Death Is Only The Beginning
A WWE wrestling fanfiction
By: Jay 2K Winger

Disclaimer Stuff: The characters herein are the property of World Wrestling Entertainment (and don't get me started on how much I dislike the fact that they Got The "F" Out), and are not used with the intention of making a profit. This story is written to explore a few little concepts I thought up in regards to the storyline in question, as well as to explore some other aspects of their characters.

Teaser: The Dead Man will not rest in peace after being buried alive by his brother. A fictionalized version of the current Taker/Kane storyline, with a look back at their histories.

~*~*~*~*~*~

PART FOUR: THREE LITTLE DEAD GIRLS

~*~*~*~*~*~

Raw, 27 days until WrestleMania…
~*~*~*~*~*~

The time was drawing nearer. His followers, his old "children of the night" were amassing again. His messages to his brother were bringing them out into the open once more. Some of them had become his fans after his metamorphosis into the American Badass, and were now bringing out their 'old school' side to cheer him on. It wouldn't be long now. He'd already sent a message again at the billionaire's pay-per-view No Way Out, warning them of his impending return.

But at the same time, he was getting more and more worried about whether he still be in control of himself when the time arrived. He had no true anchor. He kept his thoughts on his wife and daughter, but he lacked an anchor like the Urn, and the ashes of his mother. He didn't have something tangible, easy to tether his essence to, like the Urn. He couldn't do that with his daughter. He never understood whatever eldritch law prohibited it, and had never needed to worry about it before.

With the Dark Side's voice growing stronger with each passing moment, however, he did begin to worry. It was very difficult to incarnate in the physical realm without using tremendous power, and the only easily accessible fount of such power in The Void was, alas, the Dark Side. The last thing he wanted was to give himself over to that again. He had enough sins on his soul as it was, and a great of them went right back to the fire at the funeral home.

He'd always been rather quiet and withdrawn at the funeral home, which was rather expected when you're surrounded by death and grief in your youth. His father was never home, and his mother, though loving, was distant. He would never have done anything to hurt her, but as she was so preoccupied with helping Paul Bearer run the parlor, he craved her attention. What a fool he was, setting those old bouquets of flowers on fire. He hadn't expected them to burn so readily, or for the fire to spread so quickly.

The fire had claimed not only the lives of his mother and visiting father, but three little girls who hadn't fled the building in time. Strangely, though he had encountered their spirits during his earlier trips to The Void, they had never held any animosity toward him for their deaths. If anything, they had become almost like his guides to the World Beyond. Currently, they were conspicuously absent, making him wonder if they had finally moved on in the World Beyond, or if they were just keeping their distance, because of the Dark Side's looming presence.

Then, suddenly, they were there before him. Three almost identical young girls, pale of hair and countenance, staring up at him. He nodded grimly to them and bid them welcome.

They told him his time was approaching. He replied that knew this, and was taking steps to make his return.

They told him he must make his peace with the one who betrayed him, lest he be consumed in the fires of his own vengeance. He told them he could not let the betrayal stand, that there must be retribution, or his return served no purpose.

They warned him that the Dark Side would not let him leave The Void without embracing it, that it needed a new avatar in the physical realm to do its bidding. He told them he was not about to let the Dark Side consume him again, that he would let The Void take him before he'd let the Dark Side do so, and that was a promise.

They told him they would hold him to that promise.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Kane slept fitfully in his hotel room. His nights had not been restful since the Rumble. His dreams had lately been of open graves and worms, bugs, and rotting flesh.  He saw his brother setting fire to those flowers at the funeral home, saw the burning wooden beams trapping him within the building. He could feel the heat of those flames, and hear the screaming of his mother...

In his dream, Kane raised his arms to shield himself from falling embers, running toward the door to the basement, hoping that the cooler, damper air would protect him from the inferno. Instead, the heat, combined with the bank, made an oppressive, choking atmosphere. The furnace belched smoke and flame. Kane coughed and hacked, then turned to see three little girls, pale of hair and skin, staring up at him. One of them held a white rubber ball in her hands. He squinted through the haze at them. "You have to get out of here!"

The three little girls all spoke as one, in a sing-song voice, "As I lay me down to sleep..."

Kane blinked, staggering back from them. Suddenly, he was no longer a scared young boy, but his bigger, older self, and the girls had begun to walk in a circle about him as embers and heat dripped through the weakening floorboards above. "No, no, not you!"

"...I pray my soul is mine to keep..." the girls sang, continuing their skipping steps around him. The girl with the ball was bouncing it as she skipped.

"This isn't real! This is just a dream!" Kane shouted, covering his ears to try to block out their voices, but it did no good.

"And never step outside this bed..."

"SHUT UP! I BURIED HIM ALIVE!"

"Never, into all the evil... all the evil..."

Kane turned and ran for the stairs, but they were blocked by flaming debris as the building above began to fall in upon itself. He turned around, the three girls having ceased their skipping and now staring up at him, eyes boring into his mismatched eyes, boring into his soul. The floor above was starting to collapse as well elsewhere in the basement, so the entire scene was backed by fire and heat and smoke. "LEAVE ME ALONE!" he wailed.

