Page 18 of Possess Us

‘Willllloooow…’ a deep voice calls from behind me.

I run away from the voice. From this room of hell, and into another.

The next room holds jars of body parts floating in discoloured liquid. The blood all over the floor tells me they are very real and fresh body parts.

On the wall are torsos with random arms and legs stitched onto them. One has three fucking heads.

Their eyes watch me, and their fingers twitch!

This is some sick and twisted kind of experiment. My throat is unbearably tight, and I am running on pure fear and adrenaline, shaking from head to toe.

They all leap from the wall and scuttle after me, their limbs disjointed and flailing about, their mouths open in a perpetual scream.

‘GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!’ I scream. I run.

I have no idea where I’m running to. No idea what is chasing me.

It feels like everything is. The rooms all start to blur.

Lights flash. The screams come from the speakers and the air.

A siren begins to wail, and some airhorns warn of disaster.

The scenes in this haunted walkthrough have come alive, stealing the guests for their sick tableaus, making them real. Making them hell on earth.

I fall into a room flooded with blue light, landing face down.

I swallow the urge to make any sound when I push myself up.

I’m in a fucking morgue. An entire wall is filled with drawers. Pale feet stick out of each and every one.

Get up and get out.

That’s all I can think of.

Get. The fuck. Out!

Their feet start to move. They begin to slide out!

I can’t breathe. My heart hurts, it's hammering in my chest so hard. I want to run, but all I manage is slowly standing and walking out as though drunk, swaying from side to side as the world spins around me. I cling to the wall, trying to shake sense and coordination back into myself.

I hear the dull thuds of their feet meeting the floor as I leave the room.

If I die of a heart attack now, after everything I have been through in my life, I will be so fucking pissed!

I enter the next room.

What could possibly be worse than all that? Well. Let me see.

I stop still, taking in the sight. An old light flickers above a steel table.

Two nurses stand on either side. One points a wind-up camera down at a man strapped to a metal gurney.

The other holds a tray of rusted implements.

The man’s chest is bare, and his wrists are chained to the table.

A doctor in a dirty white coat with a matching hat and face mask stands poised with a scalpel at his patient’s chest. I breathe a sigh of relief when I realise they are mannequins.

The light flickers and buzzes with electricity, threatening to go out completely and plunge me into darkness.

Thick cobwebs cover the ceiling, and the speakers continue to play those distant screams and moans.

‘Breathe, Willow,’ I tell myself. ‘Do not have a heart attack. It’s just a mannequin.’ I carry on. Three steps in, the lights flicker and plunge the room into darkness. My heart pounds. Every muscle in my body tightens, and my legs won’t cooperate.

Why does the darkness make everything so much more terrifying?

The light flickers back on.

Everything is the same. I’m still alone. And there’s a sign up ahead.

I take another step. The lights go out again. Chains rattle. Not through speakers. Not from another room. But close.

A man moans.

The light flickers back on.

I freeze, still staring at the exit sign.

‘Keep filming, Nurse,’ A well-spoken man says. ‘We must document. Now, calm yourself. This will only hurt for a moment.’

I hear a man plead, beg and thrash. His screams become desperate as a wet squelching sound tells me the scalpel has cut flesh.

The ticking of the camera as she films continues.

‘Rib spreader, please, Nurse.’

I don’t want to look. I really don’t. But I slowly start to turn, my body on autopilot as it entirely ignores my mind.

I see exactly what I expect to see. No longer are they plastic mannequins but very real people. The patient struggles against his restraints as blood spills from the cut down his chest. The doctor lowers the scalpel and takes the spreader from the nurse.

The light flickers out, but I hear it. The snapping of bone. The wet squelches. The screams.

The light flickers back on and I step back, knocking over a glass of something green. It smashes. The doctor and two nurses stop what they are doing and slowly lift their gazes to me.

‘Shit,’ I hiss, still very much a deer in headlights. I offer a smile and a wave, looking at the blood dripping from the doctor’s hands and the spreader half in his patient’s chest cavity. ‘Hello. Don’t mind me. I’m just… yeah. I’m leaving.’

The light flickers out, and I stagger back.

When it flickers again, the doctor comes at me with the scalpel raised.

