Chapter Ten: The Family Day Two; 6:35 a.m.
Through the trees and forth into the forest, Corporal Lenart walks. The trees all have a dark and gloomy look to them with bony arms reaching out. The light is intercepted by the hordes of branches and leaves. A short distance away, Corporal Lenart can see a small building.
Coming up to the small building, she discovers it to be an old, abandoned cabin. Moss and vines crawl all over the dark and moist wooden logs which form walls. Approaching the entrance, the door is open, with what seems like wet footprints leading inside. Inside the house is too dark for her to see from the outside. She steps up on the creaky deck, heading towards the entrance. As she steps through the doorway, a flash of light suddenly overcomes her vision.
A hysterical laughing calls out through the blinding light, but ceases when vision returns. Corporal Lenart finds herself to be chained, shackled to a chair. Her clothes are different, she's wearing a light blue shirt and identically coloured pants, and her shoes and socks have been removed. She finds herself sitting at a table. At the other side is a man in a business suit, sitting there, with an expression of anger upon him. He's a bald man, with a wide-brimmed hat on his head. A thick gray beard spreads out over his chin and into his moustache. Laying on the table in front of him are some papers, documents of some kind.
Corporal Lenart looks to her side and finds another man sitting by her. She has difficulty focusing her eyes to see him clearly, but she can tell that he's wearing a dark suit and has a briefcase with him. She feels groggy, light-headed, and dizzy, having to strain just to keep her head in one spot. Her eyes are rather heavy, and want to close, but she finds that she must keep them open. The man beside her stands up from his chair and opens his briefcase on the table. Inside the briefcase are some papers, a pistol, and what appears to be a knife, covered in blood. The man takes out some papers and hands them to the man across the table. Suddenly a red liquid starts pouring out from the edges of the ceiling. Corporal Lenart goes to stand up, but is pulled back by the shackles. The man, seemingly some kind of lawyer, sits back down while the bald, bearded man reads the papers.
Corporal Lenart tries to ask what's going on with the ceiling, but when she opens her mouth, she can't find her words well enough to say them, and drool falls out the corner of her mouth, landing on her shoulder. She looks over at the lawyer beside her. He looks somewhat displeased, but calm. He suddenly stands up and reaches into the briefcase, pulling out the knife. The other man is signing and reading the documents, when the blade slams into his hand. He starts screaming out in agony, but a gun shot ends it. The lawyer walks over to the other side of the table and slides the papers over to Corporal Lenart, who is completely shocked and a bit frightened. She looks down at the papers before, but can't read them, her vision is too cloudy. All she makes out is that large, stamped, word in the middle which reads: RELEASE, in red ink.
She looks back up at the lawyer, who is now aiming the gun at her. She widens her eyes, and a crack of lightning rings out, another flash of light invades her sight.
She wakes up to find herself laying on the floor inside of the cabin. It looks like it used to be a living room. Around her there are chairs, a couch, and some other pieces of furniture. She no longer feels drugged, but confused. She sits up and looks at her wrists where there had been chains of some sort. Now strange wristbands had appeared on her wrists. She takes hold of one's edge and goes to pull it off, but when she lifts it from her arm, it feel like it's tearing the skin with it. She lets go and leaves it there.
Corporal Lenart stands up and brushes herself off. Looking around more, there's a kitchen and a doorway around the room. The windows all have the curtains pulled to the sides, letting in what little amount of sunlight manages through the trees. She turns and walks into the kitchen, finding it to be completely normal. Coming into the dining room, Corporal Lenart finds that the table is completely set. There's plates, silverware, and glasses set out, but no food. Suddenly a sound of someone's footsteps starts on the second floor, each step making it's own creaking sound. The
steps quicken their pace, and head to the stairs. Hearing someone coming down the stairs, Corporal Lenart panics and hides around a corner, with her face barely around the edge, watching if someone comes down. The pace slows down, and a foot comes into vision through the railing.
Quickly, Corporal Lenart turns and keeps herself out of view from the stairs around the corner. She stands there, listening for any sounds, but there are none. Hearing nothing, she decides to turn around the corner to check again. Corporal Lenart shrieks with terror, when she finds a girl standing right there, facing her when she turns. She is scared so badly that she jumps back, hitting the wall behind her, and almost loses her balance, but manages to stay up.
The girl has long dark hair, and a face with little expression other than anger. Her eyes, and mouth are sewn up, with loose stitches showing signs that her eyes have been sewn before and torn out. As Corporal Lenart stumbles a way, the girl stands there, watching her through the sealed eye lids. Suddenly, an extremely high pitched scream cries out in Corporal Lenart's head. The scream is so loud and sudden, that she jumps again, losing her balance, and toppling over onto a chair. She's about to get up, when she notices a basket beside the chair, with knitting needles and wool in it. The knitting needles look different though. They look like they're made of old steel or iron, and have a sharp point on one end, a loop in the other.
