Until Dawn: A New Path

Chapter 15 of my Until Dawn story, enjoy.

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Boris Yeltsin: Thanks, glad you enjoyed it, well, we can only wait and see.
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Now onto the story.

Disclaimer: I don't own Until Dawn or its characters.

Chapter 15

Sam bit her lip as she crawled slowly, edging towards the exit to the vent. After waiting until she was sure the Psycho was gone, she'd slipped out of the elevator and began to look for a way out. Finding an open vent, she'd slipped inside and began to sneak through it, stopping and waiting for quite some time, too scared to emerge, in case the Psycho was, in fact, waiting for her.

She winced at the pain in her body. She was bruised, she had a nasty gash on her right knee, the blood had come down to cover her upper shin, her towel was filthy by now. But thankfully, none of the dust or dirt had gotten into her wound.

'The last thing I want is some sort of infection. Things are already bad enough here... Where did that guy even come from?' she thought in terror. 'What about the others? Are they... What if he... God, don't think like that, Sam. Not until you see proof.'

So, preparing herself, she moved around so that her feet were pointed at the vent cover. She kicked at it twice before it broke open. She slid into the underground room. It looked like some sort of crazy workshop. She almost gasped in horror at the sight of it.

She shuddered. 'This must be that whack-job's lair.'

There was no sign of him, however, so she composed herself and prepared to take a look around.

She wasn't sure to start, until she saw something on a nearby noticeboard, which drew her eye. She approached it and examined it. It was a sheet of paper. On it was what looked like designs, plans of some sort, for the same sort of machine that had killed Josh. Only they revealed something strange.

"This is..." she whispered. "This can't be right."

The plans showed that it would be possible for someone to stand behind where the victims were supposed to be, with his head stuck through a hole on top of a fake body. Something about that didn't sit right with her.

Shaking her head, she continued to search through the workshop, searching in desks and amongst shelves. It wasn't easy, she found, clutching a towel around her body, holding a torch, and to search for things all at the same time.

"Wha...What is going on here?" she muttered to herself.

She had just found a psychiatric report and Josh's cell phone, all of which seemed to indicate communication from a psychiatrist who was seeing Josh and who seemed to be trying to warn him away from some sort of unknown plan, saying it was a bad idea. Shaking her head, Sam continued her search, starting to seriously get worried and suspicious.

She noticed another noticeboard, upon which were pictures and letters and such, all relating to Hannah and Beth.

Sam shuddered upon seeing it. "Ugh. Creep city..."

She left the room, finding herself in a small corridor. Continuing her search, she spotted what looked like an audio recorder. It already had a message on it. Sam played it and listened to the message. She was startled to hear the Psycho's voice. It seemed that he had recorded one of the speeches that he had either already given, or was yet to give. The recording seemed to be a rehearsal, as the Psycho seemed to falter and try again. At one point, the voice recording even stopped sounding distorted.

'Wait, that voice sounds familiar somehow, but surely not...'

Still lost in thought, Sam proceeded onwards, tensing when she saw, just in the next room, the Psycho working on something. Watching and waiting, it seemed.

Holding her breath and crouching below the room's window, she made her way into the next chamber. What she found there wasn't much better.

'Ho-lee, this is... Ugh, sick. He intended to do that to me?' she thought in disgust.

She felt even more violated now. For in the room, there was a video camera pointed at a chair, upon which a mannequin was tied up, wearing her stolen clothes. It was clear that it was intended to be her. She now realized, had she been caught, that she would have been tied to that chair herself, most likely still in just this towel, if she was lucky.

Shuddering at the thought of that and the implications of what could have been, Sam made her way towards the door opposite, spotting her backpack. Her heart leapt, due to the tightness of the ropes. She couldn't properly get her clothes off the dummy, but she had spare clothes in her bag. She could change and hopefully also find something for her injured leg. At the very least, she wanted to get some shoes on. The ground was rough and already causing more pain for her bare feet.

As she walked towards her bag, she had to pass a floor-level wall grate. Someone grabbed her ankle as she passed. She gasped, leaping back, trying to ignore the jolt of pain sent through the gash on her knee.

