Restless Dreams: Chapter Four

Ban plunged the torch into a knothole in floor's wood. After making sure it stood up on its own, he crawled from the corridor back into the room he'd discovered and peered around. The dim light only allowed so much, but from what Ban could see the room was fully wooden. The wood looked brand new, fresh, even unpolished.

"What the hell...?" Ban muttered to himself. Everything else here looked old and decrepit, so why would a room that hadn't even existed earlier seem so new? Ban grit his teeth, more confused that he wanted to admit.

He stepped forward, lightly touching a wall. The wood felt cool and rough under his fingers.

Suddenly the light went out. Ban whirled around, hunting for an intruder, unable to see in the complete dark. He moved toward where he'd entered the room and searched for the cracked boards.

He couldn't find the hole. The wall was perfect. Why the fuck was there no hole? He'd punched his way through, so why was there no hole? It had been there not ten seconds ago, and now it was gone.

A whimper caught in Ban's throat as he felt frantically for rough, splintered wood. He stopped and took a deep breath to calm himself. What the hell was he doing, panicking like this?

With the flick of a lighter, Ban was surrounded by the familiar glow of fire. He looked at the wall and froze. His lip trembled.

The wooden walls were greasy. Slimy. Decayed. Blackened and gnarled with age. Splatters of blood garnished with golden film decorated the walls, sticky rivulets of sap sliding slowly down the crumbling timber. Ban heard the scurrying of thousands of termites, eating away at the rot.

And there was no hole in the wall.

Ginji stared blankly at the corpse in front of him. It was Kagami Kyouji, it had to be. No one else's eyes were that shade of purple, but he was too mutilated to tell anything otherwise. Ginji's lip trembled as he watched blood flow slowly from the missing heart's cavity. He tore his eyes away from the body and looked around. This couldn't be real; such a powerful man couldn't be dead.

His eyes unfocused as he tried to take everything in. Kagami was held up by Kazuki's strings, his hair was attached, it had to be... Ginji shook his head. That meant that either Kazuki was hurt as well, or he did this himself. Ginji wasn't sure which was worse.

He heard a thud behind him.

Ginji's breath quickened, heart racing faster in his chest. His eyes darted toward the flickering candle next to the corpse's head; if the monster got closer it would see him through the ricepaper. Attempting to move forward to snuff the candle, he hissed as a taut string suddenly bit into his bare calf.

He heard a roar in the distance and shuddered; it was getting closer. Swallowing hard, Ginji reached out, arm straining to touch the candle. Outside the room was another, louder thud, then two, then three. Ginji cried out, stretching his arm as the chaos of threads cut into his skin, trying not to look down at Kagami's body pressed just beneath him, still warm and soft, and focused instead on grabbing the candle just centimeters from his fingertips.

Ginji felt the thing move closer, heard its moaning draw nearer. His arm ached from the strain but he pushed forward, feeling strings pulling at his shoulders and across his cheek, slicing flesh like old cheese, and the flame was so close and felt so warm near his skin...

Ginji swiped at it, and his hand connected with the hard wax. The candle broke off its holder and fell, flickering before hitting the ground and dying out.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Ginji stepped back from the deadly web of string wincing as pain flared up his ankle and tiny thread wounds clotted with blood.

He stood in the dark, gathering his thoughts and trying to calm down. Suddenly he heard a creak behind him and felt the bile of fear rise to his throat again. He held his breath, trying to keep as absolutely silent as possible. The thing was right next to the room's sliding door.

It continued stomping down the hallway, away from the door.

Ginji sighed inwardly; he didn't dare move until it was completely gone.

Suddenly there was a loud crack behind him. Broken bits of wood and debris bombarded Ginji as he struggled to move, hundreds of threads binding him in place. He shuddered as the monster screeched, high-pitched and deafening. Glimpsing back he felt it rear up, its giant body reeling backwards to strike. His eyes widened.

