Alec awoke facedown on the cold stone floor of the synagogue; he felt oddly light-headed and as he lifted his head, a small stream of fine white sand flooded off his head onto the stone below. He brought a hand up to brush it out as he wearily climbed to his feet. His eyes widened as he took in his surroundings.
Whereas the synagogue in the waking world had been elegant and comforting, the room he stood in now was a study in nightmarish decay. Rocks crumbled and cobwebs and moss choked every surface, the windows were all shattered, and a portion of the front wall was missing exposing the sky beyond. Alec’s brain caught up with him when he realized the sky itself was a deep red.
“Creepy,” he muttered and then it hit him: he was completely alone.
“Buffy?” he yelled out, his voice sounding slightly muted. He scanned the rows of rotted pews for any sign of her.
There! Near the back, a blond profile, lying prone behind one of the pews. Alec rushed over to it.
There was Buffy lying face down on the pew, her face to the wall. She lay very still as Alec knelt by her and slowly turned her over.
“C’mon sis, we gotta-” his instincts were a fraction too slow as he fully turned over the figure.
It wasn’t Buffy; it wasn’t even human. Rather than a face, leering up at him was a huge gaping maw filled with teeth that encompassed the entire front of its head. The creature roared deafeningly and clamped cold clammy hands on either side of his head. Alec gasped in pain as the creature slowly crushed his skull, dragging him towards that drooling maw.
Frantically, Alec lashed out with a hand towards the beast’s throat. A curved blade erupted from his palm, slicing downward through flesh and tendon to clash hard against the stone floor below. The maw made a gurgling sound of surprise before the hands dropped away from his head, dead.
Alec scrambled away, massaging his head from the crushing pressure that had been inflicted on it.
“I hate this place,” he muttered darkly. Shaking his head to clear the stars from it, he hiked his jacket up and headed off into the red-tinged world of nightmares.
Alec wandered through the cracked streets warily. He realized that this place was nothing less than a hideous parody of the semi-familiar streets of New York. Things scuttled unseen in the dripped shadows. Occasionally a wraith-like form would drift closely to him, only to retreat the moment Alec fixed it with a dark glare of his own.
That’s right shadow-boy, you’re looking at a pro, he thought to himself grimly as the wraiths retreated. He turned a corner-
His hands were up before his brain was even fully cognizant of the beast before him. The creature roared and lashed out at him; Alec blocked it and stumbled back. It was astonishingly strong. Was everything in this realm supercharged? He wondered.
The creature was humanoid with large fanged maw, gray, mottled skin, and a shock of white hair. It launched into a flurry of punches and though Alec was able to block them, inwardly he grimaced. Not only was the thing slayer-strong, it also had comparable speed and training.
The creature backhanded him, hard, sending him sprawling to the ground.
Okay friend, you want to play rough?
Alec rolled back onto his hands and flipped his feet up hard, catching the beast under the chin. It screeched and fell back as Alec rolled up easily to his feet then lashed with a cartwheel kick, slamming two feet in rapid succession into the beast’s head, causing it to fall back hard. It slowly re-oriented itself, eyeing him now very warily.
Slowly the creature advanced, then launched a roundhouse kick; Alec blocked it easily, after all he’d seen it a thousand times befo-
My God.
He lowered his arms warily, peering at the beast. Reaching a decision he made a gamble, if he was wrong the beast would surely tear him apart.
But if he was right…
Closing his eyes, he began a kata, a precise set of martial arts moves.
Then he smiled when he felt the ‘beast’ respond in perfect time. Punches were blocked slowly, almost languidly. Kicks made light contact against torsos. Each move was measured, careful and mirrored perfectly by the other.
Finally Alec relaxed his muscles and opened his eyes, smiling as he saw his sister standing before him.
“How did you know?” he asked her, still amazed. She winked,
“Well who else throws themselves around in the air like that?” she replied grinning. He laughed and reached over snatching her up in a tight embrace. She squeezed him tightly before letting him go.
