A/N: Sorry for the wait, I've just recovered from a spanish exam. Here it is, the final of the chapters before the four alternate endings (two bad, two good). I hope you enjoy it. Please Read and Review xxx
Chapter 14
Sam
Sam swung on the rope in an unsteady circle.
Seeing that the elevator had gone, he'd decided to lower climb down into the depths below regardless. He had to know what had happened to Alison no matter what it took. Besides, he assumed it would be quite a simple feat. However, it was proving to be far more difficult that he had thought. Sam tried clumsily to brace himself against the wall. It was impossible to get a decent grip, and eventually he gave up. Both palms were chafed and stinging with rope burns. Also, his head throbbed with a persistent ache that seemed to have come from nowhere. It made it difficult to concentrate on continuing the risky descent.
Fumbling ineptly on the fraying rope, Sam managed to lower himself a few metres down. He could sense that he was getting close to the bottom of the shaft. This was confirmed when his boots knocked against something that clanged hollowly- the top of the elevator. So Alison hadn't- as he had feared -been thrown down to her death.
She may still be alive.
Sam crouched quickly to find a strange little hatch in the elevator roof. It opened grudgingly, creaking like a rusted gate. He just about managed to squeeze through, landing unscathed on his hands and knees. The rope had entangled itself around his ankle. Sam untied it and stood up, brushing off his knees. The elevator doors were wide open as if somebody had already gone through. This gave him hope. Stepping cautiously through the open gap, he blinked in the gloom and fumbled for his cell. Although it barely functioned, the screen made a decent flashlight.
Sam held it before him and drew in a sharp breath at what he saw.
Corpses littered the floor, carpeting it in an obscene, decaying gore. To his eyes, all of them looked small and human despite their hideous wounds. Their features, which were mangled and rotten like spoiled fruit, were delicately female.
Children. They were all girl-children.
Sam tried not to look as he picked his way through them. It was sickening to think that perhaps Alison lay somewhere among them. He knew for certain that if he caught even a glimpse of her mischievous self, nude and bloody as a slaughterhouse pig, he would go completely mad with guilt.
Don't think about it, he chided himself. Block it out.
He reached up to nurse his pounding head.
"NO! NO! WHY?" something howled abruptly. Sam jumped, almost dropping his cell phone in shock. "Why do I have to be…?"
The words trailed off into choking snorts.
Sam peered round wildly, gun already in hand. In moments he notice a heavy iron cage in the centre of the room, its sides covered in crucified corpses. There was something inside it. Something alive. It was jerking and rocking to and fro as if it was having a seizure. Sam approached it warily, expecting it to be some kid of monster. Then urgently he recognised its shape and laughed in relief. He threw himself at the bars and reached through them with straining fingers.
"Alison, what are you doing in there? What happened?" he asked. "I've been going crazy looking for you."
Alison raised her head. She was lying on an iron gurney, wrists and ankles bound in criss-crossing chains to restrain her. Her hair was matted over her face so that only her wicked mouth showed. It was definitely her, yet she looked different somehow. Smaller. Weaker. Younger, even. Sam tried to ignore the shiver running down his spine.
"You were already crazy," said Alison, after a lengthy pause. Her voice was cold and vacant, quite unlike her own. "Crazy and… evil. To do what you did, you had to be. I know why you're here, Sam. You see, I'm not Alison, and you're not the person you think you are."
"What?"
Sam was beyond confusion. He floundered in his bewilderment, flashes of thought swirling in his mind. The headache was getting worse. He started to feel dizzy and unstable. So he clung to the cage for support that it could not possibly give.
"What do you mean I'm not who I think I am? This is madness. And if you're not Alison, then who the hell are you? And where is she?"
Alison smiled grimly with lips like rosebuds and reached upwards. Wrapping her hair into a thick knot, she wound it round her knuckles and ripped hard. Sam bellowed in horror. He expected her scalp to tear away in a shower of blood. But instead its simply fell to the floor, revealing a head of pretty blonde curls.
