Halloween 2017: Choose Your Spooky Outcome: Chapter 6
If Victoria wants trouble, you can’t imagine much worse than a creepy old basement. Together, the three of you leap into the portal, everything instantly fading to white. This time, the falling sensation is mercifully brief, it only last for a few seconds before the white light clears from your eyes and you find yourself inside the dingy basement. Taking stock, you find that you’re no longer in counselor attire. Instead, you’re in a rustic outfit, jeans with a plaid shirt and sturdy boots. The one holdover from your time at camp is the axe still clutched tightly in your grip.
Jim and Victoria have changed outfits too, although Jim is still looking distraught over his missing party favors. A sad, empty-throated wail fills the basement.
“We get it Jim; we’ll find you something fun before you accidentally sober up.”
“Totally holding you to that, but I wasn’t the one who made that noise.”
That’s all the warning you get before a shrieking figure flies out from the darkness. It’s horrible, human-shaped yet with flesh that looks like it got halfway to rotting off. The teeth are thick and sharp, with hands ending in twisted claws that are on a crash course for your face. Reacting in sheer panic, you try to backpedal, only to lose your footing. Down you go, flailing wildly in the hopes of righting yourself and completely forgetting that you’ve got an axe in your hands.
The wet thump comes a second before you crash to the ground, your axe lodging itself firmly in the skull of the monster. It comes down on top of you, the rancid breath washing over your nose.
“Get it off get it off get it off get it off!”
“Relax, Merlin. One would think it’s your first time dealing with corpses, and not even a fully formed one at that.” With the kind of casual detachment that makes you fear her personality more than her magic, Victoria grabs the monster by the collar and tosses it easily off you. Luckily, the axe stays in your hand. Unluckily, that means you get a spray of viscera right across the face.
There’s a clapping sound from behind you, it’s just Jim though. His eyes are wide and hands are clasped, with a rare look of surety on his face. “I know where we are! The ugly person, the creepy basement, and all that gore. That was a deathite, we’re in the Wicked Death series.”
“That’s a new one by me,” Victoria admits. “I keep myself abreast on modern monsters as part of my education, yet these are unfamiliar.”
“I can see that. The monsters never took off as much as the general lore and the lead actor. Basically, these are people who get taken over by the wickedness from a book, the Deathnomicon, and the keep attacking and coming back until you use the Deathnomicon to stop them.”
It takes a few seconds of Jim staring at you and Victoria looking impressed before the implications of your own words land. “Wait. Holy shit! Did I just kill a fucking person?”
Whipping around to the corner of the room, you find that there is no corpse waiting to be discovered. So, silver lining, you’re not a murderer! Too bad the rest of the storm cloud is that you’re stuck in a basement with a monster you lost sight of.
“Maybe we should bail,” Jim suggests, nodding to a set of nearby stairs. Wow, advice that’s sound and topical, he really is edging toward sober.
The three of you race up, only to find the door locked securely. Well, yeah, there’s a monster in here, that’s a smart thing to do. Victoria is unbothered, however. With a few whispered words and a bit of metal from her hair, she undoes the deadbolt in seconds. All of you make it through just in time to slam the door on the monster’s face as it lunges once more from the darkness, open axe wound on the head still spitting gore with every movement. After the door is relocked, you head down a hallway to see where you are.
It leads into a living room full of people who looked scared shitless and are dressed just like you three. They stare at you in surprise, a few starting to rise from their seats with makeshift weapons in hand. All of that goes out the window a moment later, when Jim comes rocketing past you and makes a dive for the table set up by the kitchen entrance.
Ah, yes, like many films of this genre, a certain amount of pre-terror debauchery has to go down. That probably explains the table laden with cheap booze, and a few other undiscernible substances that are meant to convey drug use without getting specific about it. Jim scoops all of the loose stuff on the table into a cup, fills it the rest of the way with vodka, and then pounds the entire drink in one magnificent chug.
“I… guess that means you aren’t possessed. None of the people who get taken over care about our alcohol supply.”
“Philistines.” Jim mutters the word as he drops the cup to the ground, sinking into an open chair with a contented look on his face.
“You nailed it. We just arrived, so would you mind giving us the rundown on what’s happened so far?” Jim is a good ice breaker, but getting out of here probably demands figuring out which part of the movie you’re in.
The guy, who it turns out is named Bryce, explains that his group was watching the first Wicked Death movie when the screen went white and sucked them in. Since arriving, the group has been turning bit by bit. Someone apparently had the bright idea of sending a search party out into the woods, since that’s where the last scene they watched took place, and the Deathnomicon was in it. None of those people have made it back yet, though. So… probably dead? Yeah, probably dead.
You and Victoria group up, Jim seems to be singing a nursery rhyme and head-banging, so he’s no good right now. “We need the book to stop the monsters here, but without knowing when we are in the film for sure I can’t be positive where it is. There are scenes where the Deathnomicon shows up in the basements, ones where it’s in the woods, and then at the finale it ends up in the cabin itself. There are no clocks and the entire flick is pretty much shot in darkness, so we aren’t getting clues from that stuff either.”
“It seems you already know what our potential paths are,” Victoria points out. “All that remains is for you to choose one.”
Wait a minute, are you the one who did the choice recap this time? Oh that is just fucking it. Make your damn pick in hurry, or I’m going to start pulling for the deathites.