My Life is Horrific Chapter 16 — Key to the Unknown (Patreon)

I threw myself out of the sewer tunnel and hit the grass hard, rolling onto my back with my arms spread while my lungs burned and heaved and dragged in huge gulps of clean air that tasted so sweet after the filth down below that I nearly cried from it. 

That was a fucking close one. A really fucking close one.

I barely had time to get my breathing under control before Richie was on me.

"DUDE! DUDE DUDE DUDE!" He skidded to his knees beside me, his glasses practically vibrating off his face while his hands waved in every direction at once. "We saw it! We saw you do the thing! You turned into a wall, man, like literally your whole body just went, went, went brick, like you were part of the building, and then you just, you slammed into that thing like a freaking missile! Are you a mutant? Are you an actual mutant? Do you know the X-Men? Is Professor X real? Can you shoot lasers too? How long have you been able to do that? Were you bitten by a radioactive brick? Holy shit are you a superhero? I have some ideas—"

Eddie had appeared at Richie's shoulder and was somehow talking even faster. "You're bleeding from your ears, that is a major warning sign of intracranial hemorrhage, I read about it in my mom's medical encyclopedia, you could have a subdural hematoma right now which means blood is pooling between your brain and your skull and if you don't get to a hospital within the hour you could literally die, also what the hell was that rock stuff you did because my aunt has a condition where calcium deposits build up under her skin and they look sort of similar but not really and—"

"Boys." I held up one hand from where I lay on my back, eyes shut, breathing through my mouth. "Give me. Five seconds. Of silence. Please. I am begging you."

They both shut up at the same time, which was probably a first.

Beverly had broken away from Ben and was kneeling at my other side before I could even open my eyes, her red hair falling forward over her face as she leaned over me with her hands already moving, checking my forehead for the cut, tilting my chin so she could see my nose, her fingertips brushing the dried blood under my ear. "Are you okay? James, you were down there for so long and we heard the fighting and the screaming and I thought, I thought—"

Bill was right behind her, pale as paper. "Sh-she's right, are, are you h-hurt, you look, you look really bad—"

I pushed myself up into a sitting position while waving them both off gently, which made my ribs scream at me in a way that I did my very best to not show on my face. "Everyone needs to take a breath and calm down. We are still not safe here, alright, we are sitting about ten feet from the opening that leads straight down to that thing's living room, so how about we save the twenty questions for when we are very far away from this spot, yeah? Let's go."

I got to my feet, and one of the boys, Stan I think, let out a loud yelp and pointed past my shoulder with his whole hand shaking.

"Oh, oh shit, oh shit, look, look—"

I spun around.

At the far end of the sewer tunnel, standing just inside the dark where the daylight stopped and the black began, was a figure. Man-shaped. Tall. Broad across the shoulders. Wearing a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows and a pair of pressed trousers.

Arthur Mitchell.

My father.

He looked exactly the way I remembered him, right down to the little patch of grey at his left temple and the nick on his jaw where he always cut himself shaving. "James, son," he said in that calm voice. "What's the matter? Why so scared of your old man, huh?"

I felt my throat close up and my hands clench into fists at my sides.

"Did I ever beat you, James?" he continued. "Did I ever raise a hand? Did I shout at you? No, no I didn't. I was good to you. I was a good father. I loved you." His smile widened, and something behind his eyes went yellow at the edges. "So maybe it's something else, then. Maybe it's because you know what I really am. Because you know about the little trips, James. Because know about the ritual..." As he spoke his voice got more and more distorted until it sound nothing like the man I once knew. 

I stood there with my jaw locked and my fists trembling while the thing wearing my father's face stared back at me from the dark, and the giggling started agai coming from everywhere and nowhere.

"Let's go," I said through my teeth without turning around. "Now."

I bent down and scooped Beverly up into my arms again, careful of the bad leg, and turned my back on the tunnel and started walking fast, heading up the grassy slope toward the street. The kids fell in around me without needing to be told twice, Richie for once keeping his mouth shut, Ben close at my elbow, Bill and Mike flanking the rear, Stan and Eddie nearly jogging to keep pace. 

