A/N: Ha! And here you thought this story was dead as a doornail! (To tell you the truth, I thought this story was dead as a doornail – but, since iCarly itself is going to be ending before too long, it seemed a shame to leave things hanging.)
Disclaimer: As ever, don't own.
Sam Puckett had always thought of herself as the toughest kid on the block, but now, as she faced the great and imposing iron doors and imagined the horrors that lurked behind them, she didn't feel quite so tough after all.
Still, what choice did she have? Until Freddie and Carly came up with some miraculous cure for her condition, she was trapped in this strange world of dreams; and if she could not fly from her fears, the only reasonable course of action was to face them head-on.
She seized hold of the door-handle. Again the searing hot metal burned her palm; again the single image blazed into her mind that she had shared with Freddie when she walked into his dream – a ring, lying in a snowdrift. A college ring, she had thought at first, but it was not quite like any she had ever seen before; twin golden lions, standing on their hind legs, pawed at a silver human-shaped figure bound to a stake, while the whole scene was surrounded by a motto in letters of red gold: QUOD AMO, ID OCCIDO. Foreign languages had never been a strong point of Sam's, except for Italian, but Freddie might know how to translate the phrase. If only I had had a chance to tell him more before he woke up! she thought with a twinge of regret.
What the ring meant, or who it belonged to, she had no idea. But something told her that it was important – vitally important. And to understand its true significance, she would need answers – answers that could only be found behind these doors.
With all her might, she dug in her heels and pulled. The hinges resisted, groaned, squeaked and squealed; the heat grew, scorching her clothes, searing her flesh. This isn't real, she told herself over and over again. You're not in any danger. All the resistance you face is coming from your own subconscious mind. And yet, though intellectually she knew this to be true, the sensation of pain and horror didn't diminish one bit.
At last the door opened, and she stepped over the threshold.
It was as if she stood in the eye of some demonic tornado. All around her black, vaguely formed wisps of spirit spun, howling in agony, lashing out at one another with long tendrils. Crimson lightning crackled across her field of vision, reducing the spirits to nothingness, then pausing to allow them to reform. Blasts of hot air soared up from the bare rock beneath Sam's feet and spun close about her, taking her breath away. And over all the noise rose the barking of an immense dog, the size of a city block, with a pitch-black coat – and three heads, all of them foaming at the mouth and baring their fangs.
Sam remembered her Greek mythology. Cerberus. The guardian of the mouth of Hell. No one but Hercules ever took him down in a fight. And I may be strong, but I ain't no Hercules, God knows.
An adamantine chain connected to a collar around the central neck held the great beast in place. Behind its forequarters Sam could see, dimly, a quiet night scene: Ebenezer Dixon's shack, blanketed by snow, with an inexplicable light shining in the window.
The answers she sought were there, no question about it. But what would it cost her to face them? Maybe there was a good reason her mind had locked away these memories. Maybe they were so brutal, so horrific, that facing them would push her over the edge into madness. It would be so easy, even now, to turn and run.
But I'm a Puckett. I don't run. I fight.
Ignoring his cacophonous roar, his sulphurous breath, his bared claws, Sam advanced implacably toward the beast. When his central head was within arm's reach, she drew back her hand, slapped him as forcefully as she could, and yelled, "Can it, mutt! You're givin' me a headache!"
The roar sunk to an ashamed whimper. Then, to Sam's amazement, the monster itself began to shrink; its triple heads merged into one, its fangs receded, its body withered. At last it stood transformed into a tiny puppy that scampered away, yipping in bewilderment.
Now that's more like it.
Her path now clear, Sam entered the frosty, debris-strewn yard and approached the shack.
A soft, supremely self-confident voice floated to her through the window glass: "…some people think that old age destroys beauty. Quite the contrary. All those wrinkles and white hairs add a patina of authority that actually increases the appeal of the human form – when viewed in the right perspective, of course."
An answer, almost inaudible: "Let…let me die…"
"Oh, no. No no no. I'm not even close to being finished, you know. Killing you now would be akin to setting a canvas afire in mid-brushstroke."
"Why are you…doing this? Why…why me?"
"Because you won't be missed, old man. You live on the fringes of society, all alone, hated and despised. No one will notice your disappearance, or, if they do, they won't care. But as a corpse – oh, as a corpse, you'll be famous the world over. No one will ever know that you were once Ebenezer Dixon, the belligerent hermit living in the midst of his own filth; you'll be known as the finest work yet of the most gifted sculptor humanity has ever produced."
"You're…mad…"
"I prefer 'eccentric', actually. Less of a pejorative tinge."
Sam pressed her nose against the glass. The old hermit hung upside from the ceiling, naked, bound. A man she had never seen before, wearing a butcher's apron and wielding a gargantuan knife, was calmly drawing dotted lines with black marker all over the old man's shrunken, white-haired chest. He stepped back, examined his handiwork, gave a satisfied nod – then began to cut.
