A/N: Apologies for the long break between uploads! I've had my final exams this year so haven't had much time to work on stories until now. I hope this slightly longer chapter makes up for it!
-CHAPTER TWO-
So I'd just escaped the creepy zombie dogs and entered the creepy old musty house. If you don't believe me when I say it's creepy, well, imagine this: the room is so dark I have to use a flashlight, and this is due to the windows being ashed-up. Ash. How did ash even get here? From that mine that collapsed earlier? I was in desperate need of some answers at this point because, seriously, what had happened here? How does a ghost town even form? I don't honestly know but the first thing to enter everyone's mind when you think about the formation of a ghost town is something horrible. Massacre. Plague. Monsters. The last one is always in movies, but could you blame me for considering it?
The room I entered - a kitchen, if the rusty stove and crumbling wall tiles gave anything away - had been painted a pale blue colour some time ago. I use the term 'had' because pretty much all the paint had peeled off by this point due to a build-up of mildew or something. Some of it looked like it had manually been peeled off, however. Violently peeled off. It made me wonder if someone had been living here whilst the walls began to rot. Must have been a depressing life to let your walls rot like that. Just watching your life rot before your eyes and accepting that fact. I had half a mind to close the window behind me but, if I learnt one thing from watching Zombieland, it was survival rules and this was an example of rule number twenty two: 'When In Doubt, Know Your Way out'. Ok. I haven't watched that film too many times I swear and, well, maybe I was taught survival skills from S.H.I.E.L.D training and the carnie, but I preferred to imagine myself on the set of a zombie film because it made this whole thing less weird (despite not having a buddy, so I was failing rule number twenty nine already unless you counted my bow). I would get out of the town and see Stark grinning his ass off before revealing that this was all an elaborate prank which he caught on camera.
I decided to test my theory with the hidden cameras because monsters couldn't exist. Aliens existed - New York proved that. God's did. Men who turned into radioactive monsters... Ok so maybe a town had been wiped out by zombies. Anyway to test my theory, I started to search the kitchen for cameras but there weren't any. But to be fair I couldn't see jack with the lack of lighting and Stark could easily conceal them so I didn't lose hope just yet. Either way, I needed to find Stark and get out of town, and that wasn't going to happen if I stayed put and waited for the road to collapse in. I figured I should exit through the other side of the building in order to slip past the dogs. They could probably smell me, though. I did an awful lot of running, and it was likely I was the only living thing nearby, but I figured I could trick them with some meat if I ended up getting corner so I went looking for some.
That was definitely one of my less-intelligent moves. I'd told myself over and over again that the town must have been abandoned for years, so of course there wouldn't be any food. When I opened the fridge to check, I got a nose-full of sour black rot which was covering the shelves inside. I stood there watching this thick black gunk ooze down onto the floor, hitting my boots in the process. The stuff was thick and, well, the only word I could think of was chunky - not like smooth slime you'd imagine. Bits would clump together as something, whatever it was in there, began rotting away. I clamped a hand over my nose and mouth because the smell was that rancid and, if I wasn't careful with it, I would definitely end up with some kind of disease. Smart move getting it on me. The water in the faucet was bound to be even more dangerous (if it even worked) so I had to leave it there as what else could I do? It wasn't corrosive - all I had to do was leave it alone and not touch it.
The best move would be to leave the kitchen alone before I did something else stupid as, if I got a serious infection out here, then what could I do? I had no radio for Christ's sake. I could feel my heart rate pitch slightly at the thought, which was completely stupid. I've been in situations worse than this over the years, but back then someone was always there. Villains, teammates, civilians. There was nothing this time. It made my skin tighten. I ended up clamping a hand tight against my nose again due to the blubbery stench filling the air of the livingroom. The whole house stank of decay. Oh, but it wasn't just rotting paint: there was the unforgettable smell of rotting flesh. Now, I'm pretty sure Tony hadn't gotten his hands on putres- (Putrestin? Putristine? Putrescine? Something. It's the chemical which causes the smell dead bodies give off when they rot - at least that's what Stark had said when his whole lab stank of death a while back and I believed him as it was fucking creepy imagining him as a serial killer but now I'm not too sure) so this had to be the real thing and, well, I wasn't exactly comfortable with that. Regardless of how many dead bodies you encounter - unless you're Tasha - the smell still gets to you. It digs itself under your skin and stays there no matter how many hours you spend scouring away the stench.
