Chapter 4
Shulk covered his mouth in horror and stumbled back in his chair. He made choking noises as he continued to stare at the now headless Lady Palutena. After what seemed like hours, he found the courage and strength to stand from his chair and hurry towards the exit for his escape. Thrusting his hands upon the handles, Shulk pulled with more force than was usually required. To his horror, the doors stood fast. Dark Pit must have locked it behind him when he had left! Equal amounts of fury and fear rose in Shulk's mind, but the terror began to take a firmer hold of the young man. Concern almost choked him when he thought about his friends. If the fortuneteller was dead the whole time, then what did Dark Pit do with his friends? What happened to his friends? Why did Dark Pit even lead them here? His pounding heart echoed in his ears as his mind searched frantically for an answer, despite it being unwanted deep down. The questions continued to bombard him until he finally took a deep breath to calm himself down. Shulk knew that in this situation, panic was the enemy and that composure was his ally. He couldn't run around like a headless chicken. He had to formulate a plan to get him, and his friends, if possible, out of here.
Shulk avoided looking at the decapitated woman as he began to search for a different exit. There was no such thing. At that thought, he had to inhale deeply to stop his rising panic again. There had to be another way out. There just had to, he whispered to himself. He felt the walls, disgust rising in his mind at how soft they felt. It was almost as if he was touching jelly that gave way with the slightest finger and pulsed in protest at the way it was being handled. As much as Shulk wanted to throw up right on the spot from the walls and woman, he bit his tongue lightly to hold it in. He continued to feel his way around, moving in a full circle until he was right on the fortuneteller's right side, and his fingers finally touched something that obviously was not wall from the hardness of it. Shulk's heart leapt as he outlined the rectangular shape of a door. Red like the walls around it, it blended in perfectly to deceive strangers that the door behind them was the only entrance and exit.
Though there were no knobs, Shulk still clutched onto the small hope that burned in such a despairing situation. He leaned against the hard door and pushed. The flicker of hope began to die when the door wouldn't give way. He tried to push even harder yet it still wouldn't budge. Hope gave way to fear as Shulk began to pound at the door desperately. He pounded everywhere on that door, the center, the corners, anywhere he could reach for. His fear of losing the right to live so early in his life caused him to shout in indignation and slam on the door even harder. His common sense deserted him when he began screaming meaningless words, words nobody was certainly going to hear.
"Help! Somebody! Help me! Let me out of here! Please! Help!"
Shulk continued to smash his fist on the hard wall. He shouted another word in desperation. Even as a deep voice told him there was no escape, the young man wasn't giving up easily. He just kept pounding away, ignoring the abuse on the wall.
The wall gave way. He yelped in surprise as it flipped forward, causing him to fall into the secret room. Before he could recover, the hidden door spun once and knocked him right inside before sliding to a stop. He rubbed his cheek where he had landed. Shulk then shook his head to clear the pain as he groggily stood up. The inky blackness wrapped around him, as if to comfort him. He blinked in reflex before realizing that the darkness had completed enveloped his vision, preventing him from seeing no more than an inch in front of him. Shulk reached his hands outward to feel nothing but chilly air and empty space. He surmised that he had entered another long hall similar to the one that Dark Pit had led him through. He then stretched his hands to the side. To his disgust, the walls surrounding him were as soft as the ones in the fortuneteller's room. Something about the material just made him want to wash his hands a thousand times and he could only satisfy that brief moment of mysophobia by wiping his hands on his shirt. The young man made a mental note not to lean to close to either side of the walls. He dreaded the moment when he would have to turn to continue.
Time a wasting, Shulk slowly moved forward. He was beginning the hate the silence that always seemed to accompany the house. It wouldn't leave him alone, and any attempts to dispel it were quickly proven futile. The carpet prevented even the comforting claps of his feet from reassuring him that there were any signs of life here. It continued to bug him, nip at his heels, and generally get on his nerves. Shulk never realized how much he missed the chatter of his friends until now. He found himself praying that they would be all right. Though he tried to convince himself that they were all right, he couldn't stop that little voice of doubt from planting that heinous seed.
