Jim
A couple of minutes later and out of breath, Jim and Anna reached the meeting spot. Right as they stopped running, they heard rapidly approaching footsteps. Jim held up his scissors, made himself ready to attack in case of an emergency.
Hendrick almost ran into Jim’s scissors as he turned the corner. He appeared to be out of breath as well, his eyes quickly darting from side to side.
“Hendrick, where is Jack?” Anna asked.
Hendrick looked at his own trembling hands, the toy-gun still gripped tight. He let go of it as it fell to the floor. “I-I… Jack... he’s…”
“What happened?” Jim interrupted. He had a feeling that this dream was slowly evolving into something else. He also didn’t feel like fooling around anymore. This just wasn’t funny.
“The shot… it didn’t kill the Doll-Maker. It survived and got Jack. I didn’t want this to happen, I swear.” A deep despair could be heard in Hendrick’s shaky and somewhat distant voice.
Anna moved over to Hendrick, embraced him. A quiet sobbing was audible. Jim didn’t feel like hearing any of that bullshit.
“Y-You mentioned that it captures its prey a couple of days before it kills them. We can still go back and save him, right.”
“No… without the gun, we have no chance against it. It won’t fall for the same trick again so we can’t lure it away… also…” Hendrick hesitated, as if he tried to find the right words.
Jim pressed, asked, “Also? Focus, we have no time.”
“We need to go now.”
“No! If you don’t go, I go alone,” Jim said.
“I saw him get impaled by one of its legs. He is dead, Jim.”
“...”
Anna let go of Hendrick’s embrace. She just stood there, as if to figure out what to say. She moved her hand towards her hair, but stopped herself before readjusting anything. “Hendrick is right, we need to go now.”
Jim clenched his teeth, pushed Hendrick. “What the fuck did you do? Why did you let him die?”
“W-what do you mean?”
“You fucking idiot! This is all your fault.”
Jim felt emotions inside of him he couldn’t quite put anywhere. This was all way too fucked up for comfort. The picture of what he had seen inside of the hidden room flashed inside of his inner eye once again. “Do you have any idea what this thing will do to him?”
Hendrick had wiped away his tears, seemed to be more calm now, “See who’s talking, mister joke around. If you wouldn’t have fooled around all the time, maybe he would still be alive now.”
“What?” Jim stepped forward, but someone stepped in between him and Hendrick. It was Anna.
“You two, stop! We don’t have the time for this now. I got caught, it is my fault he is dead.”
“Anna…” Jim said.
“It is. And I will take responsibility for it, but we have to leave first. This place isn’t safe.”
Jim’s mind snapped back to the present he had seen once again.
The blonde hair it had… he thought. Just like hers.
Hendrick stared at Jim for a moment longer, then turned away. “Follow me,” he said. “I'll show you the way out of here. The portal to the second stage is around 2 minutes away. Let’s hurry.”
And then, with a surprising clarity in his voice, Hendrick added, “If we escape, his death wasn’t pointless at least.”
And they started running towards the portal.
Not once looking back.
---
Jack
Pain.
It had grasped Jack’s entire body, embedded itself into every fibre of his very being. The physical pain was already unbearable, but what really drove him crazy was the psychic pain induced by the person he had trusted to death.
Everything had happened so fast, movements and actions flashing through his inner eye at a fast pace. He saw it so clearly in front of him. Hendrick’s smile. The wide grin on his stupid face.
That rotten fucking bastard.
The cold, black hands held Jack in a tight grip as the Doll-Maker carried him above its main body. It had pinned him down earlier, broken his arms so he couldn’t defend himself anymore. It hadn’t even required its effort, had snapped them like tiny twigs. His glasses had been broken while the whole situation had been going on, which made it harder to focus on details which were far away from him.
Jack refused to believe that Hendrick had really done that to him. There had been too many signs by now. Him using his other hand; him acting differently... the look in his eyes. Whatever the creature was that was currently wearing Hendrick’s skin, it wasn’t the Hen he knew. And knowing that this being would probably go for his friends next made him fall into even deeper despair.
Now it was carrying him up the stairs to the massive bed in the middle of the room. The needles apparently grew out of its hands, since Jack could feel the tips of needles pressing from where its palms were holding him. It was like a wordless threat.
Why? Why did he do this? Did he lure it out here so no one would hear my screams? I don’t understand.
Jack’s thoughts circled round and round as the Doll-Maker kept ascending, the subtle and now rather calm sound of the music box accompanying their ascent.
As they reached the last couple of stairs, the surface of the mattress got visible. It looked like a battlefield, blood and remains of human parts spread all over its otherwise soft and cozy looking surface. The parts were almost unrecognizable, torn outwards or twisted to inhuman shape. Some appeared to be ripped off, some cut off, and some simply crushed by brute force. Around the centre of it all, the pile which Jack had spotted earlier stood out from the otherwise rather flat surface.
