Here's a little bit of terror for you!! *wink* Brirey, don't you worry, it's about to get scarier!!!
Chapter 10: Vanishing Act
Day Four at the Haunted House
The morning was kind of awkward as they all sat in the living room.
"Are you still mad at me?" Batista asked Rey quietly.
"I'm grateful you came and got me last night, I am, I would have been lost in there until morning or worse if you hadn't found me. But…I don't really like the reason why you were able to find me," Rey explained.
He was a nervous wreck, twitchy and frightened by any noise he couldn't identify. Batista had told him that morning about what he'd seen on the stairs. Maybe he shouldn't have, but he felt like maybe having another piece of the puzzle might help Rey solve this thing.
Everyone silently noted that Batista had an immaculately cleaned little cut on his temple that someone had stuck some gauze and medical tape over when they'd gotten back.
Batista had loved that the injury had made Rey put his hands all over him, but he didn't like that it was one more thing for Rey to fuss over until he worked himself up into an anxiety-ridden mess.
They'd both explained to the others where they went last night. No one knew where Sylvia could have gone or why she would have screamed out there except that maybe there was another ghost on the loose, and that was the one that had taken Jericho.
"You should be the one angry with him, Batista, he hit you in the head with a flashlight," Shawn said.
Rey squeezed his pant legs and looked guiltily at Batista.
"You shut your trap; he apologized like eighteen times and nearly gave himself a seizure worrying about this cut," Batista growled.
"Dave, I'm sorry, it was an accident, I-" Rey said for the nineteenth time, terrified that Batista hated him for his mistake.
Batista touched Rey's hand, which was sitting on the luchador's thigh. "Rey," Batista said very gently.
Rey blinked and stopped talking.
"Don't worry about it. It's over with."
Batista smiled at him. "Okay?"
Rey squeezed his friend's hand and nodded. "Okay."
Shawn glared at them. He really hadn't expected Batista to be the one to hold their friendship together when Rey wasn't up to it. Was there really not a weak link between the two of them?
"Should we go back into the forest and look for Sylvia? Or try to find what she wanted to show me?" Rey asked, speaking to no one in particular.
Batista eyed Rey. "You can't find your way back to where you were, can you?"
Rey fidgeted. "You know I have a really bad sense of direction…"
"Can you find your way back without me?"
"No," Rey admitted. "All those trees look the same at night…I don't know where I was."
Batista sighed. "I'll take you back there, just not today, Rey."
"But, Dave-" Rey pleaded.
Batista shook his head and crossed his arms authoritatively. Now was one of the first times anyone had seen their roles reversed. Rey, despite being younger and more on the petite side, was typically the one to take the reins in their relationship.
"No buts, Rey. We're not going out there again just yet. I got a bad feeling about those woods." He looked at his friend. "You won't try to go in there without me, will you?"
Rey shook his head. "No."
Silence.
"So we never did find that basement door, did we…?" Triple H put in.
"Let's try to find it today," Rey suggested, glad that there was something for him to do now.
"All right. Let's break up into the groups we were going to film in and search for that door, then," Triple H said. "Hop to it, people."
FOUR GROUPS
Jeff Hardy and C.M. Punk
Rey and Batista
Chris Jericho, Edge and John Cena
Randy Orton, Triple H and HBK
Rey and Batista were on the second floor. The search was taking them forever because they had to knock on all the walls and try to make sure windows weren't actually doors in disguise and that lamps weren't secret levers to hidden passageways like in Scooby Doo or something. They were deep into a hallway and Dave had turned on their flashlight in order to see through the shadows. The sun couldn't light this place all the way through even at the height of the day.
"Rey, could you walk forward a little?" Batista requested suddenly.
"Why?" Rey asked, looking over his shoulder at Dave.
"You're standing on something."
"Some people call them 'rugs', Dave," Rey said dryly.
Batista rolled his eyes. "No, not the rug. Something's under the rug. It looks like a trapdoor."
"Trapdoor?" Rey repeated curiously and stepped forward a pace or two, turning around.
There was a profound creaking sound from the floor beneath him and the boards snapped suddenly.
