Mable: Welcome to Book 2, my friends! ^-^ Enjoy!

Book 2:

"Charlie and Sammy's new life are thrown into a tailspin when dangerous creatures begin to roam the streets of Hurricane. With nowhere to run, they, along with Charlie's friends and a few others, must uncover the truth about these violent attacks or else become the next casualty on their rapidly growing list."

...

The Butcher's Traps

Chapter 1: Tempest

Thick, dark clouds hung ominously in the sky outside of the diner. They had been creeping in all day but only now did Jessica take real notice of them looming in the distance. Apparently the local forecast calling for thunderstorms was right, though this looked a little more intense than a typical storm. Shrugging it off, she decided not to take it as any sort of sign and instead sipped at her soda.

Charlie was running a little late, Jessica had been expecting it. Her robotics class always ran over a few extra minutes, which was why the plan was to meet here instead of waiting on campus. Now she could get a head start on her order and see if it beat her friend to the table. Hearing the ringing of the bell above the door, she looked over to see if she had arrived.

It wasn't Charlie, but Jessica did recognize the young man who had walked into the diner. He went to the university with them and she recalled seeing Charlie speak to him once or twice. The blond, however, didn't know him at all, so she lowered her eyes to the lone menu and glanced over all the things she hadn't ordered. Perhaps she should've gone with the turkey on rye instead of the chicken salad.

She didn't realize that the young man had noticed her or that he was walking over until he was right beside the table. "Hey, you're Charlie's friend, right? I don't think I've ever caught your name," he greeted with a friendly tone. She looked up and he offered his hand. "I'm Arty."

"Nice to finally meet you. I'm Jessica," she returned with her own smile. So that was it, Arty. She remembered Charlie mentioning Arty once or twice but somehow never connected the name with the face. "I've seen you around campus. Charlie said you share a couple of classes with her."

"Glad to hear she talks about me when I'm not around," he 'joked'. Not quite a joke though, not with the goofy smile that followed it. He sat down on the other side of the booth. "Actually, I thought I might catch her here. She mentioned she usually comes here for lunch."

"Practically every day. It's sort of our meet up and vent at the world time," Jessica actually joked. She tapped her lavender painted nails on her glass thoughtfully. "But don't you take the same class? How'd you get here so fast?"

"We do! Last I saw, she was asking our professor questions about this project we just got. I was thinking of asking her if she wanted to collaborate. Seems like we get a lot of work done when we're partnered up," Arty said. That was when she noticed it, that glint in his eye mixed with the goofy smile on his face. He was definitely crushing on her.

Jessica didn't want to be the bearer of bad news, but it almost didn't seem fair to not say something. She would have to break it to him easily, stalling a little longer. "I know what you mean. We don't share any classes right now, but we've worked together on our own things. Sort of bouncing ideas off each other and seeing what sticks."

"So, you guys are pretty close."

"Best friends since childhood. In fact, only a couple of months ago I moved by from New York so we could do the whole college experience together. Totally worth it."

"That's great!" Arty hesitated a long moment with a sort of uncertain smile. Then asked, "So, do you know if Charlie's seeing anyone, or…?" Well, that would make her job to break the news a little easier.

"Actually there's someone who Charlie's been seeing, and it looks like it's getting pretty serious," Jessica said as gently as she could. 'Serious' might've been an exaggeration, but they were definitely going steady. At least, they went out to a meal or an event every couple of weeks, something that Jessica had been ecstatic about. She had been eagerly trying to nudge John and Charlie together and was finally seeing the fruits of her labor. That didn't mean she didn't feel for Arty though.

"Gotcha… I guess I should've expected that. Charlie's pretty great, of course she'd have a boyfriend," he said. He looked positively defeated, like a kicked puppy. "I was just hoping she didn't since she never brought him up."

"It's sort of a new thing. Sometimes you want to be careful, don't want to jinx it. Really don't want to get people gossiping too early," Jessica said. Again, a joke to lighten the mood, but Arty suddenly gave her a peculiar look. As though she had said something that caught his interest in a different way. This was interrupted by the arrival of the waitress who dropped off Jessica's sandwich.

