Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Beyond the Looking Glass ❯ Chapter 3: Dolls Part 1 ( Chapter 10 )

Beyond the Looking Glass

 

Chapter 3: Dolls

 

Author's Note: This chapter will give brief insights into Duo's past and current ghostly character, put our living characters into further jeopardy, and hopefully, I'll have freaked people out a bit more. I'm actually shocked that so many people have reviewed and e-mailed saying that this fic has scared them. It's always nice knowing that you've hit your target and I hope that everyone's enjoying it. As always, I promise no happy endings, just a disturbing, questionable journey, and a few good scares. Maybe some will live, but at least one main character will die. This is a horror story, after all. The title `dolls' is a throwback to one of my oldest fears. Yes, even as a young girl, dolls terrified me. They still do. Same thing with clowns. How anyone can find these things `cute' or `fun', I have no idea. I blame my mother and her tendency to put creepy ass dolls in my room when I was little.

 

Also, I'm well aware that the `intro' is too freakin' long. Blame Odin. He just wouldn't shut the hell up.

 

 

 

 

“What is a ghost? A tragedy doomed to repeat itself time and again? An instance of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber… A ghost… That's what I am.”

 

~The Devil's Backbone

 

 

 

September 3, 2023

 

 

It was a good thing that Odin Lowe had spent his entire life in loneliness or the long, desolate trek through rural Japan to a hopeful salvation would have driven him half mad. If there was one thing he had always been good at, even as a child, was hiding, though he had never had anyone trying to find him until he had taken up this job. There was something woefully lonely about hiding when no one cared enough, or hated enough, to want to find you, but still, he had been good at it. Such a skill in his line of work was invaluable. You could shoot a target from a seemingly impossible distance, be as quiet as an owl in the depths of night, or have impenetrable nerves of steel, but none of those things mattered if you couldn't hide yourself at the end of it all.

It was because of this skill, and only this skill, that had still seen Odin alive after twenty years of living as an assassin. Men in Odin's trade called themselves `rogue mercenaries' and `lone wolves', but they weren't anything more than murderers for hire. Odin was well aware of this fact and wasn't ashamed of his line of work. You couldn't be in this line of work for twenty years and hate yourself, you wouldn't last. And yet, in a way, Odin was disgusted in himself. He had regrets like any man, but his regrets were heavier than most and weighed on him.

Odin's job was simple. Someone would pay for his time, give him a name, and he would find that person, or persons in some cases, and take them out as efficiently and silently as possible. The job left no room for grey areas, it was as black and white as possible, kill or don't kill, and for most of his career, that had suited him just fine. Another assassin had even told him that they were a lot like whores. They got paid, privately, to do a dishonest service, and at the end of the day, if you could look at yourself in the mirror, you knew you'd last in the business. If you couldn't, you might as well just quit before you got yourself killed. Odin had hated the similarity, but he couldn't deny the truth of it.

Odin wasn't like other assassins who simply didn't care about the people he killed, he wasn't exactly a bleeding heart, either, but he wasn't apathetic. He was well aware that his line of work was `wrong', but as wrong as it was, he was good at it. People got into this business for all sorts of reasons. Some were sociopaths, they didn't care about life and death, right and wrong, they found some sort of pleasure in murder and chaos. Some were desperate for money and chose to believe that the people they killed were evil, that what the did had some meaning, but Odin knew that that was an illusion, a poorly constructed lie. He had had his fair share of men that probably deserved to be wiped off the earth, but also quite a few innocents. Children of ambassadors, rich old ladies… he couldn't lie to himself and say that these people deserved it.

Other assassins, on the other hand, had chosen to do it because of something terrible that had happened in their pasts. They were consumed by rage and clung to the violence and death like a security blanket. Odin had strived to steer clear of these individuals because they were reckless and irrational, killing not for money, but for some sort of twisted sense of vengeance, or just because it made them feel good. For these people, killing was easy, and Odin never wanted it to be easy. Killing was a job, but he didn't want to lose his humanity just because of a job. Even if he was good at it.

Perhaps it was for that reason that he had grown tired of it in these last few years. He was not haunted by the people he had killed, rather, he was haunted by how good he had gotten at killing, how easy it had become. It had become almost… boring, which was a disturbing concept to him. He didn't want to be a killer. A man with a job to do, yes, even a man with a job that he was good at, illegal or not. But once it became so easy that the money didn't even excite him anymore, just the prospect, the pride of that easiness, it was only a small step to doing it for free. Killing might be his calling, it certainly seemed so with how frequently he was asked for, and how he had never been caught, but his comfort in it would make him a murderer, something, he felt, he was too smart to fall into. Murderers got caught, because they liked the killing too much to stop. If there was one group of people that disgusted him, it would be addicts.

So, he felt that he had a choice. He could either just put himself up for retirement, find some other easy job that would bore him enough he could never truly love it, or he could keep going until that line between a job and an obsession was completely blurred beyond repair. It seemed like fate had been working with him in this sense on his last job. He had just been contemplating his choices when he had been contacted to kill a certain ambassador who was taking a vacation in Japan.

A Russian national, Odin seldom ever strayed far from his homeland, but had been confident in both his Japanese and his ability to hide amongst a crowd. However, in this case, his skills had failed him. With his noticeable height and blonde hair, Odin had been spotted and recognized easily, ending with him being shot in the shoulder and pursued heavily, though not before he had made his own shot, finishing the job. It was a small victory, though, with Japanese Defense Forces and international police chasing him through the continent like hungry dogs after an elusive bit of raw meat. Still, being on the run had given him the excuse to stay out of Russia and make him escape his old life, if he could only find a place that the police wouldn't find him, he could settle down for awhile. Even if it was in Japan, and he stood out like a sore thumb here.

Keeping to the back roads had been ridiculously easily. Japan was a great place to hide in, especially the more rural villages that had temples and shrines that had abandoned long ago, even before the third World War had demolished so many cities around the globe. In the past, Odin had wished he had been old enough to have seen the war, it would have made hiding so much easier. The other good thing about these small towns and villages was the people's distrust of strangers, both native Japanese and foreigners. To these people, if you had not been born in their town, you were as foreign as a tall white man, even if you look, acted, and spoke like Japanese. Because of this, his procuring of medical supplies and directions became quick and easy, the people he asked just wanting to get rid of him, because he was different, but wasn't causing any trouble. The police, however, were given little information, because they symbolized something sinister to the small town people.

