Back in business, baby. Tons of notes, slow plot movement, but 15 chapters in interactions and development between Henry and Eileen lead to this. This is also the last Eileen-centric drabble for the rest of the novelization.
Enjoy.
Chapter 28
Eileen woke up on the couch, curled as much as her body allowed her to be. The room was quiet. A soft dankness seemed to blanket everything and above all else it seemed serene like an untouched pool of water in the middle of a forest. Timidly, she stretched her frail body, her eyes focused on the coffee table in front of her. There were several open books strewn on the table, one of them being a diary that Henry had kicked in accidentally from just outside the door. The edges of the pages were crumpled but the words he had read to her were seared in her mind now in her waking hours.
I had that weird dream today. The one with the man with the long hair and coat. He was crying and looking for his mother again. I saw that man with the coat 10 years ago at this apartment. He was going up the stairs, carrying a heavy tool, an old-looking bowl and a bag that was dripping blood. I never saw him again after that. But a few days later, the neighbours complained that they heard strange noises coming from the supposedly empty Room 302. So I took a look around Room 302 and found signs that someone had been in there, but nothing odd other than that. But that's when it all started. I still hear strange noises coming from the window of Room 302.
Sunderland.
Though Eileen felt an unexplainable warmth emanating peacefully from the room she still shivered at the superintendent's words. Joseph's words, too, taunted her as she lied there, not quite fully awake but not asleep either. The idea that this had been going on for years – had been planned for years – haunted her so much she was surprised that her sleep was long, quiet, and fulfilling despite the horror that was gnawing at her insides.
Henry had scoured the room before she had begged him to stop and rest with her, leading to them eventually falling asleep where they had secured themselves: her on the couch, Henry in a chair just out of her sight. Before she had fallen asleep she could barely see his stretched legs in her fuzzy peripheral vision, but after she woke up she had to crane her neck and peek over the armrest to see that he had become just as curled up as she was despite how ridiculous he looked. A grown man with unkempt facial hair, broad, thick shoulders and long, almost lanky legs somehow comfortably if messily curled on a single chair...Eileen would have only envisioned it as a hyperbolic illustration if she hadn't seen it for herself.
Part of her felt bad for begging him so hard to rest here a while, but then again the moment he had sat down she had heard him sigh so deeply she guessed that it took him mere seconds to fall asleep. She wasn't all together surprised because he had looked on the verge of collapse when they had entered the apartment. Joseph's words must have invigorated him, maybe even scared him. They had scared her.
No, they had terrified her.
She had known Joseph in life—he had a strong moral compass but never imposed it on anyone (she guessed this was because of his journalist mindset). To think that what he was saying wasn't with the best intentions as well as heavily researched would be blasphemy. That wasn't like Joseph, and since he seemed to be the only other one in his right mind, if you could call it that in this godforsaken place, she was hard-pressed to reject what he had said.
On top of what Joseph said there were the books and notes Henry had poured over and tucked away. She had shown curiosity in what he was reading at first but it quickly dissolved to heightened queasiness and soon she was begging him to stop even though the letters he was reading were short.
She had heard every word despite her plea though; either that or she had known every word before he had read them aloud or she had seen them while peering over his hunched shoulder. The first one he hadn't read aloud, but she could see that it was a children's book, with large text next to gruesome illustrations.
There once was a baby and a mother who were connected by a magical cord. But one day the cord was cut, and the mother went to sleep. The baby was left all alone.
But the baby made lots of friends at Wish House, and everyone was very nice to him. The baby was happy.
His friends told him how to wake up his mother. So the baby went right away to go and wake her up. But the mother wouldn't wake up. No matter how he tried, she wouldn't wake up.
Because the one that he was trying to wake up was actually the Devil. The baby had been deceived. Poor baby.
The baby cried and cried and cried. When he thought of the mother, he remembered the feeling of being connected to her through the magical cord.
Just then,a ray of light came down from the sky. The light was very warm and made the baby feel good. When the baby looked into his hand, he saw that the magical cord was lying there.
With the cord clutched in his hand, the baby went happily to sleep.
When Henry had seen that she was reading it as well he picked up the next book, bound in red leather and stained on many of the old pages, and read it aloud for her benefit, much as they both came to secretly regret.
"Crimson Tome"
She who is called the "Holy Mother" be not holy one whit. The "Descent of the Holy Mother" is naught but the Descent of the Devil. Those that be called the "21 Sacraments" be not sacramental one whit. The "21 Sacraments" be naught but the 21 Heresies.
To give birth to a realm of wickedness within the blessed realm of our Lord be blasphemy and the work of the Devil.
If thou would stop the Descent of the Devil, you must bury part of the Conjurer's mother's flesh within the Conjurer's true body. Thou must also pierce the Conjurer's flesh with the 8 spears of "Void", "Darkness", "Gloom", "Despair", "Temptation", "Source", "Watchfulness", and "Chaos". Do so and the Conjurer's unholy flesh will become that which it once was, by the grace of our Lord.
The tome's words had been much more cryptic than Joseph's, but still just as disturbing. A stone had begun to settle in her stomach at this point. By the time Henry had gone into the bedroom and had started reading the scattered sheets of red paper the stone had become a boulder.
The first note he read made his face crease with discomfort, as though he had just experienced what she had been by reading something that was unknowingly familiar. He read it slowly, with his voice fading on certain words as his mind raced to remember why the text made him feel like he was forgetting something.
What's with this room?
It's covered in blood and rust...
This is my room...but what the hell has happened to it...?
This room...is this really my room...?
It's in terrible shape. The air is so heavy...my head hurts...
Creepy...it looks like a face.
What the hell am I writing?
August 2 – Joseph
His eyes had brightened with a worried fervor as he pocketed the note and moved on to the next.
I can't break down the wall.