I could still feel the eyes on my back like a sunburn, and the giggling followed us all the way up the hill, fading only when we broke through the tree line and hit the sidewalk where the afternoon traffic rumbled past. 

We found the bikes where the boys had dumped them in a pile near the edge of the park, and my Mustang sat a little further down the block where I had left it. I carried Beverly all the way to the passenger side, where I opened the door with one hand and set her down carefully into the seat, swinging her legs in and helping her get settled before I stood up and looked her in the eye.

"Are you sure I can't convince you to let me take you to a hospital? They'll take an x-ray, put you in a proper brace, and have you sorted out in an hour."

Beverly shook her head quickly, and I watched the fear snap back into her face like a switch had been flipped.

"No. No hospitals. My dad, he would, he'd want to know where I was, he'd want to know why I was out, he'd, if he found out I was hanging around with a bunch of... with boys... he'd... I just can't, James, please."

I looked at her for a long moment before finally nodding.  "Okay," I said quietly. "No hospital." I stepped back and looked over at the group of boys standing around their bikes. "Alright listen up. Follow my car back to my house, I live on Witcham Street, you can't miss it. I've got medical supplies there and I can treat Beverly's ankle properly. Stay in a group, don't take any shortcuts through side streets, and for the love of god stay away from any open drains. Let's move."

They nodded almost in unison and started climbing onto their bikes while I shut Beverly's door gently, walked around the front of the car, dropped behind the wheel, and fired up the engine with a rumble that made the whole car vibrate. I pulled out slowly and watched in the rearview as six kids on bikes fell into a loose formation behind me, pedaling hard to keep up.

The drive home took about fifteen minutes, and I helped Beverly out of the car the same way I had put her in, lifting her up against my chest and carrying her through the front door while Ben held it open and the others piled in behind us. I crossed the living room land set her down carefully on the big leather sofa, propping her injured leg up on a couple of throw pillows.

"Alright, welcome to my place, make yourselves at home, don't break anything, don't burn anything, and don't touch the studio equipment in the garage."

That last instruction was completely ignored within about thirty seconds. Mike, Bill, and Ben gathered around the sofa immediately, all three of them hovering over Beverly like worried mother hens, while Stan stood slightly behind them looking uncomfortable. Meanwhile Richie and Eddie had already peeled off into the kitchen like a pair of raccoons.

"You live here by yourself?" Richie called from somewhere behind the refrigerator door. "This place is sick! Do you have any chips? What about pretzels? Do you have a Nintendo? Where's the remote? Is this your dad's Playboy or yours?"

Eddie had found the downstairs bathroom and was loudly commenting on the quality of the hand soap while simultaneously inspecting the towels for mildew. Bill shot a look over his shoulder at them and tried to rein things in. "G-guys, come on, this isn't our house, don't just, don't just r-rummage through everything like—"

Stan nodded firmly beside him. "He's right. This is really rude."

I let out a long, tired sigh and waved a hand in the general direction of the kitchen "It's fine. Seriously. There's a bunch of snacks in the kitchen, help yourselves, the cupboard above the sink has chips and crackers and I think there's some cookies in there too. Just try not to destroy anything while I work."

Richie whooped from somewhere inside the refrigerator, and a second later his head popped back into view holding two cans. "Yo, there's beer in here. Can I have one?"

I didn't even look up from where I was unlacing Beverly's shoe as carefully as I could. "Sorry, kid. Beer's only for boys who've got hair on their balls."

The silence that followed lasted about one and a half seconds before Eddie let out a bark of laughter so quick he nearly choked on it, doubling over against the kitchen counter, and Stan's face cracked into a smile that he tried and failed to hide behind his hand. 

Richie's mouth dropped open in pure outrage, his face going red from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears. "I have hair on my balls!" he sputtered. "I have a ton of hair on my balls! Tell him, Eddie!"

Eddie, still wheezing, straightened up and wiped tears from his eyes. "How would I know what's on your balls, Richie?"

