You wish you'd never come.
You should have listened to Vincent when he cowered behind you, and his voice trembled and he didn't like the looming house ahead of you. You know that now, but you didn't then. Then, it had been raining, you'd been cold, and you could feel Vincent clinging to you, stealing what little warmth you had in his cold, dead fingers. You had been hungry, and cold, and wet, - not as hungry or cold or wet as Vincent - and on your own for a week already. Long enough to think you knew everything, but not long enough to listen to the warnings you'd been given. You'd never been good at listening. You didn't listen when mother told you to leave Vincent behind, she'd said you'd regret it. Maybe you do.
The two of you trembled outside of that house, that looming shadow, the white paint and yellow trim a sopping, drippy grey in the dark wet of the storm. The wind had howled, pushed at your back and pulled on your hair. Towards fate, or destiny, or food. A big house like that, you could break in, get some food, and be out fast, that's what you thought. Vincent was starving. You'd found a scrap of food yesterday, and you'd eaten it. If Vincent had noticed, he hadn't said anything, but he'd whimpered and groaned that night in his sleep, his stomach making the sounds he wouldn't, and as he'd slept you'd counted every bone on his chest, ghosted your fingers over them, and you'd felt true shame. The guilt had kept you up.
Vincent was shivering. Vincent was trembling. Vincent was starving. It was your fault, would always be your fault, so you had to fix it. The house would do. You could get in, get out, and even if there wasn't food, there would be a blanket, something useful that you could take. There would be something, and if you got caught, you'd bite and claw and scream until they tossed you out. It wasn't a good plan, but it was your plan, and you'd make it work. You'd have to, because Vincent was shivering and trembling and starving and you hadn't shared yesterday. So you'd fix it, that's what older brothers did.
But Vincent didn't want you to go, even though he jumped at the thunder, and his teeth chattered so loudly in his head that you wanted to just clamp his mouth shut. He stuttered and sputtered and didn't said anything right, but Vincent didn't want to go into the house. Didn't want you to go into the house. But you were in charge. You had always been in charge, always being a whole week. What you said went. When you found food and didn't share, Vincent had dealt with it, when you wanted to break into some big fancy house, then Vincent would deal with it.
You decided to leave him. Not for long, but he would only slow you down. He jumped and cowered when the thunder roared, he'd get you caught. It just made sense to leave him behind. Besides, he needed you to do everything for him. It was because of the eye, you both knew it, but still, you had to do everything. It was all because of that eye.
Vincent said the house was strange. He was right. You didn't care. His stuttered whispers listed off the mistakes, the problems, the mysteries. You listened, but you had already made up your mind. It was all on its own, no other houses around, no cars, no animals, no lights, no sounds. It was surrounded by a forest, a sea of trees the two of you had waded through to escape the water drip drip dripping on you. It was like the person who owned the house didn't want anyone coming to knock on their door, but that made it perfect. No one would see you go in, and no one would see you come out. It was strange, but that didn't change anything.
And you were going to leave him, leave Vincent, cause if someone lived there he was going to get you found and that could only be bad. If they found you, they'd kick you out. If they found Vincent, they'd hurt him. You knew it. You were a pest, a small thing that could bite, to be shooed back outside, where it belonged. Vincent was a plague, a slithering, crawling thing that someone took a shovel too. That had been a bad day. You weren't doing that again.
But Vincent wouldn't listen. He begged and pleaded. No, no, no, don't go. No, no, no, don't leave me. No, no, no, I'll go too. Vincent was never that stubborn. Of all the hints, of all the things to notice, you should have noticed that, but you didn't. And if you did, it only annoyed you. Vincent always gave up, or didn't question you. You knew better. He knew you knew better. You knew you knew better. Vincent listened, always. He owed you everything, so he did what you said, and he didn't ask. Vincent didn't. For the first time, he didn't give up. Vincent held onto you with his cold, wet, shivering hands and he wouldn't budge, wouldn't let you take a single step without shadowing you.
