DISCLAIMER: I don't own "Ju-On," "The Grudge," or any characters from the films. Reviews, anyone? There's only one chapter to go (after this one, that is).
Kayako
Considering the magnitude of the mission, it was a relatively small caravan, but if it had been up to Tyler Ness, the team traveling with him would be even smaller.
Forty-five minutes earlier, they had gotten the call. The one they had been waiting for since this entire unholy operation had begun months earlier. Not a crank, not a prank. This was it – a hotel proprietor in North Garfield Park had seen her, and rented a room out to a woman who signed her name as "Jodie Goodell" looking for day-to-day shelter. It was a man who had given the police many helpful tips in the past. They had no reason to question his motives or honesty.
By this point, everyone had seen the face – the two-year-old mug shot of Jill Robbie, short blonde hair, blue eyes, pretty in a rough-and-tough way, her nose pierced and her face a blank, emotionless slate. It had surprised Tyler that a girl who could be classified as "cute" with nary a laugh from his peers could be the face that had caused this city so much goddamned sleep in the recent weeks, but the facts were immutable. The prints were hers. She fit the profile. And her whereabouts were now known. The only thing that Tyler didn't comprehend was why Jill hadn't decided to skip town – she certainly had advance warning.
Right now, there was no time left to think. He looked to his right – Officer Kubel, a man he had just met for the first time half an hour ago, drove the car, while he sat in the passenger seat, looking back once again to the civilian cars with other plain-clothes officers ready to covertly make the snare. There were six of them total – himself, Detective Redding, a Detective David Pierce that he had also just met a few minutes earlier, and a regular officer accompanying the three of them.
He looked to his left – there was one more turn. The two-story hotel was now visible, while scores of Garfield Park residents – just like Lawndale, one of the poorest, crime-ridden sections of the city – walked the streets around them, casting nervous glances on the three nice, white sedans driving down the middle of their street.
I can't blame them – I'd be paranoid too…
Tyler removed his gun from his side holster. Like the other Detectives, he wore a bulletproof vest outside his suit jacket, white letters adorning it denoting the wearer as 'POLICE.' He checked the sight, dropped the clip and re-inserted it. It was a nervous habit – one he had been well aware of since his days in Academy training – but one that he had never dropped. It put his mind at ease, whether he was about to take target practice or take down a serial killer.
The six of them were now directly outside the room. When they had entered the hotel, they had made their way up to the room in the manner that Tyler had arranged with the hotel owner, lightly nodding at him and walking right past the roughshod lobby toward the stairs at the back of the first floor. Single file, they made their way to the second store, and with Tyler in the lead, the officers had gathered outside Room #205.
It was a small hotel, and they had to be careful. There were only ten rooms on each floor, and if they made too much noise, it would either scare Jill off or warn her to pull something out that they didn't want to see, most notably a gun or knife.
But they hadn't made noise. They were completely silent. There were no lookey-lou's in the hallways. Everything seemed perfect.
And now here I am – outside the door, ready to take down the beast.
Ready, Tyler?
He reared back, raising his leg and shoving it forward with all his might at the light wooden door. He heard the satisfying crack as the pane separated from the side, seeing the opening formations of wood splinters out of the corner of his eye, and then the room itself as the door slammed open.
It was a sight he didn't expect to see. No TV on, no shocked jump from their perpetrator, no gun in their collective faces, ready to go out in a blaze of glory.
Instead, Tyler was taken aback for a moment, because of all the things he expected to see, what awaited him on the other side of the door was truly the last thing he thought would be there.
It was Jill Robbie, but in a way, she wasn't there. She sat on the bed, staring at the turned-off television, her window shut, the blinds drawn, the room in almost total darkness. She wore a gray hooded sweatshirt, the hood pulled up under her head, her hair not even visible behind her sunken face. And despite what had to be an Earth-shattering smack from the broken door hitting the wall, she didn't move an inch.
She's there, but she's not there…
Tyler cut off his thoughts, shaking off the strangeness of the sight of this vicious serial murderer seemingly resigning herself to her fate, bursting forward and running to Jill. He immediately shoved her backward on the bed and turned her around as the other Detectives and Officers backed him up. He pinned her arm behind her back, removed the handcuffs from his belt, and began putting them on Jill.
She didn't resist. Not at all…
"Jill Robbie, you have the right to remain silent," he said, reciting the familiar dialogue by memory, still holding his gun trained on Jill with his right hand while he applied the handcuffs with his left, "anything you say can and will be used in a court of law…"
And as he finished the legal cover-our-own-ass segment of the arrest, Tyler realized that while it was necessary for the A.C.L.U., it was completely unnecessary in a practical sense in this case. She wasn't going to say a thing. She wasn't even going to do anything, and Tyler didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed that this takedown was so uneventful.
