Curse

# **Curse of Shadyside**

*"Before the witch's final breath, she found a way to cheat her death. By cutting off her wicked hand, she kept her grip upon her land. She reaches from beyond the grave to make good man her wicked slaves. She'll take your blood, she'll take your hand. She'll follow you until you're dead." Nursery Rhyme*

The Curse of Shadyside is a pact between the Goode family and the devil, initiated by Solomon Goode in 1666 and forcibly ended by Deena Johnson in 1994.

## Functionality

A first-born member of the Goode family sits in front of the devil symbol with the book in black clothes and speaks all the devil names listed in the book. Finally, Goode tells the devil the name of a real person that lives, which immediately carves itself visibly into the wall. Then Goode puts on a kind of long, black, pointed hood that covers his face. This allows the devil to take possession of the named person. The latter first hears an eerie voice whispering his name and flies buzz around him. Eventually, the devil completely takes over the person, who then begins to murder the people around them, until they are either killed themselves or kill themselves after a while. The devil then feasts on the blood of the killed. In return for the sacrifices, the devil ensures that the Goode gets what he wants for themselves , their family and fellow people.

### Threats to the secrecy of the pact

Sarah Fier, a resident of the union in 1666 discovers this and therefore becomes a scapegoat and is hanged. But even beyond death, she does everything to show the people the truth. Whenever someone bleeds on the bone, be it on the body or the severed hand, the person receives visions of what really happened. But due to the body being incomplete, Sarah is initially unable to show more than a few fragments and therefore the victim is still under the impression that Sarah is after them, this of course came to light and was revealed to be nothing more than Fier attempting to make people see she was innocent when Deena herself had seen 1666 in Sarah's body and therefore found out she was just a scapegoat used by Solomon as a way to continue his pact with the devil, something he would then hand down to his son and something that carried on until 1994.

#### Precautions

Whenever someone receives visions of Sarah's corpse, the devil senses this and sends previous possessed people back as undead to kill that person and the carved names on the stone look like they are bleeding. These undead that come through the Heart of Darkness retain the behaviours they exhibited when they were possessed as living. To find their target, they sense its blood and are attracted to it. As long as other people do not have the target's blood on them, the undead will ignore them unless they attack them or are directly in their way. If there is blood on an object, they examine it briefly before turning their attention to the next blood trail or to the target itself. This shows that they are not that intelligent, as you can lure them into a trap with laid blood trails, and if you splash blood on several of them, they will even fight each other. Since these killers are already dead, they can't be killed again, and any injury you inflict on them heals right back up. Even if you blow them up, they will reassemble from the pieces and continue as if nothing had happened. The Undead Killers do not disappear until their target dies (or the curse is broken during their hunt). However, through a loophole, it is possible for the target to live on. The killers disappear as soon as their target has a cardiac arrest, whether caused by one of them or otherwise. If they are revived afterwards, they can live on. If a person receives visions from Sarah while another living person is possessed, former possessed will also be sent back as undead to kill them but the living possessed person will also be more keen on killing the vision receiver rather than random people as sacrifices.