"Because you, because we, we've changed in the locker room, you've seen—"

"I have never looked at your balls!"

"Well maybe you should start because there is a significant amount of hair down there—"

The argument continued at increasing volume while I tuned it out completely, heading down the hall to the bathroom where I kept the medical supplies I had stocked up on. I grabbed the kit and carried it back to the living room where Beverly was watching the ball-hair debate with a look of disbelief.

I sat on the edge of the coffee table across from her and started cleaning up the abrasions around her ankle with antiseptic. 

Ben drifted over, watching me work with genuine fascination. "How do you know all this stuff? The way you checked her leg back in the sewer, that was like, like a real doctor. Are you gonna be a doctor or something?"

I chuckled softly without looking up from where I was applying the cold pack. "Probably not. Just picked things up now and then."

I wrapped the elastic bandage in a clean figure-eight around her ankle and foot, and then slid the lightweight brace over the whole thing and adjusted the velcro straps. When I was satisfied I looked up at the cluster of boys who had drifted back from the kitchen to watch. "Alright, everyone into the next room. There's a phone on the side table, order a pizza or something, the number for Dino's is on the fridge, I'm buying, get whatever you want, but I need some space for a few minutes."

They filed out, Richie already calling dibs on toppings while Eddie argued that pepperoni was a bacterial risk, but Ben lingered in the doorway with a worried look that kept flicking between me and Beverly, and Bill hovered beside him, clearly not wanting to leave either.

"She's fine," I said, meeting their eyes. "I just need to finish up. Go order the pizza." They went, reluctantly, and the living room went quiet except for the muffled sound of six boys trying to agree on pizza toppings in the next room.

I turned back to Beverly. "Okay. Now that we've got a minute. How's the foot feeling? Scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst."

She thought about it. "Like, a six, maybe. It aches a lot but it's not sharp anymore. It's better with the ice on it."

"Good. Can you wiggle your toes for me?" She did, wincing slightly. "Good, good. Any tingling or pins and needles?"

"A little. In my big toe."

"That's normal, that'll fade as the swelling goes down. Are you having any pain anywhere else, anything in your knee or your hip on that side?"

She shook her head. "Just the ankle."

I nodded, satisfied, and then I let the silence sit for a moment, watching her face carefully. "Beverly. Can I ask you something that might be a little harder than medical questions?"

She looked at me, her eyes shifting from tired to guarded in the space of a heartbeat. "What do you mean?"

"I mean your home. I mean why you're so scared of going there. Why the first thing you said when I told you your leg might be hurt was that your dad was going to kill you, and why you wouldn't go to a hospital because he'd find out you were hanging out with boys."

She tried to smile, and it came out thin and brittle and wrong. "It's, it's fine, he's just strict, you know how dads are—"

"Beverly." I reached over and put my hand gently on top of hers where it was resting on the cushion, and her mouth closed and her eyes got very eide very fast. "I'm not asking you to give me details. I'm not going to make you explain anything you're not ready to explain. I'm just going to ask you one question, and all you have to do is tell me the truth, okay?"

She nodded though it could barely count as one. 

"Do you feel safe going home?"

She didn't say anything, her jaw tried to work for a few seconds, the muscles in her throat tightening and relaxing and tightening again. Her lower lip started to tremble and she bit down on it hard, and then very slowly, very quietly, she shook her head.

I squeezed her hand gently, "Okay. That's all I needed to know. You don't have to go back."

"But you'll, you'll get in trouble, you're eighteen, they'll say you kidnapped me, they'll come looking, my dad will call the cops, he'll say I ran away, and then Children's Services will get involved and they'll put me in a home and it'll be worse, it's always worse, and you don't even know me, why would you, why would you do this, why would you risk everything for someone you don't even—"

"Hey, hey, slow down." I put my other hand over hers too, holding it between both of mine, and I waited until her eyes came back to me before I spoke again. "I'm not going to let any of that happen, alright? None of it. I've got a spare room upstairs. It's clean, it's got a bed, it's got a lock on the door. You can stay there as long as you need to, and nobody is going to come take you anywhere. I'll handle the rest. You just need to rest and let that leg heal."