Something scared the shit out of her, he thought. Whatever it was, I don't know, but somebody beat us to the punch…
"She hasn't moved, bro," Mark said, looking at her through the double-sided window. "Not an inch."
"Damn," Tyler said in return. "She's freaked by something."
Tyler gathered himself for a few moments. It had been a whirlwind of activity since they had entered the hotel room and made the arrest, from the ride back to the Station to the frantic jailing process, not wanting the media to catch wind of the takedown until after they already had the information they wished to divulge to the masses.
Which means going in there to talk to her…
Right now, there was only nothingness. He could see Mark in the reflection of the glass – the Detective that he considered his best friend, a longtime work associate and former partner as an Officer. He had added a moustache and about 30 pounds since his promotion, but it was still Mark Redding. Behind the glass was nothing more than a shell.
A figure wearing a sweatshirt and dirty blue jeans, staring into space. Throughout the long ride, she had not resisted or protested, despite the overwhelming anecdotal evidence dictating that a person of Jill Robbie's skill and stature would almost certainly make life miserable for them post-arrest if for no other reason than to seem like a badass to the people that she so longed to impress.
And she didn't even give us the satisfaction of roughing her up…
She still had not said a word.
"I'm going in there," Tyler said, holding the information that he hoped would be substantial enough to establish a rapport in his right hand – her rap sheet, her family history, her list of known associates in the robbery business.
"Be careful, bro," Mark said, turning his head and nodding at his friend before Tyler rounded the corner and entered the densely lit interrogation room.
"I didn't give my name back at the hotel," he said, sitting down across from Jill, scanning the biography for anything that he could use. "Tyler Ness. Detective Tyler Ness."
He held out his hand for Jill to shake. She didn't move an inch – her face still turned downward, her mouth, nose, and eyes still the only part of Jill that was visible underneath the hood of her sweatshirt.
He withdrew the hand.
"Jill, we have substantial evidence that can connect you to the Second City Slasher murders. We have your fingerprints on a vehicle used in one of the attacks. We have eyewitness accounts…"
"Good," she said, finally looking up, her eyes connecting with his. Something in those eyes chilled Tyler to the core.
"You think this is good?"
"I don't want any lawyer," she said. "I don't want to protest this. At all. Just take me away. Take me away from her…"
Kayako had known that Jill was in trouble; her new freedom had granted her the ability to not only see the approaching officers, but hear the intent that they came with. She did not like their purpose. Jill Robbie was an artist; a magnificent one, one that deserved to be celebrated, despite her current state.
And now she's divulging information? She's giving it all up? She's giving up – giving me up?
Kayako felt it once again, just as she had felt it when the last man – the man who wanted to die – had entered her apartment building. The energy coursing through her pores, the murder and mayhem ringing like an alarm inside the inner recesses of her mind.
It's time to break the last rule…
Unbelievable, Tyler thought, unfrigginbelievable. Here I thought this was going to be the most difficult interrogation of my career, and this chick is doing all the work for me. Denying a lawyer. UNHEARD of.
But then he looked at her face once again. She was calmer now, speaking with a low, monotonous drone, completely devoid of emotion. Just two weeks ago, this was someone who had committed her final murder in such a horrific fashion that its gruesome details couldn't even be released to the bloodthirsty media.
Something happened. Something happened in those two weeks – maybe something that built up – but it was so profound that it's turned this person, this brutal, emotionless killer, into a quivering mess…
Then it happened.
The lights in the room dimmed.
What the fu—
While he had been looking up at the lights first, his head immediately snapped back down.
Screaming. Jill was screaming – a truly guttural, terrified scream. She was looking to her right.
And Tyler saw it. Saw her…
He didn't know who she was. He didn't even know what she was. All he knew was what he saw.
Her hair was long, black as coal and undulating like a willow tree. Her eyes and face were turned downward, looking at the floor – what he could make out was that her face was quite beautiful. She wore a white dress – stains of fresh blood caked to the garment.
For some reason, she seemed to glow, an eerie, green orb surrounding her entire body in a sort of ectoplasmic perimeter.
But then she looked upward, and Tyler saw her eyes…
As one of the last things that Tyler saw in his life, it was a look of pure, unimaginable hatred – the pupils burned into his, the face twisted into an expression of such malevolence, such bad intent…
He barely had time to register the face when the ungodly figure stepped toward him, moving in a stilted, almost broken manner, then reached upward with her arms, grabbing his forehead with her right arm and underneath his chin with her left.