"I should probably get going," Arty said and stood to leave.

"You don't have to go. Charlie will be here soon. If you want, you could stay and have lunch with us," Jessica offered. She hoped it would take some of the soreness out of the wound. A light flush took to Arty's face.

"Nah, I'm not really hungry. You two just enjoy your meal and tell Charlie I'll see her later," he fumbled. Then he hurried out of the diner, perhaps not wanting to be there when Charlie arrived and risk her finding out about their conversation. The blond raised a brow slightly before shrugging and moving onto her meal. She was only a few bites in when, finally, her friend had arrived.

Charlie came into the diner in the same disorganized fashion that she entered and exited every class. Backpack overstuffed and hanging off, carrying a notebook or more in one arm, usually carrying a pencil in the other, as though she would suddenly be inspired and have to jot something down. If someone saw her on campus, they may think she was in over her head, but Jessica knew better. Charlie wasn't just excelling at her classes, she totally threw herself into them. So focused on them that she didn't care how she looked.

"Sorry I'm late. I got caught up with Dr. Treadwell and time got away from me. We just got handed a new assignment and I already know I'm going to get in over my head," Charlie said. She said it with an eager smile too, so apparently this was exactly what she wanted. If she had been vocal about any complaints in class, it was that they had yet to do much direct work.

"Finally! It's about time they let you do some hands-on stuff," Jessica congratulated with a smile. She then pointed to the door. "I think Arty said something about that. I just ran into him- and might've just learned his name, but don't tell him that." She watched as Charlie took the menu to look over it before getting a sly smile. "He's got thing for you, you know."

"…Yeah, I know," Charlie admitted awkwardly. She fiddled with the edge of the menu between her thumbs. "I haven't been trying to lead him on or anything. It just sort of happened."

"Yeah, that's usually how it is. Speaking of which, any plans this weekend?" Jessica asked, resting her chin on her interlaced fingers, giving her a very interested look. Charlie knew exactly what she was getting at.

"The only date I have is with a textbook, a tool box, and whatever I end up bringing to life in the process. If I'm lucky, I'll be a mad scientist by the end of the week," she joked. Jessica was less enthused.

"Just don't work yourself to death. You're going to get a good grade regardless, so make sure to take a break now and then, okay? Maybe we could get everyone together and do minigolf."

"That actually doesn't sound half bad," Charlie agreed. She raised a hand to flag for the waitress. "So, how's your day been?"

"Oh! Glad you brought that up!" Jessica exclaimed, slapping her hands on the table. "You're never going to believe what they found curled up in the stairwell this morning-."

Their meet-up went on as it usually did. A comfortable routine that Charlie and Jessica had adapted to ever since the semester had begun. Definitely a perk of going to the same college and having similar schedules.

Life had been pretty good since the reunion a few months previously. While her schedule was tight, she was able to make enough time with her friends to not feel overwhelmed. Though Charlie couldn't say she didn't sometimes like that pressure put on her by her classes, such as now. She made it through the rest of the day eagerly awaiting getting home and starting on this new opportunity.

Charlie let herself into the house with a call of, "I'm home!" She shut the door behind her, clicked the lock in place, and by time she turned around again she was joined by her brother, Sammy. He greeted her with a wide smile and a welcoming hug. He released her after a few seconds and guided her by the hand to the living room.

Life with Sammy had gone a lot smoother than Charlie had expected. Originally she worried that she would have to constantly be protecting the Puppet from being seen, or that somehow the secret would always be at the risk of coming out, but it really hadn't. Her friends knew better than to come inside without forewarning and Aunt Jen never came by- largely because she didn't know that Charlie was still staying there.

Her other fear had been that as she spent more time away from the house, Sammy would become lonely and restless. That the minimal things he could do in the home would get to him and he would become unhappy. He was a human after all, even if he didn't have the body of one. He had the mentality and intelligence of an adult the same age as her. However, this never became an issue. Sammy kept himself entertained during the day and seemed content with what he had.