Rey gasped and dove forward, clinging onto the edge of the hole in the floor. He was hanging onto one floorboard and that whined for a second before breaking, too. He managed to bolt over to the left to a better floorboard before he dropped.
Rey gasped for breath, shocked. From the waist down he was just dangling in midair over some gaping black abyss.
Rey had caused a domino effect. The floor groaned and fell away within an ovular radius of where Rey had been standing when he fell through initially.
He blinked, frightened. "Dave…"
The floor behind him creaked and moaned for a minute and snapped and fell away into the blackness. Rey shivered anxiously.
Batista gasped. Rey was too far away from him to reach; at least a yard too far. There was still another yard of floor in front of Rey that lay in between the hole he was dangling over and the wall.
"Rey! Try to get back over to me! Try that ledge in front of you near the wall! It looks stable!"
Rey swallowed and inched forward it.
It collapsed under the shifting of his weight and he grunted, throwing himself forward, managing to get his hands on the single floorboard that was directly beside the wall. Rey was holding on only by his fingertips. Luckily he was wearing his wrestling gloves and so his traction was solid.
Rey gulped and grunted again, lifting his body below him.
He pulled himself up over the edge and pressed himself against the wall.
Batista grabbed Rey and retreated with him back a safe distance from the hole. Dave pulled Rey into his lap protectively. They were on the solid floor a few feet in front of where the trapdoor had been.
"I think you were just a little bit wrong about that ledge, Dave," Rey panted.
"Yeah, uh…sorry about that."
"Thank God you're that fast, otherwise you would have been a goner," Dave noted worriedly, squeezing Rey's waist.
Rey nodded. "I don't know how I…how I did that. My reflexes just kicked in."
"You okay, man?" Batista asked Rey, who was still breathing through his mouth and nose at the same time.
Rey felt like he'd never get enough air in his body. Jesus, that was so scary. Who could've expected the floor to collapse like that?
"Why do you think it fell through like that?" Rey asked, looking over the edge from where he was. It was pitch black down there, but on the other side he saw some stairs leading down. They were tan-colored but that was probably the color the dust leant them. And they were probably supposed to have railings, too, but those were long gone. Rotted away. Most of the house was made of wood, and the stairs were most likely wooden, too. The problem with that now is that wood that old ceases to hold any weight at all, regardless of what weight class you are. Even Rey could fall straight through them, they just weren't that stable.
"You fell through the part just behind the trapdoor, the part of the floor that the trapdoor was hooked onto. The trapdoor dropped off down into the hole when the boards holding its hinges collapsed."
"That makes sense. But…why did the floor I was on drop away in the first place?"
Batista felt around the floor where they were sitting.
"Because there are beams under this part. But there must not be beams under where you were."
"What? You mean, like, the foundation of the house is holding up certain parts but not others? How can we tell which part is stable?" Rey asked worriedly.
"No, no. The foundation is holding on everywhere where there is a foundation. It's just that…" Batista shone his flashlight around the edges of the dark hole. At the far edge of the abyss was the tip of a beam beneath the floor. "There aren't any beams where the hole is. It has no foundation there, just the wooden floor on top of nothing."
"God, so there's a gap…" Rey said, understanding. "I could have fallen right through. This floor is so old and rotted it can't possibly support people walking on it any more."
"Why didn't they put beams under there?" he asked Dave.
"Because the stairs are right under that floor that collapsed. They couldn't put foundation and stairs in the same place, Rey."
"Why did they need stairs to go down beneath the-" Rey stopped himself. "This must be the basement, Dave, the house is supposed to have a basement, and we couldn't find the door for it."
"Well, I guess you just did find it then," Batista agreed.
"Don't tell me you want to go down there," he said, watching Rey's curiosity.
"I- no, no, what gives you that idea?"
Batista raised his eyebrow. "Your expressions are easier to read than a book, Rey."
Rey rolled his eyes. "No, I don't want to go down there and get attacked by the boogeyman. No."
"You do, too. You're interested now."
Rey turned away so that Batista couldn't see his face. He frowned and squinted and edged closer, but there was no use. He couldn't see from where he was.
