Until Dawn: Atychiphobia

by Universal lizard

One year following a terrible tragedy involving two girls, eight teenagers decide to reunite at the site where they had lost their two friends. An attempt at closure, the night could hold a great many discoveries for them. That is if they do not lose themselves to whatever lies in the cold of the night...

7. Chapter 6: Psychosis

-I hope this chapter can carry the spirit of Halloween within it, despite the day itself having already passed before I could release it then. In any case, enjoy! -

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Emily was not one to say that she preferred animals. Or, perhaps that wasn't exactly true as she liked dogs and cats just like any other normal person. No, what she didn't prefer were those wild, undomesticated animals that liked to roam around forests and away from civilization and all that. They were dirty, untamed, but most of all dangerous. Any kind of animal that couldn't be trained to live in a house could kill someone if they weren't careful.

Kind of like how these elk here could kill both her and Matt!

The elk at the very lead of the pack let out another cry. This massive herd of elk with their even bigger horns atop their heads just came out of nowhere! In no time at all they had completely encircled both Matt and her from the front. With vicious looking elk in front of them and a sheer drop off the cliff directly behind them, Emily could feel a nervous chill running along her body from all around.

"Matt...?" she spoke softly and cautiously to avoid possibly provoking them, "What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do...!?"

Matt meanwhile stood a few inches in front of her so that she couldn't exactly see his facial expressions. What she could see however was his right hand gripping that axe and his left hand gently held out between her and the creatures.

"Stay calm..." he whispered just as softly as she had, "Relax; they're just deer. They just wanna... check us out is all..." Despite Matt's words of assurance, the only thing that drew Emily's attention was one of the elk suddenly shaking its head and its antlers shaking along with it. The entire display sent fear through her body yet again at the mere sight.

"No no no, Matt, they're gonna hurt us...!" she spoke in spite of his words. A quick but gentle shushing from her boyfriend silenced her from speaking any further. All she was left to do was rub the sides of her arms nervously. What could Matt be thinking right now? Was he planning to like fight off these elk, with that ax he held in his hand? That'd be crazy; he'd get himself killed for sure!

Before them the massive herd of elk remained stationary. The fact that they weren't advancing any further was somewhat of a good thing in a moment like this. But still, the way they were just standing there, those massive horns and antlers atop their heads that could seriously hurt someone, Emily could feel her teeth chatter involuntarily. Whether they chattered from the chilling cold or the fear coursing through her body, she couldn't exactly say. Seriously, where had they come from and why were they here now, with the intent of possibly hurting them?

Emily thought back to the sudden loud yet distant screeching sound she and Matt had heard earlier. While she had no clue what that was either, coincidentally that was the one thing that had occurred directly before this herd had suddenly appeared. Was it some kind of elk rallying call or something? It sure didn't sound like any elk call that she'd ever heard of before. Of course, she wasn't very well versed with elk in the first place. All that mattered now was that this huge group of at least a dozen or more elk was here now, and possibly would do something to them if they didn't do something first! But what could they do?

It was then that Emily caught sight of movement directly before her. Her eyes widened as she witnessed Matt suddenly yet slowly advance towards the elk herd, his free empty hand raised out towards them. What the heck was he doing? Why was he approaching them- was he trying to get himself killed?!

As she opened her mouth to protest, something else caught her attention that shut her up. To her shock and amazement, the elk that was located at the forefront of the herd suddenly backed up slowly upon his approach! It did let out some more of its 'elk-calls' towards him, but aside from that it was actually backing away from him! And not only that, but a couple of the elk also standing close by to this one seemed to follow its example and backed up along with it.

Matt then very quickly glanced over his shoulder towards her and gave a quick motion to follow him with his hand. Emily's eyes widened and her mouth hung open to wordlessly protest. This was crazy what he was doing, but now he wanted her to get close to things as well!? What if one of them suddenly lashed out towards her? She could be impaled on any one of their sharpened antlers or even pushed off of the cliff behind her!

However, Matt it seemed wasn't waiting around to see what she herself would do, and he was still very slowly proceeding forward as he had been doing. Pretty soon he'd be further and deeper into the thick of the herd, leaving her by herself near the edge of the cliff! As bad as this was, being left by herself was infinitely worse Emily had to admit. With a quick breath of air, she just as slowly yet deftly made her way forward to rejoin Matt.

As he walked directly behind him, she kept the beam of light from her flashlight trained straight on the snowy ground. The light itself reflected off of the snow white of the ice and up at the elk's legs. It might've been a bad idea to shine the light directly at the elk's eyes lest it irritate them and cause them to do something after all.

By now the sounds of elk cries and calls could be heard from all around them instead of strictly in front of them. In addition to the sounds, Emily found her nose assaulted with the strange, musky odor of what she could only guess was what elk smelled like. The more the two moved forward the more Emily could see that this herd was actually comprised of elk both with and without horns. From what she did know about wild animals like deer from school, the ones with horns had to be males and the ones without had to be females. Maybe these female elk wouldn't be so keen to attacking them as she figured the males would be? She shook her head; that was not something she was wanting to test out either.

She glanced back up at her boyfriend. Good God, he was so brave for walking into this herd himself and basically clearing the way for them! She still couldn't see the exact look on his face from her angle she stood; how was he not freaking out as much as she was right now?

Her mental pondering was interrupted with Matt's slow advance came to a slow halt. Emily looked up to see that one of the elk directly in front of them was not receding as its fellow elk had done. A male, with at least a dozen sharp points on its antlers alone remained standing in place before them, just sniffing the air between them. Why wasn't it moving? What was it planning to do- attack them? They others had simply backed off, so what was going on here?

And what was Matt planning to do as well? From the side she could see him holding that axe in his hand as he stared down the elk. Surely... was he planning to attack the elk? Just to get it to move?

Her answer came in the form of Matt taking a single step forward towards the elk, his foot crunching in the snow rather loudly. The creature gave a single grunting noise, but nonetheless relented to his action. It followed the other elks' example and yielded to Matt, walking slowly backwards to allow the two some space.

"Just... walk slowly..." Matt spoke up softly, seemingly for the first time in forever. He even glanced back over his shoulder once towards her before turning back and focusing on directly in front of him.

Emily continued to rub her arms nervously as she too shuffled her way forward. On practically all sides of her an elk could be seeing eyeing her and sniffing in her direction. It continued to make her feel even more creeped out; 'being sniffed by a herd of wild animals' was NOT something she was planning to tell her friends and family when she got home!

To her credit at least some of the elk in this big herd seemed to lose interest in them specifically. They turned their heads to sniff each other or make those loud elk calls back and forth to each other rather than exclusively at them. Was this a good thing? Were they finding them not so interesting anymore so as to not focus on them so much anymore? Emily didn't want to count her blessings too soon, but that's what this was looking like at the moment.

Emily followed closely behind Matt as he suddenly veered to the right and past one of the snow-covered trees in this clearing. He quickly pulled himself up and over one of the nearby large rocks beside the path they had just walked past.

"Matt-?" she gently called out to him.

"Come on! We can go this way...!" he replied just as hastily. He reached a free hand down to her which she accepted. He then pulled her up to join him atop the rock before jumping down onto the other side himself. Emily however cast one last look behind her at the massive elk herd.

By now the animals seemed to completely lose interest in the pair, more or less. The group that was once so tightly packed together to seal them in close to the cliff edge before was beginning to disperse slightly. Many of the elk began sniffing and calling out to each other instead, with even a couple of the males knocking their antlers against each other as well. All in all, the immediate threat and danger of the elk herd seemed to pass, and Emily couldn't help but feel a sudden strange fascination with the creatures now that they weren't trying to kill them...

Her head snapped back around towards where Matt stood expectantly with his arm stretched up towards her. Staring at wildlife would have to wait as she placed her hand in his and jumped down to his level.

"Oh my God!" she said with a shiver running up her body, "How did we- did we really just-?"

"Yeah, I guess we did," Matt said with a shrug. He redirected both of their gazes up at where they now stood, "And look here! This was the path we needed to be on! Guess the debris blocked off that we didn't see it before..."

He was absolutely correct; the familiar stretch of a path laid out before them. On both sides lay a run-down, broken wooden fence laying against a small wall of rock and leaf-less trees sprouting up from above them. This was scary as heck, but at least it looked like a trail that was meant to be walked.

"Ah, well, nice job Matt!" she said to him with a nod. The boy gave a smile of appreciation before she herself proceeded to walk forward along the trail, "But, I mean, is this where we're supposed to go? To the fire tower?"

"Well, it's gotta be, right?" he said behind her, "Where else would it go?"

This line of thought wasn't boding well in Emily's mind. She wasn't one to take things merely 'on chance'. She always preferred to have a clear goal in mind when setting out to do, well, anything in her life. It was always better to know exactly what the problem was and the exact way it needed to be done, with all points in between considered. Thankfully, the two of them had seen a ranger's map of Blackwood Mountain earlier on with a dotted line indicating a trail to be hiked to get up to the nearby fire tower. The exact way that line curved on the map served as a slight reference to the way she hoped this particular trail would curve as well.

This snow flurry wasn't making things any easier for her either. Not only was it pitch black out but the snowfall of icy flakes getting in her eyes was really getting on her nerves too. Why did there have to be an ice-cold blizzard tonight of all nights?! One of their friends was killed, this didn't need to make things any harder for them!

Nevertheless, she continued to ascend the natural incline of this hiking trail, the run-down fences on either side serving as a continued guide for her and Matt. To her credit Emily was at least getting somewhat of a decent workout in her legs from the way she was walking. The burning feelings in her shins and her ankles was unmistakable. Now if only the rest of her body could get this much of a burn to ward off this freezing cold...

Eventually their walk on the path took a sharp turn to the right. Even as they walked Emily kept her flashlight trained straight on what was all in front of them. She did not feel like running into anymore of the friendly local wildlife, so maybe shining this light around in front of them would scare anything off? Thankfully nothing like elk or anything else could be seen on their path or anything around them for that matter, which could only mean what she was doing was working.

However, as the two ascended up the steady incline of the path that was slowly curving to the left now, something did catch Emily's eye. There, through the trees on the left side of the path, a small light could be seen piercing through the thick of the tree line! A bright red light, though small in size shown upon them like a beacon from the sky itself! From how high up this light was it had to be the fire tower!

She let out a small sigh of relief along with the rhythmic sound of her's and Matt's feet crunching the snow beneath them. While her heart felt elated at the feeling of something going right for once, there was something nagging at her in the back of her mind.

"If we do manage to get someone on the radio-" she said.

"Which we will," Matt quickly cut in.

"And we tell them we need help..." Emily continued, "What do we do while we wait?"

"I still say we should go back to the lodge and get everyone else," Matt answered rather quickly. His response caused Emily to frown.

"Oh God, not the lodge," she said. The lodge was the one place she was not too eager to get back to. For all they knew the Psycho could be lurking around there just waiting for her and him to show back up, "We should stay here. You know, in case whoever it is needs to get back in touch with us...?"

"Let's just get that radio working first..." Matt replied. Emily recognized that tone in his voice as resignation. This was good; she didn't need to say anything further because she was right, and Matt was accepting that. Took him long enough to figure it out, but at least he was on her side still.

After a few more feet of walking up the incline the path before them turned sharply to the left again. It was also around this point that the path was widening a little more before them. The tree lines on both sides of the path were growing smaller the further up they walked. This also had the added effect of the wind blowing in a little more unhindered as a result. Ice cold snowflakes whipped at Emily's face and exposed hands. The one time she decided not to bring her hat and mittens with her to a snowy mountain too...

The two rounded the corner and beheld what lay before them. A large open clearing of snow-covered ground, an equally snow-covered wooden lunch table, and the fire tower itself. The metallic structure stretched up high into the air, at least fifty feet or so above, with the familiar red light shining at the very top. This light illuminated a small square walkway that wrapped around the entire 'base' of the tower's box.

Perfect! She and Matt had finally arrived! And it looks like all they'd have to do to get up there was climb that wooden staircase at the bottom of-

"AHHH-!" Emily suddenly yelped as her world suddenly burst out with brighter light. Her eyes stung as an offending light source nearly blinded them. She squinted her eyes and held her hand up to block out wherever this light was coming from, "Ugh, that's freaking bright!"

"Yeah, no kidding!" Matt could be heard next to her. A few more seconds of harsh light and her eyes steadily began to adjust. Eventually with eyes still squinted she lowered her hand to gaze out at what was making this light glare practically right in her face.

"I... can't see; what is that?" she asked before feeling a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"It's just a security light," Matt looked at her. With his non-squinting eyes, he must've been able to identify the source before she could, "Motion sensor probably..."

Emily's eyes finally adjusted to the harsh light. She could see that the light itself shone from a singular source from one of the metallic legs of the tower itself, above the wooden stairs. Maybe it was good that this light had activated upon their arrival and not... well, anything else out here.

She then snow-crunched her way forward a couple more steps before proceeding to walk up the wooden stairs themselves. A thin layer of snow coated the top of the steps, but Emily did find some small relief in walking upon something relatively solid for once. She could also hear the sound of Matt's footsteps directly behind her as she turned sharply to the left. A few more ascending steps further and the two found themselves at the very base of the tower itself, the bright light directly above them by now.

Emily and Matt then stood upon the wooden 'floor' of the tower's central base, which mostly comprised of wooden planks in various states of rot and disrepair. In fact, to their right side was a massive hole definitely big enough for the two of them to be able to jump down through!

Next to this hole however was a massive metal ladder that reached all the way straight up the tower's next level. Frankly Emily would've rather preferred more steps to walk up instead, but it seemed they had little choice at this point.

She herself approached the base of the ladder and proceeded to climb. The ice-cold metal practically stung her exposed skin beneath her hand. Her eyes remained glued to the 'ceiling' directly above her where the ladder led up to. A hatch could be seen a few rungs up which would lead to the next 'floor' of this tower.

Emily soon passed the floor of the next level after ascending before the ladder itself soon ended. As she emerged from below, a couple squawks from birds could be heard from behind her as they flew away upon seeing her appear. Emily's feet soon found themselves back on more solid ground before she cast a quick glance back down at the lower level. Matt could be seen beginning to climb up himself, his ax still in his hand.

Rather than stick around and wait for the Muscle-Head to finally climb up to her level, Emily instead made her way to the next ladder and proceeded to climb up it as well. While her eyes remained glued to the open hatch above her and little else, the surrounding wind was sure doing its best to detract her from climbing. She could practically feel each individual snowflake stinging her flesh. In fact, it was feeling rather colder compared to before.

"Ugh, why is it so windy all of a sudden...!?" she spoke aloud.

"Just keep climbing; we're almost inside!" she heard Matt reply from behind her.

Just like before Emily finally reached the top of this ladder and stood upon the tower's next 'floor'. Upon turning around to see the next ladder to climb, Emily found herself afforded a rather clear, unhindered view of the full moon in the sky. Without any clouds around to obscure it, the night was looking that much brighter thanks to the brightness of the moon itself.

A quick glance out of the corner of her eye told her that Matt had already climbed up to her level by now. Emily then proceeded to ascend up what she hoped was the last ladder this tower had to offer. Upon looking straight up this time, she instead saw what appeared to be a square trapdoor directly above her. As she raised a hand up to press against the door, a deep feeling was suddenly felt within her heart; what if this door was locked, what then? Would they have climbed up into this tower for nothing?! And what would they end up doing if they couldn't go-

Just like that, the trapdoor easily pushed up and inwards from her push, and the heavy feeling within was lifted as well. The door fell back against the floor behind it and Emily cautiously lifted her head up and through the hole to peer inside.

Thankfully, no one could be seen within this small, rather cramped space of the tower's control room. A couple cabinets stood up against the wall, metal fold-up chairs rested on the floor, some office equipment rested on a nearby table, as well as a fancy-looking circuit board thing. Shining her flashlight within the space didn't reveal any hiding psychopaths anywhere up here. At the very least it only verified that she and Matt were alone up here in this tower.

With that she pulled herself up the ladder completely and stood upon the wooden floor. Both the feel and the sound of the howling wind outside was significantly muted from finally being indoors. It would definitely be a good idea for the two of them to stay put if nothing else to try and keep warm.

She then looked back down into the hole she had crawled up. Matt could be seen steadily climbing up the ladder himself, somehow managing quite well with an ax in his hand too.

"Almost... there we go!" he said as he finally pulled himself through the trapdoor hatch. As he stood up completely, he reached across to grab the trapdoor and close it, locking it in the process.

"Ah, finally..." he said as he comfortingly placed a hand on her shoulder, "You alright?"

"Yeah," Emily said with a nod. The two of them looked all around the tower's room again, Emily's light beam directing their attention at various places, "Guess someone didn't clean up around here..."

"Well, there's the radio at least," Matt said, pointing to the nearby table. What appeared to be a box-shaped radio rested upon it with a microphone in front of it.

Wood creaked underneath her feet as Emily approached it, and she couldn't help but notice the buttons on the front of this box. Almost as if they were meant to glow or something, and yet none of them were at the moment. Maybe that didn't matter when working a radio like this?

Upon pressing a finger to the red power button, her fears were confirmed when virtually nothing happened.

"Oh... come on!" she said. Turning the nearby 'TUNING' knob did nothing either. None of this would work, not when it seemed like this thing was powered off.

"No power?" Matt asked.

"Nope, nada..." Emily said with a shrug, "But... there's gotta be like a switch, or a power button somewhere... right?" Matt turned his head to look about the inside of the tower's room.

"Guess we gotta look for it..."

Emily picked her flashlight back up and shined its light against the lower wall itself. Around where there would be electrical outlets there had to be a power switch of some kind, shouldn't there? Her light breaking the darkness beneath the tables however revealed no such switches, or even any outlets for that matter.

Beside her she heard a metallic creaking sound; Matt had opened the nearby locker to look inside himself.

"Whoa... Hey, Em?" he called her over. Curiously she rejoined his side to look upon what he pointed at inside this locker.

There, taped on the inside of the locker's door was a poster with the word 'MISSING' written in bold, and a familiar picture of Hannah. Her image stared back at her with its framed gentle smile, something Emily was finding she missed far too much of these days.

"I'm sorry Hannah..." she found herself saying, "You're still missing."

"You know after tonight? Their disappearance is starting to make a little more sense." Emily looked at Matt in mild confusion.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Think about it: both Hannah and Beth go missing last year, right? And they may even be dead by now for all we know?" he explained to which Emily nodded nervously, "And now, like a year later, Josh gets killed. Just... What if this guy, this Psycho guy, he has it out for the Washingtons?"

"Seriously?" Emily asked incredulously. She turned away from him while rubbing her forehead. His explanation and its implications reeled hard in her mind with their absurdity, and yet... In a strange way, it somehow did make a bit of sense. Just a small bit of sense anyway.

"Em... Em I'm sorry, alright?" he spoke up again, obviously trying to calm her down by the sounds of it, "I-I don't mean to scare you, but..." The tone in his voice told her enough that he was serious, but frankly Emily didn't want to hear more. It's better if this whole thing was dropped now anyway.

"It's fine, it's fine, ok?" Emily dismissed with a wave of her hand, "Let's just keep looking..."

With that she dragged the light beam of her flashlight back down to the lower section of the wall. Not only could she not see any sort of power switch anywhere here, but not even was there any general outlet to be found either. Just a wooden wall that somehow was keeping from rotting in this snowy weather.

Nothing could be seen along the other table either, having brought her light to shine underneath it as well. The only thing resting upon this table was this strange machine that Emily quickly recognized as a printer or even a fax machine. On a whim she reached up and pressed the big red button on the upper side of the machine and was unsurprised in the slightest when nothing happened either.

"Yeah, no power..." she off-handedly remarked. Her flashlight drifted its light once again along the length of the wall until it reached the corner. It was there that Emily was in fact reminded that there was a door on that particular wall. She glanced back over to Matt once more, "You found anything?"

"Zip, I don't think there's anything here," the boy said with a shrug as he looked up with her.

"Well, maybe it's outside, through this door...?" Emily pointed to the door before her.

"Worth a shot I guess," he said. He rejoined her side with his axe in hand. Tentatively Emily reached out a hand to grip the icy doorknob and pulled the door inward. The door itself was blown open hard as a hard, snowy wind could be felt on her face once more. She held her free hand up to shield her eyes as she took a cautious step outside.

The world around her felt so much smaller from just how high she was up now. With it also being nighttime and a snowy wind blowing all around, everything felt like it was blanketed in a sheet of icy mist. It was quite a view; a real 'otherworldly' view. In fact, if this were any other time when their lives weren't in danger, Emily almost wished that she and Matt could experience views like this more often. A quick shake of her head reminded her to stop daydreaming and stay focused; a switch or fuse box had to be around here somewhere...

She turned to her right to investigate around the first corner of the tower's exterior. This angle turned away from the glow of the full moon in the sky, shrouding it in darkness. A nervous chill ran up through Emily's body briefly as she shined her light through the shadows. Thankfully there wasn't any Psycho hiding there at all, unlikely as it would be. However, what she did find lifted her spirits greatly.

"Matt look!" she pointed to a gray box on the wall with an electrical symbol marked on it, "That's gotta be it!"

"Yes! Finally..." he with a sigh of relief. Emily reached up to take hold of the small knob on the fuse box's door and opened it up. Inside was in fact a small switch set in the lowered position. This should be easy, shouldn't it? A quick flip of a switch to get this tower's radio working again. She gripped the flip in between her fingers and pushed up.

She could almost feel a sort of 'snapping' feeling as the switch was flipped into its new position. This was quickly followed by a nearby light bulb positioned at the corner above Emily's head suddenly powering on. It worked! It had to have worked!

"Oh fuck yeah! Here we go!" she said.

"Nice one!" Matt agreed, holding out the flat of his palm up and before her.

"Yeah," Emily raised her own hand up and gave his hand a high five, "Score one for Matt and Emily!" Finally, for what felt like the first time tonight, something was actually working as it should be for herself and Matt. Of course, that was the first step done, now they just had to actually send out a call for help.