“I really didn’t want to be alone in this place,” she confessed. He nodded emphatically,
“No argument there,” he replied as they parted. He sighed and looked around,
“So, now which way do we go?” Buffy looked around and sighed,
“Whichever direction looks the least freakish?” she offered vainly.
“I can tell you,” a small voice sounded out. Buffy and Alec whirled around to face a small boy, no older than 9 with blond hair and pale blue eyes.
“I know where to go,” he repeated. Buffy kneeled down in front of him, even as Alec kept his guard up, just in case. Things in the Nightmare world were rarely what they appeared to be; he’d learned that the hard way.
“Hi there, I’m Buffy, what’s your name?” she asked the boy. The boy smiled gap-toothed smile,
“Seth,” he replied, “You’re looking for him aren’t you? The bad man?”
Alec and Buffy exchanged looks at that.
“Yes, yes, we are Seth, can you take us to him?” she asked quietly. He shook his head,
“You have to go somewhere else first,” he said pointing towards a decrepit warehouse like building down the street.
“Charming,” Alec quipped dryly as he took in the looming, gutted silhouette of the warehouse.
“You have to go their first, there’s things you need to see,” Seth told them, taking their hands and leading them down the street,
“You know,” Buffy commented thoughtfully, “The last time I was lead somewhere by a child, it ended badly,”
“How badly?” Alec asked.
“I died,” she replied. Alec blanched inwardly,
“Yes, that qualifies,” he confirmed, suddenly acquiring his father’s nervous stutter. Buffy smiled humorlessly as they were led to the gaping entrance.
The boy stopped at the entrance,
“I can’t go with you,” he informed them in a small voice. Alec and Buffy sent each other suffering looks before plodding into the gloom.
The stench was unbelievable, like raw death, malaria and nightmares.
“Boy, I wish we had some backup,” Alec commented peering this way and that into the gloom.
“Sounds like a great plan. Know any armies for rent?” Buffy replied. Alec barked out a humorless laugh. Even more so than the caverns of the Deadlands, the darkness here was choking and oppressive. It was a like a cold hand clutched at his heart as Alec scanned the room for danger.
There was no warning, a sudden creak, a CRACK! And with a roar of shattered wood, the siblings fell through the floor into the darkness below.
They landed hard on a cold surface, Cement. Alec’s addled senses told him. A few stray pieces of rotted wood rained down upon them as they groaned and checked themselves for injuries,
“I REALLY hate this place,” Buffy growled. She peered around the room. The scent of the air was different, musty and dry, yet very familiar.
“Smells like a basement,” Alec commented saying out loud what she had been thinking all along. He peered at the various piles of clutter throughout the room, “Baby pictures, old tricycles, broken refrigerators, yeah it’s a basement,” he confirmed.
“Okay so the next question would be why the hell are we in a basement?” Buffy asked. Suddenly there was a loud whining mew from somewhere in the basement. Both Alec and Buffy tensed, their muscles trembling with tension,
“No, the next question is, what the hell was that?” Alec replied. Scanning the darkness he peered into a particularly cluttered corner. Moving over to it, he tossed away a rusted bicycle frame and a box of hideous lawn ornaments.
“What are you doing?” Buffy asked fiercely. Alec ignored her as he reached a large, locked wooden cabinet. He tore the lock off and ripped the doors open.
A small child, bound head to toe and wrapped in what looked like cellophane stood there, whimpering quietly. Buffy’s hand flew to her mouth,
“Oh God,” she whispered hoarsely. The tiny bundle thrashed weakly from side to side. Alec knelt down and started pulling at the plastic,
“It won’t come off,” he exclaimed, trying to work his fingernails under the binding plastic, to no avail.
Suddenly the door above them opened flooding the room with light, revealing a hulking shape,
“What the hell’s all this noise,” it demanded. The wrapped bundle trembled as much as it could with its constraints. Alec stood tall, Buffy flanking him,
“You are about to have every square inch of your ass kicked,” Alec informed the hulking shape darkly. Buffy just readied herself as the form advanced. Alec lashed out with a fist and stumbled as it passed clean through the form. A moment later the hulking form walked right through both Alec and Buffy, snatching the bound child from the cabinet roughly and dragging it across the floor.