You tried to convince him, when ordering didn't work. You didn't use the L word, because you were sure he knew that already, but you told him you'd be back. You told him that it wouldn't take long. You poked at the bumps on his head and the bruises on his wrists, but not enough to hurt. You told him about food. You told him you'll always come back. You didn't know if he believed you, but it didn't work. He wouldn't stop, wouldn't give up. You should have used the L word, but there was something nice about Vincent when he was behind you, when he clung, when you were facing forward and all he could see was your mop of hair, and all you could see was not him, but you could always feel him behind you. There was something nice about that, but you don't know what it was. You miss it now.
He stumbled behind you, because you had already made up your mind, and Vincent would follow you. Would follow you anywhere, off cliffs and into fires and away from homes that didn't want him, but you didn't lead him away from that house.
The house was big. Really, really, really big. You circled it three times, looking for lights, and open windows, and where the kitchen was. You didn't find any lights, and you didn't find any open windows, but you found the kitchen. It was big too. You found the main door, because none of the windows would open, no matter how you tugged, and you tried to remember where the kitchen was when you turned the handle. It opened, with a creaking sound that you could hear even as thunder boomed in your ears. Vincent tugged at your hand, but he didn't say anything, and as you went inside, he matched you, step by step, hand in hand. You remember now, that the door was big enough for both of you to go in at the same time, shoulder to shoulder, and you remember how the sound of that door slamming closed behind you made your heart jump, and how the sound echoed and boomed in the old house like some man eating giant laughing at you. Suddenly there was light, the low flickering of candles that lined the walls and floors burst to light as if some magician in a book had suddenly waved his hand, their flames bursting to life.
Both of you had turned, like mice wanting out of a maze, frantic to get to that door and out and away and never back. But as you reached the knob, you heard the worst sound in the world, a click of a lock. You turned the knob again and again, pulled and tugged and pushed and kicked at the door with everything you had. It wouldn't budge. You remember the quiet sound of Vincent crying behind you, remember it as loud in the quiet of the house. You would have hit him if he'd said 'I told you so' but he didn't, and he wouldn't, so neither would you.
You needed out. It was warm in the house, but the house was wrong. Vincent had been right, and now you knew it. You had to get him out, and you forgot about the kitchen. There had been other doors, you knew that. So you took his hand, held it tight, and the two of you went to find another door. He got quieter when you held his hand, and you didn't want anyone to find you. You wanted to blame Vincent, but you knew better. It was always your fault, this time wasn't different.
If you thought it was big from the outside, it was bigger inside. It didn't make sense, but it was true. You'd kept track of what was where when you'd walked around the house, but now that you were inside, nothing was the same. It was a maze, and you really did feel like a mouse. It wasn't a good feeling. There were winding hallways, and empty rooms, and full rooms, and dark rooms, and doors. Doors that opened when you turned their knobs, and doors that didn't open, and doors that led to stairs up and doors that led to stairs and doors that led you back to the first door, but you didn't find a door out except for the first one. The one that was locked.
The two of you walked, hand in hand, for a long time. The candles led you from place to place. Candles that flickered and made monsters out of shadows. You kept to the candles. Even if you didn't like the things they splashed across the walls, they were light, so you didn't move very far away. A lot of the house had candles, brightly glowing from room to hallway to hallway to room and back again, but there weren't candles everywhere. Sometimes, there would be a hallway, or a door, without candles. It would loom and get taller as the shadows stretched to reach you, as if they were hands pulling you away from the light. You were drawn to that darkness, but as you tried to see past that empty darkness, Vincent would grip your hand, and tug on you. He told you not to go into those places, not to go there. You hadn't listened before, and he had been right, so this time you listened, and let him pull you away. But you wondered about that darkness when the candles led you in circles, when following the candles never led you to a door out. You wondered a lot.