He finally reached the turn. Much to his dismay, it was actually a fork. Dark Pit was graciously allowing the young man to take destiny into his own hands and decide his course. For some reason, Shulk didn't like that one bit. It was almost as if the fortuneteller's son was taunting him, pointing out that everything that happened was Shulk's fault and not Dark Pit's. He had the choice, and it just happened to be the unfavorable one. Shulk gritted his teeth and clenched his fists in anger before reminding himself to calm down. Blind anger in this situation would do more harm than good. He had to keep a leveled head if he wanted to get out of here alive.
"Should I turn left or…?"
Shulk quickly went right without much thought. He didn't want to second-guess himself and get into more trouble, if that was even possible. The right hall was just as long as the central, making Shulk wondered whether Dark Pit had an obsession with long halls. It really was becoming a nuisance having to walk all the way down one way in order to walk down another even longer way. The muteness didn't help at all.
Eventually, he came to a dead end. Shulk cursed quietly at the lack of light as he rubbed his sore nose. His blind eyes looked at the wall up and down. Unlike the usual walls, this one was hard. The young man traced his hands over until his left landed on a familiar object. Shulk took a deep breath to calm his screaming nerves. Be calm…be calm…and you would react accordingly. Giving the knob a twist, he pushed the door open so abruptly that anybody on the other side wouldn't be able to react in time.
If there was anybody in the room in the first place. Shulk blinked his eyes rapidly from the sudden, dim glow of a single candle. The darkness lightened somewhat from it, and the young man could barely make out the contents of the room. While one side was extremely messy with clothes spewed about from a vacuum cleaner on the red car-framed bed, the other side starkly contrasted it with a neatly made blue car-framed bed and clean desk. Toys were scattered on the carpeted floor, and Shulk noticed how two identical closets stood on either side of the door like sentries. Judging from the contents of the room, the young man surmised that this must be a child and their sibling's room, both most likely boys. Strangely, there seemed to be no other possible light source with the candle marking the middle of the room. Shulk cautiously stepped inside, every muscle in his body tensed and ready to bolt should the time demand it. His heart skipped a beat when his foot stepped on something hard. Shulk reared backwards, almost out of balance, but regained it quickly before he could make sort of noise that notified Dark Pit. He peered at the ground to see what almost gave him a heart attack. Expecting to see something grotesque, he breathed a sigh of relief when only a toy car greeted him. He nudged it towards the messier side of the room to avoid stepping on it again. The rolling wheels were stopped abruptly by a white, balled-up shirt.
Careful not to step on anything else, Shulk walked towards the lone candle. Though it was dim, it provided sufficient enough light to let Shulk get a sense of his bearings. He leaned down to pick it up. As he straightened, the fire flashed fangs at him. The young man shouted in surprise and fear, falling back to land on his rump. Thankfully he retained his hold on the candle or else he would have added "fire" to his list of anxiety. His heart pulsing in his head exactly one hundred and eighty-four beats per minute, Shulk's eyes desperately scanned the thing in front of him. He shuddered when the light reflected off of a pair of jagged fangs openly posed before him ready to bite him, yet his fortunate rational mind told him that if it had wanted to bite him, it would have done so by now. Shulk was able to look past it and see that it was an extremely realistic model of a raven with snake-like fangs. He wondered why he didn't notice it before, but the bird's eyes were glowing two beams of light pointed above him. Shulk knew he shouldn't have any more fear regarding that, yet it continued to creep him out.
"It's okay. It's just a bird with teeth," Shulk's voice sounded abnormally magnified in the tense silence as he tried to reassure himself. He stood up cautiously, keeping the candle in front of him just in case the raven model had second thoughts. He had to admit that the idea of adding snake fangs to a bird was a bit unusual. Little teeth along the beak was fine, but two long fangs? It made a weird-looking saber tooth bird.
