When Laughter Dies( A Laughing Jack FanFic)

Chapter Four: Hand Prints

     The shadows danced alongside the young girl as she hurried down the corridors, the wicked spirits finding amusement in her failed attempts in finding her absent sibling. Nothing had been left to speak of his whereabouts all except for the single candy wrapper and a sickly sweet aroma Chloe could have sworn was familiar. She searched every cranny and corner her brother would retreat to hide, even the dolls sat still in their cages as they watched this hopeless adventure. All was silent except for the footsteps that bounced off the walls each time Chloe took a step and for once even the three children whom often lurked in the living room were not in sight. It was dead inside the house, vacant and eerie. Even the birds stopped singing but Chloe could not recall if they ever sung here before anyway. As the girl curled her fingers around the handle to the front door a deafening shriek came from the second floor of the house and immediately it caught her attention. 

    She turned sharply where she stood and began her anxious ascend up the staircase, already her heart pounding against her rib cage. 

" SAM?!" Chloe called out loudly but she was only met with the same hysterical cries from before. 

    It took only seconds for her to reach the end of the hall where the sobbing originated and as she reached the door her insides churned and she could not bite down the vile that rose in her throat. 

    Chloe had never seen so much blood and carnage before in her entire life, not even in the horror films she was never actually allowed to watch. It was difficult to say which limbs belonged to which sibling, for all three of Ms.Miller's children were now in scattered pieces across the room. The pale sunlight that shown through the window  was now coming in streaks of dull red and the metallic smell of blood stung Chloe's nose and eyes to a point where she nearly vomited again. Intestines were hung gruesomely around the room similar to the fashion of holiday garland and crimson hand prints painted the chipping walls. There were torsos and legs, an arm or an eye laid across the floor but Chloe saw no heads and no limbs actually attached to the person they once belonged to. Though she was not sure she could dare to peer into the room again. Ms.Miller sat in the midst of all this, her frail body trembling so severely she appeared to be having some sort of convulsion. She was the body that belonged to these shrieks, an awful and terrible song that shook the entire house. Whatever life she had once possessed in her beady eyes had faded and her pale skin was now somehow a few shades lighter. There was blood on her clothes and on her hands as she sat in the mess and already she herself had gotten sick three times. Once Chloe was capable of looking up again, she came to an even more horrific discovery. Scattered in the blood were the same candy wrappers placed in her room and the window was opened just a hint to show a small doll that had been left there. Whomever had done this she realized had not only been in the same room with her only minutes before but had also taken her brother and now she was helpless and Sam was in the hands of a monster. Ms.Miller continued to sit there and sob and Chloe herself was so close to that same breaking point. The shadows loomed overhead with devious grins, knowing all of what had happened but speaking not a single word to the onlookers below. This was only the beginning of a story far more sadistic and somewhere in the back of her mind, Chloe already knew that misfortune. She stood there petrified and frozen in her place- an unseen force of fear keeping her still in her perch.

    The shrieks soon died into choked cries that sounded weak and feeble, the small woman in the center of the room covering her face with her blood stained palms. Chloe could only stand and watch in horror at the scene though soon Ms.Miller would glance up and notice the girl. Her expression went from grief to anger and she pointed her finger directly at the orphan she was meant to care for. 

" You," she spat, her words hissed and dripping with venom. " You brought this curse upon my children... My sweet children." 

   Before she could continue she broke into another sob and Chloe managed to stumble backwards, crashing into the wall behind her before taking back down the hall. She would find her brother before he met the same fate. Somewhere in the distance the girl could hear laughter and the sound of a jack in the box singing. It was sickly familiar, she had known this once before but it had long since been hidden in her memories.