A/N: So this is some sort of prequel to my first multi-chapter fic I'm working on at the moment. I needed a little break from it and this sorta happened. On to the fic! (Though there are a few notes on the story at the end.) Enjoy~
Some days, he could remember the smell. There was nothing that would trigger it; just sometimes the smell would come from some imaginary source (his mind?), and there he would be. In that abandoned building again. Reliving every little detail.
The ceiling, disgusting and soggy, falling to the floor in thick rotting pieces. The paint peeling eerily down the walls in a way he had never seen outside a horror movie. The entire place smelled wet and moldy with some other smells he couldn't place adding to the stench.
In his memory, he walked through that dark building, avoiding the dirty and torn tarps that hung the ceiling. He wandered alone. He'd heard the stories about this place before, but he never really believed in all that paranormal nonsense his friends went on about.
Alone. He was completely alone. He knew that.
Then why did he feel like he was being watched? Why was he so uneasy? Why did the entire place feel...heavy? This place couldn't be that bad. It was just an old building!
Shaking off the uneasiness, he continued down a long hallway and up a dusty stairway. Once at the top of the stairs, he turned right and continued along his path. All of the doors he'd come across had been open to some extent. Wide open, cracked, off the hinges, the window smashed, or any combination of those states. Every single door was like that; except for one. One door sat completely closed with its window intact. Feeling curious, he pulled the creaky door open and stepped inside.
As soon as he entered the room, that heavy feeling that followed him through the building got worse. The room itself had an odd chill to it.
"It's all in your head, Peter," he mumbled to himself. He shook his head and continued through the room.
Looking around, it was nothing special. Just a sparsely furnished room with a bed frame, an old chair, and an overturned table. The light fixture that once hung from the ceiling had fallen and laid smashed on the floor for who knows how long. On the wall opposite the door were two boarded up windows. On the floor sat a moldy and water damaged painting sitting soggily on the floor.
Suddenly, Peter began feeling ill. Just a little bit nauseated, and beginning to feel dizzy. The beginnings of a headache throbbed at the base of his skull. The heavy feeling came back again, worsening still.
He had to get out of this room.
Some gas leak, or something, he thought.
He quickly turned and left the room. As soon as he was out the heaviness seemed to lift back off him a little. Once again, he was continuing down that dark corridor. He had to stay there just a few hours or until he saw something that made him believe. That had been the deal he'd made with his friends who sat in a van outside the building waiting. As long as he avoided that weird room, he figured he'd be just fine.
Feeling a little better than how he'd felt in that room, he relaxed a bit. The place was so quiet and peaceful. The only noises were the occasional water drips and his own shuffling footsteps. Reaching a turn in the hall, he stopped.
But the footsteps didn't.
Those same shuffling steps continued for a few more steps and then also stopped somewhere behind him. Frozen in fear, Peter couldn't will himself to move. He gripped his flashlight tighter.
He knew he was alone. Absolutely alone. He would have heard anyone else's footsteps echoing off the walls if one of his friends came in to scare him.
He felt cold. How was he cold? It was summer and this place was sealed up tight. It was hot in here and now he's chilled to the bone?
Suddenly, a door slammed-hard. The noise was enough to unfreeze Peter and he whipped around, lifting his flashlight with a shaking hand in the direction of the noise.
That room. The closed room. He had left the door open when he left and now it's closed tight.
But he was alone.
Peter was breathing heavily at this point and was thoroughly shaken. He started shivering and the hall was still icy cold. He could literally see his own breath in the air in front of him.
Then he heard it. The raspy voice that still haunts his nightmares. That unearthly voice that made his blood run as cold as ice.
"Get out," it hissed directly into his ear.
Peter gasped and his shivering changed to violent shakes. Slowly, slowly, he turned his head in the direction of the voice, but stopped. He thought better of it and instead booked it down the hallway, past the Room, and stopped at the top of the stairs, clutching the door frame. He stopped and looked back down that dark hallway. Two impossibly bright white eyes shone back at him, moving slowly down the hall. They were high up; whatever it was had to be a good eight feet tall.
