Howard was the first to hear the screaming.
He had been in the living room, chatting with his friends, when a faint noise, coming not from outside the cabin, but seemingly from under it, grabbed his attention.
Howard immediately stopped listening to whatever debate that Will and Nerissa were having, and then tried to see if he could hear the sound again.
He could. And this time more clearly.
Hellllppppppppppp!!!!!
And it was coming from below them.
Howard got off the couch and headed for the basement.
Lars noticed. “Hey! Where ya’ going?”
Howard opened the door and began heading down the stairs. “I think I hear something…” he called over his shoulder.
“Help!”
Howard could hear it for sure now, it was definitely close, he thought.
But as he flicked on the light, nothing was out of the ordinary in the basement.
But it did seem to be coming from…a wall?
Howard stared at the gray cement, confused. He examined it thoroughly, looking for a microphone or a radio, trying to gouge if his friends were pulling a prank on him or not, then started knocking on it. He grasped at the wall, seeing if there was some sort of handle.
He was just about convinced he was hallucinating when…
Click.
His hands found something small and round in shape, painted to look gray with the rest of the wall, accidentally pressing down on it.
A section of the wall slid away.
“HEEEELLPPPPP- OH! HI!”
Howard blinked, his eyes adjusting to the dim light. This section of the basement was completely different from the concrete gray. Instead, the walls were mainly constructed out of wood, the ceiling made of dirt, held up by oak planks.
The back wall of the room contained 1800s tables and chairs, and surprisingly enough, a landline phone.
In the middle of the room was a large but rustic ping-pong table, and a man in a yellow shirt and really messy hair, along with a woman who kept glaring at him, were both tied with ropes to the legs of the table.
“HELLO!!” Cried Lemon-Shirt. “A LITTLE HELP HERE?”
Lars, who had followed Howard down, peeked over his shoulder. “Uhhh…What is going on?”
Glare-face explained while Howard cut through the rope with a pair of scissors.
“We, there were three of us, no clue where Robin went, were in a cabin, too,” she said. “Then we all got kidnapped by someone? I’m a bit hazy on the details right now.”
Lemon-shirt, who also turned out to be called Mike, cleared his throat. “I THINK WHOEVER DID IT HAD SOME SORT OF MASK ON?” he added.
Lars looked around the room with uncertainty, scratching his arm.
“Has this been here all along?”
Glare-face, who turned out to be named Lydia, nodded. “Yeah. Looks like no one but us has set foot in this place for decades.”
Then she frowned. “Hey, do you hear that?”
Howard strained his ears again. “I don’t hear…”
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
“I HEAR IT!!” said/screamed Mike. “SOUNDS LIKE FOOTSTEPS!!!”
The noise kept getting louder, until it seemingly stopped beside one of the walls. There was a crunching noise, the planks shattered, and a man in a gas mask, holding a fire ax in one hand squeezed through the hole.
“Ah crud,” Lydia mumbled.
Mike scrambled to get away, while Lars and Howard stood frozen in fear.
The man ripped off his mask. “Guys! It’s me! Robin!”
Mike turned back around, hands on his knees. “Oh…oh my god…”
Robin whirled on Lars and Howard. “Who are you, exactly? And how did we end up down here?”
Howard tried to respond, but then Lars beat him to it. “Yeah…if y’all did get kidnapped, how did you end up down here?”
Howard hesitated. “Good point.”
Lydia glanced at them. “So either of you could be the kidnapper?”
“Or they could both be, for all we know,” said Robin.
“Good point.”
Howard waved his arms. “Look, that isn’t the point right now, okay? What is significant is that some psycho is going around kidnapping people from rental cabins just to put them in other rental cabins, in passages and rooms no one even knew about for a century!”
Robin sighed. “Both issues seem to be of significance right now.”
Lydia prepared to leave the room, but then turned to Robin. “Hey, where were you anyway?”
Robin sighed again. “That…is a long story.”
================
EARLIER THAT DAY…
Unlike Mike and Lydia, Robin wasn’t tied by the hands. Instead, he had been trapped in what seemed to be an attic, and a long rope secured to the foot of a rocking chair. The rope was just long enough for Robin to be able to hobble over to the window, where he could see that he was indeed in an attic, and there were lights on in whatever house he was in.
