User blog:MrTyeDye/The Nightmare House (Part 11: Lincoln)

Previous Chapters:

(Lori)

(Leni)

(Luna)

(Luan)

(Lynn)

(Lucy)

(Lana)

(Lola)

(Lisa)

(Lily)

Lincoln lumbered out of his room with a labored yawn. It was 12:30 in the afternoon, and Lincoln was just now leaving his room for the first time that day. After a particularly exhausting school day on Friday, he decided to give himself the privilege to sleep in on Saturday - and sleep in he did.

Man, I can't wait for college, he thought. Then I'll be able to sleep in, like, every other day.

As he walked out into the hallway, he couldn't help but notice that the floor was uncharacteristically quiet. Granted, he didn't expect to be the only Loud who decided to sleep in, but he assumed that there'd be at least one of them out and about. Still, while he found the house's tranquil state a bit unusual, it didn't exactly bother him. If anything, the emptiness of the house gave him a rare opportunity to claim the TV all to himself - an opportunity he intended to take.

He tiptoed down the stairs, muffling his footsteps so as not to wake anyone up. After years of using that stairwell, he had memorized every spot on every step that produced a creak, a knowledge that proved invaluable on Saturday mornings. Or, in this case, Saturday afternoons.

Once he got downstairs, he plopped himself down on the couch and snatched up the remote, ready to veg out. As he was getting himself comfortable, though, he felt a small, rigid lump lying under his seat. He got up off the sofa and looked down at the spot he was sitting on to find, much to his delight, a shining dollar coin.

Well, this day's off to a good start!

But as he bent down to pick it up, he suddenly felt ten presences behind him. Those elusive sisters had picked the worst possible moment to show themselves.

Dang it.

Lincoln grabbed the coin, fidgeting with it nervously in his hand, as he turned around to face his sisters - who, sure enough, were all right behind him, clustered together. After the "Sharon DeMonay" incident, he knew that there was no way he'd be able to get away with trying to hoard the money for himself. As such, the first thing that came out of his mouth was a hasty, frantic promise to share.

"I-I wasn't planning to keep it! I-if you girls have change, I'm sure we could split this... eleven... ways?"

Lincoln started trailing off once his eyes picked up something peculiar. All ten of his sisters were... smiling. And these weren't mischievous smiles, either; they were perfectly friendly, cordial smiles. Even Lucy was bearing one.

"Oh, that's all right, little bro," said Lori. "You can keep it all if you want. Finders keepers."

Lincoln looked down at the coin grasped in his palm. "Are you sure? We did promise to share money from now on."

"Sure we're sure!" said Lynn. "It's just a dollar. Keep it."

After a moment's hesitation, Lincoln pried open his pocket and dropped the quarter inside, keeping a wary eye on his sisters as he did so. None of them dropped their smiles for even a moment.

"Well... see you later, I guess," he uttered, as he started to walk back towards the stairwell. He was, apparently, too busy mulling over what just happened to look where he was going, and his foot ended up getting snagged on some of Lily's blocks, which she had carelessly left in the middle of the floor.

"W-whoa!" he cried, toppling over and landing back-first on the floor. Lincoln rolled over on the floor, hissing in pain and clutching his lower back, which had taken the brunt of the impact. While he was still recovering, he suddenly sensed a shadow looming over him. Oh, boy, here we go again, he thought, dreading a maelstrom of meddling from his overprotective sisters.

But when he looked up, he saw Luna, standing alone, extending a hand towards him.

"You all right, dude?" she asked. "You want me to help you up?"

Lincoln gave her a peculiar look, but accepted her offer. He grabbed her by the hand and let her pull him back upwards into a standing position.

"So... that's it?" he asked. "No gauze? No defibrillators?"

"That would be a gross overreaction to an extremely minor injury, wouldn't you say?" asked Lisa.

"Well, yeah..." admitted Lincoln, his voice trailing off. He was inclined to point out that such a "gross overreaction" was their typical response to a minor injury, but he didn't feel like pressing his luck. For whatever reason, they had decided to change their ways, and as far as he was concerned, it was a welcome change.

"Anyway, thanks," he said as he gave Luna a wave. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I've got some homework to do."

"No need!" said Lisa. "I've already done it for you."

Lincoln looked back over his shoulder towards Lisa and raised an eyebrow. "You did?"

"Indeed," she said. "I decided that you deserved a break, so I took the liberty of finishing all your assignments."

Lincoln couldn't help but crack a smile; he had been given a particularly heavy load of homework that weekend, and now he didn't have to worry about any of it.

