Anna
Blurred images spun inside of Anna’s head, slowly taking shape. There was a faint buzzing, which sounded so distant yet felt so close. The pictures begun to sharpen as the buzzing decreased in volume. Anna slowly got her grip on reality back.
Her eyes darted from left to right, her whole body ringing alarm signals which shot through her body. There was deep, stinging pain, but she couldn’t yet locate where exactly it came from.
Dark walls of boulder and stone formed the surrounding room: a tunnel shaped structure spanning a diameter of roughly 5 meters. The area was lit in a dim, shady light, just enough to see clearly, but the light’s source was nowhere to be found. Anna saw some twists and turns of the cave in the distance, but her view wasn’t going very far in either direction.
Anna wanted to gasp, realized she couldn’t. There was a deep, stinging pain originating from her mouth. She couldn’t open it, the pain only worsening at each subsequent attempt.
The beast that had captured her was nowhere to be seen. This was probably a hiding place of some sort. For some reason, it didn’t look like anything they had seen before, the place contrasting with the colourful and shiny landscape they had been travelling through earlier that day.
Or was it that day? How much time had passed since she had passed out?
Anna remembered the fate that had unfolded onto her. For a second, she remembered the twitching hands restricting her movements. She remembered them pushing her inside the gooey mass, limiting her breath until she had passed out.
She barely managed to contain her tears.
But Anna wanted to cry out. Her mind immediately wandered to blaming Hendrick again, his sneeze that had ruined everything. But she realized that blaming him would be of no use now. She had escaped by herself, and she had been caught by her own fault.
Now she was here, and it would most likely be the end of her. She wondered if her attempts to be perfect and please her parents had been of any use. They appeared to be so trivial and useless now. How stupid she had been keeping herself drawn inwards, refusing so many nice things just to please them with their over the top expectations.
And even though she had tried to be useful to her parents her whole life… she had been a burden to her friends now. She had been useless, and she made a point to herself that she would change that if she somehow managed to get out of this.
Metallic scratching sounded through the cave as the demon moved around a corner which laid out of Anna’s sight. She stayed as quiet as possible, tried to remain calm. It moved closer, turning its mask sideways as if to examine her. The music box, which seemed to be inserted into its back, let out a single sound, almost as if curious.
Anna took the opportunity to analyse her options. Her hands appeared to be lifted above her head, strings holding her mid-air by her hands. They were the same strings that the being had used earlier to capture her, the hooks still embedded through her palm and clinging onto her flesh. There wasn’t much dried blood on her palms, which probably meant the hooks were intended to capture, not break.
She followed the hooks upwards to find out where the strings were attached to. It looked like they were attached to the ceiling of the cave… the weird part was that the strings didn’t look like they were fixed there; they moved back and forth slightly, as if they would expand inside of the wall, ignoring the fact that stone was solid matter. Her back leaned against stone, the ground was around 1 feet beneath her.
The Doll-Maker, which was now very close to Anna, moved a single hand across Anna’s cheek, caressing it with a gentle touch. It felt cold, lifeless even, but it seemed genuine as well. She focused, took a couple of deep breaths. Hen had stated earlier that the creature usually captures its targets and keeps them for a while until it starts turning them into its creations. Maybe there was still a way out of this.
Maybe if she would push herself off the wall with the right timing, she could attempt to –
Her thought process was interrupted by a familiar shouting with a light voice-crack in its tone echoing through the cave: “Hey, get over here, toy-fucker!”
Anna never thought she would ever be so relieved to hear Jack’s voice. She felt a light sting inside of her cheek shortly before the Doll-Maker backed up with a chaotic mess of sounds originating out of its music box. Anna saw the multiple rows of arms on its back shake and twitch in visual distress. Then she felt a single drop of blood roll down her cheek.
The voices origin had been distant and the way the cave was structured made it hard to spot where exactly it had come from, but the message’s purpose was clear: The being reacted to sound... they wanted to lure it away from her!
And it worked. The Doll-Maker started scratching, clawing inside of the stone underneath its body as it accelerated, then moved through the twists and turns off the cave until it was out of sight.
Anna felt blood drip on her shirt, but she didn’t care about it getting dirty anymore.
The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps grabbed her attention – one pair of footsteps, a single person.
Jim ran into Anna’s field of vision, big smile on his face, even bigger pair of scissors pointing upwards held with both of his hands. He was panting lightly, his hair even more messy than usual. He halted for a moment, as if to prepare for something, then exclaimed with a deeper than usual voice:
“Fear not, my young lady, your saviour has arrived!”
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Hendrick
Hendrick slid open the cylinder of his toy gun to make sure the bullet was still there. It was. Every detail counted now. Everything needed to work out exactly like he had planned. This one bullet would decide the fate of the two of them.
Hendrick slid the cylinder back inside of the gun, took a deep breath, said: “You got our plan, right?”
Jack looked at his scissors, appeared to be pretty calm for the situation they were currently in. “Yea. Let’s kill it.”
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“Once we lured it far enough away from the others, we can kill it in the place where it expects it the least.”
“The place where it sleeps. Got it.” Jack had his view still focused on the pair of scissors. “We split up after the second turn, and I take the long way around. You set up the trap, and I will guide it there.”
Hendrick smiled. It was funny how much Jack had gotten into it in such a short time. It seemed like the talk last night had really been important to him.
Metallic scratching could be heard as the sound of a lightly echoing music box approached at a rather quick pace. Hendrick took another deep breath. “Seems like its showtime.”