It was four days since the failed job that Odin found himself in the strange town of Nasue. Despite his holing up in dirty rooms and being constantly on the move, Odin's bullet wound was healing, though slowly, and did not hurt him very much. Being on the run from the `law' really only meant that he was isolated from everyone. He was not overly bothered by the prospect of being caught and sent to jail, but he could speak to no one, could hardly even walk through a crowd, since he was so different looking. It was strange how that made him feel. He had spent his whole life in loneliness, yet now, when he entered Nasue, he was suddenly struck with this deep feeling of depression, having not a single person he could rely on or converse with. What was even stranger was that Nasue, which was similar to all the other towns, seemed lonelier than all the others.

The people here looked at him with fear, not simply distrust, but actual fear, as though they had secrets to tell, secrets that he was a part of and was only there to make things worse. He wondered if it was because he was a stranger to the town, simply passing through as seldom did, or because he was Russian and not Asian. When he tried to ask directions, no one would respond to him, only hurrying away. He wondered if that had anything to do with his blood-stained shirt. His bullet wound had started to bleed a little again once he had entered the town, but he couldn't worry about it until he had some sort of shelter. Odin quickly realized that no one was going to grant a bloodied stranger like him refuge and, oddly, there were no temples in this town, though the old woman made the same signs at him that others had in different towns, so he knew that they all had some sort of religion.

It seemed to get darker quicker here, though that was silly, Odin knew, it was not winter quite yet. By the time the sun had set, he had long surrendered the possibility of finding a motel or a kind stranger who could put him up for the night. Nasue, being a backwater town, was too far away from any other city for him to give up on it, and it was too dark for him to try to find some other place. He didn't have any camping equipment, which was unusual for him. He had always been meticulous, even as a child, which was a reason why the exacting nature, the perfection behind the job of being an assassin, had called to him. Camping was the same way, but he had hardly the time or accessibility to find gear for it. Still, it seemed like his only solution was to sleep in the woods, which suited him. Sleeping out in the wilderness that surrounded the town like a feral blanket would be safer for him than being near people.

As Odin started to walk towards the wilder, hillier side of town, the only supplies with him a blanket, a bit of food and water, and a med kit, all freshly stolen, plus the guns he had had on him and the hunting knife he always carried, he realized that he was being followed by a group of children. There were four of them, and though they were several feet away, keeping a great distance between themselves and him, it was obvious that they were trailing him as he walked up an uneven path that trailed up the hill. They were watching him with terrified eyes, but refused to back off. They whispered to each other occasionally, but Odin could not hear them over the harsh, fall wind. The four of them seemed indecisive as well as fearful and the thought that they had come to bully him seemed ridiculous, but Odin could not think of another reason for scared children to be following him so resolutely.

Odin paused on the trail as the children continued to follow him, but hesitated more and more the higher they went, as though they knew they shouldn't be up here. He contemplated throwing rocks at them, not liking how their presence made the back of his neck prickle with the need to `take care' of his stalkers, but the last thing he needed were a bunch of pissed off parents coming after him. He turned back around and continued to walk, trying to ignore the children.

The wooden path was strange to him. It was clearly not kept up by the village, weeds and wild flowers and rocks scattered along the path, yet it had not completely taken to wild woods. There were no tire tracks, but also no grass, as though both people and nature knew to keep away from it. Huge trees blocked out the night sky and a strong wind moved through them, making eerie sounds as it shook the trees and the wild, untamed grass that grew on the edges of the path, but not on it. In the trees, no birds or bats flew. There weren't even any mosquitoes or fireflies, which was very odd to Odin, but he couldn't put his finger on why it seemed so strange. He only knew that it made him on edge.

Odin glanced behind him and saw that the children had left him, no doubt running home to dinner, or out of fear of getting lost out in the woods. He snorted to himself. He had little experience with people in general, let alone children, and their absence made him feel better, yet at the same time, nervous, still something that he couldn't quite explain to himself. He put it out of his mind, but the disturbing feelings remained and he continued to walk up the long, curving path, feeling like he was walking into the heart of the dark woods.

Despite this feeling, Odin saw in awe, when he reached the peak of the hill, the trees disappeared, giving way to flat land. Even more incredible than the lack of forest that he had been expecting was the enormous mansion sitting there were deep woods should have stood. There was something chilling about the place just being there, an elaborate house in the middle of the wild, miles from the town. The place was clearly ancient, leaving Odin with the thought that it may have been here long before the town ever had. It seemed to have been abandoned for a very long time and Odin wondered how it was even still standing so perfectly and not a mess of rotted wood, swept away from centuries of wind and wear and rain. But it was shelter, and that was all that mattered now.

It was a dismal, windy autumn night, but when Odin slipped through the huge gate that greeted him, he saw with a strong feeling of wrong that the cherry tree in the large front yard was in tact. On the grassy ground, not a single pink petal lay, as though the wind could not touch the innards of the yard and mansion. In the front yard, the plants were growing uncontrolled, even the pretty tree was completely wild, but the biggest testament to the place's abandonment and neglect were the remains of a once upon a time rock garden that had been strewn about violently, as though it had been done by a child in the middle of a temper.

Odin's first instinct was to try to push the door closed, his analytical mind supplying that, once such a door was locked, it would take nothing less than a bomb or raging fire to get through it again, even a battering ram couldn't do it in. However, that same analytical part of him told him that closing it all on his own was impossible. The door was massive, though it should have been splintered and rotten, it looked just solid and heavy and perfect, as though it had been constructed a short few days ago instead of centuries. Also, something else that seemed to prick at his mind as something wrong or off, was how the door was open. The last occupants of the house should have shut the door fully, to keep the villagers from looting or squatting in the massive home, or, if they had been so careless, the doors should have been flung fully open, as an image of welcome or, in later years, for cars to pass through. And yet, the door was open enough only for one person to pass through, as though the person that had left it that way to keep cars and such out. The whole thing just seemed… strange to his perceptive eye.

