Heya people! I'm sorry this took a long time but to make up for it it's extra long! The bits in italic are Chandler's memories and written in first person to better describe what happened that night, which is better then how I described it ;-). I know it still leaves one question unanswered but by the end of this chapter they HAVE to say what happened ok? Thanx everyone, and don't forget to review!
'Oh God.' Rachel exclaimed after what seemed like an eternity of silence. Chandler nodded to the comment, the fact that he was sent to this person to care for his life was too horrific for words.
'Then what happened?' Ross prompted. Their questions of where Taylor had gone and why Chandler had never mentioned him were still unanswered.
'Well. We ran!' Taylor said. 'We ran away from him but he was chasing us, we got in to the courtyard and Aunt Lucy was just coming back from shopping. We ran to her and told her what we saw but she didn't believe us. Our uncle came up and asked what all the commotion was about and started acting as if nothing had happened. He laughed off Aunt Lucy when she told him what we said. We wanted to make her go down there but she wouldn't.'
'Aunt Lucy was going out that night again. We were begging her not to; we didn't want to be left alone with Uncle Tad. She still didn't believe us and we begged her to go down in the basement and see for herself, we were almost hysterical and so she agreed.' Chandler paused.
'Did she find them?' Monica asked gently, putting her hand softly on Chandler shoulder. Chandler shook his head.
'We were begging her to go down there so much that we weren't concentrating on where Uncle Tad was.'
'Which was stupid as he was the one we were scared of.' Taylor interjected.
'Aunt Lucy finally agreed to go down and look, to put our minds at ease if nothing else. She went down there and the door slammed behind her.'
'We heard her scream and we realised that he must have been down there.'
'He got her too.' Chandler whispered. They were silent again as the waitress came over and they ordered their food. The friends waited to hear the rest of the story but the two brothers were silent. It was obvious that they didn't want to continue.
'Yeah do you mind if we talk about something else?' Chandler said finally. The others nodded.
'Yeah, ok.' Ross said. 'Why didn't you tell us about this before?'
Chandler sighed. 'I meant about a different subject!' He snapped. All of this was getting to him.
'Ok I have a different subject.' Phoebe piped up. 'In the café earlier you said you were writing a book. Tell us about that!' It was clear from Chandler's face that he had hoped she had forgotten about that.
'You're writing a book?' Monica asked. Chandler smiled slightly and looked up.
'Yeah, I got fed up with work so I started writing whenever I would usually play games or look at … websites all day I just wrote. It was quite easy actually.'
'Whoa' Said Rachel, genially impressed. 'What books have you wrote?'
Chandler winked at her. 'The one you're reading.' He said.
'That can't be right, that guys name is Matthew Taylor' Rachel said frowning.
'Matthew was what my name had been changed to.' Taylor explained. 'So he just combined the two names.'
'Oh.' Rachel understood. 'Why?'
'I dunno, just didn't want to use my real name' Chandler replied. Their food had arrived, in record time. They began to eat and talked about anything but what had happened to Chandler and Taylor. It wasn't until coffee that Ross brought it up again.
'Are you going to tell us about why you didn't mention Taylor before?' He spoke up. The others look at him.
Chandler sighed. 'Ok. Taylor will tell the rest of the story.' He said in that child-like way. Taylor rolled his eyes.
'We heard her scream and we didn't know what to do. It was too late to run, we could hear the footsteps coming back up the stairs. Chandler told me to run and so I did. He ran as well but we ended up getting spilt up. He was upstairs somewhere and I was in the downstairs closet. He came crashing through the house for searching for us. He found me first.'
'But he never came looking for me.' Chandler continued. 'He took Taylor out of the house and drove away. That was the last time I saw him.'
The others were silent again and as their waitress came over Monica asked for their check, feeling that they would be better talking about this at home.
'Are we going to back to our apartment?' Monica asked Chandler, feeling that it was his and Taylor's decision. They both nodded in unison and Monica almost smiled at how close they were before she realised how hard it must have been for them to have been separated like that.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Chandler, Monica, Ross and Taylor were in the porche on the way back to the apartment. Chandler sighed and rested his head on Taylor's shoulder as they went through the busy streets of New York City.
His mind went back to that night, the last time he ever saw his brother.
'Please!!!! Aunt Lucy you HAVE to believe us.' Taylor was sobbing. I was tugging on her arm, pulling her towards the door to the basement. She had to see what was down there, those dead bodies of the girls. I was glad I hadn't actually seen them at that point but Taylor had. I knew he wasn't lying to me, there was no reason for him to.
'Children PLEASE!' She yelled. She wasn't very happy with us, we had been bugging her all night to come and see what was down there, to prove that we weren't lying and that Uncle Tad was a bad person. 'Leave me alone, I'm going out tonight and I NEVER get to go out, I'm always stuck looking after you two because my God damn sister couldn't hack it.' She pushed me off of her arm and walked up the dusty stairs to her room.
The boards creaked under her steps, the whole house was in bad condition. It had been built by my great great uncle and his wife years ago. It wasn't a badly built house and not old either but still it was dark and dingy with joints that creaked in the night and put images of bad creatures in to young children's minds. It created shadows on the walls in the middle of the night and reflections in the mirrors and windows that weren't really there. But it had not created what Taylor had seen.
'But they're really down there!' Taylor tried again. Aunt Lucy sighed and opened the door to her room, we followed her in there before she had the chance to slam it in our faces.
'You two are just trying to create mischief!' She insisted. I exchanged a look with Taylor, she would never believe us. But why? Surely she wasn't happy here having to look after her brother and her older sisters children so why was she still here? Why did she want to stick up for him?