Peter stood frozen again, still shaking violently with his eyes as wide as saucers. The way it moved, oh God. It was so unnatural and almost indescribable. It shuffled its feet as it moved down the hall. It's knees were bent at an odd angle, and its too-long arms came out of two incredibly broad shoulders at the top of a very long and inhumanly shaped torso. Its head appeared to be adorned with several crooked horns, jutting out at all directions from the crown. The figure was entirely black; just a deep, dark shadow, a shadow darker than anything he'd ever seen in his entire life. But it's eyes. Its eyes. They shone white. Too white. Like two little suns shining out of it's face.
He stumbled backwards in fear and tripped on something, causing him to fall to the ground. Unable to look away from the figure, he scrambled clumsily to his feet and raced down the stairs two at a time. He ran blindly down the hall, stumbling a few times, and threw himself through the front door of the building.
He sprinted across the parking lot and to the van where his friends sat waiting. He got in the car and only managed to stutter out "drive" in a shaky voice. He looked at his friend who sat behind the wheel. His eyes widened and all the blood drained from his face as he looked back to the building. He slammed his foot on the gas and they peeled out of the lot. Peter didn't look back. He didn't want to. He didn't want to know what his friend saw.
It was only once they were back at their shared apartment that they spoke about what happened. He told his him everything he did, saw, and heard.
"What...what was that? You saw it, too, didn't you?" Peter asked. His friend, Stephen, took a drag of his cigarette before speaking.
"Yeah I saw it. Most everyone that's seen it agrees that it's probably a demon," he replied.
"A demon?"
"Yeah. Let me tell you a little story about that place. About that thing. What it does to people.
"A couple years ago when I had first gone in there, I went with a friend of mine named Eric and his girl Lucy. We went into that same room, and all the same things happened to us. Scared the shit out of me and I never went back; and I never will go back there even if my life depends on it.
"Well even though I never went back doesn't mean Eric and Lucy didn't. They went back a week later. Then they went twice the next week, and so on. They were obsessed with it and couldn't stop going back. They didn't always see that Thing, but they still saw it on some trips.
"One night they decided to try to stay overnight. Overnight in the Room, of all places. Long story short, something attacked 'em. Left big scratches all over 'em. They didn't make the whole night and left the place for good.
"Eric started acting strange though, after that. Short temper, violent, lashing out. He even went as far as attacking Lucy in the middle of the night. He didn't even know he was doing it until Lucy managed to punch him and bring him to. She said it wasn't him, though.
"That was as bad as they let it get though. That's when they got higher powers involved. Turns out whatever was in that building, that Thing, it possessed him. He had to go through an exorcism and everything. A violent one," he said, bringing his story to an end. They sat in silence, letting the story sink in for Peter as he finished his cigarette.
"So Peter," he said after a few quiet minutes, "you remember how that place felt, right?"
"Yeah," he said after a moment. "It felt...heavy. And bad, no. Evil."
"Right. So if you ever come across a place that feels like that, you don't go in there. You turn around and get right out of that place," he said. Peter nodded.
Coming out of his memories and back in the real world, Peter sat in one of the armchairs, staring vacantly at the static playing on the television set. He shook his head and took a deep breath, trying to get the image of that Thing out of his head. Standing up, he walked into the kitchen and got a glass and filled it up with tap water. He took a long drink and felt himself relax a little bit.
Later that night, he sat jamming with Mike while Davy finished up a phone call with his latest girlfriend. As Davy hung up, Micky came through the door in his usual excited manner.
"Guys! You gotta hear about this place I found..."
A/N: So yes! Spooky stuff yes. I've always had a thing for it and I suddenly got really interested in it again.
This was set back a few years to when Peter was living in the village in case you didn't catch me sticking Steve Stills in there.
I also want to say that I feel like the end implies Micky found the Place, but that's nowhere near them, so no this is a different place he found.
Anyway this started as a stream of consciousness. Sometimes when I'm at home I can literally smell this abandoned building I went to. It was some building on the campus of an old state school and god it reeked. The building in the story is based off of the smelly building I wouldn't explore for the soggy reeking part, and then I had another building on campus in mind for the rest.
Also, Eric and Lucy's story and the Thing are based on a real life interview from a program I've watched, so if it sounded familiar you may have seen it, too.
But yes! I'm working on a long fic like this one, so keep an eye out for me! 3