'What the fuck? It's him, he... No, wait…' She calmed herself down. 'If it was him, he wouldn't have let go the minute I jumped.'

She looked down and gasped at the familiar face below. The young man smiled, giving her a short wave.

"Matt!" she whisper-shouted. "What are you doing down there? There's a g-!"

She stopped and composed herself. Relief flooded her. At least she had found someone else, finally. She knelt down until she was level with Matt, clutching the towel tightly to make sure it didn't come undone.

Matt nodded, showing plain relief at her being alive, too.

"Oh Matt, thank God you found me." she said at last.

Matt nodded and spoke reassuringly. "It's okay, you're okay."

As he said this, he raised his hands to grasp the grate's bars.

"Where's Emily? She's not with you?!" she cried out.

Matt sighed. "Emily is dead."

Sam gasped in horror, unable to believe it, especially after the things she had just seen.

Matt shook his head. "There's some fucking maniac up here on the mountain. He's…he's trying to kill us all!"

"Listen... The guy who you're talking about..." Sam began, shuddering, "He attacked me. He showed me these videos, too. And one of them showed Josh being killed, just ripped apart by this huge fucking saw blade."

"Jesus Christ!"

Sam nodded and then remembered something. "I think he's living down here and whoever the hell he is, he's obsessed with Hannah and Beth. But here is the crazy thing: I found these plans, like, blueprints for a crazy machine like the one Josh was in, but it's fake... It was for a dummy."

"Sam, slow down." Matt replied, realizing what she was getting at.

Sam, however, shook her head. She was determined to get her point across. "Josh might not be dead!"

"What the fuck is going on around here?" Matt wondered aloud, before gesturing to his left. "There's a door here. It won't open. Can you unlock it from your side?"

"I'll see." she replied, standing up.

She approached the door that she had seen earlier and retrieved her backpack, fixing the straps over her shoulders. She then exited through the door and looked to her left. Down a small flight of steps was the door Matt had to have been talking about. She approached it quickly and saw a wooden plank jammed across it. She quickly removed the plank and pulled the door open. She smiled as Matt stepped through, covered in grime and dried blood.

"Hey..." he sighed, relieved.

"Jeez." Sam gasped. "You look like hell."

Matt laughed a little. "Nice to see you, too."

Sam just rolled her eyes and moved over to the other end of the room, moving behind some shelves, which offered, sadly, only minimal cover.

"Uh, what are you doing?" Matt asked.

Sam replied sarcastically, as she was able to finally clean the cut on her leg, as well as most of the blood. It had scabbed over, so it hopefully wouldn't cause any more issues unless it reopened. "Well, actually, the towel didn't turn out to be the best outfit for fighting off killer maniacs, you know?" She paused and then gestured for him to turn around. "Do you mind? Matt?"

Realizing quickly, Matt did just that. "Oh. Right. My bad."

He quickly turned around and Sam dropped the towel at last and began pulling her spare clothes out of her bag before pulling them on.

Before long, Sam had redressed in a simple white shirt, a red hooded jacket, gray yoga pants, and simple sneakers. A head torch was also part of the outfit, although she kept this slung around her neck for now.

"Okay, done. Let's put this thing to bed." she said at last.

Turning around, Matt joined her, nodding. "Amen to that."

They had yet to determine their next destination, however. They soon got their answer, however, when they heard screaming and Ashley's voice.

"Please!"

"I can't! I can't decide!" Chris's voice could be heard, too.

They each shared a worried look and ran to the door at the other end of the room where the screams had come from and soon forced the door open. They froze at the sight before them. Chris and Ashley were strapped to chairs on either side of a table. Above them, having stopped mere inches from their heads, were circular saws, still spinning. Chris had one hand free and was holding a gun. They both looked distraught and traumatized. Both were bearing several injuries.

Then they all saw him. The Psycho stepped out of the shadows towards Chris and Ashley, who had been looking around in shock, mostly likely at still being alive, despite the death trap.

The Psycho ominously approached and Ashley cried out.