"Oh no," Sam whispered. He understood.
Alison beamed sweetly up at him. Her eyes were blue, sparkling, wide and naïve. Sam finally allowed his legs to give way beneath him. He could see everything in perfect clarity and it hurt him more than he could bear.
Tears over-flowed, cleansing him.
"There is no Alison," said Alison. "She's gone. I am Jewel."
Sam didn't reply. He couldn't hear her anymore. His lost memories were flooding back in crimson waves. It felt as if his soul were breaking under the weight of it.
He remembered everything.
Most importantly, he remembered what he'd done to Jewel.
Sam dragged himself to his knees like a dog. His very blood boiled with self-hatred. He was miserable, foul, evil as the Red God himself and more loathsome than he. Sam should have been dead long ago. Buried in a shallow and unmarked grave to be spat upon by passers by. It was all he deserved.
For what redemption could he possibly receive?
Jewel's Home, Two Days Previous
"Thank you so much for bringing Jewel home. I've been at my wit's end. I was thinkin' of bringin' in the police. But now I don't need to, and I'm real grateful. Might look like I don't care 'bout her but I do, ya know?"
The speaker, a woman with a puckered face, took a long drag from her cigarette. Glossed pink lips pouted around it like the mouth of a fish.
"I know, Mrs. Kady," said Sam. "I about her too. I don't know why she ran away. It isn't like her..."
Mrs. Kady peered at him with bright blue eyes and cracked a smile.
"Hah! Honey, if you say that you really don't know her at all," she cackled. "She's flightier than a goddam bird when she's got somethin' on her mind, though I cain't think as what that may be. Though I have a feelin' she has a thing for you. Better watch yourself, she'll be after that ass of yours before you can even grab onto it."
Sam toed the ground, highly embarrassed.
"Anyhow," Mrs. Kady drawled lazily. "Where'd you find her? Train station? That's where she usually hides, though I swear I checked more than fifty times."
"No, she was in some alleyway. She didn't wanna come home till I told her that's where you hang out."
This was a dangerous statement, but Mrs. Kady exploded into filthy chuckles.
"Ooh, you got courage, young man," she grinned. She flapped her highly manicured hands in a shooing motion. "Go on, scat. You go keep an eye on Jewel where you'll be sure to keep outta trouble. Can you stay all night? I'm workin' long hours. And… I may check into a hotel if things get too much. That ok? You sure you got time, what with your job and all? Alright then. So long, honey."
She leaned forward to plant a kiss on Sam's cheek.
"Have a nice time, Mrs. Kady," he said politely, and moved across to the staircase. He lingered there, watching as Mrs. Kady left through the front door. True to her word, she would be out for the entire night. Sam was pleased about that. He was free to do whatever he wanted, and she would never know.
As he climbed the stairs Sam found himself thinking about Jewel and how she had claimed to hate him. She'd seemed genuine. Maybe she'd never loved him at all, simply using him for her own pleasure. She was pretty, after all. Jewel could have anyone she wanted, yet she'd lured him instead- her twenty-one-year-old babysitter.
Both of them enjoyed the thrills of the forbidden, but not the responsibility of relationship.
This was why Jewel teased him and refused his proposal.
She'd never intended to marry him in the first place. It had all been a twisted child's game right from the very start.
She had made a toy of him, a slave, whilst he adored her unconditionally. Sam clenched his fists. He hated her.
Yet he loved her, too…
Jewel's room was right ahead. From within came the sound of sweet singing. Sam did not allow himself to listen to that angelic voice. He slammed the door open and marched through without even knocking. Jewel lay upon her bed, legs crossed in the air provocatively. She had headphones on, listening to some pop song or another. Sam snatched them off her head and flung them across the room.
Jewel's eyes snapped open.
"You," she said bitterly. Her beauty became unpleasant. "Coming back to beg me to marry you again, huh? Answer's still no."
