A/N: In the last chapter, Sherman and Daniel attended Mason's funeral, and they met Penny after a very long time of not seeing one another. Now Penny is working in the field of TV production. And now Sherman and Penny have been asked by Mason's mother to find out how her son REALLY died, and rumor has it that it was at the hands of a cursed video. This is where we left off from there, enjoy!
Ding Dong! Sherman jumped off the couch wearing a dark red long-sleeved shirt (sort of a mix of red and black) as well as a pair of black skinny jeans with red Converse high-tops on his feet. He then opened up the door to reveal Penny wearing a white long-sleeved shirt with a tan wool hoodie over it, she also was wearing khakis and black leather boots.
"Penny, hey" Sherman greeted. Penny walked into the apartment and spoke.
"Hi. So, this is where you and Daniel live?" Penny asked looking around the halls.
"Yeah, three years of living here with my boy" Sherman said looking at the walls which were covered in framed photos of Sherman and Daniel together. One had Sherman and Daniel having ice cream together. The one next to it showed Sherman pushing Daniel on a swing at a playground. One photo above those two showed Daniel in front of a birthday cake with a lit number eight candle on it, and Sherman was right next to him smiling at him.
"You two look so happy together" Penny said.
"I know. I love him so much" Sherman said. He then walked Penny into the living room and saw that Daniel was in the living room, watching 'Ninja Turtles' his favorite TV show.
"Hey, Daniel" Sherman said getting his son's attention. He looked behind him to see his dad standing next to Penny.
"Yeah?" he asked.
"You remember Penny? You met her at the funeral yesterday" Sherman asked his son.
"Uh-huh, why?" Daniel asked getting up off the couch and over to Penny.
"I'm gonna be gone for a while okay? Penny's gonna keep an eye on you. Be good for her, okay?" Sherman asked his son after getting to his son's eye level and put a hand on his head.
"Okay dad. I will" Daniel told his father before launching himself into Sherman's arms and they hugged one another tightly. Once they broke apart, Sherman gave Daniel a kiss on the forehead goodbye and got up to speak to Penny.
"His bedtime is usually around 9:00 on the weekends, and he normally watches TV to pass that time. Just thought I'd let you know" Sherman told her as he picked his car keys off the coffee table.
"Alright, thanks for the tip" Penny said. Sherman began walking to the front door, but then he turned around to speak to Penny again.
"Oh, and Daniel doesn't sleep in pajamas, he prefers his underwear. It's normal for him to be like that in case you were wondering" Sherman told her.
"Sherman, you don't have to worry. I've got this under control" Penny assured him. He just smiled and waved goodbye to Penny and Daniel before leaving the apartment and getting into his car and driving off for 'Shelter Mountain Inn'.
It was a seven hour drive to get to the inn. Sherman had to drive up a windy road up a mountain. By the time Sherman had arrived at the inn it was getting dark and the sun was close to setting. He parked his car, grabbed his black leather book bag, and walked up to a cabin that said 'Registration'. He went inside the cabin and saw someone sitting at the desk. He was the only one in the cabin, it was empty except for him.
"Hello sir" the person at the desk greeted. Sherman walked up to the desk and spoke.
"Hi, um, I'm here because one of my friends left something here at the cabin they were staying at. They checked in on Friday about a week ago and stayed until Sunday" Sherman lied. He hated to lie to people, but this time he had to. He wouldn't let Sherman on the premises if he knew he was investigating a murder.
"Alright then. What was your friend's name?" the man asked.
"Nadir. Mason Nadir" Sherman said. The man nodded and took out a red velvet felt book and opened it up.
"Give me a little while, okay?" the man asked. Sherman nodded and looked around the cabin. He saw a rack full of videotapes against the wall next to the door. Most of the tapes were labeled, a lot of them were old Disney movies.
"I see you have a nice video cassette collection here" Sherman said.