Desperately, Corporal Lenart grabs one of the needles and gets up off the chair. She stands there, terrified of the girl standing there in the doorway, watching her. She wields the needle, ready to attack with it if the girl comes near her. Suddenly another person comes into the living room. It's a very tall man, wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt, which has several tears and holes in it, as well as patched jeans. His head bent over to the side, with his neck sticking out awkwardly. Like the girl, his eyes and mouth have been sewn shut. The man and girl just remain standing there, staring at Corporal Lenart.
In a thought of escaping through the window behind her, Corporal Lenart turns around, but boards have appeared over the window, completely sealing it. Now even more afraid, Corporal Lenart turns around to face the two people there. Now there's another one, a woman, with her belly bulged out from what seems like pregnancy. Her eyes and mouth are sewn like the others. In her hands, she has wool and knitting needles, as she's making some kind of shirt. She remains sitting in the chair, just knitting, but facing Corporal Lenart while doing so.
Yet another person comes into the room. Another man, but not as tall or old as the other man. His face is sewn, and a screwdriver is plunged into his shoulder. There are also bullet holes in his chest, and several cuts all over. They look like a family, all of them standing around, with their covered eyes just staring at Corporal Lenart. Her hands tremble violently and her lip starts quivering.
"Wh ... what do you ... want?" She manages to ask, but none of them do anything. Backed up into the corner, she finds herself trapped there. Suddenly the girl walks quickly towards her. Corporal Lenart slams against the wall behind her in pure terror, tears building up in her eyes. In a panicked attack, Corporal Lenart thrusts the needle into the girl's chest. The girl stops and backs up a step from Corporal Lenart, and turns to the needle sticking out of her chest. She turns back to Corporal Lenart and swiftly grabs the needle, pulling it out of her. Corporal Lenart trembles and fears for her life so severely that, finally, she loses consciousness, collapsing on the floor. The last thing she sees is the tall man leaning over to her and reaching out.
A dream comes to her, but it seems different from most other dreams. She finds herself standing outside of a farm house, which seems similar to the cabin she was just in. She's standing by a shed, where some noises are coming from within. Entering the shed, there's someone there, rummaging through drawers and cupboards, seeming to be looking for something. He's a tanned man, in his teens. He has short black hair and the start of a goatee. Finally he stops raiding the place, and looks at some keys in his hands. He then walks over to a locker and opens it with the keys, and tosses them to the side. Inside the locker is a collection of guns. A few rifles, shotguns, and ammunition. He reaches into the bottom and picks up a revolver, a large magnum. He loads it and puts it in his pocket. He turns and starts heading out of the shed, and doesn't seem to even notice Corporal Lenart standing there.
When Corporal Lenart turns, she find herself to suddenly be inside the house, on the ground floor, in the living room, where the woman and tall man that she had seen earlier sit, watching television, the woman, knitting. The teen-aged boy comes in, holding a bat. He comes up behind the chair that the tall man sits in. The boy calls out, "Dad?" and the tall man tilts his head upward, just to see the bat crash down on his neck, breaking it and killing him. The woman drops the knitting needles and is about to stand up, when the boy shoots her in the side. She falls back into the chair, bleeding immensely from the large hole in her ribs, near her heart. Corporal Lenart just stands there, watching this boy murder what seems like his parents. Another teen-aged boy comes running down the stairs, who seems to be older than the murderer. The two boys face each other for a moment, before the one yells at him.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" The murderer is about to shoot him, but the older boy tackles him to the floor, setting off the gun, and spraying blood from the older boy's leg. The older boy holds him there, and sits up to slug him in the face. The murderer, pinned to the ground, reaches around desperately, and finds an open toolbox sitting against the wall. He reaches inside and pulls out a screwdriver, slamming it into the older boy's shoulder, and throws him off. The stabbed boy lays on the floor, bleeding, when the murderer shoots him near the centre of his chest. He lays there, twitching and bleeding to death, when he is shot again in the chest, finalizing his death.
Standing in the doorway, just watching is the girl with dark hair. She appears to be in shock from what she had just seen. She looks up at the murderous boy there, aiming the revolver at her. She just stares at him, a tear falls, splashing to the ground, when the magnum fires again, plummeting the girl to the floor, with a hole bore in her throat. The murderer looks around a bit and grabs the bat, then walks to and up the stairs. Corporal Lenart quickly follows him to a bedroom, with the door closed. The boy violently struggles with the door, cursing. He yells out for the door to be opened, but nobody responds. He puts the gun back in his pocket and takes hold of the bat with both hands, to slam the door knob, breaking it off. He slams his body into the door, smashing it open to reveal an empty bedroom, with a window, wide open. The boy runs over to the window and spots a girl in the distance, running away. He yells out at her, and starts shooting, but can't aim anywhere near her.
The boy turns around to where Corporal Lenart stands, and just stops. He remains there, staring forward a moment, then looks up at Corporal Lenart's face.
Corporal Lenart suddenly comes to consciousness. She's still in the living room, but the people who were there have disappeared. She stands up and notices the needle, she had used to stab the girl with, sticking out of the floor. The window by her is no longer boarded, everything has returned to normal. Confused and scared, Corporal Lenart runs out of the cabin, not caring where she's going, just as long as she can get away from that place.