-CHAPTER 4-

-Noodle-

Everybody reacts to danger differently. For some people it's a drug. Their blood starts to rush, their muscles twitch, and they run to meet it without even considering the risk. Other people become so calm and precise they can walk into a burning building or wrestle a shark and come out without a single scratch. There are people who can face danger with a smile and there are people who can do nothing but run away from it. All of these responses are perfectly normal and acceptable—even running away if need be.

Running away is exactly what I did. I may not have done it physically—my body never left the studio. Instead, I ran away to someplace safe deep inside myself. I don't know how long I stayed there. There was no concept of time in the place I had run to. It was warm and dark and quiet. Safe. Vaguely pleasant. I didn't know if I wanted to stay there or if I wanted to leave. I didn't know anything. I didn't have to know anything while I was there.

I don't know how long I would have stayed there if I would have been left to myself. Maybe forever. Maybe not.

The first thing I noticed was that I was drifting. My head felt as though it was a thousand miles away from my feet. My feet felt weightless and my body felt scrambled.

Something was pulling me back together; forcing my head to connect to my spine to connect to my legs to connect to my feet. It was a sound. At first it was so far away I couldn't identify what it was. Then I was on a bullet train that was thundering towards it. The sound became louder, closer, and suddenly I knew that it was Russel's voice. He was shouting about something and he sounded furious.

I tried to ask him what he was so angry about, but my voice wouldn't come out of my throat. All I could do was listen.

"I said leave him the hell alone, Muds! Let him go!"

"What were you thinking in that feeble mind of yours, shit-for-brains?"

"It wasn't me…Murdoc, I swear it wasn't!" That was 2D. He sounded dazed, like when he takes a heavy dose of painkillers. "Didn't you see—"

"Well if it wasn't you then who the fuck was it? By all means, enlighten me."

And suddenly my world was graced with light and full color. I was back in the studio and I still had handfuls of discarded hair stuck to my sweat-soaked palms. I didn't try to scrape it off. Instead I turned around to look at my three band mates. Russel was standing between 2D and Murdoc. 2D looked as dazed as he'd sounded, but I didn't think it was because of the bruise that was forming beside his left eye. He had strings of shiny, brown-black film dangling from his hands. I felt an insane urge to laugh at the image—Just like that hair that's stuck to my hands, I thought. Murdoc was looking at 2D with murder in his eyes. None of them seemed to notice me.

2D shook his head and said, "I don't know who—"

"Bullshit!" Murdoc moved as if he wanted to sidestep around Russel, but his movements were clumsy and Russel had no trouble stopping him.

"You know, Muds, if Noodle wasn't standing over there comatose I would seriously consider kicking your ass," Russel snarled.

"Oh, go ahead and try it."

I watched the argument go on this way for several minutes. Murdoc accuses 2D of committing some sort of transgression, presumably destroying a demo tape. 2D denies it. Murdoc tries to get around Russel. Russel stops him, usually with some sort of mild threat. Murdoc responds to Russel's threat and then accuses 2D of committing the crime. And so on.

Something about the repetitive nature of their argument brought me fully back to my senses. Maybe it was the familiarity of it. Arguments between the three of them often followed this pattern. Whatever the reason, I felt a sense of calm roll over me. The slick of cold sweat that soaked my face and body began to dry. My muscles stopped quivering. Normalcy was temporarily restored.

When it became obvious that their fighting was not going to stop for some time, I quietly slipped out of the studio. There was no point in watching it any longer. I knew that eventually Murdoc would storm off to the carpark, Russel would mutter under his breath and fiddle around with his hip-hop machine for the next several hours, and 2D would wander off to find his painkillers to treat the headache that all the yelling had brought on. Except that wasn't what happened this time.

Instead, 2D came barreling out of the studio shouting, "Noodle, wait!"

I pushed the button for the lift and waited to hear Russel or Murdoc come storming out of the studio after him. They didn't. The lift doors opened and 2D followed me inside. He waited until the doors closed. Then he said, "Are you all right?"

I quickly nodded yes. Too quickly. He frowned and pressed, "Are you sure? You're bleeding."

I brought a shaky hand up to my cheek and felt a raw sting. There was a thin trickle of blood there but nothing serious. It was already starting to scab. Even so the, the scratch scared me. Now they can touch me, I thought. Or did I do this to myself? Either way, I felt disgusting.

I felt as though I was choking on something. There was a dull ache behind my eyes and in my nose. I was afraid to answer 2D's question. I couldn't trust my voice. All I knew was that I had to get away from him before he asked another question.