He considered shouting for help or pounding the floor, but that might give away to the Shadow Butcher that he was awake.
Instead, he grabbed an old, knobbly vase from a small table and threw it into the far wall. It shattered, and using the glass shards, he was able to saw through the rope.
His leg free, he stood up and tried to get out of the attic.
Robin first tried the hatch on the ground. It was secured by a huge padlock, as he had suspected.
He couldn’t jump out the window, it was a two foot drop.
Instead, he looked for something to break the lock.
The room was filled with junk, but Robin didn’t know if it was junk that could help him escape, or just plain junk.
Boxes filled with lamps to coloring pencils were piled high. Robin stopped looking through them after he hit a box filled with creepy dolls.
He then checked under the bed. It was small, designed for one person, and while it did look commonly used, it had a metal frame and was not out of style with something he would expect from the 1800’s or 1900’s.
There was a lot of old stuff under the bed, but it was still mostly dust bunnies and fluff.
With nothing left to examine, Robin started studying the newspapers on the wall.
The first three crimes were him basically breaking into houses, where he stabbed everyone in the house to death in some place called Cedar Hallows.
His next two crimes were him killing a late night jogger and a homeless man, but with a chainsaw.
Then in the next article, which said something about how murders were being investigated, something in red had been written on the bottom. Robin squinted, attempting to read it.
Timmy is resting in the bedside cabinet. Sally is among the boxes, however.
Robin raised an eyebrow. He walked over to the wooden cabinet beside the bed and opened the uppermost drawer. Inside was a black shoebox. Inside of the shoebox was a polished knife, with the word “Timmy” carved on the handle.
He went back to the wall. The next murders were in a town called Pineville. With a garrote wire. On the bottom of the last murder: “Georgina likes being behind paintings.”
Robin lifted a picture of a teddy bear. A garrote wire, Georgina carved into one of the handles, sat behind it.
Then the crimes got to Evercrest. First was neck snappings with a pair of gloves named Harry. Then it was another stabbing, this time with a knife named Junior. Then it was a Fireaxe named Flynn. Which Robin had heard somewhere, was strong enough to break padlocks.
He found it. He broke the padlock. Then he fell into a pit that was supposed to lead to the basement, but turned him on the wrong side of the wall.
Those were just wooden planks, though. No trouble for Flynn.
================
June 22nd, 9:19
After discussing the issue with Will and Nerissa, they attempted to get out of the Grove. Very inconvenient for them that all the doors were either barricaded or padlocked, and the windows were all placed up high.
With no cell reception, they couldn’t call for help, either. That is, until Lars remembered the landline phone .
He dashed down to the basement, convincing the others to try finding an alternate exit.
Lars grabbed the receiver, mashed a few buttons and prayed. Eventually though…
“Heeeeyyyyy!!!” came through the voice of Kieran, one of his friends back in Evercrest. “Who is this??”
“Yo! Kieran!” Lars almost shouted into the phone, relief washing over him. “It’s me! Lars! Is your roommate with you? We have a situation in the cabin at the Grove!”
“…yeah, Nav’s here. What’s this situation?”
Lars told him everything as fast as possible, which was not very fast.
“Oh crap.”
Lars raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“This psychopath you’re talking about? Knows secrets, moves like shadows, enjoys doing anything illegal? Yeah, sounds like the Shadow Butcher.”
Lars opened his mouth to ask who that was, but then remembered the headline of the newspaper that day. “Oh…ya’ think it’s really him?”
“Pretty sure, but I’ll grab Nav in the car and try to get you out of there. I think Mark is out night-hiking today too, so he can come with me. Oh, one more thing,” said Kieran.
“Watch your back.”
Those were the last things that Lars heard before the Butcher planted a knife down his spine.
================
June 22nd, 12:47 AM
Kieran pulled his minivan up to the driveway of the cabin. The lights were all turned off, and a huge padlock blocked the main door.
Kieran tried striking it off. It didn’t work.
Nav walked up to it and tried it himself. It didn’t work. Shocker.
Mark peeked around the side of the house. “Is there another entrance we can use?”
There was. But they were also padlocked, to their dismay.
Eventually, when they found the backdoor was, astoundingly, also locked, Nav got so mad he threw a rock at a window.
