Each Step, Alone
A/N: written for Trick or Treat Exchange 2016 for Snickfic to the prompt Jo knows she's supposed to be hunting something, but she can't remember what and themes amnesia, casefic, enclosed spaces, and psychological horror.
.
It's dark.
Jo blinks slowly, trying to understand more of her current situation than that remarkably unhelpful fact. She hopes that given a minute, her eyes will adjust and find some vague shapes, but seconds or maybe minutes of interminable time pass, and nothing changes.
Fine, try something else.
She concentrates, and she can hear the faintest hum coming from somewhere to her left. There's a hint of a musty smell, the kind she associates with dusty abandoned buildings that haven't yet gone to rot. Her head hurts, but that isn't much more useful to know than the fact she can't see a damn thing.
Think.
Okay, first step to figuring this out, she tries moving. She's not tied up, that's good. Cautiously reaching outward into the darkness she can't feel anything but the smooth floor she's lying on, cool under her fingertips. Still mostly good, though lying on the floor is a little worrisome. Jo sits up, and has to cradle her head a bit after the minor change in altitude. That's not good, and she can't find any kind of bleeding or bruising, which, well, she's not sure if that's good or bad. She pulls the elastic out of her hair to let the ponytail she was wearing fall, hoping it'll release a little of the pressure she's feeling on her skull.
Weapons?
Jo continues to take stock of her situation. The knife in her boot is still there, definitely good. She doesn't seem to have a gun or a flashlight unless she dropped them just out of reach, and that's definitely bad. She has no idea where she is or how she got here, also very bad.
Groaning, she tries to think harder, to recall the last thing she does remember. Was she on a hunt? Her memory stays as dark as the damn room is, and Jo lets out a huff of breath in frustrated irritation.
She doesn't know where she is or why, which means she doesn't know if she's remotely safe here. It hurts her head even more to move, but she can't afford to wait and hope the pain goes away. She's on the floor in an unfamiliar place that smells musty, probably on a hunt. She has to get moving. As carefully as she can manage, she feels around in a wider space of the floor surrounding her, still hoping for that flashlight she should have had with her.
Thud.
Her hand runs into something and tips it over so that it makes a noise in the stillness of the room. It's not actually that loud, but it seems to echo simply by its disruption of the previous silence. Despite the pain in her head, she scrambles after it because it felt like – yes! Her flashlight. She grips her knife in her other hand. It's what she's got, and at least the knife is iron. Of course if the hunt isn't for a ghost – but that's borrowing trouble before it's here. She braces herself to react.
Click.
The beam of warm yellow light is immediately a comfort that allows her to relax just a little. Even more so when she sweeps it slowly across the room and reveals nothing threatening for the moment. The floor she's been lying on is wood, and just a few feet away is a throw rug in shades of burgundy. The slightly faded but still intact wallpaper is patterned in roses in a matching shade. That all seems normal enough, but it's truly not. The rug is the only thing in the room and even after thoroughly going over every bit of wall space with the light – twice – there's no hint of any doors or windows. That's a problem. A big freakin' problem.
Don't panic.
Don't panic.
Don't panic.
Jo takes a deep breath to steady herself and stands. It's a good flashlight, but the room is big. If there's a hidden door, she'll have to get closer to see it. There has to be a way out if there was a way in, and if she can't find a join in the walls, she'll find one on the floor. If she can't find it in the floor, she'll check the ceiling. She runs the light over the respective surfaces and sees no obvious joins there either yet, but -
The rug.
She grabs a corner of the rug and pulls it aside hoping, hoping for a trap door. Instead there's just a dark stain in the wood. It's old, and the wood is permanently discolored over an area almost the size of the rug itself, which is not small. She can't know that it's blood. It could be something else. Right. With her luck and the fact she's here at all?
It's definitely blood.
Jo swallows hard and looks up sharply, expecting to be confronted by a haunt with a flair for the dramatic. There's no sudden temperature drop, there's no hovering ghost. All the movement earns her is an angry throb from her still aching head. She gives both her racing heart and her head a moment to adjust, though she doesn't drop her guard entirely. Okay.
A door.
There has to be a door here somewhere. She takes the walls inch, by careful inch. On the third surface, finally, pay dirt. There's the tiniest hint of a seam, disguised by the vertical lines in the wall paper. She feels around a little more determinedly.
Snick.
Crackle.
Creak.
It bothers her that the door acts like it hasn't been opened for a while. That shouldn't be possible, because she had to get in here somehow, right? Things that can transport a person through walls are universally on the truly nasty end of the monster scale. Which makes whatever is here significantly less likely to be intimidated by her knife. So not good.
She pulls the door the rest of the way open to reveal a narrow set of stairs. It turns sharply to the left and continues out of sight around ten steps up. There's the glow of an inconstant light source coming from above. Candlelight, or perhaps a flickering bulb, she thinks.
Whatever is up there will see her coming before she sees it. Considering the look of the stairs, probably hear her, too. She still can't remember a damn thing about this hunt and what she might be facing. But the only other option is staying in this room and waiting for it to come for her. That's not really an option. Jo resets her grip on her knife and clicks off the flashlight, tucking it away. She makes up her mind to cause whatever brought her here serious regrets for thinking it could screw with her.
Step by step.
She goes slowly up the creaking stairs, not willing to rush in case they aren't as solid as they look.