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38
I'll Never Be Free
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The three of them tumbled onto the maroon carpet of the hotel room below Dr. Matthews' room.
Valerie's weight collided into Sam, knocking her to the ground. She landed on her injured hip, but was too busy panicking to feel the brunt of the pain. Bits of plaster rained from the ceiling as police officers stormed the room above.
There was the bang of a door. "Clear!" someone yelled.
A balding man not wearing a shirt jerked awake, sitting up in the bed. He blinked furiously at them, as if he was still dreaming.
"Sleep," Danny ordered, voice faint and disembodied, like speaking through a tin can.
The man wavered a few times drunkenly, fighting. For one harrowing moment Sam thought he was going to break free of Danny's mesmeric hold, but then his eyes rolled back and he fell onto his pillow, snoring.
Sam felt Danny's hand slip out of her own like he was nothing but vapor. Eyes closed, his form wavered, like a candle subjected to a gust of wind. His skin shriveled in fast-forward, eyes sinking. What teeth were poking out of his grimacing mouth blackened. Worry exploded in Sam's gut. It was the third time he had extended his ghost powers to her, the third time it had caused him to go see through, but the first time his limbs had started to wither.
Valerie groaned. Her wet hair was flopped over her face, backpack of relics strapped to her back. She was still brandishing her spoon.
Solidifying again into his usual visage, Danny put his finger to his lips and pointed up to the ceiling, where Ramón had moved on to searching the top row of hotel rooms.
Sam peeled back the curtain and looked outside. At some point in the night the rain had turned into snow. Flakes flurried, fast and frantic, shooting through the streetlights and light from the hotel hallway. A cop car idled in the parking lot. Another officer was standing next to Gray's borrowed car keeping watch in case someone tried to make a run for it. Going out the front way was not an option.
Valerie strode to the back of the room, where a large window overlooked the back parking lot. With a frustrated growl she threw it open and kicked out the screen. It fell into a bush, thankfully without much noise.
Sam's body complained, but she managed to slip out the window, avoiding the bush. Her feet landed in an inch of snow. It immediately soaked through Dr. Matthew's faux fur lined slippers. Snowflakes tapped her cheeks and her eyelashes. With the reddish hue in the night sky, the flakes could have been mistaken for ash if not for their moisture. Somewhere behind the purple mottled storm clouds Sam was certain the moon and sun were still colliding.
Valerie wordlessly ran to the back of the parking lot, towards a gate in the fence.
Sam hesitated. What about Dr. Matthews? They couldn't just leave her behind. Although, Sam had no idea how they were going to help her now without getting caught themselves. She didn't even know if the police had already gotten her, and if that was how they had known which door to knock down.
Danny appeared beside her. He pushed the small of her back until she broke into a run for the fence.
.
This wasn't Amity Park.
Pieces of it were, and pieces of it weren't. There were playgrounds where Sam knew no playgrounds existed and rows of abandoned storefronts with sale signs hanging in the windows. A sign advertised a dozen eggs for 33 cents. Stuck into the browned lawn of someone's squat, modest mid-century home was a sign yelling, "PRAY FOR RAIN", the painted letters washing away. They passed a dark green Chevy, whose truck bed of beets was getting a thin layer of white. The older, plainer, license plate told Sam it didn't belong.
Whatever dimension she had stepped into had followed her back up that crooked staircase and spread. It was a town trapped between past and present. Amity and Amity Park; a double exposure on a negative.
There was no indication that anyone living was around. The barrenness felt profound. Like beyond Amity Park, the entire world may look and feel this just this desolate and lonely. It felt as if Sam's insides finally matched the outsides of the world. While that didn't lessen the crushing weight pressing in on her from all sides, it was somehow comforting.
Puffs of condensed air plumed out in front of Sam's face as she ran. She could hear Valerie racing along next to her, although she paid her no mind. Inside, her thoughts were wild, firing in all directions. Even if she found the bodies, Masters could still cover it all back up. They needed to expose the information. Tell everyone. They could find a radio station or a TV station, but Masters could be waiting for her to do something like that. How can she get all the information out when she finds the bodies?
Unable to run any longer, Sam picked a driveway to stumble down and wound around the side of a house until she was hidden from the street behind a row of bushes. She clutched at her side, panting.
Valerie followed, tucking close. Snow covered her now frozen hair. She was shivering uncontrollably, her elbows knocking against Sam's sides. "What the fuck is going on?" she whispered, eyes huge and glassy with panic.