She stared at me, her eyes watering, her lips pressed together so tight they had gone white, and for a long moment she didn't say anything at all. Then she nodded and rubbed her eyes hard with the heels of her hands.

I finished up with her ankle, wrapping the brace properly and giving her two ibuprofen from the kit with a glass of water, telling her the swelling should come down within a couple of days and that she needed to stay off it as much as possible.

The doorbell rang right as I was packing the medical kit away, and I pushed myself up off the coffee table and headed for the front door where a bored-looking delivery kid was holding three large boxes and a bag of garlic knots. I paid him, added a decent tip, and carried the stack back into the living room just as six boys came flooding back through the doorway like they had been summoned by the smell.

Boxes went down on the coffee table and lids flew open and for a few minutes the only sounds in the house were chewing and the occasional argument over who had taken too many garlic knots. Eventually, with his mouth still half full of pizza, Ben looked up at me.

"So. Can we, can we talk about it now? About the clown? The... the thing in the sewers?"

I leaned back in the chair across from them, a half-eaten slice in my hand and sighed. "Its name is Pennywise. At least that's what it calls itself. It's old, older than the town, older than the country, been here since before any of this was built on top of it. It sleeps for long stretches, decades, and then it wakes up and it feeds. It targets children because children are easier to scare, and fear is what it eats, the more afraid you are the better you taste to it. The adults in this town, most of them can't even see it, it's like there's a fog over this whole place."

I let that settle for a second and then looked at all of them. "But here is the important part. Stay out of the sewers. I cannot stress this enough. That is his home, his territory, his turf, and you are walking into his kitchen and climbing into his oven. He is stronger down there than he is anywhere else. Do not go back down. Whatever he has shown you, it is a trap and it will get you killed."

Bill's face had been getting more upset with every word, and now he leaned forward with his fists clenched on his knees. "But he t-t-took Georgie. My little brother. He's down there s-somewhere and I'm not going to just, just leave him—"

I set the pizza slice down and met Bill's eyes. "Bill, I'm sorry. I really am. But your brother is dead."

He flinched like I had slapped him, and his whole face twisted up, and I could see Richie and Eddie exchange a look of alarm on either side of him. "You don't, you don't know that—"

"I do. And I think you do too, somewhere. Even if Pennywise didn't kill him right away, think about what you're saying. How long could a little boy survive in those tunnels with no food, no water, no light, in the freezing cold, with that thing circling him? Days? A week? It's been a lot longer than that, Bill. I know you love him and I know this is the hardest thing anyone could ever ask you to hear, but going down there looking for him is not going to bring him back. It's only going to add your name to the list."

Bill's jaw was trembling and his eyes were shining and for a second I thought he was going to shout at me or punch me or storm out. But he didn't. He sat there with his fists shaking on his knees while tears rolled down his face, Ben put a hand on his shoulder, and Beverly reached over from the sofa and took his hand, and the room went very, very quiet.

I gave him a minute.

Then I leaned forward. "I know he tries to lure you. He'll show you things, your worst fears, the people you love, Georgie's face, your mother's voice, anything to make you come closer. These things are not real, none of them are real, they are projections, illusions, puppets on strings, and the only power they have is the power you give them by being afraid. When you see something that scares you, remember it's not real and you walk the other way."

I looked at each of them in turn. "Do not go back to the sewer. I won't always be around to pull your asses out of the fire. Am I clear?"

They nodded, one by one, some more reluctantly than others. Bill wiped his face with his sleeve and looked down at the floor but he nodded too.

Time passed quickly after that. The mood lifted slowly as the pizza disappeared and Richie started cracking jokes again and Eddie got into an argument with Stan about whether or not the water in the sewer tunnel could give you hepatitis. Eventually the daylight started to fade and the boys began making noises about getting home. I walked them to the door.

