I tweaked the circumstances of Kurt and Blaine's first meeting but assume that everything that happened after is the same. Karofsky incident, transferring, etc…

Also I'm not trying to offend anyone with the religious undertones in this story. But I'm not going to apologize for it, so if you get offended by this, please be offended elsewhere. I'm not trying to shove it down your throat but Silent Hill has a lot of religious subtext, relating to a massive cult. So they're will be different opinions about spirituality in this. Don't read too much into Blaine's, Rose's or Kurt's personal opinions. They're just to give the characters more background. They don't have any big relation to the actual story.

The title comes from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe by the same title if anyone was curious.

Chapter 4: The Valley of Unrest

The door slammed shut behind them, the sound echoing around the small atrium they were standing in, bouncing off the cracked walls. Despite how forlorn the building looked, they each felt a sense of foreboding upon entering, as if something was waiting them at the end of the line. And only with hope of reuniting with their lost loved ones did they move forward into the unknown building.

"Sharon," Rose shouted, the sound amplified. There was no movement in response to her cries.

Blaine hated the sense of neglect and desertion that he felt while walking through Silent Hill. Though he would like to deny it, he was scared to think what that meant. There were no birds, no wildlife of any kind that he could see. There was only that creature that had attacked the police women and Blaine couldn't wrap his head around what sort of demonic being it was.

The whole situation was strange. Even abandoned towns, especially ones so close to a forest, would have signs of life. But it was as if the town itself was dying, rotting from the inside out.

Blaine chalked it up to paranoia and turned his head to look at the door behind him, hoping to get any sort of clue. He was not disappointed.

The top section of the door held a large square opaque glass window that Blaine had vaguely noticed upon their arrival. The window had a grainy texture that looked bumpy to the touch and in the middle of the glass there was a circular design embedded into the glass. He raised his hand to touch the strange cross like symbol with the tips of his fingers.

Blaine stared at the figure in wonder, having seen nothing like in before in his life. It depicted a ring in the center with four smaller crosses sticking out the sides of it. The bottom arm of the cross extended farther, reaching down to a wider base that would have held it up had it been an actual object.

"I've seen this symbol before." Rose muttered softly, confusion coloring her tone. "It's everywhere around town, like a cult or something."

"It looks religious." Blaine said, "Some type of Christian denomination."

Rose didn't say anything in reply, looking up the steps that would take them deeper into the school. A railing ran down the middle, painted a sunny yellow color. The steps were the same color as if to inspire happiness in whoever entered this haunted place.

"Yep, definitely religious," Blaine said when they reached the top of the stairs. He glanced behind him to see a sign that disheartened him.

"Look." He pointed to it.

"The foes of the righteous shall be condemned." Rose read aloud, her heart sinking with every word. What kind of people must have lived in this town?

"Kurt would have field day if he saw that." Blaine muttered to himself. Rose, overhearing him, raised an eyebrow in question.

"One too many preachers telling him he was going to go to hell for acting on his perverse lust for another guy. And it didn't help that when his mom died, some asshole had the audacity to tell him that it was his fault for being the way he was." Blaine explained, eyes narrowing in anger at the memory.

Every time he remembered that sad day when Kurt had told him about it, he still got angry on Kurt's behalf. It was a closely kept secret he'd hidden from his dad and all his friends, especially the overly religious ones like Mercedes and Quinn.

"I believe that God exists," Blaine said before Rose could reply, "But I don't believe in organized religion. I've seen too many miracles happen to not believe. Kurt on the other hand…" He paused.

"Kurt won't allow himself to," Blaine said, "Which is something I respect. I know there are some bad people in this world but it's not a utopia, it's not perfect."

Rose was quiet after that, thinking of her own beliefs.

"I stopped believing for a while too. My parents were very religious and were very strict about it. Church every week and I couldn't play with my friends afterwards. My in-laws were even more so. I met Chris, my husband, at a relief society fundraiser that the church was hosting and we bonded over our hatred of religion being forced down our throats. After we got married, we decided we both wanted a baby right off the bat. We didn't want to wait till we got older. We wanted a family to cherish. So we tried and tried but with no success. I went to the doctor and found out that I had an extremely low egg count and a baby was almost impossible."