The hairs on the back of Ban's neck prickled. "Ginji," he whispered into the darkness. Something was wrong with his partner.

A white-hot pain seared through Ginji's back, blossoming through his body and over his skin. His scream was silenced with a spray of salty blood as he careened forward, a few threads broken by the monster's slash.

The web of threads below him broke his fall, catching Ginji and tangling him in their grasp. The corpse's body lurched forward with the string's vibration, showering Ginji with congealed blood from Kagami's severed arms.

He hung sideways, suspended in threads coiled tightly around his skin. He felt light-headed, like he was floating. It was almost enough to drown out the searing pain in his back as hot blood streamed down gashed skin. His entire body felt on fire, as if the thing's spikes were laced with blistering venom.

The monster roared.

Kagami's corpse rocked forward again with the impact and nearly collapsed on top of Ginji, the gaping hole where his heart should have been suspended just above the retriever's face, dripping blood and bits of bone onto his cheek.

"Ginji! GINJI!!" Ban pounded on the wall desperately, trying to tear down the wall, dent the wood, anything. He backed up a step and charged at the wall, slamming his side into the wall. Grease smeared onto his shoulder and splinters stabbed into his bare arms, but he stepped back and rammed the wall again. He had to get out of this fucking prison.

Ban felt his shoulder shove out of place and grimaced. He bit his lip and smashed into the wall again, wincing as pain blasted up his arm, completely dislocated. Ban yelled and sank to his knees, left side aching, unable to reach his partner, and closed his eyes. His body shuddered, stressed and in pain.

Ban gritted his teeth, eyes still closed, and grabbed at his shoulder, shoving it back into place. It hurt like hell.

He exhaled shakily and prepared to launch himself at the wall again, not ready to resign himself to listening to his partner's screams.

Suddenly there was light behind Ban's closed eyelids. He opened his eyes -- and stared. The walls of his wooden cage were gone. Ban swallowed hard, looking frantically around. He was sitting in a hallway, lit with steel industrial lamps attached to the walls. The wood of the pagoda walls was completely rotted, hanging limply from greasy, blood-splattered cement, and the floor had been replaced entirely with rusty metal grating that stretched over an endless black abyss. Only a tile of floor just under Ban's legs was still solid wood.

Ban rose to his feet and warily stepped toward a concrete wall. Suddenly there was a metallic crash behind him and he whirled around, battle-ready, searching for its source. He saw nothing. Nothing but the metal grating, cement, and blood. His platform of wood had disappeared.

This had to be Evil Eye, either that or he was going fucking crazy. But the presence of his partner, loud and anguished, snapped him back to twisted reality. He needed to find Ginji.

Ban walked tentatively down the hall, unwavering in finding his way out of the damn house.

The grating was springy under his feet and felt like it would give at any moment. He choked as the stench of blood overrode his senses, so strong it was gagging. He regained his senses and continued moving, unsettled by the endless abyss just a rusty grating tile below him. He tried not to look down.

The smell got worse and worse with every step, threatening to make Ban retch if it got too much stronger. He glanced around, trying to find the source of the stench. He saw nothing but bloody, greasy, endless concrete with no visible way out.

Ban held his breath and kept walking, determined to find his way out of the damn house.

He heard a piercing shriek behind him and whirled around, still-damp hair flinging into his face, fully alert. All he could see was an endless stretch of corridor in the dim lighting. It was almost as bad as being trapped in the wooden room, with nowhere to go and no way to get there.

Ban shuddered and turned, resolute in finding his way out of the damn house.

Suddenly he stepped on something squishy. Chancing a glance down, Ban swallowed hard. He was sure that bloody piece of severed meat with its rancid smell wafting into the air hadn't been there a minute ago.

Hoping that he wasn't leaving bloodstained footprints behind him, he continued on, desperately seeking a way out of this damn house.