“What the hell?” Alec asked bewildered. The hulking man heaved the plastic bundle onto a large work table and flicked on a blinding florescent light. His features were ugly and piggish, with tiny eyes, fat jowls and more than his share of chins.
“I told you to shut up!” the man slurred, clearly drunk. He took a large knife and brought it to the child’s head. Alec lashed out again with a fist and growled in frustration as it passed through the man. Clearly, the man did not even notice they were there. He slit the bag open around the child’s face. The child wailed loudly in pain as the fat man clamped a meaty hand over his face, nearly smothering him.
“I said SHUT UP!” he growled, squeezing his massive hand over the child’s face, there was a tiny ‘crack’ and twin rivulets of blood started to run out from underneath the man’s hand. Buffy looked sick,
“I can’t stand this,” she whispered hoarsely. Alec nodded in agreement and took his eyes off the horrid spectacle before them. His eyes widened when he spied a family portrait on the wall. He instantly recognized the fat man in the picture, alongside a pale, thin woman and-
“Seth!” Alec yelled in recognition.
And without warning his feet were yanked out from under him. Buffy cried out as Alec was hoisted upside down and higher into the air than a basement should allow.
A creature, clad in rags and wrapped in shreds of plastic grinned evilly at him. It had a narrow jaw and a wasted form. Attached to its legs were prosthetic extensions. Bits of plastic clung to the creatures form and created a mummy like mask around its face, revealing nothing but a pair of crazed red eyes and tufts of stringy black hair.
It reached out with a bandaged hand, tipped with gleaming claws and with a shout Alec lashed out with his hands. A large blade lashed out from his palm, slicing at the creature. It cried out and Alec had a split second to recognize the voice as human albeit barely so, before it released its grip on him, sending him plummeting to the stone floor below.
Buffy was ready and grabbing a hold of several large garbage bags created a makeshift cushion for the plummeting man. There was a loud WHUMP as bits of stuffing and pillow casing exploded into the air and came raining down like snow.
The bandaged man cackled manically before leaping like some kind of spider towards the wall, only to disappear within it, leaving a trace of crackling energy.
Buffy rushed over to Alec, “Are you okay?” she asked frantically, helping him to his feet. Alec groaned and rubbed his back, which was very sore at this point.
“Thing looked like a cross between Marilyn Manson and Freddy Kruger,” he winced as his fingers touched upon a very sore spot on his spine.
“That was the bad man,” a small voice said.
The pair turned quickly to spy Seth standing before them, looking very grave for a small child. The room around them melted away and once again they were standing outside the large rotted warehouse. Buffy knelt and gathered the boy in a hug,
“That was you, wasn’t it? In the cabinet?” she whispered tearfully. Seth didn’t return the hug but he didn’t struggle either. Rather he simply stood there, limp in the embrace. She released him to see the boy regarding her with wide, blue eyes.
“Come on, we don’t have much time,” he told them, taking their hands and leading them further down the street.
They walked perhaps five minutes before coming to suburban-style single story home. It might have been pretty in the real world, a white picket fence and an expansive lawn. Instead the fence was barbed wire, the lawn was brown and dead and the house itself resembled a festering wound, containing within rape, abuse and every suburban horror that gets swept under the rug and glossed over in the real world.
“Fantastic, it’s like ‘Leave it to Beaver’ on crack,” Alec commented sourly as they approached the house. He turned to Seth,
“Don’t tell me, in there, right?” he inquired dryly. Seth nodded. Alec sighed, “Okay, right,” Alec and Buffy approached the house even as Seth hung back. Placing his thumb on the large brass release in the handle, there was a CLICK and the door creaked open and they stepped forward quickly swallowed by the gloom inside the house. The door slowly creaked close and sealed with another ominous click.
The house had a late seventies motif. Stained linoleum floors dominated a kitchen that had clearly seen better days. Plates of crusted food were stacked overflowing into a sink filled to the brim with brown, soiled water that occasionally sloshed over the rim onto the floor below. Cockroaches crawled over most of the surfaces and feasted on rotted, half eaten piles of food pasted to the countertop, table and floor.