"So we turned to adoption, thinking that it would be great if we could give a second chance to a child that someone didn't want. But they had trouble finding one for us. We waited for almost three years before we got news that they had a baby for us to take home. Then the plans fell through when a rich couple donated a lot of money to the orphanage and were given the baby instead. We were just about to give up when they found Sharon. She is a godsend. I had lost my faith and she gave it back to me." She said, smiling. Blaine flashed her an identical one.

"That's exactly how I feel about Kurt. Before he came along, dating wasn't something I did. I fooled around with guys but never was one to talk about commitment. Then I saw him, sitting at a nearby table, wearing a ridiculous outfit and drinking coffee with his friends at the local beanery. It sounds corny, but it was love at first sight," Blaine smiled goofily, remembering fondly his attempt at talking to Kurt that day. He'd been so nervous that he practically dumped his coffee on Kurt's lap, stuttering like a mad fool while tripping all over himself. But Kurt had just smiled at him, amused at his actions and Blaine had melted into a puddle of goo. From that day on, Blaine knew he wanted it be part of Kurt's life, whether it be just as friends or something more.

"I actually wasn't supposed to be there that day. Classes had been canceled because of teacher conferences and my friends wanted to drive to Columbus to go shopping. Our car broke down on the side of the road and we walked to the coffee shop to get a phonebook so I could call a tow truck and find a mechanic. We got a coffee while we waited and that's when I saw him. After talking him to him, I was astounded to find out that he knew about cars and could come take a look at it for free. His dad owned the only mechanic garage in town." Blaine continued to spout, reminiscing about better times.

Whenever he shared his thoughts with Kurt, the other boy would laugh and shake his head, calling it a coincidence. But he couldn't believe that their meeting was a chance of random luck. That his car broke down right outside of the Lima Bean, where Kurt was. Blaine believed that they were meant to be. It was so much more romantic believing in soul mates than two people who just happen to run into each other and fall in love.

"He sounds like a great guy." Rose said as they pushed through another set of double doors, the glass containing metal lines inside of it to help fortify against intruders. The door shut behind them and the echoing thud was drowned out by Blaine's reply.

"He is. He's kind and sweet but he's also a complete diva. It's weird because he seems like the stereotypical gay guy that's interested in fashion and Barbra Streisand, even though he's more into Patti Lupone. But he does care about people. No one seems to see it because he has a prickly side, a defense mechanism to keep people away from him. He's been hurt too much in the past and it's a knee-jerk reaction for him."

Blaine sighed, realizing they'd stopped walking while he'd talked, and that Rose was probably bored with the conversation, "Sorry, I know I sound like an idiot when I talk about him because I can never seem to do him justice when I describe him. I just love him so much."

Rose chuckled, "I can tell."

"We should probably keep going." Blaine said in an attempt to change the subject. His cheeks were red tinted but Rose decided not to bring it up to spare him further embarrassment.

The front entry way opened up to a long perpendicular hallway with arched ceilings. The walls were once painted a light blue but the paint was chipping and falling off the walls with age and disrepair. The concrete flooring was covered in dirt and small rocks and trash littered the area.

Off to the right there was a sign for the main office and without thinking about it, they both headed towards it. The door was unlocked and it creaked when Rose opened it and stepped inside. Blaine followed, looking around the new space with inquisitive eyes.

The office was a terrible mess, papers and books lying everywhere. Metal file cabinets and a shelf filled with important looking ledgers and books leaned against the far wall. A few desks sat in the middle of the room, old fashioned typewriters and phones sitting on top of them. The chairs were pulled out, reminiscent of someone who had just occupied them.

"You've been very excepting of me so far. Where we come from, we don't get a lot of support." Blaine said as Rose started searching the wooden cupboards underneath the operating window that once must have dealt with public visitors. The silence was opposing and Blaine was curious.