It shattered, providing a clear way in, saving twenty minutes of time.
“Dang,” said Kieran, stepping into the cabin. The entire place was a mess. Furniture was ruined. Scrapes and scratches appeared alongside walls. It looked like a tornado had blown through the area, complete with the various limbs of human beings.
Nav gagged as he stepped on a hand, hearing the crunch of finger bones beneath his sneakers.
“Dude,” he said, approaching Kieran. “We should get out of here.”
“Not without Lars,” Kieran responded. “There’s still a chance he’s still alive.”
“No bro!” said Nav, scooching to the window. “If it’s really the Butcher that got to him, then…hey, where’s Mark?”
He was gone.
So was Nav, in the next second. A bullet hole had mysteriously appeared in his neck. A smoking pistol in the hands of a man wearing a beak mask.
Kieran noticed this.
He threw up his hands. “Hold it, wait, wait wait wait wait wait wait-”
BLAM!!
Kieran thumped onto the ground, clutching at the new wound in his leg.
“For years, I have killed,” the Butcher began, his voice deep and raspy.
“I have murdered, I have lied. Every soul I have set my sights on has died. And yet…all you see is a murderer. Not an artist. Not even considering that I was one of you in the first place, assuming I lived in a shack somewhere.”
Despite the agonizing pain, Kieran still couldn’t sustain his curiosity. “Y-you don’t?”
“No, you damned fools!” The Shadow Butcher screamed. “Have none of your accursed philosophers even considered why I murder? I have killed all in this house, and yet, all you still see is a murderer! Do you ever wonder why I enjoy killing?”
Kieran opened his mouth, and then shut it. It was true. Whenever he read about some sort of killer, he hadn’t ever considered their motives.
“Humans have plagued this planet for far too long,” he started again, his voice more sad than anything. “Polluting our oceans, slaughtering animals, and yet we still manage to blame it on each other or invasive species or aliens. And whether or not you’d like to admit it, we’ve all done our share in murdering our home.”
The Shadow Butcher spread out his arms.
“I am Earth’s mercy. I am Earth’s vengeance. And you, you are another number to add to the body count.”
He raised his gun again.
Kieran’s eyes went wide.“Wait, please, I don’t-”
Just then, a man with a gas mask and a stump for one of his arms, leapt out from a wardrobe and trapped the Butcher in a headlock.
The Butcher screamed in fury and began randomly firing his gun, one of them hitting the spot just beside Kieran’s head.
Another man ran out the window they had destroyed earlier, and the one wearing the gas mask followed behind.
“Wait! Don’t-”
The Butcher whirled around to face Kieran, and this time took the shot without hesitation.
Meanwhile, Robin and Mike jumped into the minivan, which was miraculously unlocked. Without a word, Mike stepped on the gas and sped off.
====================
Robin took off his gas mask and leaned against his seat. “OH! Oh, oh my gosh.”
Mike looked at him. “THERE IS NO WAY THAT HAPPENED.”
“I AM STARVING FOR A MILKSHAKE.” Said Mike, scratching his chest. “GOD…”
Robin closed his eyes. “Yeah, we just ran away from a psychopathic murderer.”
He opened the glove compartment. “Hey what’s this?”
Robin pulled out a stack of papers, detailing the names and various information of each person that commonly used the vehicle.
Composed By:
Kieran O’Brien(Gotta keep track of things!)
Kieran O’Brien
– Owner of car
– Likes Toyotas
– Dislikes Everything else
Navy Watson
– Common passenger
– Likes Toyotas
– Dislikes Chevrolets for some reason
Mark ‘Ed’ Edwards
– Common passenger
– Likes cars
– Dislikes non-cars
At the bottom of the page, written in huge red letters were:
Hope you like car brakes!!
– Ed
“Um, Robin?” Mike’s voice traveled over to him, a slight tinge of fear. It was the first time that he wasn’t screaming.
“What, Mike?”
“The brakes aren’t working.”
“What?”
Robin looked over in a panic, completely disregarding the speed they were going and the inevitable collision with that tree.
Evercrest Gazette!
When Grove becomes Grave
Nine found dead, one missing in Twilight Grove
Ed set the paper down. He loved a good headline.