Before Emily could return back into the tower's room however, something outside caught her attention. Another box lay on the exterior of the tower's wooden wall, noticeably larger in size compared to the fuse box itself. Curiously, Emily abandoned her walk to the door in favor of investigating this instead. Once she had gotten close enough and shone her light upon the box, the words 'EMERGENCY FLARE' could be seen in white font against what was shown to be a stark red box.

'Emergency flare?' she thought to herself. She gripped the handle of the box's door with a hand and pulled it open to reveal a small, orange flare gun laying within!

"Oh, here we go...!" Emily seized the flare gun rather hastily. Finally, some further sense of reassurance surged through her body. While she'd never held a gun in her life before and in fact hated the idea of guns, she didn't have the convenient option of being picky. It was better to take all the protection she could get for herself at the moment.

"Hey Ma- oh," she began to announce to her boyfriend, only to find that he wasn't standing next to her as she'd previously thought he was. He must've gone inside already. As she looked back down at the utility tool in her hand, she was reminded of the fact that Matt himself already had his ax in his hand and already had some protection himself. Perhaps with that in mind and between the two of them, it'd be better if she herself held on to this gun herself. Where crazy Psychos were bound to be, the both of them would need to be protected.

With that she slipped the flare gun into the back pocket of her jeans. Her jeans were already of the small size, so this rather large item was barely able to fit inside her small pocket. It was whatever though; having it now and not needing it would be better than not having it and needing it later.

Emily then turned to make her way back to the tower's entry door. The stinging feeling of wind was getting too much for her by this point. She would be glad when she could finally be back indoors of some place and not be under threat from some crazy Psycho at the same time.

"Whoa!" she suddenly heard Matt say. Looking up she could see that he was pressing the now green glowing button on the fax machine, and a single sheet of paper was sliding out as a result. He picked it up and flipped it over in his hand, and he frowned upon what he saw, "Hey Em, check it out..."

Passing the paper to Em, she took it in her hand to look upon it herself. Immediately she saw what made him frown: it was another wanted poster, with the image of a familiar face to her. Beth Washington's face looked back at her, wearing that white beanie cap and gray turtleneck sweater.

"Oh... sorry you're still missing too, Beth..." she said again. Just like before, Matt's previous notion regarding the Washington kids returned to Em's mind, despite him not even saying anything this time. Something about it still didn't make sense though; who'd want to hurt them? Sure, Josh seemed a little weird to her but Beth and even Hannah? They were kind, nice girls! Beth in particular seemed to have a good head on her shoulders whenever she and her talked before.

Why did something even have to happen to the two of them anyway? That really stupid prank from last year, which Emily still had to remind herself was Jess' idea anyway! It was all just to teach Hannah a lesson in response to how she kept making moves on Mike in the past. They never meant to hurt her, much less get her killed! And Beth! Why did all this have to happen to her as well? If Emily could've gone back in time and stopped this whole thing, she would have... Well, in addition to giving her past self a big slap across the face too.

She shook her head and placed the paper back on top of the fax machine face down. That was enough thinking of past faults; they had to focus on the 'now'. And the 'now' in this case lay with contacting someone and getting them out of here!

Thankfully the radio equipment on the opposing table this time held a single glowing red light on its big box. Combined with the sounds of static coming from the big microphone, Emily could already feel her hopes rising again at the promise of help.

Approaching the radio, she took hold of the tuning knob in her fingers and gently twisted counterclockwise. A small needle on a green-glowing meter slowly moved along with her twist. Periodically, a sudden noise could vaguely be heard through the static with each slide of the knob. The needle eventually turned all the way to the right side of the meter when the voice finally broke through,

"- ranger service for Blackwood County, over."

"Oh shit! Em, that's it!" she heard Matt cheer her on behind her. While Emily wished to share in his enthusiasm, all they had heard was someone's voice, but it wasn't known if they were heard themselves.

"W-what do I do now?" she glanced over her shoulder.

"Um, the-the thing!" Matt pointed to the microphone before her, "Press that button right there!" Emily shot her head back down to the microphone to find the aforementioned button and hastily pressed it down. The button itself glowed red beneath her fingers as she began to speak.

"Hello?"

Silence.

"Anyone there? Hello?"

Again, only silence met her through the static. With each passing second of silence Emily could feel her heart growing heavier with worry.

"Please, say something if you're out there," she pleaded, "Please, we need help! Over! Over!"

"Wait Em, you gotta take your hand off the button-!" Matt suddenly spoke up again.

"Oh, shit-!" Emily hastily pulled her fingers from the button. Unfortunately she was met with silence yet again.

"Hello?"

And just like that, hope surged within her once again. Someone was there! A man's voice by the sound of it. And maybe that someone had heard her just now!

"Oh my god!" she said, quickly placing her fingers back on the button to speak again, "Thank God- er, we need help! Please!"

"Hello, is someone trying to contact us?" the voice spoke again, "This is the park ranger service for Blackwood County. We're not getting your signal very well; please speak slowly and clearly. Over." Slowly and clearly; alright, Em could definitely do that.

"Please! Please, please, please help! Oh my god- we're stuck up on Blackwood Mountain, and there's a maniac-!"

"If you can hear this, please repeat your message as I am unable to understand what you are saying. Over."

"We need help! PLEASE!" Emily pleaded yet again.

"Hello?" The man's voice continued to speak again. What filled Emily with more dread was the fact that it didn't seem like he was acknowledging her specifically, like he was talking directly to her as she was to him. Could he really not hear her? Maybe he had a bunch of static on his end as well?

"Can you please identify yourself? Over."

"Em! You gotta speak clearer for him!" she suddenly heard Matt speak up from beside her.

"I am!" Emily persisted before turning back to the microphone, "Help! Oh my god, please help! We're stuck on Blackwood Mountain by the ski lodge- and there's a killer and he's killed one of our friends! Oh god, please, come get us please-!" In her haste of rapid speaking she also turned the tuning knob a couple of times to the left and right. The sounds of static grew louder and lighter with each turn.

"EMILY!" Matt cried out more sternly this time.

"You're not coming through clearly; please repeat. Over."

"Oh my God! MATT-!" Emily declared while spinning her head to face him. Her frustration boiled over from both vocal sources pressuring her, which only fueled the feel of desperation within her. How could she get anything across if nobody around her was listening to her?!

To her credit, Matt's stern face quickly melted away into one of concern, likely from having seen the face that she was leveling at him.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he held his hand up defensively, "Just... take a breath, and start over. Speak slow and clearly for him." Emily turned her head back to the microphone and, following Matt's advice, took a quick breath to steady her nerves before speaking again.

"We're on... Blackwood Mountain, by the ski lodge," she spoke as clearly as she could muster, "There's a killer and he's after us! He's already killed one of our friends! Oh God please, you've gotta help us...!"

"Whoa!" Emily nearly jumped when she both heard Matt suddenly call out as well as rush to the side, "Something just tripped the motion sensor!" In a flash Emily felt her panic spike at his words. On top of this man barely hearing what she was speaking as clear as day to him, now there potentially was something out there? Her breathing became quicker and more frantic. Her eyes remained glued to her boyfriend, studying his facial expressions as he scanned out the tower window. After a moment however he pulled his gaze away and rejoined Emily's side, "Eh, probably one of those fucking deer-"

"I read you ma'am."

Emily and Matt's gazes shot back to the radio in surprise, followed by a surge of intense relief. The man on the other end said 'ma'am', so he had to have been referring to Emily! He'd heard her, and they'd potentially help them!

"Please do not leave your position. We will send out a helicopter to come get you as soon as the storm has subsided. Over."

"Oh my God! Yes...!" Matt declared with a sigh of relief. While Emily herself wanted nothing more than to share in his enthusiasm, there was something preventing her. A small detail that hadn't been made quite clear to them yet. Were they not coming to get them 'now'? Instead they'd be waiting until some time later before deciding to come rescue them?

"What? Wait- how long?" she spoke into the microphone again.

"Dawn? At the earliest?"

Dawn? Like when the sun is just barely starting to rise? How long was that gonna take? She reached towards her pocket to fish for her phone to check the time even as the man's voice continued.

"Not until dawn. Over."

*CRASH!*

Nearly jumping out of her skin for certain this time, Emily snapped her head around towards the trapdoor she and Matt had come through. There was no denying in the slightest: something was banging on the door from beneath! Something, or someone, was trying to break in to where they were!

"Oh shit-!" Matt said.

"Oh my God! He's here!" Emily cried out. Her hands gripped the outer edges of her arms as the cold chill of fear ran up and along her spine, "HE'S COMING FOR ME!"

She took a few nervous steps back away from the trapdoor. In fact, her steps were almost in sync with each pound delivered upon the wooden door. The simple piece of door was actually popping up slightly against the lock, which quickly dispelled any illusions that Emily hoped she was just hearing things. This was it, wasn't it? This crazy Psycho guy was here. He'd break open the door and murder her and Matt where they stood! Help wouldn't get here in time!

The trapdoor then ceased its previous movements, and Emily even noticed that the harsh pounding stopped as well. What was happening? Was the Psycho giving up? Why would he just give up if he had them right where he wanted them?

Nervously, she leaned her head in to listen closer to the sounds from outside. Instead of consistent banging and pounding on wood like she'd heard before, the sounds were replaced by clanging and even clambering of something against metal. Like something was banging against the tower's metal beams? Just who was this guy that he was able to get up and down from a huge, tall tower in no time...?

"Matt...? What is-"

A snapping sound suddenly rang out. Despite being muted outside through windows and the howling of wind, Emily heard it as clearly as if it were right next to her. It was a snapping sound, though with a strange metallic twinge to it as well. Did something just break? And why was the tower making a harder groaning sound than before...?

Two more similar sounds were heard in quick succession. And while Emily wasn't completely terrified by now, she most definitely would be with what followed. It wasn't the rapid succession of sounds that chilled her to her very core, but rather the feeling of movement beneath her feet, so agonizingly slowly. Her mind in disbelief, this was most definitely a nightmare made real!

"OH MY GOD! MATT, WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" she cried out. The shift beneath her feet was unmistakable by this point. Glimpses out the window showed the faintest image of the word outside shifting along with the tower's own movements.

"The tower!" Matt cried out as well. The ground shook all around as Emily's center of gravity was slowly being shifted. She flailed her arms around in a desperate attempt to steady herself. It did her little good however, as all around she could see the various office equipment furniture being tossed around as well. At some point she even caught a glimpse of something sparking blue before turning orange in color, but she had no way of telling what it was. She and Matt were going to fall and get crushed inside of this tower!

"Emily! Hold on-!" Matt could be heard calling out to her. In her panic she'd lost sight of him. She could practically feel her heart pounding so hard in her chest, like it could actually beat itself out of her body! Her hands clawed around to grab something, anything, to hold on to! Was this really how she would go out?! She had to have a fighting chance; somehow!

But just like that, the tower lurched harshly to the side with its center of gravity following suit. This left Emily practically flying off of the ground towards whatever doom await where she would land. Her vision all around her was a constant blur of movement and instability, culminating in a single moment when she felt everything cease.

The chaotic motions around her person came to a standstill, but Emily felt no more at ease no than she was earlier. Her eyes were clenched shut and she dare not open them. With what semblance of control she still retained she focused her mental attention on what all was known to her. She was currently laying on top of something ice cold, her hands splayed out on top of this icy surface. Next she refocused her hearing on what she could hear around her.

"-mily!"

The familiar sound of Matt's voice could be heard calling out to her. Her boyfriend, Matt. Where was he? Why wasn't he here with her, keeping her safe?

"EMILY!"

How easy it would be to simply keep her eyes closed and wish this entire nightmare away? That's all this was, wasn't it? A horrible nightmare? In what reality would she and Matt be inside of a rickety fire tower that would actually be falling down with the two of them inside of it still? She could even feel the urge to open her eyes as if waking up from a dream. Against her own judgement, she'd have to open her eyes eventually. But, here's hoping that what she'd see would not be that of a terrible nightmare...

Very slowly her eyes opened to a black void. A black void through spider-webbed glass. Her eyes shot open completely as she realized the horrible reality she found herself in. The tower had fallen to its side and she was laying atop its very fragile glass window!

In fact, looking all around her she could see the numerous crack lines in the glass that separated her from oblivion. One of these spider-web cracks was even caused from a familiar looking fire axe that lay atop it. Matt's fireaxe lay right next to her with a rather unhealthy number of cracking lines forming underneath it. In fact, Emily could hear many more cracks in the glass beginning to form all directly underneath her form. Could she even get up to move from her precarious position? She had to; it was the only way she could get to relative safety! Maybe somewhere onto the wood sections of the tower- just, anywhere but here!

"Em, look out!"

Instinctively Emily turned her head up towards Matt calling towards her. What she saw however was not Matt, but something black, square-shaped, and closing in on her fast!

Emily's world quickly flashed with sensations of pain, noise, heat, and movement. Firstly she registered the black box hitting her in the head, having not moved her head quick enough to avoid it. Next she screamed as the forward motion had completely broken the glass beneath her. Thousands of shards of glass flew around her as both them and her tumbled downward. Everything came to a jarring halt yet again though with Emily falling midsection first onto a hard piece of metal railing. The wind was briefly knocked out of her in that moment but she clamped her fingers down hard on the first thing she felt. Finally, she was allowed to take stock of her new situation yet again.

"Fuck me...!" she swore as she stared upwards. Now she could see why exactly everything felt strangely warm above her. A fire? Where did that fire come from? And where was Matt? She could see into the dark of the ranger tower room itself, but nowhere inside could she see him. Aside from the dancing flames, the only form of movement she could see was a flaming box, growing in size and rushing towards-

Wait, WHAT?!

"Jesus- SHIT!" Emily cried out. She released her right hand to allow for the falling debris to tumble straight down and just barely miss her. The flames on that box graced her face just barely, enough to momentarily break the harsh cold off her face before the icy cold replaced it yet again.

To make matters worse, a deep groaning could be felt throughout the entire body of the leaning tower. From the gentle way it was moving now, it was going to tumble even further!

"No no! NO!" Emily screamed out, "HELP ME!"

Her answer came in the form of the tower turning over further and sliding down into the dark, cold hole of whatever lay below...

---

'What the hell happened?!'

'How the hell am I still alive?!'

Among the seemingly limitless questions surging through Matt's mind as his entire body struggled to process the sheer chaos occurring around him. Literally a few minutes ago he was standing within a rickety yet relatively stable wooden fire tower with Emily calling for help, and now this same tower had fallen over! Worse still, the ripping of power cords from the wall in the process had sparked a fire and now this same tower was burning all around him! This sort of stuff only happened in cheesy action movies! How the hell could this happen to anyone in real life?!

While he himself managed to avoid the worst of 'falling' himself by holding on to a nearby wooden support beam, the same couldn't be said for Emily. He was forced to watch in absolute horror as his girlfriend was thrown all around by the tower's fall. His last sighting of her was the radio itself smacking her in the head and breaking her through the glass window she had been laying upon before he had lost sight of her. Actual burning flames around him did little to aleviate the chill of terror running through his body.

"Oh crap... come on," he told himself as he held on for dear life. The support beam he still held a grip on was at least was holding itself, as well as him, in a precarious position. He had to get off of this tower now, but the only way he could do that was to actually climb out of here! Thankfully he noticed the now open hole of the once trapdoor now directly above him, about five or so feet to his left. If he could carefully shimmy his way across, he could reach the hole and at least get himself on top of this whole thing.

Turning the corner of the inside he was met with the completely shattered window directly in front of him. No jagged edges of glass could be seen where he'd need to secure his hands and fingers. All he had left to contend with for the moment was the harsh, choking feeling of smoke and ash all around him. As he slowly inched both his hands and feet to the left inch by inch, a huge shift in the tower could be felt which caused his heart to lurch.

"OH-! Oh, fuck...!" he said. He didn't want to find out just how much more this tower could move before it decided to give away. Course that meant getting out of this destroyed room and outside as quickly as he could.

A glance to his left showed him that the tower's ladder that extended into the room itself was still there, and just within reach of his hand. This was good; if he could just get a grip on that metal ladder, he could potentially pull himself closer to it, and then out of here completely!

"Dammit...!" he swore as he reached a hand out steadily. After a few seconds of stretching outward, his fingers brushed against the metal and then clamped down hard. He then pulled his arm as firmly yet slowly as he could to move closer. At the same time however a couple more shifts in the tower could be felt beneath him! He had to work faster!

Finally his entire body held a much more secure hold on each rung of the ladder. It was also here that the rising smoke and flames could be felt harder against his skin as they began to rise. His heart was practically running a marathon as he carefully ascended up the ladder and through the hole at the top.

He first poked his head up through the hole to get a look at where he was, or rather where he would be. The underside of the tower's control room lay out before him with noticeably more iron support I-beams to stand on. Off to the side a fire was raging intensely against the wood of that section. Aside from all that however, with the state this tower was in right now, this was looking as relatively safe as possible for him to stand on.

"Okay, okay..." he said as he prepared to lift his leg up and over. No sooner had he done so however then the massive wreckage lurched yet again. The structure of the tower barely shifted a couple inches, and yet it felt like it was going to give away completely at any point! His breath hitched at the feeling of his foot not even touching anything solid yet when it happened as well. It was in that moment though that in addition to the sound of his own breath, another sound could be heard echoing throughout this cavern-

"MAAATT!"

The boy's eyes widened in shock and surprise. That was Emily's voice; she was alive! A deep feeling of hope could be felt within his being. He had feared and dreaded that she was lost down this giant hole when the tower fell. But now that he heard her voice and knew she was still alive, he could get to her!

He first secured his foot firmly on one of the I-beams before brining his other foot up to join it. Better to walk on something hard and solid like this metal than on the rotting and burning wood. He then steadily raised himself to standing position while keeping himself carefully balanced.

He'd heard Emily's voice call out from the right side of the tower where from where he stood. The underside of the wooden railing could be seen with an I-beam underneath it to support the wood. Not only that, but through the cracks in between the wood Matt could see the checkered image of his girlfriend beneath them! He couldn't see exactly the situation she was in from his angle, but the important thing is that he could get to her!

His next big obstacle lay before him in the form of the next I-beam a good five feet away in front of him. He'd have to stretch his leg out pretty far to securely stand upon it and not risk touching down on the wood beneath it. As he attempted to move Emily's voice could be heard again,

"OH GOD MATT! HELP ME, PLEAAAAASE!"

"I'm coming! I'm coming...!" Matt called back out to her. With a careful stretch of his leg, his foot finally rested atop the metal I-beam. He then brought his other leg forward to rejoin his planted foot. There was no only one more beam of metal before the railing itself ended by this point. By now he could barely see the very top of Emily's hair from over the edge. Maybe he could lean forward and place his hands on the beam in front of him to-

A massive groaning from the tower came as a result of his attempt. HIs breath quickened and his heart started beating even harder as a result. This wasn't going to work- he couldn't place too much of his weight through his hands on the beam in front of him like he'd planned. He was just too heavy and the resulting shift could cause this entire thing to tip over and fall!

Matt was thus forced to maintain the majority of his weight on the middle I-beam he stood upon and just barely peak his head over the edge towards Emily. The girl herself looked absolutely beside herself with fear and terror. In addition to the widened, panicked look in her eyes, a small gash could be seen outside of her right eye, dripping red blood along her once pristine beautiful face. She was hurt and barely hanging on to the metal railing itself, but she was alive at least.

"Em! It's pretty unsteady over here-" he tried to warn her before she cut herself in.

"Matt! You gotta do something RIGHT NOW! What are you waiting for?!"

Seriously?! Now of all times she was choosing to be her usual pushy self?! This was not the time for her to be acting like this, not when her life was literally on the edge!

"I-I'm thinking!" he protested, "Let me think!" He momentarily pushed her comment aside to try and peer closer at how she was positioned. The metal bars that she was holding onto were broken in between her and likely could bend away from how she was standing on them. Nonetheless, she seemed to have a tight grip on them and she was at least standing on the lower one. Maybe if she could-

"Don't think you IDIOT! Just GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

In that moment, Matt's ears almost deceived him. Something, or someone, just called him an 'idiot'? This was almost too surreal of a moment for him. Here he was, clamboring atop a crumbling fire tower that was literally on fire, and from out of seemingly nowhere, something called him an 'idiot'? But who? Who in their right mind would possily...

His eyes drifted back down to the girl beneath him. Emily. Emily Davis, his girlfriend, the one he was trying to rescue in this very moment, staring back up at him with eyes of desperation. However, it wasn't purely desperation that filled her eyes. There was something else within them; something that Matt unfortunately was all too familiar with. Something that sadly she herself had demonstrated to him many times before.

The feeling of being used.

In fact, this wasn't the first time he'd seen this look in her eyes, even tonight alone! He remembered seeing it back when they'd ran into Mike a little outside the cable car station. He saw it in the lodge when she'd forgotten her bag. He remembered her giving him that look when 'in' the cable car station earlier! And that was even when he had agreed to her suggestion to come to this damn fire tower to get help in the first place! She was pushing him around, as if the help he provided her wasn't enough, or even wasn't 'good enough' for her! And thus far, Matt had opted to keep civil about her attitude and simply be the kind boyfriend he thought one was supposed to be.

Until now.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM!?" he suddenly exploded with anger he almost didn't believe he was even capable of. He could swear he could hear his own voice echoing throughout the rocky walls of the cavern all around him. More that, Emily's face flashed with shock and surprise as well. The once condescending look in her eyes was gone almost instantly.

"I- what-?"

"Why are you being such a BITCH to me?!" Matt pressed. Between the raging fire occuring behind him and the anger he was feeling in his own body, Matt was never feeling more figuratively on fire! He couldn't believe it, but Mike was right! This whole time she really was being a bitch to him! Maybe even to both of them! Maybe even to anyone she's ever been with before! He never wanted to admit it or at least refer to it by word, but it was all true! All she ever cared about was how anyone and everyone bowed to her every whims and desires!