"I'll make sure Beverly gets sorted. She's going to stay here for a bit while her ankle heals."

Bill stopped in the doorway, still a little red-eyed, and looked at me for a long moment. "Th-thank you, James. For, for everything today."

I gave him a nod. "Take care of yourselves. All of you. And stay the hell out of the sewers."

They filed out and climbed onto their bikes and pedaled off down the street in their pack, looking exactly like a Spielberg movie. I watched until they turned the corner and disappeared, then stepped back inside and shut the door.

I spent the next twenty minutes sorting out the guest room upstairs, the one that used to be Esther's before I had stripped it clean. I put fresh sheets on the bed, grabbed a clean towel from the closet and folded it on the end of the mattress, cracked the window to let in some air, and made sure the bedside lamp worked. 

When I came back down Beverly was still on the sofa, half asleep, her chin drooping toward her chest. "Room's ready for you. Upstairs, second door on the left. There's a towel on the bed and a clean bathroom across the hall. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen, anything in the house, treat the place like it's yours."

She blinked up at me sleepily. "Thank you, James. Really."

"Hey, before you crash. What's your address? Your house."

She gave it to me, though confusion crossed her face. "Why?"

"Oh it's just something I need to do," I said without missing a beat. She accepted that, too tired to push. I helped her up the stairs, got her settled in the room, and closed the door behind me.

Then I grabbed my car keys and my jacket. "I'm heading out for a few minutes," I called through the door. "Be back soon."

I heard a sleepy murmur of acknowledgment, and I left.

The drive to the address Beverly had given me took about twelve minutes. The neighborhood got worse with every block, the lawns getting browner and the fences getting rustier until I pulled up in front of a sad little one-story with peeling white paint and windows so dirty the light inside looked yellow and sick.

I sat in the car for maybe thirty seconds. Just breathing. Just making sure I was calm enough to do this the way it needed to be done.

Then I got out, walked up the cracked concrete path, and kicked the front door clean off its hinges.

The door exploded inward with a bang that shook the walls and sent it bouncing off the hallway wall before it crashed flat onto the floor. 

I stepped over the threshold, my boots crunching on the broken frame, and walked down the narrow hallway, past framed photos of a girl with red hair who smiled less and less in every picture the older she got, past a kitchen where dirty dishes were stacked in the sink and a half-empty bottle of whiskey sat on the counter, and into the living room where a man was already on his feet.

Alvin Marsh was shorter than I expected, maybe five-nine, with thinning hair combed over a splotchy scalp and a gut that hung over his belt buckle. He was wearing a stained undershirt and the kind of expression that was halfway between startled and furious, his bloodshot eyes wide and his mouth already opening as he balled both fists at his sides.

"What the fuck are you doing in my—"

I hit him.

The punch landed on the bridge of his nose with a crack that I felt all the way up to my shoulder, and his head snapped back and the rest of him followed, his feet tangling as he stumbled backward and would have gone down if the armchair behind him hadn't caught his legs. I grabbed him by the front of his undershirt before he could recover, spun him, and threw him face-down onto the carpet, then dropped my full weight onto his back with my knee planted square between his shoulder blades, driving the air out of him in one long wheezing gasp. His arms flailed backward, scrabbling at my jeans, his face mashed sideways into the carpet with blood already running from his broken nose.

"Listen to me," I said, my voice came out cold and barely recognisable even to myself. "Are you listening?"

He bucked and twisted under me, spitting blood and carpet fiber. "Get the fuck off me you little shit, I'll have the goddamn police on you, I'll have you thrown in—"

I punched him in the back of the head. Not hard enough to knock him out but hard enough to make the struggling stop. "I said. Are you listening."

His breathing was ragged against the floor and finally went still.

"Good. Do you know who I am?"

His one visible eye rolled up toward me. "You're Arthur Mitchell's boy," he said through the blood.

"That's right. I am. You must be wondering why someone you've never met before is putting his knee on your spine. Put simply I know what you've been doing to your daughter, Alvin."