He had been in the living room, chatting with his friends, when a faint noise, coming not from outside the cabin, but seemingly from under it, grabbed his attention.
Howard immediately stopped listening to whatever debate that Will and Nerissa were having, and then tried to see if he could hear the sound again.
He could. And this time more clearly.
Hellllppppppppppp!!!!!
And it was coming from below them.
Howard got off the couch and headed for the basement.
Lars noticed. “Hey! Where ya’ going?”
Howard opened the door and began heading down the stairs. “I think I hear something…” he called over his shoulder.
“Help!”
Howard could hear it for sure now, it was definitely close, he thought.
But as he flicked on the light, nothing was out of the ordinary in the basement.
But it did seem to be coming from…a wall?
Howard stared at the gray cement, confused. He examined it thoroughly, looking for a microphone or a radio, trying to gouge if his friends were pulling a prank on him or not, then started knocking on it. He grasped at the wall, seeing if there was some sort of handle.
He was just about convinced he was hallucinating when…
Click.
His hands found something small and round in shape, painted to look gray with the rest of the wall, accidentally pressing down on it.
A section of the wall slid away.
“HEEEELLPPPPP- OH! HI!”
Howard blinked, his eyes adjusting to the dim light. This section of the basement was completely different from the concrete gray. Instead, the walls were mainly constructed out of wood, the ceiling made of dirt, held up by oak planks.
The back wall of the room contained 1800s tables and chairs, and surprisingly enough, a landline phone.
In the middle of the room was a large but rustic ping-pong table, and a man in a yellow shirt and really messy hair, along with a woman who kept glaring at him, were both tied with ropes to the legs of the table.
“HELLO!!” Cried Lemon-Shirt. “A LITTLE HELP HERE?”
Lars, who had followed Howard down, peeked over his shoulder. “Uhhh…What is going on?”
Glare-face explained while Howard cut through the rope with a pair of scissors.
“We, there were three of us, no clue where Robin went, were in a cabin, too,” she said. “Then we all got kidnapped by someone? I’m a bit hazy on the details right now.”
Lemon-shirt, who also turned out to be called Mike, cleared his throat. “I THINK WHOEVER DID IT HAD SOME SORT OF MASK ON?” he added.
Lars looked around the room with uncertainty, scratching his arm.
“Has this been here all along?”
Glare-face, who turned out to be named Lydia, nodded. “Yeah. Looks like no one but us has set foot in this place for decades.”
Then she frowned. “Hey, do you hear that?”
Howard strained his ears again. “I don’t hear…”
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
“I HEAR IT!!” said/screamed Mike. “SOUNDS LIKE FOOTSTEPS!!!”
The noise kept getting louder, until it seemingly stopped beside one of the walls. There was a crunching noise, the planks shattered, and a man in a gas mask, holding a fire ax in one hand squeezed through the hole.
“Ah crud,” Lydia mumbled.
Mike scrambled to get away, while Lars and Howard stood frozen in fear.
The man ripped off his mask. “Guys! It’s me! Robin!”
Mike turned back around, hands on his knees. “Oh…oh my god…”
Robin whirled on Lars and Howard. “Who are you, exactly? And how did we end up down here?”
Howard tried to respond, but then Lars beat him to it. “Yeah…if y’all did get kidnapped, how did you end up down here?”
Howard hesitated. “Good point.”
Lydia glanced at them. “So either of you could be the kidnapper?”
“Or they could both be, for all we know,” said Robin.
“Good point.”
Howard waved his arms. “Look, that isn’t the point right now, okay? What is significant is that some psycho is going around kidnapping people from rental cabins just to put them in other rental cabins, in passages and rooms no one even knew about for a century!”
Robin sighed. “Both issues seem to be of significance right now.”
Lydia prepared to leave the room, but then turned to Robin. “Hey, where were you anyway?”
Robin sighed again. “That…is a long story.”
================
EARLIER THAT DAY…
Unlike Mike and Lydia, Robin wasn’t tied by the hands. Instead, he had been trapped in what seemed to be an attic, and a long rope secured to the foot of a rocking chair. The rope was just long enough for Robin to be able to hobble over to the window, where he could see that he was indeed in an attic, and there were lights on in whatever house he was in.