"He could be down there, Dave; you don't know that he's not. He's probably in there. We checked all the rooms."
"There's the attic, too," Dave reminded him, swallowing.
"What? You'd rather I go fall through the attic stairs instead of the basement stairs?"
Dave frowned at him. "No. The attic looks stable. This doesn't."
"Well, guess where I was with Sylvia when she gave me frostbite the other night?"
Dave sighed. "The attic."
Rey nodded. "Yeah. And he's not up there. And you know that, too, come to think of it. You guys searched the attic, didn't you? Unless you lied to me and only said you searched it!"
Batista twiddled his fingers sheepishly.
"Well, did you look there or not?" Rey demanded.
"We looked," Batista admitted.
"And?"
"And he wasn't there, no," Batista confessed. He really didn't want Rey to go down into the basement. He didn't like that big black abyss. He didn't trust it. And Rey was so sweet and little and handsome...if there was a monster or a socipath around, Dave couldn't stand to think what it would do to him.
Rey narrowed his eyes at Batista in determination. "He has to be in the basement, Dave."
"I know, Rey, but I don't want you to go down there."
"I'm all adrenaline right now. I could go down there. Just give me the flashlight, Dave, come on. I have to know where Jericho is."
Rey held out his hand.
Dave hid the flashlight behind his back.
Rey exhaled exasperatedly through his nose.
"Oh that's cute. Stop acting like a seven-year-old, I'll be fine!"
Rey stepped quickly to the side, trying to reach behind Dave and grab it, but Batista stepped back, avoiding him.
"You're not going down there, Rey, no! Just give it a rest!"
Dave walked over to the opposite side of the hole, leading Rey . If Rey wanted to go down the steps, then he'd have to walk away from them first. This was brilliant on Dave's part because even if Rey managed to snatch the flashlight, he would still have to run back a few yards to reach the stairs again. And Dave could most likely tackle him before he could ever get that far.
Rey noticed this and hesitantly followed Dave to the other side.
"There we go, now you can't get down there," Dave said once they were both on the other side, switching the light into his other hand.
"Give me the flashlight, Dave!" Rey shouted in frustration.
"No!"
"What's up, guys? Are you having a custody battle over your lighting equipment?" Punk asked, turning the corner with Jeff Hardy and shining his flashlight teasingly up into Batista's eyes.
Rey used the opportunity to snatch their flashlight away from Dave.
"Hey!" the Animal exclaimed.
Rey grinned wickedly and, mimicking Dave, tucked the light behind his back.
Batista glared at him. "You're not going down there and that's final."
Punk laughed and said, "What, these stairs over here?"
Rey looked away for a second and met Punk's eyes. "Yeah, those. We think that's the way to the basement."
"Our lost guy could be down there," Jeff piped up.
"Our sentiments exactly," Rey said.
Dave lunged for the flashlight and Rey hopped back easily.
"Ooh, too slow," Rey teased.
Batista reached and Rey dodged again.
Batista sighed. "Give it back, Rey. I can take it from you any time I want to. So just save your dignity and fork it over."
"I don't think you can take it back. So don't you worry about my dignity, you worry about your own," Rey asserted.
Batista narrowed his eyes. "I can and I will take that thing from you, now hand it over."
"I'd like to see you try to take it," Rey dared, lifting his chin confidently.
Batista charged and Rey sidestepped him at the last second on purpose so that Dave ended up clunking his forehead into the wall.
"Jesus! Stop fighting dirty with me!" Batista complained, rubbing his head.
Jeff and Punk giggled.
"Hey, no commentary from the peanut gallery," Batista ordered.
Punk shrugged, "We're getting free entertainment here, Jeff," he joked.
Jeff clapped his hands theatrically. "I wish I had some popcorn. It's Mysterio:3 Batista:0 right now."
Dave snorted. "He couldn't get the light from me until you guys showed up."
Rey laughed. "Oh, get over it. Cry me a river."
Batista whipped back around at him. "Admit it, Rey, you're a little cheat."
"And where exactly are the rules for grabbing a flashlight?" Rey reminded him.