Sometimes she wondered if it was a relief to have the safety and routine after years of struggling. Sammy dragging her into the living room to get her to sit down and talk about her day was part of their routine, which today she was very eager to do. She tossed her jacket and bag on the armrest and sat down alongside them.

"So, something pretty interesting happened today. I have a new assignment for my robotics class," Charlie said. Sammy's eyes widened in interest and he quickly tilted his head, questioning what it was. She found herself smiling as she revealed, "An assignment to build a working animatronic prototype."

Now he looked excited. Sammy tended to get invested in her schoolwork, so they had been both waiting for the day when she would get more substantial work to bring home.

"I had a feeling you'd be interested," Charlie said. "It sounds simple enough, but I was thinking of taking it up a notch. I asked my teacher if she would accept something that was repaired or built from an already existing structure and she said yes, as long as I track my progress to show I did substantial work. I was thinking that if I tried to work from some sort of body- we'll say a toy for example- then I might be able to make a fully functional, albeit kind of small animatronic."

Sammy seemed thrilled by this idea. He nodded eagerly and she could hear the light ticking of music box teeth deep in his chest. She was just as excited, "I was thinking of maybe using Ella as a base-."

The Puppet was up and gone before she could say another word. He darted upstairs so quickly that there wasn't even time to stop him, leaving her sitting there alone.

"I wasn't planning on getting started now, but alright," she said to herself. She wasn't fighting it though; she was just as excited as he was, just not enough to run upstairs.

He came back rather and breezed past the living room with Ella carried in his arms, heading directly to the garage. By time Charlie caught up to him, he had Ella face down on the table and was starting to undo the back of her dress. He pulled the fabric back to reveal a panel underneath and started to pull it up when Charlie stepped in.

"Wait, before you do anything… You can't help me," Charlie said apologetically. That excited smile dropped into a look of surprise. Which would've been comical if she didn't feel so guilty about shutting down his eager attempts to help. "I'm sorry, Sammy. It's one thing when you help me with my homework, but if I let you help me with this it's going to be like I'm cheating. I have to prove I can do this on my own."

A small, disappointed frown settled in as he released the doll and drifted around the table. She could recognize the difference between true upset and his occasional dramatics though.

"Don't start pouting. You can still help me with ideas, or like a mentor. You just have to leave the hands-on stuff to me," Charlie invited with a smile. He seemed to accept this as he smoothly turned and leaned on the end of the workbench, propping his head up with his long arms, and watching as she went to remove the panel. "And I'll need all of that I can get. It's not going to be easy trying to make a toy into a functioning-…"

That was when Charlie removed the loosened panel and instead of seeing gears or batteries like she expected, found part of an endoskeleton and some loose wires. From one look alone she was baffled to realize that Ella wasn't just a basic toy, but a small animatronic herself, just not nearly as advanced as some of the larger ones. It almost made sense considering that her father built it.

"…Or she's already one and I just got to get her moving again," Charlie finished. Sammy chimed in light laughter as she began to look around inside. There was some damage and wear on the inside, things that would need to be replaced, but Ella wasn't nearly as shabby as she imagined something this old without maintenance to be. "This almost feels like cheating. Maybe if I can figure out a way to program her to do something new, I'll fulfil the requirements and do something with a little more challenge. What do you think?"

He was on the same wavelength and went to fetch a well-worn notebook and pencil from nearby. This would be the first animatronic built in this workshop in years, and they couldn't wait to get started.

It was that same night when Charlie was roused out of a deep sleep by frantic shaking. It could've only been a few hours since she had gone to bed and she looked up to see Sammy leaning over her. There was a panicked look on his mask, one that she hadn't ever seen before. It almost frightened her.

"Sammy? What's wrong?" Charlie asked. He answered by looking upwards, his currently glowing pupils showing the motion. She followed his gaze up to the dark ceiling and saw nothing.