Odin tried to shake off the odd feelings. He had been around long enough to believe, no, know, that things like spirits, the supernatural, and anything of any sort of unnatural nature weren't real. The only ghosts existed in the human mind. The house was undeniably creepy, but that was only because he was so anxious and tired. When he woke in the morning, it would seem less so. Still, as he approached the front entrance, there was something, deep down in his stomach, demanding that he turn around and find a place in the woods to camp out. No, not even the woods near him, but as close to the town as can be, because even the dark woods up here, on the hill, made his insides squirm.

The blonde assassin tried the door to the mansion and found it unlocked, though the old door took some force to open and when it did, it creaked and groaned like an old man. Immediately, Odin dug out his flashlight from his pack and walked into the house. He shivered as he walked into the entrance, there was an incredible chill in here, even worse than outside, and he reasoned that it was because it was fall and there was surely no heat source in the entire house, but even the cold felt wrong. There were lattice screens blocking in certain hallways past the foyer and he had to take a step up to get level with the seemingly maze-like paths. The flashlight in his hand was like the ones policemen or security guards used, the base was long and the light was powerful, yet the light couldn't penetrate the darkness of the long hallways, as though he were trying to see into utter nothingness. When he shone it on the screens, it created shadows that were so vivid, so full of detail, they looked like people, standing and watching, yet they were suspended, as though they had no feet at all, not hanging, but… stuck.

Odin, at the sight of those shadows, felt a sharp spike of fear go through him and quickly flicked the flashlight away, the fear growing as he could no longer see the shadows, then illuminated the screens once more, only this time, the shadows were gone and the light showed him nothing. He laughed at himself, flinching at how hollow and dead the large, wooden structure made his voice sound. His grandmother had often told him ghost stories as a child, including the old belief that ghosts were spirits who wandered, but had no feet. That was what this was, his overactive, tired imagination, remembering those stories and painting his anxiety into reality, but it was nothing more than shadows and the eeriness of this place. Odin ignored the fact that he had hid in all sorts of places like this one in the past, but never before had he felt so ill at ease, like he was being sucked into a deep, dark hole that he could never claw his way out of.

The blue-eyed man, still trying to deny such strange, disturbing thoughts, was already formulating a plan as he braved one of the long, dark hallways. He was a man that always needed planning, he would be lost without some sort of organization. First, he would need to find a suitable room, where he would have supper and sleep. In the morning, he would go back into town and find out if the police had followed him here. If they had, he would hide in the mansion longer and maybe they would move on. If they hadn't, he would leave and try to find an airport. It was clear to him that he could never fade away into a crowd in this city. He couldn't go back to Russia, either, they would be expecting that. America, or perhaps England, these were his best chances. If only he could escape Japan without being caught.

Suddenly, as he walked towards one of the first rooms he saw, Odin heard a sharp creaking from behind him, as though someone was walking from the screen to the other side of the foyer. In less than a second, Odin was turning to face the sound, a gun in his hand, cocked and ready to fire at the intruder. The flashlight made the shadows arch like long claws on the old wood, but that was all that was there. He chuckled again at himself. There were no such things as ghosts. If there were, he would be haunted every second ever since he had killed his first mark. He heard the floorboards creak loudly above his head, dust falling onto his head. He shook his hand through his hair, shaking away the dust. The creaking only further convinced him that the strangeness was all in his head.

This house was old and probably filled with all sorts of gaps for the wind to move through. He was paranoid of the tail that he was sure would follow him all the way to this town, so it wasn't such a leap to think it was all in his head. However, hearing those creaks and groans of the old wood only furthered that paranoia. He had survived so far by being several steps ahead of his pursuers and staying to the shadows. Remembering those kids following him earlier, he now feared that just hiding up here wasn't enough.

Children didn't distrust like their parents did, but they did fear. If a cop asked one of those kids about the strange blonde man, they would be more willing to speak to them out of fear for authority, or maybe a small bribe. The old house was a perfect hiding place for him because those small, creeping sounds would hide any noise he might make and the old floorboards would easily tell him if someone came into the house. He just needed to find a hiding place that no sane person would look in. He scrapped the first floor entirely. That was too obvious, the first place that anyone would look. Most people who feared for their lives wouldn't brave the second floor of an ancient place, whose structure might not be stable.

He continued to walk down the long hallway, ignoring other side hallways and inviting, open doors. He ignored the way the shadows lurched in front of him, or the movements in the corner of his eyes from behind him. It almost made him mad, fighting against his instincts to shoot at anything threatening. It was all in his head, he told himself. There was nothing in this old place besides a lot of dust. As he walked, he heard more strange noises coming from the second floor. Heavy creaking and constant scratching. Rats, he told himself. This place had to be infested with them. Very, very big rats. He ignored the doubt in him that told him that the scratching couldn't be from little, scrambling paws. It sounded like human nails against woods, as though someone had been locked away in the walls and was trying, frantically, to get out.

Odin shuddered a little. The thought of cat-sized rats running around upstairs was more chilling to him than someone trapped in the house with him. He hated rats. He loathed them. Their naked, hairless tails, beady black eyes, their squeaking voices which sounded like squealing babies, their square, tiny teeth… He had been bitten by one, just once. It had been early on in his assassin career. He had been hiding out after a hit in a condemned factory. He remembered the feeling of those little, square teeth sinking into his flesh, feeling like sharp wood chips, but warm and diseased. The rat had been large and black, hideous looking. Since then, he had hated the little monsters, how they had no fear of humans like so many other animals did, climbing into his things and sometimes, even his clothes, searching for food. The only thing he hated more was spiders.

Odin finally came upon a long staircase leading up, not looking very sturdy at all, but he started up it anyway. It creaked loudly, but didn't shift, to his surprise. That was old age workmanship, he supposed. Nowadays, everything only last a few years, yet there were places like this that were still standing after all these centuries. The upstairs was, with the exception of structure and design, exactly the same as the upstairs. There were different hallways and different doors, but the feeling of the place remained. It was eerily quiet and still, a pervasive smell of old age and nothingness. It was as though time had stopped and life itself was rotting. It made it hard to breathe, as though Odin had entered an ancient tomb and his mere presence was a blasphemy.