He considered shouting for help or pounding the floor, but that might give away to the Shadow Butcher that he was awake.
Instead, he grabbed an old, knobbly vase from a small table and threw it into the far wall. It shattered, and using the glass shards, he was able to saw through the rope.
His leg free, he stood up and tried to get out of the attic.
Robin first tried the hatch on the ground. It was secured by a huge padlock, as he had suspected.
He couldn’t jump out the window, it was a two foot drop.
Instead, he looked for something to break the lock.
The room was filled with junk, but Robin didn’t know if it was junk that could help him escape, or just plain junk.
Boxes filled with lamps to coloring pencils were piled high. Robin stopped looking through them after he hit a box filled with creepy dolls.
He then checked under the bed. It was small, designed for one person, and while it did look commonly used, it had a metal frame and was not out of style with something he would expect from the 1800’s or 1900’s.
There was a lot of old stuff under the bed, but it was still mostly dust bunnies and fluff.
With nothing left to examine, Robin started studying the newspapers on the wall.
The first three crimes were him basically breaking into houses, where he stabbed everyone in the house to death in some place called Cedar Hallows.
His next two crimes were him killing a late night jogger and a homeless man, but with a chainsaw.
Then in the next article, which said something about how murders were being investigated, something in red had been written on the bottom. Robin squinted, attempting to read it.
Timmy is resting in the bedside cabinet. Sally is among the boxes, however.
Robin raised an eyebrow. He walked over to the wooden cabinet beside the bed and opened the uppermost drawer. Inside was a black shoebox. Inside of the shoebox was a polished knife, with the word “Timmy” carved on the handle.
He went back to the wall. The next murders were in a town called Pineville. With a garrote wire. On the bottom of the last murder: “Georgina likes being behind paintings.”
Robin lifted a picture of a teddy bear. A garrote wire, Georgina carved into one of the handles, sat behind it.
Then the crimes got to Evercrest. First was neck snappings with a pair of gloves named Harry. Then it was another stabbing, this time with a knife named Junior. Then it was a Fireaxe named Flynn. Which Robin had heard somewhere, was strong enough to break padlocks.
He found it. He broke the padlock. Then he fell into a pit that was supposed to lead to the basement, but turned him on the wrong side of the wall.
Those were just wooden planks, though. No trouble for Flynn.
================
June 22nd, 9:19
After discussing the issue with Will and Nerissa, they attempted to get out of the Grove. Very inconvenient for them that all the doors were either barricaded or padlocked, and the windows were all placed up high.
With no cell reception, they couldn’t call for help, either. That is, until Lars remembered the landline phone .
He dashed down to the basement, convincing the others to try finding an alternate exit.
Lars grabbed the receiver, mashed a few buttons and prayed. Eventually though…
“Heeeeyyyyy!!!” came through the voice of Kieran, one of his friends back in Evercrest. “Who is this??”
“Yo! Kieran!” Lars almost shouted into the phone, relief washing over him. “It’s me! Lars! Is your roommate with you? We have a situation in the cabin at the Grove!”
“…yeah, Nav’s here. What’s this situation?”
Lars told him everything as fast as possible, which was not very fast.
“Oh crap.”
Lars raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“This psychopath you’re talking about? Knows secrets, moves like shadows, enjoys doing anything illegal? Yeah, sounds like the Shadow Butcher.”
Lars opened his mouth to ask who that was, but then remembered the headline of the newspaper that day. “Oh…ya’ think it’s really him?”
“Pretty sure, but I’ll grab Nav in the car and try to get you out of there. I think Mark is out night-hiking today too, so he can come with me. Oh, one more thing,” said Kieran.
“Watch your back.”
Those were the last things that Lars heard before the Butcher planted a knife down his spine.
================
June 22nd, 12:47 AM
Kieran pulled his minivan up to the driveway of the cabin. The lights were all turned off, and a huge padlock blocked the main door.
Kieran tried striking it off. It didn’t work.
Nav walked up to it and tried it himself. It didn’t work. Shocker.
Mark peeked around the side of the house. “Is there another entrance we can use?”
There was. But they were also padlocked, to their dismay.
Eventually, when they found the backdoor was, astoundingly, also locked, Nav got so mad he threw a rock at a window.