"I'm sorry," she stammered, "I-I didn't mean it, really..."

Even the way she was trying to apologize felt weak! As if she were hard pressed to even feel bad for the way she was acting towards him! Was it really this difficult for someone to act decent towards someone else when their freaking LIFE WAS IN DANGER?! No wonder Mike left her probably, if this is the way she would really act. Still...

As quickly as his surge of anger came, he could feel it lessening slightly. His once raging anger was replaced by duller anger. He blinked his eyes twice and looked back down at her. Maybe it was from the angle he could see of her, but the way she was looking up at her almost seemed... genuinely remorseful. She wasn't saying anything, but the once spiteful look on her face and in her eyes was completely snuffed out. Here wasn't a girl who was eager to step all over his efforts to be the best boyfriend for him, but his girlfriend who was just wanting her boyfriend to be there for him.

However, memories from before flashed through his mind once again, and the dull feeling of irritation began to return.

"From now on, you either treat me like an actual person, or I'm out!" he declared to her, a pointed finger extended to emphasize his point, "Get it?"

"Yes..." Emily said with quivering lips.

"Say it."

"What?" Emily asked, put off by the sudden change in request.

"Say you'll treat me like a GODDAMNED HUMAN BEING!" Matt jabbed his finger towards with every emphsized syllable to his ultimatum.

"I-I'll treat you like a person!" she pleaded, "L-like a goddamned human being, okay?! You're a person! YOU'RE A PERSON!" With every word that escaped from her mouth, the spiteful bite in her tone lessened more and more. This in turn reduced Matt's anger from anger to relief with every assured promise.

"Thank you!" Matt said. Looking down at her Matt could see the faintest shimmer along the lower corner of her right eye. Between the blood from the gash on that side of her face, he couldn't tell exactly if what he was seeing was from blood drop, or from a tear drop...

"Now will you please get me off of this goddamned tower?!" her stammering tone continued, "Please-please-please Matt, just DO SOMETHING!"

Matt shook his head of his residual anger. He was then reminded of the fact that he and Emily were in fact in danger of falling to their deaths alongside a crumbling, firey tower. Worse still, Emily herself was in a much more precarious position in comparison to him. However, if only he could get her up to his level, the two of them might have a better chance to-

The tower once again shifted in place. Then shifted again! Matt's eyes widened in horror: the tower was beginning to slide from its position much quicker! If he didn't do something fast, then they'd both be dead for sure!

"Screw it-!" he said to himself before leaning over the edge as close as he could, "I'm coming! Here, take my hand...!" He stretched his hand out as far as he could manage towards her. Down below the whimpering Emily turned her head up to see what he was referring to. Thankfully she seemed to register what he wanted her to do without any complaints and raised her arm up as well.

It was then however that the tower shifted yet again. This shift however felt much more harsh from before. He pulled the entirety of his body mass back away from the ledge and closer to the center of the tower. There was no denying that he in fact caused the shift that time! Trying to reach over the ledge was too big of a risk at this point!

In addition, the change in motion caused Emily to lose her footing beneath her! She gave a quick yelp as she began to slide, but thankfully grabbed onto the lowermost railing before she could fall completely.

"Oh shit...!" she could be heard beneath him.

"Whoa whoa..." he himself said, attempting to steady himself and not cause any more shifts.

"Matt please!" Emily cried out again, "Come back! Help me!"

"J-just hold on, alright?! I don't wanna tip it...!" he called back down to her.

His head snapped back and forth all around him. Everywhere he could see was destruction, broken and burning wood, gnarled and mangled metal, and smoke threatening to overtake him if her remained in place. But worst of all, there was absolutely nothing he could see that he could make use of to help Emily! This feeling of uselessness was beginning to return in force. He really couldn't do anything! Could Emily have been right this whole time...?

Then, something caught Matt's eye. There, directly on the other side of the tower itself in this massive cavernous hole was a ledge! A wooden ledge on the outer edge of a small cavern! He quickly looked at the distance between both the ledge over there, and where he and Emily stood. True he couldn't make a jump to the cable car earlier, but he most definitely could make that jump! And if he could get there...

'I can get there, then I can reach across and grab Emily and bring her over there!' he thought to himself. A long shot to be sure, but this was the best plan he could think of in this moment. A couple more harsh shifts in the tower reminded him of where he literally stood. If he was going to do this, he needed to do it now!

"Emily hold on-!" he called out. He then rushed forward and put as much strength into his leg to kick off and throw himself out. In this moment, Matt could feel an absolute rush through his entire being. Both a rush of air from jumping forward, a rush of adrenaline that was likely strengthening his jump, but also, a rush of fear upon realization of something.

The tower! It had fallen!

Matt briefly felt the impact from hitting the wooden ledge against his chest. Emily's screams could be heard echoing throughout the cavern's walls as she and the tower fell down. While Matt felt the sensation of success for having landed that jump, that success was quickly replaced by terror as to what had just happened, and what he possibly had allowed to happen! Had his quick action and shift in motion on his part caused the tower to fall by that much?!

He finally scrambled to pull his entire body up to standing position atop the wooden ledge. Before him he could see some sort of tunnel entrance that this ledge likely would lead into. But Matt kept his gaze turned back towards the abyss behind him that Emily and the tower had fallen into. Neither of them could be seen anymore, not even with the tower on fire and lighting up the darkness as it had been.

"Emily...?" he called out.

"EMILY!" The sound of his own echoing throughout the cavern was his only response. No sign of Emily could be seen in the dark cold abyss.

Matt's eyes stung and his lips quivered.

"EMILYYYYYY!"

---

Ashley watched with anxious eyes as someone could be seen returning back down along the staircase. For a the briefest of moments she feared that it was the Psycho, causing her breath to momentarily hitch. However, her fear was quickly abated at seeing that it was only Chris, walking back down the stairs with his flashlight in hand. However, while she was relieved to see him again, the fact that he returned alone only caused her anxiety to spike again.

"Wait, she wasn't up there?" she called up to him.

"No, I couldn't find her up here," he said with shake of his head, "I'm guessing you already covered down here?"

"I haven't seen her either..." she said as he rejoined her side.

"Well then, I guess we gotta follow these creepy balloons..." he said, indicating to the strange red balloons with the white arrows painted on them. She had nearly freaked out upon finding them here when she and Chris had finally returned to the lodge, in addition to being still shaken hard by what she had just been put through...

Chris led the way along the left side of the stairway railing, following where the nearby creepy balloon indicated for 'them' to go. Coincidentally that way led down to the basement, the one place where Ashley swore to herself she'd avoid going, even back when she and Chris went to look for the Spirit Board. Why did they have to be directed somewhere that was dark, cold, and-

"Ahh-!" Ashley suddenly yelped as something snapped beside her. She spun to her side to see what exactly had just happened. Nothing could be seen, aside from a candle with a small flame lit atop it now. Except, it wasn't lit before, was it? Ashley could swear it was completely flameless.

"D-Did that just happen?" she turned to Chris while pointing at the candle. From the looks of it the boy himself had seen what had happened, or at the very least had acknowledged that something had happened that demanded their attention.

"Dammit, what is going on around here...?" he said. Ashley could feel her teeth and jaw trembling as she turned to look back at the now lit candle. Aside from the spontaneous combustion as it were, there was nothing else to cause alarm to her or Chris from it. She then turned back to him to follow down the stairs.

How could he be so fearless when going down somewhere dark and scary? Thank goodness one of them was at least, especially to have rescued her from the shed. The darkness, the rusted smell of that place, the terror of what she and Josh were put through, and what happened to him... the blood that was still coating the left side her body right now...

Thank goodness for Chris having saved her.

"Chris?"

"SA- er, w-what?" Chris stopped his call for Sam mid-way to speak directly to her.

"Chris, I just wanted to say..." Ashley started before nearly fumbling her words as well as nearly fumbling her footing as she made her way down the stairs, "What happened back there in the shed. I know how hard that was; Josh was your friend-"

"Ash stop-"

"No no I just wanna say, I mean..." she quickly cut in, "Thank you... thank you, for saving my life..."

Chris remained well in front of her the entire time the two of them moved down the stairs, with he himself having turned to advance down the main lower steps. Yet even from this angle as well as the dark of the room, Ashley couldn't quite see the look on his face. She could only imagine what he must be thinking right now, as well as what was going through his mind during that whole ordeal.

"W- Ash, what was I supposed to do?" he suddenly said while still walking and reaching the bottom floor, "I-I couldn't let anything happen to you... I couldn't..." His tone had shifted in volume with that last comment, almost as if it weren't meant for Ashley to hear. But she did hear him. As a result, she could feel a small burden on her heart lift a little at the thought that he would go so far for her. Granted no one should have to have that happen to them where'd they'd have to.

Ashley reached the lower floor herself, with only hers and Chris' simple flashlights to break the darkness. She could see that he himself had stopped to turn and face her completely.

"You alright Ash?" he asked her.

"Yeah, I just..." she replied while struggling to think of the right words. If only she could just help him, just like he had helped her earlier. But what exactly do you say to someone who was basically forced to kill one of two people who they're close with? "I know... you and Josh were close, Chris..."

"... Let's just find Sam, okay?" Chris said almost dismissively as he turned towards the cinema room, "That's what we're doing right now."

"But I mean oh my God-"

"Ashley- just stop! Okay?" he turned back to her as she nearly recoiled from his sudden change in tone, "I don't wanna think about what just happened..."

"Chris-"

"We're finding Sam!" he spoke firmly but soft in tone. The way he leveled his gaze at her left absolutely no room for any argument. Ashley's lips quivered, but she still gave him a small nod of acceptance.

With that, he turned once more towards the cinema, where the only other form of light could be seen from its dual doors opened and from whatever bright source lay within. While the break in darkness should've been a relief, Ash could only feel uncertainty and even dread as to what they would find within. Could the Psycho be there, waiting to pop out from within to kill them...?

Chris crossed the threshold of the room first and remained standing, which slightly dispelled that notion. Taking that as sign enough to follow behind, Ashley carefully followed behind him and into the room herself.

The light source was quickly revealed to be the massive screen itself, projecting sheer white imagery upon that side of the room. The very center of the room was a set of cushion chairs facing the room, while each of the walls held posters of the various films Josh's dad had made. Every one of them held a cheesy name to them with an even cheesier premise. Maybe she herself could get into them more, like Chris and Josh, if not for all the disgusting gore. She quickly shook her head to clear her mind from thinking of Josh.

Instead, upon dragging the beam of her flashlight towards the right-side wall, Ashley came to note something laying on the ground. Specifically, something in pieces.

"Hey, look at this," she said as she brought herself low to pick up one of the pieces. She quickly came to realize that this was a piece of a vase, completely smashed apart. She looked up at Chris to allow him to see the piece for himself, "Chris? What happened here?"

"I'm no forensics expert, but... it looks like it was thrown..." he said with a shrug. Ashley herself placed the piece back down and rose to her feet, "Come on; let's try looking over here..."

His empty hand indicated towards the other open door on the left side of the room. That was the hallway that led towards the guest room, and... the one place that Ashley herself hadn't searched yet. She didn't want to admit that to Chris, but at the very least if she were going into a dark and scary place, she'd have someone with her this time.

Chris stepped to the side to allow her to pass through first; at least he was retaining his 'gentleman instincts' even a time like this. Her light shone forward, thankfully not showing any Psychos or any other humanoid shapes directly before her.

*THUD!*

Ashley gave a quick yelp as she spun around. The door had suddenly closed rather loudly, nearly making her jump out of her pants! She was ready to instinctively reprimand Chris for scaring her, only to find that he was looking towards the door as well. Almost as if he was just as surprised by the door suddenly closing...?

"What the heck...!?" she muttered in between her quickened breaths. Her heart was already running at like a million miles a minute here, why did every little thing have to scare her?!

She nervously turned her head back to face directly in front of her; flared anxiety insisting that there might be someone around the corner after all. Her flashlight beam remained at the corner of this small hallway while her own gaze was trained on the door directly in front of her. Step by step, her light revealed more of the other side of the hall until its darkness was completely dispelled. Once she was fairly certain there was nothing around the corner that could surprise them, she reached for the doorknob, twisted it, and pushed it-

Or not. Instead of opening, Ashley found the door was completely locked to her.

"Hm, dammit," she said softly, "It's locked."

"This is so eff-ed up..." she heard Chris speak from behind her. Well, where were they to go now? Down this hallway towards the door at the other end? What if it was locked too just like this one was? What if they ended up stuck here, unable to go anywhere? Ashley soon found her anxious mind flooding with questions she didn't know the answer to, much less if she'd want them to be answered.

Her flashlight stood fixed on both the door and the ground leading towards it as Ash very slowly made her way towards it. Her heart began to beat slower yet just as hard in her chest with each step she took. She couldn't even control the chattering of her teeth in her mouth, both from how cold she was feeling as well as the dread and terror flowing through her body.

The door opened before her.

"Ah-!" she yelped again in surprise. For a moment she expected to see a Maniac standing there in the doorway ready to grab her. Thankfully though there was not a single person standing there at all. After a moment of realization, Ashley forced herself to calm down.

She then fixed her flashlight towards the open door as she made her way slowly closer to it. There was some slight reassurance with the fact that she had a flashlight on her. It was as if wherever there was light being shone, by her, that nothing could be lurking in any darkness ready to get her. Now if only she could just remain alert, as well as stick with Chris, they all could make it through this.

Ashley then stepped through the threshold and rounded the corner into the adjoining hallway when she came to an abrupt halt. Before she had even brought her light up to shine down into the hallway, she had seen something. No, she had seen 'someone'.

Someone was walking towards the door at the far end of the hallway! Well, Ashley could only catch a glimpse this person's foot at least as it disappeared through the-

Wait a minute. While Ash was almost certain she saw someone there... was she seeing things, or did that leg of the person seem... transparent...?

Her discovery occurring in less than a second, Ashley let out a gasp of surprise. Her anxiety spiked when she felt something bump hard into her back. She spun herself around to- oh wait, it was only Chris behind her. Hold on, had he seen what she had seen?

"Wait a minute," she said, pointing back down the hall before stepping further into it, "Did you see that?" Her flashlight remained trained towards the door she'd seen that figure to keep the darkness illuminated.

"Um... did I see what?" Chris asked from behind her.

"That Chris! THAT!" Ashley emphasized.

"What 'that' was that?" he asked again. So, he really didn't see what it was? Now that she thought about it, Ashley was almost disbelieving as to what she saw could really have been what she thought it could be.

"It was like... it was like, a see-through shape. Like a ghost!" she tried to explain. Actually, having said that out loud, Ashley could scarcely believe it herself! An actual ghost? In this lodge? And she had seen it walking around doing who knows what?

"Oh boy..." Chris could be heard behind her. She could recognize that tone in his voice as naturally dismissive of her claim.

"I'm serious!" she protested as she turned back to face him, "Why don't you believe me? I said I saw it; doesn't that count for anything?"

"We've... we've been through Hell tonight, okay?" Chris tried to speak calmly with a hand raised before her, "Your mind is fried. My mind is fried, I- I don't even trust what I've been seeing!"

Ashley's head glanced to the side towards the door that she'd seen the figure walk towards, only to find it was closed. While it was known that ghosts could in fact phase through things like doors, it would've been nice if it was open, and she could've shown Chris that what she had seen was in fact real. As it was however... the more she looked up at the boy with his earnest and even pleading facial expressions, she couldn't deny that there was merit to what he was claiming. What if she was only imagining this as a ghost from seeing things through it. In fact, was she even so certain she saw anything at all...?

"I... I don't know..." she said with a shake of her head, "I don't know. I just... I saw 'something', Chris."

"Ash, it's okay," Chris said, placing a hand on her shoulder. Lately tonight, contact from him hadn't been feeling nearly as... uncomfortable as she'd feared it might be. In fact, with him near her as he had been with all that had been going on, she felt all the safer the closer she was to him, "You're just... we're both... kind of out of our heads right now. I mean we just..." His lips quivered, as if trying to figure out the next best thing to tell her, "We just gotta pull together, okay? You with me?"

"Chris..." That really was it though, wasn't it? They were really going crazy with all that had been happening this evening, weren't they?

"Let's just- let's just keep our heads, okay?"

"Are we going CRAZY down here?!" Ashley could feel her own eyes starting to sting again from tears that threatened to spill over. Why did this have to happen to her? To any of them?!

"The basement, Ash; it's the only place left Sam could be," Chris reminded her, "I mean you and I already checked both floors-"

"I wish we could just go find everyone else, and-"

"What if 'Sam' needs us?" Chris pressed, "What if she's in trouble?"

"Oh God..." Lips quivering and eyes beginning to sting harder, Ashley couldn't resist raising her hand up to rub her eyes. Finding people was important sure, but so was making sure they themselves were safe! Why did everything have to be so complicated?! She just didn't know what to do. If only she were allowed to simply sit down and have a good cry about-

The slow sound of creaking hinges drew both of their attention. Both Ash and Chris turned to see the door in question had strangely opened up before them. Fluorescent lightbulbs illuminated the stone hallway that no doubt would lead down to the basement. The very place that Ash wished she didn't have to go down into.

"The basement... Come on, let's go," Chris said as he led the way this time for the two of them. Ashley almost found herself transfixed on Chris' retreating form as it proceeded down into the barely lit depths of the basement. Badly as she desired to not be going into the basement, being by herself would only prove to be worse in this situation. She thus took a quick breath and followed hastily after the boy.

As she walked through the brick hallway, she was at the very least thankful for the sets of lightbulbs granting her the least bit of light for her to see. It didn't make this whole thing any easier, but at the very least she wouldn't be stumbling through the dark just to get to the dark and creepy basement.

Looking down she quickly caught herself from stepping upon one of the broken steps at the very base of the initial turn in the stairs. She then rounded the corner just in time to catch Chris' form disappearing around the next corner. The doorway he walked through held a lightbulb that was flickering erratically in comparison to the previous bulbs that were shining in better clarity. Ashley realized her own breath had been held as she'd found herself transfixed by the strange flickering. She thus shook her head and released her breath as she forced herself to press on.

A couple more turns in this hallway, and she caught sight of Chris again. He thankfully hadn't walked too far in front, and she made haste to catch up to his side again. To their right side stood a wooden shelf built into the wall itself that also acted as a sort of divider. Through each shelf Ashley could see the outline of a massive machine on the other side. While on the left side an assortment of yard and gardening tools could be seen stacked up against the wall.

Upon stepping forward and fully into the basement, a sudden loud booming sound echoed throughout the confined space. Both Chris and Ashley jumped in place a little from the offending sound, with Ash letting out another small yelp. While in her panicked state it felt like a thousand times louder than it likely was, it was gone just as quickly. As she struggled to think as well as calm down her breathing and heartbeat, she attempted to rationalize that what was heard was simply some big pipe from within this basement's walls.

Cautiously, Ashley entered the whole of the basement itself, Chris being directly in front of her. With the exception of both of their lit flashlights and the nearby basement window on the far wall letting moon light spill in, the entire place was completely blanketed in dark. Ashley could feel her own hand trembling as well as see that reflected through the flashlight's light dancing around on the ground before her. As for what she could hear, this basement was eerily quiet now. It was absolutely unnerving how little sound there could be in a scary place like this...

Stepping to Chris' side Ashley shined her light to peer around one of the stone supports. It was then in that moment that everything practically exploded all around her!

"WHOA WHOA WHOA!" Chris suddenly exclaimed, which in turn made Ash nearly jump out of her skin from nearly scaring her. In between recoiling in response, she quickly calmed herself to try and catch a glimpse of what had just happened. The boy was pulling himself back upright to his own feet after apparently having stumbled to the side?

"UGH! You GOTTA be kidding me!" he added with a shake of his arms.

"What the hell is going on-" Ashley tried to ask, until movement directly next to her could be seen. She gave a yelp and jumped in place upon seeing- oh wait, it was nothing. Just a child's rocking horse suddenly moving?

"Whoa..." Chris could be heard next to her.

"Oh my god that scared me...!" she herself said. The rocking horse rocked back and forth a couple times more before slowly easing to a halt. Ashley placed a hand to her heart to desperately calm herself down.

"You knocked into it, right?" Chris asked, "I mean you knocked into it?"

"I don't- I don't think so, I mean... I don't know!" Ashley said out of exasperation. She was steadily losing sight of what was even really happening anymore. Some things happening tonight just seemed to happen completely out of nowhere somehow!

"How did everything get so FREAKY around here?! Doors slamming, and candles lighting up out of nowhere and-" In between her rant she reminded herself of the ghostly image that she'd seen, or now what she was uncertain if she'd seen, "And that Specter! Or whatever that was-"

"Ashley, Ashley," Chris cut in with a raised hand, "I think you're kind of ignoring what's really happening here...?"

"Don't tell me you didn't see that translucent, white figure just passing right by us?!" Ashley protested as he pointed back towards the basement's entrance where they had come from.

"W-we could be seeing things?"

"No! I couldn't have imagined that!" she pressed. There was definitely someone there and she definitely saw it! Chris on the other hand began stepping in place with a hand rubbing his own head.

"Yeah, well I saw some strange stuff too! I... I-I saw what happened with Josh in the shed! You know, 'that's' what I'm worried about!"

"Oh Chris..." she said softly while turning her head down and away from him. There it was again. Bringing up Josh and how he got killed in the shed, all when she wanted to talk about it earlier but he didn't want to. In that moment Ashley started to feel guilt at having made him bring it up or even re-live that moment himself. True she herself was right next to him as he met his grisly end, the sounds of ripping flesh and splattering blood filling her ears even to this moment, but Chris? For him to have been forced to make the decision of essentially killing Josh himself?

"Chris, I know... I know..." She looked back up at him with pleading eyes, only to find that his own hardened eyes were looking back at her as he continued.