## History

### 1666

The pilgrim settlement Union. Solomon Goode lives outside the settlement and lost his wife and son. Tired of never having any luck, he goes to a widow named Mary, who he knows has a devil's book. He kills her and takes the book with him. On his way back, he sees Hannah Miller, the daughter of the settlement pastor Cyrus, secretly making love to Sarah Fier, another resident of the settlement. The two also notice that they are being watched, but do not realize by whom. Back home, in a cave room under his house, he initiates a ritual in which he makes the pact with the devil. He speaks all the names listed in the book and in front of him the devil symbol appears in the ground, in the middle of which a fire is created and around him a cave vault is formed, which also has the shape of the symbol. In this vault, a kind of large, fleshy blob (The Heart of Darkness) erupts from the ground, pumping like a heart. Solomon names Cyrus as the very first possessed, possibly hoping that he will also kill his daughter Hannah, since he too was madly in love with Sarah. The food in Union begins to rot, is spoiled by flies, the animals go crazy, and the well is blocked because the Fier's family's dog got into it. Contrary to Solomon's possible hopes, the pastor locks numerous children in the church, including Sarah's brother Henry, where he then cuts out their eyes and his own. Solomon then kills him when he then tries to attack Sarah. Looking for a scapegoat, Union's population then finds it in Hannah and Sarah, as Thomas, another Union resident and drinker also saw the two and another resident who previously harassed Hannah until Sarah helped her, confirmed his accusations. Thus, several other residents also jumped on the bandwagon and claimed to have seen Hannah and Sarah. The settlement residents then manage to capture Hannah but Sarah is able to escape. Enraged by the hasty accusations and condemnations, she decides to make a deal with the devil and goes to the widow, but finds her dead and the book gone. She seeks shelter with Solomon and then, hiding from some of the inhabitants, she discovers the cave room and realizes that Solomon is behind it all, which could be seen from the fact that his food was not rotten. When Solomon comes, she tries to escape trough the cave vault but he catches up to her and in the fight her hand is cut off. She then again manages to get away again and finds herself under the church where she kicks the ground and exits the church. Outside, however, there are numerous inhabitants of the settlement and Solomon comes from behind, who immediately presents her as the witch, to use her as a scapegoat so that she is punished for his actions. She and Hannah are then to be hanged. Sarah is aware that they would never believe if she told them the truth now and therefore claims to have really bewitched the pastor and his daughter so that at least Hannah would be spared. She succeeds in doing this and while Solomon attaches the rope to her, she curses him and his descendants with the truth, that she will never forget and that even beyond her death she will do everything to show it to people. She then is hanged and buried under the tree until Hannah and her friends rebury her an the place where she and Hannah made love for the first time.

### Between 1666 and 1978

Over the next three centuries Solomons descendants keep the curse going and every 13 to 18 years they give a name to the devil allowing it to take the person over, making it kill others and feasting on their blood. In return the devil gave them "Power, wealth, a legacy." as Solomon called it. The place, where his house was, would eventually become the town called Sunnyvale, while the Settlement Union would be renamed Shadyside. Due to the devil's influence on both towns, Shadyside has been plagued by bad luck. Practically nothing goes right in the city and hardly any Shadysiders get anything together. The buildings partly run down, construction projects are not getting off the ground and hardly anyone can speak of a good life in this town. In addition, Shadyside is considered the killer capital of the USA because of the devil's possessed. Officially it is always reported that these people just go nuts, for those who think that there is more (something supernatural) to it, there is the story of the witch Sarah Fier, who keeps bewitching people from the grave and turning them into murderers to take revenge on the city for her execution. In Sunnyvale, on the other hand, the opposite is the case. Almost everything is going great there. The city was voted one of the best places to live in the United States and was crime-free for decades due to it's immunity to everyday tragedies. Many houses there are villas or big and beautiful. Those who live in Sunnyvale can always tell of the good life. In every sporting event between Sunnyvale and Shadyside, Sunnyvale always wins. Many Sunnyvalers are very proud of this and look down on the residents of Shadyside and some even see them as inferior.

#### Killers in this time period

##### 1666-1904

During this time, numerous people were given over to the devil for possession by the Goodes, of whom nothing else is known apart from their names on the cave wall.

##### 1904

###### The Grifter

A tall, burly man named Isaac Milton was given to the devil by a Goode that year. Possessed, he put on a gas mask and drowned several girls, and gutted them with his bare hands. How exactly he died himself is not known. Since then he was known as the Shame Killer or the **Grifter**.

##### 1922

###### The Child Killer

A boy with a facial deformity named William "Billy" Barker was chosen as the next Shadyside Killer that year. When possessed, he put on an iron mask and beat his brothers to death with a baseball bat while they slept. Since then he was known as the **Child Killer**.