"Um... wow. Thanks, Lisa."

Lisa returned the smile, pulled the TV remote out of her pocket and tossed it across the room into Lincoln's hands. "Now, you can devote your time to indulging in your favorite entertainment programming."

Lincoln peered at the remote and turned it over in his hands, inspecting it as if it were the first time he had ever seen such a device. The idea that someone in the Loud house would voluntarily give up the TV remote was borderline preposterous to him.

"You mean it?" he asked. "Don't any of you have programs you want to watch?"

"Don't worry about that," said Luan. "Just have a seat and relax! Today's your day."

Lincoln couldn't remember doing anything noteworthy for the sisters in recent memory, so this behavior was striking him as increasingly odd. Nevertheless, he figured that if they were going to give him a gift, it'd be polite to just accept it. He walked back over to the couch, plopped himself down, and clicked on the set.

"Just don't spend too much time in front of the TV," said Lori. "You don't wanna be late for the Ace Savvy fan meetup, do you?"

Lincoln jerked his head towards Lori, eyes popping. "The what?!"

"Oh, haven't you heard?" asked Lori. "A bunch of Ace Savvy fans are meeting up at Gus' Games & Grub tonight at 6. I'm sure they'd love to have you!"

Lincoln's face lit up. "Gosh, thanks for letting me know! How'd you even find out about that?"

"Eh, I saw a poster for it at the mall," Lori said with a shrug.

Sounds reasonable to me, thought Lincoln. Gosh, I wonder if I still have my Ace Savvy costume lying around?

That last thought, coupled with the prospect of a crowd of fans gushing over the craftsmanship of his outfit, spurred him into action. He hopped off the couch and started speed-walking towards the stairwell, only to be stopped cold by an interjection from Lori.

"Whoa, hey, there! Where are you going?"

Lincoln shifted his body mid-stride and turned around to face his big sister. "Oh, I was just going to check and see if I can find my old Ace Savvy costume."

"You mean this Ace Savvy costume?" asked Leni, beaming brightly. Before he could even ask her to qualify, she opened her purse, reached inside and pulled out the very costume he was going to look for - freshly washed, freshly stitched, and overall looking better than it ever did.

"Ta-da!" sang Leni as she held the outfit aloft by its shoulders, letting it unfurl like a flag.

A huge grin exploded across Lincoln's face. "Leni, that looks great!" he cried. "Thank you so much!"

Lincoln strode over, took the costume out of Leni's hands and let it fall over his left shoulder. "And here I thought that you all hated this old thing."

"Hate it?" Leni asked incredulously. "Like, where'd you even get that idea?"

Lincoln's smile shrunk just a tad, as his enthusiasm was dampened by the memories of his sisters' teasing. "Well, every time I wore the costume before, you all made fun of it."

"And we're really sorry for that," said Lana, clasping her hands in front of her. "We were wrong to tease you."

"Yeah, that's an ace costume if I ever saw one!" Luan added, following up the quip with her signature laugh. "But seriously, that costume looks great. I think we were just jealous of it!"

Lincoln's smile shrunk even further, as a feeling of suspicion crept in. The Luan he knew would never admit to being "jealous" of a superhero cosplayer, regardless of how well designed their outfit was. As he glanced across the room, he found that all of his sisters still had those same smiles that they greeted him on the couch with; none of them had even begun to falter or break.

"Okay, what's this all about?" he asked. "Are you trying to teach me a lesson? Do you want something from me?"

"What more could we possibly want from you?" asked Lynn. "We've already got the best brother anyone could ask for!"

"Winky bess!" Lily chimed in.

"And why would we want to teach you a lesson?" asked Lucy. "You're perfect the way you are."

Lincoln felt a twinge of unease at Lucy's remark. Their praise was already starting to feel a bit heavy-handed, but he really wasn't comfortable with being called "perfect" - especially when he knew he wasn't.

"Guys, seriously," he said, throwing his hands in front of him, as if to shield himself from the unrelenting compliments. "I don't know what's going on here, but you really don't have to act this way. Just be normal."

"We are being normal, silly," said Lola, sashaying up to Lincoln with her hips swaying. "Now, why don't you come up to my room and play with me and Lola?"

"M-maybe later," said Lincoln, as he shuffled back towards the couch. "At the moment, all I really want is a bit of..."

Wait a minute.

Lincoln looked back towards the still-beaming Lola. "Could you repeat that?" he asked her.

"I said, why don't you come up to my room and play with me and Lola?"

The boy turned around and started taking slow, measured steps towards Lola, his brow tightening. "What do you mean, you and Lola? You are Lola!"

