I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to recognize myself. The man who looked back at me was gaunt and pale, his face lined with sorrows. His eyes were hollow and red-rimmed like those of a corpse left too long beneath soil. It would appear that so many sleepless nights had taken their toll. Just when I was beginning to feel that I could move on, that the wounds of grief had healed, the world seemed to have decided otherwise.
Mari... Could she really be in this town?
I walked out of the public restroom into an open area surrounded by trees and grassy patches of land. The paved street continued further down the hill, going into the woods, towards Faraway Town. A thick fog covered everything beyond the edge of the pavement. I couldn't make out any details through the mist, but I knew that the path ahead led to our old neighborhood.
Nostalgic memories flooded my mind as I began walking down the road, towards the town where I grew up, and without being able to prevent it, my mind returned to the strange letter I had received a week ago.
"In my restless dreams, I see our hometown, Faraway. You promised me we would be together forever, but we didn't. Well, I'm alone there now. .. In our 'special place'... Waiting for you..."
The name on the envelope said "Mari." It's ridiculous... Couldn't possible be true... That's what I kept telling myself. A dead person can't write a letter.
Mari died because of that damn accident five years ago. So then, why I am looking for her?
Our "special place", what could she mean? This whole town was our special place. Does she mean the secret spot nearby the lake? We spent the whole summer there. Me, her, and our dearest friends, watching time pass by on the water's edge. Could Mari really be there? Is she really alive... waiting for me?

Scene 1

After this short introduction, Hero drives down the tree-lined road that runs down the hill toward Faraway. However, he ends up having to stop the car because a section is blocked off, full of traffic cones and construction material. As Hero stops the car on the roadside, he can't help but notice how all the construction material is covered with a dense layer of dust, as if nobody has touched it for months. However, the journey to Faraway on foot is not very long, and he decides to just keep going.
When he arrives in Faraway, the first thing he notices is the sepulchral silence, not even being able to hear birds or animals. The second is how empty the town is. He stops on the main street, and sees no one, no people, no cars, nothing. It's like Faraway has turned into a ghost town.

Scene 2
A rickety wooden signboard hung above a small establishment just past the end of a dark alley. Its name, which read "Faraway Pub," was written in faded letters that were barely legible. Sitting on the edge of the sidewalk near the entrance to the establishment was the first living soul I'd seen since leaving my car. Her long pink hair and her light blue bow were unmistakable to me, and I felt my heart warm just seeing her again.

Aubrey seems relieved to see Hero unharmed, although there is a certain hint of gloom in her voice. She comments that he looks terrible, and he just agrees and asks what happened to the town. Aubrey confesses that she doesn't know, that she woke up with the mist covering the town and everyone had disappeared without a trace, and that she is looking for her mother. Hero feels his blood run cold and asks if at least his family is okay, but Aubrey says she couldn't find them either, not even Kel. This leaves Hero astonished, he talked to Kel last night, he was fine. Hero just repeats that this is impossible, and that he needs to go home and make sure they are okay. Aubrey decides to go with him and help him.
The mission, therefore, changes. Discovering the origin of the letter can wait. Hero's family is the priority at the moment.

Scene 3

As they are walking on, Hero decides to break the silence and talk to Aubrey to ease the tension of the atmosphere. He asks how things are going with the rest of the gang, if she has kept in touch with them. Aubrey says yes, she has been trying to get closer to Kel and Basil, but things are... Complicated. She says that she has even decided to take a break from the Hooligans and has left the leadership to Kim.
Hero, on the other hand, says that he has kept very little contact with the guys, but that he had talked to Kel last night and he seemed to be fine.

We continued walking in silence until we arrived at the Faraway Plaza. The fog here was thinner than what we saw when we first entered town, but it still covered everything beyond fifty meters or so—even though we could clearly see some stores past that point, we couldn't actually see any people there either. There were no cars parked along the street, and the fountain looked like it hadn't been used in a while.
I wandered around the square in bewilderment, approaching the stores and trying to see through their windows in the hope of finding someone inside. The lights were off, making it impossible for me to see far, and when I attempted to open the store doors, I found them locked. Meanwhile, Aubrey searched the area near the fountain with growing concern.

Aubrey calls Hero, she has found something interesting. Near the fountain, a steak knife soiled with blood is lying. She picks it up with a certain curiosity and disgust.
But before they can both think what it means, they hear something moving among the trees. Cries and wails break the silence of the ambient, while a creature, as tall as a one-story house, emerges from among the trees.
The creature looks like a tall misshapen corpse with exaggerated humanoid features. It has wounds and stitches covering its entire body, including its face, and has no eyes.
Immediately, Aubrey panics, backing away while asking what the hell it is. The creature moves at a slow pace towards the pair, and instantly, the fight or flee effect kicks in. Aubrey takes off running, disappearing into the fog of the parking lot, and Hero backs away until he has his back to Hobbez's entrance. He tries to force the door, but it is locked. In desperation, he breaks the glass of the door with his shoulder and enters. The interior is completely empty, without its bookshelves or posters, containing only a few metal tables and chairs stacked in a corner. Hero grabs one of the chairs and lifts it up as if to use it as a shield, while the beast, destroying one of the store's windows, squeezes his body to enter the establishment.
The creature seems to smile as it approaches Hero, but Hero, overcome with sudden courage, slams the metal chair into the beast's face, forcing it backwards.
The beast opens its mouth, and a tentacle shoots out of its throat, grabbing Hero by the ankle and knocking him down, only to slam him against a wall with such force that makes him dizzy with pain.
The creature pulls Hero close, opening its mouth full of sharp teeth as if it were going to swallow him, but Hero, who has not yet released the metal chair, forces the chair's legs against the monster's throat and stabs it, causing the monster to howl in pain and release Hero, who forces the chair a little more deeply and then takes advantage of being free to escape.
He searches the Faraway Plaza for Aubrey, but she is nowhere to be found. Not wanting to risk the creature recovering, Hero runs away.