##### 1935

###### **The Humpty Dumpty Killer**

The man, whose real name is believed to be Ed Carson, was chosen to be the next Shadyside killer in '35. Little is known about him, other than that he hid his victims' body parts across the city to be found, hence the name.

##### 1950

###### The Milkman

A milkman named Harry Rooker was chosen as the next Shadyside Killer in 1950. Then, obsessed, he went on his tour, but stabbed several housewives with a jack-knife. Unlike the Grifter and Child Killer, he did not use a mask, and had a slightly burned face of unknown origin. It is not known how he himself then died, but it is likely that he was eventually overpowered and sentenced to death. Since then he has been known as **The Milkman**.

##### 1965

###### The Teenage Killer

A teenager named Ruby Lane was chosen as the next Shadyside Killer by Nick and Will Goodes father. She was possessed at a party and used a barber blade to kill six of her friends, her boyfriend and then herself by cutting her wrists. It is likely that the devil made her kill herself, because he was already satisfied with the blood of her victims for the time being and had therefore no further use for her.

### 1978

#### Killer of this time:

##### Thomas "Tommy" Slater

Tommy was a counselor for Shadyside campers at Camp Nightwing. Nicholas "Nick" Goode gave Tommy's name to the devil for him to be the next Shadyside Killer. Ruby Lane's mother Mary was searching for Sarah Fier's hand in order to reunite it with the body which was still believed to buried beneath her hanging tree. She didn't find the hand but the cave room with the names on the walls including Tommy's. She then decides, that she has no other option than to kill him in order to stop him from getting possessed and killing others. But Tommy manages to overpower her and she is brought away.

That night Tommy's girlfriend Cindy Berman wanted to find out what caused Mary to behave like that so they broke into the infirmary to find answers. A former friend of Cindy, Alice and her boyfriend Arnie find them there, take the book and become interested and go to the marked space against Cindy's protest. They eventually find a house and the cave room in the basement and the names on the wall. It is this time that Tommy becomes fully possessed. He takes an axe and uses it to split open Arnie's skull. Cindy and Alice end up having to flee into the cave vault and are separated from Tommy by a cave-in. In the cave they find the heart of darkness and Alice touches it. She then sees images of the eyeless kids and hurts her leg in the process.

Meanwhile, Tommy goes on a killing spree in the camp, noting that he only kills Shadyside kids. Meanwhile, Cindy's sister Ziggy became close friends with Nick and together they took revenge on Sheila, a girl who repeatedly bullied Ziggy by luring her into a toilet house, showering her with bugs and locking her up with Sheila under the illusion that she is actually meeting Nick's younger brother, Nick. As they got closer they talked about a few things including the Goode legacy Nick was to take on after his father's death. When Ziggy probed further, he dodged the question and quickly changed the subject. When the first dead children were found, everyone was called back to the canteen. When Ziggy was aggressively asked by Sheila's friends where she was, Ziggy quickly ran to the outhouse to free her. Meanwhile, Cindy and Alice have discovered certain moss that the former wiped away while cleaning the toilet block and thus find their way there. As Ziggy enters the house, she is attacked by an angry Sheila. She tries to explain what's going on, but Sheila doesn't listen and punches Ziggy. Angry, she hits back and Sheila falls unconscious. She then hears Cindy and Alice's cries for help and spots them. With the help of a bucket and another counselor, she tries to pull them up, but then the possessed Tommy shows up, kills the other counselor and Ziggy is forced to flee without helping them out. Alice is unable to continue walking and has to be left behind by Cindy. This then finds the bones of Sarah Fier's hand and Cindy finds another way to the canteen. Ziggy finds Nick again and together they hide from Tommy in the reptile house but he finds them and they are separated again. Ziggy flees to the canteen, where the other campers are being driven away in the bus. In the cafeteria, Ziggy hides from Tommy while Cindy struggles up from below. Tommy finds Ziggy and in the ensuing fight she manages to stab him once and put a sack over his head which she tries to suffocate him with. However, he pushes her away and pursues her until he knocks her to the ground. However, in the meantime, Cindy has come upstairs and saves Ziggy from Tommy by stabbing him first in the back and then several times in the chest until he collapses dead. Then Alice joins them both and presents them with the hand bone. They decide to reunite the hand with the body to free the city from the curse. However, Ziggy's hand is bleeding and Sarah tries to show her the truth, which of course she doesn't understand. Then the dead Tommy is brought back by the devil as an undead and he also sends Ruby, the Milkman and Billy back to kill Ziggy. Undead Tommy kills Alice before Cindy rips his head off with the shovel. (Of course, that doesn't stop him for long.) Cindy and Ziggy then see Ruby coming up from below and quickly run to the gallows tree where they dig for the corpse while being surrounded by the killers. But they only find the stone that Sarah's friends left behind when they reburied her. They are then both killed by the killers, Cindy by Tommy and Ziggy by the milkman, and the killers disappear. However, Nick then arrives and manages to revive Ziggy, which probably has something to do with the fact that he gets what he wants from the devil. For Cindy, however, any help comes too late and her body is taken away. Ziggy tells Nick the curse is true, but Nick tells the police that Thomas Slater just went nuts and instead tells the police and paramedics that Ziggy is called Christine and watches on as she is taken away.