"You lied to me," Sam accused. "You never loved me. I thought you did, but no. You played me along for your own goddam amusement."
Jewel giggled.
"Only just worked that out? You're slow. I liked you, Sam. You liked me. Sooo… I tricked you. It was fun! All the things you said- 'Jewel, you're so perfect. Jewel, you're so pretty.' I loved it!"
She grinned wolfishly at him. She looked like a predator, a black window spider with her legs intertwined. Sam didn't doubt that there was venom in that pretty mouth of hers.
"You treated me like a princess," Jewel continued. "I felt special. Then you proposed, and it ruined everything. It was just too serious. So you see, I don't want you anymore. Game over. I'm not your girlfriend anymore, honey."
Suddenly, Sam couldn't take it anymore. For a long time he had been strained and tormented, and now he could take it no more. Something snapped inside him and he changed for the very worse.
He wasn't a man anymore.
He was a monster.
He grabbed Jewel by the throat and snatched a handful of her scarlet dress in his fist. It tore, ribbons of silk fluttering down onto the carpet. His grip bruised Jewel's bare skin and she cried out in pain.
"Sam, no! What the heck are you doing?"
He ignored her.
Jewel's sharp nails slashed frantically at his eyes. Irritated, Sam grappled her wrists and pinned them to the headboard. Then he leaned in close to her, catching her flowery scent. It made him reel back momentarily.
"I loved you, Jewel," he said to her.
She spat in his face.
"I hated you."
Sam didn't care. He kissed her cheeks, breasts, inner-thighs, too engrossed in her flesh to notice her violent slaps. He did, however, see her tears and sighed in twisted bliss. Jewel was beautiful in her misery.
Sam stated his love one last time.
And then he ruined them both.
Jewel's sobs rose into a piercing scream. Sam hated the sound as much as he hated her. She'd made a fiend of him, a once decent man. She deserved this. She did.
Pain and unhappiness were joy to him. Sam had reached the point of ecstasy, and everything was heaven. Agony was his zenith, a segment of his own atrocious euphoria, an orgasm rising with the call of death. He pressed a shard of shattered glass to her throat and answered it. The thrusting, gurgling convulsions of her demise served only to fuel his exhilaration. Even the choked begging and tiny hand fluttering against his cheeks did not disturb the fog of bliss.
Yet once he was done, this pleasure became a nightmare of his own making.
He saw Jewel, limp and broken as an unwanted doll.
Only then did Sam realize the extent of what he had done.
He looked at her and wept. Her skin was grey, no longer lovely, and her beautiful eyes had rolled back in her head. Oozing bite marks covered her upper half, the signature of his love. Sam felt as if he was descending into madness. Hysterically, he attempted to kiss her in a fruitless apology only to tasted death upon her. Revolted, he staggered back from the bed. There was blood covering both him and the sheets. It would be obvious to anyone that he had murdered her.
They would capture him like a bird and lock him away forever if they found him.
So he left abandoned Jewel and ran for his life. He wasn't sure how far he'd travelled. He'd taken buses, trains, anything he could afford. Towns and states flashed by like a dream. Then his money ran out, and he ended up stranded on a lonely freeway. He could have walked, he supposed, but he did not. He paused on the sidewalk, staring unseeingly into the darkness.
Sam didn't want to run any further.
He wanted to die.
His senses had returned, and so had his humanity. He loathed himself for what he had done. The guilt preyed on his mind, whispering into the very edges of his consciousness.
He was nothing. He was a killer. A monster in human skin.
And so he stepped out into the traffic, praying death would claim him.
But by some twisted miracle it did not. He was pulled onto the other side of the road by an elegant bespectacled figure who radiated ultimate calm. Sam clutched his legs and called him God, begging to be slaughtered. The figure politely declined.
"No," he said. "Your suffering is not yet complete. Come, I will lead you to the salvation you seek. Silence is waiting."
And so Sam allowed himself to be pulled into a town swathed in fog, where his deepest fears lurked in cunning forms…