Danny came last. His eyes glowed in the dark like two floating orbs and he made a motion with his hand towards the ground, lips taut in concentration. Their footprints faded from the snow.
An illusion. Sam was certain they were still there. "How long will that last?" she whispered, teeth chattering.
Danny didn't answer.
His blank expression broke her heart. "She'll be ok. She's really smart," Sam whispered. She reached out and barely brushed her fingertips against the sleeve of his dark sweater.
"W-We have to get somewhere warm," Valerie stammered, breath catching and fluttering.
Sam swiveled on her slippers and glanced up at the house they were crouched against. A string of white Christmas lights ran underneath the eave, illuminating a kitchen window. She raised an eyebrow and rapped her knuckles on the siding, pointing up at it.
.
The kitchen was dark. The house was silent. Pools of water collected at her feet.
It was a nice modern kitchen. Country style, with floral wallpaper. There was an island with pots and pans hanging off hooks directly above. The streetlight from outside shone yellow gleams off the handles. A dirty plate in the sink. A knife rack next to a pepper grinder. All in all, a kitchen of someone who loved cooking.
Sam almost felt bad for breaking in and dripping all over it. She plucked a knife from the rack and weighed it in her hands. The blade shone like oil in the dark.
Valerie began investigating cupboards. She made little disappointed noises after rummaging through a good portion of them, although Sam had no idea what she was searching for.
Tick tick tick tick tick...
Danny appeared in the doorway. His skin was glowing again from within. "No one home," he reported. "Also, I found this." He placed a flashlight on the counter.
Safe, for now. Her body sagged in relief.
Valerie snatched the flashlight, before brushing past them down the hall. The orb of light danced across the walls as she looked around.
Sam caught a slice of a photo. Shock rattled through her.
Through the gloom, Mr. Lancer smiled, his arm around a thin woman with curly red hair in a wedding dress. They had broken into her history teacher's house. It was probably just her own desperation, but she could swear that Lancer was looking down at her in that photo like he was saying: Ficciones! Mi casa es su casa.
Feeling a little light-headed, she leaned her weight into the wall. Without warning, tears flooded her eyes, spilling down her cheeks.
Valerie strode back into the hall, flashlight in her mouth, arms full of something. She tipped a laundry basket and clothing splayed lifelessly across the floor.
.
Unbeknownst to Lancer, three teenagers raided his laundry and took up temporary residence in his living room.
Danny peeked between wooden blinds towards the front lawn. To his right, a Christmas tree sat, dark and demure, wooden ornaments hanging off its branches. "Sixteen hours left," he announced.
"Yes, thank you. Can you slow down time as much as you seem to be speeding it up?" Valerie grumbled. She kicked her feet up onto the coffee table, patting a paisley hand towel she had snagged from the bathroom through her hair. Oversize sweatshirt sleeves were rolled five times. She rolled the towel hard across her temple, green eyes flicked over to Sam. "What are you doing?"
Sam's fingertips tapped along a digital keyboard. Her hands had stopped shaking long enough to grip her phone.
Sam could practically feel the discomfiting glance Danny and Valerie shared behind her back. It prickled through the air. Tapping the faintly glowing period key with a little more flair than necessary, she looked up. "So, back to the mansion," she prompted.
"No," Valerie shot. When Danny didn't immediately jump in with something similar, she uncrossed her legs, swinging them down from where they were hanging over the arm of the chair, and pointed the towel between the two of them. A dry laugh fell out. "No way."
Danny dropped the blinds and crossed his arms. "That reaction is exactly why it's a good idea," he said.
The towel dropped. "It's a death trap," Valerie pleaded, like she knew that she was two seconds away from being outvoted. Peering between them, she said, "Really?"
"Dying here, dying there..." Danny was muttering to himself. "What's the big deal?"
"I can't go back. Once was enough," Valerie whispered.
Something in her tone made Sam pause. Last time she had heard that near-meltdown waver, Valerie had tried to punch her in the face. Valerie's head had dropped and she was swaying slightly. "You won't have to go back," Sam promised.
Danny blinked in surprise. "No?"
There was three of them. Masters used his puppets to his advantage. Sam would have to do the same. Although this had been part of the basic sketch of a plan she'd come up with back at the hotel, she winced at having to actually say it aloud. "I go back alone," she decided.