"And you know what I'm really worried about?" he continued, "I'm worried about Sam! Like what's happened to her? If there's some maniac around here, and she could be dead too-!"

"Don't say that!" Ashley cut in, "Chris, please..." To her credit the boy did seem to calm down from his little tirade. He took a quick, silent breath of air.

"Sorry Ash, really, I am..." he said, "But, you get what I'm trying to say, right?"

"Yeah, yeah I do..." Ashley nodded her head. She claimed to understand him, but that didn't make this situation any more favorable for her. The two of them would still be in danger from who knows what down here in this basement, but... well, maybe it was a good thing that Chris was with her this whole time.

She suddenly drifted her head to look over Chris' left shoulder. From where she stood, a nearby open doorway could be seen with light pouring in from within.

"Hey, there's a room over there," she pointed out, to which Chris turned around as well. This time she herself moved to investigate the room. She navigated herself around Chris and made her way to the open room, her trembling flashlight guiding her every step.

She then passed through the doorway of the room and the gentle light that illuminated it. While Ashley was grateful for the light to show her where she was, at the same time still showed her that she was standing within another room of this basement. From the many bottles of what looked like wine set up within wooden shelves on the right side, this must've been where the Washingtons kept their vintages.

Ashley brought her flashlight up towards the door that could be seen at the far end of the room. Where would this door lead to? Unfortunately upon reaching the door, Ashley frowned in confusion as to what she found upon it. Or rather, what she didn't find.

"There's... there's no handle...?" she said to herself, staring at the knob-less door in brief confusion, "Who makes a door with no handle?" Her eyes scanned all along the door itself once more. Aside from the missing knob, nothing else stood to her her as out of the ordinary. Sam definitely couldn't have come this way.

With that she turned around and made her way out of the room. Her trembling flashlight guided her way back into the dark of the basement room. Thankfully though Chris could be seen directly before her holding something in his hand.

"Damn thing..." Chris cursed while holding his phone at different angles all around and over his head, "Of course there could never be a signal of all times..."

Ashley approached him from his right side, the light from the nearby upper window at the end of the hallway giving faint illumination to him. However, after glancing down the hallway only once, Ashley's eyes widened at what she could see down there.

"Wait!" she pointed out to the familiar figure walking towards the left. Chris' eyes quickly snapped up to meet her in response to her sudden alarm, "Chris-Chris-Chris-Chris-Chris- THE GHOST!" Her eyes remained glued on the ghost's quickly retreating form even as it walked around the corner and out of sight.

"What-!?" Chris himself spun around towards where Ashley pointed, but was clearly too slow in catching sight of the figure like Ashley had.

"Didn't you see it?!" she pressed. He scanned the hallway himself for a second with his own flashlight tracing all around.

"No," he said with a shrug before turning back to face her. Of all times he just had to miss it walking by? All because he was looking at his phone?

"You were looking at your phone, you dip!" she accused him. Her comment caused him to glance back down at his phone in his hand before pocketing the item, "What, are you tweeting? 'Hashtag There's A Freaking Ghost After Us' ?!"

"Ash, calm down, okay?" Chris gently but firmly spoke to her. She in turn struggled to take a few calming breaths to steady herself. Her heart unfortunately continued to beat practically out of control despite her best efforts, "There's no ghost here. And, a ghost of what even?"

Now that he mentioned that, in comparison to before, Ashley actually managed to get a quicker view of some the ghost's features. While it was definitely glowing somewhat in its pale blue color, it a had a head of stark black hair running down the length of its neck. The only people she could think of with black hair were Emily, and...

"You're freaked out because of what happened with Josh-"

"You're not paying attention!" Ashley quickly cut in, "I saw it- I saw a ghost and- It looked like Hannah! It looked like Hannah!"

"Wait wait, what...!?"

"Or, or maybe it was Beth?!" Memories and images from the past flooded her mind all at once, reminding her of the fact that both Hannah and Beth had similar hair. Both were raven black in color with just barely a slight difference in length between the two. Of course, it certainly wasn't making Ashley any better now as she thought about it. That an actual ghost walking around here was that of one or even both of the Washington girls? And just when they'd hosted a seance and specifically spoken with Beth earlier?!

"Jesus Ash- W-what, you think they 'followed' us up from the seance?!" Chris posed the question to her.

"I don't know! Maybe, they-"

"They DIDN'T! Because-" Chris cut her off before lowering his own tone, "Ghosts don't exist, okay?"

His pleading voice held desperation within it as well. Ashley knew that he wasn't one to believe in stuff like the supernatural, being the 'realist' he was. Yet in between his firm claims as well as her own certainty that she had definitely seen something supernatural-like walking around, frankly it was making her own mind all the more difficult to process things.

"Then who was talking to us at the seance, Chris?" she reminded him. It had to have been Beth, hadn't it? She remembered seeing the rather suprised looks on both his and Josh's faces when her questions directed at 'her' specifically were being strangely answered. He just had to believe something of that nature was going on around here by this point.

Chris himself was pacing a few steps in place, his mouth twisting about as if struggling to think of a good answer to her honest inquiry.

"I don't know...!" he finally replied out of exasperation, "I mean, it had-"

A screaming sound suddenly ripped through the air for a second. Both Chris and Ash's gazes shot down the nearby hallway towards where they had heard it from. Which, coincidentally was the same place Ash had seen the ghost walk in the direction of. Ashley felt her own heart beating harder as her eyes remained trained on the corner itself, as if waiting for something to emerge from around it. Was that the ghost just now? Screaming out for attention maybe...

Ashley yelped and jumped a little at the sight of movement again. She quickly relaxed slightly upon realizing that what she'd seen was a flat picture frame having... jumped out and onto the ground?

"Er, what did that...?!" she said.

"How does a picture just jump off the wall like that?" Chris asked as well.

"Chris?" Ashley softly said to him, "That picture... I saw the ghost walking... 'towards' it. Like, from the same direction-"

"Oh Jesus, not this again..." Chris pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand before taking a breath of air, "Alright well, we haven't looked down there yet anyway, so..."

Ashley was already tentatively walking towards the 'creepy jumping picture'. She occasionally glanced side to side at the nearby walls as she walked forward. While she wasn't necessarily claustrophobic, for some reason these hallways were feeling just a little bit smaller than they were probably designed to be. While she didn't bother waiting to see if Chris was catching up with her, she could at least hear a second set of footsteps behind her in addition to her own. The light beam from his flashlight also shone forward in the same direction as her own flashlight beam, both focusing forward and towards the window shining its own light in. In a way, it was as three different light sources were illuminating the sole spot where the picture was now laying, as if beckoning someone to go there.

"Okay, here we are..." Chris could be heard saying behind her. Both of them stared down at the face-down picture frame, while Chris' light trailed off to the right, "And that's probably the only other way to go..."

"What the..."

Ashley herself not only was not heeding what Chris was saying at the moment, but her attention was focused completely opposite him. She instead traced her flashlight beam up from where the picture had come from.

A large, flat, and square piece of plywood stood up and upon the stone wall itself, with a single metallic hook that likely served as what held the picture up. However, the hook itself was not completely empty. Something even now hung upon the hook: a small key! As if it were begging to simply be taken by someone!

In this moment, Ashley felt something within her being. A completely different feeling from the dread and terror she had been experiencing lately. It all stemmed from having seen the ghost come this way, the picture jumping off, and now finding this strange little key? Unbelieveable though it may seem, could it be possible that this ghost had 'different' motives other than scaring the daylights out of them...?

She reached up and took the key in her fingers. The small item looked and felt massive within her hand, but other than that was no different from any other key she'd seen before. She turned around to face Chris and present him with what she had found.

"Hey Chris, check this out," she said. The boy turned to her to look at what she held before him.

"Um, what is that?"

"I dunno, I found this on-" Ashley started, until something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Her eyes widened again upon what she saw: the ghost! It was standing over where they were a few seconds ago, head bowed and holding out its arms as if reaching towards something! She let out a gasp of chilled air.

"Oh my god! THERE!"

She hastily moved her hand to Chris' shoulder to force his direction towards where she pointed with her other hand. As she did so however the ghost suddenly yet slowly began to walk forward again so that it would disappear behind one of the basement's stone pillars. The time it was taking to move this time, there was no way Chris could miss it!

"Look there Chris! You can't tell me you don't see that-"

"Whoa, that's...!" she heard him say. From the tone in his voice, Ashley was thoroughly convinced he HAD seen what she'd seen! She felt a small modicum of relief within her as a result.

"See?!"

"T-that's, er..."

"You DO see it!"

"I-I dunno, I just... just..." Chris fumbled and stammered his words before beginning to bolt forward, "Th-that's fucking crazy...!"

"Chris..." Ashley said as she followed after the boy herself, "It's showing us the way! It has to be...!" Granted this ghost was still being creepy and everything, but aside from that, Ashley had to guess that what it had been doing so far could almost be interpreted as 'helpful'...? And what if it really was the spirit of Beth, or even Hannah? She still could not get over that distinct, and rather morbid possibility.

"What the..." Chris could be heard saying as Ashley rejoined him, "Where is it...? It-It's gone!"

Both Chris and Ashley stood to face the location where the ghost was last seen walking towards. Their flashlights traced over everything before them, illuminating the Washingtons' assortment of knick-knacks with the soft glow of light. Aside from the miscellaneous everyday items however, not a single ghost could be seen at all. True to Chris' claim, it was as if this ghost had completely vanished into thin air, leaving them to look upon...

Ashley's own flashlight beam traced over a nearby table, as well as what lay atop it. Even without the light to showcase it, a large dollhouse could be seen. She then quickly thought back to earlier, and how the last 'sighting' of the ghost led to the key she held in her hands. Just maybe perhaps, the same thing would be occurring here...

She took a tentative step forward, her flashlight fixed squarely upon the dollhouse. Her light began to cast shadows of its windows through the interiors, vaguely revealing what lay within.

"Ashley, what are you...?" Chris asked behind her.

"Look, look-look-look Chris...!" she quickly motioned for her to follow her as she investigated the front of the house herself. The entire thing appeared to be made of wood with the front painted rather pale yellow. The trimmings of both the front porch and the windows themselves were painted with pink. However, these windows clearly led way into a more hollow space within the house, as well as something that lay within.

"You can see in the windows," Ashley pointed a finger within.

"See what? Tiny furniture?" Chris asked.

"No, it's... it's a whole scene, with dolls and everything!" Ashley said. The dolls themselves could barely be seen in varying positions in at least two of the house's rooms. With how small the windows themselves were however, it was just not possible to see clearly what all was inside. Yet at the same time, they had to have been put there by hand, which means that this thing had to like, open up somehow...

Ashley pulled back to look up at the front of the house, taking note of the small circular attic window. A small screw at the top of it as well was quick indication that it could in fact be moved. She reached her hand up to slide the window to the side, revealing a small keyhole underneath!

"And look, this little key?" she held up the key to insert it into the keyhole. The key turned easily and an unlocking sound could be heard from the house itself, followed by the house's front barely popping open ever so slightly, "What'd I tell you; the ghost is helping us!" Rather hastily she reached to the side of the house where the edge of the front was located and pulled open.

What she saw within made her both her breath and her very blood run cold. The house itself held two floors, and a number of little dolls could be seen in varying positions. On the top floor a couple of dolls lay upon a small couch with tiny plastic bottles visibly taped to their hands. On the bottom floor's bedroom lay a number of dolls; four dolls sitting prone next to the bed, and two standing on their feet. While this entire display was rather strange in of itself, what made it all the more creepier was not only that each doll was naked, not only that each one strangely had no eyes, but that each one was positioned in a way that was eerily familiar...

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa...!" Chris said with increasing alarm as he peered in closer with Ashley to investigate, "Whoa- what is going on here?!" The more Ashley studied this little diaroma the more horrified at the realization of what it represented specifically. Each little doll possessing hairstyles and colors that not only helped it differentiate itself from the others, but also bore striking resemblances to... their own!

"Oh God..." Ashley breathed as she raised a hand to her mouth, "It's like-"

"It's not 'like' anything; that's us!" Chris finished for her, "Hiding there, waiting for Hannah last year..."

Ashley's eyes darted back and forth between each individual doll, almost desperate for this claim to not be true. However, with each doll her eyes darted toward, the truth became more and more painfully obvious. They were all positioned nearly identical to the way they themselves were posed last year when they did the dumb prank. Even the doll that was supposed to represent 'Matt' had a small camera taped to his hand!

"But it- It's so accurate!" she said pointing to the doll that was to represent herself by the bed, "I mean that's exactly where I was sitting, and that's where Matt was-"

"This was set up by someone! Who was there!" Chris declared. As much as Ashley didn't want to believe it to be true, she sadly had to agree with him. As for 'who' exactly would set this up in such a way... her mind immediately thought back to the ghost itself. The same one that both directed their attention to this dollhouse and the key to open it up in the first place!

"Or someone- or 'something', that was watching us!" she said, subtly implying it to be the ghost itself.

"Maybe it's a warning," Chris said, "I think someone... I think someone put this here to mess with us."

"No- it has to be the ghost!" Ashley protested. How was he still not getting it by now, with the number of times this ghost had appeared by now?! "It's trying to tell us the maniac killed Hannah and Beth!"

"Well I'm more thinking that it's this bastard, and that h-he's trying to fuck with our heads!" Ashley pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers in frustration. Even now he was still focused on the maniac and not willing to see that the ghost was trying to help them?!

"But why would 'he' set this all up, Chris?!" she asked him. Looking at his face she could see that he was still studying the diarama intently. As such she looked back to the display herself. Upon doing so however, it was only now that she noticed a striking, as well as really creepy detail about the dolls. Their eyes, or rather, their 'lack' of eyes. Most of the dolls had their backs turned to her, but the ones whose faces she could see were completely lacking pupils, or completely void of eyes at all! Almost as if they'd been scratched out completely! Ashley felt a shiver run down her body as this realization set and she stared at them more.

The doll that was supposed to represent 'Hannah' in particular stood for her and Chris to see. In addition to her entire front being visible, her 'eyeless' face stared straight forward at the mock display of a prank that was posed in front of it.

"He's trying to tell us that he's gonna come after us too-"

The Hannah doll's head twitched and the 'eyes' suddenly somehow cracked open!

"Yikes!" Chris and Ashley jumped back while letting out various yelps.

Ashley's heart nearly leaped out of her chest as she herself jumped back. Her breath quickened in her throat from the sudden scare, while a clattering beside her feet revealed to her that in her panic she had dropped her flashlight. As she took a step back to bend down and pick her flashlight back up, Ashley noticed that the entire roof of the dollhouse had suddenly cracked open. What the hell was going on here?!

Still panting slightly, Ashley dared to peak her eyes into the... compartment? This children's dollhouse was also a container for smaller knick-knacks like spools, cloths, buttons, and... a book?

Curiously, Ashley reached her hand inside to pull the book out. Underneath the light of her flashlight, the book's cover was pink in color with the numbers '2013-14' written in gold trimming.

"What is that?" Chris asked.

"It's... it's Hannah's diary," Ashley replied.

"Whoa um, I don't think it's a good idea to..." Chris could be heard saying even as Ashley was already opening the book. What was the harm in looking?

The very first page she opened to revealed a full page of neatly written text.

"'I really think Josh is doing better now that he's out of the hospital. I saw him today,'" Ashley began reading aloud until she paused for a moment to note the date. The top corner of the diary page read October the 29th, "This was... this written a couple months before we all got together..."

"Couple days before Halloween..." Chris noted as well.

"'I saw him today and he seemed better," Ash continued, "'He's pretty upbeat, but he talked like he's been doing therapy for such a long time. I guess I didn't know. Mom and Dad never let on. Still, what kind of sister am I that I failed to even notice that about my own brother? I kinda need a good cry thinking about how lonely he must feel...'"

And just like that, Ashley began to feel her lips start to quiver at the mention of Josh yet again and what had become of him as well. She'd always suspected that Josh was hurting big in some way from all this, but she'd never gotten around to asking him about it herself. Still, in a way she felt relieved that she wasn't the only one to have not picked up on the whole thing as she should have.

She turned a couple more blank pages until she came to a stop on the page marked 'January 9th, 2014'. It detailed Hannah's anxious wait in regards to the actual get together they had planned back during that year. She had listed that herself, Matt, and Sam had agreed to join the party by that point, but nothing from Mike. She could strangely remember that time when she had phoned to accept Hannah's invitation, even to this day. At the time she had just finished what felt like her hardest piece of Literary Homework she'd ever encountered before. She was riding on a high rush of good feeling from her accomplishment and had accepted the offer wholeheartedly.

The next page listed for January 18th was dedicated solely to Hannah's excitement over the fact that Mike had accepted her invitation. Even the entirety of the page she wrote on and the page next to it were decorated with small art doodles like hearts, balloons, and even art depictions of butterflies. The way these butterflies were drawn... Ashley's mind briefly drifted back to seeing these designs vaguely reminding her of Hannah's own butterfly tattoo. She must've really been proud of that one too.

The next turned page for February 1st was decorated with even more happy doodles. While Ash had to admit that they were cute and all, she couldn't ignore the stabbing feeling being felt in her heart ever so slightly. Written by the hand of a kind, gentle soul that deserved better than what had happened to her. This feeling was made only worse with the words themselves that were written on the page.

"'Everyone being together here on the mountain, it's going to be so awesome," she read aloud, her voice starting to tremble as she read, "'Cozy fires, hot tubs and omg Mike. I am so psyched to spend some time with him-'" Her reading ended abruptly from feeling that familiar feeling of her eyes starting to sting. She snapped the book closed by squeezing the two ends together with her hand , "I can't read this! It's so sad, Chris...!"

"Ash, Ash... it's okay, okay?" Chris said, patting her shoulder once with his own hand, "And, well, I said this wasn't a good idea either..."

"I know... I know..." Ashley softly. Curse her curious nature, but she just couldn't help herself sometimes! She reached her hand up to place the book back into the compartment space she'd pulled it from. Before she could reach up to close the roof shut again, a noise could be heard echoing slightly through the basement's space.

"Huh-?!" Ashley uttered before quickly lowering her voice to a whisper, "What was that?"

"It came from down there..." Chris whispered just as softly. He had stepped away from the dollhouse and was staring off to the side. Ashley followed his gaze to see that he was looking towards the long hallway where she'd seen the ghost the first time in this basement. No ghost could be seen this time, but the sound she'd heard sounded an awful lot like a door's hinges creaking slightly. It had to have been the door on the right side of the hallway this time...

Chris wordlessly motioned with his hand for Ash to follow close behind him as he took the lead this time. She hastily stayed close behind him and matched his speed as the two of them made their way down the hallway. The blue light of the night glowed ever brighter as they drew closer to the window.

As they approached the turning point, Chris reduced his own walking speed to barely a crawl, with Ashley remaining directly behind him. He then carefully peered his head around the corner, then almost immediately relaxed his tense stance he'd held before. He then glanced at Ashley and silently motioned to carefully join him. Her heart running like a marathon runner, but trusting his silent instructions, Ashley just as quietly deftly made her way to look at what he was looking at.

Before the both of them, the door was just barely cracked open to allow the smallest sliver of light from the other side to be seen. Not only that, but was that mist that was pouring through the crack as well? Ashley could feel the sensation of her own mouth chattering; she even considered if the chattering of her own teeth was so loud that anyone else could hear it. What if... what if the psycho was on the other side of this door right now? He could just be waiting for the two of them to step right through it so he could kill them too...!

She slowly glanced towards Chris to find that he was saying something to her. Or rather, he was silently mouthing the words 'I'll go first'. With that Ashley watched as he slowly reached forward to place a hand against the flat of the door, the beam of his flashlight pointed straight at the door. With a low creaking of door hinges he pressed against the door to reveal...

No psycho.

In fact, there was no one in the next room at all. What could be seen however was what appeared to be an extension of the basement they stood in now. Two sets of windows similar to the one behind them shone their light through snow-filtered glass and bathed the room in an ominous glow of soft light. A number of cardboard boxes lay stacked up against that same wall, just out of reach of the windows' light. Aside from those things however, little else could be seen into the room through the thick of this fog. This strange, cool mist that seemed to be flowing from this room. Where was it even coming from?

As Chris took the first steps towards the room himself, Ashley craned her head a little to try and see where this mist was coming from.

Ashley's world exploded with a screaming filling her ears, and the visage of someone appearing directly before them! She let out a scream of her own as something practically had jumped out of nowhere! She felt herself flinching so hard she held both of her arms up defensively with her eyes clenched shut. This was it! The ghost had appeared before them and would-

The familiar sound of the door slamming shut momentarily broke Ashley from her frightened state. She slowly opened her eyes to find no more ghost standing before her. Though now not only was she still scared out of her wits, she was confused as to what had just happened. Where was the ghost? How did the door close shut. And... where was Chris?!

"Goddammit...!" she suddenly heard his voice, from the other side of the door! What had happened?! How did he- Was he taken just now?! She had to get back to him!

"Chris?" she grabbed the doorknob and twisted it, only to find that it was somehow locked?! The jiggling knob in her hand only seemed to mock her with each refusal to turn. To make matters even worse, Chris himself couldn't be heard on the other side either.

"CHRIS!" she called out louder and jiggling the doorknob harder. Yet again the door refused to open to her. With each denial Ashley's desperation grew, and her twists of the door knob became more and more frantic. The jiggling sound of the knob itself echoed through the dark space of the basement, as if to further torment her with denial of entry!

All of a sudden the door swung open again. Standing in the doorway there was Chris, perfectly fine, much to Ashley's both shock and relief. His own flashlight shined harshly as it was pointed straight at her, causing her eyes to squint a little. His own facial expression held that of... disappointment? As if he'd missed something just now?

"Nothing," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. In that moment, Ashley was almost certain she had a better understanding of what had just happened. Perhaps he had tried to rush in after that ghost had appeared before them to... try and capture it? But, that would mean...