Scene 4

Hero keeps running without really seeing where he is going until he is too tired to run. He stops and observes his surroundings, he is on the street of the city hall. It looks like a hurricane has passed through there, judging by the amount of things destroyed. As he walks, he finds a history book of Faraway Town, but before he can read it, he hears someone running from inside the town hall building.
It's Sunny, who is immediately very happy to see Hero and runs to hug him. Sunny's presence is a little disturbing to Hero for a reason that he can't quite point out, but he hugs him back. Hero examines Sunny, he seems fine, but he has some scratches on his stomach as if he had recently fought something. He asks what Sunny came to town for, and Sunny gets a little distant, and says it's something about Mari, and that he needs to ask Hero something.
He asks if Hero has received any letters too, and Hero pauses, in shock at what that could mean. Sunny got a letter too? But before they have time to answer...
A monster appears, hovering above the buildings. It resembles a vaguely humanoid shapeless creature, its body practically made of limbs and hands that move like tentacles, and a head filled with several mouths that open and close as if they were screaming, its entire body covered with robes made of sewn human skin. And it comes towards Hero and Sunny. Sunny is paralyzed with fear, and Hero pulls him to enter the town hall.

Scene 5
The city hall was completely empty when we stepped inside. It was a relatively small building, yet it was much more spacious than I ever thought it could be. Everything was clean, almost too clean, as if the place was untouched for a very long time. It was absolutely eerie, but I couldn't think about it, because the monster was coming towards us.

Sunny and Hero run into the building. It is very empty, but at the end of a corridor Hero sees a window through which they can both escape.
However, Sunny wakes up from his apparent stupor and starts shouting that not through there, for them to look elsewhere, but it is too late. A door in the corridor opens, and through it passes a younger, Headspace-like version of Kel... But his face is totally deformed, as if he were a grotesque caricature of Hero's younger brother.
Hero leans against the wall and whimpers at this. Sunny finds a wooden rod and hands it to Hero, who breaks it and uses the sharp end to try to ward off the gruesome Kel who is walking towards them.
Meanwhile, the other monster full of hands starts to enter the building, while speaking "He...Ro...".
Hero tells Sunny that he will say something and Sunny should run and jump out the window. Hero throws himself against the gruesome Kel, distracting him, and yells to Sunny. Sunny runs and manages to escape out the window, leaving Hero alone in the building.
The gruesome Kel punches Hero in the face, sending him into a wall. Hero tries to get up, but his makeshift weapon is snatched from his hand, and the last thing he sees before he blacks out are dozens of arms and hands coming down toward him.

Scene 6
I opened my eyes slowly, feeling my back stiffen against the wet grass. I groaned as I tried to sit upright, which proved to be much harder than I had expected, my whole body sore. I looked around me. My vision was blurry at first, but things came into focus as I made out the silhouettes of the trees surrounding me. The area smelled foul, like something rotten and wet. In fact, it reeked like a sewer. I let out a pained groan and stood up, trying to get used to the pain in my back.
A pier was visible in front of me, long and wooden, over a small lake of murky, stagnant water. It took me a few seconds to realize that I had woken up in the old Hangout Spot—a place where we would play as kids and have picnics. The place was in an even more precarious state than the last time I had been there, a year ago. Some of the wood planks were broken, the dock was barely floating in its position, and the end of the pier was leaning dangerously close to the water.

Hero heard someone calling him. As he turned around, he realized that there was a young woman building a makeshift barrier around the clearing. She has her hair in a ponytail and is wearing a black dress with a white collar, carrying a rifle on her back. As she works, she says that he is lucky that she heard him scream, or he would not have survived.
When she turns around, Hero freezes. Her face is identical to Mari's, which causes Hero to stutter her name. The girl just stares at him and asks if he knows her, but Hero quickly realizes that she is not Mari, only very similar, but her the details on her face are wrong, her eyes are way too big, her eyebrows too straight, her skin too pale, not to mention the cold look in the woman's eyes.
He says she reminds him a lot of someone he knows, and she introduces herself as Maria. She says she lives in the neighboring town and was going to the the southern city when her car died near Faraway and since then she is stuck in the town.
She asks what Hero is doing there, and he explains that he wanted to find a childhood friend of his there at the lake, Mari, and that Maria looks a lot like this friend. He purposely omits the fact that Mari has been dead for five years, because he finds it too strange a detail to say, considering that he has received letters from her. Maria, however, says that she hasn't seen anyone there since she arrived.
She seems displeased, she was waiting for Hero to have answers about what the hell is going on in the town. This reminds Hero that he still has to find out if his family is okay, and he quickly tries to leave, even though Maria says it's not safe. At his insistence on going outside, she hands him a pistol so he can at least defend himself, and he runs out of the Hangout Spot.

Scene 7

Hero is making his way home full of fear and paranoia of being attacked again, but the way home seems calm, and he allows himself to relax a little. He stops at one of the crossroads, as he realizes that there is something different there. Further in, among the trees, there is a statue "in Memory of the Victims of the Great Fire of 1974", and surrounding the statue, a lot of garbage and trash containers, something that was not there before.
As he watches this, he sees Aubrey come out quite injured from behind one of the containers. She startles when she sees Hero and points the baseball bat at him, thinking him to be an illusion, but he calms her down and takes a look at her injuries, taking off his sweater to make a provisional bandage. Aubrey explains to him that the monster that Hero faced earlier in the Plaza followed her, but she managed to kill it with the baseball bat, and later she found a creature pretending to be Hero to trick her. She also seems very worried because she hasn't found anything of her mother's yet.
Hero tells Aubrey that on the way he found Sunny, but got separated from him. Aubrey is stunned by this information and asks if Hero was sure it was Sunny, because it didn't seem possible, but she doesn't elaborate much on this. Hero decides to tell her that if they get separated, she should seek refuge at the Hangout Spot, since there is a girl there creating some sort of safe-zone.
But for now, Hero says he'll check his house to see if he can find Kel, and then, go get something from the tree house (the second secret spot where he might end up finding something from Mari, Hero supposes).
Hero finds his house surprisingly intact, only the power had been cut off and everything was dark inside. As soon as he enters, he hears a sound like meat being smashed, and as he walks to the kitchen, he finds Kel stomping the head of a dead monster in the floor.
As soon as Kel and Hero meet, they are immediately happy to see each other and hug. Kel explains that he also woke up with everyone missing and without power in the city. Aubrey asks how it was that she didn't run into him, and Kel explains that he was practically walking around the city all day looking for an explanation to what was happening, so they both assume that they ended up missing each other.
Aubrey insists that they both go get Aubrey's mother, but Hero promises that he will do so after checking the tree house first, since it is practically next door. The trio then leaves the house and goes to Sunny's backyard, ready to look for clues there.