The staircase traveled above the second floor to a third and Odin had to wonder how many floors this house had. Remembering the view he had gotten, looking up at the mansion from outside, he felt chilled to think the house could easily be four or five levels high, not including a basement. He continued up the staircase, thinking that the higher up he went, the better a hiding spot he would find, and the less his pursuers would likely follow him. He supposed to any other person, it would seem silly, but even the smallest details could save his life. Like the second and first floor, the third floor was built like a labyrinth.

Just standing there on the landing next to the staircase, could see that there were hundreds of doors, alcoves, hallways, and side hallways. It was like stepping out into a microcosm. He chose a hallway at random, the only way he could choose. There were no windows, not even a shred of light, and the beam from his powerful flashlight seemed so pathetic, as though the shadows were laughing in disdain at him. He idly wished that he had a map for this massive place, as a small, childish part of himself briefly cried out about getting lost. It wouldn't be very hard to get lost in a place like this, but the mansion was old and made of wood, how difficult could it be to break down a wall or window?

Odin continued to walk forward, as slowly as he was willing to, keeping his flashlight's beam trained on the floor in front of him. An old place like this was a death trap of loose floor boards and rotten wood. If he fell from this far up, he would no longer have to worry about the police or fellow assassins. He walked for what seemed like hours, but for some inexplicable reason, there were no doors in this hallway.

It had to lead to somewhere and he forced himself to believe it was another trick of his mind, that the lack of light made it impossible to tell how long he had really been walking for, even as that childish part of himself that remembered old ghost stories and superstitions clung to the idea that he would be walking forever, down this dark, silent hallway. If he turned back, it would be the same. He would never find that staircase again, or another hallway. He would be suck on this straight path for all of eternity, as the world passed him by. The adult part of him scoffed at the silliness of such ideas, but the darkness was a powerful thing and his inability to tell time was chilling him.

Immersed in his thoughts and self doubts, Odin almost fell as his foot hit empty space and the flashlight's beam met with what looked like another staircase. He grabbed onto the railing to stop from tripping and thought, in irritation and worry, that he really was lost, that he had someone gone in a giant circle and he was back at the staircase he had gone up before. A quick glance down told him otherwise. His flashlight couldn't pick up much, but he should have been able to see something of the second floor when he looked down. Instead, he saw nothing, just blackness and more of the staircase. Also, the area between the stairs and the walls was narrow, looking more like a narrow pit or an elevator shaft. Again, he felt the dryness, the silent void. Not even the slightest of air currents hit him as he looked down over the railing.

He should have doubled back and found a room to hide in, though common sense told him he didn't know how long that would take. These stairs might lead him to a better hiding space, or just the second or first floor again. His curiosity won over his sense of caution and he dug into his pocket for a piece of change, dropping it down into the black pit below. He waited. And waited. He strained his ears for a noise of any kind, though he didn't really need to. He would be able to hear a mouse breathe in this unnatural silence. He didn't even realize that he had stopped hearing the creaking of boards except for the ones under his own feet, or the scratching.

Odin heard the sharp sound of the change hitting something solid. It was a long drop, two floor at least. The staircase suddenly struck him as a kind of cave, the blackness below him like a void, or maybe an old well, devoid of water and sound and life. Something gripped his heart at the thought of going down there, a little voice inside screaming at him to turn around and find the entrance on the first floor, to camp out in the woods if he had to, but to not go down there. Another part of him screamed at him to do it, to go down. To take the plunge into something threatening, just for the sheer joy of it. He didn't know if that was the assassin in him, the thing that made him kill and take risks day after day, or if something was beckoning him, that thing that haunted every kid that climbed a tall tree. They knew that they shouldn't jump, that they could easily break their legs, yet they couldn't deny the urge to fall.

`There's something down there.'

The thought came to him like an electric shock and his eyes strained downwards, trying to give some fact to that random thought, though he still couldn't see anything. He snorted at his own foolishness. There wasn't anything down there, in the dark, just more of the house. Still, he should keep moving forward, hadn't that always been his way of doing things? Odin took a step down, testing the stairs. They creaked, sounding like joints popping into place, but didn't break. He took each step slowly, not sure if the old staircase would really hold his weight, but he continued to walk.

The staircase was like the hallway, traveling downwards, almost never-ending. He counted each step patiently, measuring which floor he would be on as he quickly realized that the staircase didn't meet a floor when it should. As he passed by what should have been the second floor, he wondered where the stairs would lead. Some secret place? The other side of the house? Or perhaps this was a disposal of sorts. He didn't know how people disposed of waste back when this house was built and it seemed so strange to have a staircase like this, one that passed by floors. He went down and down, until he reached what should have been the first floor, and met with the end of the staircase.

No, not really the end of it, Odin realized, as he shone his light downwards again. The planks of the stairs were collapsed, but he clearly saw, several feet forward and down, more stairs. It was almost like something had fallen from a great height and had crashed through the stairs, creating this great gap. He couldn't see the true bottom of the staircase, but logic told him that it had to end near the first floor. The hole between the stairs spurred him on. No sane man would take such a leap and fall to the other side of the stairs, not knowing how deep the fall was, or if those stairs were intact. He was no sane man, however, and knew that he could reach the other side safely, if he was very careful.

Odin lowered himself down, gripping the last stair with his hands until he was hanging in midair, his flashlight tucked in his belt-loop, the light streaming down into still blackness. It was unnerving, just hanging there, unable to focus that singular beam of light, the only one that he had, where he wanted it: the steps below. He had to aim using mostly memory and what little bit that light showed him. Hanging there, he suddenly felt like a worm on a hook, just waiting for something big and powerful, something with rows of sharp, pointy teeth to swallow him up. Or snatch him out of the air, like a large bat would an insect. That image made him shudder. This place had somehow managed to strip away the confident assassin and expose his weaker points more efficiently than a prison guard or expert torturer.

He was a bad ass, he told himself. He had a glock tucked in the back of his pants and his hands were drenched in the blood of hundreds of people, many of them fellow bad asses. He had killed mafia bosses, politicians, and serial killers alike. He was untouchable. Some shadows couldn't change that.