He was about to leave when something gray barely stood out from the raven's black beak. Rolled up with a red rubber band, it quietly rested right in the curve of the beak, as if waiting for somebody to get it. The young man stared at it, regretting his natural curiosity. Though he wanted to leave as soon as possible, the item had bewitched him and tempted him with its puzzling contents. His curiosity finally got the better of him and he grabbed the newspaper. On an impulse Shulk yanked his hand backwards, only to find that his fears were true as the raven suddenly clamped its mouth shut. If the situation at hand was not at all spooky and terrifying, then he would have been able to see that the raven actually waited until his hand was clear of its beak before closing. Yet rationale and logic had abandoned the young man the moment he and his friends stepped into the house. He backed away from the raven and rushed out the door, making a note to himself that once he got back on the fork and headed straight, behind him was a dead-end leading to the freakish saber tooth raven that automatically closed its mouth.
The door closed soundlessly behind him as Shulk worked to keep his breathing under control. He didn't realize that he was actually crushing the newspaper in his hand until he looked at it. The young man forced himself to relax, yet the newspaper retained its unfortunate wrinkles. It was still legible though, and Shulk struggled to pull the rubber band free without dropping his candle. He didn't know why he was spending so much time examining this newspaper when he should have been examining a way out. However, he convinced himself that perhaps it contained some type of clue. That would explain why the raven shut its mouth so suddenly. He finally pulled the rubber band out, tucking the elastic thing away in one of his pockets, the idea of littering still an enigma to him.
The inquisitiveness shouting at him to hurry it up, Shulk forced himself to slow down. He unfurled the newspaper, making sure that there was enough light for him to see. The small flame flickered from the movement but it held on. Shulk blinked at the contents of the newspaper. Headlines screamed, "CATASTROPHIC CARWRECK!" in bold, dark letters. Beneath it a picture displayed a red car folded in half by the black truck behind it against a store wall. The truck's cargo had overturned, blocking the street and injuring more people. A couple of fires broke out, spreading to the light poles in the parking lot. The picture was strangely detailed as the truck driver leaned back in his chair, a horrified expression on his wide-eyed face. The driver of the red car still sat in her seat with his hands still on the wheel. Yet, small as she was, Shulk could still see her squashed body with a rogue pipe splicing clean through her skull. The young man had to blink when the photo seemed to play tricks on him by deceiving him the dripping blood from the dead woman. Shulk was about to throw the newspaper down to avoid looking at it anymore when something else caught his eye. He peered at the wall and noticed something strange about it. The portion where the red car had crashed seemed to be darker than the surrounding area, spreading to a larger area than Shulk thought impossible for a car accident such as this. There were also two small things that stuck out from the wreckage. Though Shulk should have given up at that point, he just couldn't. After he found those two strange things, he knew that he had to know what they were. He couldn't help it. Shulk scrutinized the photo even more. Realization finally hit him harder than Captain Falcon's football tackle.
His sweaty hands trembled as his mind raced at the recognition of a little child's appendages dully sticking out from the crash site. He wasn't sure why this frightened him so considering it happened eleven years ago according to the date on the headlines. The newspaper didn't even belong to any company around here. Shulk found himself wondering whether Dark Pit had any relationships at all with the dead child in the picture. At that thought, the young man remembered his current situation. He quickly rolled up the newspaper again and tucked it away in case he needed to read more. He had a feeling that it was an important clue to something.
Though his candle held little light, it was enough for Shulk to see the walls on either side of him. For some reason, he found the walls to be a bit closer to him than he would have liked. He was quite sure that they were far enough for two people to walk abreast before. Now there was only room for a person and a little to walk side by side. The thought that he was perhaps in a different hallway struck him, but Shulk quickly shook that notion away. That should be impossible considering how he came out the exact way he came in. The silence he hated to become accustomed to didn't help at all.
The young man waved the candle around in case there were other sights that he had missed in the darkness to greet him. Thankfully for him, there were none. Despite that he unknowingly held his breath until something caught his attention and reminded him to breath.