"Come back from the dead..." the three little girls intoned, but it was less of a song and more like an incantation, a summoning. The girl with the ball threw it in the air, where it hung overhead, the ceiling seemingly higher than it had been. It began to resemble the moon and shined its light on the nightmarish dreamscape.

Then the dreamscape shifted as the floor directly over Kane started to buckle, so instead of finding himself in the burning funeral parlor basement, he was standing in an open grave, seemingly twice as tall as he himself. He turned about in a panic and tried to climb up out of the hole, but the earth gave him no purchase, crumbling in his grip. He squinted up at the night sky above, and saw the three little girls looking down at him. He screamed, "Let me out of here! This isn't real! It's just a dream!"

Dream, brother? Or prophecy?

Kane jumped in alarm as he saw another shape join the girls at the sides of the grave above, but his was a silhouette, framed by the moon, his features obscured, but the Monster knew who it was. "YOU'RE NOT REAL! I KILLED YOU!"

Dead, but not gone. I have traversed the boundaries of reality before, brother, and I will do so again.

Then the silhouetted figure turned to one side, and returned, dropping shovel after shovel of earth down upon him, until it was a veritable avalanche, covering him, burying him, so that dirt got in his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. He wheezed for air, choking, gagging on the dirt--

And then he woke up, gasping, sweating, his sheets and bedding soaked through. He tore the bedclothes off and lurched into the bathroom, turning on the light and leaning over the sink, breathing heavily and scooping handfuls of cool water up to wash away the sweat. "It was just a dream... he's not coming back." He rested his shaved head against the mirror and closed his eyes, repeating his newfound mantra. "It's all in my head. It's not real."

He splashed one more handful of water on his face, then turned to grab the towel and dry off. "That's all it is," he said, smiling in relief. "Just a dream, just in my head. It's not real." He turned back to the mirror and jumped back in shock, tripping over the edge of the bathtub and hitting the back of his head against the tiled wall.

For on the mirror, written in brown letters (mud?) were the words In 27 days, the dead shall rise... And down at the bottom, in a ruddier color, was the word AGAIN.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Once again, the crew at the arena found the Big Red Freak in a foul mood upon his arrival. They scattered at his approach, and were careful to stay out of his reach. He brooded in his dressing room, black towel hanging on his head as he sat in burning contemplation, his permanent anger boiling dangerously. These otherworldly messages and nightmares were nothing but some elaborate practical joke someone was playing on him. He, of course, did not find it funny, but he would find it humorous in the extreme to find the party or parties responsible and inflict copious amounts of pain upon them.

Rather than open the door and face the wrath of the Monster within the dressing room, some stagehand slipped the paper with the night's matches under the door. He glared at the closed door for a moment, then got up and picked up the paper. Circled for his benefit was his own match that night: Kane v. Chris Jericho. And then, Kane grinned, as now the night promised an outlet for his incessant rage. And now he didn't need some laughable excuse like spilled coffee to inflict pain. He had enough just from Y2J's actions two weeks previous, when he'd interrupted Kane's match with Trish Stratus to play the hero and save the damsel in distress.

And so the match came around. Kane just grinned at him as the bell rang. "Well, well, we meet again, hero," he sneered. He tilted his head to one side, then asked mockingly, "How's the knee?"

Jericho scowled, and charged, going low as the Monster swung at him, dropkicking him in the knee. He grunted and fell to one knee as Jericho then kicked him in the face. "Son of a bitch!" the blond Canadian spat. "Show you how my knee feels!" He grabbed Kane's legs as he fell back on the mat and tried to turn him into the Walls of Jericho. Growling, the Big Red Freak spun his legs to one side, throwing him off, then got up and caught him as he charged again, throwing him high in the air and letting him drop face-down to the mat. Jericho yelled in pain as his injured knee was jammed again. He curled up, clutching the injury and rolling away.

But Kane was a shark, and he smelt blood. He stalked over and pulled him out of his curl, kicking him hard in the chest, then stomping on the knee. He stepped to the outside and dragged the protesting Jericho onto the apron, lifting his injured leg up high, then swinging it down sharply to hyperextend the knee over the edge of the ring. "How's it feel now, hero?" He punched him in the face as he tried to sit up and attack, then pulled Y2J's kneepad down off his knee, exposing it. He dragged him over to the corner of the ring, punched him in the face again, then snapped the knee around the steel post, earning another anguished shout of pain.

He climbed back in the ring and pulled the lamed Jericho up and whipped him into the ropes. Partway there, however, Jericho's knee buckled and he collapsed against the ropes, groaning in agony. Sneering, Kane pulled him out into the middle of the ring, grabbed him by the ankle, then lifted him high in the air before bashing his knee against the mat. The smaller man shouted again and curled up, rolling away as he clutched his leg. Laughing now, Kane pulled him to his feet and set him up for a back suplex. When he swung him up onto his shoulder, however, Jericho rolled through and tried to land behind him. The Monster grinned as he heard Jericho cry out in pain as his knee buckled again, collapsing him on the mat. "Some hero," Kane sneered as he pulled Jericho's injured leg up and started kicking at the wounded knee.