"Thank you, the reception on the mountain sucks here so we had VHS tape players put in each cabin" the man told him as he kept searching through the book. Sherman got down on his knees to see one tape that was in between the VHS tape of 'Fantasia' and the VHS tape of 'A Bugs Life' was one tape that had no case and wasn't labeled on the front or sides.
"What do we have here?" Sherman muttered to himself. He took the tape off the shelf and inspected it side to side. He looked at the back side and the front side.
"Why isn't this labeled?" Sherman whispered to himself. He looked around and unzipped the side pocket of his bag and placed the tape inside. He then zipped the bag back up and got back up.
"Oh here we are, Mason Nadir, Cabin 12" the man said. Sherman then walked over to the desk.
"Thanks. Now I know where to look" Sherman said smiling. The man then turned around and took a key off the key-rack with a small key with a white label on it with the number 12 on it.
"Oh, feel free to stay the night there if you want to. It's getting dark out there and you don't wanna be falling asleep on the way back home" the man said with a smile at the end of his sentence. Sherman smiled and nodded before leaving the cabin and looked to the very end of his left to see six cabins spread out across the mountain surface. He saw that there was a sign by the cabin at the very end that said '12' on a sign.
"There you are" Sherman said as he began walking. He took his phone out and dialed Penny's cell phone number. She didn't answer so he decided to leave a message.
"Penny, it's Sherman. I just wanted to let you know that I have arrived at the inn and I'm staying at the cabin that Mason and Amber were staying at. I'll be back at about sometime in the afternoon tomorrow. Tell Daniel I said goodnight and that I love him. Bye" Sherman said before hanging up. Sherman then got onto the cabin's front porch and unlocked the door with the key given to him by the man at the front desk. Once he got in there. The whole place was dark. There was only a bed, a sofa, a recliner, a coffee table, and a TV with a VHS player on top of it inside the cabin.
"It's pretty small" Sherman said as he shut the door behind him and locked it. He didn't bother turning the lights on and just shut the curtains on the windows. He then saw some candles on the table and a box of matches next to them, he lit all the candles and put them in different ares of the room to let a little bit of light into the small cabin. Sherman then took the tape out of his bag.
"How can something outdated and lifeless kill someone?" Sherman asked as he held the tape in his hands and stared down at it. He then walked over to the TV set and got down on his knees. He stood up for a brief minute to turn the TV on and then put the tape inside and then he sat back down.
"Okay, let's see what's on this thing" Sherman said as he turned the volume up a little bit on the TV. For a while, the screen was just black, but then it showed a small wave of static.
"Come on, play already" Sherman whispered irritatedly. The tape then began playing.
The first image on the tape was a glowing white ring of light that made high pitched hovering noises. Sherman just made a confused expression as he wondered what this image meant.
The next image was of a river with some blood flowing in the water itself.
After that, the tape showed a wooden chair inside a big white room.
Sherman showed another confused facial expression when he saw the next image, an image of a ray of sunlight shining down locks of jet black hair.
The next image showed a woman in a mirror brushing her hair and smiling as she did so. This image made Sherman feel a little creeped out, as if the woman was actually smiling at HIM.
The woman stopped smiling and brushing her hair so that the tape could show another mirror but the background was black and a little girl with long jet black hair and a white nightgown backed away into the shadows. The tape then cut back to the woman in the other mirror but she was facing her right and smiling.
"What is all this?" Sherman asked himself as he kept focusing on the screen.
The next image on the tape showed a rusty nail with one lone drop of blood flowing down it.
Sherman got creeped out again as he saw the next image, a house with a man looking down at him from a window. The man was looking down at Sherman but then turned his head around to see something else.
The next image on the tape showed a cliff with grass blowing in the wind as well as a tree with rustling branches. A fly then just all of a sudden appeared and began crawling around in the air as if it wasn't part of the tape.
Sherman then got disgusted by the next image on the tape which was of a close up of a human mouth vomiting up something tube-shaped (Supposedly his intestines) and making regurgitating sounds as the person threw up.