His eyes strayed down to the blackness below and all those comforting thoughts crumbled, leaving his heart quaking with a fear that he couldn't even put a name to. A fear he had only felt once, as a child, lying in bed one hot summer's night, freshly woken to find a large, fat, black spider crawling up his naked chest towards his face. He had been frozen then, as he was now, looking at uncertainty, mindless in the face of it, and not even sure why. He gritted his teeth and steeled his nerves. He was Odin Lowe, a man, not a child, and he had a job to do. He swung his body back and forth, then dropped into the blackness below.

He almost yelled out, childishly, in relief as his feet met something solid, instead of just feet upon feet of open air. His heart beat wildly and, if he had been just a little bit older, he would have worried about a heart attack. His fall was jarring and he stumbled back down to the next step at the momentum, but quickly regained his balance. Something shifted under his feet and fear flared inside of him, trying to remember how heavy he was. His imagination, suddenly overreactive, tried to do an equation. Odin's weight plus rotten wood equals very messy death. It painted a picture of him splattered on the ground below with his pursuers looking down at his mangled body, laughing at such a lame death for a once great assassin.

The stairs under him groaned loudly and he could feel the wall to his right shift as well, just slightly. Dust from somewhere above him fell in his hair, but the stairs didn't beak. He breathed in relief again. Maybe, after this, he should join the circus, he thought in amusement. He felt something strange move down his face, but concluded that it was just more dust at the ticklish, light feeling. He swiped at it with his hand. The movement moved up his hand, to his wrist. He paused, his hazel eyes widening in the dark, realizing that the movement was vaguely familiar to him. He suddenly felt very cold and very still, holding his hand out in front of him and grabbing his flashlight with the other.

Odin yelled loudly as the flashlight showed him a large spider slowly crawling up his arm. He batted it off frantically, revulsion seizing him. He felt more movement down his face and he panicked. There were more on him. With a scream that, moments later, he would think was just frustration, he ruffled his hair, pulling at it and sending sparks of pain through his scalp that he barely realized through his fear. Dozens of spiders fell from his blonde hair, each of them fat and black. Some of them fell on his leg and he backed up quickly, brushing them off, and forgot that he wasn't on flat ground. He fell backwards, quickly losing his footing, but the panic from the spiders was greater than his fear of breaking his neck at that moment and he didn't try to break his fall as he fell off the side of the steps, no railing to stop him.

His head slammed into solid wood and he saw a bright light in his vision, tinged red. It quickly dissipated, followed by a sharp pain. He heard the heavy sound of his metal flashlight hitting the same wood he had and felt a fear as sharp as his fear of the spiders, not that he had broken something in his fall, but that the flashlight would go out, leaving him in total darkness. As he lay there, he wondered at that fear. He wasn't afraid of the dark, never had been. Even if the light went out, he just had to find another source of it. There had to be a window somewhere, right? And yet, the thought of darkness terrified him like it never had, as though that fear was coming from somewhere else, some alien invader in his head.

Then again, he thought, he had no idea where he had fallen and getting lost in this place would not be a good thing, so light was invaluable. And then there were the spiders... without the flashlight, he wouldn't be able to see them... Odin jumped to his feet, grabbing the still operational flashlight and looking around frantically. They should be all over him by now... scuttling around on the floor, all fat and black and terrible looking, but there was nothing. Had they scurried back to some dark corner? No, he should be able to see at least one of them, but all he saw was a flat, wooden floor. He touched the back of his aching head and winced as he felt hot, wet blood. Not enough to worry him, but enough to start considering a very mild concussion.

Had the spiders just been in his head? His fear of the fall making him see and feel things? He didn't think so. It had been too vivid, the feeling of little, scratchy legs moving down his face and hand, the sight of those fat, black spiders, like ghosts out of his worst, childhood memory. He touched his hair with a shaky hand, but he felt only dust and hair, no arachnids. He shook his head, ignoring the pounding, and took a look at his surroundings. The floor he had fallen on wasn't very big. His flashlight allowed him to see all four sides, though shadows obscured most of the details, but still bigger than most of the one room apartments he had lived in in his life. Planks of wood lay on the floor under the stair case, but the most destructive thing was right in the middle of the floor. The planks of wood were bent and shattered, revealing a large patch of sandy earth underneath it.

To him, it looked as if something had fallen from a great height, falling onto the floor with a great force, breaking it. He wondered if the ceiling above was broken, too, but that ceiling was more than three levels up and he wouldn't be able to see it. He walked towards the mangled boards and frowned. The earth and the boards were darker than the rest and Odin had to wonder if it was blood. If it was, then it was very, very old. He moved his flashlight, following those dark splotches as they moved from the hole in the floor to a trunk by the far wall. There was a part of him that was screaming at this point to find a way out, to just ignore the ancient trunk at the same time that his curiosity made him move forward, informing him that the trunk was big enough to hold a human being, that what if the blood wasn't that old at all?

He opened the lid with a great deal of effort, the thing heavy and awkward to move, then swore out loud. The lid slid to the floor with a loud bang. The inside of the trunk was very plain, made of only wood, but splashed with blood. It was vibrant in the flashlight's beam, brighter than the splatters on the floor. There were streaks of blood on the front of the trunk, too. It was as though someone had poured blood into the box and it had overflowed. He turned away in disgust. Someone had died in that box. That, or it wasn't blood at all and this was some kind of trick. No one could bleed that much and live to tell about it. Hell, no one could bleed a third of that much. He put the image of someone trapped inside of that trunk, bleeding to death, far out of his mind. There was nothing he could do about it anyway. His grandmother had told him once that any house, with enough years behind it, had its ghosts. This one was clearly no exception.

Odin looked along each wall, trying to find a door or window. There was nothing. Remembering how long it had taken him to reach the bottom, he realized that he had to be in some sort of basement. What if the stairs were the only way out of here? What if it really was some kind of pit? He didn't think that he could pull himself back up those broken steps, but refused to even consider the possibility that he might be trapped down here. In a darkened corner, under the steps, something glowed. At first, he thought it was simply an illusion, the light of his flashlight bouncing off some piece of metal or glass, but when he turned his flashlight away, the glow remained. No, a pair of lights, like eyes, reddish, like the eyes of a jackal or rat, but it was far too big to belong to a rat.