Both Cybil and Rose hadn't batted an eye when he'd admitted that Kurt was his boyfriend, just going on like it wasn't that big of deal. Rose even let him gush about Kurt, something that his friends had barely tolerated. Part of him knew it wasn't that big of deal, they were just two people loving one another but another part of him, a part deep within him, expected the blatant homophobia that small minded bigots spread. Going to Dalton had quieted this, but growing up in small town (Kurt especially, since Westerville was almost twice the size of Lima but still considerably smaller than Columbus or Newark) made that impression hard to ignore.

"It seems so insignificant. Sharon is more important to me then who you choose to love."Rose stated, shrugging. She turned and tried to open a drawer, surprised to find it was locked tightly. The wood groaned from the strength she used to pull on it but it wasn't aged enough to break the lock that held it shut.

Blaine smiled at her back and then started looking through the items on a nearby desk, hoping to find a key that would unlock the drawer that Rose couldn't open.

Giving up on the drawer for now, Rose shuffled through some papers on the top of the cupboard, going through an inbox of curdled browning papers, her cuffed hands becoming more a nuisance every second. She eventually found them at the far end of the desk. She held up a giant ring of keys, of different sizes and shapes for him to see before unlocking the drawer.

He assumed that it held nothing of use since she moved on after a quick glance and tried the one below it. Inside she hit the jackpot. She slipped the keys into her jacket pocket and reached inside to lift a long steel flashlight out. Flipping the switch, the lamp flickered and went out. She hit it a couple times against her palm and it jolted to life, a narrow beam of light hitting the ceiling.

She jerked it towards Blaine and he winced as it scalded his eyes, his concussion making him extra sensitive to light. He groaned, shielding his eyes with the back of his hand. The light only acerbated his pounding headache.

"Sorry." She said as she moved the beam of light around the room, illuminating her surroundings.

Above the door on the wall, there were a few framed pictures on the wall. Each one had a moralizing word in the top center and a picture highlighting the meaning of the word. The first said country and had a soldier, fitted in his gear with the flag flying behind him and a profile of a revolutionary white haired woman doing her patriotic duty. The second picture said Home and was fitted with a young blond woman sitting on some type of stool with a book in her lap. She had one arm wrapped around a young boy, both looking down fondly at a blonde baby-faced toddler sitting at her feet.

The third depicted loyalty and the forth said God. If Blaine didn't think this used to be a town ruled by a religious faction, these images cleared any doubt from his mind.

"I can't imagine growing up here. This place is creepy." Blaine said shivering and Rose couldn't help but agree.

"I don't think we'll find anything else of use in here. Lets go." Rose said, heading for the door.

They left the office, following the hallway deeper into the bowls of the school. Lockers lined the walls of the hallway. Most of them were rusted over and some of them were opened, random books and clothing hanging out. Between each of the set of twenty lockers there was a doorway. Blaine peeked into the nearest one to see an eerily familiar classroom. There were eight rows of desks facing a chalk blackboard and the teacher's desk sat off to the right corner of the room.

Rose moved on, shining the flashlight in one of the open lockers. Blaine saw a glimpse of purple, some type of cloth but a loud slamming sound broke the silence, making Blaine jump in surprise. Gasping, Rose broke out into a run towards the sound.

"Rose, wait." Blaine said running after her. She shouted her daughter's name as she ran and then came to such a sudden stop that Blaine almost ran into her. She ignored his questions as she shined the flashlight through an open door. Blaine peeked over her shoulder to see a wooden stairwell heading to depths unknown. Her arms shook as she held the flashlight aloft.

Besides her panting, Blaine could hear someone breathing down there. His heart skipped a beat. Those gasping grunts sounded too manly to be Kurt or a little girl.

Before now Blaine hadn't seen anybody except for Rose and the cop, and it scared to him to realize that it was possible they really weren't alone. A cage of some sort appeared around the corner and Rose gasped, covering the light with the palm of her hand. A hulking man in some sort of suit holding the cage rounded the corner. The yellow canary stood out in the darkness, tweeting innocently from the cage.