Human corpses, he thought.
Jack wanted to cry out, but his screams had been silenced a couple of minutes earlier. The screams had only made it more angry, more violent. No one could hear him except for it up here anyways, so there was no use crying for help anymore.
There was no hope.
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He felt a movement of the arms which carried him, lowering him a little before throwing him through the air towards the centre of the mattress. He landed a couple of meters next to the pile, which was now close enough to examine.
The metallic noise it made was almost quiet now, yet he heard it inching closer. It was rather slow now, as if it knew that it wouldn’t need to hurry anymore.
Jack turned his head towards the pile of human bodies. At first, he didn’t see much except blood and gory mass. There wasn’t much recognizable detail, besides a few exceptions. The victims were all wearing... the same clothes? Another detail that stood out was that they all had no eyes, their empty eye sockets revealing reddened skin in varying states of decay.
Jack forced a dry swallow.
Then something caught his eye. One of the faces seemed familiar. He narrowed his eyes, tried to see clear through all the panic which flooded his body with adrenalin, telling him to turn to his enemy, which was still silently approaching.
One corpse, which was more or less still recognizable, rested on top of the pile. Its motionless head was turned in his direction – empty eye sockets carved inside of a bony, thin and dark-skinned face. He must have been alive for a longer period of time before he eventually died. Jack forced himself to examine further. The remains of hair could be seen on its partly ripped open head… and a blood soaked buttoned shirt covered parts of its body.
Jack shivered in disbelief. Right as he wanted to reassure his assumption, a loud screeching sounded from behind him. He turned and got met by a white mask presenting an unnaturally wide smile hovering just inches from his head. A long neck expanded from it, dark red and fleshy in presence. The head tilted to the left and right, examining Jack, observing.
Waiting.
He was now able to get a closer look at it. The body of the thing – which was made out of a black gooey mass – almost looked like a giant caterpillar, various strings emerging out of it and assisting its posture. The strings went right through the ceiling, still ignoring the laws of physics like before. On the back of its worm-like body were five rows of dry looking arms... like they had grown out of it at some point. Countless metallic, thin and round needle-like legs stuck sideways out of the lower half of its body, which made a 90-degree bend in the middle and then pointed straight towards the floor.
Jack looked at it, his heart beating up to his brain as he searched for a way out. He could think of none. There was nothing left he could do…
Nothing?
No… He wouldn’t go down as a coward.
He gathered all of his confidence, spat onto the mask. As saliva ran down its smooth surface, Jack raised his now rather weak voice:
“Go fuck yourself!”
The music stopped.
And it almost seemed like the smile on the mask had grown an inch wider.
One row of arms opened its palms, the dry skin moving aside as needles emerged out of them. The Doll-Maker rammed them inside of Jack’s palms, moved the hands away as strings came out of the spots which had earlier revealed the needles. He got lifted into the air, arms held up high above his head. It played him like a puppet on strings.
Jack held back a whimper. He bit his lip, kept pushing:
“Who are you? Why do these corpses look like–“
He got silenced by loud chaotic notes as a hand pressed against his mouth, a needle stinging right through his lower lip and inside of his tongue. Jack coughed up some blood as the needle got pulled out again. He saw one hand in front of the Doll-Maker’s mask with one outstretched finger signalling him to stay quiet.
More rows of hands appeared close to Jack’s face, one held his chin raised as he was forced to face the mask. Jack let out muffled sounds as he felt his mouth fill with warm blood.
Then, without a warning, one hand started using a thinner needle to sew his mouth shut. His lips got pressed against each other as the needle cut through his skin like butter, fixating his mouth. Jack was forced to swallow, a taste of warm iron spreading inside his throat.
He squirmed and tried to break free. He moved every still movable fibre of his body to escape, but it had no use. Tears started running down his face as he saw his inevitable fate play out in front of him.
Why? Why had he trusted him? He had told him there would be no pain in here, that everything would be fine. He had told him that it would be just like in the games, the countless adventures they had had together…
This didn’t make sense. Jack was 100% sure that he had predicted his betrayal. He had stepped to the side in the last possible moment, which should have made it impossible for Hendrick, no, that thing, to predict his movement.
Except...
Two hands with opened palms revealed themselves. Only the tip of needles could be seen sticking out of them. They hovered there lifelessly, unmoving as another hand emerged and placed itself on the Doll-Maker’s mask.
It got a hold of it, grabbed it with its fingers, and slowly pulled it off.
Jack’s eyes widened.
And as the two hands which had hovered in front of Jack placed themselves on his eyes,
and he felt the needles slowly force their way through his irises and beyond,
one question remained lingering inside his head:
Why do all these corpses look like me?
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Stage 1 End
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