CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE FEAR OF FEAR
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THE GANG HAD ALL FOUND THEIR WAY INTO THE LIVING ROOM FOR THEIR REGULARLY SCHEDULED MOVIE NIGHT —
Desmond sat in his arm chair alone in the corner, Aron and Camren each took places on the couch whilst Liam laid across them, and Eve and Freya built a makeshift bed on the floor just below them to cuddle up together for the scarier parts of the horror flick they'd chosen.
"I want to do something.. spooky," Aron said, his expression bored with each flicker of light from the television.
"What is it with you and 'spooky'?" Desmond quoted with his fingers, "You're literally dead."
"Yeah and?" He replied.
"And, just go eat a human and get it over with." Desmond waved his hand at him, clearly annoyed with Aron's incessant need for activity.
"No, I mean like.. adventurous."
"That's not adventurous?"
"No, I-" Aron made a loud noise of exasperation. "You know what I mean! Something fun!"
"Have any of you been Urban Exploring?" Eve implored, scanning the faces of the men around the room.
"Exploring abandoned places?" Liam questioned.
"Yeah. There's an abandoned hospital about 20 miles away. It's really far out in the country. But it's been there for years and they're just not demolishing it. It's been abandoned for a really long time." She elaborated. Aron's eyes beamed with excitement and anticipation.
"Yes. That's what I'm talking about. Let's go." He immediately began to remove Liam's legs from his lap to stand.
"This sounds like a bad idea.. I'm in," Liam said, lifting himself from the couch.
"You guys can't be serious, right?" Camren asked, his eyes bouncing around the room as the girls had also begun to stand.
"Why wouldn't we be?" Aron asked, grabbing his shoes and beginning to put them on. "Are you guys coming or you gonna stay and watch the snooze fest of a movie?" Camren looked between Freya and Desmond, internally battling on what was the right choice to make. He let out a hefty sigh, reluctantly standing to find his own shoes.
"You're all idiots." Desmond spoke, joining the gang as they prepared to head out.
The hospital was in the neighboring county, on the crest of a large metropolitan city. The only lights to be seen the entire drive over were from the head and tail lights of the cars as they went, the countryside around them blanketed in black. The sky was deep blue, barely illuminated by the moon and kissed with little specks for stars that doubled in quantity only because of their distance from the city.
"Okay, stop here to park." Freya instructed, earning confused looks from the men around her. "The building is abandoned but cops frequent here all the time. Looking exactly for people like us right now and squatters. And I will not be letting y'all get my car towed or put in jail for it." The men around her chorused in laughter.
"That's a good one," Desmond said, like Freya had been warning them about mosquitoes and it was hardly a big deal.
The boys were impatient on their way into the building, wanting to get there and inside as fast as possible. To speed up their "walk" there, Camren had scooped Freya on his back and Eve onto Aron's so they could all sprint to the building's entrance. The building was massive, towering in height above the group. The old red brick had begun to crumble with weeds and ivy was overtaking the sides. The glass in the windows had been shattered and the doors were deteriorating along with their padlocks.
"We have to go in through the back. The front door is chained shut." Eve informed the men, earning a chuckle from Liam.
"It's actually really cute that you guys think that could stop us," Liam teased. Regardless, they humored the girls and squeezed through the small makeshift entrance on the South side of the building. The building had been boarded off so well that no moonlight made its way into the corridor they had entered into, Eve illuminating the way for them with her phone flashlight.
Freya glanced around the building as best she could with her own phone flashlight, seeing old medical equipment knocked over, papers scattered throughout the halls and desks, and cobwebs covered just about every surface inch of the rooms. Liam had scooped up a stack of the papers, adjusting fake glasses as he read the information from them in an "old-timey voice" causing Freya to giggle.
The men had sparked discussion about old illnesses — running through ones that were curable or now no longer existed. Freya felt a pang in her chest when one of them had mentioned small pox, her brain immediately bouncing to Liam's history. As the boys rattled into the plague, the girls found themselves getting bored and chose to wander away and explore more of the abandoned building.
Freya and Eve carefully ascended the staircase to the second floor, grimacing with each loud groan or creak that would sound with each of their steps. "Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that burger for lunch," Eve joked.
"Oh shut up." Freya chuckled along.
They took their time meandering down the long corridor, stopping to shine their flashlights into each of the rooms to see what had lain behind each door. As they entered the last room on the right, their hearts flew to their throat. Their flashlights fell upon a decent sized group of men, all twice their size covered in very obviously prison tattoos. The lantern they held in the corner of the room illuminated the progress of their partially painted swastika...they were skinheads. The men all laughed in amusement at something before averting their attention to the two small girls stood in the doorway.
Freya's mind ran blank as her eyes shifted all around the room, connecting the dots of the artwork on the wall to the men that were rising to their feet before the pair. She heard
Eve suck in a breath as the men began to smile wickedly their way, basking in the fear the that radiated from the girls. The two were comparable to deer in headlights, wide-eyed and frozen. As soon as the words left her lips, Freya mentally facepalmed.
"S-sorry to bother you, we'll be goin-"
"No. Stay. It's really a party now that two whores have arrived." The men all laughed, quickly beginning to stalk towards the girls. Freya's heart fell to her stomach, they fucked up. They shouldn't have come here tonight. If they survived this, they were going to be absolutely traumatized.
"Stop!" Eve's voice wavered, her fear bleeding into her shriek. Freya wanted to move, wanted to sprint and fight for her and Eve's lives. But in the moment of fight or flight, her body froze completely still. She couldn't even bring her own arms up to stop Eve from raising her arms up to brace for the impact from the incoming man.