"Shit." Rose said and started running again, this time away from something instead of towards it. Blaine wasted no time following. They had to find somewhere to hide, both of them knew it. The first door they encountered was locked and no matter how much Rose pulled on it, it stayed locked.

"Come on," Blaine grabbed her elbow and pulled her away. He could hear them coming closer, the wood underneath their footsteps squeaking from old age and maltreatment. The breaths of the unknown men, released in a wheeze like from a gas mask, echoed from behind them.

Light was shining in from another set of double doors ahead of them and he pulled Rose towards them, hoping that they weren't locked. Rose had no sense of the meaning of discreet, her boots making clunking footsteps as she ran and Blaine winced, knowing whoever was coming definitely would have heard them by now.

They ran out into a decent sized courtyard, opening the door so hard it slammed against the metal gate behind it. Glancing around, Blaine could see that the quad was mostly enclosed with only two doors to come in out of. There was a door they had just exited and the one on the opposite end of the yard. Since they had no other choice, they took off towards the other door.

Blaine paused as he ran across a carefully drawn hopscotch game in yellow chalk, staring at it in dread. Instead of the starting point being the number one like remembered drawing, it said hell. The end point was heaven and Blaine shivered at the connotation, not knowing that to make of it.

"Blaine, hurry up." Rose yelled, holding the door open for him. She was staring at him impatiently, waiting for him to catch up. Shaking it off, he turned and ran through the door, up the stairs and around the corner, skidding in the general dirt and trash that lay on the floor.

"In here." Rose led them into a nearby classroom, running up to the boarded windows. They faced the courtyard, giving them an excellent opportunity to see if they strange men were still following them. Leaning against the boards, Rose peeked outside.

"I don't see anybody." Rose said breathing deeply. The courtyard was empty and they both couldn't hear anything besides their own breathing.

Blaine leaned against the teacher's desk and looked around at the decaying room. Behind him, old maps of the U.S and the world hung on the walls, nearby another chalkboard. An analog clock hung on the wall above the chalkboard, its hands remaining stationary no matter how long he stared at it. Blaine hoped the reason it wasn't working was because the batteries had died and not because time had stopped.

The desks were all line up neatly in rows but this classroom was larger than the others he had seen. The chairs and desks on each set were attached by a metal pole, like the ones he remembered from primary school. Each of the desks sported a fine layer of dust and Blaine wiped his hands clean on his pants when he noticed he'd left a handprint on teachers desk where been leaning on it. Rose backed up from the window, bumping into one of the desks as she did, casting a fright filled look around the room.

"Do you know who they were?" Blaine asked watching her as she ran down one of the isles, heading towards the second entrance to the room in the back.

She shook her head and he reluctantly followed, coughing from all the unsettled dust. His ribs ached fiercely and he almost asked if they could stop and take a break.

"No, I've never seen them before. We should keep going." She said but stopped abruptly, seeing something on one of the desks.

"Look at this." She said as he came to a stop next to her.

Two perfectly placed hand prints in the dust highlighted a word etched into the desk. It was scratched into the wood, no longer just words written by simple graphite that could be erased. They were forever.

"Someone must have been here. There's no other explanation." Blaine said. The hands prints were too new, having disturbed the dust rather recently.

Rose sighed and opened the top of desk, pulling it up like an old fashioned one from the eighties.

"I'm beginning to think that nothing around here can be explained without it sounding like we belong in a nut house." She said to which he silently agreed. He wasn't a hundred percent sure all this wasn't some hallucination, and he was really lying in a hospital bed in a coma from the car crash, with Kurt dutifully sitting by his side.

Blaine chose to say nothing, staring at the contents of the desk curiously. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Rose reached in and picked up a workbook. Broken pieces of color pencils fell off onto a children's novel and math textbook before finally settling down at the bottom of the desk with soft thunks.

"Alessa Gillespie." Rose read in a whisper, touching the top corner where it had been colored on with so many different colors that it now looked black. It reminded her of one of Sharon's drawings.

"Do you know who she is?" Blaine asked, turning to look at Rose's face.

"No." she replied dropping the workbook back into the desk, offering no explanation for her behavior.