The next image took Sherman by surprise, a face strangling against a black rubber surface.
"Woah!" Sherman said jumping in surprise a little bit.
Then the tape cut to an image of a big bright white circle about to be covered by a black circle, sort of like an eclipse.
After that, the image of a dead tree with black bark and no leaves on it came on the screen, and the branches were covered in flames.
The next part of the tape showed the rusty nail again, only it went right through the tip of human finger and made the fingernail come right off, causing a high pitched whining sound to be made.
Sherman flinched at that part.
The next image showed a bunch of maggots squirming around each other all over the screen.
After a brief flash of light, the tape then changed from the maggots to several people swimming around in a body of water with no room to swim around or past another person.
The tape then cut to show a table with a chair and a glass of water on it. The chair backed up away from the table a little bit by itself, and then a very large very long millipede coming out from underneath the table.
Sherman got confused again at the next image on the tape, which showed an open door of a barn and it showed a goat being pulled by an unseen figure inside the barn.
The next image on the tape showed a close up of a horse's eye. And there was a glimmer of light inside the eye.
The tape showed the big white circle again being covered up some more by the black circle even more, the light was now in the shape of a crescent moon.
The next image disturbed Sherman a little bit, the image of several human fingers inside a wooden box with the lid right next to it, and some of them were twitching like worms inside the box.
The image of the dead tree on fire was shown again, some static was made in the middle of the screen and the fire was spread as one large flame covering the tree.
The image of the face struggling against the black rubber surface that made Sherman flinch came up again, and the high pitched whining stopped.
The woman from the mirror came up again, she was seen doing her hair in front of a mirror and she turned around and began frowning, supposedly she saw Sherman through the screen and was frowning at him.
Sherman was freaked out even by this image the most.
The house from the near beginning of the tape was shown again, except no one was staring down from the top window.
The same chair that was the third image from the tape was seen again only it was spinning around, upside down in midair.
Now the image changed to a ladder leaning against a wall. Sherman had no idea what a ladder had to do with any of these other images on the tape.
Sherman began looking up closer to see the next image, which was the body of a dead horse lying down on a beach with the waves crashing down on the corpse with a little flute playing in the background of this part.
Now it showed the woman from the mirror again, only she was standing on the edge of a cliff and she extended her arms out and fell forwards. Sherman gasped and covered his mouth to see the image of that woman committing suicide.
The next image on the tape showed the same ladder from before falling down from the wall.
The circle of light showed up again only the black circle had covered it completely. The light was getting in through the edges of the black circle, forming the white ring of light, the first image on the tape itself.
The falling ladder popped up again and it showed the ladder falling to the ground and making thudding noises.
And the final image, was a well made from stones covered in moss in the middle of a valley surrounded by dead trees, fog, and dead grass. The tape then cut to static after that. Sherman then quickly shut the TV off and ejected the tape from the VHS player.
"Okay, that was weird" Sherman said to himself as he put the tape back in his bag.
BRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNG!
Sherman jumped and gasped and turned around to the telephone next to the bed.
BRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNG!
Sherman then walked slowly towards the phone and placed his hand over the phone itself, slowly getting ready to pick it up.
BRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNG!
Sherman picked the phone up and held it up to his ear.
"Hello?" Sherman asked. There was a short period of silence before Sherman got an answer.
"Seven Days" a small whisper said. Sherman then got scared and slammed the phone down on the receiver. Sherman then looked at his bag which contained the tape inside the pocket.
"Oh my God, it's true. That tape really did kill Mason" Sherman whispered. Now Sherman had only seven days left to live unless he could find a way out of this and avoid death.
A/N: Wow, now Sherman has watched the tape and got the phone call saying he would die in seven days. But on the bright side, the hypothesis that this killer tape was the cause of Mason's death has been confirmed. More to come in the next update. Please review, thanks!