'But we're not Aunt Lucy.' I said firmly. She stared down at me before grabbing my arm and the back of Taylor's neck to shove us out of the room. She let out a small aggravated noise as the door slammed and a lock sounded. I stared at Taylor and we wondered what to do.
'They were down there though!' Taylor pitifully insisted to the closed the door. Aunt Lucy must have heard him but chose to ignore it. I was only nine, Taylor just turned ten last week, but we were more mature then other boys at our age. I guess that's why I was so immature later on in life.
'We have to make her see!' I whispered. Taylor nodded, most of the time we didn't need to speak when it was something as important as this. When our parents were fighting and they would both leave the house in order to let out steam we would, without question, go and tidy up all the plates that had been smashed and glasses broken, fed ourselves and wait nervously for them to return, when we would run to our room to hide form more vicious onslaught from them.
'Are you kids still on about that?' A voice said behind us. We both froze, feeling the cold, hard eyes of Uncle Tad bore in to us from behind. We turned around slowly to face him, our expressions and movements reflected in each other. To people who didn't know us, or even know of us, we were seen as twins, the age difference not recognizable until mentioned and appearances so similar it was difficult to tell us apart for the first few minutes with us.
'Why must you pester your Aunt with these lies?' He spoke to us, his tone was indifferent to what was happening. 'Dead girls in the basement! I've never heard such crap! What do you think I do then? Grab girls from the woods and bring them back here to kill them? Who am I, the Blair Witch?' The look on his face, the impression of his eyes told us that he was admitting it, this was what he was doing.
'Tad, could you please take them away from me? They're driving me crazy with all this talk about dead bodies in the basement.' Aunt Lucy called from her bedroom. Uncle Tad grabbed our arms and hauled us downstairs. We cried our to Aunt Lucy but she ignored us again.
'Listen you little brats! My sisters may not realise it but I sure do. You're trouble makers the both of you!' He whispered manically at us. We didn't move, his grip on us so strong he could have snapped our frail arms like a twig if he wanted to. 'When your precious aunt leaves tonight I am going to make sure that you never tell anyone about this! You got that?' We both nodded silently, being twins again in our movements, and he let go of our arms.
He left the room and we huddled together, figuring out a way to save ourselves without even using words.
'Right kids, I'm leaving now, I want you to be good and show you can be trusted so that I can go out more often and not stuck in this place all the time!' Aunt Lucy said to us as she walked down the stairs.
'Aunt Lucy…' I began, I knew what to do, but not what to say.
'Where did you put our bikes when we came?' Taylor finished. Brilliant! I thought.
Aunt Lucy sighed heavily and glared at us. 'In the basement.' She said, her voice sounding like steel.
'We wanted to go bike riding before it got dark. Uncle Tad said he was going to get them for us but then he went to the woods again for a walk.' I lied. Where did he go anyway? 'You know he'll be gone for ho-ours!!' I whined, hoping to win her over.
'Well it will be dark very soon so you wont have a lot of time anyway.' She told us sternly.
'But we can turn to yard light on. Please!' Taylor begged using his puppy dog eyes that always succeeded with our mother for trivial things like this. I turned on my charm to, hoping to win.
'Watch the TV if you're bored, you can ride in the morning.'
'But the TV bro-oke!' I whined again, I was the best at whining and usually won.
'Fine!' She snapped. 'If you two are SO adamant about me going in to this God forsaken basement than fine! I'll go and be late for my only night out for ages.' She yelled and then walked to the kitchen which held the door to the basement. We followed her, happy about winning but not smiling for we knew what she was about to see down there and the result of whatever was to come would be good for anyone, we weren't any safer, but she needed to know!
She opened the door mumbling under her breath something which we couldn't hear, and maybe that was a good thing. She twisted the handle and opened the door, turning on the light as she descended the stairs. It was cold in the kitchen which led the logical side of our minds to think that it was just a gust of wind that blew the door shut, sending it slamming against the rotting door frame. We jumped, the not so logical part of our minds already fearing the worst. Where was Uncle Tad?
The silence seemed deafening. The wait for anything was killing us. Time ticked by, a second matching an hour until we heard a scream. The most bloodcurdling, soul terrifying scream that tore in to the centre of our bodies and sent the blood accelerating through our veins.
Shit! I thought. Guilt also cursing through me, whatever had happened to Aunt Lucy was all our fault.
Footsteps were heard climbing back up the stairs. I knew instantly that they weren't Aunt Lucy's, they were hard and heavy, whereas Aunt Lucy was a small light footed person. Like our mother.
'Run!' I yelled and ran in the direction my brain sent me, not even paying attention to where it was. I didn't feel or hear Taylor behind me. I hid in Aunt Lucy's bedroom, feeling safer in her surroundings. I could hear familiar crashing sounds from downstairs. Uncle Tad was looking for us. I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself that this was just another fight between out parents, the crashes just tables being knocked over and angry, frustrated yells just exclamations of annoyance from memories of whatever had triggered this fight between them.
I heard another familiar sound, but unlike the other I could pretend it was something else and hide away from it. It was the sound of my brother screaming.
'Chandler?' Monica called. Chandler just sat there in the car still, even though the car had stopped. Chandler was still deep in the memories of that night. He shook himself from the depths of that night and smiled at her, climbing out of the car after his brother.
Phoebe's cab was already there, meaning that she had beaten them home. They climbed the stairs to apartment 20 and walked inside, seeing that Phoebe, Joey and Rachel were already there. And there was someone with them.
'Mom.' Chandler and Taylor gasped. Nora's eyes went wide as she saw both her sons standing in the doorway.
Ok, I have the next part written. It explains where Taylor was I PROMISE!!!!!!!!!!!! Please be patient and it will pay off. That was a long one and I need to go and watch the Simpsons now to revive myself before I can type up the next part. Please leave a review!!!!