That idea finally struck a nerve in Danny. He abandoned the window. "Sam…" he protested, "You don't have to do this on your—"
"You'll pretend to be me," Sam interrupted, "You and Valerie will go back to the hotel. Get the car. Lure Ramón and her team away from the villa."
Danny had gone still; a film reel of thoughts flickered behind his eyes.
"You mean a diversion?" Valerie asked, sounding a little more herself. "Ramón's a puppet?"
Sam nodded. It was a strong possibility. The day Danny and her had broken into the police station, she had seen a cop car in the mansion's driveway. Officer Gray had been at the station. There were only so many cops in a small town like Amity. "Besides. Even if she's not, you'll make enough noise to catch his attention," she reasoned.
"Won't he find it weird Danny's not with us?" Valerie pointed out.
"No. He'd probably think I was invisible, and he'd have to get close to sniff out I'm not," Danny spoke up. That myriad of thoughts had solidified into one— apprehension. "He knows I'd never leave Sam's side. Especially not right now."
Sam believed him. She was closer to solving this case than anyone who came before her. If Danny's priorities had ever been in question, him leaving his sister behind had put them to rest. Keeping her alive was his first concern. Sam also knew if this was the Danny she had read about in Walker's notes, he wouldn't have even entertained this plan. He would have barrelled right back for his sister without care to consequences, but Danny had said it himself— he'd had to become a different person.
"Which is what makes this a great plan. When you go back there, you can't go looking for Jazz," Sam whispered. "I know you want to, but you know that if he's got her, he'll keep her alive. Killing your sister wouldn't make for good leverage."
"He probably thinks I'll come for her no matter what," Danny conceded. "And going for her would only prove I'm not really you." He fell quiet, lost in thought, hand curled beneath his chin.
Valerie was staring down at her towel, tracing the pattern with her fingers.
Taking their silence as implicit— and on Danny's end more like grudging— agreement on that part of the plan, Sam said, "While he's chasing you two, I'll go back to the bunker, alone. Follow the tunnel Skulker took the bodies."
Valerie sat back in the armchair. Approval spread across her lips in the form of a smile.
"I don't like it," Danny muttered. He waved his hand back and forth like, but you both already knew that.
"That reaction is exactly why it's a good idea," Valerie quoted. She raised an eyebrow.
Looking a little annoyed at having his words thrown back at him, Danny sighed and ran both hands down his face. "Vlad's brain works opposite of normal people. For all we know we're playing into his hands," he admitted through his fingers.
Sam felt her chest ache at the torment still lingering in there. Danny was right. They could be about to walk into another trap, but it was better than running, or doing nothing at all. Her breath caught in her throat as Danny ripped his hands away and studied her intensely. She could hear the questions in his combing gaze, asking her if she was really okay doing this, if he was making a mistake, if going against all his first instincts was the right choice.
She smiled. Ticking clicked back and forth between them.
The turbulence in his eyes calmed. Blue bled into violet, his body wobbled, and Sam found herself staring at a mirrored version of herself, shaved hair, Lancer's coat, burns, bruises, and all.
The effect was vertiginous. There was something uncanny about seeing yourself, but not. She swallowed, eyeing him up and down for any inconsistencies, and tried not to let her skin inch away. It was creepily accurate. Down to the slight pigment discoloration in her damaged right eye. "How long will that last?"
In a voice that sounded a lot like her own, only without her drawling monotone, he said, "Two, maybe three hours."
Sam straightened her phone between her hands, thumbs poised to over the 'send' button. "Let's finish your story, Danny."
.
As Sam drew closer to the mansion, less and less of modern day Amity Park existed. The Pine street she jogged down was lined with older one-story houses with flat roofs and vintage-new cars parked in driveways.
The mansion loomed above them all, dazzling in a fresh coat of white paint.
Borrowed boots two sizes too big crunched over broken glass as Sam passed through the front door. Over one shoulder she balanced a shovel she had taken from Lancer's.
The lights were still on. Glass still scattered across floor. From the kitchen, Sam could hear the metallic rattling shrill of an old phone over and over. She knew her hands should be shaking and she should be panicking, but a sense of calm had overtaken her.
She felt outside of herself. The fact that the house she was walking through was familiar, and yet totally foreign, didn't help that feeling of… what had Jazz called it? Disassociation?
