Notes: This can be read as a prequel / companion to Behind Closed Doors. I like to think there is a good reason why Patrick is so screwed up, and also why he took the name Ethan and killed those people in Russia.
The title is taken from Alice Cooper's "Bad Place Alone".
Warnings: All chapters. Minor spoilers for series 4. Violence, borderline non-con, possible underage (age not specified), prostitution, stealing, death, murder, creature attacks, homophobia and homophobic attack, mentions of incest (brotherly), mentions of threesome.
Please read the warnings first and if anything is likely to bother you then it is up to you whether or not you read on.
Bad Place Alone
The light had just vanished after he stepped through and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't find it again. There had been these little things with pointy teeth that had attacked them- Oh God it had attacked Matt. He remembered hearing the scream, racing to ward the sound and seeing the other boy on the ground. There was so much blood; the creature crouched over him looking up as Patrick came into the room. It snarled and launched itself at him.
He had run when it chased him, barely even noticing the sparkling lights in his haste to get away. Then there was nothing.
Patrick looked around at the strange surroundings. He was no longer in the house, but where the hell was he? There was dirt underfoot and the remains of a building further down the hillside but nothing looked even vaguely familiar. He pinched his arm, hard, but still he remained there; he had been hoping that this was all some kind of a crazy dream and that he'd wake up in his bed at home.
Trying not to panic as he heard a sound nearby, he turned to look. Maybe it was Ryan, he thought. Maybe the other boy had run through the lights as well. Deep down he knew it wasn't; Ryan had been downstairs at the time. He wouldn't have had time to get upstairs and through the light before it vanished. A second later Patrick heard a low growl and the sound of stealthy footsteps scuffing on the ground but there was nothing there. Then again, he hadn't see the gremlin-looking things at first, had he? When the one near Matt had started to chase him, a second one had appeared as though from nowhere, suddenly becoming visible against the cream wallpaper.
He heard the scuffling sound again but this time from the opposite direction and his heart began to pound. There was something out there, multiple somethings, and they were stalking him.
Patrick was torn between staying near the place where the light had vanished, in case it came back, and getting somewhere safer. Eventually, self-preservation won out and he started walking toward the ruins, his pace speeding up as he heard them again, nearby.
That night, Patrick sat huddled in the corner of the ruined building, clutching a thick piece of wood. He had managed to grind one end to a rough point on the stone floor he sat on.
Great, now I can stake vampires, he thought as he examined his handiwork. He smiled to himself, thinking just how ridiculous that sounded.
He hadn't seen another person since arriving wherever the hell he was, only a few animals but even those weren't right. There were other things in this place, though. He heard them moving about, heard the snuffling breaths as they went by on the other side of the wall. Sometimes they paused right outside as though they knew he was in here and Patrick tried to keep as still as he could as he waited for them to go away again. He really wished Danny was here; his brother had looked out for him his entire life, defending him if he got bullied at school or taking the blame if his mum got angry about something. Danny did that a lot; he often got grounded for something that hadn't been his fault and, on those occasions, Patrick would stay inside with him rather than go out to play with his friends. Danny had done it so that he wouldn't get into trouble and so the least he could do was stay in and keep his brother company.
Right now, he would have given anything just to have someone else here with him. Every noise in the darkness made his heart race just that little bit more, the fear and uncertainty of not knowing where he was or what was out there causing tears that he refused to allow to fall. He wouldn't cry: crying was for girls. He didn't want to let his brother down by acting like a wimp.
Feeling tired but still unwilling to close his eyes and leave himself vulnerable to this place, he gripped the stake tighter and maintained his vigil. Eventually he succumbed to sleep, eyelids drooping despite his best efforts to remain awake.
Tomorrow, everything will be okay, he thought as he fell asleep. Danny will come and get me.
The next day arrived but his brother didn't. Patrick knew he would, though. After all, Danny always looked out for him, had promised to never let anything bad happen to him. Danny would come for him.
In the meantime, he had to do something. He had already looked for the lights again, hoping that it might come back or that there would be another way out of here, but it didn't. He would just have to wait, but that didn't mean that he was just going to sit here and feel sorry for himself. His stomach growling reminded him that he was hungry but a search of his pockets found nothing edible. Well, he'd just have to do something about that. Head held high and the stake in his hand, just in case, he set out in the direction of the other structures he'd seen.
There were more ruins here, the remains of what had once been a city. Most of the stonework was crumbling though some of the walls remained, the roof in broken heaps on the ground with a thick layer of foliage growing over the top of them. Whatever had happened here, it had been a long time ago.
Maybe that's what this place was; another world. Just like they had the ruins of the Aztec or Inca civilisations, maybe in this world this was their past. A few weeks ago, when their parents went out and left Danny looking after him, they had watched Stargate. A friend of Danny's had a video copy that they had loaned him and now Patrick found himself thinking how scarily similar the situation was. He had walked through a sparkly light, kind of like the Stargate, and ended up in another place. At any other time, he would have been fascinated by this, excited even, but the thought just terrified him. No one knew where he was; hell, even he didn't know where he was. His mum would be worried sick when he didn't go home, and what about Matt's parents? What if Ryan hadn't survived? There would be no one to tell them what happened. They might think that he had hurt his friends and then run away, and he couldn't even be there to tell his side, to explain about the weird animals.
Patrick forced himself to stop thinking about his friends, trying to rid his mind of the image of Matt's body on the floor, all clawed and bloodied. He had to find something to drink, even if he couldn't find food and he moved cautiously through the broken streets, the search taking his mind away from that house.