Scene 8

Upon arriving at the tree house, everyone is pleasantly surprised to find Basil and Sunny already inside, reading the photo album while sitting around the table. Sunny seems happy to see everyone, and Hero too, but as soon as Kel enters, he almost falls backwards when he sees Sunny. Kel acts strange, and then says that he will wait outside, which is clearly an excuse not to stay with them in the tree house. Aubrey enters soon after, staring at Sunny and Basil with a strange expression. Hero doesn't understand the reaction but ignores it and asks Sunny about the letter he was going to talk about before.
Sunny, however, says that it was nothing. This makes Hero a bit angry, and he insists for Sunny to explain about the letter. Sunny gets uneasy and says that it doesn't matter anymore.
Hero then decides to come clean to Aubrey and explains about the letter he received, containing Mari's handwriting and signature. Aubrey is surprised and argues about why he didn't tell her earlier, and Hero, even though he hoped Mari was really there, confesses that dead people don't send letters and this could only have been some cruel prank. He then takes the first possibility that comes to his mind and asks Sunny if he was the one that wrote the letter.
Sunny doesn't answer; instead, he gets up and runs out of the tree house, quickly descending and passing Kel before disappearing into the mist.
Hero comes down from the tree house and asks everyone for help in going after Sunny, because it's not safe out there and he's going to get hurt. Everyone agrees without a second thought.

Scene 9

The group tries to follow Sunny through the foggy city, but Sunny is much faster than them, and even though Kel can catch up, Hero doesn't want the group to split up, which slows them down.
Eventually, Sunny enters a building, and the group realizes that they have arrived just down the street from the hospital, the building that Sunny entered.
The group follows Sunny into the building, and realizes that he stopped to see if they were still following him, before rushing to the emergency stairs and going upstairs. The group follows Sunny, but loses sight of him because it is too dark inside the hospital.
They end up in a hallway so dark that they have to walk around groping the walls. Suddenly, Hero hears Basil let out a horrible scream. Looking to his side, he realizes with horror that Basil is being pulled to the ceiling by a red tentacle.
Above, on the ceiling, is a creature, similar to a spider, but made of human skin and with eight humanoid arms and hands, as well as several mouths and eyes on its torso, from which the tentacle emerges.
The sight of such a terrifying arachnoid creature paralyzes Hero for a few seconds, and he loses track of what is happening until Aubrey slaps him in the face to wake him up. Kel had jumped on Basil's legs and was trying to pull him down while he was already halfway into the creature's mouth. Hero immediately helps, pulling Kel up, but the force, instead of pulling Basil off the creature, causes the creature to detach itself from the ceiling and fall on both of them. Kel hits his head and falls unconscious, and Hero gets out from under the monster and pulls Kel out of the monster's grasp.
Meanwhile, Aubrey rushes by and starts punching the monster into the ground with her baseball bat, managing to kill it after she gives him a fucking headbutt.
Hero manages to pull Basil out of the monster's mouth, realizing that he is unconscious but still alive. Kel wakes up shortly after, and Hero asks him to take Basil out of the hospital and wait outside while he goes to get Sunny along with Aubrey.

Scene 10

Hero and Aubrey continue walking through the next floors of the hospital, looking for any sign of Sunny, even in the darkness. Hero is very silent, Aubrey questions why, and Hero comments on the strange way Sunny is acting, she agrees, but before she can say anything else, she stops and stares at something ahead.
Further ahead, a flashlight is lying on the floor, creating a spotlight on a wall where the corridor is intersected. A shadow moves in the spotlight, resembling a woman with her hair over her face suspended above the floor, moving like a pendulum from side to side.
Hero begins to stutter Mari's name, and Aubrey falls back seeing it.
But then, the shadow changes, descending and increasing as the one projecting it seems to arrive from the other side of the corridor. It is Maria, with her hair loose and carrying her rifle. It seemed that everything had just been an optical illusion. She looks slightly annoyed when she sees the group, pointing her rifle in their direction before lowering it when she sees that it is no monster.
Aubrey still thinks that she's Mari, but the other one again states that her name is Maria. When Aubrey asks about why they look so much alike, Maria changes the subject to say that she was looking for things to reinforce the barrier she was building. Hero asks if she has seen Sunny and describes the boy to her, but she says she hasn't seen anyone and actually thought she was the only one in the building until she saw both of them.
It is at this time that the group hears a loud sound outside the building in the distance.
It sounds like an air raid siren.

Scene 11

The walls, ceiling and floor begin to peel, and the whole place changes. Everything takes on bluish tones, and mold starts to cover every surface. The walls crack, giving off a foul-smelling odor, and long strands of hair begin to cover the walls and ceiling, which becomes composed of stitched human skin.
A whisper comes from across the hall. "He...Ro..."
The same creature as before, the one covered with cloths of human skin and with multiple hands, appears floating toward the group. Maria and Hero immediately pull out their rifle and pistol respectively, and unload bullets at the creature, but it seems to simply ignore the projectiles, continuing to advance toward the group. Hero and Maria run out of ammunition, and before they can reload, the monster uses its many hands to snatch the weapons from both of them. Maria screams for the group to flee, but the monster seems to be focused on her, and several hands suddenly grab her and pull her into the being's cloak, causing her to disappear inside with a shriek.
Hero is paralyzed watching this, but awakens when Aubrey steps forward and hits the monster hard in the face using her nailed bat, which although it doesn't hurt the monster, is enough to slow it down. Aubrey pulls Hero, and they both begin to flee up the stairs, climbing several floors until they are sure that the monster has stopped following them.

