In another trial in the Entity's realm, four more survivors tried to repeat the process of surviving. This time it happened in a place known as the Garden of Joy, which should have been seen as a joke giving how depressing it was. An old Victorian styled house surrounded by trees and withered bushes, it was a dark reflection of suburbia.
Then there were the hooks attached to the lampposts along a nearby road. Three of them were occupied by the hanging bodies of survivors. Barely alive and groaning in pain as they waited to bleed out or, in some small fraction of hope, be rescued.
Quentin Smith was the only one left, but as much as he wanted to help his friends, he was in no position to do so. He had been attacked by the killer and was now crawling for all he was worth along the ground. Somehow he had managed to slip his attacker and was trying to find a way out. Though he was a teenager he was tougher than he looked. He had to be tough to survive all the shit he had gone through in Springwood. To survive the nightmare known as Fred Krueger.
But Krueger was a distant memory for the moment as Quentin had to pull himself around just to survive.
'Crawl, dammit! Crawl!' He told himself as he left a trail of blood behind him. Unless the killer was very careless and blind he didn't have long to get away before he was found. He had to hurry though, as he was bleeding so badly that he was beginning to get blurry vision. He'd die soon if he didn't get help...
Then he heard a distinct howling as he passed a nearby bush. Blood dripping from his mouth Quentin finally saw it when he went around a corner. There was his salvation. An open hatch that oozed darkness but was one of only two ways to escape this hell. Well one of four but this was his best bet at living to see another day since two others involved dying. He crawled with all the strength he had left in his body, dragging himself towards the open hatch.
His hand hit the edge of the hatch when he heard soft humming. The tune was low and pleasant to the untrained ear, but for Quentin he knew it was like death at his door. His heart began to beat frantically as he pulled himself closer-
His brain felt like it was going to explode, but he got an arm into the hatch he saw something out of his peripheral.
A little girl was walking towards him, her golden yellow eyes barely seen behind the long locks of her dark hair, and the red dress she wore was dirty. Her ankles were covered in fresh and dry blood. She walked very slowly towards Quentin, humming that tune as she got closer.
She was the one who had gotten his friends and had barely managed to wound him. He didn't wait, not taking the chance, and he pulled himself into the dark salvation that the hatch offered him.
The hatch lid closed as soon as the boy got through, though the little girl didn't mind. Her yellow eyes remained focused, unblinking, as she turned around and saw the result of her latest trial. Three poor souls hung from hooks, and it was because of her. The little girl watched with complete indifference to their suffering. In fact a scowl of contempt was on her young face.
Alma Wade wasn't a normal child by any stretch of the word. She was a monster, born with abnormal psychic abilities, and had until recently been sealed away by her own father. She had managed to find her way out though, through paranormal means, but she hadn't gotten far before the Entity had found her and brought her to this forsaken realm.
Speaking of the Entity, Alma saw that the monster in charge of this place had come for its offerings. Appearing like eldritch horrors claws came from the portals in the sky to retrieve the bodies of those sacrificed to it. They screamed as arachnid like spikes came and pierced their chests, their sacrifice to the Entity complete, courtesy of Alma. Not that Alma had done so willingly, mind you. She had been told to do so and had had done as she had been told. With extreme reluctance.
She didn't like being told what to do. Not by her father, not by the doctors who had watched over her, no one. She'd turn their bodies inside out with just a thought if she felt like it. However, the Entity had proven to be a much stronger and less amiable obstacle for her to handle. Somehow, since coming to this place, her powers had been tempered to an extreme. She couldn't do anything easily anymore, hence why the bodies hung from hooks instead of just being charred skeletons or splatters of blood on the ground.
The there was the fact that Alma was there not of her own accord. She had tasted freedom but for a moment before coming here, and while her initial task had been to get revenge on those who wronged her, she now had to put aside those notions for a whole other reason.
Though most of these helpless survivors meant little more to her than flies, there was one she knew was in this realm. She had seen him, shortly before he had been taken away from her, a soul she knew with surprising intimacy. A man who she knew was her son. The youngest of her two boys, taken from her just after being born. By nothing short of fate she had been separated from her boys only for them to find her years later. Now they were all grown up, and in Alma's mind she wanted to see them.
Yet the Entity was keeping her from her one child, and she hated that, though she couldn't do anything about it. She was powerless against the creature. Yet, given how random the trials tended to be, there was a great chance she would run into her son again soon enough.
Whether or not she would be forced to do the unthinkable and harm him for the Entity's enjoyment was up in the air.
As the trial ended, Alma looked down at her feet and saw mist or fog beginning to take her away from this place. The fog was like the Entity in a way, acting on a supernatural impulse to do the bidding of the creature. In this case, Alma would be sent back to the darkness to wait for another trial.
It wouldn't be long before the fog would summon her again, and then she would be one step closer to her child...
As the nightmare man and the child psychic were returned to their pocket dimensions to await another trial, the Entity made sure that those survivors that had been sacrificed or killed during the games were sent back to the campfire. Technically no one died in the trials. Death was not an escape from this hell. The Entity had the power over life and death here among other things. Even time wasn't an issue, with killers and survivors from both the distant past and the far future converging in its dimension. All for the sake of its enjoyment.
The game was always so simple. Four weaklings forced to try and survive against a strong foe. The Entity made them work for their escape, too. Forcing them to get the electric generators up to power the gates. All the killer had to do was sacrifice the survivors. The Entity had an endless supply to choose from for its trials, pulling anything or anyone from countless dimensions to bring into its game. Some coercion was needed to secure the deal at times, but it always succeeded. Then it was off to the trials to see what was new.
Four versus one. Some live, some die, but it always produced results.
Simple, formulaic, but simple.
And stale. The Entity didn't have tastes, but even it had to liven things up a bit every now and then to satisfy its own needs. Now was the time to spice it up. The last couple trials it had sensed hostility from the killers, specifically towards the Entity itself. Nothing to worry about, it felt no threat from them. It could send them to another dimension as punishment for bad behavior like a strict schoolteacher.
But it had another idea.
The nightmare man wanted the one who got away.
The psychic child wanted to be with her offspring.
So, the Entity thought, why not give them what they want and get something new out of the deal?
The gears were beginning to turn, and what would be a new experiment. A new type of trial.
It couldn't wait.