I scream, falling on my backside like a scene in every bad horror movie I have ever seen.

The light becomes strobe, plunging the room into darkness and light, making the nurses' and demented doctor’s movement jarring and impossible to predict.

Scrambling away, I try to get back on my feet.

He’s there with the scalpel halfway across the room.

Then directly in front of me. Then the scalpel is heading straight for me.

Its blade meets my arm as I try to protect my face.

Another scream as he slices through my skin. Blood spills from the gash.

‘FUCKING HELL! STOP!’

I turn and scramble onto my feet, desperately looking for the door.

‘I’m trying to free you, you fucking asshole of a demon! Stop making the monsters real!’

The doctor yells. I see him lunging after me again, with a crazed look in his eyes. He’s not holding back. He wants to slice me to fucking ribbons!

He misses me by an inch, my face narrowly avoiding the blade. But he delivers a firm punch to my gut, making me double over.

Then his foot slams into my face.

I fall, my head spinning. My vision blurred.

The next thing I know is I’m being dragged, limp and dizzy, across the floor by my wrist.

Another blink, and the man with the chest spreader is tossed off the table, and I’m lying in his place. The pooled blood he left behind is warm and thick as it coats my skin and seeps into my nurse's costume.

Another blink.

I’m strapped down.

When the world has stopped spinning, I look up. The nurse is filming me now. The doctor holds out his bloody hand.

‘Scalpel.’

That single word has me feral, screaming and tugging against my restraints with all my strength. They are as calm as could be. The nurse places the scalpel back in his hand, and he looks down at me.

‘You are sick, my dear. Diseased in the mind, body and soul. We can fix you.’ He holds the scalpel in his hand. ‘We just need to see your heart.’

I scream for my demons. For Lust and Pain. But they don’t come.

I watch his every move as much as possible, with the lights still distorting everything. This crazed doctor runs this house of horror. The demon made flesh.

‘Do you have a heart?’ he asks me, inspecting the sharpness of his knife. ‘Shall we see?’

He cuts open my dress, sliding his blade down the fabric, leaving me exposed. My bare breasts lay before all three of them, and I thrash against the restraints.

Another hand reaches out from behind me, his palm splayed as he gestures for the knife.

‘If she has a heart, Dr, I will be the one to find it.’

I look up. In the brief glimpses of light, I see the man… the monster.

‘Kai,’ I breathe.

But it’s not, is it. Kai is gone. His green eyes are now jet black with silver specks, like a clear night’s sky.

He takes the knife and looks down at me. His dark hair falls over his dark eyes. He leans over, lowering his face until he is nose to nose with me.

I get glimpses of him as the light continues to strobe.

He looks me deep in the eye, then looks down at my naked body. His skin is pale, and I quickly see that the scars and stitches are not drawn on. But real. Very real. He’s been cut or hacked up and stitched back together, like one of the many monsters I’ve seen tonight; his costume has become real.

The stitches go up the corners of his mouth. Along his neck as though his head had been reattached. His bare chest is covered in them, too. Deep scars and messy stitches cover him completely. He leans over me, his hand resting next to my head, and the scalpel pointed warningly at my face.

The screams in the speakers get louder. More real.

I try to sink into the table. Stupid. Solid steel doesn’t allow for much sinking.

‘So you’re my tribute. My willing victim of fear. My…’ He looks into my eyes and smiles. ‘Pretty Prey.’

He smiles. His mouth widens. His jaw dislocates.

And the head of a black snake starts to slither out.

A snake ! Slithers out ! From his fucking mouth !

I let loose a fierce and violent scream, watching it come. Inches upon inches of it. It meets my neck.

I fall silent. My eyes roll into the back of my head.

It’s too much.

‘Oh no, you don’t.’ I feel his hand tap the side of my cheek. It’s as though I'm looking up through a long tunnel, and at the end is only him. ‘You stay with me.’ He plants a soft kiss on my lips. ‘Or do you wish to forfeit?’

He waits. I know that if I forfeit, he will let me go. I will be free to leave, and he will not stop me. That’s the deal we made.

But the payoff is too great. The prize is too tempting.

I shake my head and take a breath.

‘I am yours, Deimos. Lord of Fear.’