The echoing moved around the cave like waves clashing against its rock surface. Hendrick gripped his toy-gun a little tighter.
Then it slid around the corner, metallic legs scratching it forward as its unnecessarily long neck tilted towards them. It had locked its target. The music box’s playing picked up in pace and volume, the hollow smile on the mask pointing towards them.
“Now!”
They started running.
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Jim
The Doll-Maker had moved far enough away to become inaudible.
The plan has worked, Jim thought. Nice, all is going well.
After he had cut the strings that had kept Anna suspended in the air, they had started moving, moving in the direction Hendrick had told him to. They were just a couple of minutes away from the place they were supposed to wait. The tunnel system sure would be confusing if someone wouldn’t know the layout, but Jim had memorized which direction at which cross-way to go. It was a blessing Hendrick had all of that information noted on his grammar exam, since survival really was more important than tenses.
Anna was still visibly distressed, looking around as if someone or something could jump on her every moment. Jim decided he should calm her down a little, said, “You’re safe now. Hendrick and Jack will get rid of the thing for us. Also… it’s still a game, remember.”
“Shut up,” Anna said. “The pain here is real… I don’t know how you can stay ca-”
“Sure, I mean, without a little bit of tension it would be boring, right?”
“You are aware that the pain means Hen lied to us, right? He said there only is slight pain, but the one I felt wasn’t even close to being slight.”
“He probably just said it so we won’t get scared. Let’s just ask him about it later, alright?”
Anna remained silent for a moment, then nodded yes. “I just have the feeling something here is off. Something just doesn’t add up.” Anna was still pronouncing things a little messy, probably because of the strings that had kept her lips sewn together earlier. Luckily, Jim had been able to change that with his scissors. All that remained now were small red dots from where the strings had been. Jim had to admit that this location was kind of creepy, but at the same time it was super cool as well.
The two of them reached another crossing. Left, Right, Right, Center… now we need to go right, he thought. He moved towards the right tunnel. Anna followed him.
“Anna, look. I got a big ass scissors and in case anything attacks you I will protect you. Don’t make a big deal out of it and just play along. It will be fun, ight?” Jim gave Anna a confident smile which was met with a glance. Anna didn’t respond, just continued walking.
After a couple of minutes, they spotted a suspicious hole in the side of one of the tunnels. It didn’t look like the other ones – which seemed to be fitting and created by nature. No, it rather looked like it had been scratched into the rock, clawed down with brute force. It was easily big enough for them to just walk into.
Jim stopped walking, hesitated. He could have sworn he had heard something from inside of there. Their original goal was not too far away.
Anna turned towards him, looked at the hole, then back at him. “What’s the matter? You stated we were almost there. Just ignore it and keep going.”
“But it looks interesting. Maybe there is some cool extra stuff in there.”
“That’s a bad idea. What if it comes back?”
“It won’t. Hen and Jack are keeping it far away. Come on, I bet there’s sick loot somewhere hidden in there.” Jim turned right, started walking into it. If he had learned one thing from exploring caves in video games, then it was that pathways which looked odd always contained secrets. And he was more than ready for secrets.
He heard a voice from behind him. “Jim? Ah for fucks sake…”
Hurried footsteps followed behind him.
The path went through a few turns and twists. Then, a stone staircase presented itself in front of them. Its stairs were out of rock, clawing marks all over them. It certainly had been crafted by the Doll-Maker as well, but with more care than the tunnel itself. It was a rather open room, pillars out of stone emerging from the sides of the staircase towards the ceiling rather high up.
Jim followed the staircase with his eyes, was met with a bright appearance. At the top of the staircase, a giant door rested inside of the rock. It was very colourful and appeared – in contrast to the other things around – to not be made out of stone.
“See, I told ya there was going to be a secret somewhere.”
Jim started ascending the steps, looking around at the room he was inside of. The pillars were all carefully crafted, patterns and symbols carved inside of them.
Anna stopped for a second, examined one of the pillars closer. She used her left hand to scratch her nose, said, “I think I have seen that one before… is it the same language as on the gate?”
Jim looked closer, put his finger on one of the symbols. “Perhaps. It seems kind of weird that this giant thing was able to craft stuff like this with such care, won’t you think?”
“I have seen it sew my mouth shut with precision and without any intention of harm… rather silence. It probably can be accurate if it feels like it. I don’t want to know what happens if you make it angry, though.” Anna backed off from the pillar, looked at her palms, then upstairs. “Let’s not be here to find out. We need to hurry.”
“You have no reason to worry, Ann. It probably is already dead.”
“What if Hendrick misses the shot?”
“He won’t.”
“...”
A muffled sound from upstairs broke the silence. It had gotten louder than before… his ears hadn’t deceived him.
Jim shook his uncertainty off, kept ascending the stairs. It was a game after all. What was supposed to happen? He didn’t know if that chance would come again, so he might as well use it to enjoy a real adventure.
He made it to the top of the staircase, looked up and down at the massive door. Light shone out of it, and on its surface were more of the odd symbols from earlier. It stood open just about 20 degrees, but that was more than enough for him to slip through. He looked down at his scissors for a moment, made sure Anna was still behind him, then moved forward.
After he moved past the door, his eyes needed a moment to get used to the sharp contrast from the area before.
He saw what laid in front of him.
His jaw dropped.
“Anna, I think you should see this.”
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