"No!" She shook her head, struggling desperately against her bonds. "No, no, no! Get away!"

Sam and Matt started to move forwards when Chris suddenly shot at the Psycho three times. They stopped and stared in disbelief, as the Psycho was unharmed.

"Oh, Chris..." he muttered in his distorted voice. "Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris."

Chris shook his head in utter shock, looking at the gun. "What the fuck?"

"You've heard of blanks before. I mean, really?" the Psycho replied, revealing the truth. The gun had been loaded with blanks the whole time.

It was then that the Psycho removed his terror clown mask, revealing his identity to the aghast friends. For it was none other than a very alive Joshua Washington.

Chris was the first to recover. "Josh?" he spluttered, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

Josh burst out laughing as Sam yelled his name, anger seething through her. Matt also voiced Josh's name, sounded just as shocked as Chris.

"Oh, oh very good." he said, sounding overly cheerful. "Every one of you! You got my name! And after all you've been through! Good, good-good-good. I mean, how does that feel?"

During this time, Sam and Matt quickly untied Chris and Ashley and they all now stood, staring in shock and anger at their friend as he explained.

"Right? How does it feel? Do you enjoy feeling terrorized? Humiliated? I mean, panicked?" he queried, actually sounding a little crazed. "All those emotions that my sisters got to feel once one year ago! Only guess what? They didn't get to laugh it off! No! Nope! No, no, no! They're gone!"

By the end, he was laughing again, actually sounding completely unhinged. It was a veritable maelstrom of emotions for them all.

Sam felt as if she had been violated all over again. Everything she had endured at the hands of the Psycho, seeing her in the bath, chasing her as she had only a towel on, all of it was Josh. Ashley was in too much shock to really think or say anything while Chris could only feel betrayed, betrayed by his best friend.

Matt, meanwhile, replied angrily, "I don't know if you noticed this, Josh, but none of us are laughing."

Josh raised his arms and spoke. "Oh come, come-come-come-come. Why the long faces? Come on!"

He began to make expressive gestures while revealing his role in everything. "It's good to get the heart racing every now and then, right? And race they did. I mean, every one of you, just pitter-pat, pitter-pat! I hope you appreciated my little phantasmagorical spectacle!"

Ashley remembered how the candle had flared to life. Josh had set it up to do that.

"I mean, no detail too small! No opportunity missed!" Josh continued, remembering how he had created the ghosts. "It was such a delight to play the puppet master to all of your Pavlovian panic!"

Sam recalled the death trap plans she had seen. That was how Josh survived. Ashley had been chained up while he stood behind the wall and put his head through the gap, onto the fake body.

"And all that gore? I mean, there was gore galore!" he continued to brag. "Fake bodies! I mean, God, that shit was expensive!"

The others all shared a look. Yeah, they had fallen for it, been terrorized, but now it was just too far.

"And no retakes! Nope, nope, nope, only double-takes! You should have seen your faces. Hook, line, and sinker for every little stinker!" Josh cried out. He was clearly enjoying himself, feeling as if he had triumphed.

Sam shook her head, recalling everything she had seen. "Josh, your fingerprints were all over this. It was obviously all you."

"Oh, really? Really, really, really?" he taunted.

Sam then elaborated on what she meant. "You're crying out for help, Josh... Come on, you wanted to get caught, didn't you?"

"Oh, sure. I'm totally just crying out for help. 'Help me! Oh, help me! Help, help.'" Josh taunted. "Come on! Come on! It was just for fun! I mean, so you got a little bit of egg on your face, right? Nobody got hurt-"

For Matt, that was the last straw. "What are you talking about, you ass hat? Emily is FUCKING DEAD."

"What?" Josh gasped, suddenly deflating.

The others all looked at Matt in horror as he moved towards Josh, reaching into his waistband to pull out a revolver.

"Did you hear me? Emily is dead..." Matt growled. "And YOU ARE GONNA FUCKING PAY, YOU DICK!"

As he uttered the last word, Matt slammed the butt of the revolver into Josh's head, knocking him out cold.

End of chapter, hope you enjoyed it, read and review please.