Mike's feet hit the snow covered ground with a hard crunch as he climbs out of the helicopter, Sam and Chris close behind. He shrugs his jacket on tighter and zips it up to his chest, ignoring the chill that tries to work its way into his bones. Wearing two layers of clothing is a hell of a lot nicer than wandering around in a thin tank top and jeans. Being surrounded by other people in that creepy ass basement will also be a pleasant change this time around. And maybe this time he'll be able to get away with all eight of his remaining fingers still intact.
The lack of fingers doesn't really bother him. He still has the most functional three left and besides, chicks dig scars. Sympathy sex is still sex, not that he would ever mention that around Jessica. She doesn't care about his hand, that doesn't bother her, and he does genuinely care for her. They've been through some serious shit together, but he knows the future is never set in stone. He had never really thought that he and Em would split, but here he is happily with Jess. Sometimes it's good to consider the future without people, even if you don't plan on losing them.
"Detective!" Mike calls loudly over the sound of spinning chopper blades. The detective turns to him as the helicopter begins to shut off. "I think I should carry a gun down there with you guys."
"You want to carry a gun?" the detective repeats flatly. "We've got a whole group of trained men with guns. You're safe, trust me."
"With all due respect, you've never been down in those basements," Mike replies evenly. "You haven't seen how confusing the hallways and tunnels are, or even know where the hidden rooms are for that matter. I've gone down there and Sam," the blonde headed girl glances at him warningly, "well she knows how to get into some of those secret rooms. You're probably going to need us to lead and if we come across the son of a bitch who did this, I'd rather not take any chances." Mike pulls his wallet out of his pocket and hands the detective a card. "I've got a hunting license, if that helps."
"You want me to hand you a gun that you might shoot without it being authorized to you?"
"We gotta protect ourselves," Mike answers simply.
"No," the detective replies sternly, handing him back his card.
"Mike's right," Sam intervenes. "That basement twists and turns all over the place. You need us in the front to help navigate and from our experience in that house, we need to protect ourselves in case we get separated. You'd rather have an unauthorized gun being shot than three dead teenagers, right?"
"Kids-"
"What happens if we're up front and that maniac comes out?" Chris questions hastily. "He could grab one of us before your men see him and shoot. Let's not take chances. You can say a deputy fired the gun. You can come up with something to explain it. People aren't going to care how a psychotic murderer died as long as everyone else ends up safe."
"You kids are a pain in the ass," the detective mutters, pulling a pistol out of the holder around his ankle. He goes to hand it to Mike, but Mike holds up his hands. "What, this one not good enough for you?"
"I'm better with shotguns."
Sighing irately, the detective goes and takes one of the shotguns from his men, then hands it to Mike. "There, now we need to establish a few ground rules. One, if that shotgun goes off on someone or something that is not a danger to you, I'm telling everyone you stole it and went rogue. Two, I want you all to stay close to the group of rangers. You may be leading us around down there, but if you make any move to ditch or run off to go on your own escapade, I will take you back to the surface and this little excursion with continue without you. Are we clear?"
"Crystal," Sam replies before Mike can answer.
"Everyone listen up!" the detective yells to his men. "We're looking for Joshua Washington, a picture of him has been sent to all of your phones. However, he's been down in the basement for seven days, possibly without food or water, so he might not look quite like his picture anymore. If you see anyone who remotely resembles a teenage boy, don't shoot. With that, you also have a sketch drawing of what the suspect looks like, and he's probably armed and extremely dangerous. Proceed with caution."
The detective gestures to the broken staircase leading down into a burnt concrete tiled room. Mike takes a seat where the staircase begins and grips the edge tightly, then fearlessly jumps down into the basement. The impact ricochets throughout his ankles, but quickly dissipates as Sam, Chris, and the detective land behind him. Sam hands him a flashlight as the detective goes up to the basement entrance with a crowbar. He jams it between the steel door and the lock and heaves, allowing the door to open with a loud groan.
A speck of nervousness crawls up Mike's spine as he steps forward into the first room of the dimly lit basement. He had been as fine as a person can be being chased by Native American legends up in the sanatorium. The loneliness had freaked him out, but he hadn't been overtly terrified. He hadn't even been that nervous during the helicopter ride up here. So why now, looking straight into the pitch black face of the basement with a team of armed officials behind him, is he nervous?
Maybe it's the idea of seeing those things again. Maybe it's the idea of finding Josh's body half-eaten alive. He's not sure what the reason, but he squares his shoulders and attempts valiantly to shake the nervousness off.
"I was down here with Ash," Chris speaks up, his voice less than enthusiastic. "I can lead first, unless you wanted to, Mike." Mike steps back and gestures for Chris to come forward, much to the blond haired boy's disappointment. Chris steps forward and takes the flashlight from Mike, reluctantly starting down the hallway.
Burn marks trickle down like blackened waterfalls from the tops of the walls and soot coats the floor. It's not nearly as bad as the remains of the lodge, but the burn marks aren't coming out of the walls any time soon. Despite the huge blaze that once raged above it, the basement is cold and unfriendly. The chill that hangs in the air down here is all too familiar.
"Are you sure you know where you're going, Chris?" Mike questions, never having been in this part of the basement before.
"Yeah, of course," Chris grumbles and Mike looks at him dubiously.
"No, really, he does," Sam interjects. "I was down here with Josh for a little bit. We're a few feet past where the radiator and hot water heater were. I guess that part of the basement didn't really survive the blast."