Every so often, he heard sounds from inside the buildings, a scuffling deep in the darkness, but he didn't stop to investigate. Instinct told him that he was better off not knowing what was in there, and what might be watching him. Outside the buildings it was fairly quiet. From his experiences last night, he realised that the animals here were much more active in the darkness but he didn't want to take any chances. He kept to the middle of the street to give himself time to see anything trying to sneak up on him, constantly scanning the area.
A gate led him into what had once been a garden of some kind, a crumbling stone wall surrounding the area that now resembling more of a jungle than a garden. The plants had run wild, thick grasses tangled in among the thorny branches of an ivy-like plant that had spread across the entire space.
Patrick could hear the faint trickling of water from somewhere in the middle of it and knew that he needed to get to it, so he started to pick his way through the foliage. The thorns were brutal, about two or three centimetres long and sharp as needles as they ripped into his skin, even through his jeans, but he kept going. Using the heavy stake he still carried to hack a path through them he managed to get to the source of the sound.
In the middle of this dreadful place, among the vicious plants and destruction, was a narrow channel of water. The crystal clear stream bubbled serenely through a small stone arch in the base of the wall and eventually vanished under the thorn bushes. There was a slightly clearer area next to it and Patrick crouched, cupping his hands and cautiously lifting some of the water to his lips.
It tasted like heaven. After a night and most of a morning with nothing to drink, the cool water tasted better than anything he could think of.
As he drank his fill, Patrick looked around at the rest of the garden. This might not be a bad place to wait, he thought: the walls were crumbling but there was still a good five feet left of them all the way around, and only one way in. The thorns would keep out whatever was prowling about in the darkness, and also give him an early warning if anything did come in. He had tried to walk quietly through them but it was impossible, the dead branches under the bushes snapping loudly each time he set his feet down.
Or so he thought.
It should have occurred to him that if he was using the stream for water, then other things might be too, but it didn't, not until he saw the dark blur out of the corner of his eye. It was one of the gremlin-looking creatures, like the ones back at the house, and it dived on him from the top of the wall before he could get out of the way. Patrick put his arm up to fend the creature off whilst frantically grabbing for the stake with his other hand, shouting in pain as the creature's claws tore down his forearm.
His fingers curled around the end of the stake and he brought it up with as much force as he could, hitting the creature so hard around the side of its head that it was knocked into the bushes. It lay there for a few moments, stunned, before getting to its feet once more. From the look on its face as it snarled at Patrick, if he let it get back up, it would kill him.
He just couldn't do it, he thought as he stood, stake held aloft, poised to hit the creature again. He couldn't kill it.
The creature sensed his weakness and pounced again, sinking its teeth into his ankle and this time there was no hesitation. He hit it and hit it until it let go, dropping back into the bushes, bleeding. It didn't get up again.
"Oh God…" Patrick dropped the stick and backed away, looking in horror at the dead creature.
Patrick moved as far away from the dead animal as he could while he checked his wounds. Aside from the bite to his ankle and the claw marks down his arm, there were numerous scratches to his legs from the thorns. He couldn't clean them up with anything but water from the stream but it would have to be enough. He could get them treated properly when he got home.
~.~
The bites and scratches healed over, luckily without becoming infected, and Patrick found himself a place to hide in one of the ruins next to the garden. Having explored a little he found that this was easily defendable, like the garden, but it had the benefit of a roof so that there were no more nasty surprises as things jumped the wall to attack him. It was also close to the stream, giving him fresh water to drink.
Food, however, was a different problem. There was a tree which overhung the garden wall bearing odd-looking pink fruits but one meal of them told him why nothing else had been eating them. The bitter taste had his stomach in knots after a few minutes and he had spent the next few hours alternately throwing up or in a cold sweat. By the end of it he was so weak and exhausted that he could have quite happily unblocked his door and let the animals have him. That was, if he had the energy to get up and go to the door.
Eventually it passed, though it left him dehydrated and he had to force himself to get up and go back to the stream to drink. He never touched the fruits again, and as hungry as he was, even the other berries he saw on some of the bushes and creepers filled him with dread at the thought of eating one. That left only one other option: Meat.
The first time Patrick managed to catch something- a small rodent that had found its way into the room he was hiding in- he felt so bad from having killed it that he could barely face touching it, let alone eating it. However, it was becoming clear that he had very little choice in the matter if he wanted to stay alive. He could still remember how to build a fire and light it from his short stint in the Scouts and so he lit one in the doorway, just outside, so that the smoke wouldn't fill the room.
It was revolting. Roasted rodent tasted like eating a piece of rubber; chewy, stringy and the taste was awful. A small part of him preferred the poisonous fruit. Still he ate it, telling himself that it could be worse; he could be eating it raw.
~.~
Days and then weeks passed and still Danny never came for him. Maybe no one was even looking for him, he thought miserably one night as he tried to sleep despite the growls outside, or the scrape of claws or snuffling breaths going past his hiding place. Maybe Danny didn't want him back. He knew that he was mum's favourite- Danny teased him about it often enough- and his parents were definitely easier on him than they were on Danny. With him out of the way, then he could be their favourite. No, Danny wouldn't do that to him. No matter how much they squabbled sometimes, he knew that his brother loved him.
Still, no one came for him and the tiny doubts began to grow, to eat away at him, the more he thought about it. Each day was the same, the hunt for food, fending off the various creatures. He was getting pretty good at catching the rat-like creatures now, and the taste, while still awful, was growing more tolerable.
~.~
One night, as he looked out of the doorway to the stone room, he saw something which made his spirits leap. There was a light up on the hillside. A shimmering light that looked oh so familiar.
Grabbing the stake and checking the area for creatures, he set off at a run. He was going home.
~.~.~
To be continued…