Two hands had gripped Freya's shoulders, yanking her back and away from the danger of the men before them. Her and Eve both toppled over onto their asses as their legs became gelatin beneath them. Flashbacks filled Freya's brain and haunted her ear drums as loud snarls filled the room, her heart rate somehow increasing tenfold at the sounds.
"Who the fuck are you?!" A voice yelled.
The pain shooting up through Freya's leg was unbearable. Her ankle had twisted in an unnatural way in her tumble from being thrown from dangers path. She hovered her hands over her already swollen ankle, wanting nothing more than to clutch it close to her but dreading the agony that came with any touch to the injury. She saw Eve searching for her just a short distance away, before her head pivoted to the scene before them.
The boys all had their backs turned to Freya and Eve, stood in front of them in protection. The strange men all looked terrified, bewildered by the speed in which the group had ended up in front of them. One of the men acted quickly, aiming the large black gun he'd had at Desmond and firing. The bullet didn't connect to Desmond though, instead ricocheting into the brick wall. Desmond, Liam, Camren and Aron all snickered in amusement as the cocky smirk he held shifted into sheer and utter panic.
"I'm going to enjoy this one.. I haven't eaten a Nazi in years, how nostalgic," Freya strained her ears, not quite believing the voice she'd just heard came from Camren. Camren cocked his head to the side, rolling his fingers with an amused smile. Desmond let out a chilling laugh.
"I still hate you just as much as I did in '41, you pieces of shit," Aron stalked forward slightly.
The four became blurs, but Freya felt like she was watching in slow motion. In what felt like several minutes but was actually milliseconds, the four flew across the room and to the group of skinheads. Freya's head spun with the sound of delighted cackles, tearing flesh, and shrieks of agony. Her hazel eyes could only seem to focus on the serrated teeth as they sunk into flesh and the blood that poured from each wound.
Her heart had sped so fast it had practically left her in room, fleeing from the danger before her. Aron and Liam had literally danced over to one man, grabbing both of his arms and twisting them both at the same time. The pops that followed would plague Freya's brain for many night to come. The four men fed like a Thanksgiving buffet was placed before them.
"Oh no you don't." One man amidst the chaos had crawled his way into a corner, so shaken in fear that he had vomited all over himself. Camren had stalked over to him in the corner, his nose upturned at the sight of the man below him. "Fucking disgusting." He snarled.
At some point Eve had buried her face in Freya's back, trembling. Freya sat doe eyed at the scene before her — the entire crew that occupied the room prior to their arrival were scattered about the room in pieces, all lifeless and blood soaked to the bone. Tears had poured from her eyes but everything about her felt numb in this moment. She watched Desmond restrain and feed from the very last man alive — the leader who nearly initiated the attack on the girls. The other three stood up and walked over to Desmond, wiping blood from their pale chins.
Desmond pushed the leader back, making him fall into a sitting position. He yanked him back up to standing, looking him eye to eye and shaking his head. The man looked petrified, his lack of blood making his skin look translucent as he held eye contact with Desmond. "May I remind you.. You lost the war." Desmond spat, a sinister grin splitting his cheeks at the barely conscious man.
His hand entered the man's chest cavity with unbelievable ease, reaching in and ripping his heart out. A blank expression washed over the Nazi's face as the life left his body. He fell to his knees, and then face down onto the blood stained concrete. Aron appeared behind him and grabbed his head, twisting it off cleanly.
Desmond tossed the man's heart off to the side, where Liam, Aron, and Camren began to play hacky-sack with it — clearly having the time of their lives. Desmond spit on the Nazi's corpse and the other three followed suit. "Nazi fucking scum."
Freya silently clung to Eve, trying her best to inhale Eve's scent instead of the deep metallic of blood that wafted heavily through the air. In milliseconds, the two were split apart — Aron had scooped Eve away into his arms, whispering soft words of comfort to her as she sobbed and trembled. Freya stared blankly at Camren who knelt before her, trying his best to speak to her.
All she could hear was ringing in her ears from the after math. She tried her best to tune into the words he was saying but her brain wouldn't even translate the read from his lips. His face pinched in worry as he reached for her, offering his hand to help her stand. She didn't get very far before she collapsed right back down, letting out a sob and yelp of pain as the weight hit her ankle.
"Oh fuck.... 'm so sorry... can I-..." His words were finally starting to reach her but the ringing would still overpower the majority of his words. She flinched hard when he went to slide his arms around her to lift her bridal style. Pain shot through her heart at the heartbreak on his face from her recoil. "Freya." It was the first word that sounded clear and had practically snapped her back to the reality in front of her.
Her eyes shot back over Camren's shoulder to Liam, who was still on his joyride. Liam was still poking and kicking at the pieces of flesh littering the room. Smiling in pure joy at the work he and the boys had done with eyes still black as coal. Camren's gentle voice snapped her attention back to him.
"We need to get you out of here and get your foot looked at.." it was so soft and cautious. The complete opposite of what it was just moments prior when he was hyper-fixated and blood thirsty. It eased her troubled heart and mind slightly, like she'd almost remembered the man before her until the smear of blood along his chin served the reminder of the slaughter he'd just performed.
"There's no way you can walk.. can I please carry you?" Her voice was still locked tight in her throat. Sniffles and sobs being the only sounds to breach its hold. She nods her head slowly, closing her eyes tight when she feels his arms circle her. His grip on her is contradictory — tight like if he loosens it even slightly she'll slip between his fingers and vanish but tender in a way that wouldn't alarm or harm her.
"I wish you hadn't seen any of it, but I don't regret what I did in even the slightest." He whispers down to her as they make their way out of the abandoned building.