“Who remembers ‘Seven’?” Alec commented taking in the filth.
“We find a fat guy with ‘Gluttony’ written on the wall, I’m leaving,” Buffy replied. They slowly made their way through the kitchen, trying to ignore most of it and entered as cramped hallway littered with bits of trash and debris. The carpet was cheap shag and so heavily stained that the original color was indiscernible. All along the hallway cracked pictures of Jesus and other religious depictions lined the walls.
“Could this place BE anymore of a cliché?” Buffy commented dryly. Alec nodded distracted. There was a strange sound coming from the room at the end of the hallway, a muffled grunting, the occasional loud slap of skin on skin and a quiet sobbing. Alec held up a hand for Buffy to stay where she was. Buffy froze as Alec peered around the corner and turned gray, quickly ducking back around the corner and away from the scene in the living room. Buffy approached him concerned,
“What is it?” she hissed. Alec just gestured around the corner. Buffy peered and gasped putting a hand over her mouth, trying very hard not to be sick as she ducked back around to join her brother, who was bent over at the waist, hands at his knees and inhaling deeply.
“That’s..that’s-“ she sputtered out looking very ill.
“-Called ’Rape’ where I come from,” Alec commented shakily. “That’s Seth’s mother, I recognize her from a picture down in the basement before I got snagged by Bandage Boy,” Taking Buffy’s wrists in his hands, he positioned her hands over her ears. She nodded and trembling, put her hands over her ears and pressed them there until the skin flushed, then turned white. Alec leaned against the wall and tried to ignore the pleading sounds from the next room.
After what felt like an eternity, he exhaled hard and peered around the corner a moment before coming back,
“It’s over, he’s…it’s done,” he told her still sounding ill. Slowly Buffy released the death grip over her ears and nodded wiping away a few tears of sympathy and horror,
“That poor woman…” she whispered. Alec nodded.
“Agreed. Come on,” he said, taking her hand and leading her into the den.
The hulking father was there; now clad in a white sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of boxers, reclined in an oversized and badly enduring recliner, which creaked under his weight. Alec tried to ignore the scent of fear and stale sweat, those being the least offensive odors in the room. As Buffy made her way past the man, who stared seemingly through her and at a flickering television, she grimaced,
“Never thought I’d be happy to see a guy like this in his boxers,” she muttered.
“Beats seeing him out of them,” Alec replied evenly. Buffy nodded her head so vehemently, Alec was worried it was going to come off,
“Scarred for life,” Buffy told him fervently as Alec approached the sounds of a woman sobbing. Alec slowly opened the door and stepped inside.
The woman was standing there in front of a mirror, sniffling and wiping her eyes, staring at her reflection. She was nude and might have once been pretty, before all the beauty had been starved and beaten out of her. Alec considered averting his eyes, but considering the position he’d just seen her not ten minutes ago in, this was tame. The woman climbed inside an old-fashioned and heavily discolored porcelain tub, she shivered and clutched at herself as she turned one of the knobs and the tub began to fill with blackish water. Alec gave Buffy the ‘all clear’ sign and she stepped inside. Instantly her heart broke,
“Oh God,” she whispered, closing the bathroom door behind her and coming to sit upon the rim of tub beside the woman. She reached out a hand to stroke her hair then snatched her hand back when her fingers passed through the woman’s head.
“I figured as much,” Alec commented sourly, “It was the same thing in the basement,” Alec sighed and looked around the bathroom trying to ignore the woman’s sobbing in the bathtub.
Then the sobbing stopped, and Alec’s intuition told him that something was very wrong.
“Alec…” Buffy whispered hoarsely, Alec turned and froze.
The woman was holding an old-fashioned straight razor staring obsessively at her own tortured expression in the dull blade’s reflection.
“Oh no, no, no,” Alec muttered, at once grasping both the events that were about to transpire and the utter lack of power he had over them.
“Hey!’ Buffy yelled futilely waving her hands frantically in front of the woman, trying to grab the razor blade and only succeeding in passing through her body like smoke. “Come on, don’t do this!” she cried.