She didn't even have a chance to ask again before she heard what was wrong. A loud gust of wind suddenly blew into the house and caused the wood to creak loudly in protest. The storm had come, and if it wasn't for the windows rattling from the breeze alone she might've tried to alleviate his fears and return to bed. She knew immediately it was something more than a simple thunderstorm.

Charlie hurried to get out of bed and pulled on her jacket. Though she barely needed it with how warm the room felt. Like it might've felt on a sunny day and shouldn't have felt in the middle of the night, and the wind kept coming. There was a clattering noise as a branch blew off the tree and thumped down the roof and the wood of the house itself felt like it was rumbling.

"Is it a tornado?!" Charlie blurted out in a panic. In response, Sammy grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the door. She followed him quickly. "They said it was just a thunderstorm! How could this happen so fast?!"

He threw up his other arm in an exasperated shrug sort of motion. Yet he seemed to know where he was going as he led her downstairs and started to take her past the living room.

"Hold on!" She stopped him long enough to grab her backpack and phone out of the living room before joining back up. "Alright, where are we going? We can't leave in this."

Sammy shook his head and began to lead her into the garage. He released her and hurried to one of the shelves before starting to push it out of the way, she joined in on the other side and they moved the shelves over to reveal… Nothing. Just a patch of the garage wall. This seemed to confuse the puppet, who patted his hands over it like he was searching for a door.

The wind was getting so loud that now Charlie could hear it even this far into the house, and seeing that Sammy was confused about something, she physically grabbed him and pulled him from the wall.

"I think I have an idea! Come on!" she called, trying to speak over the growing noise. She pulled him back out of the garage even as he kept looking back in confusion. They returned to the living room where after brief consideration she snatched up two of the couch cushions, then beckoned Sammy to follow her into the bathroom.

"We'll get in the bathtub and cover ourself with the cushions. You get in first," Charlie explained. Sammy proceeded to give her a look of befuddlement. She rushed out another explanation, "One of the ways people protect themselves in tornados is to get in bathtubs and cover themselves with a mattress. I don't know if it really works or not, but this is the only option we have. We don't have the time to drag a mattress in here."

Convinced enough, Sammy nodded and almost reluctantly lowered into the bathtub. He then pulled into himself tightly as though climbing into the cardboard box that he frequently slept in- which he still tended to gravitate to even though they had made him up a bed with a futon pillow and plenty of blankets. A bed that might've been better used to cover the bathtub then these old couch cushions.

Charlie squeezed into the bathtub alongside him. They fit, but it was awkward and uncomfortable, made worse by the dread of the storm and the knowledge that they would be trapped there for a while.

Said storm raged on outside. They could hear it through the walls of the bathroom and rumbling along the wood of the house. Charlie got out her phone and tried to call Jessica, then John, but neither call made it through. She found that she couldn't do anything except try to wait it out. Just about then she heard an almighty crash from somewhere in the house.

"I think that was the roof," Charlie said in dismay. Sammy let out a low, slowed noise between a dial tone and a hum. A sound of depressed agreement. Neither was surprised by the sound; even with the repairs that had been done, it couldn't erase years of the house being left unattended to. Charlie supposed they were lucky the roof held at all.

A little after that, though she didn't know how long later, Sammy began to play music through the music box in his chest. Maybe it would be considered singing. She couldn't name the song but believed it was something from Swan Lake. It was almost soothing. Would've been better if not backed by the sound of the storm, but it was better than nothing. She slid further down to hug her brother protectively.

Then, finally, the winds started to die down and the house grew quiet. The devastation was over in less than an hour. They gave it a good ten or twenty minutes more before they dared to get out of the bathtub long enough to see what damage had been done.

Most of the house was intact, but the windows in the kitchen had been busted and many of the picture frames were knocked off the walls. The master bedroom had both and it looked like the closet wall had fallen in, which was a mere sign of what was to come when it led to the focal point of the damage.

