Until Dawn: A New Path
Chapter 10 of my Until Dawn story, enjoy.
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Now onto the story.
Disclaimer: I don't own Until Dawn or its characters.
Chapter 10
Matt crouched by a wall, near the building he had seen. He ached all over from his constant running. The cold bit into his body and he was still trying to process what he had seen back in the mines with Emily.
"Jesus." he muttered, ducking down before he was seen.
The stranger that he had followed from the mines, the one he was sure was behind what had happened to Emily, was walking up the path towards the building. Matt had heard growling and, peeking over the wall again, saw that the stranger wasn't alone. Two wolves were with him.
"Dammit." he muttered, ducking again.
He watched as the stranger seemed to close a door in the side of the building before moving to the front of the building and entering.
"Alright..." Matt muttered to himself. "Let's get a closer look."
He grunted, trying to ignore the pain as he climbed over the wall, still carrying his lantern.
Walking towards the building, his mind replayed those last horrifying moments again and again. 'Dammit, Emily. I'm so sorry, I...I...I swear I will get this guy. He will pay for what he did to you.'
He paused by the door. He wondered if he should risk going in. Then he decided to check what the stranger had been doing first, in case it offered an alternative way inside. He soon figured out where he was when he came across a sign on the building, labeling it as condemned, yet also identifying it as a sanatorium.
"Awesome. Why wouldn't I end up on the creepiest place on planet earth?" Matt remarked sarcastically.
He reached where the stranger had been and found a metal plate against the wall. Grunting and muttering in exertion, he pushed it aside to reveal, just as he had suspected, another entrance to the sanatorium, leading into the basement by the look of it. He carefully clambered in and jumped down to the floor before looking around.
"Dammit. Alright..."
He knew he was going blind here. The lantern was his only light source and he had no idea of the layout of the building. Still, he continued onwards, searching the building as thoroughly as he could. There wasn't much room to move about, but he saw a hole in the ceiling. If he got up to the elevated path, he could then hopefully find something to use to climb through it and that would hopefully take him into the main building.
Careful searching turned up a barrel, which he set the lantern on and, preparing himself, he began pushing it until it was in the perfect position. Retrieving the lantern, he climbed onto the barrel and up onto the elevated path. He couldn't believe his luck when he found solid footing in the form of a broken machine on its side, right underneath the hole. He wasted no time climbing up and poking his head out of the hole, seeing his immediate surroundings.
"Whoa, that's different." he commented as he pulled himself up onto what appeared to be the main floor of the building.
The sanatorium was in complete disrepair. It was clear that some parts of it had completely collapsed. There were fallen walls and Matt was certain that some of the doors were busted. The only plus side he could see right now was that he was out of the snow, away from the freezing cold. It helped him focus his mind on his pursuit, his determination for vengeance.
Knowing that he had to start somewhere, he approached the first door that didn't seem to be a dead end, apparently leading to the chapel, according to the sign. Peeking through a window by the door, he saw the stranger again, throwing something to the two wolves who began eating it.
"Whoa, what the…?" Matt whispered, praying it was an old-fashioned dog bone or animal meat and not human.
Trying the door, he found, to his frustration, that it was locked. He needed a keycard of some sort. He peeked through again and saw that the stranger was gone and the wolves were just leaving. Matt had no choice now, he'd have to search wherever he could, leaving no stone unturned, to find the keycard.
Turning away from the chapel, he began his search in the very hall he was currently in. All his search turned up was administration notes to the sanatorium staff about the arrival of a group of miners who had been caught in a cave-in at the mines. It was dated 1952 and Matt suddenly remembered the map he had found when he and Emily had passed through a section of the mines, detailing sections of the mine that were unstable. The notes also mentioned that the press were being forced away from the building.
Matt couldn't deny that he didn't like what he was discovering, what appeared to be a decades-old cover-up. He continued his search, however. All of this could wait until he found that man and made him pay.
'Gotta keep moving. C'mon, it's gotta be here somewhere.' he told himself.
However, he was once more confronted with the 1952 mine mystery when, while searching the admin office, he came across a broken camera and a partially opened safe with a wooden stake next to it.
"Whoa, someone really wanted to take a peek inside." he noted, before finishing the job.
Inside, he uncovered thirty clocking-in cards for miners. He deduced that this was the number of miners caught in the cave-in. But he still couldn't understand the broken camera, only that the damage looked deliberate. Mystery was piling upon mystery. Matt briefly considered that maybe this stranger was looking into this 1952 mystery and these were clues he had gathered. It appeared that the sanatorium, which seemed the center of said mystery, was also his base.
Shaking his head, Matt reminded himself, 'But then, why attack Emily? What is he hiding? What is he up to?'
Resuming his search for the keycard, Matt began heading down the corridor towards what the signs indicated was the morgue. Just what he needed to cheer himself up.
There were still a couple of offices just before the steps leading down to the morgue that were accessible, so Matt checked them first. In the first office, he found an old newspaper that detailed an assault on a reporter, suddenly making sense of the broken camera.
"Huh, intrigue on Blackwood Mountain." Matt mused.
It was clear now that something was definitely being hidden here, especially when the other office yielded medical reports that did not tally with Matt's findings so far, reports on only twelve miners, not thirty. Eighteen were unaccounted for.
Perplexed, but by no means distracted, Matt made his way down the steps towards the morgue. In the outer corridor he came across a partially open room. Debris prevented him from actually entering, but he could see a crow sitting on a table right by the door and embedded in said table was a machete.
'Urgh, just great. Well, I think I'm gonna need a weapon... Better than nothing.' he told himself before reaching it.