The horrific snap sound was the last thing that Tyler registered with his conscious mind as the woman jerked her arms in opposite directions, shattering his vertebrae with one fell swoop.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit…
Jill had seen her twice already. After the death of the rich society bitch who had seen fit to enter Lawndale (which seemed like an eternity ago), the sounds had picked up in intensity. Sleep was no escape – she heard them in her dreams. The croaking, the cat, the shuffling.
Then he had seen her, peering at her from the closet in her room. The very face that looked at her now. It looked at her, just like she was looking at her now, with a sort of soulful curiosity.
But she had known then, just as she knew now – this was the face of pure evil, even moreso than herself, and she had known this day would come, when she would witness the ghost woman perform some sort of unconscionable act.
She didn't even hear her own screams anymore. The body of the Detective quickly fell to the floor underneath the table, no longer able to support himself against the flimsy weight of the back of his chair.
Suddenly, the door of the room popped open – but the lights hadn't brightened yet.
Somehow, we're in this thing's world…
It was one of the other Detectives – the heavier one, the one that had identified himself as Mark something. Moustache, pudgy—
Oh God, man, get the hell out of here…
The woman disappeared, and Jill saw a look of shock pass across the Detective's face. He had seen her.
And just as suddenly as he entered, this Detective too was dead. As if by magic, tears began appearing in his flesh, his own bodily fluids escaping from the gashes like a geyser, a veritable waterfall of blood spurting out onto the floor.
Then he exploded – and he was nothing. He had ceased to exist.
The door slammed shut, and just like that, Jill was alone with the woman again.
She's still looking at me like that? She's still looking at me like she's doing this for me?
What the hell did I do to deserve this? Two weeks ago, I didn't fear anything. Now I'm afraid of everything – thanks to her.
Jill had thought of several theories over the past two weeks, as the woman constantly followed her, visible to her and to no one else, always watching, always waiting, ready to pounce. At first, she had thought she was some sort of collective spirit, the remnants of everyone whose life she had taken during her recent secondary career. She had even toyed with the notion that the woman was the ghost of her mother, but the look just wasn't right. The facial features and that hair – Jill had never seen anything so black, so completely devoid of color – told her that this wasn't right. Her mother, like herself, had been a blonde, and if her no-good, soulless cunt of a parental unit, who had done drugs in front of her, had strange men over to their house to perform sexual acts on her for a fee when she wasn't even a teenager, and done countless more to scar her for life than she could currently wrap her head around, she would want her to know that it was dear ol' mom.
Just yesterday, she had settled on her present theory, and with 24 hours remaining before her eventual capture, Jill Robbie had become a born again Christian.
It was the Devil. There could be no other explanation. This thing was the devil incarnate, and had claimed her soul as a result of all the wickedness, the stealing, the killing and the profiteering, that she had engaged in unapologetically for so long.
And now it was here for her…
"What do you want?" she screamed at the woman. "What do you want from me?"
In response, she did nothing. She merely stood in front of the door, her long black hair seeming to sway as if an unseen wind was pushing it, her face wearing an expression of happiness, of servitude.
Jill finally stood up, walking up to the figure.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT?" she yelled, getting in her face. Now, she saw a reaction. The face turned from happiness to confusion.
"I don't want you around! I never wanted you around, do you understand me? I want you to leave! I want to face God on my own terms, so get the fuck out of here!"
Jill began to cry, something she had not done since those days in her early teens when her mother used to come home from drug binges, high on God-knows-what and ready with more than a few disparaging remarks for her daughter who hadn't managed to procure any money from sex-hungry men today to further her own drug dependency.
Through the haze of her own tears, she saw the face once more. It was not curious anymore. Now, the woman was angry.
And in her mind, Jill could feel what was coming – and she welcomed it…
I'm leaving, I'm finally leaving…
Good, I didn't deserve to live anyway…
Jill heard something then – the same croaking sound that had taken up permanent residence in her dark matter – and then watched as the woman disappeared in a burst, her body moving at an incredible speed, a blur headed straight from where she was to where she would be.
She was aware of the pain in her neck, then reached upward to touch it with her hand.
Wetness…and pressure…
It was blood, shooting against her hand.
The artery, huh?
Clever.
Jill Robbie collapsed to the floor of the interrogation room, her eyes registering the prone body of Detective Ness, her eyes already closing, her mind losing consciousness, her heart already acting as a pump, transferring the blood from her heart to carotid artery, and lacking anywhere else to go in a controlled fashion, into an ever-increasing pool on the floor.