Then he turned and glared at the ref as he started calling for the bell. "That's enough, that's enough!" the referee told him. "He can't continue! You're the winner." He raised Kane's hand in the air, but the Monster growled and hauled the crippled Canadian to his feet and hurled him over the top rope. Y2J gave another shout of pain as his knee was jammed upon landing, but his efforts to crawl away went to waste as Kane followed, picked him up, cradling his knee, then charged and slammed it hard against the unforgiving steel ring post. Glaring, his ground-state anger howling in his mind, Kane turned about and grabbed a microphone from the timekeeper's table, stepping back into the ring.

"Let that," he spat, "be a lesson to you, Jericho, for trying to be a hero." Then he turned about and glared out at the audience, at the world in general. "And let that be a lesson to whoever's behind these 'mind games.' I will do the exact same thing to you!" His voice grew to a terrifying roar as he released his rage. "THE UNDERTAKER IS DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!!" He threw down the mike and snapped his arms down, setting the ring corners ablaze and storming up the ramp. He got halfway up when the lights turned purple and he heard it again.

BONG.

"Don't you ever learn?" Kane just shook his head and continued walking up the ramp as the unsettling video -- all the more unsettling after his recent nightmare -- played on the TitanTron. An added wrinkle to the event this week was flickering lights and the rumbling of thunder in the arena. "He's not real! He's dead! I buried him!"

'Don't you ever learn' is the question, brother.

"YOU'RE NOT REAL!" Kane snapped, approaching the top of the ramp. "This is all just tricks and mind games! It's not real!"

You think so, brother? Then tell me, if everything else can be explained as mere parlor tricks, then explain to me how it can rain indoors.

Kane blinked, stopping at the top of the ramp as he saw the smoke rising from the stage, swirling about his feet, then looked up. Just as the voice had said, it was raining inside. He raised his hands and stared at it in bewilderment, then up at the ceiling, but saw no sprinklers or anything that could explain the meteorological anomaly. "What... the... hell is going on!?" he snapped.

'Hell' is exactly what is going on. A special circle of Hell is set aside for betrayers, brother, and the fires are being stoked for you.

"SHUT UP!" Kane roared, running out of the rainfall and backstage, dripping water in his path. He didn't even spare Eric Bischoff -- sputtering about how he was trying to find the parties behind tonight's event -- a glance as he returned to his locker room to hurriedly dry off and change out of his ring gear. He threw his things into his bags and continued repeating his mantra: "It's all in my head, it's not real, it's all in my head, it's not real." He pulled his shirt on, then turned to grab his winter coat before abruptly staggering back. Sitting on the bench, which had been empty not a minute ago, was a white rubber ball.

It just sat there, daring him to refute its existence, not doing anything more unsettling than reflecting his own twisted, distorted reflection back at him from its shiny surface. Kane ran his hands back over his shaved head, forcing himself to calm down, then kicked the ball off the bench and into the corner, grabbing his coat and then his bags. "It's not real, it's not real," he repeated. "All in my head, all in my head..." He threw his coat and bags into the passenger's seat of his rental car from the driver's side, then started the engine. "This is all just someone's idea of a sick joke."

He turned to secure his stuff, then actually cried out in shock. Sitting on top of his bag was the white rubber ball. Kane shook his head. "It's not real!" He rolled down his window, grabbed the ball and threw it out into the garage before driving out of the arena. He was shaking with nerves and turned on the radio to calm them.

This was a mistake, as instead of getting music, he found himself listening to the same eerie noises and sounds as the week before. Arcane chants and distorted wailing filled the car, and the voices of the three little girls came back:

"One, two, Taker's coming for you..."

Kane switched off the radio hurriedly, and thankfully, it did stop making noise. He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Just in my head..." But now doubt had entered his voice.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They told him they would aid him however they could. He thanked them for it.

They warned him that should he succumb to the Dark Side, then he would forever lose their help. He told them he understood.

They bid him farewell for the moment as they disappeared into The Void again. He returned their farewell into the emptiness about him.

The Dark Side was still there, loud and laughing, mocking his humanity and his weakness. He ignored it. He might not have an anchor in the physical world yet, but he knew he was not alone. He had assistance here, he was not an island amidst The Void. He could rely on the girls' help.

He reached out, trying to make contact with others in the physical world, not just his brother. It was possible, but he was weak still. He was not yet strong enough to contact anyone except the one responsible for his demise. And as he realized this, the Dark Side's whispers became louder, saying that if he just gave in to it, he could return to the material world now, instead of waiting until the proper time, that he could contact his loved ones and his followers.

For a moment, he considered the temptation. He seriously considered it.

Then he rejected it. His thoughts went back to his wife and daughter. For them. He had to hold onto his humanity for them. The Dark Side was there again, whispering that he could be with them again if he just gave in.

Once again, he considered it, and rejected it. He would wait. Yes, wait, and be patient. Wait for the proper time to return to the material world. Wait for the proper time to exact his vengeance. All he needed to do was wait twenty-seven days.

Twenty-six...

Twenty-five...

Twenty-four...