His heart racing again, he walked closer to the glowing eyes, trying to get the light on the thing so he could see what it was. He had this terrible image of a giant rat, or perhaps a rabid dog, leaping at him as soon as he got too close. As he got closer, his flashlight flickered, making it impossible to see. The glowing peered back at him, right into his frightened heart, the flickering of his flashlight chilling him. To be in the dark with that glowing... He whipped his gun out from the back of his pants, aiming for those glowing eyes, ready to kill whatever was huddling there in the dark. The light stopped flickering and became solid once more, but instead of seeing the eyes of a hungry, feral dog, the redness became the blue-violet eyes of a little boy.

Odin immediately dropped the hand holding the gun, shame filling him. He had almost shot a kid... he only looked like he was six or seven, too. He had gone after kids before, but never this young, and those had just been jobs... He knew, logically, that there really wasn't any difference between killing for money and just plain murdering someone, but as thin as that line was, he felt shaken. He was losing it... that had to be what was going on. The noises, the shadows, the spiders, his fear... after all these years of hits, he was finally losing his mind. But, even as he thought that, that logical part of himself was screaming at him. Why, it demanded, was a kid this young down here in the dark? No, how was this kid down here? The stairs were broken and there was no way a kid this little could have jumped down here without killing himself.

Then, there was the flashlight. He could see parts of the boy, his feet, the strange clothing he wore, and his face. The light should have been able to pick up all of the boy's body, but the light was inexplicably dull on his bare arms and neck, giving Odin only the impression of form and skin. It was as though the light was fleeing from the boy's skin, but Odin explained it away. It had to be from the fall. His flashlight had been working fine up until now and he was sure that flashlights didn't work that way, but he refused to accept any other explanation.

The boy himself was strange. Trapped down here, in the complete darkness, in a strange house, he should have been sobbing and terrified, but he looked up at Odin with a bizarre calmness. It reminded Odin of the way a cat would look at a bug, with interest, as though it were studying it, but it knew that it was the one in control and it had no reason to be wary of its soon to be prey. He shook off that odd thought. The boy was unnaturally pale, like the blood had stolen from his body, or he was terribly sick. Odin clung to that impression. It was easy to believe that the boy was scared and just a quiet, repressed sort of child, even if the look on his face said otherwise. Still, that look made him feel uneasy. Just seconds ago, he had been pointing a loaded gun at this little boy, fully intending on shooting him, but the boy didn't even seem shocked by this, or even a little bit worried about getting shot.

Why hadn't he yelled for him? If he had been sitting in the dark for so long, he should have made some noise once he had heard Odin fall or see the flashlight, but he had continued to sit here, in the dark, waiting. He just kept staring up at him like Odin was nothing, just a bug that had wandered into his room. All of his logic, all of his common sense told him to get away from the boy, that there was something very, very wrong here, but what little humanity he had left wouldn't let him do it. He told himself that the boy was just in shock. But the kimono... he couldn't see it very clearly, but he could tell that the boy was wearing a kimono.

Odin didn't think that many kids these days wore such traditional clothing. Even if this kid came from a very old fashioned family, he thought that only girls wore kimonos. And it was white. Maybe that wasn't so odd, but this house was ancient. There was dust and grime everywhere, yet the kimono, from what he could see of it, was pristine. Around his shoulders, the white looked clean and new. How could that even be possible? Maybe this boy had been with the other children that had tried to follow him earlier, he reasoned. Maybe he had gone ahead while the others had gone back to town. Maybe there was a festival going on today or tomorrow and that was why the boy was dressed the way he was. He couldn't even think about the oddness of his long hair. He couldn't give much thought to any of it, finding a rare weak spot for little boys, lost and alone in the dark. He knelt down, trying to appear non-threatening even as the boy continued to stare at him, wordless.

“Hey, there,” he said cautiously in poor Japanese, tucking his gun back into his pants, “What are you doing down here, kiddo?”

The boy continued to stare for a moment and Odin worried about the little Japanese that he knew, that he might have said the wrong thing. He knew how to talk conversationally, a little bit, enough to get by in this country, but was always worried about getting the translations mixed up.

“I can't find my doll,” the boy finally said, his voice just as strange as the rest of him, sounding as though he were whispering and there was something wrong with his throat.

The boy clearly wasn't afraid of where he was, Odin concluded. Maybe he was too young to really understand that he was trapped here, too worried about a lost toy.

“Do you know where you might have dropped it?” Odin ventured, trying to figure out how he was going to get the boy out of this pit of a room, when he couldn't even figure out how to get himself out.

To his shock, the boy raised his arm and pointed past Odin, towards the floor. Odin turned to look and saw what looked like a trap door, near where the floor was broken.

'That wasn't there before,' he thought with absolute clarity.

Again, as he had with all the other thoughts that didn't make sense to him, he shook it off. He had missed it, he told himself. In his panic and the confusing darkness, he had missed one trap door. That was how the boy had gotten into his room. He grabbed onto that rational thought with desperation. The boy wasn't scared because he knew how to get out, he was just in this room because he was looking for his doll. Then, there was another chaotic thought. Just how far down did this house go? They were already in a basement of sorts. That trap door must go down below the house itself.

“Down there?” Odin clarified, not wanting at all to go down there.

That trap door could lead anywhere and as much as he wanted to get out of this pit, he didn't want to go down there, either. Why had he gone those steps? The thought hit him like a physical blow as he realized how illogical his actions had been. He had gone down into the dark, had risked his life taking that fall, into a room that he didn't have a way out of. Why? He should have gone back the way he came as soon as he had realized that the staircase was broken. So, why had he made the decision to jump down here? It was as though something had dragged him here, like a siren seducing men to crash on the rocky shore. But, maybe it was for the best, if he had found this kid.

The boy nodded, continuing to point at the door. Odin bit back a sigh. He had to get this child back to his parents. He might be a terrible human being with questionable morals, but that concept was pretty basic. Maybe he was going to hell, but it wouldn't be for leaving a little kid in an old mansion. He would help him find his toy and the boy might be able to help him find his way out, that was a fair trade. After all, there had to be another way in and out of the mansion or he would have seen the kid before now. Unless he had entered before Odin did, but that didn't make much sense to him.

“I'll help you find it, ok?” he said.