The lift's doors opened and I stepped off. I was almost safe. In a few more seconds the doors would close again and then he would be gone.

"What was that thing that scratched you?"

I felt my heart stop. It was a like a ball of ice in my chest. I could have ignored the question. I could have kept walking, all the way back to my room where I would play with chords and melodies on my guitar while I pretended everything was normal. I didn't.

"I do not know." My voice sounded tight and weak. I can't stand that tone of voice. It makes other people worry and fuss. I hated myself for using it.

"So you saw it, too," he whispered to himself. I heard his footsteps in the hall behind me as the lift's doors whirred shut. "That's good. Not…not that you had to see it, but good that I'm not going crazy."

I shook my head. "I thought I was going crazy, but now you can see them, too, so I do not know what to think anymore."

"Wait…what do you mean? Have you seen that thing before?"

I didn't want to say anything more. I was afraid that putting it into words would make it real and it was too horrible to be real. But you're not going crazy, I reminded myself. Not unless we both are. If he sees them then he needs to know. I turned around to face him. "I have seen them for a long time."

His empty eyes went wide. "Them? You mean there's more than one of those things?" I nodded. "How many are there?"

"I am not sure. There are many. Ten. Or perhaps fifteen."

"Are they all like the one that was…?"

"Almost all of them. Taro-kun is the only one that is different."

He bunched his eyebrows together and said, "Who's Taro-kun?"

I chewed my lip, suddenly wishing I hadn't mentioned Taro-kun. There was no need to discuss him, but now there was no escape. "He is younger than I am, and he looks like a normal boy. I do not know his real name; I think that he cannot speak. That is why I call him Taro-kun."

Something new occurred to me and I blurted it out without thinking: "He is the only male."

2D didn't seem to understand the significance of this new fact. Perhaps it only seemed important because it was new to me. It always seemed terribly important whenever I noticed something new about the visions I'd been seeing. At the time it seemed absolutely imperative that he understand this new piece of information, so I repeated it slowly and carefully: "All of the others are like the one you saw downstairs. Taro-kun is the only male."

-Russel-

I don't know how long we'd been arguing without noticing that Noodle had left. My tolerance for Murdoc's attitude was wearing thin and I was about to walk away from the whole thing. I was fairly sure that Murdoc had blown off enough steam by this point to let 2D fend for himself. Plus, I was starting to suspect that Murdoc was so hung-over he wouldn't be too much of a threat.

I was about to open my mouth to deliver my exit line when I noticed that 2D wasn't looking at Murdoc anymore. He was looking at a point somewhere behind Murdoc with a glazed expression on his face.

"What is it, D?" I asked.

The question had come out sounding much harsher than I'd meant, and he winced a little before saying," Where…where's Noodle?"

Behind me, I heard Murdoc turn around to look around him. "Damn," he said, but all of the fire had gone out of his face and the swear sounded hollow. I turned around slowly, already knowing what I was about to see. 2D was right; Noodle had disappeared.

For a few seconds, we were all silent because every one of us knew that we had made a very, very big mistake. I think we were all afraid to say anything out loud because it had been our voices that had caused us to lose her and we didn't want to cause something else to happen.

2D was first to recover. "I tried to tell you," he whispered.

Murdoc and I turned around to face him cautiously. His voice had been low, but it was dripping with an uncharacteristic fury that was almost frightening.

"I tried to tell you," he repeated. "Something was here. I saw it. It might have even been what hurt Noodle but you wouldn't hear any of that, would you?"

"Now look here, face-ache, if you think you can just—"

"Oh, shut up, Murdoc!" 2D snapped. Murdoc stared at him in disbelief and, surprisingly, he did close his mouth.

2D had turned a sickly shade of yellow, and he was shivering, but he kept talking in that same unnervingly hostile tone. "I tried to tell you and all you did was scream at me over this—" he gave the film in his hands a shake. The long, dark strands whispered dryly. "—which wasn't even my fault and you said it was all shit besides! And now we've gone and…and fucked up Noodle even more than she was! What's the matter with you?"

And with that he stormed off towards the door. "Where are you going?" Murdoc was so surprised he sounded like a wounded kitten.

"To find Noodle, so you can both just fuck off!"

The door slammed behind him. Murdoc and I just stared at each other in goggling disbelief. 2D—carefree, easygoing, good-natured 2D who was too spaced out to care about anything more often than not—had just delivered a Murdoc-sized tantrum. It was as though a volcano had erupted or an earthquake had flattened the room into rubble. Finally Murdoc scoffed and muttered, "Who does that little leech think he is? Me?"