"Sharon," she whispered with a soft sigh, "Where are you?"

Blaine felt for her, knowing what it felt like to lose someone you loved.

There was a flash of purple from outside the doorway and the sound of someone running by the room. Rose didn't stop to explain, running after the small body that Blaine only caught a glimpse of. It was a small girl with black hair that they could only see rounding the corner but never get close enough to really catch up to her. She was too fast.

Sharon? But if so, why was she running away from them? Why was she hiding from her own mother?

It didn't make any sense. But Blaine was beginning to understand that lot of things didn't make sense in this place.

"Wait." Rose yelled after the girl, sprinting up a wooden spiraling stair case. The traveled up several floors and Blaine could do nothing but follow them to the top. They ran down a hall way that the girl was already at the end of, opening a door and disappearing behind it.

They burst into the room the girl had just vanished into, the wooden door slamming shut behind them. Glancing around the bathroom they found themselves in, Blaine saw urinals over on the other side and wooden cubbies lining the wall behind them.

This was the boy's restroom.

They both could hear a quiet sobbing cry coming from one of the beige wooden toilet stalls and Rose turned on her flashlight, crouching at first to see if there were any dangling legs to indicate which stall the girl had hidden in before tiptoeing closer.

Blaine figured that seeing two people would scare her away and decided that Rose would probably be the less frightening of the two. With that in mind, he decided to let her handle this. She was a mother after all, and even if this wasn't Sharon, she would know how to deal with a sobbing child. Blaine hated when kids (and Kurt) cried and became practically useless in the situation.

Wanting to stay away from the urinals, he gravitated closer to the cubbies. They were all empty, save for one and what was hanging from the metal hook made Blaine's heart slow to a near stop, his lungs unable to suck in any air. A leather satchel, much like the one his boyfriend used, dangled from the rusted hook. A layer of dust coated it, suggesting that it had been hanging there for some time.

As Blaine slowly approached, he saw that it was not just like the one that Kurt used, it was almost identical down to the brass buckles and authentic leather shoulder strap. He pulled if off the hook with shaking fingers and ran his hands over it. It couldn't be Kurt's. Kurt hadn't brought his on their trip down here, deciding to leave it back in his dorm at the last minute.

Blaine glanced back Rose to see her using the butt of the flashlight to open the stall doors, checking them one by one, and then back down at the satchel.

With trembling hands, he unbuckled the clasp and started to open it, not knowing if what was inside was even going to help him find Kurt. His brain told him he was being stupid, this bag must have been discarded here for more than thirty years. There was no way it could help with what was going on now, but his gut said otherwise.

A choking sound from Rose distracted him from his newfound query and he slung the satchel over his shoulder, rushing over to where she was hunched over, looking like she was trying not to regurgitate her lunch. Taking the flashlight from her limp, unresisting fingers her shined it into the stall that she had previously been looking into.

He felt his stomach flip and churn at the sight of a man, strung up by barbwire, his body arched back in imaginable pain, frozen at the time of his death. Whoever this man used to be, he wasn't newly dead, that much they could tell from the horrible stench coming from him. Blaine was surprised he hadn't been able to smell it before, it was so strong.

"Dear, god." He mumbled, staring at the man in horrified fascination. Who was capable of this?

He covered his mouth and nose with his free hand, the stench so powerful it was almost blinding.

The wall behind the man, chipped and pealing, was painted the same blue as the hallway but on this section, someone had written on it with a large black marker. He moved the light up to read it.

Dare you

Dare you

Double

Dare

You

There were arrows pointing towards the man's open mouth and Blaine could see a small slip of something sticking out of it. He looked back at Rose, who must have come to the same understanding that he had. She nodded towards the man.

"Do you want me to do it?" she asked, trembling. Blaine could tell that she was trying to be brave but he didn't have to be a genius to figure out that the last thing she wanted to do was go anywhere near the man. She was bound by society's rules that because she was the adult in the situation, it should be her taking control but her eyes begged Blaine to do it.

"No." Blaine shook his head and turned back to the dead man, figuring that he should do it since he was the man and she was probably too spooked to do it. "I'll do it."

