"Evan!" The scream echoed through the halls with the tolls of the clock. Lui looked towards the stairs, seeing Tyler halfway up them. He held the gun that had killed Craig and should have killed Evan, his blood stained hands curled around it tightly as if he meant to use it on the demon who stood at the bottom of the stairs.
Lui looked back up at his friend in time to see the bloody axe glint in the light as it came down towards his head. Lui rolled away quickly though not fast enough to escape the axe as it grazed his shoulder and hit the wood floor that splintered under the force. "Lui come on!" Tyler yelled as Lui scrambled to his feet,feeling blood ooze down his shoulder and soak his sweatshirt. He ran up the stairs with his hand reaching for Tyler.
"You are never going to leave this house! Your soul is mine now!" The demonic entity screamed in Evan's voice, following Lui up the stairs. "I've killed all your friends! I'll kill you too!" Lui glanced back at him, meeting his wide and murderous black eyes. He swung the axe at Lui who ducked out of the way; his hands clutching Tyler's arm tightly. It crashed into the banister, breaking the wood railing which splintered weakly under the inhuman pressure. Tyler pulled Lui up the rest of the way, sprinting down the hallway with the demon close behind. "You are never going to leave this house!"
Tyler pushed Lui into one of the rooms, slamming the door shut as he followed. He locked it, propping a chair up under the knob before slowly backing away. Lui stepped back, feeling something warm and wet soak through his sock. He glanced down, his eyes widening at the sight of the pool of blood on the floor, left behind by Evan. The wardrobe where he had hidden several times that night was still open, the room dimly lit by the early morning light.
"That isn't Evan...That's not our friend out there, Tyler." Lui whispered, tears falling from his eyes. He moved away from the blood pool, his eyes on the window that he had tried desperately to break open. "He's gonna kill us."
"No he isn't, Lui. We're getting out here." Tyler said, more aggressively than he meant. He seemed different than what he had been like just a few hours before. Lui stared at him, expecting him to attack him with the gun just like he had attacked Evan. "Why are you looking at me like that? I'm not the possessed one."
"You were! You killed Evan! You tried to kill me! You attacked Luke because he accidentally killed Craig. Now Luke is dead! Evan smashed his head open with that axe! He laughed, Tyler! Just like you did!" Lui cried, backing away from Tyler who seemed shocked by his words.
"Evan isn't dead, Lui! You saw him! I didn't kill him! I don't remember doing any of that!" Tyler said, glancing nervously at the door as he tried to keep his voice down. "I didn't touch him."
"I remember clearly. I heard what you said as you hit him...I saw what you did." Lui spat, his words full of venom that hurt Tyler more than anything else he had heard in his life. "When we get out of here, I want nothing to do with you. I will never be able to forget the things you said to me. The things you did."
"Lui...Please. Please! I didn't do those things." Tyler begged, his voice breaking as tears filled his eyes. "That wasn't me...Just like that isn't Evan out there right now." He pointed to the door and the hallway just beyond which had descended into an eerie, heavy silence. Not a single noise could be heard in it's empty halls. "Lui please…"
"You beat Evan to a pulp...You kept hitting him until he was dead! I saw it." Lui sobbed.
"Did you do anything to stop it?" Tyler suddenly demanded, catching Lui off guard. "You could have done something! You could have stopped me! You could have saved the others too! Brock...Brian...Craig...Why didn't you? Are you a coward?"
"Shut up!" Lui cried. He didn't want to hear this, to hear what he had been thinking all along.
"Why didn't you save them, Lui? Why didn't you fight back?" Tyler took a threatening step towards him, his hands tight on the wood gun. "Do you not care, Lui? Did you not cry?"
"Shut up! Shut up! Shu-" Tyler's hand clamped down over Lui's mouth, stopping his cries as footsteps echoing in the hallway came towards the room. Lui stared at the door with wide eyes, waiting for the handle to shake and the demon with their friend's face to try to break the door down. The footsteps continued down the hall, past their door and towards the stairs at the end of the hall. Lui wondered if it had just been one of the ghosts.
"Look...Lui...I'm as scared as you are. I am terrified. It's adrenaline keeping me going right now because if it wasn't, I would have broken down and cried till I couldn't anymore when Brock died. I don't remember doing those things and as much as it scares me and hurts me...I believe you when you say that I did them. This place is scary, Lui. There is something really evil here...It saw that we were angry and it got to us...It used us to kill each other. I'm sorry, Lui. I'm sorry. I need you and you need me if we are going to get out of this alive. And in the morning, when we are out of here and alive and you still don't want anything to do with me, then I understand. Just stay with me for now...Please." Tyler said softly, tears falling from his eyes. Lui stared up at him, unable to say anything with Tyler's hand pressed over his mouth to keep him from screaming.
Tyler's eyes moved from the door to the window and the sky that was starting to brighten. Slowly, the sun was starting to rise and morning was dawning on this slaughterhouse, the blood pools reflecting the soft glow. "I'm so scared, Lui...I'm so scared." Tyler whispered again, moving his hand away from Lui's mouth to hug him tightly.
"W-We'll get outta here, Tyler." It was what Lui knew that Tyler wanted to hear. Lui couldn't move, his eyes on the door. He was waiting; waiting for the demon to smash through the door and kill them both. "We'll get out of here. This night will end." One way or another, it would end.