Batista groaned and tried again.
After two minutes he was panting and leaning over his knees.
Rey bounced energetically up and down from one foot to the other like a boxer. "I still have it…" he tempted, waving it around.
Dave reached for it, but Rey pulled it back.
"Aw, fuck this shit," Batista rasped and didn't aim for the light, but Rey himself.
Rey blinked and felt his midesection get barreled into.
"Ow! Jesus!" Rey blurted, sprawled out flat on his back.
Batista snatched up the light from his hand before he could recover.
Rey glared up at him.
"Like you said, there aren't any rules for grabbing a flashlight," Batista said, offering Rey his hand.
Rey smacked it away. "You're a cheat, too, you overgrown bull."
Batista smirked. "Aw, you're just a sore loser, Rey."
Rey stood up by himself and brushed himself off. "I am not; you just can't ever resist using your weight against me, can you?"
"What, are you calling me fat, now?"
"I don't know, what are you, like five hundred pounds?"
Batista rolled his eyes.
"Break it up, now! Break it up!" Punk said, waving them down. He chuckled. It was funny to see the two friends not getting along for once and arguing like a couple of teenagers. "How about me and Jeff go down there for you and check things out?" he suggested.
"Yeah, we can do it," Jeff agreed.
Rey sighed. "All right, just be careful."
Batista frowned. "Watch the stairs."
"Scaredy cat," Rey muttered.
"I am not!" Batista yelled.
Punk set his foot daintily on the first step and patted it. He laid his sole down against it and it creaked. He winced and brought the other foot over. When it didn't cave, everyone breathed again.
Punk stepped down slowly, one stair at a time, and got to the bottom.
"About how far down is it?" Rey shouted.
"I'd say like twelve or fifteen feet!" Punk shouted back. "Come on in, Jeff, the water's fine!" he said, laughing.
Jeff smiled and pattered down the stairs quickly but gingerly.
Rey sat down on his haunches and furrowed his brow, waiting and listening as the two stomped around on the floor beneath him.
Batista didn't sit, and he couldn't stop walking around behind Rey.
"You're making me nervous, just stop moving," Rey told him.
"I can't help it, I don't like basements," Batista grunted.
"You what now?"
"I don't like basements…" Batista repeated, mumbling this time.
Rey stared disbelievingly up at him. "At your size?" He turned back around, shaking his head. "You really are a scaredy cat."
"Stop calling me that or I'll find something high up to dangle you over," Batista threatened.
Rey was afraid of heights.
"I'm building a basement in my house the second I get back home," Rey taunted.
Batista huffed.
They were quiet for a minute.
Dave was about to say, "Don't," when they heard a loud snap.
Then a scream.
Rey's entire body froze.
"What was that?" Dave asked.
Rey stood up and scrambled over the edge of the hole to the other side before Dave could do anything to stop him.
"PUNK!! JEFF!" Rey yelled urgently from the top of the stairs.
Awkwardly, Dave followed him to the other side.
"Rey! Don't go down there without a light! Wait a second!"
"GUYS!" Rey shouted nervously.
He was nearly taken off his feet again as Punk bolted up the steps and ran his torso smack into Rey's face. Rey stumbled back and held Punk at the elbows.
"Easy! Easy! Where's Jeff?"
"We gotta go, we gotta go, Rey! We can't stay right here!" Punk blurted, jumping up and down and shaking.
"Why? What's down there? Where is he? Did he fall?"
Punk opened his mouth to speak, but he was too scared to answer. The flashlight in his hand was shaking.
Rey shook him. "Punk, where's Jeff?!"
"Something got him, Rey, I think it was another ghost, it sounded like a monster or a demon or something, man, we hafta leave, we hafta leave!"
"Okay, okay, go on," Rey said and pushed Punk towards the hallway. Punk crossed over to the other side of the hole, away from the basement stairs.
"Stay close to me, Rey," Batista ordered his friend and followed Punk halfway to the other side.
He assumed Rey was following him, but he wasn't.
Rey swallowed and inched closer to the stairs, looking down into the darkness, searching desperately for Jeff. He took a couple steps forward and nearly had his foot on the first stair when he jolted like he'd touched an electrical outlet.
