Chapter Text
Two boys walk up concrete steps out of a basement. The stairs underneath them creak in a familiar way, the noises ones they’ve become acutely aware of in the past week and a half. They reach a door, a dial on a lock is turned, and for pretty much the first time in that week and a half they feel fresh air on their faces, breathe this new freedom into their lungs. The sun burns their eyes, used to the dark of the basement, but it’s more than welcomed. It’s embraced.
The boys are both bloody, beaten, and nowhere near the same boys who went in. Their families don’t know this yet though and a little sister runs across the street, braids flying behind her. She wraps her arms around the brother she thought she’d never see again, that’d she’d lost for good, never planning to let go in case he might disappear again. In case this is just a dream too.
There’s a moment of calm for all of them. A moment of peace at what this moment means. The monster is dead and they are free.
It only lasts a moment.
A whirlwind picks up around them, people in uniform guiding them away from the haunted house. They don’t panic, stay eerily calm, until someone tries to separate them. The boy with the long dark hair appears worse off than the other who had been supporting him. A large gash covers most of his face, still bleeding, almost making it look like he has no face at all. Fresh cuts mark his arms and the front of his shirt is stained with blood from a wound no one can see. He’s pale in a way he shouldn’t be. The EMTs mark him as the priority and pull him away from the other boy who besides bruises and some smaller cuts doesn’t appear to be fatally injured. Just traumatized.
This boy fights the attempts to separate them, fights as if their lives depended on it, the other boy being too weak to even protest. The one fighting them though is also weak and it doesn’t take long till they have the one on the stretcher, getting whisked away, and the other wrapped in a blanket, his emotions turning numb once he realizes the fight is futile.
Police and EMTs try to ask him questions but he only gives one response.
“Basement.”
After that they leave him and his sister alone, his sister who still hasn’t let him go. He’s holding her just as tight.
Reporters show up, more ambulances. Bodies covered with a white sheet are removed from the house across the street. The boy counts four, figures that’s about right.
A freshly sober father shows up. Hugs his son tightly in a way he hasn’t done in years.
By the time the last body is brought out, the one from the house the boys walked out of, they’re both gone.