Mister Creevey broke through whatever was keeping him out. He removed himself from the girl's body and dragged her by the hair up the hill to us. I took aim with the hunting rifle and fired, it yielded little to no results. He would pause and look where he was hit at first before cackling.
Once closer to our establishment he flung the girl through the front door and into the staircase. I could hear Josie crying as she tried to pull herself to a stand and failed, she no doubt broke a rib or two. Loading up the rifle I had hooked it over my shoulder and picked up the double barrel shotgun, Gallows was nowhere to be seen and it was alarming. I went to search for him before Mister Creevey could enter the establishment; passing the staircase I fired a round into the creatures chest which successfully knocked him back a great deal.
I turned onto Josie and handed her a police issued handgun, just one of our many victims. I instructed she flee upstairs and either hide somewhere thick and padded, due to gunfire, or escaped out one of the second story windows. The girl crawled up the stairs and turned onto Mister Creevey and fired again once reloaded, successfully furthering him from the house.
I called for Gallows but he did not answer verbally. From the roof he jumped cackling and tackled Mister Creevey to the ground as his cushion against the fall. No longer holding his sickle he was instead using a farmers scythe. He brought it deep into Mister Creevey's chest and cut vertically as he hopped away and spun laughing.
Mister Creevey attempted to get up but Gallows spun once more, this time catching our enemy horizontally across the chest. Twirling the scythe he brought it down upon the head of our enemy and grinned widely with maniac glee. Gallows tore the scythe from the creatures head and stepped back to the doorway where I stood ready. Mister Creevey laid motionless.
I glanced to my partner who was frowning once again. His pleasure for bringing harm to others, for murder and mayhem was back. Not quite back to his normal mindset but enough for now. I'm interested as to what changed it, I'm considering he finally read what has been posted since Mister Creevey revealed himself. The Shady Lady, your information was incredibly useful. To have Dia worrying over him I believe assisted, he dislikes it when his prey frets about him and not their own survival.
It was not that easy, however. Mister Creevey's body convulsed and the wounds pulled themselves together layer by layer. Inhumanly he arched upon the ground and twisted before waking up and hopping to his feet. That maddening grin was back, "Want to try again?"
I shoved past Gallows as Mister Creevey lunged, the creatures sharp hands sunk into my shoulder but the double barrel shotgun was digging into his torso with my finger on the trigger. Gallows reached over and pulled my arm and fired it for me, once more Mister Creevey was separated from us. He straightened and attacked once more with more force, Gallows used his scythe as a shield but the wood split in half as he was flung back inside. Mister Creevey kicked me into the door frame, I dodged his swipe and slammed screen door on his hand.
"I'm going to the shed." Gallows growled as he threw aside the useless half of the scythe and ran off. I reloaded and turned to the door only to find the creature gone.
Screaming arose upstairs followed by the same cackling the beast makes. I ran up the stairs and found it was coming from the barely intact third level. Josie ran above me and the creature followed after. I took aim as she passed over and fired when Mister Creevey came, his chest was hit and the hole the shot made swallowed up his leg. He pushed on the floor to pull himself loose but I fired again which made another hole directly next to the creature, he fell to the second floor before me. I cracked the butt of the shotgun against its skull, the force would have snapped a humans neck but the odd angle its head was twisted at meant nothing, there was no crack of the neck.
I ran in Josie's direction and came to the large hole in the floor. She was looking down it uneasily trying to find another way across. I told the girl to jump, she hesitated but did so and I caught her before tossing her across the hole that was on the second floor as well. I jumped in pursuit whilst Mister Creevey chased.
There was a small object that flew up and landed on the opposite side of the hole, it rolled and stopped the creature in its place. Looking curious at it until it slowed in its rotations.
"Grenade!" Wood and plaster from the walls blew apart in all directions. Gallows hysterical laughter echoing from below as he waved the scythe around the new hole in the building. "Give me a lift, girlie!"