Part of me wanted to check out the smell, but deep down I did not want to know. The town was abandoned - no one needed to know about a body and I just wanted to leave, really, because images of zombies crawled back into my mind. What if the ooze was what caused those zombie dogs? If it was the cause... I felt myself pale a little and the urge to get out became more dire. Quickly, I made my way to the front door of the apartment. There wasn't any meat in the kitchen to distract the dogs with, so all there was left to do was walk out and lea-
It was locked.
Of course it was locked.
Right then. Either there was a key in the house or the person locked the door on their way out and was long gone. I should have figured this would happen. I wanted to leave the creepy death house, so of course I'd get trapped in there. I decided to check the livingroom first as it didn't smell so bad in there compared to the hallway. Maybe I could find a working radio somewhere that I could use to send an SOS signal to some nearby radio station. S.H.I.E.L.D. would be monitoring all the nearby ones in case anything bad happened: like your radio freaking out and being attacked by zombie dogs and escaping into an apartment which smelt like a corpse. Yeah. This was going to be hard to explain back at headquarters - I bet you're reading this and thinking I'm just making shit up but I'm not I swear to god I'm not.
To prove I'm not, I'll even tell you that I tried to turn the TV on. I was in a place like this and I tried to turn the TV on to check the news because maybe, just maybe, someone knew about this town and could explain what was going on. I told you I wasn't making this up as that's exactly what I would do in that situation - try to get some more normalcy back into the world. I even got disappointed when it didn't work and, really, I was glad it didn't give me snow like my radio had. The sound of static was starting to make me uneasy after that incident in the fog. After that I managed to find some local newspaper articles on a coffee table. They'd yellowed a bit due to age, but I figured they could tell me something about what happened here.
As I read the article on the front page, I felt my blood go cold. The headline read: "BOY, 8, KILLS SELF IN SCHOOL BATHROOM"
I nearly saw red and wanted to throw that TV out of the window. An eight year old. He was eight years old. How in god's name does an eight year old get the desire to kill himself? And what kind of school even allows that to happen? They should have seen the signs. They should have noticed the kid was sad as kids that young? They don't really know how to lie. They can't hide something like suicidal thoughts from someone unless they're a spy, but I'm pretty certain Ray Knotts was not a spy.
He didn't get to be anything now.
The newspaper was written fifty years ago, so the kid would have been approaching retirement. Maybe he would have been a doctor or an astronaut. Maybe he would have been married with grandkids. In my grief, I needed to know why the kid wanted to die. The rest of the paper had been ripped off in the same mad fury which was present in the wallpaper, so I couldn't find out that way. It wasn't morbid curiosity or anything like that, but I had to know what was so horrible he wanted it to end and whether or not someone could have stopped it.
But I was in a ghost town and, maybe, I should leave the dead be. I'd already had enough zombies after me - I'd prefer it if another didn't come after me. Either way, I took the newspaper with me just in case anything came up again about Ray Knotts. The name seemed almost familiar to me, in a weird kind of way, which didn't surprise me considering the strange things already going on. The livingroom ended up being keyless and so I had to, grudgingly, check the other rooms. I had a quick glance in the bathroom, but there was too much rot in there to merit searching as, really, who would leave their front door key in the bathroom? If I had seen keys in the kitchen, I would have picked them up so there was only the bedroom left.
I could tell upon opening the door that this was the room with the dead body, because the smell was so rancid it made my eyes water. The thing was, I wasn't prepared for the body to be that of a child hanging limp and heavy from the ceiling - a thick rope clasped tight around her mangled neck. "...Shit." I cursed under my breath, placing my head against the door and closing my eyes tight in order to get ahold of my building anger. What was with the children here killing themselves? And where were their parents? Dead? I took a deep breath, choking slightly on the putrid smell, before searching the room - avoiding looking at the child because, really, I only got angrier the longer I looked at her.