Scene 12

Aubrey and Hero only stop running when they reach the top floor. The hospital still seems to be all transformed into this infernal form, but even so, Hero recognizes the structure of the place, and remembers the last time he was there a year before, when Sunny and Basil had a fight and ended up in the hospital. He can't remember exactly what happened afterwards, his memory is fuzzy.
However, he decides to check out a place Sunny may have gone, and fortunately, he finds Sunny - in the room he had stayed in at the hospital. Curiously, even though the walls, ceiling, and floor have been transformed, the room retains its normal hospital furnishings, and Sunny is hiding under a bed, trembling with fear when he sees the pair.
He tries to convince Sunny to go with them to a safe place, but Sunny refuses and winces even more. It is as if Sunny is afraid of Hero and Aubrey, Hero has never seen him with so much fear in his eyes. Aubrey says nothing, just stands in the doorway, shining his flashlight cautiously, and Hero decides to approach Sunny. He gives his best smile, the way he usually does to "charm" people, and tells Sunny that he's not mad at him, he's just worried, and reminds him that he had promised that they would all be together no matter what the situation. This soothes Sunny, and he decides to come out of his hiding spot. Hero lifts him on his arms and together they start to walk out of there. It's time to look for the exit.

Scene 13

Hero carrying Sunny and Aubrey started looking for a quick way out of the hospital so they wouldn't have to go through the monsters waiting for them on the lower floors. They found a rusty fire escape against the wall outside the building, and decided to climb down it.
From up there, they could see the whole city transformed into that horrible distortion like from inside the hospital. There were pieces of stitched skin and hair wrapped around almost every building and object like plant roots, and the whole place smelled rotten.
No sooner had they reached the second floor than they heard Kel shouting. He was hiding behind a pile of wreckage next to Basil, trying to protect himself from a humanoid jellyfish-like monster whose tentacles were trying to grab Kel and Basil while letting out a sound similar to a shrill scream.
Hero immediately jumped into action, leaving Sunny on the ladder and trying to get the monster away from his friends. Kel and Basil fled toward the stairs, and Aubrey joined Hero in trying to hit the monster. However, the monster was very evasive, and not only managed to avoid all attacks, but also used his tentacles to grab Hero by the neck and start to asphyxiate him.
Hero quickly lost consciousness.

Scene 14

Hero woke up in the middle of a garbage dump, scared and with adrenaline running high. Looking around, he realized that the world was no longer dark and full of... Hair? But it had gone back to being all foggy. He didn't quite recognize where he was, but began to explore the place, very worried about what had happened to his friends.
He had to hide, because further ahead, another Medusa creature floated by. Hero watched it from behind a pile of trash, but as he stepped back, he kicked a glass bottle, drawing the monster's attention to himself. Knowing that he couldn't face the monster alone, Hero fled, running without a sure direction.

Scene 14

He was lucky, because the garbage dump eventually gave way to the street in the southernmost neighborhood of Faraway, where the poorest houses were (and where Aubrey lived). The monster kept following him until Hero jumped into a thicket between the trees, falling down a ramp into a ditch full of garbage. The monster lost sight of him and continued to chase him up, unsuccessfully.
Hero waited to be safe before getting up. He searched through the garbage for something he could use to defend himself, finding pepper spray and a rusty pipe. Apparently his luck was changing!
He tried to follow through the trees until he was at a safe distance before going back up the ramp. He was now on the street to Basil's house. Quietly, he began to walk around the place, planning to go back to the hospital street and get his friends, but he stopped short when he reached Basil's house.
Basil's house was no longer there. In its place, a small forest of completely black trees was there, with a trail leading into it.

Scene 15

Hero walked into the middle of the dark woods, his curiosity overcoming him to find out what the hell had happened there. He felt a bad feeling, as if someone had been watching him during his whole walk there.
But when he reached a clearing, his heart was filled with relief to find Kel there. Both brothers hugged each other, and Kel told them that the monster took Hero away and more creatures attacked, and the group, trying to run away from them, got separated. Kel is still searching for the rest of the group and doesn't know where they are or if they are okay.
Hero asks if he knows what happened to Basil's house, and Kel obviously doesn't, but he says there is something else up ahead that Hero should see.
They continued on through the trees, arriving in another clearing where a black stream was flowing. In the center of it was what looked like a hut, or rather a wooden cube with three doors on each side and a glass wall that let you see inside. There Maria sat, as if waiting for them.
Hero immediately ran to Maria asking her if she was all right and how she had survived, but Maria didn't seem to know what he was talking about, that she hadn't been attacked by any monster.
Maria said that he must have dreamed it, and started reminiscing about when Sunny had nightmares and ran to her bed at night, and how she had taught him a breathing trick to control his fears, and after laughing a little, said that she had taught that same trick to Hero too.
Hero stared at Maria in astonishment, and could only say "Mari...?".
Kel had heard enough, and started trying to force the doors open to get Mari out, but they wouldn't open. Each door had a specific number, and he didn't know what that meant.
Maria, in response to Hero, just said that she was whoever he wanted her to be, then started saying that he was responsible for protecting the group, and that in Mari's absence, he was the one who should calm Sunny down. She said that he had promised that he would never abandon his friends again, so she got serious, and asked Hero why he lied.
Hero didn't understand what she was saying, but decided that if that was Mari, he needed to get her out of there, so he went to help Kel in figuring out how to open the box.
He found out that the way to open it was to turn the handle of each door the same number of times it was written on the door, and he needed to do this with all the doors in order to open them.
And that is what they did, managing to open the door to the cage-box.
And finding Maria hanging on the other side, hanging from the ceiling, as if she had been dead for hours.
Hero fell backwards as soon as she saw this, but stood up quickly and tried to walk away from the scene as if she was cursed. Kel stood frozen, watching this, and began to cry. Hero, also in tears, pulled Kel away from the scene and covered his eyes, and started to try to get away from the scene as soon as possible.
Hero had spoken to Maria one second, and the next she was dead. This was surely a nightmare. Then why didn't he wake up from it?
Whatever it was, Hero felt that only Sunny could have the answers to what the hell was going on there.

