(Warning: Cringey Content, Character Death, references of experimentation, disection, etc.

Hellooooo CrimsonIris back at it again with soft horror this time. There's a lot of darker themes in this story and violence. Character death right away. If you're worried it's too much this chapter will let you know, nothing is super duper gory and anyone who makes it out alive in this chapter will stay alive. Sanity in one peice eh well you'll see.)

Chapter One: The Truth Never Stays Buried

I call the social worker. They don’t immediately pick up. I feel like they already know. 

“Can you come pick me up?” I say softly, almost out of breath. 

I listen to the sounds of their family in the background then they sigh, “What happened.”

“My uncle…died.” I slowly look up over the phone, “A long time ago.”

“What?!” They exclaim silencing the party, maybe it was their birthday. “When?! Have you been alone this whole time?” I hear a brief scrambling noise and their keys jingle.

“Well no…” I turn back to my uncle’s house, “the guy living here, he’s not my real uncle, he…”

“Wait, who’s living there? Who’s with you now?!” They exclaim. I hear a door open and family members calling out to him. “I’m on my way!” His voice is suddenly really clear, the sound of a car door closing and the car turning on. 

“I think he killed my uncle, he buried him at least and…marked his gravestone.” I feel my breath shuddering. “Seven years ago.”

“Where are you?” The social worker demands, “Are you in danger? Is there somewhere you can go that’s safe until I reach you?” 

I look up at the man I just found out was pretending to be my uncle, a man whose face is expressionless. 

“I don’t know.” I whisper. 

The man now makes a stern expression, holding out his hand. 

“I thought I told you not to mess about out back.” He says calmly.

“Who was that?! Are you okay?!” I hear as the man takes my phone, looking at it in disdain before hanging it up. I don't move to run and look up at the towering man. 

“Now why did you go and do that?” He asks gesturing to the weeds torn off the grave that were previously covering the name and more importantly death of my uncle. 

“Did you kill him?” I feel my heart racing. “Are you going to kill me?” I ask, wondering if the large rock beside my foot would be enough to defend myself with.

He blinks at me slowly like he does whenever he realizes something he hadn’t considered. 

“No and…” He tilts his head at me. I take a step back making a sharp noise as I realize I'm waiting for him to finish considering it. “Why would I kill you?” He says finally. 

He takes a step forward and I fall back three more steps. 

“I’m a little irritated because I liked this little spot, now I’ve got to uproot and start all over.” He gestures to the well taken care of house and garden surrounded by miles and miles of wild forest.

‘Yeah because it’s in the middle of nowhere.’ I think.

“The perfect spot for my research.” 

I tense up at the mention of his research. All I know is that he tortures small helpless creatures. I could hear it all through the fake wall. 

‘Am I the next stage of his research?’

“W, well.” I say, “You’ll get caught if you do anything to me, they already know I’m here and if I’m not here when-”

“I can’t leave you here.” He laughs. 

I freeze. “You,” my voice raises a few octaves, “You should just leave me and run, you're more likely to get caught if you take me!”

He stares without saying anything and then finally after it got uncomfortably long, smiles as though I was just being kind, “While I appreciate your concern about me getting in trouble, despite the fact you’re the one making us move in the first place.” He grumbles. “I can’t leave you here because that,” 

He points and I glance back quickly before returning my gaze to the madman. “Will kill you the second I leave you alone.” 

I turn again, glancing rapidly between the woods and him, hands shaking a little.

‘I shouldn’t believe him, he’s crazy, he knows how to manipulate people otherwise he wouldn’t have gone so far as to pretend he was my uncle.’

He spreads his hands, “I don’t have time to convince you whether or not to come with me but just know if I wanted to hurt you, I’ve had plenty of opportunities. I’ve been putting sleeping pills in your dinner every single day since I caught you sneaking around at night.” 

He walks past me and then stops. I’m frozen in shock. He leans down to pick up the rock and puts it in my hand, “You can try defending yourself from it with this.” 

I can’t breathe until he walks away. Whirling around I look at the rock, still reeling from his confession about drugging me.

He walks back towards the house far too calmly. I know that the social worker won’t get here for hours. He has time to pack his stuff and to bury me as well. 

I glance around nervously. I swear I see things moving around in the woods. Before I can overthink things I follow him keeping at least a seven foot distance from him. Constantly checking all around me, I jump when he stops and looks back at me. He doesn’t seem happy or angry, just nodding and continuing walking intently. 

I stay outside as he goes into his lair. Leaving the door wide open. I don’t have any urge to see what he has in there. I also don’t have the urge to be anywhere near him. I swallow and sit on the steps wishing I’d see the social worker's car coming up the road but even if he was going 100 miles an hour he’d never get here soon enough.

A scream makes me dart inside. It came from the woods! The madman is next to me in a heartbeat grabbing my shoulder and leaning over me to look. 

“That…is not a good sign.” He mutters to himself. Then looking down at me walks away. Leaving the front door open still. I close it. Locking it too. He smiles over his shoulder, “That won’t stop it, it’ll come when it gets dark.” 

I look at him terrified. 

“You should pack anything you want to keep.” 

He suddenly turns on his heel and walks back towards me. I clench the rock in my hand. He points to my wrist. I look down and then he hands me a bracelet he’d tried to give me earlier. “Wear this.” He says monotone and I legitimately couldn’t wrap my mind around why he wanted me to accessorize when we’re apparently being hunted by some demon. 

He tilts his head at me, “Why do you look so terrified?” Then he laughs, feigning a slap to his forehead, “Oh right you still think I killed your uncle.” He forces the bracelet on my wrist and points, “It doesn’t like that very much.” 

“What?” Is all I manage, looking from the plain metal bracelet to him, face pale and confused. 