More like something caught his ears. Shulk strained his ears, certain that there was a slight sound in the air. On an impulse he turned around, stretching out his candle to stare down the way he came. He stood still to actually allow the silence this time to do its job. Ironically this time it heartedly refused and graciously rewarded Shulk's kindness with just the slightest change in the air. Shulk tilted his head in an effort to catch the sounds. There was something…something…ticking? Or was it rumbling? The young man didn't know how he jumped from ticking to rumbling, but that was what his ears told him. He strained them further. Shulk looked back in the direction he headed towards initially. It seemed that it was coming from there as if beckoning him to continue his journey. Inhaling deeply to calm his tensed nerves, Shulk started onwards.
With every step he took, the noise just kept getting louder. Strangely enough, as it got louder, the young man had the notion that it was also getting more distorted the closer he got. Maybe the whole Halloween horror was getting to him, but Shulk thought that he could hear laughter mixed in with the strange ticking and rumbling as well. He felt like when he and his friends got out of here, they would need extremely long therapy sessions.
The unearthly noise got to the point where Shulk had to plug his ears in a futile attempt to block it out. However, as he was holding his candle in one hand, he could only plug one ear, and even then he still heard the horrendous ticking…or was it rumbling? He quickly shook that thought away, reminding himself that he had far more important things to worry about.
Shulk soon reached the end of the hall. No doubt about it, the disorienting sound was coming from the small crack of the door. Light streamed out, perhaps hinting that somebody might be inside. However now that the young man had arrived, the seed of doubt in his mind made him hesitate from finding out what was making the sound. He wasn't sure what to expect nor was he sure that he was going to even want to know. After a moment of fighting with himself, Shulk finally crept towards the crack and looked inside.
The room was nearly identical to the fortuneteller's room that Shulk was so familiar with. It was quite unnerving for the young man to see so many similar rooms, as if that was the only design that Dark Pit was willing to use for his house. Yet instead of a table this room held a large bed with silk curtains. Shulk couldn't see who it was due to Dark Pit sitting in his line of vision of the person's face, and it was difficult to judge the person's legs as the fortuneteller's son had covered it up with a blanket. The only other future the room held was a round table with the familiar golden hourglass. However he paid no attention to that as he was fixated on the winged back of the plotter.
Dark Pit showed no signs that he noticed his spy as he continued to hum and do whatever he was doing to his victim. One arm held still while the other waved back and forth with a needle between his fingers. Shulk started when he recognized the sewing motion. He knew that it was common to sew a wound, but Dark Pit's actions so far could never hold any relation to the medical method Shulk thought of in his mind right now. He could only imagine what the black-winged boy was doing to his victim. Was he sewing their eyes together? Their mouths closed? Their ears to their foreheads? Shulk didn't want to know. Panic rose in his mind as he knew he had to get out of here before Dark Pit discovered him and do whatever he wanted with the young man. He began to back away from the door quietly.
"There. You're finally done," he heard Dark Pit say triumphantly. Shulk cursed his natural curiosity for what seemed like the thirteenth time that day. He wished he could have resisted the urge to spy one more time. If Fate had been so kind, then Shulk wouldn't have gotten caught. He stopped in mid-step, reversing it so that he moved forward again. He peered through the cracks as his heart pulsed at a sonic rate with the blood rushing through his mind.
The fortuneteller's son turned towards the table with the hourglass and placed his sewing materials there. As he turned, Shulk could now see part of Dark Pit's victim. He strained his eyes against the dim light and bright darkness to learn the person's identity. The face was still covered by Dark Pit's body. However, the golden locks and the dainty hands was more than enough evidence for Shulk. His shock caused him to gasp loudly. He barely registered the fact that Dark Pit whirled around quickly towards the door. In Dark Pit's turn, Shulk was able to recognize Peach's head for the briefest moment. Her eyes and mouth had been sewn shut. A stich ring similar to Lady Palutena's wrapped around the girl's neck.