I slammed shut a drawer with a sigh. There was still no key, but I had a horrible hunch where the key would be... Looking over my shoulder at the child again - god, she was covered in that black mold - I could make out some pockets on her dress. My stomach clenched. I'm not normally a queasy person, believe me - I eat all kinds of garbage, but just looking at her made me ill. I made my way over to her, getting spare pair of gloves out of my bag to change into afterwards. Reluctantly, I started to dig through her pockets, the texture of the mold thick and greasy, before finding what I only assumed was a key. The rot clung to the metal and, as I stepped back from her, I could faintly hear a dripping noise in the back corner of the room. One drop at a time as it hit a solid concrete surface.
How can I even describe the feeling of dread? Scientifically, you're going into the fight-or-flight response so your pupils dilate and your heart rate increases so much you can only hear the rush of blood through your ears. But mentally? Fear's hard to put your finger on. Some people flee, others find strength in it and push on, but me? Well, I get frustrated with it, as when your hands shake firing a bow is just that much harder. I shook my head before slowly checking over my shoulder.
Now things were getting weirder. Blood. I knew it was going to be blood. It wasn't dripping from the walls like in all those cliché horror movies me and Kate watch, no, it- well, it was dripping from the floor to the ceiling. Upwards. I didn't want to understand how that happened - I wasn't curious about everything like Stark - so I just took my key and left the room because that right there was unnatural. I used my map to figure out the nearest exit, if the road hadn't collapsed in on itself, before I went out to try and avoid the dogs. It almost reminded me of my childhood, sneaking past dogs. In the carnie, I was always avoiding guard dogs. The thought made me ill but I had to press on.
Outside was as foggy as always, but thankfully free of any... whatever noise those dogs made. I couldn't see anything beyond a meter ahead of me so the silence was the only thing I could go on. Having to rely on my hearing, my crappy hearing, was the worst but you do what you have to in order to survive, right? I took a left and started walking, my bow drawn in case anything decided to sneak up on me. Yet again, the only thing I could hear was my footsteps and that unearthly sensation of being watched crept in. I could feel sweat forming on my brow as my eyes darted to every shadow and every alley I passed.
It figures that actual movement would catch me completely off-guard. I hadn't heard footsteps, but a body ran past me and I fired my bow in shock, missing the figure as they kept heading down the street. My initial thought was of a monster and then perhaps Tony, as I realised the shape was humanoid. A monster would be expected at this point, but of course the town always did the unexpected, didn't it?
...It was Barney. Barney Barton. I blinked a few times but he was still there, my brother, running with a smile plastered on his face as he disappeared into the thick fog ahead of me. There was no way it was him, this was obviously a trap, and yet my feet began to move after him with desperation because it was Barney.
"WAIT!" I shouted stupidly, of course he wouldn't wait! He shouldn't even be here! My footsteps bounced off the walls of the alleyway I followed him down, then a left and a quick right - was he trying to lose me? Emerging from the cover of the buildings, I found myself at a crossroads. There was no sign of him, not with all the fog, and I suddenly felt extremely exposed. I couldn't see anything so surely nothing could see me. It was a ridiculous fear but, by following him, I lost track of where I was and that didn't bode well. I quickly decided to backtrack through the alleyway but, as the thought crossed my mind, I heard the metal scrape of a gate being slammed shut behind me and I could make out flashing red and blue lights in front of me. They were approaching at some speed. Diving out of the way onto the ground, I managed to dodge a police cruiser which came to a halt in front of me. The engine wasn't running, yet the lights were still flashing and... and there was no one in the dilapidated car.
At that point, I started to back off. Anywhere away from here would be good and I could find a signpost and then decide on another way out. That was when a loud, monotonous metallic screech began playing from the cruiser's speakers in a continuous drone. The noise was deafening, really, and I scrambled to turn off my hearing aids but the pain was too much and I was already worked-up. It was worse than nails ripping down a chalkboard and the pain...
I think I fainted from the pain.
The next thing I was aware of was laying on a rusting, metal grate, staring at my reflection in a moldy and just as rusting mirror. A metallic smell filled my lungs and the taste of copper was on my tongue, so I put my hand to my head to check for a cut or something as I assumed that I must be tasting dry blood. My head wasn't injured - the floor was literally that rusty. At least I hoped it was rust. For all I knew from the dim lighting it could have been dried blood. Shakily, I managed to get onto my feet and had a look around the room. Or, really, looked at myself sweaty and exhausted from every angle. The room was a room of mirrors, see? And there was a metal armoire to one side, covered in rust as well, yet I remembered the room from somewhere. I think it was a long time ago, back at the circus.