They walk for a few more minutes, all three of them glancing in every cranny hoping to find a holed up Josh. There's been no sign of him so far, no footprints in the soot or blood smears against the wall. They haven't covered nearly even half of the basement and where it leads to yet, but Mike doesn't expect they'll find anything down there either. It's been seven days. They almost died after one night. It's simply not possible Josh survived that long and especially not in the delusional state he was in that night either. It sucks and even though he doesn't want it to be, it's most likely the truth.
Chris stops outside of two steel double doors with circular viewing windows and Mike faintly hears him catch his breath. Mike peers inside to see the room where they found out Josh was the psycho all along. One saw blade still hangs up ahead over the table, the other one dislodged and broken on the floor from the explosion.
"Is that a torture chamber?" the detective demands.
"No," Chris replies quickly, his voice sounding a little hollow. "Josh's dad liked making movies. That was just one of the sets for a horror one. The saws don't even work." Chris takes another lingering look at the room and for a moment Mike wonders what it must be like to find out your best friend made you choose between shooting yourself or the girl you love. Of course the gun wasn't loaded with real bullets, but neither of them knew that.
Sam takes over at the front of the group, leading them on silently for a few minutes. They soon come to a wooded room that looks almost like a workshop. Soot covers nearly everything, several shelves have been knocked down by the blast, and part of the room is burned beyond recognition, but the layout resembles that of a working space. Mike doesn't miss the way Sam's eyes trail the detective nervously as he picks up and glances at objects in here.
"This more movie stuff?" the detective questions, flipping through Josh's plans of being sawed in half. Sam and Chris nod hastily and the detective moves on. Sam stops in front of a table, subtly blocking whatever's on it. It looks to be a folder of some kind. "Is that everything in here?"
"It is indeed," Sam replies lightly. She quickly pushes the folder beneath some boxes, then leads them out and down another hallway.
"What was that?" Mike whispers.
"Josh's psychiatric notes," she murmurs. She leads them down a set of stairs, where there's a small table with what looks like an answering machine on it. "That's just a prop too," Sam informs the detective before he can ask about it. "The dang thing never even worked." The detective nods in acknowledgement and Mike raises an eyebrow. "Josh practiced his, uh, psycho voice on it," Sam informs him beneath her breath.
"Ah," Mike replies quietly, not sure what to think about the amount of effort Josh put into his prank to scare them. What he's more curious about, however, is why Josh didn't involve him in the psychotic prank. He was the one who lured Hannah into the bedroom that night after all.
Though, maybe it wasn't entirely about that. Sam had told him that Josh said Chris and Ashley needed to go through something traumatic to bond over and realize their feelings for each other. Maybe it was about that all along. Chris was his best friend, maybe in some sick way he was just trying to help him. Maybe that was the main goal and all of the other scares were his revenge for what they put Hannah through. But if that's the case, then why scare Sam? To make it believable to everyone else?
Mike shakes the thoughts from his mind, the endless possibilities of why giving him a headache. There's no use in trying to understand Josh's reasoning, the dude clearly had some mental health issues. It's better to just let the beginning of that night go, considering it was far from the worst thing to happen on the mountain.
"I'm afraid this is as far as I know," Sam says loudly, coming to a hallway visibly older than the rest of them. "Michael?"
Mike shrugs. "Sorry, I haven't been down this one. I only know how to navigate through the tunnels from the sanatorium to here. I mean, I can take us to where they start, but I don't know this path."
"I do," Chris offers reluctantly. "It leads down to the old hotel."
"Really?" Mike questions, surprised. "This place is a goddamn maze. Detective, what do you think?"
"Let's do your tunnels last. Your friend probably would have stayed closer to the basement than he would've the sanatorium. Do you know which path he would've been more familiar with?"
"This one," Chris says quickly. "He knew how to get to the old hotel, but he never mentioned going near the sanatorium. I'm sure the paths join up close together somewhere, but I know for a fact he's gone this way before."
"Okay, this way it is then," the detective decides. Chris starts forward down the hallway and the others follow, their footsteps echoing loudly in the emptiness. As they walk, Mike wonders who the hell built all these passages around the mountain. "Speaking of the sanatorium, did any of you see it blow up?"
"We saw some smoke," Mike replies carefully.
"So none of you were there when it happened?"
"Nope, afraid not. We only got to witness one explosion, but one is enough for me," Mike answers. There's no way in hell anyone would believe he blew up the sanatorium to kill a bunch of cannibals turned monsters and he'd rather not go to jail for arson. "I guess the guy trying to kill us had evidence in there."
"Uh-huh," the detective says flatly. "Tell me again what happened with the explosion upstairs."
"The psycho chasing us had cut the gas line," Sam tells him. "We knew he had to be somewhere in the house, but we lost him somewhere down in the basement. I knew that I could set the explosion off by breaking open a light bulb, turning on the light, and igniting the gas. So, I took the risk and flipped the light switch and then, well, now here we are."
Sam stops suddenly and Mike bumps into her. "Sam, what are you-" He stops mid-sentence as he follows the trail of her gaze, which ends at five long claw marks down the wall. A chill runs up his spine at the remembrance of those marks all over the sanatorium. Though, they don't appear to be quite as deep. "Were those here before?"
"No," Chris says, visibly shaken. "They weren't."
A/N- Thank you for the reviews, favorites, and follows so far! They mean a lot to me. I really hope you're enjoying the story so far and will stick around to see how it progresses. As always, reviews are always welcome. :)