He doesn’t answer of course and just as suddenly goes back to his secret room, messing with all the cages. I look away quickly as I notice something dissected on the table. 

“Did you…mess with my mouse traps?” He suddenly materializes behind me. 

‘I hate how quiet he is.’ I look away guiltily. 

“Hmm.” He says and then looks around my room aware that I never really had that much stuff before after seeing it back to how it was when I first moved in. I had saved a big mouse or something from a glue trap and once cleaning all the glue off of it made it a little house with some food and water in it to recover. The mouse and some of the food and water was gone the next day. 

I still don’t regret saving it. Even though it bit me viciously. I’m messing with the bit finger and he notices. He steps forward and lifts the scarred hand and fingers to see my other desperate attempts to save his victims and tightens his lips. 

“You’re lucky they didn’t get infected or give you a disease. Still we should get you checked just in case.” I perk up a little bit at the chance to escape him later and he grabs my bag bringing it into the livingroom to place it with the other dozens of bags. I see a toolbag and shudder at the kind of equipment he probably had in there. I look out the window nervously and swear I see something watching from the forest's edge.

“Can we hurry?” My voice has an edge of fear in it.

“Thought you didn’t want to go with me?” He teases me knowing I’d rather not. I can’t help it. I look back to the woods. ‘Is it getting darker?’ He goes back to his lab lifting cages. 

“Help me dispose of these. He walks into the bathroom and I follow after slowly, confused, and knowing I’ll just keep freaking myself out looking outside. Another scream sends a shiver up my spine. And I rush into the bathroom where he is looking at me with a sadistic grin. “They really hate it when I kill them off.”

“Kill…” I look at the bathtub and gasp lunging forward as I drop the rock. He snatches me trying to stop me but lets go startled when the rock makes a loud thud. I snatch the cages out of the water. He looks angry. 

I step back, “Stop!” I narrow my eyes at the creature in the cage but have to refocus on the madman because he moves towards me. “I’ll let them go, you don’t have to-” 

He glares at me. I hear soft coughing and look down at the winged ‘bird?’ again. 

He snatches one of the cages from me and shakes it to my horror. I wrap both arms around the cage still in my arms. I feel myself trying to go numb. 

“Fuck! Why, why’d you do that!?” I scream. Shocking him. That’s right, it’s the first time I’ve ever raised my voice at him. I lunge forward and he takes a startled step back as I carefully yank the cage from him, unable to look away at the blood now spotting the metal bars. I turn my back to him crouching and look into it carefully. It looks like another rodent but its fur is all weird and it’s not moving. I feel myself freaking out and try to open the cage. 

“It’s already dead.” The madman says monotone, “It doesn’t take much.” He tries to see what I’m doing. “Hey don’t do that!” 

I shake him off as I pull the poor little rodent out. I’m tensed in case it bites me, almost welcoming it if it means it’s still alive. I don’t realize I’m whimpering some encouragement to it, telling it it’ll be okay, I roll it over a little and the man hisses through his teeth. I freeze as its fur slips off like it wasn’t connected. I realize it’s not a rodent or any animal I’ve ever seen before it looks-

The other one starts coughing again, its feathers sopping wet and then slumps, not breathing anymore. Horrified that I was too late I turned on the madman again screaming profanities at him and calling him names.

He crouches and waits until I make eye contact then slaps me. I restart. 

“They’re dead, get over it.” He says harshly. I feel something wet trace down my cheek and through blurry eyes rush past him. I grab the door to the secret room and slam it shut. Locking him out before he realizes what's happening. I look around as I catch my breath in the small, dark room. The wallpaper is old, the edges starting to yellow and peel. 

I hear little noises from the animals, squeaks and chirps, ‘what did I just see? Was he breeding new species or something?’ 

I fumble for a lightswitch and find it. The light flickers on and I look at all the little cages lining the walls at head height and try not to look at the poor creature on the table. I take a deep breath and start opening them all, not sure what I was going to do if they attacked me. Only…they either barely moved or pressed against the backs of their cages. Cowering.

“Knock, knock, knock, what are you doing?” The madman calls and I hear a pained squeak causing me to tense. “Turns out the little birdie just passed out, if you don’t open the door right now I’ll strangle it.”

“Stop!” I beg lunging back towards the door, “Let it go!”

“Open the door.” He makes the poor creature squeak again. I look around wildly and notice a few are rousing now. 

‘I couldn’t sacrifice all of them for one…he may just kill it anyway but how do I save them?’

“I, I have something to hold hostage too!” I squeak still looking desperately for leverage. He goes eerily quiet. I pull open the drawer to his desk and he panics.

“Don’t touch my research!” He slams on the door. “I’ll let the bird go.” He tries to sound friendly again. “I’ll even let you keep it as a pet, now be a good boy…”

“How do I know I can trust you? Y, you shook the other one to death!” 

He’s quiet for a long while before responding,“I can just fix my research if you rip it up, so it’s not really worth it to make me mad.”

I suddenly remember my lighter. I pull it out and press it down. He recognizes the sound instantly since I was always playing with it. 

“That’s my entire life's work, if you destroy it I’ll, I’ll…”

“Just don’t hurt the bird!” I gesture back towards the door and turn to the cages, realizing I’m going to have to smuggle them all out somehow.

I put on my headphones to block out my uncle begging to know what I was doing and that he wasn’t going to hurt the bird anymore. 

Steeling myself I reach into one cage with two and wince as they try to defend themselves. I place them in my hoodie pocket. I pull another little bird out of a cage. It's limp and I try not to cry as I put it in my pocket as well, not sure if it’s even alive. I jump when one hisses and biting back any noises that might let my not-uncle know what I was doing, corner it and grab it, pocketing it soon after.