Scene 16

Kel and Sunny ran out of the woods immediately after seeing that scene, and only stopped when they reached the crossroads. There, they collapsed crying, the image of Mary hanging burning in their minds.
Kel commented on what she had said, that it sounded familiar to him, but he couldn't remember why. He was sure it was something to do with the hospital, after Sunny's fight with Basil, but he could only remember the emotion he felt - a feeling as bad as the one he had felt the day Hero had fought with him.
Hero asks Kel for forgiveness for that, and Kel smiles and says that it has happened so long ago that he doesn't even remember it properly. They both hug each other.
However, as nothing good lasts long, the two get interrupted when a giant monster arrives, coming from the street of their house to go towards the street of Basil's house. The monster looks like a bird in shape, its body made of solid plates on top of piles of flesh, and under its head, some tentacles are hanging. The most important thing is its chest, for it is transparent, and inside it the group can see Sunny unconscious, immersed in an orange liquid.
Hero doesn't even think twice when he sees Sunny in danger, he simply takes the objects he had obtained and goes on the attack. The monster notices him and gets aggressive, heading towards him, but his attention is diverted when Kel starts throwing rocks at the monster, causing it to pass Hero and start running after Kel, who hides behind a fence.
Hero goes up to the monster, going under its legs, and begins to strike the monster's chest with the rusty pipe he had gotten hold of. The monster counters by using its tentacles to grab Hero and pull him up towards the monster's mouth full of sharp teeth. Hero grabs the pepper spray he had found and throws it in there, causing the monster to break the spray and start choking on the liquid inside, releasing Hero. Now free, Hero takes the opportunity and hits the monster in the chest with the pipe, breaking the chest and the pipe at the same time, but freeing Sunny and causing the monster to squirm and die.
Sunny is unconscious, and Hero with Kel decide to take him to the refuge that Maria was building so that he can rest.

Scene 17

When they arrive at the hangout spot, they find that the barrier Mary had been building has been destroyed, its pieces scattered all over the place. Aubrey is lying there, resting, and gets up when she sees the group, glad to see that they are okay. Hero practically collapses on the floor after leaving Sunny lying there, and just listens to Aubrey's conversation with Kel. Aubrey says that the place was already destroyed when she arrived, trying to find the safe place that Hero had told her, so there is no safe place left in the city.
She explains that she managed to escape with Basil to the city limits, and that she suggests the group get out of there as soon as possible before everyone ends up hurt or worse. Kel agrees and says that they need to get out and call the police or the national guard to sort out whatever is going on in Faraway. Hero asks why Aubrey hasn't run away with Basil, and she says she will only leave after she finds her mother.
Hero gets up and tells Kel to leave with Sunny as well, while he and Aubrey search for her mother. Kel seems unwilling at first to leave Hero alone but accepts.
Hero, Aubrey and Kel (carrying Sunny) go together to the city limits, where Kel says goodbye to Hero with tears in his eyes and leaves.
Now it's just Hero and Aubrey.

Scene 18

This is where the shit gets serious.
Hero and Aubrey decide to start searching Aubrey's house to see if they can find any clues. When they get there, Hero realizes something he hadn't realized first. The garbage dump he had woken up hours before? That's where Aubrey's house used to be. Simply, instead of the house grounds, there was a garbage dump. Aubrey seems surprised by this, she says that earlier there wasn't a garbage dump there, but decides to go ahead and explore.
Hero is going to follow behind her, when the wind blows a newspaper near his foot. When he picks up the newspaper, he freezes, reading the first page.

18-YEAR-OLD GIRL DIES IN DOMESTIC FIGHT
Eighteen-year-old Aubergine Williams passed away this October morning...
... During an argument with his mother, the latter threw a glass bottle at her...
... She was rushed to the hospital, but did not survive.

Hero couldn't finish reading, raising his gaze to look for Aubrey, she was nowhere in sight.
Hero entered the dumpster, starting to search for Aubrey. Was it just him, or did the dump look bigger on the inside than on the outside?
Eventually, he found something that was not there when he woke up. Aubrey's house, standing on a mountain of garbage. The door was open.
Walking into Aubrey's house is what you expect from Aubrey's house - trash everywhere, dirt, and stink. Aubrey was standing there, with her back to Hero, staring at a door ahead, covered in darkness.
There was a very strong smell there, more than usual. Hero looked around, until he found a bloody pile on the floor, a corpse that had been decomposing for many days. Hero approached the corpse, and choked when she saw that the corpse was wearing clothes very similar to Kel's. He began to feel weak, falling to his knees, and even though he wanted to scream, he only managed to let out a faint sound.
Aubrey began to speak. She says that her mother is further ahead, and says that she had everything ready to leave that damned town, that she just wanted to forget everything, the memories hurt too much. She finds it funny, though, that her mother had practically never cared about her, but decided to confront her just when she was ready to leave.
Aubrey simply drops her nailed bat and heads towards the darkness, disappearing. Hero stands up, her mind blank, picks up the nailed bat and follows her.
He reaches a small room. The walls are made of stitched skin, black hair is hanging from the ceiling and sticking out of the floor, and boxes and trash are stacked everywhere. In the center of the room is a creature that looks like a mixture of woman and lizard, skinless, with exposed bloody muscles, and with black hair covering its face.
Aubrey is nobody to be seen.

The battle between the two begins. Hero hits the monster hard using Aubrey's nailed bat, the monster falls to the side, but jumps over Hero and manages to bite him in the arm.
The instant the monster makes contact with Hero's skin, he has a flashback. He remembers Aubrey talking to him on the phone, asking him to help her get her out of Faraway and let her stay at his place for a while, but Hero makes an excuse, because he himself is running away from Faraway and everything related to it.
The fight continues, Hero keeps trying to hit the monster, but it dodges a lot. The monster manages to trip Hero, knocking him down, and hits Hero with its claws. Hero has another flashback.
He in the hospital, beside Basil's bed, and Sunny arriving at the door, saying he needed to tell them something, and proceeding to explain the truth behind Mari's death.
Hero simply feels drained after this flashback, but still manages to get up and hit the monster right in the face, breaking its jaw and causing it to fall inert on the ground.
When Hero leaves and returns to the entrance of the house, he finds Aubrey there, lying on a pile of trash, as if asleep. But as he approaches, he realizes that she has no pulse.
All he can do is cry.