She could navigate this house's layout blindfolded, and yet the wallpaper was a different color. There were tables where there should be mirrors. Chair where there should be coat racks.
Tiptoeing down the hallway, Sam spotted the phone. It was gold. Drilled into the wall right beside the entrance to the kitchen. The wallpaper around it was more detailed, and had embossing. Sam guessed by the outrageous display of wealth, this is what the mansion had looked like while Masters had owned it.
Comparing this to Lancer's kitchen— which, while she had never been there until tonight, had felt innately familiar— Sam was finally able to pinpoint exactly what it was about this place that set her senses off.
It was a house that appeared to have built itself. It lacked hope or love. Despite the fact that it paraded beds and tables and fireplaces and sofas, it was still a house wearing a costume of a home. Not hers. It had never been her home. Her family had simply been tolerated to walk up and down it's spines and stuff their things between it's ribs.
It had her wondering… to what end was this house not a reflection, but an extension, of it's owner's perverted brain? Not alive; not dead. Like most things in Amity Park it was somehow stuck right in between.
Past the phone, all the way down the hall, standing absolutely still near the kitchen island, was a man. His back was to her. Sam recognized his hair and the tan color of his car coat. Her eyes flicked down and she froze.
His feet hovered one inch above the ground.
Dread filled her chest with ice. Slowly, as if he could hear her, Sam reached for the study door. The shovel's wooden handle grew slick in her other hand. Something instinctual told her she did not want whatever was left of her father to notice her and she needed to hide, quick.
A noise came from inside the study, soft and muffled against the ringing. Someone sobbing on the other side of the door.
Sam's hand froze, hovering an inch over the doorknob, torn.
Her father tilted his head and began to slowly rotate in place.
Sam inhaled sharply, whipping the study door open, spinning inside, and closing it as softly as possible. Not pausing to listen if he had heard her or not, she raised the shovel ready to strike and took in the room.
A woman was lying curled on her side in the middle the rug. Her thin shoulders shuddered with each cry and for a wild second Sam thought it might be Madeline Fenton. Then, she took in the pale blonde hair and the chemise robe.
"...Mom?" Her shovel lowered slightly.
The woman quieted. Her head swiveled drunkenly, eyes swollen from crying, hair mussed on one side. A wineglass lay next to her right hand, red spilling across the rug; the knife and blood that the ghost of her murdered mother no longer had. A strand of pearls rested delicately atop her collarbones. They glowed strange in the amber light pouring from outside.
"Are you going to make me leave?" Sam ventured cautiously.
Her mother hiccuped and laughed, head wobbling in a negative. "No point. Everything's all out in the open now!" She flopped an arm out at the door, as if to say, see?
Sam realized this was as close to her Mom as she was going to get. Her throat tightened and the room suddenly got blurry. She ran the few steps between them. Ignoring the cold-wrong feeling ghosts always had, she pressed her face into her mother's shoulder with a shuddering breath.
"My brave girl," Pamela soothed. "It's okay. It's okay…" A hand stroked the top of her head like iced velvet.
Sam could feel the waves of cold gust down the back of her neck like air falling out of a freezer door. "I'm sorry," she choked. Sorry that she had no time left to atone for all those years she spent pushing her mom away.
Her mother gripped her into a tighter hug, as if to convey she had never blamed her in the first place. Sam's face pressed into her shoulder, her mother's solidness growing softer, like a pillow of snow, until her form began to fade completely.
A thread of dead smell wafted off the ghost's hair and hit Sam like a bucket of ice. She flinched. Even though she couldn't outrightly hear it anymore— time was still ticking. Danny and Valerie had given her maybe three hours to find the bodies. As much as Sam wanted to stay in her mother's embrace, she forced herself to let go.
She grabbed the fringe of the rug and ripped it away from the floor. Dust sprayed through the air and her mother ducked as if it would hit her, but it just fell right through. Using the pointed tip of the shovel, Sam pried open the floorboard and yanked the lever. The bookcase swung open. This time it was full of books and swung silently, as if silence was the whole point of it, and the hinges were well greased and used often.
The dead smell didn't come this time. It's absence was worse. It told the story of a bunker that had changed while she had been away.
Still sitting on the floor, now with part of the rug lying over her sprawled legs, her mother stared into the narrow passageway. Embers of recognition lit in her eyes and her body wavered in fear, like a thick vapor against a closing door.
