"You look like you've been through some shit." Anthony breaks the silence, tearing off the sleeve of his shirt with his knife. He then proceeds to tie it around the gash on my leg from the little girl I encountered in the attic, which before he addressed it, I did not even notice was there.
I rest my head against the wall and lose all tension in my body. "You're not looking to amazing, yourself." I answer without opening my eyes, exhaustion being the only thing my body knew at the moment. "I came here to get you, you know?"
He tightens the wrap without notice and I grit my teeth, the cut was a lot deeper than I thought it was. "Is this the part where I tell you you're such a sweet lad?" Upon finishing, he hands me a pistol, a smirk plastered on his face. "Thanks… for not leaving me behind, I mean."
I take it, smiling in response as he helps me up with a hand, his shotgun in the other. "We're not out yet." My legs barely keep me up as I unfortunately feel a sudden dizziness, the world spinning around me as I struggle to keep it together. "God, my head hurts."
"You prefer if we take a break? Not much we can do if we're not feeling like ourselves." Anthony suggests, taking my arm in order to provide me something to put my weight upon. "Although, I doubt we're completely hidden from whoever is in this house."
He was right. Ever since I stepped into the vicinities of this godforsaken place, I have felt the sensation of being watched as if someone was always behind me. There was nothing normal about this house and there's no way of knowing what would happen if we dallied more than we should. "I'm fine. I don't want to risk being found by another one of those things."
Anthony nods and takes the lead towards the now open door, the same one who took some of my blood to open. "Be careful. The layout of this place can get pretty weird." He steps onwards and I follow swiftly behind him, doing my best to not fall over.
"What do you mean?" I ask. Another question pops up in my head. How did he get away? He stops abruptly and as we move a few inches away from the entrance of the door, it shuts. The room we were in did not resemble the hall we were just in. The hall behind us was pristine, riddled with carpets and expensive-looking wallpapers. This, however, looked like it was forgotten. The area was riddled with the carcasses of dead birds and plucked out feathers, the rotting ones making themselves known through the horrible stench.
"This was not the same room I was in before I stumbled upon you." I watch him ready his shotgun and I do the same with my newfound pistol. Unlike my revolver, it was much lighter, which got me a bit off-guard.
I decide to ask him as we continue to push towards the dark room, slowly treading over the litter that was on the broken floor. "How did you manage to get away?" There was no noise, silence the only company we had as the tension becomes tighter.
"I didn't. I was saved." Anthony answers, his piercing blue eyes now much clearer when he doesn't have his glasses on. Saved? We stumble upon huge strips of plastic drapes, similar to the ones you find at a meat shop.
"By who?" I ask once more as he positions himself on one side of the blocked entrance and I take my position on the other side.
With synchronization, we burst through the plastic drapes and sweep the entire room. There were dozens of rusted bird cages of different sizes and shapes. Some of them contained more corpses, similar to the ones in the previous room. "Nothing here." I relax a bit and go to rendezvous with Anthony.
"All clear here as well." We push through and find that as we go deeper, the things inside the cages grew more and more grotesque. Disembodied hands, legs, a finger. "I was saved by kids, funnily enough. A little girl in red and a little boy who had a temper." He stops, his eyes alert and focused. "They told me they were also trying to find their way out and that their dad told them to just follow the magical breadcrumbs if they ever wanted to."
"Breadcrumbs?" I say as I finally see an open doorway at the distance. "Over here." I call out to Anthony and he walks over. All of a sudden, he screams out to me as he lunges forward.
"Get down Mike!" I immediately duck as I hear a sharp whoosh above my head and a loud thud afterwards. A cleaver barely missed my head and was now stuck onto the wooden frame carrying one of the cages. "You really followed me all the way here?" Anthony calls out as he points a shotgun behind me, still crouching on one knee.
I completely turn around and I see a grotesque version of my local butcher. The man in front of me was burly, a bloodied-up apron wrapped around his bare torso. His face was fucked up though, stitches were everywhere as they barely keep the patches of skin together on his head. Some of the skin was now peeling, crudely flapping around as he moves his head. He was carrying a machete that had blood dripping off of the blade and he just stands there, looking at us completely inanimate. "This someone you know?"
"Oh, that's an understatement. He's practically in love with me." Anthony fires a shot which barks as I follow him in doing the same. The Butcher doesn't even flinch as he suddenly decides to sprint towards us. Bullets don't work against him? He stretches out an arm, nearly grabbing my neck and I step aside to avoid it. I end up rolling on the ground as I barely avoid the swing of his machete, getting specks of blood splattered over my face. We need to run!