The storm was always there, it never went away, just like the darkness and the rain. Every time the thunder boomed, Vincent would grip your hand just a little bit harder, and you would tell him it would be okay. You knew he didn't believe you, but you didn't believe you either. But even if Vincent didn't like the thunder, you liked the lightning. You always wanted to be gazing into one of the dark ways when they went off. You wanted to go to those undiscovered places, but you wanted to discover them in the light. The lighting would do it, but it never happened. You were never fast enough to catch a look at what was inside of those dark rooms and hallways. But you wondered, and you always looked around for them. Comforting Vincent came second.
It felt like hours, or days, or weeks, but the storm never stopped, and the rain never stopped, and the night never ended, so you don't know how long it was. You did get tired, both of you did, but you took turns staying awake. One of you holding the other's hand, and watching quietly. You never slept well. You didn't think Vincent did either. He cried in his sleep the first few times, but he stopped after that, and it was better. You did find food, but it didn't make you happy. You'd find food placed out for you, where it hadn't been before. Nothing prepared, always water, usually fruit, sometimes juice, rarely bread. At first, both of you didn't want to eat it, but after a while, you thought that if someone wanted to hurt you, they already would have. You ate the food, and Vincent ate the food, both of you didn't get sick, but you felt more like a mouse in a maze than before, and you searched.
You searched forever. You went in and out of places, found hidden passage ways, found different rooms, found keys to closed rooms, found the upper floors, found the lower floors. Many times, you thought you'd gotten closer, only to find the keys you found never worked on the door out, they always led to more doors, more disappointment, and more darkness. You had a feeling you'd never get out, that the house was eating you, that you were two squirming things in its stomach.
And that is how you decided that you had to go into the dark places. You'd tried everything else, it only made sense to go where you hadn't been before. Following the candles hadn't led you to a key out, hadn't led you to a new door.
Vincent didn't like it. He didn't want you to go into the darkness, just like he hadn't wanted you to go into the house, but you were the older brother, and Vincent listened to you. Always had before. You had a plan, you were going to leave him in the hallway with the light, and you were going to go into one of the dark places, alone. You were going to take one of the candles with you, because that was a smart thing to do, and if you needed to come back, you would call for Vincent, and follow his voice. That was the plan. Vincent didn't like the plan, and he wouldn't budge. He didn't want you to go into the dark places, but if you were going to go, he wasn't going to let you go alone. You told him no, because he would want to hold hands, and you'd need both your hands. One for the candle, and you didn't want him clinging. If you had to run, you didn't want him slowing you down. He wouldn't listen. No matter what you said, he wouldn't listen. He'd go with you. It wasn't what you wanted, but you wanted out more, so it was fine.
He held your hand tightly as the two of you stood before one of the dark places. You had your candle in hand, and you were ready. Vincent whispered something to you, that you ignored. You took your first steps into the darkness, and Vincent followed you without a sound. You didn't see anything. The light didn't reach out, as if the darkness had thrown a blanket over the flame, and was forcing it to only glow dimly. You took careful steps. You wanted to have a hand in front of you, but Vincent was still holding your other hand, so you couldn't do that. You were far in when the door behind you creaked, and closed, and with it, the candle flickered out. Vincent gasped, and huddled next to you.
The candle was useless now, so you dumped it on the floor, and you could feel Vincent tense behind you at the noise it made. You put your hand out, and you took slow even steps, expecting to come across things. You did a lot of bumping around, both of you did, but it never helped any. The storm outside didn't stop, and the thunder didn't stop. You could hear the wind and the rain and the thunder but no light came with the loud bangs. The darkness never changed.
And then it happened, you bumped into something, hit your knee, and you let go. The second you'd done it, you knew it had been wrong. You had always felt Vincent behind you, always close by, always needing you for every little thing, but he was suddenly gone. As if someone had just picked him up, and carried him away from you. You knew, right away, that he was gone, even if it didn't make any sense, and you panicked. You called his name over and over, quiet and loud, soft and hard, angry and sad. You must have called for him a million times, trying to move forward, with your hands groping for his small shoulders or his dirty hair or his bruised wrists, because he had to be somewhere, he couldn't just be gone, but he was.