Sam felt the heavy sharpness of a rock in her hand. Where it had come from she had no idea, but she knew what to do with it now. As the mad artist's blade drew the first drops of blood from the helpless hermit's flesh, Sam reared back and hurled the rock with all her might through the window glass, striking the killer square in the temple. He reeled and stumbled against Dixon's makeshift stove, giving Sam time to circle around and barge in through the shack's only door.
"Don't worry, Mr. Dixon," she said as her panicking fingers pulled at the knots holding him in place. "I'll get you down."
"You…you're that girl who's always playing pranks on me…"
"Yeah. I don't like you much, but that doesn't mean I want to see you get killed-UNGH!"
The mad artist, injured but not incapacitated by Sam's surprise attack, had lifted a hurricane lamp from the kitchen table; now he swung it in a great arc, catching the unprepared girl across the back of the head. She fell against Dixon, grabbing onto the hapless man's body to regain her balance, smearing his blood on her hands and arms; but her weight was too much for the rope holding him up, which snapped, sending both him and her to the floor.
The killer bent down and pulled Sam up by the collar. "I don't like to be interrupted," he said, in an eerily calm voice. "This is an art form, you know. Would you interrupt Michelangelo when he was just about to finish carving his David?"
Sam was terrified, but had no intention of showing it. "Oh, cut the crap already. You're no artist – just a sicko."
"Jealous, are we? Well, I don't blame you, really. It must hurt to know that you haven't been blessed with talent like mine." He took a handful of her hair in his fingers and examined each golden strand. "I'm not saying I mind an audience, ladybug. But you could at least have the good grace to let me finish up first. That's all."
"How can you make an old man suffer like that?"
"Does clay suffer when the sculptor's fingers shape it? And if it does, what difference would it make? The end product is so far superior to the original that the raw matter from which it comes will be forgotten. Mr. Dixon here should be honored that I selected him. And you, my dear, by virtue of your intemperate decision to blunder in here, will be the next work in my personal gallery! I do hope you don't mind."
She stared straight into his eyes and said, with the slowest and clearest enunciation she could muster: "Go. To. HELL."
He shook his head sadly. "Well, that's very ungrateful of you. Yes indeed, little ladybug, very ungrateful. Turning down the chance to work with an artistic genius, I mean."
Sam squirmed fiercely and tried to pull his hands from her throat; her fingers fastened onto a strange ring he wore on his right hand. She tugged mightily, and the ring came loose into her palm, but his grip on her remained as strong as a vise.
"Oh, your lovely face. I can shape it so nicely, if you'll just stay still. Shave off a little here, dig a few furrows there…"
"I'll dig you some damn furrows!" She raked her fingernails across his face, drawing blood, and at last he let go. She shoved him away, still clutching the ring.
Wiping his face, he sneered: "Going to run, are you? How far do you think those short legs of yours will get you?"
Sam realized, with horror, that he was between her and the door. Trying to evade him, she dodged to the left, then the right, but he matched her step for step.
"There's nowhere you can go. Don't you see that?"
They continued their impromptu game of tag, he unable to catch her, she unable to get past him to the door. He was growing increasingly frustrated. "Listen to me. There's nowhere you can go."
Then he caught sight of the ring in her hand, and all his composure was lost. The blood vessels on his forehead stood out, and his face contorted into a horrid mask. Sam thought she had never seen such unbridled rage.
"Give that back to me now, damn you! Stop running away from me! Stop running, you stupid little bitch! I'll tear your fucking throat out!"
Suddenly, the madman's leg was kicked out from under him, and he fell, clearing a path for Sam. She looked down in shock. It was old man Dixon, who had managed to free his feet, but was too badly injured to rise. "Run, girl!" he croaked.
"But I can't just leave-"
"No sense in both of us dyin' today."
And, before she knew what she was doing, Sam was off, out the door, back through the moonlit yard, willing her mind to shut out the agonizing screams behind her. The ring, forgotten in her panic, fell from her fingers, into the snow…
And then she was standing once more at the threshold of the terrible iron gates.
So that's what happened that night. I was reliving it in my sleep when I attacked poor Mrs. Benson.
It was at that moment that Sam finally understood why she had repressed the memory – not out of shock at the brutality of the old man's death, but out of guilt.
She had treated him so cruelly for so long, yet he sacrificed himself to allow her to escape. And she had left him there, to suffer horribly, just so she could save her own skin.
Looks like Pucketts do run after all.
Oh, God, what kind of a monster am I?
Slowly, like a prisoner being marched to the scaffold, she walked back into the strange door-filled dreamscape, then fell to her knees in the silence and began to sob.