"This will all be over soon," Sam promised. With that goal fresh in her mind, she slung her shovel over her back and began her descent through the cramped little staircase.
.
This time, the evil presence from before didn't stick on her back. Masters wasn't paying attention.
The lights were already on, making it easy to see the steps out in front of her. Behind her, the study winked out of view and the sound of the kitchen phone muffled until it faded completely.
A snapping sound took its place. It started loud and broke into multiple echoes as it galloped and bounced up the staircase. It was whatever Danny had heard that had alerted him to the secret room in the first place.
The Nasty Burger, Lucky Strike gas station, back to the mansion, and now the bunker... Sam was retracing his last steps. Which meant that at the end of this tunnel was the same thing that Danny had found all those years ago.
As she neared the end, she grasped the handle of her shovel, grip slick with sweat. Even though she didn't feel the serial killer's oppressive eye, she prepared for him to be in the bunker, cutting someone open on a surgical table. He wasn't.
The room was brightly lit this time and very clean. The surgical bed had a crisp linen sheet tucked around it and an unused pillow. The two enormous lamps were switched off.
Under her boots, the ground was a waxed cement. Hardly any dust.
Another snap resounded, the lights flickered, and Sam pinpointed the source: a generator, built into the far wall. A blinking red light suggested it was malfunctioning in some way, although apparently not malfunctioning enough for Masters to replace it. It was no doubt powering the entire basement, from the surgical equipment, to the overhead lighting. The exhaust was being pumped out of the bunker via a silver tube, which snaked along the wall, and exited the bunker through a vent above the padlocked door.
Only it wasn't padlocked. It was open.
Crossing the room, Sam grabbed the handle of it and glanced back. She couldn't help the feeling that this whole thing was a set up. It reeked like the second before that dog jumped out of the bush. Too late to switch plans now.
Sam pulled back the metal bar lock. Expecting images of gory murder to await her on the other side, she couldn't help the flutter in her chest as she yanked open the door. Behind it she found another room, smaller, like a storage closet. She could make out the butt of a wooden trolley, like one people used to haul tools on railways, and followed it down to the floor where two parallel silver tracks began and faded off into the dark.
Reaching around inside the door, she found a light, and switched it on.
A loud snap whipped through the room and for a second the light flickered in mayhem, dancing like lightning, before it grew steadily, flooding the closet.
The ceiling was barely above her head, and the metal exhaust pipe for the generator took up a lot of that space as it continued its meandering journey across the ceiling, down the opposite wall, and through a small opening. The same opening the tracks led out, and the same opening the wooden trolley that sat atop those tracks faced.
Sam couldn't stop shivering. Even if Danny hadn't already told her what this room was used for, it would have still elicited the same feeling of wrongness that was marching up and down her spine. It was just too small to be normal; just too sparse to be used for anything good.
To the right of the portal was another flip-switch, facing down. And, as Sam walked inside the tiny room, she realized the trolley was attached to a chain that suspended, taut, deep into the cavernous tunnel.
She knew what she had to do. Didn't make it any better climbing in.
The trolley was just too short to fit an adult comfortably. She doubted any of the taller kids had laid flat along it's bottom either. She had to curl her legs, tucking them up towards her chest and over to the side. Her shoulders pressed up against the top edge, and she had to crane her neck to keep her head ducked down inside. She fit the shovel in sideways and pinned to her chest, arms crossed. Not comfortable. And Danny, who was a good bit taller than her, had contorted himself here, pretending to be a corpse, for how long?
The thought made her breath hitch and she remembered that a dozen other bodies had pressed against the constraints of this thing. There was no stains, no discolorations, no scratches in the wood to say they had been there. Sam could still feel them.
Not wanting to think about it any longer, Sam reached out and hit the switch.
A snap hit her ear like a gunshot, ricocheting down the tunnel and down her spine. The pipe that was now mere inches from her face hissed. For a horrible second she thought the generator would explode. The trolley jolted backwards. The chain rattled, grew taught. She could feel the wheels grind like shifting muscles of person's back, then the trolley crept backwards into black.
a/n: Two chapters left. :) I can't believe it. Thank you to KenTheBagel, MsFrizzle, MaxandFang101, hepchaton, sammansonrepilica, Annie Android, Anna McNarin, OutOfThisUniverse, brooklyn1shay2black3, TheSmilingRose, and Alakazamboni for reviewing the last chapter.