The handle suddenly shook, turning slowly at first as if the demon was just trying to see if they were stupid enough to leave it unlocked. It shook suddenly, as if it would somehow unlock it but Lui saw it as a taunt, as if the demon was giving them a few last moments before killing them with a smile on their stolen face.
"Hide...Hide!" Tyler whispered, shoving Lui into the wardrobe.
"Tyler no!" Lui grabbed onto Tyler's hand tightly, his eyes wide with terror. "Don't...Evan will kill you! You said that we would stay together! That we would make it out of here!" Tyler gave him a reassuring smile as he pushed his hand away and closed the doors on Lui, leaving him alone in the dark.
"Come on, Evan! You demonic fuck!" Tyler yelled over the sound of the doorknob rattling. The rattling suddenly stopped, a strange silence descending on the room as the temperature dropped with it, chills running down Lui's spine. He leaned forward to the crack between the doors, seeing Tyler look around the room as if expecting to see Evan appear behind him.
The sound of wood splintering made Lui jump, his hands over his mouth to stop his scream. The axe came through the door repeatedly, Evan's twisted laughter sounding worse than the breaking of the wood. The door broke open, the chair used to blocked it kicked out of the way like it was nothing.
"Hello Tyler!" Blood dripped from Evan's wounds, his black eyes wide and lifeless. Lui watched Tyler back away from the entity, his hands gripping the gun that he had convinced himself would save his life though it was nothing more than wood and metal.
"Evan please...I know you are in there. You gotta snap out of it!" Tyler begged. "For your own good, snap out of it! That sun is going to rise and we're gonna get out of this house!"
"You are never going to leave this house." Evan's voice was strange, sounding like two voices speaking at once. One was his voice that Lui knew very well from all those late night Skype calls playing the games they loves the most.
The other was a dark voice that was not of this world, sounding gnarled and full of unimaginable pain that made it scream out the words. "You are never going to leave this house! You will never leave! You can't escape!"
"Evan! Please! We are going to get out! Do you see that sun rising out there?" Lui couldn't see Tyler anymore but he imagined him pointing to the window and the outside world that was just out of reach. "It's almost morning! We've made it, Evan! Please! Snap out of this!" The axe swung through the air towards Tyler who was able to get out of the way, the axe hitting the wall where he had just stood.
"You are never going to leave this house!" Evan screamed, his voice sounding more demonic than before as the axe came down on Tyler. Lui heard a scream of pain and blood splatter onto the already bloody floor.
Lui felt sick, wanting to look away from the gruesome sight. He had watched Tyler beat Evan, laughing and screaming at him how much he hated him the whole time. Now he was watching Evan do the exact same thing to him. He tried to tell himself that this wasn't Evan, that this was the monster who had killed all his friends. Yet all he could see under the blood was Evan.
"E-Evan...please…" Tyler struggled to get the words out, his hands reaching for his fallen wooden gun as if it could protect him. Lui's eye was caught by another figure in the room standing over Tyler, watching him scramble away from the demon. Except the ghost had no head, only strands of flesh hanging down it's chest and a broken stump of a bloody neck. Lui knew it was Luke, a cold chill running through him as he watched the ghost reach forward, curling it's bloody hand around the gun. The sound of a gunshot made Lui jump, falling away from the closed doors into the dark of the wardrobe. He heard a body hit the floor and Tyler's gasp of shock. "Evan…"
Lui couldn't move, only stare at the closed doors with wide eyes. The gun wasn't real, it couldn't fire anything; yet Luke's ghost had willed it to out of anger that Evan had killed him. "Evan...Oh God, Evan! No!" Tyler wailed. "I didn't mean to do it...I didn't mean to…I didn't want to…" Lui pushed the wardrobe door open slowly, his eyes landing on Evan's still body and Tyler's tear stained face. His shoulder was bleeding badly; he'd bleed out by morning if he didn't get help. Lui glanced at the axe that had fallen from Evan's hand as he crawled out of the wardrobe towards Tyler.
"Tyler...We have to go…" Lui managed to say. "Let's get out of here."
"I didn't want to kill him, Lui! I didn't want to kill him!" Tyler sobbed. "I didn't mean to. I thought he would stop of I said those things! I thought he would snap out of it and be our Evan again!"
"I know! I know you didn't mean to, Tyler! Evan didn't mean for any of this to happen too! We can't sit here and cry about it though! We need to get out of here! We need to get help! So please, get up and let's get out of here!" Lui yelled, more aggressive than he meant to be. Tyler stared at him for a few moments before nodding slowly. "Come on…" He took the still smoking gun from Tyler's hand and setting it on the floor as he helped him stand. They stumbled towards the door, Tyler's bloody shoulder pressed against Lui who cringed at the feeling of the blood soaking his already bloodstained sweater. "Let's get out of here…"
The sound of metal scraping on the wooden floor made Lui sick, turning slowly to see Evan rise to his feet, a bloody hole on his forehead where the bullet had hit him. Evan reached forwards, his hand curling around Tyler's shoulder. He dragged him back with inhuman strength, throwing him to the floor.
"Tyler!" Lui cried, desperately reaching for him.
"Run! Get out of here!" Tyler yelled, his eyes on the axe as Evan raised it above his head. Lui hesitated, remembering what Tyler had told him about fighting back. "Run!" Tyler screamed again.
Lui turned and ran from the bloody room, Tyler's cry of agony echoing down the hall after him.
Somewhere in the house, the clock tolled five.