I hurried over and grabbed the neck of the scythe, successfully pulling him up as well. Sweat beaded down the side of his face, the black face paint smudged even more so from sweat. He had his torn jacket through his belt and a new one wrapped around his waist. Gallows has a thing for prancing around the property shirtless.
He grinned and walked past me to Josie cowering against the wall with the gun aimed poorly at him. Gallows leaned over the gun and flicked her double pierced eyebrow once, "Ya know, I'd love to rip out every piercing ya got but we've got something more important to do. So you're gonna be a good girl and stop aiming that gun at me. You're gonna use that fun thing on Mister Creevey over there and we're gonna kill our common problem. Maybe if you do a good job in helping I'll let ya walk away from this all so you won't have to spend eternity with your parents in hell. Capiche?"
Josie's face contorted from fear to anger at the drop of her parents. She slapped Gallows across the face with enough force to knock him into the opposite wall. He looked grimly at her but the girl had spunk. She closed the proximity between them and held the gun to the side of his head while leaning down, looking him straight in the eyes. I pressed the barrel of the shotgun to the base of her spine as a silent warning. She didn't bat a lash. "Don't talk about what you don't know. It could get you killed." She said to him and pulled away from us both.
Gallows grinned once more and glanced my way from the corners of his eyes before back at Josie. Looking past me to the smoke filled hallway we could vaguely see Mister Creevey sprouting a new arm and speaking unnaturally.
We went to the skinny staircase on the other side of the house that led into a closet on the first level. Gallows broke it open followed by a window in the kitchen, we climbed out and ran to the large tree where decayed bodies hung from. Josie cringed and mentioned Gallows being fucked up, he hummed to her response whilst spinning the new farming scythe.
"We're going." Gallows announced as he reached into a hole in the tree and pulled out a small cooler.
"Where?" Josie questioned, he cocked his head at her. "You're not leaving me here, dick." His eyebrows raised as he looked at me, a surprised smile quirking up his lips.
I grabbed both of them and teleported, we ended up at the border of the city. Gallows was displeased and questioned why we only got this far, I attempted again but it only yielded the same results.
"Why can't we leave?" Josie asked frantically, she ran forward and disappeared from our sight. Gallows looked alarmed before following in suit as did I, we appeared on the opposite side of the city. "I don't get it, I don't understand. Haven't you guys left the city before?"
"Yeah we went to Belgium only."
I glanced over what was the border of the city, "Only because Ferus took us out of the city. I did not do the transporting." Gallows was scowling by the time I finished that.
"What are we going to do?" Josie panicked with the gun, Gallows snatched it out of her hands and threw her a glare.
"We can use the tunnels under the city."
Josie shook her head frantically. "Those are just rumors. Nothing is beneath the sewers."
Gallows pulled her forward by the collar of her shirt and sneered, "Well we don't got much of a choice now do we, girlie?" He let her go with a small push and headed towards the nearest alley. We weaved through a couple blocks until we found a manhole and popped the lid.
We continued down at every stairwell we found, going deeper beneath the city until the sewers were no longer there. Only abandoned tunnels. We walked a great deal of time, Josie fumbled her carton of cigarettes and hastily whispered about poor timing to try quitting. Gallows made a new song down there, singing about how she's killing herself slowly when he could be. Their banter made the situation less tense for them.
Gallows flung the flashlight across the tunnel and found a few skeletons laid out as if they were crawling. Josie was at my side, we were alert at that point. I returned the gun Gallows took from the girl as we furthered. Coming to another stairwell that descended only we found that the rest of the tunnel was broken apart, caved in on the other side with a large gaping hole. He shined the light on Josie's face and grinned widely, she backed up into me and I nudged her forward.
We were going down.
When we hit the bottom we came to more ruins, old structures broken down. Josie was surprised to see the city she's grown within was built on top of another, when we found more skeletons we came to realize Mister Creevey was right. Our city was also built on the corpses of others. What this means we are not sure.