The bird cawed and flew away while Matt was able to finally pull the machete free. Grimacing, he stuck it in his belt and continued his search of the morgue itself. Noticing an odd shape behind a curtain, he pulled aside to find a restraining chair soaked in blood.
"Holy shit..." he gasped. "Ugh, what happened here?"
His continued exploration of the morgue offices and rooms led him to find another part of the 1952 mystery: a telegram, which seemed to indicate that there was indeed only twelve miners brought to the sanatorium, but thirty had indeed gone down into the mines during that fateful excursion and that a massive cover-up was underway.
Matt shook his head at the fear of reporters flooding the place. 'Gee, who wouldn't want press snooping around in this paradise?'
His search led to another room, of which he could not identify the original purpose. Whatever the room used to be, it now only featured several tables and boxes and, strangely enough, a moving arm attached to a table, which jerked back and forth at irregular intervals. Matt grimaced upon seeing it. He didn't really want to touch it, so he ignored it and looked around, trying to find the morgue.
Luckily, he got a hint as he approached one door and the temperature dropped. Matt recalled from the various crime dramas he sometimes watched that morgues had to be relatively cold places. It had to be through there. Entering the morgue, he was face to face with a strange, deformed, but still human skull on a shelf.
'This place just gets better and better.' he thought sarcastically.
Continuing his search, he found, to his frustration, that the door out was locked and required a keycard, the same keycard that he needed for entering the chapel, too.
He growled as he turned to survey the room again. 'You've gotta be kidding.'
There was only one place he hadn't searched. Three, actually. Three body drawers, the only ones not rusted shut. Forcing himself, Matt examined them. The first revealed a name tag of a man named Nicholas Bowen, the second was a death certificate for a Sarah Smith. It was clear that they were part of the 1952 mystery, especially the death certificate, which seemed to indicate that Sarah had been partially...eaten by something with very human teeth.
Opening the third drawer, Matt thought disgustedly to himself, 'Okay, is drawer number three the winner?'
It was. Inside was an uncovered body. Matt nearly threw up, especially when a rat climbed out of the corpse's mouth. Containing himself, he was able to spot just what he needed: the chapel keycard on the body. He picked it up and turned away gratefully.
He reached the locked door again, unlocked it and, taking the keycard with him, entered the next corridor, which appeared to be in the back part of the chapel. He began climbing the stairs when he was ambushed by one of the wolves. Crying out, he ran for his life, the wolf right on his heels, growling and snapping at him.
With a mighty effort, Matt escaped the wolf, slamming shut the door behind him. Fighting desperately for breath, pretty sure that he was going to give himself a heart attack at this rate, he realized he was in the upper levels of the chapel and could see down below. He needed to get back to the chapel's main door, so he followed the path and climbed down a fallen staircase.
"Oh, right. Back in here." he muttered with relief. He was back in the main entrance, steps away from the chapel's main doors.
He hurried over as best he could in his weakened state and opened them before entering. Just then, he heard a growl and turned sharply to his left. The other wolf was there, growling at him. On instinct, Matt almost lashed out, but then told himself not to. Instead, he stepped back, holding up his hands. The wolf growled, but in a less threatening manner.
"Okay...okay..." Matt said softly. "Easy, boy. Easy, easy... That's a good boy." He gently edged to the side and the wolf let him pass, settling itself down on the floor.
Matt let out a relieved sigh and began to examine the room. His first point of interest in the run-down, rubble-filled chapel was a wooden chest, filled with bones.
"Maybe this'll keep the wolves fat and happy." he said to himself, almost laughing in relief.
It seemed his earlier concern had been wrong. Taking one of the bones, he approached the wolf and whistled, getting its attention. He held out the bone and the wolf slowly came closer before gently taking it from his hand. Matt stroked the wolf and smiled as the animal seemed much more friendly now. Once he finished patting the wolf, Matt resumed his search around the room, now no longer paranoid about being attacked from behind by the wolf.
He spotted a cigar on a table in the middle of the room and recognized the brand from the cigar stub he had seen earlier that night.
'Ahh... the stogie stash exposed.'
Something else caught his eye: a wall that was covered in various newspaper clippings, all of them about strange disappearances, and that did not make Matt any happier about the man he was pursuing.
One thing he did benefit from during his search was a slightly tattered olive green army jacket. Smirking, he pulled it on, relieved for the extra heat it provided.
"So...what have we here?" Through a gap in a mesh fence, just behind where the jacket hung, was a gun. Reaching in, Matt tried to grab it but couldn't reach it.
"Come on!"
Shaking his head, he instead reached lower, to a leg holding the shelf against the wall and, with a bit of effort, pulled it off, making the gun slide into his hand. He smiled. He still had the machete and now had a gun. He now felt that he had a better chance.
Approaching the door at the back of the room, the only possible exit that the stranger could have taken, Matt shot the lock off and moved into the next room. Searching this area unearthed only a large stone memorial to 'the miracle men', the twelve surviving miners, still with no mention of the missing eighteen. Following the large staircase downwards into an underground area, he found another gate blocking his path and several barrels.
"Of course it's locked." he muttered. Shoving an empty barrel out of the way, he took aim and fired, breaking the lock.
But his victory was short lived as he tried to go through the gate, for he then saw the fire. Some of the barrels were filled with flammable liquid and some had spilled onto the floor and the sparks from shooting the lock had ignited it. Seeing this, he began to back off.
"Shit, shit, shit..." he cried out as he tried to flee. "URGH!"
He cried out as the small explosion occurred, knocking him backwards and onto the ground.
End of chapter, hope you enjoyed it, read and review please.