Ironically, the hardest hit by the storm had been the garage they had originally taken refuge into. The roof had fallen in, knocked in by the thick branches of a tree that collapsed onto it, one of the ones around the backside of the house. The collapse of the roof had caused the floor to cave in too, spreading halfway from the door to the back. It seemed to stop in a blunt line right in front of the workbench, so Charlie could only assume that everything behind that point had been reinforced. Otherwise most of the cabinets and all of the tools would've been lost.

The large, gaping hole in the floor caught Charlie's attention immediately and she shined her light inside. To her surprise she saw that it went at least ten or twelve feet deep and led to a concrete floor down below. There was darkness around the edges too, showing that there was more space beyond where she could see.

"Is that…? There's a basement!" she exclaimed. Surprised by this finding, she crouched down beside the hole and tried to get a better look inside.

Sammy grabbed her shoulders tightly to hold her back, a worried look on his face, but Charlie took care as she tried to see what she could. One of the things she did see was part of a flight of stairs leading up the opposite wall and she guessed directly to the wall behind the shelf they had moved. She put two and two together and looked back to her brother.

"That's why you had us move the shelf? You remembered we had a basement door there?" Sammy nodded and Charlie looked across where the door would've been. Thinking back, she was starting to vaguely remember a door there, but she couldn't tell if they were real memories or her mind piecing things together. "I think I remember a door being there, but I don't remember a basement… Why would they seal it off?"

Sammy shrugged, but then instantly got a second, more suspicious look. He knew his father and he knew the secrets he carried, so he was especially wary of this unknown basement. He tugged more insistently.

"Well, there's not much we can do. We can't reach the stairs with this hole here and even then there's a wall in the way," Charlie said. She wanted to see what was down there, but it simply wasn't possible. Instead she sat back in the doorway and stared at the damage in full with a sigh. "Aunt Jen's going to have to know about this…" Sammy gave a discouraged hum. "Yeah, I feel the same way."

After a long time of just sitting there, staring at the hole, Sammy's hands on her shoulders, feeling like she was currently sinking into a hole of her own, Charlie finally stood up.

"I guess there's nothing we can do until morning… Let's go check the rest of the house and see if everything else looks okay. Maybe we can get a few more hours of sleep," she said. Sammy nodded and led the way.

A more thorough look at the rest of the house revealed minimal damage compared to the garage. The power was out, most of the curtains had fallen, mysterious glass from unknown sources collected on the floor, and neither of them were willing to check the cabinets. By some act of divine mercy, the upstairs bedroom was fine. The window had been left open and hadn't been shattered, and other than some of Sammy's blankets being blown back nothing seemed touched.

Now Charlie was glad Sammy had been so adamant in bringing Ella back to the room last night. He knelt on his bed and hugged the stiff doll close, as though trying to coddle and comfort her. Or perhaps himself.

Charlie sat down on her bed. She was wide awake now, but she knew she had to try to sleep. It was the quickest way to get to the morning, and it would be a morning that she had to be alert for. Things were about to get very tough in only a few hours, and unfortunately there was nothing she could do to stop it. Eventually she laid down on her bed, stretched out in her jacket, and stared at the ceiling until she faded off.

…But before morning could come, something woke Charlie back up. There was a strange, scratching noise coming from somewhere. Like the sound of something sharp scraping along wood. At first she thought maybe it was Sammy and looked over towards him, only to find him curled up on his bed, still clutching Ella. Apparently after the bathtub incident, the box was a little too tight for him.

The scratching noise was still there, persistently scraping it was up against. Charlie got up to go to the door before hesitating and going to the window instead. She leaned out to listen and, sure enough, she could hear the scratching from there too. Perhaps a little more dull sounding than from inside. It had to be the tree branches brushing on some part of the roof, the light breeze outside seemed to reinforce this.

Charlie shut the window quietly and then her bedroom door, locking it out of reflex, and then returned to her bed. She laid there and worried herself to sleep.

Tomorrow was another day.