The shock of seeing his friend in that state finally diminished enough for Shulk to realize that Dark Pit was staring at him with lividity. The thought that Shulk had just ruined Dark Pit's efforts to have everything go off in a hinge passed through the young man's mind. For some reason, though he took satisfaction in annoying Dark Pit even for a swift moment, Shulk felt a heart-clutching fear when staring into the fortuneteller's eyes. He was almost paralyzed with the terror he felt. Those red eyes, so like a snake's, almost hypnotized the young man into becoming the perfect prey. It was only until Dark Pit moved towards the door was Shulk galvanized into action. The young man slammed the door shut behind him. He debated looking for something to barricade the one thing that stood between him and a madman. Unfortunately that may have been the reason why Dark Pit kept the house so empty. After a quick scan of his surroundings with little success of a reliable item, Shulk turned tail and ran backwards. As he got farther and farther away, he was conscious of a knocking sound that seemed to echo all around him, teasing him that somebody insane was right behind him and waiting for an opportune moment to catch him. The high school student passed the fleshy walls without much thought of where he was going. The panic in his mind heightened when he realized that if he went back the way he came, then he was truly trapped with two dead-ends. There was no way of escaping, but Shulk still had to try anyways.
If only he was able to stop and think about the situation logically. If he had, perhaps he may have realized that once he exited the child's room, he never came upon the old fork in the road that led him to that place in the first place. He just kept walking straight until he discovered Dark Pit's horrendous deed. And now he was running straight to escape the black-winged boy.
Until he came to a four-way intersection. A single traffic light blinked wearily, quickly changing from green to yellow. Shulk paid no such attention to the yellow shifting into red to stop the young man from going any farther. Without weighing his options, he turned left. The knocking seemed to have gotten closer, urging Shulk gather his strength and sprint away. He could just feel Dark Pit breathing on his neck, the paranoia of the fortuneteller's son soon overtaking him almost overwhelming him. Chills kept shivering down his spine, and he paid no attention to his rapidly-tiring legs' pleas to slow down and rest. The young man just kept panting for breath in order to escape from his predator. The walls themselves seemed to be panting for breath as well as they rumbled and shook. Or perhaps that was just his imagination. Shulk didn't know anymore.
The exhaustion was getting to his mind as he headed straight at another fork in the road. He barely thought about his actions now. Only the thought of getting away drummed at Shulk's head. It was the only thing that kept him going without the need of direction and logic in navigating a stranger's house that seemed to shift and change with every step. He stumbled over his own feet, crying out in surprise and fear. He frantically regained his balance before continuing to tear towards a possible sanctuary.
Shulk cried out again, this time in absolute relief. The sight of a mahogany door came into view faster and faster. The sudden discovery of the safety room brought great hope to the poor student's mind and spurred him to dig even deeper in an effort to get away. His burst of speed almost made him slam into the door. Fortunately Shulk skidded to a stop just in time to grab the doorknob with a maddening desperation. He nearly ripped the knob away from the door as he yanked it open. Without so much as a look inside, the young man rushed in and smashed the door shut. He leaned against the door, sliding down to sit and finally rest on the floor. The silence broke with the panting breaths of the exhausted student. Shulk wiped the sweat from his brow and relinquished his tight grip on the candle stand, the flame long gone from the winds of his escape. The candle stand rolled a few feet before slowing to a stop. After a few moments of regaining the lost oxygen, the young man finally shook his head. He couldn't believe it. He absolutely couldn't believe that Peach was dead. There was just no way. Maybe it was a puppet that was made to look like her. However, he didn't buy his own explanation. Tears prickled his eyes from the sorrow that one of his oldest friends was dead. His whole body tensed up when he had that thought. Peach was the last of his friends to visit the fortuneteller. Did that mean...? No! It couldn't be! Roseclere and Captain Falcon...they couldn't be dead as well! Shulk felt a choking sob rise in his throat. Hugging his knees to his chest, the young man buried his face into his knees to hide his sorrow from any spying eyes. He could care less about Dark Pit finding him now.