"But, you did see it Chris?" she asked him, "For real?"

To her credit, Chris' face didn't show his usual dismissiveness as he'd displayed before. This time, his eyes were more alert and focused, almost ready and willing to find something. He was even taking steps differently this time; much sharper steps this way and that, as if ready to move towards something.

"I saw... something," he finally admitted before turning around to entire the room itself, "but w-where'd it go...?"

Ashley took a few cautious steps into the room herself before coming to a halt. She craned her neck up and pointed her flashlight straight at the ceiling, where she had meant to look before. A nearby air vent could be seen clearly blowing this thick, rather chilly mist into the room she and Chris were in. Could the ghost have vanished up and through there...?

"Um, Ashley...?"

Her head snapped back down to see Chris looking at her. He wasn't calling her out for what she was looking at, but rather to direct her attention to something himself. Ash made her way towards where Chris stood around a sharp corner of the room. He stood directly in front of a table with couple more cardboard boxes stacked atop it. However, the boxes clearly were not what Chris meant to show Ashley...

There, directly in between the boxes, was a video camera, with a red blinking red light. Instantly, Ashley felt a wave of self-consciousness shoot up her entire body as she rubbed the sides of her arms.

"What the- Chris, is that a camera?!" she said.

"Well yeah, looks like it," he said with shrug, "I'm guessing set up by the maniac..."

"I-I don't like being watched...!" Ashley protested. Her comment earned her a look from Chris, but he nevertheless reached over to the camera to spin it so that its lens faced towards the box next to it instead.

"Better?" he said. Of course it wasn't going to be any better, but...

A moment's pause and Ashley let out a sigh of exasperation. Whoever was spying on her probably had plenty of footage of her without her consent, she might as well add her own 'voluntary contribution'.

She reached over to the camera and readjusted it so that she herself was face to face with the lens.

"Go suck an egg!" she declared before forcefully placing the camera back to the position that Chris had it facing at. She then took a step back before giving a shrug of her shoulders, "Now it's better."

Out of the corner of her eye Chris could be seen already moving on and walking along the line of shelves and table lining the wall next to them. Ashley spun herself in place to follow along with him, only to find that he had come to a halt in front of the table yet again. He had set his flashlight down to pick up something that was laying on the table before him.

"Chris?" she asked, "What is that? What'd you find?"

"It's a catalogue, for... industrial lightbulbs?" he said. He held the book up slightly so that the light from the window behind them was shining directly upon it. The cover looked rather modern with very few signs of wear and tear.

"That's... random," she noted, "And it doesn't even look as old as some of this other stuff down here..."

With one hand holding the book, Chris used his other hand to open the book. The two of them scanned the page to find only sets of electrical plugs and stuff. Not a single one of these things Ashley could tell the first thing about, but she had no doubt Chris could understand them all far better than she could.

"Huh? Ear-mark...?" Chris softly noted. It was true; one of the pages in the book had a bent corner at its top. He instinctively turned the book to that specific page. The two's attention was immediately drawn to one of the pictures that was circled with very bright red ink, helping it stand out against the stark white of the page.

"Hey, look," Ash pointed out, "One of the bulbs is circled."

"96 Watts... 5,000 hours?" Chris read aloud, "This is a powerful bulb..."

As Chris continued to read through the catalogue, Ashley began to inspect the top of the bench where the book was found. After a moment of looking, her eyes came to rest on something. She actually almost didn't catch sight of it because Chris' positioning cast a thick shadow over it, but something else could be seen. She reached over to pick up the object and bring it into the light.

"Scissors?" she said. Chris broke away from his reading at the seemingly random word Ashley spoke. His eyes narrowed as he also inspected the item she held in her hand. These were rather large scissors too, completely made of metal and large in length than Ashley's entire hand.

"You said it- random..." he shrugged. He placed the book back down on the bench and picked his flashlight back up again, "Come on, let's keep moving."

Ashley nodded in agreement. As Chris had already begun to walk towards the hallway linked to this room, Ashley came to a stop as she realized she was still holding the scissors in her hand. Actually... It might be better to have 'some' kind of protection on her person. If nothing else, should she and Chris happen to run into the psycho himself at any point.

She slipped the scissors into her back right pocket before turning to follow after Chris. She could hear the distinct sound of his footsteps before her, thankfully not terribly far in front of her. In fact, she even caught sight of him rounding the corner of the small hallway to the right.

This place truly was disgusting, on top of being seriously scary. Everywhere she shined her light revealed something decrepit or completely dust covered. Even the shelf directly next to her made her nose wrinkle in disgust. Among the items to be found at waist level alone was a small girl's doll. Or more accurately, a doll's body with the head having been 'decapitated' and laying right next to it on the shelf.

"Just when you think this can't get any creepier..." Ashley noted as she reached over to pick up the doll's head. She spun it in her hand to inspect the doll's face. Numerous paint chippings could be found marring the doll's facial image and even a massive gash in the cheek linking to the right eye could be seen. Strangely enough, just like the dolls in the dollhouse, this one also seemed to be missing eyes...

Ashley squinted her own eyes as she tried to focus on something she thought she saw... within the eye sockets. These 'somethings' turned out to be a small number of roaches, crawling out of the doll's head!

"Ugh-!" Ashley cried out as she dropped the doll's head on instinct. The head clattered to the floor, and she nearly jumped back to avoid the roaches themselves scattering about. They soon all retreated completely underneath the shelves, "Jeez...!" Ashley put a hand to her chest to steady her breathing yet again. If someone or something was in a competition for 'freaking her out the most in one night', they were seriously getting her good...

She shook her hand instinctively as she walked forward, not feeling entirely certain one of those disgusting roaches was still trying to crawl on her hand. Maybe it was a good thing that Chris had walked well in front of her already; somehow, she could just predict him making some stupid bug joke about having roaches crawling on her. Upon rounding the corner, Chris could be seen walking into a nearby adjoining room with completely different lighting. A glowing lightbulb could be seen hanging from the center of that room and bathing the room in a whiter light.

As she made her way towards the doorway that would lead to this room, Ashley felt something. What she felt however wasn't something jumping out and surprising her as many things had been doing so far, but it rather it felt dull and muted. Actually, if she was being honest, what she was feeling almost felt like a quake of some sort? This was quickly followed by huge clouds of dust being shaken off of the ceiling all around her and falling to the ground.

"Uh, what was that...?" she said nervously. She traced her flashlight up and around towards the ceiling to pinpoint the source of that rumbling. But just as quickly as it had happened, it had ended. Ashley was left with the rapid beating of her heart, her slow deep breaths, and the feeling of chilling ice running up along her spine as she proceeded forward into the next room.

What she found in this room didn't ease her anxiety any more than before. From the number of furniture items covered up by white cloths, Ashley could only guess that this was some kind of storage room. There were so many big pieces of furniture that someone could hide behind in this room. If all that wasn't bad enough, a number of mannequins on metal stands could be found littering this room as well. They were entirely featureless and even faceless, yet Ashley found herself shivering every time her flashlight found one in its light beam.

"Wait, there's a whole 'nother room through here..." Chris' voice could be heard, "It's mammoth!" Her flashlight finally came to rest upon Chris himself standing at yet another doorway before them. Actually, the more accurate word to describe this would be 'hole in the wall'. His flashlight traced along the depths of this hallway as he himself remained stationary. He then turned and noticed Ashley's approach from behind him.

"Chris... I don't know if I wanna keep going..." she said as her eyes continued to trace along the creepy mannequins. Why did these things have to look so life-like?

"Just stay close to me..." Chris replied while gently motioning for her to follow him. Without waiting for a response from her, he proceeded down the small drop onto the floor below. He then turned around and held a hand out towards her, "Here- watch your step, there's a bit of a drop."

Ashley cautiously reached out and placed her hand in his hand to steady herself before stepping a foot out. True to Chris' claim, there was in fact a drop down to a floor that was at least a foot or two deep. Upon entering the room however, Ashley coughed a little from the sudden onslaught of musty dust that assaulted her nose and mouth.

"Urk-! Filthy...!" she said in between her coughs.

"You alright, Ash?" she could hear Chris asking her. A couple more coughs later and her throat was feeling much more cleared up.

"Yeah, I'm good..." she said with a nod. She waved her hand in front of her face to dispel any more lingering dust that threatened to choke up her breathing again.

In between her coughing fit, Ashley finally was able to shine her light around to see exactly where she and Chris now stood. If she thought the basement, they were just in was creepily scary, this place was on a whole new level of creepy! A dark, cramped hallway with rotting sheetrock on all sides of them, with small rays of likely moonlight shining through rotting wooden boards in the ceiling. Seriously, just where and what was this place?

"Where... in the world are we now...?" she said as she walked forward while taking care to stick closer to Chris. Everywhere she could see was some kind of wood that was rotting or in the process of threatening to fall apart. Even the very wooden floor she and Chris walked on was barely holding together.

"Are you kidding me?" Chris said as he too shined his light all around to inspect this new setting.

"Did you know this was here?"

"This? This is like a whole 'nother building! I had no idea this was here...!" The two of them passed by a couple of decrepit doorframes on their left side and some broken down lighting fixtures on their right. Who even knew if that nearby boiler was working in the slightest either.

As the two prepared to round a corner to the left, they made note with their flashlights the most prominent source of light directly in front of them. A nearby shaft with crisscrossing metal across the doorframe reaching all the way to the bottom. The elevator shaft's door as a result created a corresponding crisscrossing shadow effect upon the ground directly in front of them due to the light from the other side. The more Ashley stared at this strange formation, the more she felt its shape more akin to prison bars. This place was already dark and creepy enough already, she didn't need this visual along with it either.

Upon turning the corner, she and Chris were met with yet another lengthy hallway completely shrouded in darkness. Even with the aid of both their flashlights, the feeling of darkness itself was really feeling suffocating for Ash in a way. Everywhere she didn't see any sort of light sent a new shiver up her arms and her spine.

"I don't think I can take any more of this..." she found herself saying before slowing herself to a stop. Chris quickly noted Ashley's pause and ceased his walk as well to stand beside her.

"Yeah, I'm uh... I'm about up to my limit here too," he admitted.

"All I wanted to do was forget that last year ever happened, and..." Ashley started. Yet again, it all came back to her initial impressions of Josh's plan to do something on the 'anniversary' of that day. After spending nearly a whole year being her usual lonesome self, some time with her usual friends was what she was really desired. She wanted to feel like she wasn't really a bad person for having taken part in a prank that in hindsight wasn't really that well thought out in the first place. It was why Ashley felt the need to want to see Chris a lot more these days. Or perhaps one of the reasons anyway. And at first, Ashley was completely on board for Josh's plan...

Until he suggested doing something at his lodge.

The moment that the lodge was even mentioned, Ashley flat-out refused Josh's plan right then and there. After all, what good was having a get together 'at' the very place where a terrible tragedy had happened? It'd be no different from having a huge party on the site of where a murder mystery took place. She remembered Josh trying as hard as he could to persuade her to join them in a 'night of fun festivites' as he called it. No matter how many times and how many ways he buttered his words up to her, she was adamant in her initial refusal. She did not want to be reminded of not only lost friends at that place, but even worse being a potential reason for why they were lost in the first place...

That is until Chris had approached her soon after. At the time Ashley was hoping that he'd see reason and not go along with this crazy idea himself. Unfortunately, instead of sharing her viewpoint, he instead had spoken to her on Josh's behalf, hoping to change her mind. She remembered being rightfully being confused and even upset by Chris' own thought process, but she also remembered the way his eyes had been alight with excitement. It was a far cry from how she'd remembered him being during the earlier part of the year. It was a side of him that she rather liked seeing.

"You know to be honest? I'm not really sure what Hannah thought she was doing," Chris spoke up. And there was yet another reminder why this whole mess had happened in the first place. But still, Hannah had to have known that Mike was so thoroughly spoken for by that point in time, didn't she? Or does love really blind people to such a degree?

"Yeah, well..." she paused to think of the right words, "You know how it is when you're crushing pretty hard on somebody."

"Great, so you're basically saying that we put a vulnerable friend in a terrible situation and essentially caused her to run away and never be heard from again?"

Chris' sudden line of question nearly caught Ashley off-guard. However, it wasn't entirely the question in itself, but also the exact way that it was posed to her. The entire time he was looking straight at her with what she could only identify as 'stern eyes', and even speaking to her in a rather reprimanding tone. If she were being honest with herself, that side of Chris nearly put her off and she wanted to tell him so, but... Deep down she knew he was absolutely right. Not only was he right, but didn't he himself have more of reason to call her out on something like this since he never exactly took part in the prank?

Yeah, that's right; he and Josh had both passed out drunk that night Ashley recalled. She never even got the chance to tell him about the plans for the prank because he was already out. She also distinctly remembered thinking back about how much of a 'hilarious opportunity' he'd be missing out on...

The more Ashley thought about it, the more she felt ashamed of herself. And thinking back to what Chris had said earlier too: a vulnerable friend. Among the kind words that Ashley could think to describe Hannah, 'vulnerable' would unfortunately be one of them as well. They had really felt her vulnerable enough that it would be funny to mess with her feelings like that?

"If it was you, don't you think you'd have run away from those who picked on you?" Ash said, "I mean, who likes being made fun of?" The stern visage on Chris' face slowly melted away as he considered what she said.

"People don't make fun of me..."

"To your face," Ash was quick to add. He looked back up at her with mild confusion to her comment.

"What-?"

"Chris," she continued, "We made her look so stupid, in front of all of her friends and the guy she liked... I can't imagine doing anything worse to somebody."

"Heh, guess somebody should've told that to our past selves; maybe even avoid this whole mess completely..." Chris remarked with a shrug.

He then turned to continue walking down the hallway, the light from his flashlight guiding his way. Ashley herself hastily followed after him to avoid falling behind, while her mind was heavy with the topic she and him had discussed just now. In a strange way, she wasn't feeling a shivering feeling of fear after having talked with him about this. It was still present, but nowhere near as crippling as it had been before. Guess it really does help to have something else to talk about and take your mind off of things. Even if something else happened to involve a friend's feelings and even possible death somehow being something you caused...

The two of them walked down the dark, cramped hallway with only their flashlights providing necessary light for them to see where they walked. On all sides of them was more wood, broken, rotting or even termite riddled. Seriously, the next time she met Mr. and Mrs. Washington, she'd have to remember to mention this place of all things to them. That is if she could bear to face them again after all that had happened.

Directly in front of them the hallway was completely blocked off with broken furniture that essentially acted as a barrier from access.

"Huh, guess we gotta go this way..." Chris said, pointing his flashlight to the left. His light revealed a small room with more stone in its walls compared to before. A central stone pillar could be seen broken from its base in the floor over a stone floor, "But seriously, have have we not found Sam by this point?"

"I don't know Chris... I don't know," Ash said nervously.

"We gotta find her, and fast..." he said. Leading the way, he turned a sharp left and drifted his flashlight all around the space that lay before them. Stepping to his side, Ashley also shone her light around the spots that Chris' light wasn't shining at.

"What do you think this area is? Or was?" she spoke as she. She could hear him mumble something but from the distance she'd put between her and him she didn't make out what he had said. Upon passing in between two broken stone pillars, her flashlight aiming at the floor actually revealed that what she stood upon was some kind of tile? Even the floor itself wasn't spared from the broken, rundown state as the rest of this place.

"Kinda looks like... kitchen tile," Chris said. A kitchen? This place was meant to be a kitchen? If that were true, then shouldn't there be more water appliances and such like sinks or even valves that sinks were plugged into? Ashley curiously dragged her flashlight along the wall to feed her sudden, and random curiosity. All that her flashlight illuminated however was more of the rotting wall and the exposed wooden boards underneath its sheetrock.

Her flashlight beam finally drifted back down towards the tiled floor to rest upon some box shaped objects. Or rather, as it turns out most of them were merely box-shaped rock debris, only one of them was an actual box made of cardboard. Strangely enough it was tied up with string and held some kind of sticker on the front of it.

Ashley approached the box and bent her legs to inspect it closer. Only now when she could see it up close could she see that one of the corners of the box was ripped, revealing the contents within to be that of newspapers.

"What the..." she spoke as she reached up to pinch the corner end of the silver colored sticker. She pulled it down to discover that it was in fact a pasted 'return-to-sender' notice posted over a mailing address.

"Ash? What'd you find there...?" Chris said from behind as he moved to join her.

"Chris, look at this..." she indicated to the package before the two of them. Reading the address it was clearly marked to Edmonton, but the date itself was marked for... August 18th, 2014? And there, listed in the bottom right of the card itself, the words 'please return to sender' could be seen in bold, black font.

"Are these... fake?" she said with eyes narrowing in confusion, "Why would someone make fake newspapers?"

"Wait, hold on..." Chris spoke up. Ashley watched as his finger traced over to the exposed newspaper on top and the words posted on its front, "'Ex-janitor'... 'arson'..." His fingers held their pose for a few seconds before Chris slowly brought them back closer to him. Ash herself looked back up at him, only to find that his mouth was hanging open slightly and his eyes were widened. He stared out forward, as if something incredible had caught his attention.

"Holy shit..."

"What? What is it?" Ash asked. Her question seemed to snap him out of his shocked state. He shook his head and turned to look at her.

"O-okay Ash, just... bear with me for a second, okay?" he said as he swiftly brought himself to his feet. Ashley quickly followed him up to her feet while anxiously awaiting what he had to say, "So... remember when I told you that way back, Sam and I found that wanted poster out by the cable car station?"

"Um, y-yeah I think so?" Ashley said. To her credit she did recall him saying something like that earlier on, before all this had happened.

"Well, I didn't mention something else about that, but..." Chris continued, "The poster said that this guy was wanted for 'arson'." Ashley simply tilted her head with a frown at the mentioning of the last word, "You know, arson, meaning stuff to do with fire?"

"Alright?" Ashley said, though not feeling entirely convinced of anything, "But, what exactly are you saying, Chris?"

"Well look here...!" he pointed a finger back down to the exposed newspaper through the rip in the paper bundle. The word 'arson' could be seen as clear as day thanks to its bold font and being the literal front-page headliner, "Fake newspapers here, also talking about some arsonist? It's even got 'ex-janitor' written on there too!"

"Chris!" Ashley cut in through his apparent excitement, "I still don't get it! What does all that mean though?" Her question was honest and sincere; nothing of any of this was sounding sensible to her. Finding 'fake' newspapers that happened to bear similarities to some wanted poster that she had never seen herself? All she wanted was for Chris to simply get to the point of all this, if nothing else to help her make sense of it herself.

Her sudden interruption also caused Chris to pause through his excitement. He looked at her with eyes filled with shock and confusion as well. Almost as if he were expecting her to fill in some blanks for him. He would be waiting for a while if that were the case.

After a few more moments, he seemed to give up and shake his head.

"I-I dunno... maybe it's just a coincidence? Who knows..." he said before turning back towards the hallway they had come from, "We should really keep moving though..." He then proceeded to lead them back towards the perpendicular hallway, though not before Ashley cast one more look back towards the bundle of fake newspapers. While their exact purpose was still a mystery to her, yet another question lay in why these were here, now, at this point in time...?

The two teens rounded the corner and stood back within the small hallway they had initially came from. Turning to their right would take them towards the 'untreaded path' and deeper into this creepy building. Seriously, was this all part of the Washington's lodge or was this place here long before?

Ashley pointed her flashlight beam forward, only to find the familiar sight of deep darkness. But not only that, a small set of stairs lay before them that meant they would be walking downwards and deeper into the dark of this place. She could feel her hands and her own jaw trembling at the sight before she shook her head.

"You know what? No," she said as Chris rejoined her at her side.

"Ash-"

"No, I've had enough!" Ashley pointed a finger towards the dark and the stairs, "I'm not going down any further in this dark nightmare, Chris!" She crossed her arms to allow her hands to rub the outsides of her arms as she took a single step away from the stairs.

"Ashley..." Chris said softly, "Listen, I understand, okay? I'm really freaked out too." He the directed his hand towards the descending stairs, "But if Sam's down there all alone with a maniac, and we leave? We'd be basically killing her ourselves! Don't you understand that?" Every word Chris leveled at her was spoken in his soft, yet urgent tone, and Ashley found herself more and more at odds about how to feel. One side of her knowing to do the 'right' thing and another side screaming at her of her fear and terror she'd been experiencing from... well, 'everything' having happened tonight!

"I know... I know," she relented, "I just... You know I don't like the dark, Chris. I don't think I can do it!"

"Yeah I know, but... there's nothing wrong with that," Chris said, "Lots of people are afraid of the dark. It's a reasonable fear to have..."

"It makes me really scared, Chris," Ashley said. It was then that she noticed that Chris had taken a single step closer to her and was placing a comforting arm on her shoulder. She could the impression of his hand through her jacket with the simple gesture. And perhaps Ashley was only imagining it, but his hand to her somehow felt... warmer?

"It'd make me scared too," he spoke softly again, "But... I'll be with you the entire time. Okay?" Even the look on his face showed genuine care for her, like he really would do anything to keep her safe. This right here- this was one of the things about Chris that Ashley always felt good about seeing in him. For all his joking and child-like attitude he demonstrated on the surface, he could be serious and trustworthy when he needed to be. And even if she wasn't entirely convinced enough to let go of her fear, she could at least trust in Chris to stay true to his word.

"And you'll be with me the whole way too, won't you?"

"Yeah..." Ashley nodded, "I will." It was also at this moment that Ashley happened to take notice of the exact distance between the two of them. Chris was... rather close to her right now, and his head was closer to hers. She could see his eyes and how even from behind his glasses they were that very nice shade of light blue...

Her moment of peace and content was broken as Chris suddenly took a step back from her. Ashley was certain she could feel something stir within her as he did so; as if she definitely wanted him to return closer to her.