He missed the thankful look and the relief she sent his way as held the flashlight out to her.

"Can you shine this on him, please?" he asked Rose without looking at her. She took the flashlight obediently and pointed the beam so it was shinning on the man, allowing Blaine to see and use his hands at the same time.

"God, who could do this?" Blaine whispered to himself, not really expecting an answer from Rose. This was just wrong.

The barbwire was everywhere, wrapping around every inch of this man's body, digging into his skin. There was no blood that Blaine could see, which was odd but the new problem was getting to the man's mouth. The last thing he wanted to do was get cut by rusting barb wire that would probably give him tetanus. And he was behind on his booster shots.

The man's skin was dried like a mummy's, but strangely preserved. There was nothing to show that bugs had started eating his torn and mutilated flesh. The man's clothes, ripped and shredded, hung off his skeletal body, rotting away quicker than his corpse. A name tag stitched into his uniform proclaimed his name to be Colin.

But what freaked Blaine out the most was half of him was missing. His hands reached up and gripped the strands of wire above him, while his head and chest were arched backwards but anything beyond his belly button was gone. The wires kept what was left of his body strung in midair.

Swallowing the urge to puke, he closed his eyes and steeled his nerves.

I can do this, he told himself. This is just one more step to finding Kurt.

Reaching tentatively towards the man, wary of the bob wire, he closed his fingers around the object. A voice in his head, sounding a lot like David, reminded him that this was the perfect set up for a horror movie. The room was too quiet, his heartbeat thundering in his ear. The sobs from the girl were gone and Blaine had a horrible gut feeling that the girl was too.

Half expecting the man to still be alive and to jerk, he quickly pulled the object out of his mouth, sighing in relief when the man didn't move, seemingly dead.

"What is it?" Rose asked, peeking over his shoulder to get a look. It was a piece of chipped blue rock with letters etched into the top of it. He felt sorry for the man, but he didn't want to be here anymore. After they found Kurt and Sharon, they'd send someone back for him.

"I don't know. Let's just get out of here." He said and Rose nodded in agreement. She didn't want to be here anymore than he did.

They walked back to the door, Rose still holding the flashlight to guide their way. Blaine slipped the piece of rock into his pocket for safe keeping. They would figure out what it was later.

Rose got to the door first and opened it. She gasped when she noticed the men that had been in the other building were now here, exploring the hallway before them. One of them still held the canary and another shinned a light on them.

Rose shut the door quickly, dropping the flashlight as she braced herself against it. The same man that had discovered them threw all his weight against the door, grunting with the effort and Blaine did the same on the other side, trying to keep him out.

"Rose, the keys." Blaine shouted, remembering that she'd taken them from the front office. She nodded in understanding and with quivering hands pulled them out of her pockets, shoving one of them in the lock. One of them must be the master key. He just hoped she found it before he called his buddies over and they forced their way through the door. Blaine didn't get the vibe that they were on their side.

"Come on. Come on." Rose whispered frantically, as they locked failed to engage and she tried another key, hearing the oncoming footsteps of the man's friends coming to join him.

"Oh, god." Rose was panicking and Blaine couldn't blame her, he was pretty close to it himself.

"Yes, thank you." She all but sobbed in relief as the locked turned over and they both collapsed against the reinforced door. Blaine half-heartedly prayed to the man upstairs, closing his eyes as he leaned his head back against the door.

"Please, please. Help us." Rose prayed out loud, clasping her necklace tightly between her fingers, as the men continued to throw their weight against the locked door, the keys jingling in the lock.

Blaine heard the distinct sound of the canary chirping, the same sound he'd heard Pavarotti and all his predecessors make, and the pounding stopped. They heard the sound of the men running away and both of them breathed in relief.

Someone must be watching out for us, Blaine thought, even in this place.

Neither of them said anything, the confusion now settling in after the relief. Why'd they stop?

They got their answer a second later when the dull sound of an air-raid siren split the silence. Rose stepped away from the door, staring at the walls in fearful anticipation. Blaine just grew more confused.