Scene 19

Hero no longer had any reason to stay in the city. He simply went practically zombie-like towards the exit, unable to think of anything but Aubrey's dead body.
He stopped when he reached the street that led to the city limits, because he saw a picnic blanket there, in the middle of the street. On it, there was only a single object: Mr. Plantegg, Aubrey's stuffed toy.
He couldn't cry, he felt empty.
Someone called out to him. When he turned around, Sunny was standing there, both eyes intact, staring at him with a serious face as usual. Sunny told him that they needed to talk.
Hero asked him if Kel was all right. Sunny said yes, but that Kel was still in town, in the abandoned part of town, in the building.
Hero asked what they were going to talk about, and Sunny said it would be about what Hero did but doesn't remember doing.
Hero left the doll on the ground and walked away, asking Sunny to talk on the way.
Sunny says that Hero remembers when Sunny told the truth, but not what happened afterwards. He says that Hero was first in denial, then was hurt, then furious. Everyone else was, but they had no one to take out their frustration on because Sunny moved away soon after.
Sunny says that Hero decided to turn his focus to Basil, to try to get the whole truth out of him. As Sunny speaks, flashes of what happened fgoes through Hero's mind, and he remembers going to talk to Basil right after he was released from the hospital, and remembers Basil's frightened face as Hero confronted him.
They finally arrive in front of the abandoned building - it is an imposing building that was under construction but the project has stalled. There is a lot of mold and black hair all over the building.
Sunny says that Hero needs to go alone.

Scene 20

Hero enters the building alone. There is not much in it but abandoned building material and dust. The first floor is the parking lot, large but completely empty. Hero climbs the stairs to the second floor, where the construction only contained a basic outline of how the building would look but no decorations. From the wide corridors surrounded by rooms, it looked like it would be some kind of shopping center or hotel.
Hero is walking along until he notices a room with more mold than usual. He enters to find a partially flooded place, with water dripping from the ceiling and walls. Basil is there, hitting a wall with gardening shears.
Hero asks if he is okay and where Kel is. Basil replies that Kel abandoned him, as everyone else did. Hero tried to argue that Aubrey had said that he had managed to get out of town, but couldn't finish speaking because Basil simply rushed towards him. Basil's expression was crazed, it looked like a mixture of anger, sadness and joy at the same time. Hero managed to knock him to the ground first, trying to calm him down, but Basil started talking about how everyone saw him as the safe haven that everyone could trust, the "big brother" of the group, but that it was all just a big joke. This lowers Hero's guard, and Basil manages to drive the gardening shears into his stomach. Hero falls to the ground, and Basil takes Aubrey's nailed bat (which Hero was carrying) and smacks Hero in the face with it, knocking him unconscious.

Scene 21

Hero woke up. He was lying on a bed, and as he got up, he realized that he was not hurt, and the pain seemed far away. He thought that he had finally woken up from the nightmare and sighed with relief, until he realized that he was not in his college room, but in his Faraway home room, which had the curtains closed, making it quite dark, and was reminding him terribly of how he had been during the days when Hero had been in a depression after Mari's death.
Kel was standing in the doorway, he seemed to be crying. When Hero got up, Kel ran out.
Hero tried to follow Kel, arriving at the stairs of his house. Kel was not there, but there was a gigantic monster in place. It looked like a dismorphic creature made of thorny plants and roses, whose most striking part was a huge head, which looked like a skull full of sharp teeth and glowing eyes.
Hero was without any weapon, so instead of facing the beast he tried to climb down the stairs and leave the place, but the monster grabbed Hero with its vines and pushed him over the edge of the stairs, knocking him to the ground. Hero got up, wounded but alive, and tried to hobble to the door, managing to get out of it.
Instead of reaching the living room, he arrived in a hallway full of boxes. Kel was further ahead, running to the end of the hallway that turned left. Hero followed him, watching as Kel dropped something on the floor before continuing to run and disappearing into the darkness. Hero reached the object, it was a blowtorch.
The monster followed Hero slowly but steadily, Hero kept running, finally arriving in his living room. There was an object glittering on the table, a necklace of shells which Hero picked up. The exit door was open, but when Hero tried to reach it, vines came out of the floor and covered it. Hero tried to use the blowtorch to open the door, but the monster caught up to him, grabbing him with its vines and starting to squeeze him while keeping his arm down so that he couldn't use the blowtorch against the monster.
More memories came into Hero's mind. He remembered driving his car in silence, having Aubrey and Kel along with him. They arriving at Sunny's new house in another city, and the conversation that followed, first calm, and then turning into a confrontation. Of the cold words that came out of his mouth, and of how Sunny's usually calm and inexpressive face finally broke and he began to cry disconsolately.
Hero couldn't stand it any longer, so he managed to make an effort and lift the blowtorch, burning the monster's vines. The monster immediately burst into flames and began to squeak. The door was unlocked, and Hero finally managed to get out.

Scene 22

After Hero manages to escape that distorted version of his home, he realizes that he no longer seems to be in Faraway, or at least, not in the way he remembers. There is a field surrounded by trees, and further on, a church with some low trees around it.
Hero approaches it, and realizes that Basil is there, together with Kel. Kel is on one of the branches of the tree, but comes down when Hero approaches, while Basil apologizes to Hero for having ruined everything, and says that he misses their happy days. Hero asks what's in that church, and Basil says it's more memories that Hero needs to remember.
He hands Hero a key, so that he can open the church door. Basil says that Hero already knows what happened to Aubrey, and it's time to find out what happened to him.
Inside, the church is identical to the one in Faraway. There is no one there, but Hero can still hear whispers as if there were people there. On the pulpit, a Bible lies open and facing Hero.
Kel follows Hero, silently and with the same sad look as before.
Hero goes to the Bible, since it's the only object that seems to be important there, but as he gets closer, he realizes that despite its thickness, the book isn't a Bible, but a kind of sign-in book.
In it, there are dates and descriptions of events that happened in Hero's life, in particular, that happened after Sunny told Hero the truth in the hospital.
I will describe in the next post in summary form what is written there.