As Ban's stepped again something squelched under his other foot, and he could feel its mass sifting into the grates below, educing a soft oozing sound. He grit his teeth and kept moving, not even bothering to look down.

He chanced another step and grimaced when his foot treaded over more soft flesh. Keeping his eyes glued straight forward, he broke into a run, frantic to get out of the disgusting corridor. With every step the grille floor seemed to blossom into meaty gore, and Ban didn't dare look behind him as he ran.

Ginji screamed, loud and piercing in the chaos, fueled by fury. He'd had enough; his partner was missing, he'd been hunted and wounded like an animal, and this damned thing wouldn't leave him alone!!

Raw electricity exploded from his body, illuminating the darkness violently as it sizzled through the air. The strings coiled tightly around him burst into flame, and fire danced down the threads, igniting the thin fibers as the air stank of smoke, voltage, and blood.

The monster shrieked as the flames spread to its flesh, crackling as they charred the rancid skin. It tried to back away from the approaching fire and tripped over the alight strings, careening backwards onto the floor and screaming as it was devoured by hot flames.

Ginji stood, having brushed aside the burnt threads that bound him. His hair, caked with blood, hung limp over weary eyes and static crackled around his body. His back had halfway healed, the lacerated skin knitted back together weakly, breathing was ragged and harsh. He was obviously exhausted, but he grit his teeth and stepped toward the blazing, repulsive monster writhing pathetically on the floor.

Best to put it out of its misery.

There was a door. And not a pagoda door, a Western-style steel door. Ban wasn't sure how it got there, but fuck if he was going to question it. He'd been running through this rank, bloodsmeared hallway of HELL for way too damn long.

Of course, his eyes might have just been decieving him again, because it wasn't like any of this was real anyway, and he'd rather move forward in the dream than run himself out of breath in the overlong corridor that stretched for hours behind him.

Eyes sliding shut in reassured, somber resignation, Ban calmly pushed the metal door ajar.

Pure, undiluted white light suddenly seared into his corneas through the opening, and Ban threw an arm over his face, blocking the assault of blinding light. Finally his eyes readjusted to the sudden change and he stepped cautiously through the doorway into a pristine, sterile white room. It was large, octagonal, cold, and spotless, nothing at all like the pagoda he'd been in---pagoda.

Pagoda.

Had he been in a pagoda? It seemed like he'd been running underground for forever. No, he was a retrieval agent in Tokyo, a damn good one at that... but that didn't seem right. After all, wasn't all this a dream? He was going insane.

A small ringing sound suddenly reverberated off the walls, shattering the maddening silence. Ban glanced toward the center of the room and noticed a small puddle of blood he could have sworn hadn't been there before, but this blood was different from the rest, different from everything else he'd seen. It wasn't congealing, greasy, or old, this blood looked pure and cold like springwater as if it had been freshly let, almost drinkable in its sterility.

And in the center of it was a small double-belled red alarm clock, quietly chiming innocently.

Abandoning the safety of the door, Ban stepped toward it slowly and warily, eyes narrowed suspiciously at the clock as it continued to ring. It just didn't seem right, and, dream or not, Ban was in no hurry to die.

As he approached it the ringing grew louder and louder, exploding into a shrieking trill as Ban stepped closer. He felt his stomach begin to turn in apprehension and took a silent, deep breath, crouching down beside the alarm as it screamed into the air. His fingertips neared its screaming bells as he reached slowly out to touch it.

And as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, leaving only the chilling afterglow of sound. Ban blinked.

And then, behind him, he heard a low, dangerous canine growl, and slowly turned around.

-tbc

Author's notes: Oh my sweet jesus christ, this took forever. Well, after falling out of GB fandom, having extensive surgery and complications thereof on my knee, my writing getting waaaay better, and general procrastinating, Chapter Four is finally done. You can thank the renewed Silent Hill obsession for that one. Hope you enjoyed this chapter in all its short (read: lazy) brevity. Um. Yay :D