His body went rigid beneath my knee like someone had run an electric current through him. "I don't, I don't know what you're—"

I shifted my weight forward, driving the knee deeper into his back until he wheezed and his face contorted.

"Don't. Don't you dare finish that sentence. I know exactly what you are, you sick, degenerate piece of shit, and if I had any less self-control I would beat you to death right here on your own living room floor and sleep like a baby tonight."

He started crying. "It's not my fault! I miss her mother, you don't understand, she looks just like her, she's my little girl and I love her, I love her so much, I never meant to, I just, I—"

"Stop talking."

He stopped.

"Here is how this is going to work. From this moment forward, Beverly lives with me. She stays in my house, under my roof, where she is safe, until she turns eighteen or until she decides she wants to be somewhere else. That is her choice, not mine. She will not set foot in this house again."

I leaned down closer, my mouth near his ear.

"You are going to forget she exists. You will not call her. You will not visit her. You will not try to talk to her at school or on the street or anywhere else. You will not look at her. You will not speak her name. She is not your daughter anymore. She is nobody to you."

He was sobbing now, great ugly sobs that shook his whole body. "And if you break any of these rules, or if you go to the police, or if you try to get Children's Services involved, or if you so much as drive past my house, I am going to kill you. I mean that in the most literal, straightforward way possible. I will come back here and I will kill you and I will bury you somewhere no one will ever look. And who do you think this town is going to believe? Me? The quarterback, the church volunteer, the kid who helps with the food drives? Arthur Mitchell's golden boy? Or you. A drunk who can't hold a job and whose neighbors already talk about the sounds that come out of this house at night."

I pressed harder.

"Once you're gone, Beverly will tell them everything. Every last detail. And the whole town will nod and say they always knew something was wrong with Alvin Marsh, and they will forget you ever existed, and nobody, not a single soul, will lose a second of sleep over it."

He was nodding before I even finished, rapid desperate nods that ground his face into the carpet. "Yes, yes, okay, okay, I understand, please, please just—"

"Do we have an understanding?"

"Yes! Yes, we, we have an understanding, please, I swear, I won't—"

"Good."

I got off him and stood up. He rolled onto his side, curling up, blood and snot smeared across his face, one hand clutching his ribs where my knee had been.

I looked down at him for a long moment.

No...

I'm not done yet...

I grabbed him by the collar of his undershirt and hauled him to his feet, and before he could get his balance I drove three hard punches into his stomach in rapid succession, each one folding him a little further forward, and when he doubled over gasping I brought my knee up into his face and felt something else crack under the impact, maybe his cheekbone maybe another part of his nose, and then I grabbed the back of his head with both hands and drove it down onto my rising knee a second time for good measure. 

He was making a high keening sound now like a wounded dog, and I caught him by the shirt again before he could collapse and swung him across the room. His back hit the old television set and the whole unit exploded backward off its stand in a shower of glass and sparks and plastic, and he went down in the middle of it all and did not get up.

I stood there breathing hard, watching him curl up in the wreckage of his own television set. I pulled a couple of hundred-dollar bills out of my wallet and dropped them on him.

"Get this place fixed up," I said.

Then I went and found Beverly's room and grabbed the largest bag I could find. I stuffed it with as much of her clothing as it would hold, jeans and shirts and sweaters and socks and whatever else I could reach, until the zipper barely closed. I slung it over my shoulder and walked out of the house without looking back.

Beverly was asleep by the time I got home.

I eased her bedroom door open just enough to slip the bag inside, setting it down quietly at the foot of the bed where she would see it when she woke up. She was curled on her side under the fresh sheets, her red hair spread across the pillow. I pulled the door shut, walked down the stairs, and stood in the hallway for a long minute staring at nothing.

"What the fuck did I just do," I whispered to the empty house. I ran a hand through my hair and shook my head slowly, feeling the split knuckles sting as I flexed my fingers.

"I need to stop with this hero bullshit. Seriously. Every single time. Every single time I say I'm going to mind my own business, I end up breaking down someone's door or jumping into a sewer or punching a clown or threatening to murder a middle-aged man on his own carpet."