after Sunny confesses the truth to the group, Hero is crushed, and Sunny moves away
Hero decides to go to Basil's house to get the rest of the truth out of him. Apparently, Hero ends up saying some pretty harsh things to Basil since it leaves him emotionally shaken. Nobody knows about this except Hero and Basil.
Hero is persuaded by Kel, he decides that they need to see Sunny's point of view instead and not abandon him. Together with Aubrey, they decide to visit Sunny at his new home
The meeting starts well, it is supposed to be a reconciliation, however as Sunny speaks, Hero can't stand it. It's not clear if he alone starts yelling at Sunny, but at least Hero feels that it's his fault. Sunny ends up crying at the meeting
Hero feels nothing. He thinks to himself that from then on, the friendship between him and Sunny is broken beyond the point of restoration
Later, it is not said how much later, Hero has a pretty nasty argument with Kel when the latter tries to talk about Sunny to him again. Hero apologizes, but decides to stay away from Faraway for a while
In the meantime, Basil apparently gets back in touch with Sunny, and ends up telling him about what Hero said to him
Hero finds out about this because Sunny shows up at his college wanting to talk to him, and the two of them end up having an argument, which doesn't really turn into a fight, but only leaves the two of them on worse terms with each other
Angry, Hero calls Basil, and says some very nasty things to him (probably even related to his grandma). Basil just listens quietly on the other end of the line
It is not known how much later, Basil commits suicide

After reading that, Hero feels desperate. He repeats over and over again "what have I done?". He doesn't want to believe that it is true, but he knows that it is true, because now he remembers.
Hero sits down on the church bench, Kel is beside him, and confirms that it is true. Kel says that Basil was buried next to his grandmother, but Hero knows this second-hand, because he was not at the funeral. Kel asks if he can handle the rest of the story, and Hero is terrified to learn that he still has more to remember.
Kel says that he was the one who figured out the quickest that Hero was the one who might know about why Basil committed suicide, since of the three, he was the one who had taken the news the worst. Kel talked to Hero, and Hero confessed everything, including what he had talked to Basil about. Kel didn't want to believe it was true, but Hero looked absolutely destroyed by the news, and the look in his eyes said nothing else but that it was true. Kel had since become cold towards Hero, and now it was he who avoided Hero and not the other way around.
Kel then says that the worst was for Aubrey, since she had been trying to reconnect with Basil, and when Basil committed suicide, she thought it was her fault.
Sunny, on the other hand... Hero only saw him once after what happened. He was at the bus stop to go to college, and saw Sunny there (they apparently live in the same city). Sunny was in a horrible state, messy hair, deep dark circles under her eyes, disheveled clothes. He just said "did you get what you wanted?" and walked away.
Kel finishes by saying that he is a great Hero indeed, and leaves on his way to the cemetery behind the church.

Scene 23

Again, Kel plays the magician and disappears as soon as Hero follows him out of the church. The cemetery is, oddly enough, normal, but the fog seems stronger than expected. Hero walks by the gravestones, seeing a new one. He approaches it, only to read the name "BASIL" and walks away from it quickly. He automatically goes to the back of the cemetery, looking for Mari's tombstone.
However, the tombstone is not there; instead, he sees a trail that leads into the woods.
On the way, he hears a siren in the distance, and everything begins to change in the way we are used to - the world seems to fill with mold, surfaces become covered with stitched human skin and hair.
Hero arrives in a clearing, and there he can see an abandoned factory. Its door is open, and he enters.
He passes through a completely empty and dusty hallway, follows a corridor and arrives in a large room, also empty, with windows placed near the ceiling through which little light enters. Further on, Hero sees only the silhouette of one of the giant monsters he met earlier, the humanoid he saw as soon as he had arrived in Faraway. The monster's back is turned, and it doesn't seem to have realized his presence yet. Hero looks for a way out, seeing a metal staircase leading to a platform on the second floor, and decides to follow it.
But when he steps onto the staircase, the sound of metal makes a horrible echo throughout the room, and the monster turns in Hero's direction. He starts running up the stairs, managing to outrun the monster and get out of its reach, but as he reaches the top of the stairs, he realizes that he's not going to get any rest, as he sees more monsters waiting for him in the platform itself.
Four monsters are waiting for him up there. They look like a mixture of mushroom and squid, with bodies made of human skin and disgusting oily tentacles. The monsters were already heading towards Hero before he even noticed them.
Hero lifted the blowtorch and lit it, starting to run towards the first monster. He managed to set the monster on fire and knock it down, moving on to the second and doing the same, but was surrounded by the remaining monsters, who used their tentacles like spears to pierce his body. To make matters worse, his blowtorch ran out of fuel.
Hero, however, managed to push one of the monsters over the edge of the platform below, and using the remaining monster's tentacles against himself, managed to knock him down and trample his head to death.
Wounded and tired, Hero continued walking through the platform until he reached a door.

Scene 24

The room reveals itself as a kind of control room, judging by the desk and control panel near a window from which Hero can see the entire interior of the factory. He walks over to the panel, taking a look at it, and realizes that even though it's electronic part turned off, it has nearby a system of ropes and pulleys that manually controls a hook, which is in this room and can be taken out of it through a hole in the ceiling.
He hears something moving in the darkness, and notices, further back in the room, thorny vines and roses stirring, and a gigantic flowery head. He realizes that it is another one of the monsters made of roses, but like the previous one in the factory, the monster has not yet realized his presence there.
Hero turns to the system, thinking to use it to escape from there somehow, since the room has no other exit, but when he turns around, he sees Kel through the window, right in the middle of the factory, staring at Hero.
Hero takes a step back, hears something, and as he turns around, the rose monster is standing right in front of him, staring at him with its glowing eyes.
Hero doesn't even have time to react, as the monster attacks him with its thorny vines and knocks him unconscious with one blow. He was already weakened by the fight against the mushroom monsters, so he had no chance.