#### 1994

##### Killers of this time: Ryan Torres, Samantha "Sam" Fraser

In 1994, Nick chose Ryan Torres, a young employee of the Shadyside Mall, which was built on the site of the gallows tree that still stood in the entrance area of the mall, and gave him up to the devil for possession. Shortly after the mall closed, Ryan became completely possessed and killed several employees. Most recently, he also attacked his good friend Heather Watkins, who worked as a cashier at B Dalton's bookstore. She still managed to call the police, but is caught up by Ryan while trying to run to the entrance and he stabs her. The latter is then shot by Nick, but for Heather any help comes too late and she succumbs to the stab wounds.

The next night, an American football game between the Sunnyvale Devils and the Shadyside Witches is scheduled to take place, but because of the massacre at the mall, a candlelight vigil is held for the victims (most notably Heather). Also coming from Shadyside are Simon Kalivoda, the team's mascot; Kate Schmidt, team cheerleader; and Deena Johnson, former drummer for the Shadyside High School band. In fact, she came along just to give her stuff back to a Sunnyvale Devils cheerleader, her ex-girlfriend Sam, whom she broke up with after she moved to Sunnyvale. At the vigil, some Sunnyvalers(especially Sam's new boyfriend Peter) express their indifference to the tragedy and their dislike of Shadyside and its residents. The latter overhear this, which leads to a quarrel and eventually even a brawl. The game is apparently cancelled and the Shadysiders return home. However, the bus is followed by Peter, Sam, and a friend of Peter's, who rumbles and even throws bottles at the bus. Angered, Deena wants to pour the liquid of the cooler on the car, when she sees Sam but not that she is against the mobbing and throwing bottles. Deena gets a nosebleed, probably because of the proximity to Sarah's grave, and the cooler slips out of her hand. The car goes off the road as a result and has an accident right where Sarah was buried. The slightly injured Sam fights her way out of the car and unknowingly bleeds through the moss onto Sarah's body. The latter tries to convey the truth about the curse to Sam, but because of the incompleteness of her body can continue to show only small snippets of visions, which Sam does not understand and initially dismisses as effects of a head impact caused by the accident. Deena, Kate and Simon come to Sam's aid, accidentally spitting some of her blood on Simon's shirt, and some lands on Deena's shoe as well. Sam is taken to the hospital and everyone tells the Sherriff that the accident was just an accident with the Shadyside trio giving not so helpful responses.

The Devil then sends three former killers, the new Skull Mask Killer, the Nightwing Killer, and Ruby Lane back as undead to kill Sam, as she is now deemed a danger to the secrecy of the pact with the vision fragments she received, and thus to the pact itself.

