I was gonna wait until tomorrow to post this, to span it out and give myself a buffer (since I have two more chapters after this already done), but I'm an impatient baby and wanted to post something a bit more substantial than the just first chapter. The following chapters are going to get posted slower.


[2]

Some time around dawn, hunger begins to gnaw at Stan too sharply to resist any longer, so he heaves himself off the couch and shuffles blearily into the kitchen. The house had followed its owner in his downward spiral, and barely half the contents of the fridge are anything resembling edible. He finds some bread that isn't moldy and makes toast. Even though he hasn't had anything to eat since yesterday morning, he feels too ill to manage more than two slices. He thinks he should probably go see a doctor about the burn, but he's had worse that he'd taken care of on his own. Not having health insurance is a bitch, and sometimes there's certain types of injuries that make people ask the kinds of questions Stan doesn't want to have to answer.

After sitting at the table for some time, staring vacantly out the window at the snow-blanketed forest, he finally decides it's time to do a little exploring.

The place is a fucking mess. He fumbles for light switches in each room he enters, but rarely finds them, and so his self-led tour is slowed as he awkwardly navigates the scattered papers and gadgets in the dark.

He contemplates tidying up a bit, but can't bring himself to touch anything. Everything here is Ford's, not his. Ford might be gone, but his shadow looms over Stan, suffocating him. The walls begin to close in, and he zips on his jacket and escapes to the outdoors.

The winter air is chilly but refreshing, and he inhales deeply. It's been a long while since he's breathed air this clear. The crunch of snow under his boots as he makes his way to the tree line is strangely calming, and he thinks that maybe he could get used to this.

He runs a gloved hand over the rough bark of a tree and looks back at the house. It's a grey, unfriendly thing, hunkered down sullenly behind its haphazard barbed-wire fences. With a twinge of unease, he wonders what could have possibly turned confident, adventurous Stanford into a paranoid, reclusive trainwreck. The woods suddenly seem a lot darker, so he makes his way back towards the house, glancing warily over his shoulder. He puts his hand on the doorknob, then slowly withdraws and sits on the steps instead, fishing a battered packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. There's only three left, and after a moment of contemplation he puts them away again.

The silence has taken an eerie edge, but Stan isn't sure he's ready to go back inside, and so he waits on the porch, trying to ignore the raised hairs on the back of his neck.

Movement catches his eye and he freezes, holding his breath. There's some rustling, and then a deer steps out of the trees. Stan watches it trot daintily over the snow and forces himself to relax.

More deer emerge from the forest to join the first. A few give him a cursory glance before deciding he's not a threat and cross to a collection of buckets just outside the barbed wire and begin to eat from them. After a moment of puzzlement, Stan realizes that Ford must have been leaving food out for them, and he can't help smiling. When they were small, Ford was always feeding the stray cats around the neighborhood, no matter how many times Filbrick yelled at him. Stan is glad that at least that hasn't changed.

He stays where he is until the deer finish and vanish back into the woods as quietly as they'd appeared, and finally pushes himself to his feet and goes back inside.

The first thing his eyes are drawn to once he closes the front door behind him is the door down to the lower levels. It feels like it's calling to him.

Yesterday, after he'd finished pounding at the controls in a futile attempt at restarting the portal, he'd turned to the journal. But the damn thing was full of codes and ciphers that he couldn't make heads or tails of, and he felt like he'd have better luck just kicking it until it worked again. Still, he persisted, poring over the book for nearly an hour. But then he began to find his attention dragged back to the portal itself more and more frequently, with mounting dread. Even inactive, the portal felt… alive. Like it was poised to strike, like it was hungry and Ford hadn't been enough for it. Eventually, he couldn't take it any more and fled up the stairs, bringing the journal with him.

Stan doesn't want to go back down there again. He wants his brother back so desperately, but he gets chills just thinking about the thing.

No, it's worse than chills. It's a dull, icy terror that wraps tight around his throat and squeezes the air from his chest and coils heavy in the pit of his stomach. It fills his head with blue light and his ears with Stanford's screams.

He stands in front of the door with no memory of crossing the room, and tells himself he should open it.

He doesn't.

Instead, he goes into the kitchen to make coffee, but the coffee machine is broken. He spends the rest of the afternoon fixing it.

That night he does sleep, but only fitfully.