corner,—by 2D, of all people—, Murdoc irritably grabbed his worn copy of 'The Wicker Man' from his open duffel. Silently fuming, he opened to the first page, but just glared at the text instead of reading it. Well, you're welcome to leave at any time, dickweed!'
There was a minute or two of uncomfortable silence, then 2D began to talk again, clearly upset. 'W-what if I can't, Murdoc? What if whatever we try to get me back in my body doesn't work? I don't even know what we could try. Or what if my body just gives out without me in there and there's nowhere for me to go back to, like Noodle said?' His voice began to break. 'I-I don't want to stay like this. I don't...' There was a miserable choked sob.
2D had just vocalized the bassist's own personal fear as well. Murdoc gritted his teeth as the singer began to bawl. He wished he could just strike 2D across the face like he typically did to get him to shut up. Unfortunately for Murdoc but luckily for 2D, the singer was in the one place the bassist couldn't beat him up. He'd have to try a different method: actually trying to console 2D. 'Look, 'D. Everyone's frightened. I mean, that ghost outside could probably make us all frog-march outside if it wanted, and that would be the end of Gorillaz.'
2D sniffed. 'Somehow, that doesn't make me feel better.'
'Shut up. I'm not finished.' Murdoc paused. '…Godammit! I forgot what I was gonna say.'
'That's all right, Murdoc. It was nice of you to try to cheer me up.' 2D said. 'But it's 'opeless, isn't it? As soon as that thing's tired of waitin', it'll force us to go outside. Then it won't matter that I'm not in my body.'
'What a cheerful thought.' Murdoc said. 'But we're not dead yet.'
Noodle's head turned to look at the covered window as a low, gasping moan came from outside. She glanced at her alarm clock. Midnight. The Japanese girl put her guitar down as the moan grew louder until it was a high-pitched shriek.
"Bloody hell!" Murdoc yelled, putting his hands over his ears.
'What about now?' 2D asked.
Noodle knew what she had to do. Her ears ringing and her eyes wet, she climbed down from her bunk and approached Russel. "Russel-san?" She had to yell to be heard over the ghost.
"Yeah, Noodle?" Like Murdoc, Russel had his hands over his ears.
The young girl looked at him for a moment, and then opened the chest pocket on her jacket and took out a small folded piece of paper. "There are three code-words written on this." She began. "The first one restored my memory. The second one will make me forget everything again." She blinked, and a small tear flowed down her cheek. "The third will turn me into an unstoppable supersolider, capable of destroying anything." She held the paper out to the drummer, refusing to meet his gaze. "It may be our only way out of this, Russel-san."
"Baby-girl, I'd rather die then have you sacrifice yourself for us." Uncovering his ears for a second, he pushed the paper back into her hands. "We're getting out of here alive. All of us."
A skeletal hand suddenly passed through the curtains, as if the glass wasn't there at all. The shrieks grew louder, and suddenly the hooded face of the ghost emerged from the window.
Inside Murdoc's head, 2D screamed in fear.
"Bright soul." It said in a raspy voice. "Why do you hide from me?"
END: part FOUR
MarqueeMoonGirl sez: Again, thanks for the reviews so far! Keep 'em coming. :D