Yet something stopped him from just wallowing in his sorrow. Shulk knew that even though he didn't really care anymore, deep down, he also knew that his friends wouldn't want him to fall into the same fate that befell him. He had to pull himself together to get through this. He just had to. If his friends couldn't, then the least he could do was escape from this fucking hellhole and bring Dark Pit to justice for revenge. Shulk wiped the tears from his eyes and he finally glanced around the room to see exactly where his mad dash landed him.
Again, the total outline of the room was identical to the other rooms of the fortuneteller Shulk has been to. Luckily there was ample light for him to just make things out. There were only two furniture that decorated the room, a single box pushed against the far wall and a portrait just above that box. Shulk's eyes widened in surprise when he saw the picture. He pushed himself off the ground to get a better look. He had no idea that it was the exact same picture that his friends had found. He noted the same similarities his friends had between Dark Pit and his lookalike. Like Roseclere, the only conclusion he could come to was that the second boy was Dark Pit's twin. When he found himself wondering what became of Dark Pit's twin, Shulk felt a chill down his spine when he thought he had the answer. He glanced worriedly at the newspaper that he still had, a sinking feeling in his stomach. The young man looked back up at the picture before finally tearing his eyes away.
The box below the portrait caught his attention next. It was rectangular, a little shorter in length than Shulk's height. Black in color, the white feather on top greatly contrasted the melancholic air that surrounded it. He wasn't sure what drew him to it, but he froze when he saw his hand suddenly reach into view. Unconsciously his curiosity was forcing him to open up the box and see what was inside. Shulk grabbed his outstretched hand with his other hand, as if his curious hand was possessed by something. His inquisitiveness had already gotten him in enough trouble. He didn't want to risk another run-in with Lord-knows-what. The young man retracted both hands, still staring at the box just in case something popped out to surprise. It stayed quiet.
His focus still on the box, Shulk jumped a few inches in the air when he heard something ringing. His heart skipped multiple beats from the surprising sound. The young man searched the room for the source of that sound. Though he wanted to ignore it considering what happened the last time he investigated a strange noise, he couldn't help but still scan the area. To his right he saw a portion of the wall that the sound seemed to be coming from. On closer inspection Shulk realized that it was actually another door. The reason he didn't notice it once he went into the room was that it blended in quite well with the crimson, soft walls.
Even after what seemed appropriate for the ringing to stop, it just kept ringing. Shulk wasn't sure whether he preferred the creepy silence or the annoying ringing, but at the moment, he would take chilling silence over the irritating ringing. He plugged his ears, yet he could still hear it. If anything it seemed to have gotten louder. Shulk sighed in frustration when he knew he had to go and see what was making that noise to shut it off. He started forward before stopping when he saw the candle stand. It was only until he picked it up again did Shulk move towards the camouflaged door. He yanked it rapidly, revealing another room.
The young man cautiously stepped into the room, the candle stand ready to hit any attackers. Fortunately for him, there was nobody in the room. Shulk lowered his hand with no immediate danger presented. Besides the sight of the room was more than enough to surprise him once again.
A long table held multiple red phones. While a couple were on standby, a few phones were knocked from their stands and lay upright on the table. The ringing sound came from one of the knocked phones. On an impulse and need to connect with technology again, Shulk moved towards the ringing phone. His hand grasped it and held it to his ear. The moment he did, the ringing finally stopped.
"Hello?" he asked. He felt a bit silly as he wasn't even sure if somebody was going to answer. The silliness gave way to fear when he wasn't sure who or what was going to answer.
"Hello?" somebody asked back. Shulk almost couldn't believe his ears. Tears almost threatened to fall again as he pushed against the table in an effort to hold himself back up from the overwhelming feeling that overtook him.
His voice croaked but it was still recognizable, "Roseclere?! Oh Lord, is that you?!"
Eh? What? How is Peach dead when she was clearly alive in the chapter before? Uh...stuff...and things...and...mind...games...almost done, guys. Bear with my story a bit longer.