The cavern was large, filled with buildings in ruins, most of them broken or shattered completely. It was bigger than the city on the surface, we guessed this stretched to the outskirts. From where our home was and perhaps even past that. We continued traveling until we found another tunnel and furthered our pursuit to leave the city.
It was within that tunnel Gallows began to falter. The scythe began dragging across the ground before falling all together, the cooler came next. Josie picked both up as I swung the gun over my shoulder and supported Gallows. His knees went weak before he backpedaled from the direction we were heading in, screaming about how he can't leave. He wasn't allowed to, on the verge of begging through his demands.
I took the risk that this was trigger effect to keep him within city walls. Despite his clawing and fighting I dragged him further down the tunnel. He was screaming and cradling his head by the time we saw the door at the end of the tunnel. His entire body was writhing within my hold.
Josie tried singing some Soft Kitty song to Gallows and he screamed further at her, "What the hell is that shit? What's wrong with you?"
"They sing it to Sheldon and he's crazy. I thought it would help and"
"Just open the fucking door." I yelled over the both of them, she flailed as she ran to the door yelling she was sorry. Josie blew off the locks with the gun and began trying to pry open the metal door.
He was clawing at his head screaming about a sound he was hearing that we could not. "Stop it stop it stop it! Make it stop! Take me back, get me out of here.!" Gallows continued screaming, Josie was struggling to get the door open still as I was fast approaching. "No no no! Not through there, don't take me out of here!"
"Open the door!" I shouted. Josie had a foot up next to the door as she was trying to pull it open.
"It's stuck!"
I threw Gallows off me and next to Josie on the other side of the door, pulling the shotgun off my shoulder I took aim. She was smart enough to move as I shot the top hinge of the door, reloaded, and shot the lower hinge. The metal door creaked with no support and fell forward.
Gallows was writhing on the ground, arms enclosed around his head as he shook. "Kill me, fucking kill me. Don't take me through there. Don't do it!" I began pulling him up and he fought me fully once more. "Kill me! KILL ME!"
His eyes were glazed over, he wasn't in control of himself anymore. I had been right, something was triggering this and I already had a guess what it was. The exact thing that kept him here to begin with. The Master that abandoned him long ago for whatever reason.
I managed to get him up again, Josie juggled the cooler and scythe while shining a flashlight through the dust filled tunnel on the other side. She went first and I followed with Gallows, the moment we passed through the door he went still and silent. It only lasted a short moment before he began to seizure. I put him down and we assisted him through it, he ended up unconscious and I carried him until we reached the end of the tunnel and found a stairwell. We waited there for him to awaken, he did so hours later.
Gallows was back to how he was before we reached that point in the tunnel. Only a vague recollection of what happened. We gathered our things and ascended level after level until we came to a manhole once more. Opening it I looked out and all that could be seen was sand. A desert. It's impossible, we were nowhere near a desert. Our city was within the country, surrounded by vast fields of green.
We walked for a day and a half before we found a road. It took the rest of the day until we found a small town. We rented a motel room and Josie grabbed a map off the counter, on top of more cigarettes. Once settled she laid it out and began mapping out where we came from. Gallows fiddled with my injured shoulder, halfway done with it when Josie called us over.
"Guys, according to the map..." She hesitated.
"What?" Gallows snapped, I heard his stomach growl and sighed.
Josie began shaking, her breathing becoming labored. Gallows narrowed his eyes as he pulled away from me and I followed to look at the map. "We don't even exist."
Gallows scoffed and pulled away, "That's stupid. The guy checked us in. Gave us a key and everything."
"Our city doesn't exist. It's not on the map." Josie sat down on the bed next to the map. "I don't get it. What does this mean?"
We left it at that and slept through the night barely. Our current predicament is an odd one. We will be changing locations shortly but Gallows and Josie both agreed that an update was necessary. We are unsure if Mister Creevey can leave the city or any of the population, we can't conduct any research without returning either since our city isn't on any maps. We have some thinking to do.
Till next time.
~Graves