The boy didn't reply and continued to stare up at him. Odin reached out his hand and took one of the boy's, relieved that the kid didn't throw a fit at having a stranger touch him. For a brief moment, Odin was startled by the feeling of that small hand in his. It was cold. Not just cold in that the boy had been sitting in the cold air of this basement for a long time, but cold like the way a piece of cloth that had never been worn could be cold, lifeless and still, just a thing. His skin felt strange, too, not smooth like a kid's hand should be, but Odin couldn't figure out why it felt odd to him. As the kid stood up and walked with him, Odin felt like he was carrying around an old doll, but pushed the feeling away. He was just jumpy, that was all. Of course the boy was cold. He was only wearing a thin kimono after all and there was no heat down here in the dark.

As they walked, Odin strangely wondering who was leading whom, he heard a strange sound coming from the boy's feet, like a chime. It was a bell, it's golden, metal surface reflecting in the light of the flashlight. Odin puzzled over that. He remembered old wives' tales of mountain children having bells tied to their ankles so their mothers would always know where they were, but in this day and age, when parents had GPS chips put in their kids wrists, such a thing seemed so outdated and quaint. Odin knelt down by the trap door and lifted it up.

It was heavy, like the lid of the trunk and its hinges creaked loudly, dust falling off of it. It came to him, then, that there was no way a little kid could have lifted the door and with all that dust… this time, it was impossible for him to shake off the thought. It settled there, in his mind, making his unease grow and grow. A quick glance down showed him wooden `steps' nailed into the side of a rock wall leading down, far enough that he couldn't see the bottom. That bothered him, that the wall leading down was made of natural stone, not wood, like the wall of a cave.

“I'll go down, ok?” he said to the boy.

Again, the boy said nothing, simply watching him with an unblinking stare. Odin tucked the flashlight back in one of his pant loops and descended down the stairs. The planks of wood that served as steps were in remarkable shape compared to the steps leading into the basement room, considering how damp the air was the further down Odin went. He didn't think that the kid would be able to get down these stairs with that kimono on and he would have to help him, but he wanted to make sure that everything was safe first.

The stairs went down fifteen, maybe twenty feet. When Odin reached the bottom he shone his flashlight ahead of him and was shocked to see, not another room or even a cave, but a man-made tunnel, carved out of the rock of the mountains that the mansion was built upon. There were wooden struts holding up the stone walls and ceiling, water leaking down from above, though Odin didn't know if there was a lake or a swamp above, or maybe just from a recent rain. He thought that it had to be a large body of water, there was just this impression of a great deal of pressure coming from above. The tunnel was obviously well made, or it would have flooded years ago. Even from where Odin was standing, he could see other tunnels along the winding path. It reminded him of the house itself, immense and maze-like. He really hoped that the kid knew how to get back where he came from.

“Hey, I'll help you down-,” Odin started to say as he turned around.

The little boy looked up at him, suddenly appearing in front of Odin by the stairs. The blonde assassin stared at him, something inside of him quaking in fear. Goosebumps appeared on his arms as he stared down at the child. When had he gotten down here? No… no, he couldn't have climbed down in the time that Odin had had his back turned to him. That was impossible. His kimono wouldn't have allowed him to get down here, even slowly. But then again… it wouldn't have allowed him to get up the ladder to begin with, either… every nerve he had was quaking with caution and warning. He flinched as the boy suddenly reached up and grabbed his hand, his eyes seemed to threaten Odin to move forward. He did so without a thought.

The question came, searing in his mind, the need to ask the boy if he had climbed down or just appeared. He didn't try to rationalize that question, to call himself a fool for even thinking it, but he didn't ask it, either. He realized why that was. He was scared of this child. When he had first come into this house, he would laughed at himself and the stupidity of fearing one, small child who just barely came above his knees, but now… how long had he been walking in that third floor hallway? Now… now it felt like he had been here for days, not hours.

Together, they walked, but Odin felt like he was being dragged around, like the boy's hand in his was a shackle and he couldn't let go, no matter how hard he pulled. He didn't try to. It was like those old ghost stories like The Phantom Traveler, or Riding the Bullet. The main character would suddenly realize that the person next to them wasn't real, was a ghost or some kind of monster, but as long as they pretended that they hadn't realized that, they were fine. Once that monster figured out that they had figured out… they were done for. Some part of him still pulled away at that idea, told him quite firmly that he an idiot. This child was just lost, just a dumb kid, nothing more. But, somehow, it was harder to listen to that voice.

The path winded this way and that, going up in hills and down in pits. There were hundreds of other paths, leading somewhere unknown, but the child kept them on a straight path. Odin didn't even know what direction they were going in anymore. For all he knew, they could be going back the way they came, with how windy the path was. At some point, he looked down and realized that they boy was barefoot. He had noted it back when he had first seen the child, but hadn't really thought about it until now. The ground was rough with gravel and sharp rocks. He almost said something about it, volunteer to carry the boy, when he saw that the boy was walking fine, his feet not bloody or even scratched.

No child was this silent, no human could walk this path barefoot and not be in considerable pain… Odin firmly kept looking on ahead, terrified of even acknowledging his own thoughts. It was ridiculous but… he was afraid of the boy reading his fears, of realizing that Odin was starting to suspect that there was something unnatural about him… They walked for so long that Odin started to feel a blister form on the sole of one of his feet, but then he saw the end of the tunnel, another row of planks leading to another trap door. He looked down to ask the boy if he wanted to him to go up it, but the boy was gone, like a wisp of smoke. Odin shuddered. He knew where the boy was. Somehow, he knew.

Odin climbed up to the trap door and it took all of his strength to get this door open. It slammed against the floor above and he pulled himself up. A sudden light, after hour upon hour of absolute darkness, blinded him. He flung his arm over his eyes, the smell of candle wax, dust, and old wood overwhelming him, and waited until he could see again. It was a small room, quaint compared to the large cavern below. There were several workbenches, each with wooden arms, legs, heads, and other doll parts strewn about. The light that had blinded him came from five paper lanterns, the flame in them flickering, placed at each corner of the room and one on top of a work bench. He quickly came to realize that, though he was out of the darkness and the confinement of the stairway and cavern, even this room was wrong.

