"So where is the book?" Ethan asked.
Now that Lucy was safe, the next problem was obvious. Without the book, finding a way back to their own time would be much harder.
Ash shook his head. "Don't know. Those things took it."
The answer hung in the room.
"Fuck," Ethan muttered under his breath.
His system portal would still work, but like always it had limits. The cooldown timer floated in the corner of his mind.
Twenty-seven days left before he could open a dimensional portal again.
That meant they were stuck here.
At least for now.
"Well, it seems we'll be stuck in this place for some time," Ethan said.
"Fine by me," Wednesday replied. "I'm more interested in what makes these things tick."
Selene didn't object.
Ash looked between them, completely confused. Most people who ended up in this cabin were terrified, barely holding themselves together. These three were discussing being stranded like it was a mild inconvenience.
Enid stared at them, then leaned closer to Lucy and muttered quietly.
"Lucy… I think we're the only normal ones here."
Lucy didn't respond. She just held onto Enid's arm.
Then Enid felt a gentle pat on her shoulder.
Soft. Almost comforting.
She assumed it was Lucy trying to reassure her. But Lucy was sitting on her lap and her hands were gripping her sleeve.
Enid froze.
Her eyes slowly shifted toward her shoulder inch by inch, turning like a creaking window.
Enid stared at the severed hand resting on her shoulder.
The gray fingers twitched.
For half a second her brain refused to process what she was seeing.
Then she screamed.
"AAAAAHHH!"
Pure instinct kicked in. She grabbed the hand and flung it away from her with all the strength of a panicking werewolf.
The hand shot across the cabin like a thrown rock.
It smacked straight into Ash's face.
"GAAH—!"
Ash staggered back as the rotten hand slapped over his nose and mouth, the fingers instantly clamping down like a spider.
"Shit—! Shit! Get this thing off!"
He grabbed it with both hands, trying to rip it away, but the dead fingers tightened stubbornly.
The hand suddenly jabbed a stiff finger toward his eye.
"HEY—!"
Ash jerked his head back. "You poked my eye, you little bastard!"
He wrestled with the hand as it clawed at his face, stumbling backward in the struggle. His heel caught the edge of a chair and he crashed straight into the wall.
The impact shook the cabin.
Mounted above him was a taxidermied deer head. The old mount rattled loose from the wall and dropped straight down.
It landed squarely on Ash's head.
For a second he stood there with a stuffed deer head covering his face while the severed hand kept clawing at him.
"You little bastard— get off me!" Ash shouted, trying to rip the hand away.
The hand immediately jammed two stiff fingers straight into his nose.
"AH—! Not the nose!"
Ash staggered around the room blindly, one hand fighting the crawling hand while the deer head slid crookedly over his face.
Across the room Ethan watched the scene unfold.
He didn't move.
For a moment he wasn't sure if he should help…
or just enjoy the show.
Enid quickly covered Lucy's eyes with one hand and squeezed her own eyes shut with the other.
"Okay—Lucy, we're not looking at that," she said quickly, turning the girl's head away from the chaos.
Wednesday watched the scene with quiet interest.
"This resembles a poorly executed puppet show," Wednesday said calmly.
Ethan sighed and walked over.
Ethan grabbed the wrist of the hand and started pulling.
"Careful— you're pulling my nose!" Ash barked, swatting blindly at the air.
"This thing isn't letting go," Ethan said, tightening his grip and trying to peel the fingers off Ash's face.
The hand twitched and squeezed harder.
Ethan braced his grip and pulled.
With a wet snap the fingers finally peeled off Ash's face. Ash stumbled back, rubbing his nose furiously. His entire face had turned red from the pressure.
"Damn thing almost rearranged my sinuses," he muttered.
Ethan held the crawling hand up and looked at it.
"You resemble Thing," he said flatly. "But he's a good hand. You're just bad."
"Don't compare my assistant to this poor excuse for a rotting limb," Wednesday said immediately, tone cold. "Thing is vastly superior."
The severed hand twitched angrily in Ethan's grip.
Ethan's expression hardened.
"Now," he said, lowering his voice slightly, "you undead demon bastard… tell me where the book is."
The hand responded by slowly raising its middle finger.
A very clear answer: go fuck yourself, human bastard.
Ethan stared at it.
"Oh," he said quietly. "You're one of those."
He slammed the hand down onto the wooden floor.
A spike of hardened blood shot from his palm and pinned the wrist straight through the boards.
The hand thrashed violently but couldn't pull free.
"Wednesday," Ethan said without looking away from it, crouching beside the pinned limb. "Did you bring your torture tools?"
"They are always in my pocket," Wednesday replied.
She calmly pulled a small metal case from inside her coat and flipped it open.
Inside were needles, pins, scalpels, and several tools that definitely weren't meant for polite medical work.
Ethan grinned slightly.
"Well, well," he murmured to the hand. "You messed with the wrong people."
The fingers trembled.
For a brief moment, the demonic hand seemed… uneasy. It was supposed to be the one spreading fear and torment, yet here the roles felt strangely reversed, as if the humans standing before it were far more disturbing than it had expected.
Ethan and Wednesday leaned closer together, studying it with the calm interest of two scientists about to begin an experiment.
Across the room, Enid quickly covered Lucy's eyes again.
"Children shouldn't watch this," she said firmly.
Lucy tried to peek through Enid's fingers.
"But it's interesting…" she protested quietly. She had always been drawn to occult things, and curiosity was the very reason she had opened the book in the first place.
*****
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