There was an assortment of items on the desk: lipstick, powder, a hat, a hairbrush. The latter I picked up because it was familiar, only for a violent shrieking to begin. I dropped the silver hairbrush, the horsehair bristles kicking up a cloud of dust as it landed, and clamped my hands over my ears, this time successfully turning off the hearing aids. It was a pointless move because the sound continued as prominent as before, like I could hear it in my head. The sound caused the mirrors to vibrate and shatter and I dove down into the middle of the room out of the way of the shards, clamping my eyes shut as my fingers dug into my scalp from the pain. It just kept going and going and how could I get it out of my head? How could I make it stop? It needed to stop. I place my forehead firmly against the ground, hoping the cold metal would find me relief but it was no use - I just had to wait it out in agony. Eventually the shrieking, or screaming - whatever it was, stopped and I opened my eyes to look around.
It wasn't the room of mirrors any more. I was in the middle of a red spotlight, everything outside of the circle bathed in complete darkness making the room seem completely endless and I was so very small in comparison. The light was as intense as a search spotlight you'd get alongside a prison wall, and the feeling of exposure when you were in it was the same. Not wanting to feel like a sitting duck, I took out my bow and readied an arrow only for the arrow to melt into that foul black ooze from before. What happened to my arrows?! I looked around again, only for lights in the distance to turn on and illuminate an... audience? No, it couldn't have been. They didn't look like people - only distorted rags soaked with red from whatever they were wrapped around. They each had a face painted on what I assumed was their head, a demented and proud smile which didn't look the slightest bit happy, and that's when it hit me. This was a circus ring and I was stood in the middle of it with an audience which didn't have souls.
A door slammed to my left and in came clowns riding on unicycles. Ugh, I always hated clowns - they were creepy - but these didn't have the foolish face of a clown painted on them. The face paint was savage and brutal, like they'd murdered someone viciously with a steel pipe, and razor-sharp teeth framed clearly behind lips which had permanently curled back. I tried to follow them as they circled around me, but then the shrieking started again and I had to close my eyes.
I wish I hadn't reopened them. The clowns became even more disfigured - they were severed from the waist down, and their body was replaced by the rusted unicycle they'd been riding on. They could still peddle without legs, though, as they used their arms but that didn't explain how they were still able to move with all that flesh. I could hardly see the unicycle because it was like the clown had started to grow around it. But that wasn't the worst part - that honor went to their necks. These were replaced by a large spring, like the type you get in a slinky, so they looked like a Jack-in-the-box minus the box. Only these Jack-in-the-boxes had fangs which dripped black ichor down their neck and onto their bodies. I've never seen anything so disturbing in my whole life, so of course when one of those heads lunged out to bite me I jumped out of the way and decide to make a run for it through the darkened ground.
Only there wasn't any ground beyond that red circle - the clowns had been riding on nothing - and I fell down and down and down. I couldn't be certain how long for because I couldn't see anything, couldn't feel anything but wind rushing by me, until I landed suddenly on the ground. A spotlight revealed the ground to be a... target? I saw the dagger catch the light as it was thrown towards me and I ignored the pain in my arm and dodged it, only for a clown to throw more of them at me and each of them to bore deep into the painted wood. Before I even come up with a plan to get off of the target, the next dagger flies straight for my head and I instinctively duck, the blade digging firmly into the centre of the bull's-eye. That caused my mind to go blank, as, really, there was too much information to take in – I'd nearly died! - and the adrenaline was just telling me to flee but I couldn't. The floor was moving, the light was blinding my eyes and there was the loud scrape of rusty metal against rusty metal, there was so much noise and the floor was moving out from under me.
I choked on the metallic taste of water as I fell in, sinking in the murky fluid. Bubbles began to fill the water and I realised it was being drained, so I tried to swim in the opposite direction but the pull of the drain was too much and I got caught against the grate at the bottom of the tank as the water finally emptied around me. Taking in a thankful lung of air, I coughed up as much water as I could before managing to sit up and look around to find out how to get out of here.
I... I was in a bathroom.