When you laid down to rest, when you could do nothing else, you always thought you heard him calling you back, but you never found him. He'd told you not to let go, and you'd ignored him. You got angry and upset. What was the point if Vincent didn't need you? Why were you still trying so hard? Because Vincent needed you, something in you would scream, because he does need you. You had to find him. But the voice in your head was there, asking things you didn't want to answer, telling you that you weren't going to find Vincent again, and that all of it was a waste of time.
You missed him. You missed making him calm down, you missed telling him that things would be okay, you missed him pressed up to your back as he hid from whatever was in front of you. You needed him just as much as he needed you, and he was gone. You cried a lot. You would find him, you would get out. You repeated it over and over in your head, it was the only thing keeping you going. You had to find Vincent, you had to get out.
But time passed, and you didn't find Vincent. You heard him some times, through walls or off in the distance, and you would run, try as best as you could to stumble around without seeing, to reach him, but like a ghost, the sound would disappear, and you would be left screaming his name until your voice hurt and scratched.
You didn't find the candles again. You didn't find Vincent.
You found the room instead, and that room, was different. You knew it when you stepped inside. This room breathed. Air was steady as it came in and out of the door, slow and evil and smelling like dead things pulling at you. The room was breathing, or something large inside the room was breathing. Right then, you couldn't be sure. You'd already thought of the house as a monster, with you stuck in its stomach. Maybe you'd found the lungs, or something worse.
Fear had always been there while you were in the house. Other things came with that fear, things that made that fear big and scary, but at that moment, there was only the fear, and it was bigger and scarier than before. Fear, because you were not alone. You hoped Vincent was still alone, tried to remember when was the last time you heard him, but without anything to tell you how long you had been there, you didn't know. You didn't know anything.
And that's when you saw eyes. Not normal eyes, because normal eyes didn't shine in the dark, didn't glow like lights. They were big, evil things, and they were pointed at you. You remembered seeing cats at night, how their eyes glowed like that, how they looked evil too, and you knew this was worse. Much, much, worse.
The thing with the glowing eyes blinked, and for just a second, those eyes weren't on you, and the fear was gone. It wasn't long enough, but you turned, and you ran. You didn't know where you were going, couldn't see anything in the dark, but you ran, your hands out in front of you so that if you ran into a wall -which happened a lot- you could just push yourself off of it and keep going. You had to get away from those eyes.
Behind you, was the sound of things moving, of some big thing escaping. You could hear the sounds of it breathing, of it moving, of it crashing through things to get at you. It was the cat after the mouse, and you couldn't see in the dark. The thing could, it had seen you in the dark, and it could hear you, because breathing was a problem. Your lungs tried to keep air in and out and in and out and your body needed that air faster, Faster, Faster! You weren't quiet about it, because you couldn't be.
But something like a hand, a hand with long claws, grabbed your hair, and pulled. For a second, your feet kept running as you were pulled through the air, then you crashed to the ground, the air gone again from your lungs, and your back hurt, and your hair being pulled out of your head. You screamed, you cried, and you struggled. In the fog of everything, of being dragged across the floor and screaming as loud as your tortured lungs would let you, and feeling as the claws dug into your head, you thought you heard Vincent. He was calling for you, screaming your name, and you almost thought that you felt him, reaching out for you, but when you reached back, there was nothing there.
You could see the eyes from the floor, soulless things looking down on you. The clawed hands pulled you closer, grabbed you, shook you, toyed with you as you screamed and cried. Then you were getting closer to those eyes, close enough to smell death as the monster let out a breath of hot air on your face and neck. You had just enough time to wish you'd never come, that you'd never entered that house, and to think of Vincent looking for you, screaming out your name somewhere in the dark-
And there was nothing more to think.