There was wreckage all over the room. The wall behind him was destroyed in a way that Odin had never seen in his entire life, the wood bent, but not broken, like large ribs. The largest workbench was in splinters around the room, various doll parts mangled and broken. The damage of the wall and the bench was intense to look at, looking, not like a natural force, but the temper tantrum of a child. From the ceiling hung small dolls, the ropes tied, oddly, not to their backs but around their necks. Every doll had black and red hair. It was strangely macabre looking, like a dozen hanging children. To Odin's right was a large mirror, but, unlike the rest of the old, untouched room, there was no dust or streaks on its flat surface. It, like the child, was unnatural to look at.

The child was suddenly there, by his side, and had been there since Odin had climbed up. His blue eyes widened as he saw, on the mirror side, the little dolls were swinging back and forth while on his side, they remained as still as death. He swallowed roughly. He felt like he was dreaming. He felt like he had never gone up and down all those stairs, that he had never left the first floor. He knew, without any idea about how he could possibly know it, that this room was on that first floor. He glanced down at the boy and had to fight not to look away.

What little doubt he had left him, leaving him feeling hollow and chilled. He could see clearly now what shadows and his weakened flashlight had hid. The boy's unearthly skin was slashed brutally, looking red and raw in the light of the lanterns, giving fact to Odin's earlier thought that that white skin looked bloodless. Someone had bled the child dry. The boy was looking to the side of the workbench in front of them and Odin followed his gaze. Two feet, the size of the child's but made of wood, poked out of the corner. His doll. In the midst of his psychotic musings, he had completely forgotten about their search.

He walked over to the bench, not wanting to turn his back on the boy, but secretly hoping that once the doll was given to him, the… thing would go away. He picked up the doll, which was heavy, just slightly smaller than the boy himself, and was glad to see that the doll was intact. Again, he thought of the destruction of the room. He didn't want to see what the boy was capable of if Odin couldn't deliver to him what he wanted. The doll was an ugly thing, not something that Odin could see a child wanting to play with. Most children wanted soft things, things they could hug and sleep with, things that were brightly colored, shaped like animals or something cute. The doll was none of these things.

It was more like a mannequin than a doll, obviously made during a period when wood was more in fashion than plastic. Or rather, perhaps that was because the doll, like the dolls around him, were all handmade. Part of it's ugliness was purely from age and rot. The wood it was made of had been, he was sure, smooth and pretty when it had been new, but was now ragged and dark from time. It's form was remarkably correct, given its handmade quality, with several joints in its hands and feet. Positioned correctly, it could hold things and even stand up. It was impossible to tell what sort of clothes the doll had been decorated with as they were now rotten and in tatters.

The doll might have had a sweet, cute face in the past, but now, it was as grotesque as the dolls hanging from nooses. It's long hair, instead of straw, was made from what looked like horse hair and it was a dingy sort of black. Odin thought it might have been brown or chestnut in the past, but centuries of dirt and lack of care had changed that. It's eyes were eerie, slanted slots with fake, glass eyes a dark purple color, darker than the little boy's eyes, but it was obvious that someone had tried to mimic them. One eye was clouded, the color dull, like the doll had cataracts, the wooden eye socket of the other rotted so badly that the socket was a gaping hole, the glass eye nearly falling out of it.

The worst, though, was the mouth, the wood, like the eye socket, rotten so that the tiny smile of a children's doll was pulled apart and full, like the smile of a clown, the ends too far up the cheeks to be anything but sinister. When it had first been made, the little smile would have given just a glimpse of perfectly crafted teeth, but now, the wooden teeth were sharp and uneven, glaring out of the widened, sneering mouth. The head itself was twisted around, looking in the opposite direction of its front, it's wooden neck cracked, but he couldn't tell is someone had broken its neck on purpose. He couldn't imagine such a thing being well loved by any child and yet, this one had dragged him all this way for this one. He turned it back around, so the head and back were facing the ground, not wanting to look into those unsettling eyes anymore.

“Is this your doll?” he asked the long haired boy.

The boy stared up at him, this time, his gaze full of fury and hate instead of study.

“No!” the boy yelled angrily, sounding like a child about to throw a tantrum.

The air around them grew heavy and something icy cold wrapped around Odin's heart, choking him and making it hard to breathe. He gasped for breath, his whole body shaking and his hair standing on end. His heart struggled to beat through the ice and he realized that, if fury could be tangible, a living thing in the air, it would be like this. Odin froze in place, even as his instincts wanted to make him run away from the child, as he heard a creaking sound so loud, it was almost like a snap. It wasn't coming from upstairs anymore, it was…

He looked down at the doll he held in his hands. The doll's head was no longer facing down, but to the side. He watched, in horror, as the head continued to turn, just a little bit every minute, towards him, it's broken neck creaking, like bones snapping into place. Glassy, purple eyes stared up at him like an accusation as the head finally settled, right where it should be.

“Oh, fuck,” he muttered through his terror.

The doll's hand grabbed his arm, pulling itself up, the wooden fingers leaving tiny splinters in his flesh. Odin barely had time to blink as the doll leapt out of his arms, the movement shocking compared to how slow the head and arm's movements had been, and bit Odin's neck, it's sharp, wooden teeth sinking in deeply. Teeth like a rat's, but worse. This rat was conscious. It wasn't biting him to protect itself or warn him off. It wanted to kill him. No, not just that. It wanted to taste his blood. A dozen shards of hard wood pierced through his skin, pain shooting through his neck.

Odin yelped at that pain, grabbing frantically at the doll's head, ripping the thing away from his neck, taking a piece of his flesh with it, and threw it across the room. The mannequin crashed against the wall and fell in a jumble on the floor. Blood, hot and thick, poured from the deep wound on Odin's neck, soaking his shirt with it. He fell to his knees, suddenly feeling strange, not quite lightheaded, but like something was wrong. His head throbbed and his vision dimmed.

He felt like he was falling backwards, but not physically. He saw, through his fading vision, the doll's limbs twitch. It started to rise again, it's joints popping back into place. It took lurching, awkward steps towards him, a cross between a horror movie zombie and someone having a seizure. It's shoulders were slumped, the blackened hair falling in front of it's eyes, but Odin could still see them looking up at him through the hair, one painfully wide, the other clouded, and it took jarring steps, one after the other towards him. He was transfixed by the sight of his wet blood dripping from those wooden teeth. Then, he fell into blackness.

 

*****