Suddenly there was a tiny tapping at the door. Buffy and Alec whirled around at the sound. The woman in contrast, didn’t even seem to register it as she put the blade to her wrist testing.
“Mommy?” a small voice said. Buffy gasped as Alec reached over and tried to yank the door open, it wouldn’t budge. Alec growled and pulled, uncomprehending as to why the door that had only just a few moments ago admitted the in three occupants of the room with no difficulty was now utterly implacable now in its refusal to budge.
“Alec!” Buffy cried out, Alec turned and with a shriek the woman dug the blade hard into the veins of her wrist and slashed downwards, hard, there was a sick sound, like skin being peeled off a chicken and a spray of blood. Buffy screamed as Alec pounded on the door in frustration,
“Open, damn you, open!” he raged.
“Mommy?” the voice came again.
“Mommy’s busy,” the woman spoke for the first time, her voice eerily calm and dreamy, whether that was from insanity or blood loss was anyone’s guess.
And then, it was all over. The gory razor dropped from the woman’s hand with a loud CLACK. Her head lolled over to one side eyes staring blankly ahead and glazing over with death, there was a rasping gurgle and then nothing at all, only the thick, steady drip-drip of blood on the bathroom floor trickling down the wrist, palm and fingertips of the dead hand that hung over the rim like a broken wing.
Buffy cried now, having never witnessed anything like this before. Alec just sagged to the floor, crouched and resting heavily on the balls of his feet, wrists at his knees, hands dangling limp. He raised his hands up with agonizing slowness and ran his hands through his hair, making tight fists of bunched hair until his knuckles were white and his whole body was shaking.
Suddenly the door exploded; Alec and Buffy leapt to their feet as the father stormed in, followed closely by a young and emaciated-looking Seth. The father took in the scene with horror that quickly melted into rage.
“Mommy?!” Seth cried, taking his mother’s bloody and cold hand in his two tiny hands.
Then a meaty hand snatched up a heedful of the boy’s hair and tore him away from his mother’s hand and instead, smashing his face against her dead face.
“This is your fault, you little bastard,” the father hissed through clenched teeth, “See what you did?”
“Mommy!” the child cried out again, hysterically as his father pried open his eyelids to peer into his mothers glazed, dead eyes.
“Look at her! Look at her, you little puke!” The father bellowed to the sobbing child. Then he plunged the boy’s head into the bloody water and holding him there.
“Leave him alone!” Buffy screamed and launched herself at him.
“Buffy, no!” Alec cried out, fearing she would pass through the phantasms and dash her head against the wall.
Instead, with a shriek the dead woman lunged out of the water with the razor blade and slashed at Buffy catching her across the arm. Buffy cried out in pain as the blade tore through cloth and flesh, spinning her around to collide hard with the floor.
The scene had completely transformed, Seth and his father were gone, the bathroom had transformed into a gutted and blackened rendition of what it had been. The woman stood before them nude, her flesh, now bone white, accompanied with the purple blotches of advanced rigor mortis, her eyes blackened, swollen and empty.
The dead woman screeched again, black blood welling up in her mouth and overflowing past her decaying lips, and advanced on Buffy.
And then Alec sprang into action.
Snatching the porcelain top off the toilet, he hefted it around,
“Heads up!” he yelled. The dead woman turned, razor blade gleaming brightly as Buffy ducked. The blow caught her across the head, shattering her jaw and crushing bone. The woman wailed in pain and fell against the bathtub hard, her head dangling over the rim. Alec brought up the heavy porcelain slab slammed it hard down onto the back of her neck. There was a sickening CRACK and the body jerked once, then laid still. Alec tossed the slab away with a weary grin,
“That’s one for the books,” he frowned as he reached out to his wounded sister, “You okay?” he asked.
Buffy’s nod turned into a frantic scream!
“Behind yo-!”
It was too late.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
SORRY it's been so long since the last update. Unfortunately Deacon was having serious issues with his internet connection since Christmas and was only able to send us the chapter last night. Fortunately it's a long one to make up for the absence! Anyways, enjoy and remember to leave us some love :)
- Rachelia
- Rachelia