"Right so... Guess we should do this, huh?" he said to her as he indicated to the stairs. Ashley glanced once more back down to the dark descent before giving a nervous nod.

"Yeah..." she said. A quick shake of her head unfortunately reminded her of what the two of them needed to do.

"Okay, I'll go first; just... stay close to me..."

With that Chris slowly proceeded down the wooden steps, each one creaking underneath his feet. Ashley felt a wave of hesitation about to stop her, but she powered through it to take a step of her own down, followed by another. Her flashlight remained fixed on Chris' descending form as the two of them creaked their way down. The stairs themselves twisted a couple times left and right as they descended as well. While she did her best to keep her gaze fixed on Chris' form, she couldn't help but allow her eyes to drift occasionally from side to side at the dark, rotting walls on both sides of her. This entire space felt so cramped already it's like it was somehow closing in on them even more with each step taken. Who in their right mind would want to come down here anyway?

Well, this psycho clearly. After everything that's happened and after all that they've been put through by this guy, Ashley wouldn't put it past that he was some kind of freak, if not a complete monster. The kind of creepy, voyeuristic freak that liked to watch people through cameras, and... wait a minute...

"You good Ash?"

Ashley was momentarily startled by Chris' sudden inquiry. In the midst of her thoughts she hadn't realized she'd already reached the bottom of the stairs, and Chris was standing before her.

"Yeah, yeah I'm good," she said. She paused for a moment before speaking up again, "It's just... Chris? I'm getting a really weird feeling from all this..."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I'd just been thinking, about what you said earlier?" she started, "And... so you're saying that this same guy, this psycho, the one who set up that camera back in the basement earlier? That maybe he also faked those newspapers too?" Chris' eyebrow raised with intrigue with each word she asked.

"Um... I mean, yeah, I-I think so," he said, "You mean with the whole arsonist thing? That would seem likely..."

"It... It feels like he's constructing this 'story' for us! And then seeing what we do..." Ashley continued, "Watching us run around and freak out, like it's all... some kind of fucking experiment!" Chris' eyes narrowed with heavy concern by now as Ashley spoke. There was no doubt that he had to be sensing what she'd been sensing by this point too.

"Yikes..." he breathed, "That, um... Th-that actually makes some kind of sense, in a way."

"Right?" Ashley said.

"So wait, that means you do agree with me with what I said earlier?"

His followup statement forced her to pause yet again. Thinking back on that as well, perhaps it was the least bit likely that could've been blamed on the psycho as well. It didn't change the fact that the more she and Chris came to learn from all they were discovering down here, the more unease she felt rather than satisfaction.

"I... I dunno, maybe?" she reasoned with a shrug, "I-I guess I just don't want to be right about some of this stuff, you know?"

"Oh yeah, I know what you mean..." he replied. He then turned his flashlight towards the hallway to their left side, Ashley quickly following suit with her own, "Looks like this is the way we go... You ready?"

"Yeah... let's go..." Ashley nodded. She could sense the heavy nervousness in the shaking of her head and hoped that Chris couldn't tell himself. The two teens slowly and carefully made their way through the dark, rotting wooden hallway. Chris' flashlight beam remained steady while Ash's moved around slightly faster in comparison. Thankfully the hallway wasn't completely bathed in darkness due to a very dim light shining at the end. As it stretched across from the left side, Ashley could tell that some kind of natural light was shining through to give them some illumination to see down here.

She carefully rounded the corner just in front of Chris and stepped through the doorway. As she did so however the sound of snapping suddenly made her jump a little.

"Oh-! Wait, what...?"

She placed a hand to her heart to attempt to steady her heartbeat and slow her frantic breathing for what felt like the thousandth time this night alone.

"You alright Ash?" Chris said from behind her as he placed a hand on her shoulder, "Whoa... what the heck is...?"

Following Chris' gaze, Ashley looked down to see what exactly he was looking at. There, located a few feet to the left from the foot of the entryway they had come through was an assortment of batteries. These were rather large batteries, the kind that were usually found in cars. And nearly all of them held red and black wires with massive clamps attached to their nodes atop. Small blue sparks periodically popped and broke the darkness like lightning bolts.

In addition, these wires and clamps themselves were connected to a number of timers. Words like 'T.V.' and 'Lights' were written on a couple of them too. What the heck was all this?

"What is this, Chris?" Ashley asked even as Chris had squatted down to try and inspect a little closer, "This all looks... kinda intricate..."

"Ah-!" Chris fliched slightly as a spark flew from one of the batteries, "Yeah, batteries, and timers..." After a moment of inspection he finally raised himself to his feet again and looked back at Ash, "This is like some Secret Squirrels shit right here... Wouldn't surprise me if this stuff was his too."

Ashley allowed Chris to take the lead and walk a foot in front of her. He led the two of them down the hallway opposite the batteries and timers. Just like before a light could be seen through a nearby opening at the end of this hallway as well. This light however was of a much different shade from before. As opposed to more natural light that Ash had seen before from moonlight spilling in, this light seemed like it was coming from an artificial light source, like a lightbulb.

"Whoa, holy..." Chris breathed. The two of them beheld yet another hallway but with a completely different look to it. Directly in front of them the source of the light could be seen in the form of a light that shone down on a... a stretch table? Ashley felt a nervous shiver run up her spine at the sight of what lay strapped to the table. While that was definitely a torso, thankfully it was an armless and legless torso of some mannequin dummy. Still that whole thing was so creepy to her; she didn't want to look at it any more than was needed.

The entire hallway she stood within felt different somehow too. The walls were stone with pale white tiles stretching up halfway from the bottom. The floor itself was completely hard like concrete. If Ashley had to guess this felt like some kind of clinical type hallway or something. Even the 'hole' both she and Chris had entered through was actually a caved in section of the wall.

Turning to her left showed the only way to proceed was through a set of heavy dual-doors. Each wall on both sides held a number of metallic looking grates and bars with evident signs of rust on them while up above a number of industrial looking pipes lined the ceiling and led in the doors' general direction as well. As Ashley tentatively walked towards the doors, she unconsciously glanced to her side to verify that Chris was still walking alongside her. She was momentarily relieved to find that he was still with her, and they proceeded forward.

The two teens nervously stepped forth into the next, rather large room. Each of their footsteps echoed slightly against the obvious tile they both walked upon. Like in the hallway before, tile lined half of the walls around them with brick comprising the other half while a couple of dirty windows barely allowed filtered moonlight to shine through. This light illuminated the rather sinister looking items found in this... whatever sort of function this room served.

Having taken no more than a few steps into the room, Ashley nearly jumped in place as a loud booming noise was heard. She and Chris spun around to see that the double doors to this room had closed! Again with doors closing and opening on their own!

"Oh no no no...!" Chris muttered as he rushed forward to the doors. He gripped one of the knobs in his hand and practically shoved his weight into it. Unsurprisingly the doors remained sealed in place despite his efforts. Ashley watched him with mild desperation for the doors to open back up. After a few seconds of failed attempts Chris finally gave up, "Ah crap... locked in."

"Locked in...?!" Ashley breathed. She placed a hand over her mouth as she involuntarily took a step backwards. In the process she felt something bump into her as well as a small clinging sound to accompany it. Spinning around yet again, Ashley yelped at the sight of what exactly it was that she had bumped into.

Hanging upon the wall directly behind her was an assortment of hooks and blades, all hanging on a metal chain bolted to the wall itself. If the threatening sight of the jagged teeth on these implements wasn't enough, they were also coated with red... hopefully not blood. However, with the flies buzzing around these tools, Ashley wasn't at all convinced this liquid could be anything else. Almost instantly her mind was assaulted with flashing images of a familiar buzzsaw that she'd nearly had that brush of death with herself.

"Ash-?" Chris could be heard rejoining her, "Oh jeez... this is so enticing..."

"Ugh, boy..." Ashley grimaced at the sight before glancing over to Chris, "Think all this stuff could belong to the guy too?"

"I mean... unless the Washingtons were into some freaky shit in their spare time, then yeah, that'd be my guess as well," Chris said with a shrug.

"And what is that smell...?" Ashley asked. In addition to the musty smell of this rather strange and creepy... room they were in, something foul could be smelt in the air as well.

"I... don't know what you mean," Chris said after sniffing the air a couple times himself, "But I mean, look at the blood on these hooks. There are flies buzzing all over them too... You sure it's not them?"

"No no, I don't think it would be..." Ashley spoke as she instinctively turned around and away from the hooks. She immediately came to regret that action however, as what she saw directly behind them on the other side of the room made her recoil even further in disgust.

A couple of industrial lights were positioned to shine their light straight up towards the center of a small, square-shaped space. They shone their light upon something that hung straight from the ceiling. Ashley didn't even need that much light shining to be able to tell what exactly it was that was hanging there.

A dead pig!

"Oh NO!" she turned her head away and covered her nose and mouth with her free hand, "You have got to be kidding me! Repulsive!"

Her action and change in direction caused Chris to turn around and see also what it was she was looking at as well. His recoil of disgust was obvious as well, but slightly more controlled compared to Ashley's.

"Oh my God..." he breathed, "That... cannot be for eating..."

Through sheer force of will Ashley slowly turned back around, desperately hoping to find the dead creature was not still where she saw it. Unfortunately, not only was the dead pig still hanging from the ceiling, but the girl was even afforded a somewhat clearer image of the precise evisceration that was done to it. Besides the obvious lacerations seen along the pig's outer skin, what drew the most attention was the entire gut section had been completely hollowed out, to the point where Ashley was certain that even from this distance, she could see the insides of the ribs that lined the insides! Blood dripped in multiple streams down from both the massive gut hollow as well as along the exterior of the pig itself. The blood streams dripped down towards a drain hole in the center of the floor directly beneath the pig carcass.

"Why the hell is this even here?!" she protested.

"It's almost like a goddamn grindhouse movie in here..." Chris noted.

"Seriously Chris, let's get out of here!" Ashley practically pleaded while indicating to the closed double doors behind them, "Can't we go back through those doors?"

"Those doors aren't opening, Ash; I tried already," Chris reminded her. His response only fueled Ashley's frustration on top of her anxiety, "And it looks like we go this way..."

He turned his flashlight to the left, shining the light along the length of the room from where the doors had initially allowed them entry. To their left was the corner of the room itself, while to the right appeared to lead them around the central pillar of the room, and towards whatever 'fun surprises' awaited the two of them further in.

The two teens proceeded through the barely lit room. Ever since Chris' first mention of grindhouse, Ashley found it difficult to shake that visual from her head. Even the tiles of the walls and floor, both broken and barely intact, gave that distinct image of what one would find in like a butcher house. Chains hung not only from the walls but along the ceiling as well, though thankfully without any blood dripping from them.

Even aside from the lingering stench of flesh and blood in the air, Ashley was even aware of that slight sterile smell that coated this place as well. This place was disgusting, in every sense of the word! It was smelly, it was ill-kept, falling apart, and from how recent that gutted pig appeared to be that psycho must spend a lot of time here as well. And if this guy ever managed to catch the two of them, as they feared he might have done to Sam already, well... Ashley didn't even want to imagine what might happen to them then.

As the two drew closer to the far wall, the smell of decrepit, rotting flesh began to diminish. Not completely, but enough to grant Ashley's nose a small reprieve. Her flashlight traced over a nearby closet looking compartment with the wooden doors rotten and falling off of their hinges. If that weren't bad enough however, streaks of blood could be seen splattered against the front of the right-side door as well. No matter where they walked to in this room, blood would always be present! From this compartment's doors to even directly beside it, with the... wait a minute.

Ashley's light came to a slow yet abrupt halt upon what lay directly next to the doors. The light brown of a cork bulletin board came into view, along with a couple of pictures that were pinned up upon it. With each picture she viewed, her eyes widened more, and her blood grew colder and colder like ice.

She saw a picture of Sam.

Then a picture of Josh.

And a picture... of herself!

"Chris...!" she gasped, "That's... that's us!"

"Whoa, whoa, what?!" Chris exclaimed with volume that matched her own.

It was true; a set of pictures, very familiar pictures, stood tacked onto this tackboard. Ashley's eyes were instinctively drawn to the picture of her own likeness. That was... she remembered that day. It was a warm day and she decided to get that haircut to show off a new style that she wanted. She even remembered showing this off to many of the kids in her school! Well actually it's not like she meant to show this off to anyone, but still...

She broke her gaze away from the picture of herself to view the others above hers. Pictures of Sam, Josh, Chris, even Jess could be seen. All of them were wearing clothing that looked vaguely familiar to her. She remembered seeing them wearing these particular clothes at school a couple of times!

A thought shot across her mind: Who took these pictures?!

"What the fuck...? And is that... Mike?" Chris spoke up. His sudden question broke her from her frightened state. She refocused her attention back to the board as a whole to figure out what he meant by that. Mike was here? Where was-

Just then Ashley found him. At the bottom of the left column of these pictures, a picture of Mike in his favorite white t-shirt could be seen. However, that was the one thing about him that could be identified. The reason being that in addition to the strange swath of red blood dripping from the bottom of his picture, both of his eyes appeared to be crossed out with large white X's. Why would Mike's picture out of all of them here be X'ed out like this?

Unless...

"W-w-what is this, a fucking HIT LIST?!" Chris said, "Christ!"

"Chris..." Ashley breathed, "This guy, has he really been... watching us? This whole time? How could he have gotten these pictures of us?" A glance beside her at his face showed that Chris was displaying just as much alarm as she was. Even behind his glasses Ash could see his own eyes widened just as hers had no doubt been.

"That would be... really messed up..." he said with a shake of his head before turning to her, "But still, we're gonna find Sam and we're gonna make this bastard pay. Got it? He's not hurting anyone else!"

"I... I just..." Ashley struggled for the right words. However, she found herself at a complete loss. Just the knowledge that someone, someone rather close for that matter, not only got pictures of them, but could very well have been stalking them. Just waiting for the right time kill them! Josh was already killed, and from what this board suggested, something was clearly in store for Mike. And Jess! She was currently with Mike right now! If this maniac was planning to do something to Mike, he wouldn't just let her go would he?

"I'm really scared, Chris...!" she practically whimpered. In her panic she barely noticed a hand on her shoulder and gently nudging her to the right.

"Yeah, yeah I hear ya..." Chris spoke.

Ashley allowed herself to be moved along with the boy's gentle gesture. Whether she was aware of her own feet moving along with him she couldn't say. For the moment she did try and focus her eyes up directly in front of her. The hand on her shoulder reminded her of the earlier feeling she'd felt when Chris was closer with her. As a result, while Ashley still felt heavy anxiety over seeing their pictures on the wall in addition to the disgusting bloody stuff in this room alone, she took some small comfort in knowing that Chris was still with her.

"Okay Ash."

The girl was snapped from the turmoil in her mind by Chris' words. She was fully aware that he had directed the two of them to a halt and looking up could see exactly why. A single wooden door stood closed before the two of them against the opposing wall. She glanced up at Chris, almost hoping that he wasn't seriously considering-

"I'll get it- be ready."

Or yes, he was.

Chris separated himself from her as he stepped forward. Ashley instinctively reached her hand back out towards him before pulling it back. She watched Chris take hold of the doorknob before looking back towards her. He didn't say a word, but his intent spoke all the volume that was needed. Nervously and hastily, she nodded her head. Chris then turned his head back to the door and twisted the knob. With a creaking of hinges, the door slowly swung open, revealing what lay inside.

With Chris leading the way, the two teens stepped inside of a small, square room. Ash's eyes were immediately drawn to a beam of light from within the room itself. Even creepier still was not that light was shining into this room that should've remained dark, but what exactly the light was shining down onto.

"Is that... a projector?" Chris' question mirrored her own thoughts. The boy advanced a little quicker into the room before her towards the projector in question. It rested upon a wooden table in the dead center of the room. Two large round spools holding thin film were held on the outside of the base of the projector itself. It was the kind of projector that Ashley would've associated with seeing in cinemas, movie theaters, or...

"Wait..." Ashley spoke, "You think this came from the Cinema Room upstairs?"

"That'd be my guess," Chris said with a shrug. He craned his head around the object to inspect around the front, "And yeah... this is the kind of light bulb that... the one we found circled in that book, remember?"

Ashley nodded on instinct while staring at the projector. All she remembered was one of the bulbs being circled but not what the bulb was specifically. Not that she could see the bulb from her angle, however. All that she could see on the projector's main box was a red on/off switch.

'Could this have belonged to the Psycho as well, even if it had to have come from the Cinema Room...?' she thought to herself. She slowly raised a finger towards the red switch, not expecting anything at all to happen by just pressing it, 'Why would this be here, just-'

The moment the switch was pressed a small snapping sound filled the air, causing Ash to jump in place.

"Oh-!" she yelped. Her sudden noise caused Chris to jump a little as well.

"Whoa, Ash! You alright?!" he said. Ashley placed a hand to her chest as she closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Ye-yeah, I'm fine," she said. As she opened her eyes to look back at Chris, her eyes were instinctively drawn to the brighter spot in the room. It turns out Ashley had in fact turned on the projector completely and light was spewing from the very front and onto the tiled wall in front of them.

Not simply light; an actual film.

The first image that appeared on screen caused Ashley's eyes to narrow and her mouth to drop slightly. For what she saw before her... was herself! Someone holding some camera in front of her while she bore an absolutely goofy grin on her face. The beanie she wore on her head was gray in color, while her attire consisted of a long-sleeve green shirt underneath a sleeveless red padded jacket.

"Oh God..." she spoke before glancing to Chris, "Chris, this is from last year..."

The boy stared at the screen, watching it as intently as she herself did. They watched as the Ashley of the past was moving to hide herself behind a nearby clothing divider. Meanwhile whoever was holding the camera had shifted in place and was moving towards the open door of a nearby closet. The evidence was impossible to miss: Ashley wearing clothes that she hadn't worn since exactly a year ago, the realization that it was in fact Matt that was holding this camera, in addition to Mike, Emily, and Jessica seen during the movement of the footage.

"The stupid prank."

By now the doors of the closet had closed, while the camera itself was still allowed a clear view outside through a small peephole. Chris and Ashley could hear the small stifling of laughter from Matt himself as he apparently struggled to compose himself. By contrast, the sounds of laughter from Ashley and Emily could be heard much clearer outside before they too silenced themselves.

Mike on the other hand remained standing out in the open, wearing that same flannel long-sleeve shirt as he'd shown up today in. The grin he wore on his face was a simple smile, but no less goofy in comparison to the grin that Ashley of the past had worn. All of them, just laughing as silly and carefree as other times they'd done before. Not a single one of them having any clue of the exact ramifications of what their prank would hold.

"Uh..." Chris said softly, "This is... little uncomfortable, huh?"

Ashley's head suddenly shot back over to Chris, ready to retort him for his comment. It was only then however that her wits kicked back in and was reminded how Chris never took part in the prank. He wasn't there, among the five of them. He'd been in the kitchen, drinking with Josh. Maybe in this case, he did have some merit to that observation. After all, how was one to think when seeing footage of something having been done that for all intents and purposes was a complete stupid idea?

A shamed Ashley turned back to the video, ironically fueling her shame even further.

"I've never seen this video," Ashley noted. By now in the video the laughter and noises from the five of them had ceased altogether. The nearby door at the end of the room slowly opened with a creak. With the bright light of a single lit candle guiding her in, Hannah Washington entered the room. Her eyes notably lit up as well upon seeing Mike specifically.

"She's just... so..." she said.

"So... what?" Chris asked.

Hannah herself wore a smile, but a very different smile in comparison to the others. Hers actually felt warm and genuine, with a healthy amount of shy to it too. But that's just how she was, a little shy yet eager to want to break out of her shell. Even back in those days Ashley couldn't help but feel that she reminded her a little of herself in a way. Someone who wanted to be more expressive with people and not just lay buried in hobbies forever. It helped her be different from the person she was before. It helped her be...

"She's so... excited," Ashley said, "And alive."

'I got your note,' Hannah was saying after she placed her candle down on the nearby chair near the door.

'Glad you could make it,' Mike could be heard saying. The two couldn't see Mike's exact face from the angle of the camera, but whatever his face read must have been pleasing in Hannah's eyes. She bowed her head slightly and started fidgeting with her hands in front of her.

"She had no idea..." Chris said.

'Maybe we should start with a little, you know, making out, and see where it goes from there?'

Mike by now could be heard speaking that absolutely cringe-inducing opening line of his. But of course, if that line weren't bad enough, what made it even worse was what immediately followed: Hannah slowly but eager beginning to unbutton to buttons to her black shirt.

"Oh jeez..." Ashley said, rubbing the empty palm of her hand over her forehead. By this point in the film was silence, with only the sounds of the rotating projector film rolls providing the sounds to fill the whole room. In this moment, Ashley wanted to hope and pray that the film just... just stopped. That the film just abruptly halted its play right here and now. That was a reasonable thing to hope for, right? To hope that something that was serving as a literal reminder of a source of shame for nearly an entire year would just stop?

Ashley opened her eyes again to look back up at the tiled wall. Disappointment hit her like a trainwreck. The video was STILL playing! Worse still, Ashley was getting a healthy look of Hannah in the film suddenly discovering that she and Mike were not exactly alone in that room. Her arms were crossed over her chest as she and the others were emerging from their hiding places, hysterical smiles all around.

"Whoa..." Chris said, "I forgot you were such a... 'willful' participant..."

Ashley could feel her pursed lips quivering. This feeling was made even worse with every camera shot catching a glimpse of her past self on screen. Each smile made back then fueled the guilt in her today. It stung even harder since the more Ashley wanted to protest to Chris and claim it wasn't true, that would've been the biggest lie of them all. If there was any doubt at all, they need only look up at the video playing right before their very eyes, and know the truth.

"This is horrible..." she said, "I couldn't feel worse...!"