"Rose, what's going on?" he asked, terror growing within him.

She didn't answer, staring at the widow as the sunlight started to fade, like a curtain coming down over a stage, slowly extinguishing the light till it was pitch-dark. Blaine stood up, feeling dizzy as his sight failed him. Rose reached down with searching fingers and found the flashlight she'd dropped. She rose to her feet as she turned on, exposing the room for what it was.

"It's happening again," Rose whispered, her face ten shades of pale. And Blaine didn't have to ask. He remembered her telling him about the nightmare, the thing that had happened while he was still knocked out from his crash. It was happening again and he was awake for it this time.

The room was turning red, the mirror rusting over and the walls peeling, falling to the ground with a sound like crinkling paper. The wood on the stalls were stripped, revealing the metal wires inside the timber and the tiles fell off the walls, smashing when they hit the floor.

A thump from the stall they found the dead man in drew their attention and Rose moved the beam over to see the man—the creature, Blaine amended. There was no way that thing was a man anymore. It slowly superman crawled towards them, making a guttural sound, a grotesque black tongue wiggling out of his mouth. Wherever the creature touched, veins of red extended outwards like webs of bacteria and giant pockets of bubbling liquid oozed like demonic pus.

"Run." Blaine gasped.

Quickly unlocking the door, Rose and Blaine ran out of the room before the thing could get to them. The hallway was different now, metal fencing instead of wooden walls and when they got to the spiral staircase, Rose cried out when she shinned the light on a naked body hanging in the middle of the spiral staircase by its wrists, tortured beyond belief. The thing cried out from behind them and they continued running.

And now, Blaine knew why Rose had described this as a nightmare. There was no other way to describe it. It was a scene plucked from the darkest of humanity's sins.

He remembered when he was little and he'd had bad dreams. His dad was never home, always at work, and his mom was more of trophy wife than a mother, only having kids because it was expected of her. So when he'd come to her, crying because there was a monster under his bed, she'd shooed him away to spend more time with the gardener and he'd spent the rest of the night sitting in the center of his bed, blankets curled up over his head and his eye squeezed shut, pretending the sounds his old house made were just that—sounds, not encroaching monsters waiting to eat him.

Now all he wanted to do was close his eyes and pretend this wasn't happening; that none of this existed. He wanted to close his eyes and be back at Dalton, curled up on one of the couches in the junior common room, Kurt safely nestled in his arms. But on some level he knew that it would mean his death if he did and he couldn't die, not while Kurt was still out there all alone.

They got to the bottom of the staircase, seeing more grotesque bodies hanging on the way. At the bottom they could see the men that had been trying to get into the bathroom, writhing as millions of bug-like creatures ate them alive.

Rose screamed as they approached, the beam of their flashlight attracting their attention. Rose ran down the hallway, throwing herself against the fencing covering the walls like a madwoman, screaming for help.

"Rose, come 'on." Blaine yelled, running after her. He pulled her away from the advancing hoard of insects in the opposite direction, running down a hallway where there was once a wall. They stumbled into a small doorway, the concrete floor turning into grate.

Rose gasped, shinning the flashlight onto the giant hole in the floor. A pool of molten lave glowed from below, broken metal and grating sticking out in places, the floor literally looking like it was rotting away. The grating underneath their feet shifted back and forth, feeling like a potent earthquake was shaking the floor. Blaine had bad thoughts of the floor giving out, sending them falling into the fiery pit below.

Rose stumbled slightly, grabbing onto his arm for balance before regaining her footing. Together, they ran across the grated bridge not noticing the grimy figure of a girl sitting at a desk off to the side, manically scribbling on a picture with a black crayon.

She made eye contact with Rose before the woman lost her footing, falling out of a hole in the fencing. She tried grabbing onto Blaine's arm to save herself but only succeeded in pulling a startled Blaine out with her. He had but seconds to brace himself before he hit the ground, knocking himself out as his head smacked against the hard metal of the courtyard. His vision swam briefly before the darkness took over, falling into unconsciousness.

Thanks to my lovely reviewers. I hope to get the next one up soon.