"I don't know, Muds." All of the tension that had been building in me over the course of the fight had drained away with the shock of 2D's outburst, and I wasn't angry at Murdoc anymore. I was just tired. "I'm telling you, something strange is going on here."

He kicked at a twisted tendril of film on the ground. "This is KONG, Russ. Let me tell you a little secret, just in case you missed the zombies, demons, and other supernatural codswallop: there's always something strange going on here."

"I know that. This is different."

"Psh. Different how?"

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Getting through to Murdoc with a hang-over is a lot like dealing with a petulant child, but only about half as effective. I decided to try anyway, for Noodle's sake at least. "Noodle's never been afraid of anything around here before. She was cool with the zombies since day one. Whatever this is, it's something new."

"Something new, eh? Come to mention it, I do remember something a bit odd from last night." (I raised an eyebrow. If his current state was any indication, he'd consumed enough alcohol to forget the events of the past two weeks. Still, I let him go on without any remarks about the reliability of his memory.)

"It was after the recording session," he said. He ground the twisted bit of film under his bare foot. "I saw Noodle while I was waiting for the lift. She was talking to some imaginary friend that she'd invented for herself. Er…Terry-goon, she called him. Or maybe it was Tori-loon. Something along those lines."

I frowned. Noodle had always been a bit odd—we all had to be in order to live in KONG without going insane—but she had never seemed the type of kid to need an imaginary friend. Fainting, crying, imaginary friends…none of it seemed to fit with the girl who had popped out of the FedEx crate and laid down a face-melting guitar riff all those years ago.

I was about to tell Murdoc so, but then I noticed that he was already on his way out of the instrument room. "Hey, Muds, where are you going?"

"Ugh. Back to bed. Whatever's going on it can wait until I feel—oh, what the hell is this now?"

In the middle of his reply, all of the lights in the studio had blinked out, leaving us in pitch darkness. From somewhere in front of me, I heard him say, "Russ, do we have a flashlight down here? Last thing I need is to trip over some rubbish somebody left lying about on the floor and break my neck."

"Hold on. I'll check."

I could hear him stumbling around the room, and even though I couldn't see him I definitely felt him when he stepped on my foot. Unfortunately, I was also close enough to smell his breath as he muttered a string of unprintable curse words under his breath.

I wrinkled my nose at the rank stench (even taking his general lack of personal hygiene into account, it seemed especially rancid that morning), and said, "Geez, Muds, you think you could brush your teeth every once in a while?"

"Funny," he muttered. "I was just about to tell you to ease up on all those bean burritos."

"That's not you?"

"The hell it is." There was a crash, another shouted expletive, then: "Ha! Found it."

A switch clicked, and then the flashlight blinked to life. In the yellow beam of light I could see Murdoc standing amid the scattered pile of tambourines he'd knocked from the shelf. I could also see the outline of two vaguely humanoid things writhing on the floor in the middle of the room. The torsos were recognizably human. The skin was discolored and pocked with deep slashes, but they were definitely human. (I could see ribs. Collar bones. One of them had a belly button ring. I swear to Jesus one of them had a pink rhinestone belly button stud.) The rest was a mishmash of arms bent the wrong way, legs bent at impossible angles, necks slit open with gaping, black wounds, faces—I couldn't look at the faces. Part of me thought (stupidly, crazily), Well at least now we know where the smell is coming from.

I let out something that sounded like a breathless rasp of a laugh. My brain had gone blank at the grotesque sight and it wasn't quite sure how to deal with it, so another horrified laugh snuck out. Murdoc's voice was a high, whining whisper as he said, "What the fuck…what the fuck…."

And then those things, those disgusting abominations moved. Their malformed legs were moving and they were hobbling towards us. Something in the way they moved was enough to convince me that they were more sentient than the zombies that infested the grounds outside the building. I also noticed with a sense of gut-wrenching horror that they were faster.

Murdoc and I didn't fend them off with weapons improvised from the musical instruments in the room. We didn't bust out any impressive hand-to-hand combat skills. We did the only thing we could have done. We turned tail and ran.

Author's Notes: Holy heck this story is back from the dead. Believe it or not, I've still got my outline for this thing, so hopefully I'll be able to get it finished this time around. In the meantime, I'd like to thank everyone who has reviewed, or added this story to your favorites lists, or put it on alert. It means a lot to me to know that people are reading this story, and I appreciate all of the feedback.

Next chapter: "Out of the Frying Pan"