Scene 25

This scene began with more memories returning to Hero's mind. It began with Hero crying at Aubrey's grave shortly after her burial, asking for forgiveness for not having helped her. Kel arrived on the scene, he still looked colder than usual, but decided to talk to Hero.
Kel explained that Aubrey had a desire to try to get back in touch with Sunny, desperately wanting to make things right with him so she wouldn't make the same mistake she made with Basil. Kel said that they owed it to Aubrey, and Hero, no longer wanting to protest, agreed.
The problem was that since the last time they had that meeting with Sunny, he had changed his number and they couldn't reach him. So they had to try to go to his house directly to at least get his contact information.
And when they arrived, they found out that they were too late. Sunny had committed suicide.
Months ago.
After that, the rest of the year passed like a blur for Hero. Kel's family moved to Faraway, and Hero began to drown herself in medication to try to keep her mind blank. It was after this that... He simply forgot what had happened, and would only return to Faraway after receiving Mari's letter.
After remembering this, Hero woke up. He was still in the same place where he had been attacked by the rose monster, but it was dead at his feet. Hero looked around and noticed that there was something new in the room, a rifle, the same one Maria used. He took the rifle and put it on his back, looking for a way out of the room.
There was none, except the hook he had seen on the ceiling, which moved along a (rail?) in the ceiling and went through a hole, leading to the other side of the factory. If Hero hung from it, he could use it as a rappel to get out of there.
And that's what Hero did (after taking a crit on his athletics roll), grabbing the hook and using his body to grab momentum and move it down the rail. The hook took him over the main hall of the factory, and then through another hole, which dropped him into a large room with a floor made of somewhat unstable grids, which had stairs leading back down to the second floor.
And these stairs led Hero to a gate, which was open.

Scene 26

The gate led to another room, which would have been completely dark were it not for a window on the opposite side of the door that illuminated it slightly. The walls were covered with rose bushes, which climbed up the columns and reached the ceiling.
On the other side of the room, Sunny had his back to Hero, and in front of him, Mari, inside an amber golden cocoon, which was suspended by a rope tied to the ceiling.
When Sunny turned around, he was wearing his eye patch again. He started talking as if he didn't know what was going on, saying that after the hospital, he got lost and was attacked by a monster, then woke up in the city limits. Hero was silent watching this, while Sunny said how they needed to get Mari out of the cocoon.
Hero just said that he already knew this wasn't real, that Sunny was dead.
As he said this, Sunny's expression changed, he looked slightly desperate before, but then he just became completely stoic. He asked Hero if he didn't look real to Hero. Hero insisted that Sunny was dead, but Sunny replied that even if this was true, it didn't mean that he wasn't real. As he said this, the rose bushes began to grow almost out of control, taking over the entire room.
Hero was confused, asked what he meant, and asked who he really was.
Sunny said that he was Sunny, Maria, Aubrey, Basil, Kel, as well as the monsters that attacked them. Hero began to wonder if he was in hell, and Sunny agreed, saying that in a way yes, he was in the hell that he himself had created.
As he said this, Sunny transformed, being covered by a cloak of stitched human skin that simply did a shapeshift on his body. Now he was no longer Sunny, but a creature that was insect-like with bat-like wings, and a hideous skull-like face with sharp teeth.
The Sunny-monster-thing began to fly in circles around the room, the rose plants growing and tangling around Hero's ankle.
Hero began to shoot at the monster, missing the first shot but hitting the second. The Sunny-monster-thing descended on Hero and drove its claws into him, but Hero pushed him away by striking him with his rifle and shooting him again. The monster grabbed Hero, lifting him off the ground and starting to slam him against the walls, but as he let go, Hero managed to shoot again, now hitting the monster in the face.
And then, everything went dark.

Scene 27

Hero was on his knees in the cemetery, looking at Sunny and Mari's grave. There was no longer a trail there, just the cemetery, as it should be.
Hero left flowers there, and stood up, walking through the cemetery, leaving more flowers also at Basil and Aubrey's grave.
At the cemetery exit, Sunny and Mari were waiting for him, Sunny with her usual serious look, and Mari with a kind smile.
Sunny said that the city brought both the best and the worst memories for the group. He said that Hero couldn't run away from it, but he couldn't let it imprison him either. What happened in the future, happened, and cannot be undone. He needs to live with it.
Hero was silent, then said that he had failed them all, and how could he move on knowing that everything was ruined because of him.
Mari was the one who spoke this time, approaching Hero and placing a hand on his shoulder, while staring him in the eyes seriously.

You must continue Hero, for those who have died, and for those who are still alive. You may believe that you have failed everyone, but not everyone is gone yet. Kel still needs you. By giving up, you will be failing him as well.

Hero stared at the ground. They were right. If he were to give up on life now, it would only be one more mistake piling up on his list of sins. However, he still had something to say. He turned to his friends, asking them if they would forgive him.
Sunny smiled, he said he had never blamed Hero to begin with. Mari said that his repentance didn't change the past, but still, he needed to use it to prevent him from making mistakes again in the future.
Hero hugged them both, crying, while Mari and Sunny comforted him.
Then Mari pulled away from him, clapping her hands as she usually did, and telling him to lighten up, that he had a younger brother and an even younger sister who needed him.
Sunny said Hero should stop torturing himself, because as long as he did that, he would be missing the chance to do the right thing.
Hero nodded, and they both left in front of the door that led out of the church. He asked Sunny and Mari to say goodbye to Basil and Aubrey for him, and left. It was time to do the right thing.

Epilogue

Hero parked the car in front of the new house. He hadn't been there since his family had moved in, too busy with college and his own depression. It was an old two-story house, in a big city in the south of the state.
It was a hot summer, but Hero was sweating more on account of having to talk to his brother after so long than anything.
Hero knocked on the door, being greeted by his very surprised mother. Kel and Sally were watching television in the living room. Hero thought that Kel would be as cold as last time, but to his surprise, Kel practically jumped up to meet him, hugging him tightly. Hero noticed that his brother was much paler and thinner than before, and seemed to have dark circles under his eyes, but his face lit up when he saw Hero.
Hero hugged him tightly, promising him that he would be with them no matter what happened from then on.