Lola shrunk away from her big brother, clasping a hand over her mouth to muffle a giggle. "Oops. My mistake. Tee hee. I meant me and Luna."

Lincoln's heart started thumping increasingly hard against his ribcage. "Who are you, and what have you done with my sisters?" was already a question he was prepared to ask at some point. Up until that moment, though, he thought he'd be asking it facetiously; now, he was asking it sincerely.

"Y-you're not Lola," he stammered, pointing an accusatory finger at her.

"Well, sure I am, big brother," said Lola, sounding sickeningly sweet. "I just got our names mixed up. That's all."

"N-no. No way. The real Lola would never make that mistake."

He then swiveled his head around to face his other nine sisters - or, at least, his alleged sisters - as his face scrunched up into a tight, rigid glower. "And I'm starting to have my doubts about all of you, too."

He set his sights on Lori. "Hey, Lori, what's your boyfriend's name?"

"Um, Bobby, duh," Lori said.

Lincoln narrowed his eyes at her. "His full name."

"Bobby Santiago."

"His full full name."

"Uhm..."

Lori tugged a bit at the collar of her shirt. "...Bobby Santiago... the Third?"

"Wrong!" barked Lincoln.

Lincoln's glare grew in intensity as it passed from sister to sister- including Lola, who had just walked back to join the rest of the group.

"That's it," Lincoln snapped. "I demand to know what's going on here. NOW."

Lisa was the only one who responded in any visible way. She sighed, took off her glasses and gave them a polish. "It would appear that we've underestimated Lincoln's intelligence considerably. In colloquial terms..."

The young scientist put her glasses back on and leered at Lincoln, donning a Cheshire Cat-like grin. "...the gig is up."

Lincoln watched in disbelief as the girls' eyes turned a muted, sickly shade of yellow, and their pupils dilated to nearly twice their normal size. All the while, they were wearing the same sort of elongated, toothy grin that Lisa had displayed a moment before. After the transformation was complete, Not-Lola stepped forward, did a twirl and gave Lincoln a curtsy.

"Allow us to introduce ourselves," said Not-Lola. "We're the Sister Snatchers. We hunt for bad sisters, and we take them away."

"And then we step in and take their places," said Not-Lana. "We saw how awfully your sisters have been mistreating you, so we decided to step in."

A dozen questions popped into Lincoln's head - "What are you?" and, "Where did you come from?" among them - but he decided to start out with the most urgent one.

"W-what do you mean, you 'take them away'?!" demanded Lincoln, his voice growing hoarse from his ever-drying throat.

"That's literally none of your concern," said Not-Lori.

"Oh, yes it is!" cried Lincoln. "I want to know where my sisters are! My real ones!"

He took a step closer to the ten figures before him, with his teeth clenched and his nostrils flared. "And how dare you call them bad sisters."

"But they are, Lincoln," said Not-Lana. "Besides, we're better."

"Way better," said Not-Luna. "We would never fight you over money, or tease you, or scare you into doing chores for us, or kick you out of the-"

"I. Don't. CARE!" Lincoln screeched, straining his vocal cords. "It doesn't matter how much you try to spoil me. You'll never hold a candle to my real family!"

Not-Leni sighed and shook her head, giving Lincoln a sympathetic look. "Poor little Linky. He's gotten so used to his sisters' abuse that now he thinks it's what he deserves."

"It's not abuse, you freaks of nature!" he cried. "I've had just about enough of this. Tell me where you sent my real sisters or I'm calling the police!"

Not-Lynn sneered at him. "There's no point. You'll never find them."

"Yeah, we sent them far, far away," said Not-Luan.

"I thought we were keeping them downstairs to the basement," said Not-Leni, prompting a sharp jab in the ribs from Not-Lori.

Lincoln gasped, thanking his lucky stars that Leni's imposter was just as dim as the genuine article. "Thank you," he spat at her, before making a mad dash towards the basement. The Sister Snatchers started to give chase, but before any of them could catch up, he cleared the basement door, slammed it behind him and locked it. With his lungs working overtime and his heart testing the limits of his ribcage, he clomped down the stairs in search of his real family.

As he descended the stairs, the first thing he noticed was that all the basement's furniture was cleared off to the side. The second thing he noticed was that in their place was an enormous box, big enough to take up half the room, that was covered by a tan tarp. The message "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL XMAS" was painted on the side facing the stairs in all-capital black letters.

They must really think I'm a moron if they thought I'd fall for that, Lincoln thought bitterly. He gripped the tarp tight in his trembling, perspiring hands and yanked it off of the box with all of his might.