Attracted by Sam's blood on Deena's shoe, the Skull Mask Killer sneaks around the Johnson house the next night, whom Deena mistakes for Peter because he threatened to take revenge for his wrecked car the night of the accident. The Skull Mask Killer then turns his attention to the house, not far away, where Kate and Simon are babysitting and where Simon's blood-spattered shirt is also located. He breaks into the house and examines the shirt. He leaves after being caught by Kate and Simon and realizes that Sam is not here. Kate and Simon are also convinced that Peter is under the mask, so they go to the hospital with Deena and her brother Josh to confront him and Sam. While Deena is taken to Sam by nurse Beddy and the rest go to the snack machine, the Skull Killer also arrives there and kills the receptionist. Sam tells that Peter was with her the whole time but Deena doesn't believe her. After Peter himself arrives, an argument breaks out between the ex-girlfriends, where they seem to ultimately break up with each other, until Peter is stabbed in the back by the Skull Mask Killer. Shocked and scared, Sam and Deena flee from him, passing the snack machine with the others. When the killer also runs past them, they also run away. Sam and Deena hide in the entrance area behind the counter, where they see the dead receptionist. Nurse Beddy also comes there and is killed by the Skull Mask Killer, who then discovers the two. They climb over the counter and run away, but the killer tries to stop them, but they fight him off, so that his mask slips off his face and Deena recognizes the face of Ryan Torres, which she saw on the news, before he puts his mask back on and Deena escapes with Sam to the others, who have meanwhile hijacked an ambulance.

They immediately go to the police and Deena and Sam tell Nick and his colleague Kapinski what they experienced, but of course they are assumed to be lying when they told that the perpetrator is Ryan Torres, who was shot to death by Nick after all. When they are kicked out of the police department, Deena steals a gun from Kapinski. Meanwhile, Simon, who is urinating on a house, notices Ruby Lane sitting on the side of the road. He approaches her and wants to help her but she attacks him and tries to stab him with her razor blade, but is shot in the back and back of the head by Deena before doing so, causing her to drop dead and giving the friends time to escape while she gets back up.

At the Johnson house, Simon recounts what happened and describes the one who attacked him. Josh, who has been studying the killers and the curse for a long time, recognizes Ruby in the description. He presents to the others his research on the killers and that he thinks Sarah Fier was responsible, but that doesn't explain why two of the former killers are now back from the dead and after them. Sam brings light into the darkness when she tells about the vision fragments she had at the accident scene.

Therefore, the five return to the scene of the accident in the woods, where the Nightwing Killer lurks in wait for them. At the site, they discover the bones of Sarah Fier under the moss, which they recognize by a padlock with Fier's name carved into it. They think that the alleged witch is angry because Sam desecrated the grave with her blood and disturbed her resting place. They try to restore the grave by wrapping the bones in a jacket and burying them again, hoping to make 'the witch' lenient that way. Meanwhile, Josh hears something in the woods and investigates it with the suspicion that it is another killer. However, after burying the bones again and Simon whispering his apologies, Josh sees the Camp Nightwing killer running towards him. As he jumps past, however, it runs past him and towards Sam, who was again bleeding from the nose on the bones and saw a vision fragment. Sam is pulled away so that she is only injured in the shoulder and the five flee Nightwing in the ambulance. They realize that the restoration of the tomb did nothing and that the killers are actually only after Sam because she desecrated the tomb. They therefore decide to use Sam as bait, despite Deena's initial objections.

At Shadyside High School, the others make sure they have no more of Sam's blood on them. They then dilute Sam's blood with water to make tracks and lure the killers into the girls' bathroom where they have poured gasoline. Sam herself also remains in the toilet. When Ryan, Ruby and Tommy show up, the plan works and after Sam escapes outside through a manhole, they set the room on fire along with the killers before they can break down the door. However, when they examine the room afterwards, they see the killers reassembling themselves from the remains and have to escape to another room. Kate now sees no other option but to sacrifice Sam.