"No, Rey, don't go down there!" Punk warned.
Rey flushed. "Dios mio."
He ran.
Batista seized Rey's arm roughly, not taking any chances on the luchador refusing to follow him again.
They all took off and didn't stop running until they made it into the living room.
Rey yanked his arm away from Dave and glared at him.
"I'm not your dog, stop pulling on me like that," Rey said, rubbing his bicep where Batista's hand had been.
The area of skin was a different color than the rest of Rey's arm; Dave's grip had been so tight.
"Sorry, Rey, I didn't mean to hurt you," Batista said sadly, reaching out to touch the marks apologetically.
Rey pulled back. "Get your hands off me!"
He stalked away.
Rey and Punk collapsed onto a couch. Punk turned off his flashlight, suddenly remembering that he had it. He was much paler than usual.
The Animal knelt down in front of the two men.
"What did you see?!" Batista demanded.
Punk didn't respond, he was too frightened.
"Rey?!"
Rey had fallen into deep thought, imagining what it was that he had seen. He shook his head. Everything he said came out in Spanish for a second for no reason at all.
"Fantasma…ah…muy mal…"
He shuddered.
"Rey, what are you saying?"
"Did he just say 'phantasm'?" Punk asked.
"Ci," Rey said. He shook himself. "I…I mean, yes, yes. A ghost. A ghost."
"Was it Sylvia?" Batista asked. "Is she turning on us?"
Rey shook his head fervently. "No, it wasn't her, she's…I feel like she's good. I never feel bad around her. What was down there, it…"
Rey frowned, forgetting how to describe it.
"You said 'muy mal' a second ago," Batista reminded him.
Rey nodded. "Yes, yes. That's it."
"It felt 'muy mal'?"
Rey nodded.
"Rey, I don't speak any fucking Spanish, so just calm down and translate that phrase for me."
Rey blinked. "Oh. Sorry. It means 'very evil'."
Batista flushed. "You saw a very evil ghost?!"
Rey shook his head. "I…I didn't see it clearly, it was like a shadow, like a shadow person, but it was so thick, like…not like fog, or clouds…just shadow," Rey said, thinking.
"Punk, did you see it clearly?" Batista turned to the other wrestler. "Was it a person? Was it a ghost? Was it one of the guys? What was it?"
Punk shrugged shakily. "I don't know. I can't say for sure. Just one second Jeff was right beside me and the next, he was screaming and something pulled him away from me into the dark."
He sniffled and dove into Rey. "Oh, God it was terrible! Jeff, I'm so sorry…"
Punk sobbed into the smaller wrestler's t-shirt.
Rey looked down at him pityingly and patted his back.
"We're using the fucking buddy system from now on," Batista concluded grimly.
"We have to call off the search for now, Dave; I don't want anybody else to get lost in the process," Rey said, rubbing Punk's back.
"Okay," Batista agreed. He just stood there.
He wished Rey would just get his damn hands off of Punk. He felt guilty that he was getting so possessive that he was at the point where he couldn't even tolerate Rey holding someone who was crying. But still, Rey should take his goddamn adorable hands off of him. He shook himself.
He was getting far too possessive; he needed to go back to anger management as soon as possible. Batista swallowed, looking at the bruises emerging on Rey's arm in the shape of his fingers. He made a mental note to ask his therapist, Dr. Jimenez why he'd done such a thing without meaning to.
"What the fuck are you still doing here?! Go get Shawn and Cena's groups!" Rey screamed angrily.
"Don't you start shouting at me just 'cause you're stressed! Jesus!" Batista swore.
"Go. Get. Them. Now!!" Rey fumed.
"Fuck you, Rey, I'm not leaving you two here alone by yourselves!"
"Fuck your fucking loco-ass buddy system! GO GET THEM, PENDEJO!" Rey shouted.
"NO!" Batista argued.
Punk sat up and wiped his eyes. "We can all go together…"
Rey huffed and muttered obscenities and stood up, snatched Punk's hand in his, and stormed off.
Batista speed-walked to keep up with him.