"Yeah..." Chris said, "And yet, looked like you were enjoying yourself-"

"That's the worst part, isn't it?!" Ashley snapped, desperate for Chris to stop rubbing salt in the metaphorical would. His head flinched slightly at her barb, and only then was Ash aware of how harsh that sounded. She shook her head a little before continuing, "We were just playing a joke; it was supposed to be FUNNY! We never meant for her and Beth to... to get them killed!" She stared at him with pleading eyes as she ranted at him. To her credit, or maybe her discredit, Chris did not return her look with any of his own. He simply continued to stare at the wall, watching the images play of the horrible event unfold right before them.

"Yeah..." was the only reply to exit his mouth. Ashley herself turned back to the wall as well.

"I never want to see this video ever again..." she with a resigned sigh.

By now the video had reached the point where Hannah was directly at the center of the screen. The shock, anguish, and sheer betrayal displayed upon her face was unmistakable. The worst part was that the footage seemed to be deliberately slowed to a crawl, almost desperate to drag this image out for as long as possible. Hannah's widened eyes stared outward, to the point where it was almost as if she in the video were staring... at Chris and Ash themselves!

Ashley found herself almost entranced by the look being leveled at her by the... the visual reminder of what happened years ago! Hannah of the past seemed to be staring at her. Accusing her. Judging her.

Condemning her.

'Mike-?!'

'AAAAAAAAAAA!'

In a flash, Hannah's transformed into a screaming visage of... of someone else's face! The footage of the projector then proceeded to skip a couple of images before cutting completely to white. The scare was over just as quickly as it had appeared, but its effect lingered upon Ashley even harder on top of what she was already feeling. She was being tormented; that's what this whole thing had to be!

"Oh, Chris Chris Chris CHRIS!" she shook her hands in front of her before spinning back to face him, "What is going ON?!"

"Ash- Ash? Just, slow down, okay-?" Chris tried to cut in, but Ash's mind was already a whirlwind of emotional chaos. The amount of crazy shit happening in one night was getting to much for her to bear!

"I can't handle this!" she cried, "Ghost, and these videos, and everything just flying around-!"

"Just- calm down! Listen to me for a second!" Chris cut in more forcefully this time.

"W-what? Calm down?!" Ashley protested, "Why should I calm down, Chris?! I am freaking out right now-!"

"This has gotta be someone MESSING WITH US!" Chris cut in yet again, even more forcefully than before.

"What?!"

"Think about it," he indicated to the projector, "Ghosts don't hook up video cameras! They don't play games!" Ashley regarded the projector out of the corner of her eye, as well as the strangely familiar 'ghost face' that appeared there at the end. Specifically how it was so similar to that ghost that appeared almost up in her face at that basement door back at the basement. But then, how could all this have 'not' have been the work of the ghost?

"Then who could've set this all up?" she asked with as much control over her voice as she could muster, "Seriously: I want to know!"

"I don't know- maybe the same person who tied you up? And killed Josh?"

Ashley desperately wanted to protest Chris, to reiterate that her claim was true. She wanted to believe that these circumstances could be rationalized away by some 'uncontrollable being'. But the more she sought to prove her case against his, the heavier her head grew with doubt. As much as she didn't want to admit it, he did have a point. A very strong, valid point. There was still the psycho who very much did tie her up and kill Josh; his blood still coating her left side serving as a permanent reminder.

"Ugh... right..." she relented.

"The same person who might have Sam," Chris continued, "Right now."

"Okay, okay...!" Ash held a hand up, "Maybe you're right."

"And I wish I wasn't," Chris said, "So that means we gotta do what we can do, right now, to find her. You with me-?"

"Chris! I-" Ashley tried to snap but caught herself midsentence, "I get it, I do. Let's... let's just get out of here, please...?" Chris spared one more look at her before seemingly relenting. With a quick wave of his hand he bid her to follow him as he proceeded to walk out of the door. Ashley followed closely behind him while this time not wanting to spare another glance at whatever images may be projecting on the tiled wall behind her.

"Over here," Chris pointed to their left, "This has gotta be the way..."

To their immediate left and through a large doorway lay another hallway. As the two teens carefully stepped across the threshold the smell rotted flesh diminished considerably, which Ashley was all the more relieved at the very least. However instead she was left with the rather musty smell of dust filling the air of this narrow hallway. Even a couple of tiles on the right side wall had broken off in a large patch and revealed the rotted sheet rock underneath them. While directly in front of them thankfully the hallway didn't stretch on for very long. A small light could even be seen casting shadows against a couple of metallic shelves stacked up against the wall in front of them.

The two then rounded the corner again to behold what lay in front of them. Ashley could see that this source of light that was casting the shadows was in fact coming from an industrial light that was propped up and facing them. In addition a ray of natural moonlight was shining down on the floor a little further in from another hole in the ceiling above. Her unease wasn't going away anytime soon, but at least she wasn't having to suffer with darkness that much at the moment.

"Oh crap..." Chris said as he dragged the light of his flashlight across the tiled floor in front of them, "Look at that." Ashley instinctively brought her own flashlight beam down at the same spot where his was to view what he looked at. There, staining the white of the tile was a red liquid, staining all the way forward towards a rather thick industrial door right in front of them.

"Is that blood...!?" she glanced at Chris nervously.

"Might even be Sam's..." he quickly replied. The insinuation sent a quick chill of fear through her body that vanished just as quickly. That couldn't have been Sam's blood, there's just no way!

Chris stepped closer to the door itself. He took special care to avoid stepping fully on the blood on the ground while his flashlight beam kept it illuminated. He then turned his head up towards the door itself, noting the stains creeping up upon the bottom of the door's edge.

"Alright, let me see if I can get this..."

Somehow managing with a flashlight being held in one of his hands, Chris reached forward and pulled on the door's handle. The door rather slowly began to open before his pull, a loud creaking of rusted hinges practically filling the air.

"RRGH-!" he physically strained. The more his head turned to the side as he pulled, the more Ashley could see just what effort he was putting into forcing the door open, "I got it, but- Oh damn, this thing is heavy!"

"Be careful!" Ashley urged him. Chris quickly glanced up at her once before focusing back on pushing.

"You gotta come through, Ash! I-I can't hold it...!" Chris by now had forced the door open to a size that she herself could easily fit through. The creaking of door hinges filled the entire room completely by this point.

Ash quickly looked down to watch her step and avoid deliberately stepping upon the blood on the floor. As she did so however, her head glanced up to her right, where her eye picked up a trace of movement. She halted all movements entirely as she focused in on what exactly she had seen, or thought she had seen.

Through the doorway to their right, a nearby wall with rotted boards covered up a massive hole in the tiled wall on its far side. Through the cracks in these boards, a silouhetted image of a figure could barely be seen through the darkness. The sole outline of a person's head with little else, but Ashley nonetheless widened her eyes in surprise. A thought crossed her mind instantly; could that actually have been Sam there?

"Oh-!" Ashley said before catching herself and lowering her volume, "Chris!"

"W-What?!" Chris grunted.

"I thought I just saw Sam, over there!" she hastily pointed out with her open hand.

"What?! Ash, are you sure?!" It was at this time that the figure had moved behind one of the thicker pieces of wood until its image had disappeared completely. If they didn't move quick enough the person could be gone altogether!

"W- I don't know, but come on!" she urged, "I think we should check that out, shouldn't we?!"

"Drgh-! Well I'm pretty sure whoever's bleeding came through here, okay!?" Chris spoke in a rush, "So we really gotta get moving! Like NOW!" The urgency in his voice was just as strong if not stronger in comparison to her own. And yet, Ashley found her gaze lingering over towards the sighting of where the figure was seen.

"Hold on, Chris," she said, holding a hand up towards him while making her way through the double doors to the side, "I just gotta make sure..."

"Ash! Come b-!"

In an instant the sound of doors slamming could be heard behind Ash. She nearly jumped in place from how close it could be felt from behind, and for a moment she felt like Chris had shut the door behind her. As she spun around to investigate however, her eyes widened to find that it was not the door Chris was holding open, but the very double doors that she had just walked through that had slammed shut! More doors closing and forcing her to go who knows where!

"Chris?!"

Ash cried out as she rushed up to the doors. She pounded a single fist on one of the doors only to find that they did not give a single inch. Even when she tried to focus her hearing as best she could she couldn't hear anything on the other side. Chris couldn't be heard at all, and all because she had to break away from him just to satisfy her curiosity! How could she be so stupid?!

As she felt her eyes threaten to sting with tears, she instinctively spun around to face the room she initially entered towards. She was afforded a much clearer view of the rotted wooden wall before her. In spite of herself, there was still the option to move forward into this room if she couldn't go back. She couldn't get back to Chris, but she could at least find out if that figure was in fact Sam...

Ashley deftly made her way close to the wall, deliberately taking soft steps to make as little noise as she could. She placed both hands up against the wall and peered through one of the cracks in the wood. She was afforded a relatively unhindered view of the space on the other end; what appeared to be a small office room with a couple of shelves and a lit desk positioned up against a wall. Almost immediately however, Ashley could see the humanoid figure she had definitely caught sight of, their back turned to her. Unfortunately, this person was most definitely not Sam at all.

What she could see was a person, a man most likely. This man was wearing rather thick denim overalls, a long sleeved shirt that concealed the skin of his arms, and thick brown gloves. As for his head... Ashley's blood ran colder than it ever had before. Either he was wearing some sort of mask, or this was his actual face, but what she could see was something out of a nightmare! He was leaning forward over the desk working with something but Ashley could see more than she wanted to see of him. She could see pale white of the head, strands of unkept black hair running down the back, and teeth! This guy must have had a serious overbite or something for his teeth to be sticking out in that way!

The man's head suddenly lurched up and slowly turned to his side. Ashley's eyes widened even further and she brought her free hand over her mouth to supress a sudden gasp she felt rising in her throat. She quickly bent her legs to sink her entire body down as close as she could to the floor beneath her. It was a quick and rapid action, and one that she wasn't even sure she was fast enough to pull off. Had this guy seen or heard her...?!

One thing was for certain, she could hear something herself. It was definitely mechanical, but for some reason Ash thought she picked up the sounds of... breathing? Aside from her own desperately shallow breaths, she thought she picked up the sounds of someone else's breathing as well as her own. Almost rhythmically; an inhale, soon followed by an exhale. It was almost hypnotizing for her ears, keeping her in a perpetually 'on edge' state.

Just then, footsteps could be heard. Loud, heavy, nearly thundering footsteps that seemed to echo throughout the confining space. Each one grew louder than the last, and each one felt like they were hammering on Ash's very eardrums from how loud she was hearing them. Worse still, the mechanical breathing itself was growing louder with each breath taken as well! He had to have caught sight of her! It was all over, wasn't it?!

The footsteps stopped, but the breathing could not have been any louder. He had to been directly on the other side of this wall! Ashley hugged her legs to her chest as tightly as she could. Her eyes stung from the tears that were threatening to fall. She should never have come this way! Why did she have to chase after some noise thinking that it could actually have been-

As she shifted a little in place, Ashley felt something in her back pocket. Her mind instantly remembered; the scissors! She still had them! It was a long shot, but, there was a chance... she could have them on hand!

Very slowly, almost painfully slowly, she reached her hand behind to her back pocket. Her fingers brushed over the metallic tips of the scissors' round handles. During this entire process, she wanted desperately to turn her head up to the breach in the wall. She wanted to at least some verification if the guy was actually still there. Her damn curiosity was literally going to be the death of her this time for sure! She mentally shook her head and refocused on her more important task of pulling forth the scissors from her pocket.

Finally, after a mere few seconds that somehow felt like much longer, the scissors slid out of her pocket and into her fingers. Holding them with the point facing down, she redirected both her hand and her attention back towards the wall breach directly above her.

The breathing could still be heard through the hole. While Ashley couldn't exactly see the Psycho's actual body or face from her angle, the silhouette of shadows against the light from within the room was plenty indicator that he was still there. It was bound to happen any time now, wasn't it? He'd quickly find her, ducking pitifully down below towards the ground and grab her! The hypothetical scenario played out in Ashley's mind nearly over and over, each time making her heart run even faster and harder! If this kept up, the Psycho was bound to find her from her own heart giving away her postion!

Another mechanical exhale could be heard from above her. This was followed by an inhale that... Wait, it didn't sound as strong as before?

The thunderous footsteps returned again, echoing through the room but growing dimmer with each step. In the process they seemed to take the mechanical breathing along with them. Ashley could scarcely believe it; did he... did he really not see her? Had she hidden well enough that she managed to elude him?

Another rather distant footstep could be heard, but this time without any mechanical breathing to accompany it. Ashley could feel it again; that urge to want to poke her head up. To want to see if he was gone. To want to know that she was safe...

She harshly shook her head and scrambled to the side away from the wall. With the new distance between her and it, Ashley could at the very least see both the wall and the breach she had just been peaking through, as well as where she was certain the Psycho had been looking through as well. Nothing could be seen there now though, but Ashley was not willing to tempt anything by affirming this. Nothing was there, and that's all she needed to know. The only thing that mattered to her right now is getting the hell out of here!

She allowed herself to scramble a little bit harder backwards, towards... wherever she was crawling towards. For the moment there was satisfaction in knowing she was putting as much distance between herself and there as humanly possible. In the process she was vaguely aware of a sharp wall corner appearing on her left side. She shifted her body around and quickly pulled herself back up to her feet. Looking forwards she could see where she stood within was another small hallway with a single wooden door laying at the end of it. Her way out clear, but Ashley felt a moment's hesistation. What if he was laying on the other side of this door?

She shook her head yet again; that couldn't be, especially if he had been just over there. There's no way he could get over on the other side of this door that quickly. This was something Ashley was just going to have to take a chance in.

Both her hands gripping both the flashlight and the scissors tightly, Ashley dashed forward as quickly yet deftly as she could. Beside her on the right side was the rotting wall, with more exposed support boards than she would care to count. Each board cast a rather barred shadow upon her due to the light shining in from the lit room on the other side. The feeling of prison ran through Ashley's being, which vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.

With the fingers of one hand she took hold of the metallic doorknob and gave an experimental twist. Relief filled her being as the knob twisted with no resistance and allowed her to completely open the door outwards. Unfortunately, this also came with the door's hinges creaking loudly. A little too loudly actually. In fact Ashley felt her fear spiking from how loud the creaking was sounding. What if the Psycho heard this?! He was just around the corner after all!

She spun her body around to focus on the room behind her as she made her way backwards, step by step. Her eyes remained glued to the corner she had passed around and was careful to take the tinest, practically babiest steps she could possibly manage. Each step backwards combined with no one's image or even shadow appearing around that corner filled her with both relief, but also a burst of adrenaline.

Having stepped all the way across the door's threshold with thankfully no one to be seen even now, Ashley took hold of the door again and pulled it shut. Hinges squeaked with rust and who knows what else as it came to a close completely.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the door was completely shut. Nothing more of the hallway and what lie within could be seen at all. It was then that Ashley released the breath that she only just realized she was holding. Short, panicked breaths escaped from her mouth at nearly a breath a second. She placed a single hand to her chest to feel her heart was still running as hard and fast as ever. How was she still alive with how fast her heart and breath had been running in one night anyway?!

"Shit... shit-shit-shit-shit-shit...!" she silently whispered to herself. Her eyes remained glued to the door as she took careful steps backwards away from it. She didn't see anybody on the other side, but was there really any guarantee this door wouldn't suddenly burst open to reveal him standing there? Better to get as far away from this door as-

Ashley felt her back bump into something behind her; something that felt very much like a person!

"AAAA-!" she yelped. This was it; he'd definitely found her! He was gonna grab her and do-

She quickly spun around to find a light shining up towards her face, making her eyes instinctively squint. In spite of her squinted eyes, what she could see before her wasn't the Psycho, but instead was Chris!

"Chris?!" she brought her exclaimation down to barely a whisper. Her hand shot back up to her chest to feel her heart threatening to burst out of her chest yet again!

"Hey hey hey! Relax...!" Chris held a hand up. The flashlight was focused away from him, yet she could see enough of him that his face was narrowed with concern.

"You scared me half to death...!" she whispered in between the breaths she took.

"W- I wasn't trying to scare you-" Chris said.

"And sorry to disappoint you..." Ashley found herself adding.

"Ash...! I'm sorry, alright?" Chris cut in, "Just, take it easy!"

"Shhh!" Ashley quickly shushed him, while also glancing back towards the door she had come through, "We've got bigger problems right now!"

"What do you mean?"

"The Psycho, Chris!" Ashley urged. Her mind began to flash with the not-too-distant memory of the maniac in question. His pale head, his greasy looking strands of black hair, those menacing teeth! All of this combined into a single figure that Ashley was convinced had to be the devil himself! She indicated with a waving hand back towards the door behind her, "I just saw him!"

"What? Where?! Where'd he go?!" Ashley could see clearly Chris' facial expressions twisting in the span of a few seconds, ranging from surprised and even angered.

"I-I don't know!" she held her own hand up to ease him down this time, "But we've got to be quiet! He's gotta be... still like really close, okay?!"

"Awesome..." Chris said with a sigh and a shrug of his shoulders. Ashley quickly returned the scissors from her hand back into her pocket, "And on top of that we still gotta find Sam..."

He turned his head all around to investigate the space the two of them stood in. Unlike before, there was not a shred of light besides their own flashlights to illuminate this space. What could be seen broken and rotted boards laying up against the stone walls, a stone floor with various debris and broken stones littering all around, and even a couple of black wires hanging from the ceiling above them. With how much of the room she could see, Ashley could only feel her fear and anxiety spiking from just how... small this place was.

"I don't suppose you went through those doors already...?"

Ashley followed Chris' as well as his flashlight beam towards a nearby wall. She could see that he was looking at a set of double doors with two large, circular glass windows upon them.

"No...?" she said as she looked back up at him. She could see his lips pursing at her response before looking back at the doors. He slowly made his way towards them, with Ashley quickly following after him. He took hold of one of the knobs while she herself took hold of the other one, both of them twisting at the same time.

The two teens opened their doors to reveal darkness yet again. Their flashlights darted around at everything they could see, and dispelling what darkness they could. One of the first things to be revealed to them was a number of metallic shelves. Every one of them were completely missing any sort of items stacked on top of them, while most of them were leaning in various angles from disrepair.

Then, both Ash and Chris' flashlights came to rest upon one particular piece of furniture. A chair; a rotating office chair by the looks of it. But something very striking about it.

Someone was sitting in this chair.

"Oh, Chris..." Ashley breathed. Her flashlight could only see this humanoid as a fuzzy silohuette, but one thing did manage to stand out to her. An arm could be seen draped and hanging down the back of the chair, with a large sleeve covering the skin itself. As the light shone upon the arm more, Ashley's eyes widened as she realized something: that was a jacket! Sam's jacket! "Oh no...!"

"Who is that...?" Chris said behind her.

"Sam...?" Ashley gently called out. The figure did not respond, or make any sort of sound at all. It remained completely still and motionless, even as she and Chris approached it closer.

Soon Ashley and Chris were directly behind the figure in the chair. From being this much closer, Ashley could absolutely see that these were indeed Sam's clothes. Except for... that didn't exactly look like the same hat she wore when she came here. She was wearing a strange Russian hat, not a weird straw-hat with a brim, wasn't she?

And why was she even here now, sitting in a chair and acting like she didn't hear the two of them? Was she even awake?

Ashley kept her flashlight trained on the person's back as she reached her other hand forward. She took hold of the chair's armrest and gently pulled towards her.

The entire body rotated in place along with the chair's spinning motion. Ashley paid special attention to the head, almost dreading to found out in what state she would see Sam's face in. The entire front of Sam's clothes finally could be seen before Chris and Ash now, while the figure's head slumped to the side upon coming to a stop.

"Sam-!" Ashley nearly exclaimed. The head nearly made her head lurch at the mere sight of. In place of a face, a strange, burlap sack could be seen covering the entire head with a single small piece of rope tying it off at the bottom at the neck. If that weren't enough though, a large hole was cut into the back to allow a mouth and even teeth to be exposed, and a straw, brimmed hat to literally top it all off.

Strangely, Ashley quickly found her shock and fear being replaced by... confusion. Was this really Sam? And if it was, why would whoever tied her up like this go to the effort of... dressing her up like this? Like a... a scarecrow?

"Huh? I... I don't get it," she said with a tilted head.

"Shit, let me see..." Chris reached forward towards the figure's head and forced a thumb in between the hole and next to the mouth. He pulled on the burlap material a little, just enough to expose the flesh underneath. From Chris' invasive procedure, Ashley was afforded a clearer view of this... 'thing's' teeth. She'd remembered seeing Sam's teeth before, and they were no where near as mis-shapen and rotten as these were!

"This isn't Sam," Chris said, pulling his hand back to him, "It's a dummy."

"What?" Ash shot her head around to Chris in surprise, "Are you serious?!"

"Why is it dressed up like Sam?" he asked.

"I don't know..." Ashley breathed.

"Why would someone dress up a dummy like Sam?" he continued. Ashley's brow furrowed in frustration at each question posed that she didn't know the answer to.

"Chris, I don't know and I'm kinda freaking out here!" she urged. She turned back to the dummy in the chair while the beating in her heart began to return in force. She could feel her breath quickening as well!"

"But where the hell is Sam?!"

"Oh my god...!" she placed both her hands to her head. It was only now that she became aware of the fine sheen of sweat on the exposed skin of her forehead, "This is crazy, this is crazy-!"

"URGH-!"

Suddenly the sounds of quick, jostling movement filled the air. As Ashley spun around to face Chris, she felt something knock directly into the flashlight she held in her hand, effectively causing her to drop it completely to the ground. Sparce light beams danced all around her as she struggled to figure out what was happening just now

"Chris-?!" she called out. The sounds of struggle met her ears; what was happening to Chris? Was something happening to him? Was someone else here with them?! As suffocatingly dark as it was in this space, she could barely make out the faint outline of a figure moving against the nearby lightbeam of the flashlights.