I headed into the garage and pulled a cold beer from the mini fridge cracking it open and taking a long pull that went straight to the tired ache behind my eyes.

My eyes drifted to the shelf where I had tossed the odd 

 item from my rewards, and settled on the one I had been deliberately ignoring for weeks. The key. Just a small bronze-coloured thing, with teeth that looked like they shouldn't fit any normal lock. 

Key to Unknown, the notification had called it.

I picked it up and turned it over in my fingers. "Alright, mystery key. What are you all about?"

It was a key, so logic dictated that it needed a door. 

"Maybe any door will do?" I looked around the garage at the only door available, the one that led back into the main house, a perfectly ordinary interior door with a perfectly ordinary brass knob and a perfectly ordinary keyhole.

I held the key up to the lock and something happened immediately, a subtle shift in the metal between my fingers as the teeth and the key reformed themselves, reshaping to match the keyhole perfectly. I let out a surprised laugh. "Okay, that's actually pretty cool."

I slid the key into the lock, turned it, and heard the bolt disengage.

I pulled the door open.

My living room was not on the other side.

Instead the doorway opened into a beautiful corridor, lit by ornate wall sconces set into dark grey stonework. The floor was smooth polished marble with a thick crimson carpet stretched down the length of the hall in both directions.

A castle. 

The doorway led into what was, unmistakably, a castle.

"Holy shit."

I stepped through without thinking and started looking around. The corridor stretched in both directions, lined with oil paintings in frames so large they took up most of the wall. Suits of armour stood at intervals in alcoves, holding halberds and swords. 

I walked further in as I took it all in, the gothic architecture, the gargoyles carved into the ceiling. The whole place felt old in a way that nothing in America ever did. I passed through a doorway into a larger chamber, some kind of entrance hall or grand foyer, and stopped when something on the floor caught my eye. A hat. A very large, very wide-brimmed black hat, sitting in the middle of the marble floor as though someone had set it down and walked away. I bent down and picked it up, turning it over in my hands.

"The hell is this place?" I muttered to myself. "Some kind of Dracula theme park?"

Behind me, the door to my garage drifted slowly closed with a click.

Sadly I didn't notice. 

I was still examining the hat when the blue notification box flickered into existence in the centre of my vision.

__________________________________

Key to the Unknown

__________________________________

Keys to the Unknown will take you to wondrous and horrifying places. Complete all objectives and earn incredible rewards.

__________________________________

"That doesn't sound good," I muttered, the hat dangling from one hand.

__________________________________

Main Objective:

• Survive

• Help Ethan

__________________________________

"That doesn't sound good."

I dropped the hat and spun on my heel, heading straight back the way I came, walking fast and then breaking into a jog when the corridor seemed longer than I remembered it being. I rounded the last corner and there was the door back to my garage, I grabbed the handle and yanked it open.

Only it didn't lead back to my garage. 

A woman ducked under the doorframe.

Ducked... she actually ducked.... because the doorframe was seven feet tall and she was considerably taller than that. She straightened up on the other side and the top of her head still nearly brushed the ceiling, and every inch of her between floor and crown was wrapped in a long white dress that hugged a body which could only be described as monumental. 

She was easily nine feet tall and built like a sculptor's fantasy, broad-shouldered and full-figured with a tiny waist and hips and breasts that defied physics at that scale. Her skin was pale, marble-white, and her dark hair was swept up beneath the wide brimmed black hat that I now realised I had been holding about thirty seconds ago. Her face was striking, high cheekbones and full painted lips curved into a smile that showed just a glint of sharp white teeth, and her eyes looked down at me from nearly three feet above my own head with amusement. 

"Well, well, well," she said in a velvety purr that filled the corridor. "What do we have here?"

(AN: James can never have a peaceful day, can he? For those unfamiliar, the Key to the Unknown has taken him to Castle Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village, which is the home of the very tall, very dangerous, and very beautiful Lady Dimitrescu. Anyway, hope you enjoyed.)