The air was bitterly cold as Leon Kennedy pushed the door open to the abandoned guest house, he caught the reflection of his face in a dusty old mirror that somehow wasn't broken - and saw his face, his eyes looked wild, and there was a glossy sheen of Southern perspiration covering his face.
On the walk up to the main house Leon had been surrounded by the wonderful warm smells of wet Earth and moss and flowers, but the closer he got to the guest house, those smells were thrown away and replaced with death and rot and mud. His wife, Piper Kennedy, and their four year old daughter had come to the Baker Farm to do a news article on them, but had never come back home. He stepped inside the guest house and the door slammed shut behind him; he spun to face the door and found it locked. "Damn!"
Leon pushed his way into a long hallway. Who the hell invited a mother and young daughter up to do a news article anyway? So, what, they saved a young girl from a Hurricane, big deal; that storm had been reported to death already! Why did the Baker family need Piper and Emma?
Leon turned to the right and went into the kitchen which was damp, and covered in mold; a soft layer of dust had settled on the furniture in the kitchen. He grabbed the collar of his t-shirt and hoisted it over his nose, something was rotting. He removed the lid from a huge pot that sat upon the molding kitchen table and he gasped.
The stew…soup…whatever was in the pot looked pale and yet charred with unidentifiable lumps. A cockroach scurried up Leon's hands, which he swiped at. "Fuck! Fuck!" He growled. Leon opened the microwave and saw someone had shoved a dead crow inside, its throat torn open, a white mass of wriggling maggots made their home there.
It was as though his mind blurred the ghastly visage to spare itself further shock and horror. A newspaper sat next to the microwave, that was coated in dust like everything else. A headline reading: "20 Missing in 2 Years!" He skimmed the article and saw it had been written by Piper, and he frowned. "Add to more to that, baby," Leon said to himself.
Sometimes, he thought ruefully, the world is so much sicker than the inmates of its hospitals, psych wards and the like. "But I'll find you and our Emma. There will be a happy ending to that story."
Leon made his way into the living room, where rather than mold and water damage, papers covered the floor - though there still were plenty of mold and water damage. He picked up a photograph near the couch, it was of Piper and Emma, but Piper was heavily pregnant. Leon sucked his lips in and sighed.
She had told him right before she and Emma left for the Baker farm that she was expecting a new baby. Leon flipped the picture over and saw cursive scrawl. "Piper and Emma Baker." Beneath Piper was written: "Seven months pregnant with Hazel." He held the picture close to his chest, they had talked about if they ever gave their Emma a little sister, Piper wanted to name the baby Hazel. Upon the coffee table, Leon saw a picture drawn by Emma, Emma had drawn herself pressing the middle peddle on the piano in the living room. A red arrow was pointing to the wall. A speech bubble came from the wall in the drawing, in the bubble was the badly written words: "I miss my Emma."
"Jesus, they're keeping my pregnant wife in the wall?" Gawked Leon. He pressed the middle peddle and a crawl space opened open in the wall. Leon crawled over slimly stones and roaches, cursing to himself as the smell of mold plugged up his nose. What he wouldn't give to be back at home, Leon settled down in front of the TV with a beer, his sandwich, and a cartoon for Emma to watch. The crawl space eventually opened up and he stood up before his sanity snapped.
Leon stepped over a corpse, and he began to hope that he would find Piper and Emma before they corpses and he had to step over them. He pushed through a wooden door which led him to a dank cement dungeon festooned with cobwebs and smelling of mold and mouse poop.
Leon heard the sounds of a crying baby, and he ran through the cavernous room - which seemed to be some moist and musty storage room - he came upon a large well lit dungeon this time, that held a large cage. Three year old Emma sat on the floor, drawing, while Piper sat on the bed, breastfeeding a newborn baby under a cold light.
Seeing his family no longer made him feel dirty and scummy and messy and brimming with toxic waste from this guest house and dungeon. He felt light and warm. Bright blood, like Snow White's lips, splattered the floor, it was fresh by the look and smell of it, and the baby in her arms was still coated in the red stuff.
Their faces were thrown into hard and unflattering relief by the cold fluorescent bar above them. "Piper," breathed Leon, his voice, made the heads of Emma and Piper jerk up. "Emma."
His daughter's face lit up with a smile and wide eyes. "Daddy!"
"Leon?" Piper gasped softly. "Is it really you?"
He didn't respond to his wife, he disappeared back into the dark room, rummaging around for a key or bolt cutters or something, anything to free his girls from that cell. Leon cut the chain, and swung the door open, kneeling down and welcoming a hug from his little girl, who buried her face into his chest, enjoying his warmth, and cleanliness - despite him having crawled on those slimily rocks. He held her out at arm's length. "Who's that in mommy's arms?"
"That's Hazel! She was born two days ago!" Chirped Emma.
Leon stood up and approached his wife and newborn daughter, he took a seat next to Piper, who had finished breastfeeding. He opened his jacket up and took out some wipes and wiped his daughter's face. "Now, daddy can see you better!" He cooed.
"You wanna hold her?" Asked Piper.
Leon cradled the child in his arms; she studied the strange man with scared eyes before screaming like every bone in her body was getting ground to paste. "Oh, oh, no, no, no! I'm daddy! Daddy's here!" That was something Piper loved, him calming down a baby, but she yanked Hazel back into her arms. "Is everything alright?"
"You shouldn't be here, Leon!"
"I'm here to rescue you, I just wanted to see my daughter first," said Leon.
"Did anyone see you on the property? Did he see you!?"
"He? I contacted Chris Redfield, he knows I'm here, but he didn't see me. Who else is here, Piper? What's going on?"
"Daddy's coming!" Cried Emma.
"Daddy's coming? Sweetheart, daddy is right here," said Leon.
"We got to get out of here!" Hissed Piper. "We need to go now!"
Piper left the cell through the only door, that door Leon had opened, cradling her youngest daughter in her arms. Emma followed behind and then Leon. "Where are you taking me?" He asked as they rounded the corner around the cell.
"Someplace safe," said Emma.
"Are you going to tell me what's going on, Piper?" Asked Leon, following Piper and Emma into the darkness. "What is this place? What they do to you and Emma?"
"Not now! We need to get out of here first," said Piper, as all their feet became submerged into ankle-high scummy gray water. "I think it's this way."