She quickly dropped down to the floor where she'd seen her flashlight clatter to. The sounds of scuffling could still be heard behind her, though she had no clue what they could be or even what was happening at all. Thankfully the flashlight hadn't been turned off in the process, which allowed her to easily spot it and grab it in her hand. Her fingers clamped tightly around the small flashlight and she scrambled to pull herself to her feet. In the process, she was vaguely aware that the previous sounds of scuffling couldn't be heard, at least not as strongly as before.

Ashley regained her feet, her heart and breath racing like a horse race at the moment. She pulled her flashlight up to shine directly forward.

She immediately regretted doing so.

With the illumination of the flashlight, Ashley was just in time to catch the sight of Chris being set down on the floor, unmoving. Her fear of someone else present was confirmed, while her even worse fear being confirmed of 'who' exactly it was that was in this very room with them, right now!

"AAAH!" Ashley yelped. Her flashlight shined dead center upon the face of the Psycho, in all its 'psychotic' glory. The pale of the entire head was pronounced by an overly large forehead, with hair reaching all the way towards the very back of the head! The eyes almost appeared to be the sockets themselves as smashed porcelin, with black holes and dark red balls that served the sinister purpose of 'eyes' within them! Worse still, the entire mouth area seemed to have the entire lips ripped away to further expose the entire teeth and gums. This guy didn't even have a nose either! If anything he looked like a living doll; a scary, porcelin doll straight out of some horror movie!

The Psycho's face and gaze was leveled straight at Ashley, with familiar mechanical breathing filling the air. His head tilted to the side in a rather creepy way.

"N-No, get back!" Ashley cried out. Her free hand once again darted back behind her to pull forth the scissors, "Stay the hell away from me!"

The Psycho did not heed Ashley's protest at all. In fact, he raised both his arms up to lunge straight for her. A deep, robotic exhale of breath could be heard, each one of his gloved fingers stretched out to take her...

Primal instinct for survival overtook Ashley's senses. She twisted her body to the right to cock her right arm back, then shot her arm forward with all her strength. Her arm managed to sail directly over his own arm to allow the sharp point of the scissors to dig into the Psycho's shoulder!

"AAAAAHHHH!" the Psycho most definitely cried out with his demonic, mechanical voice. His head lowered and Ashley watched as his body seemed to recoil from the sudden attack. He spun to his side, right arm shooting up to where he was stabbed.

Ashley continued to watch on in curious, almost satisfactory wonder. Did she do it? Did she just make this guy hurt to an insane degree? Was he going to lay down in pain now? From the grunting sounds of pain he was making, that almost seemed likely. In fact, Ashley found herself listening in to the exact noises coming from this Psycho.

"... -o..."

The Psycho's back was still turned to her, but Ashley could hear something being uttered by him.

"No... no-no-no," the man slowly turned his head back up to look straight at her. What was going on? Was he submitting? Was he giving up? What was going?!

"LIVE AND LEARN!"

"What-?!"

Ashley's world became a rush of movement as the Psycho suddenly rushed forward. She watched just in time to see the Psycho's fist flying straight at her face before everything went dark around her. All her other senses were quick to follow suit as she quickly lost consciousness.

"Live... and learn..."

---

"Ugh... my fucking head..."

Chris groaned from the throbbing of his head as his senses slowly came back to him. What had just happened? The last thing he remembered was standing in a room with Ashley and finding... What was that? A dummy? A scarecrow-looking dummy wearing Sam's clothes while tied to a chair?

After that... Chris remembered something being forced over his mouth, smelling something rather foul and then... Where was he now?

His vision gradually became less and less blurred and he began to see things a little clearer. What light was provided for him showed him that he was sitting down, in front of a table. The chair he was sitting in felt solid, highly resistant to any sort of motions his body forced upon it. Almost as if it was straight up bolted to the floor.

As for his own body, Chris raised his right hand to feel his head when he was aware that his left hand wasn't following his commands. His eyes darted down to find that his other hand was restrained at the wrist by some sort of shackle, built into the chair itself! Someone had put him here? Restrained him to a wooden chair by himself- No wait, he wasn't alone!

Directly in front of him, on the other end of the wooden table, Ashley sat in a wooden chair of her own. Her head was lowered and barely making motions of her own. They both were here?! Restrained to chairs?!

"Oh shit... oh crap!" Chris gripped his left wrist with his free hand and jiggled as much as he could, but to no avail. Whoever made this shackle and secured his wrist into it really knew how to make 'em, as his wrist wasn't budging in the slightest.

"Ash?" he called out to wake the other girl up. The girl very slowly began to stir, small groans escaping her mouth, "ASH!"

Ashley raised her head up, the light from above lighting up more of her face to be seen before him. Her brow was furrowed and her eyes were struggling to open. Eventually enough of her face could be seen under the light that Chris could see. Dark shadows appeared over her eyes as she- wait a minute... why was there a larger, rounder shadow around her left eye there? And, was she groaning in pain?

"Aw Jesus..." he said, "Ash? What did he do to you?"

"Chris?" Ash said, "I... I think he hit me...?" Chris felt his lips purse tighter and his teeth grind harder together upon hearing that. Not only what was done to her, but hearing Ash in such a vulnerable, pained voice in addition. His earlier embers of rage were reignited once more.

"Shit; I'm gonna murder this guy's fucking face off!" he exclaimed. He returned his hand to try and force his restrained arm out of the shackles. Yet again, the shackle remained fastened and his arm remained in place, which only fueled his frustration and anger.

"What... what is this...?" Ashley could be heard saying, her voice on the verge of breaking.

"This... the guy who killed Josh!" he said. Even now this bastard had to be around here, close by even! Just like before when he was probably watching the three of them while in the shed!

"Oh my God, no!" Ashley cried out. She was openly crying by now, and every moment Chris could feel as a stab at his very being. All caused by this bastard who thought he could hurt everyone here and-

Chris' eyes darted over to Ashley's left side. There, a few feet behind her, a camera rested upon a tripod. There was no denying it; this guy was setting up all this torture, and recording it?!

"You murdering piece of shit!" he shouted while still trying to force his left arm loose. Seriously, why was only one of his arms free while his other one was restrained?! "You MONSTER!"

"My God- we're gonna die, Chris!" Ashley cried out in between his own angered shouts, "I don't think I'm ready to die...!"

"Nobody is going to die, Ash," he quickly assured her, "I promise-!"

In the middle of his anger-fueled struggles he glimpsed the face of the girl in front of him. One glance at her face was all it took for his anger to begin to dissipate. Ashley's face was twisted and contorted with absolute fear, terror, and sorrow as well. Even from the distance between each other he could see the tear streaks that definitely were running down her cheeks. And unlike himself, both of her hands appeared to be restrained to the chair she sat in. Her lips were quivering and her squinted, tear-filled eyes struggled to stay focused on Chris.

"I wish I could tell you..." she managed to force out in such a small voice. Chris' eyes narrowed at this sudden, seemingly random statement. Before he could inquire what she meant further,

"It's just NOT FAIR!" Ashley exploded before lowering her head and proceeding to bawl even harder. Every single cry from this girl's mouth was like a stab at Chris' soul. He absolutely hated seeing her like this; in any kind of misery, much less in mortal danger like they were right now. She may have both of her hands literally tied, but never before had he himself felt like the more helpless one...

"What?" he tried to ask in between her cries, "Tell me what?"

"... It's too late..." Ashley could be heard while shaking her head. Slowly she raised her head slightly just so her eyes meet his own, "Chris, what's the point-?!"

"Stop it, just... say it, please," Chris urged, forcefully yet gently.

"We're always talking around it..." Ashley managed in between her sobs and sniffles, "And now, I mean... We've wasted everything!"

Whatever anger resided within Chris evaporated completely in that instant. There just was no way... no way should could be referring to... His blood ran cold and he felt his jaw drop ever so slightly upon realization. What Ashley was talking about, while the two of them were chained up to two chairs awaiting God knows what, was something that Chris actually had on his mind for the better part of a year.

His feelings for Ashley Brown.

He remembered the first time he laid eyes upon the girl. Her brown hair, her green eyes, her gentle smile, every part of her practically captivated him. Even her studious nature she demonstrated openly at the time, while managing to sharply contrast from Chris' own more joke-driven attitude, was a nice and welcome change. He liked seeing her whenever he could, in spite of the deep seated feeling that she may or may not have felt the same way towards him. And despite his infatuation with her, as well as some other girls having turned him down in the past before, he had hoped feelings this time around would be reciprocated. So he acted like a good guy, a 'perfect gentleman' as Josh had described it, while secretly hoping for some kind of sign shown by her that she was at least appreciative of this side of him.

It all led to this moment, with faced with actual death, that Chris learned that she did in fact feel the same way!

"Ashley..." he started, "None of it was wasted." The girl's sniffles persisted, but she seemed to halt them in that moment as he spoke.

"... What do you mean?"

"Every second that I spent with you..." Chris continued, while simultaneously recounting in his mind nearly every single moment that he and her shared together. Each one that flashed through his mind filled his heart with joy, as well as deep sadness, "Was the only thing I ever wanted to do with my time!" This time, Chris began to feel slight stinging in his own eyes. Crap, was he crying now? He raised his hand up to rub his eyes. This was really it, wasn't it? Maybe Ash was right? How only when they were both going to die that they'd ever know how the other one felt...!

"What are you saying, Chris?" Ash asked.

"I'm sorry, I..." Chris said. He remembered all those times where he had legitimately made Ash happy, whether amusing her with some joke he'd learned or even sharing a piece of his lunch with her at lunchtime. She always would sport that smile; a smile that she seemed to save for very special occasions. While he had never taken action, he always knew that if he were ever to 'confess', then it would have to be during when she made that smile...

"I should've told you how I felt!" he forced out. He was faintly aware of the single tear that was running down his own cheek by this point. He didn't even try to hide it before her. After all, if they were both being honest and getting feelings vented out and in the open, what really was the harm in having tears involved?

"Chris..." Ashley breathed. Her sniffling and crying seemed to have stopped for now, but the look of sadness was still written plainly on her face.

"Ashley, I swear, when we get out of this-"

The sound of machinery whirring to life effectively silenced Chris. He and Ash quickly turned to glance directly above them to find the source. The first thing Chris saw was sawblades; two very large, overly threatening, very sharp-pointed sawblades positioned directly above him and Ash. Two sawblades that along with the sound of the machinery was also spinning these sawblades! They were positioned with their teeth facing directly downward, as if they could cut straight down onto the two of them and saw them in half! Even worse still, he could see that these spinning sawblades were beginning to slowly descend down from the ceiling towards them right now!

"Oh, GOD!" he screamed.

"AAAAHHHHH!" Ashley absolutely shrieked as well. She began to thrash and squirm in her bindings as hard as she possibly could, "NOOO! Help, Chris!"

"Ashley- I'll get us out of this!" Chris cried out as he frantically tried to force his bound arm free as well, "I won't let us die!" None of their efforts were successful still, as the two of them remained bound to these damned chairs! They couldn't even wobble them away from their position from being welded into the floor!

The only sounds filling the air in this moment came from two places. One was the whirring of the sawblades from the ceiling, and one was the sound of Ashley's screams from ground level. Chris squinted his eyes shut and ground his teeth harder. This was just like with the shed all over again, where someone was about to be cut to bits by massive sawblades! The only thing that could make this scenario even worse was-

"Hello there, my special little subjects."

The voice of the devil himself. Chris and Ash's heads perked up upon hearing the third voice fill the air, then resigned themselves to terror upon realizing who it was. It was the Psycho's voice, speaking to them with that sickening, over-familiar way of addressing them. This really was some kind of sick game to him, and he was rubbing it in their faces even now!

"Aw, shit..." Chris shot his head around side to side. This guy must be watching them somehow, but for the life of him he couldn't see anything in this dark, yet wholely empty room that could indicate some connection to how! The only things of note in this room were the rotating sawblades above them, and the camera positioned on the tripod behind Ashley. However that camera was meant to simply record footage, not act as some two-way connection between one point and another. There just simply weren't any speakers to be found this time, unlike what he'd seen in the shed earlier.

"I'm so scared, Chris...!" Ashley could be heard whimpering in front of him.

"No; don't be scared-"

"Oh, you should be, Ash, because here's the twist."

Chris' eyes widened in horror, fear, and renewed anger upon hearing not only the Psycho's words again, but what exactly he was saying. He replied exactly to something that Ashley had said, which could only mean that he WAS directly watching them, right now! It made him feel all the more frustrated, as well as helpless, at the fact that he could do practically nothing in the face of this life or death situation they found themselves in now!

But, a 'twist'? What the hell was this guy talking about...?

"Chris has made one fatal choice already today," the Psycho continued, which only served as a refresher of seeing Josh's face flash before his mind once more, "And now, he must make another. Chris, you can take that gun in front of you-"

The instant Chris heard those words, his eyes darted down to the table before him. True to the Psycho's claim, there was in fact a gun on the table! A single by the looks of it! He reached forward and snatched it up with his free right hand, conveniently right as he heard the Psycho's next words-

"And shoot Ashley."

And just like that, his feelings of relief after being armed were instantly dashed. A single labored gasp escaped his lips. Not only would he not be given the chance to unload everything in this gun into this madman's head, but in playing in to his demands...

He'd have to shoot Ashley?!

His eyes darted back and forth between the crying girl sitting across the table from him, and the gun that he held in his hand. Ashley was muttering and crying small words of denial to herself over and over again as she too listened on. His own mind was of fierce denial as well; there was no way in hell he would ever even consider shooting Ashley!

"Or, you can shoot yourself."

There really was no low this guy wouldn't stoop to! Either shoot Ashley, or shoot himself?! What the hell kind of choice was this?! The gun began to tremble along with Chris' own trembling hand as he held. He could feel some sweat building up all along the top and bottom of his hands, as well as nearly pouring off of his forehead as well.

He hesitantly glanced straight up at the ceiling. His fears were only reaffirmed upon seeing the spinning sawblades, still not only spinning but slowly bearing down towards their heads even now! This was one of the shittiest deals Chris had ever seen; either he basically be forced to 'choose' who exactly dies, by his own hand, or these damn sawblades would make sure the two of them would be killed anyway! This Psycho clearly had this all planned out, down to every angle Chris himself could see!

"Whoever is left can live!" the Psycho added, and then, as if to add further salt in the metaphorical wound, "The choice is yours."

No. Fuck this choice, and fuck this Psycho straight to HELL!

Chris raised the gun straight into the air and pointed it straight at the machinery that joined the two sawblades. It had to run on intricate wiring and spinning belts to operate, it just had to! So in theory, a few well-placed bullets right into them should shut that whole thing down or at least cause it to malfunction!

He hastily squeezed the trigger once, then twice, each time two loud gunshots filling the air and his ears. He felt the gun jerk hard in his hand with each discharge, and in the midst of his desperation was he vaguely aware of how much different an actual gun felt compared to that one he had shot down at the shooting range earlier.

He couldn't exactly hear the impacts of bullets against the machinery, but Chris was still confident that he had hit his intended target dead on. That had to be something this Psycho wouldn't have accounted for, right?! He was probably watching them even now, and then Chris decided to do something completely out of his psychotic plan! He listened desperately for the sounds of shock or even surprise from the Psycho at this sudden action. Sure enough, he did hear something from the Psycho. However, what he was hearing was nothing that resembled roars of anger...

The Psycho was laughing.

"Don't be so silly, Chris."

The voice spoke in an almost chastising way. The same way a parent might scold their child for doing something rather stupid. And right now, that was exactly how Chris was feeling too; as helpless as a child, powerless to stop the machinations of a scheme that would spell certain death for someone in this room.

He bowed his head in complete shame. That was his one thing he could think of to get Ash and himself out of this, and it didn't work! It was just like before in the shed, where Chris was essentially forced to choose between one of his friends and not any sort of deviation! Chris could feel despair overtaking his entire being. He was faintly aware of his glasses getting fogged up; he must've been crying harder than he realized. In fact, he knew exactly what Ashley was feeling right now. One or even both of them, were going to die; the Psycho here was taking every possible step to make sure of that!

He slowly raised his head back up to look back at Ashley's face. Even through the thin layer of condesation lining the insides of his lenses, he was still barely able to make out the familiar image of her face. Ashley's face, her... beautiful face. Dammit! Who was he kidding anymore?! He loved this girl, and now they might not even get a chance to make anything of this!

"I... I..." Chris stammered. He was almost ashamed to meet Ashley's own eyes while armed with this choice. She continued to watch him with a face absolutely livid with despair. As open with her terror and fear as he likely was himself. How could she still love him after being told that he would be forced to kill her?!

"I can't!" he shouted before shoving the gun barrel up against his temple. He couldn't shoot her, but he could shoot himself. He could do it- it would be quick and painless!

"Oh my God, no! No NO, CHRIS!" Ashley suddenly shouted uncontrollably. Chris wanted to spare a glance at her, but he just couldn't find it in himself to do so. He didn't want to see the look on her face as he committed the deed. However, his refusal to look at her did nothing to drown out the cries she was making.

"Chris! Chris, CHRIS! PLEASE! DON'T!"

He clenched his eyes shut and forced himself to take his mind off of Ashley's face. His last image he saw of her was her crying face, so what he wanted on his mind was that of her smiling face. He wanted that to be his last memory before the end.

Memories of the previous fun times came to mind, like when he told her a funny joke. Next thing he was supposed to remember was that amused smile she made at him, but...

For some reason, the smile wasn't coming. Even in his mind, Ashley wasn't smiling. It wasn't that she hadn't appreciated him back then, but... It was as if the memory recording of back then was stuck on pause. All he was left with was everything 'except' for her smile! Why couldn't he remember?! What was stopping him!?

The frustration caused him to clench his eyes even tighter and dig the barrel of the gun even harder against his head. The barrel in particular was especially hot from having previously fired off the two rounds. But Chris didn't care about heat; this might as well have been additional punishment for him for... for something. Something else this Psycho had to torment him with in this moment!

In his mental turmoil, Chris reminded himself that he had to place his finger on the trigger if he wanted to go through with this. He slid his pointer finger over the trigger of the gun he held pointed at his own head, and...

"DAAARRGGHH!" Chris openly vented, "I can't do it!"

He lowered the gun from his head and slammed the handle on the table while maintaining a tight grip on the weapon. His eyes broke open again to show what lay before him.

Directly in front of him Ashley was absolutely thrashing around in her chair, still constantly screaming and crying out protests. While above the two of them the whirring of the sawblades could be heard even louder because... they had descended so much further down! There was about a foot's worth of space between them and their own heads by now! And from the speed they were descending, it's likely they would reach their targets within... ten or even fifteen seconds now!

In between her thrashes, Chris was afforded unfortunate glimpses of Ashley's face. It almost looked like her teeth were gnashing from how much she was crying out. Even the harsh motions of pulling her head from side to side was causing stray drops of tears to fly all about and onto the table top. She continued to cry out words like 'Chris' and 'No' as well as mixing in actual sobbing noises in so many different variations. Every sound of agony that exited her mouth served only as fuel for Chris' own agony and anguish. There was no denying that what was reducing her to this state was the absolute work of the devil himself. Chris didn't consider himself all that religious, but he was very close to accepting that the actual devil was among them even now, and punishing them in the most horrific way.

He wanted it all to stop. He wanted EVERYTHING to stop!

"PLEASE!" he called out while throwing his head in every direction, as if hoping the Psycho even now was still listening in, "I can't decide! I CAN'T DECIDE!"

His cry was met with silence from the Psycho; as if to serve as further mockery of their situation. The one time he wanted the guy to hear them, and as much as it pained him, to heed what he wanted, the man clearly wasn't hearing anything of it this time.

"CHRIS! PLEASE!" Ashley was screaming as well.

In between his own head swinging, he finally came to a rest back upon Ashley. Against his own judgement, he forced his eyes open as much as he could to focus on her. Or, at least as much as he could through the fogging of his glasses. Her panicked and tear-filled eyes met his own, with lips quivering and threatening to break apart into another outburst of screams yet again. And it was in this moment of calm, even as the spinning sawblades were directly above their heads by a mere few inches, that something snapped within Chris' mind. The end truly was at hand for the two, no matter what would happen. He had failed Josh before, and now he had failed the two of them now...

The gun slipped completely from Chris' grip, clattering back to the table top. The sudden noises seemed to break Ash out of whatever stupour she was under at the moment, only for her eyes to widen even further as they looked directly above Chris' head.

"NOOOOOOO!" she screamed.

"ASHLEYYYYYY!" Chris screamed as well.

All at once, the light was gone, leaving everything to be enveloped in impenetrable cold and darkness...

---

-Holy crap, I seem to keep upping myself in regard to chapter length the further I go, huh? Well anyway, a couple things I wanted to clarify regarding this chapter first.

Firstly, we all know the bit regarding Matt and the ax, and how if he gets to the fire tower he will just drop it down at the base instead of taking it with him? The answer to why he'd do that in game is actually really simple: having come across his first what I like to call 'death opportunity' when presented with attacking the deer or not, from that point on the game could assume that there would be no further need for Matt or his ax at any point in the game. Trust me, you play enough 'choose your own adventure' type games, you recognize stuff like this more and more. The only thing I did however was simply edit it so that he hangs on to it even as he's ascending the fire tower ladders. He'll still lose it later on, as one likely would when inside a collapsing tower, but now at least there's no confusion as to 'why would he just leave it there when he could use it later?!' So I hope that clears that part up.

Another thing to 'creatively' change was the precise movie images that Chris and Ash find on that movie projector in the slaughter house place. Let's be honest: what was playing on that screen in the game was little more than actual footage of the game's cutscenes itself, and while Matt's camera was indeed the one recording everything, the footage it was capturing could no way have looked at all like that. So I made a few 'alterations' to accomodate what it really could've looked like.

And I think that's all I wanted to have cleared up at the moment with this chapter. Do let me know what you all think, won't you? Review, favorite, all that good stuff, and above all- keep on reading! -