It shattered, providing a clear way in, saving twenty minutes of time.
“Dang,” said Kieran, stepping into the cabin. The entire place was a mess. Furniture was ruined. Scrapes and scratches appeared alongside walls. It looked like a tornado had blown through the area, complete with the various limbs of human beings.
Nav gagged as he stepped on a hand, hearing the crunch of finger bones beneath his sneakers.
“Dude,” he said, approaching Kieran. “We should get out of here.”
“Not without Lars,” Kieran responded. “There’s still a chance he’s still alive.”
“No bro!” said Nav, scooching to the window. “If it’s really the Butcher that got to him, then…hey, where’s Mark?”
He was gone.
So was Nav, in the next second. A bullet hole had mysteriously appeared in his neck. A smoking pistol in the hands of a man wearing a beak mask.
Kieran noticed this.
He threw up his hands. “Hold it, wait, wait wait wait wait wait wait-”
BLAM!!
Kieran thumped onto the ground, clutching at the new wound in his leg.
“For years, I have killed,” the Butcher began, his voice deep and raspy.
“I have murdered, I have lied. Every soul I have set my sights on has died. And yet…all you see is a murderer. Not an artist. Not even considering that I was one of you in the first place, assuming I lived in a shack somewhere.”
Despite the agonizing pain, Kieran still couldn’t sustain his curiosity. “Y-you don’t?”
“No, you damned fools!” The Shadow Butcher screamed. “Have none of your accursed philosophers even considered why I murder? I have killed all in this house, and yet, all you still see is a murderer! Do you ever wonder why I enjoy killing?”
Kieran opened his mouth, and then shut it. It was true. Whenever he read about some sort of killer, he hadn’t ever considered their motives.
“Humans have plagued this planet for far too long,” he started again, his voice more sad than anything. “Polluting our oceans, slaughtering animals, and yet we still manage to blame it on each other or invasive species or aliens. And whether or not you’d like to admit it, we’ve all done our share in murdering our home.”
The Shadow Butcher spread out his arms.
“I am Earth’s mercy. I am Earth’s vengeance. And you, you are another number to add to the body count.”
He raised his gun again.
Kieran’s eyes went wide.“Wait, please, I don’t-”
Just then, a man with a gas mask and a stump for one of his arms, leapt out from a wardrobe and trapped the Butcher in a headlock.
The Butcher screamed in fury and began randomly firing his gun, one of them hitting the spot just beside Kieran’s head.
Another man ran out the window they had destroyed earlier, and the one wearing the gas mask followed behind.
“Wait! Don’t-”
The Butcher whirled around to face Kieran, and this time took the shot without hesitation.
Meanwhile, Robin and Mike jumped into the minivan, which was miraculously unlocked. Without a word, Mike stepped on the gas and sped off.
====================
Robin took off his gas mask and leaned against his seat. “OH! Oh, oh my gosh.”
Mike looked at him. “THERE IS NO WAY THAT HAPPENED.”
“I AM STARVING FOR A MILKSHAKE.” Said Mike, scratching his chest. “GOD…”
Robin closed his eyes. “Yeah, we just ran away from a psychopathic murderer.”
He opened the glove compartment. “Hey what’s this?”
Robin pulled out a stack of papers, detailing the names and various information of each person that commonly used the vehicle.
Composed By:
Kieran O’Brien(Gotta keep track of things!)
Kieran O’Brien
– Owner of car
– Likes Toyotas
– Dislikes Everything else
Navy Watson
– Common passenger
– Likes Toyotas
– Dislikes Chevrolets for some reason
Mark ‘Ed’ Edwards
– Common passenger
– Likes cars
– Dislikes non-cars
At the bottom of the page, written in huge red letters were:
Hope you like car brakes!!
– Ed
“Um, Robin?” Mike’s voice traveled over to him, a slight tinge of fear. It was the first time that he wasn’t screaming.
“What, Mike?”
“The brakes aren’t working.”
“What?”
Robin looked over in a panic, completely disregarding the speed they were going and the inevitable collision with that tree.
Evercrest Gazette!
When Grove becomes Grave
Nine found dead, one missing in Twilight Grove
Ed set the paper down. He loved a good headline.