Up to that point, Lincoln's mind was driven by a bizarre fusion of emotions, ranging from indignation to anxiety to confusion. Once the tarp was removed, all of those emotions were squelched and displaced by a singular, overwhelming feeling of horror. His body, his brain and his heart all froze in place, seized by the petrifying spectacle before him.

Underneath the tarp was a huge glass cube, in which all ten of his sisters were encased. All of them looked gaunt, pale and emaciated, their body fat consumed and their muscles atrophied, with deep purple bags just below their eyes and just above their visible cheekbones. Some of them were slumped against a glass wall, pawing at it, while others were just content to lay sprawled out on the floor. Before he knew it, all of them were turning their weary, lifeless eyes in his direction.

"Lin...coln..." groaned Lori, shambling towards him like a zombie. Her words snapped him out of his terrified trance, and he dashed over to the cube and started hammering it with his fists. It was no use; the wall was just too sturdy. His blows weren't even budging it.

"J-just hang on!" cried Lincoln, continuing to swing away at the wall out of sheer desperation. "I'll get you out of here somehow! I'll get you out and we'll- we'll all be a... family again..."

Lincoln could barely manage to choke out the last two words of that sentence without welling up. "I-I swear, I didn't ask for any of this to happen!" he cried, as tears began to blur his field of vision. "You're not bad sisters!"

"Yes, they are, Lincoln," came a voice from just behind the boy, triggering a yelp of shock. Lincoln spun around to see Not-Lucy standing just a foot away from him.

"Wha... how did you... I locked the-"

"I used the vents," said Not-Lucy. "But you are right about one thing, Lincoln. You didn't ask for any of this to happen. Why would you?"

Lincoln heard a thud coming from behind Lucy. Looking over her shoulder, he saw Not-Lana standing just below the open vent.

"You see, dear Lincoln, we're here to help boys who can't help themselves," said Not-Lana, who at this point wasn't even trying to emulate Lana's diction. "Poor, naive little boys who just don't know what's good for them. And you are one such boy."

"The hell I am!" snapped Lincoln, brushing fresh tears off of his cheeks. "I'm eleven. I'm old enough to know what I want. And I'm old enough to know..."

He jabbed his pointer finger at the glass cube. "...that I'd rather spend a decade locked in there with my sisters than spend a minute living with you... you creeps!"

Not-Lucy's default frown curdled into a pronounced scowl. "You're being very ungracious, Lincoln," she said. "When somebody does you a favor, you're supposed to accept it and say, 'thank you'."

Lincoln bristled at the sound of Not-Lucy's voice. Though it was tonally similar to Lucy's, it was imbued with an aura of condescension and sanctimonious belittlement. The sheer audacity of this creature to try to pass herself off as Lucy made Lincoln's stomach churn with disgust; the Lucy he knew never talked down to others.

"You want to do me a favor?" he growled. "Leave. Leave, and never come back. But not before letting my sisters go."

Not-Lucy took a step closer to him. "I'm your sister now, Lincoln."

"NO!" bellowed Lincoln, losing what was left of his patience. He coiled his fingers into a firm, white-knuckled fist, which he launched straight at the imposter's nose. Without flinching, said imposter caught his fist in her palm and clutched it tight. Lincoln panicked and tried to pull his fist away, when...

SNAP.

With a frightening lack of effort, Not-Lucy squeezed down and crushed Lincoln's fist, snapping his bones like twigs. Lincoln screamed in agony and dropped to his knees, with searingly hot tears cascading down his cheeks. With that same contemptuous frown plastered on her face, Not-Lucy released her grip, just to expose him to the morbid sight of his mangled, ruined hand. Then, without warning, she lifted her foot and stomped down on Lincoln's thigh, snapping his femur in two and causing a deafening crack comparable to a gunshot. Lincoln, now too hoarse to let out another shriek, flailed around on the floor, writhing in unbearable pain.

Through his blurred, tear-tinted vision, he could see Not-Lucy step away from him and turn back to Not-Lana.

"I think it's safe to say that he's a lost cause," said Not-Lucy. "Perhaps we should take off and try to find a different boy."

"I agree," said Not-Lana. "But may I help myself to a small snack before we go?"

"Be my guest."

Not-Lana looked down at the prone, helpless Lincoln with a maniacally hungry look in her yellow-tinted eyes. With her gaze locked onto him, she let out a hellish screeching noise and unhinged her jaw, revealing at least three separate rows of razor sharp, blood-splattered teeth.

The sight of her lunging directly at him was the last thing he saw before he woke up.