August 3 – Joseph
Again. Eileen had watched him carefully from the doorway, stepping closer as he started searching the desk.
When the bell rings, Eileen = mother's body, blood.
August 4 – Joseph
"Stop," she had said quietly, her knees feeling terribly weak, "Henry, stop. I don't need to hear more."
Either he didn't hear her or he didn't listen because he had moved straight to the next note.
The Crimson Tome
"Bury part of the Conjurer's mother's flesh within the true body of the Conjurer."
Part of the flesh = super's room?
August 5 – Joseph
"Stop!" she cried, surprised at the volume of her voice. Henry jumped and turned around, eyes still burning with that worried fervor she had seen in them before. She breathed heavily, holding back tears.
"Do you have any idea what this is doing to me?" she whispered pathetically.
Henry blubbered, then had apologized, slowly at first but gaining speed and becoming frantic as the words left his mouth. He rose to his feet and approached her, arms shaking and hovering over her shoulders.
"I'm sorry," he stuttered, "Let's go, we can get out of here now,"
"No," she replied, rubbing her eye, "No, I didn't mean it like that."
That was when she had begged him to stay here and rest. She figured (or hoped) that that had been hours ago that they had found their places and fallen asleep. The bed was covered in dried wax and spent wicks. Some of the candles around the bed were still lit and dripping hot wax onto the edges, effectively making it uncomfortable and forcing them to where they were now.
Being here in Joseph's room 302 brought her a peace of mind, but the peace of mind brought her terrifying clarity. The clarity had come to her in such a way that she hadn't realized she was missing it since she was attacked. It was both refreshing and disappointing at the same time; refreshing because she could finally breathe and think, disappointing because she was losing faith in her own strength and wondered (worried) if she was any different or if anything had happened that did not remain in her memory. If it had, Henry hadn't spoken a word of it. She did remember flashes of ridiculous uncontrollable anger, visions of unspeakable violence and hatred as though they were part of her own childhood, and grinding auditory hallucinations that haunted her most when Henry wasn't near. She hadn't told Henry any of this. Hell, she figured that he was going through similar things—this world was twisted enough that it was possible. On top of that the ghosts seemed to affect him when they didn't affect her. Again, she had figured it was because he had spent more time in this world than she did, initially. Maybe it was something to be accepted but not talk about.
She had never figured that it could be because it was only happening to her. She had never figured that the ghosts only affected Henry because she was closer to being one than he was.
Shuddering and whimpering as Joseph's heavy words played over and over again in her head (number twenty the mother reborn Eileen Galvin hurry she's being taken over she's number twenty the mother reborn) she struggled to recount her past memories and childhood as precisely as possible from her earliest memory of spilling milk on the carpet to the turn of the knob of her door that let the man in the coat enter her apartment. Sorting her thoughts and plucking out the anomalies, Eileen frantically tried to place where she had always been in her life and tried to reaffirm her identity by doing so—the milk on the carpet, playing with Bob and getting hit for it, the day her parents brought a puppy home, the dog that bit her arm so bad she screamed and it bled and she hit it back with a rock and threw more rocks and more rocks and suddenly all she wanted to do was shoot them all, acne in middle school, reading the Sacraments very well, undeserved popularity in high school, yes she still had her doll she had gotten it from a little girl on the subway that had taken pity on her she'd be perfect for number twenty, relationships, rejection from that bitch that had tempted her she was a whore anyways better off as the sixteenth sacrament, moving to South Ashfield Heights, mother isn't waking up, friends in college, she had all the ten hearts in order, graduation, Assumption, plans for the Peace Corps, round two they called it round three they'll call this one, the attack, the reunion, Henry Townshend, the Receiver of Wisdom.
Eileen dug her chipped and bleeding nails into her flesh despite the pain it caused. Half of those memories weren't hers, she knew they weren't hers but they seemed so real and relevant to her that she was having trouble forcing herself to disbelieve them.
There was one though that she had no idea how to identify it. There were three people in the memory: a grimy homeless man, a mother, and her chipper six-year-old daughter in a pink winter coat. It had happened in the subway, the girl had felt sorry for the man and had given him her doll to cherish and help keep him warm in the winter. The mother had shooed her away before anything else could happen.
Eileen's heartbeat raced. She recognized the pink coat in the memory, it had belonged to her when she was just starting elementary school. The mother too, she recognized the face as her own mother. And the doll, that was her doll—her favorite doll until she was six years old because she had given it to a man in the subway. The man in the subway, though her memory was hazy, had stringy blond hair and cold light eyes. Her mind might have been playing tricks on her at this point, but her memory of how the man in the subway looked matched perfectly with the terrorizing face of the man in the coat, Walter Sullivan.
Eileen felt dizzy.
The doll. That was why she was here.
The doll was the reasoning behind her being number twenty, the Mother Reborn.
Her vision faded and she fell unconscious.
She didn't know how much time had passed when she came to again, but Henry was still quietly sleeping just out of her vision with the same broken breaths she had come to find comfort in. Shifting on the couch, Eileen tried to prop herself against the cushions so she could see him still curled in the chair.
How had he come to this? she wondered. Or does the "Receiver of Wisdom" hold less symbolism than...than a mother does? Was it dumb coincidence, bad karma? Or was she like her in that there was some repressed memory that held the key as to why they were trapped in this hell?
She wished she knew. She had spent too long feeling utterly alone in this world and while it was granted that part of that was her fault for being so guarded around Henry (though he wouldn't exactly blame her for that she knew) she honestly yearned for his companionship. Though Eileen knew he wasn't very good at small talk she desperately wanted him to fill her head with idle, mundane chatter. On top of that she wanted to feel physical comfort—hands on her shoulders, head on his lap, whatever it was as long as it gave her the false sensation of security. She was going utterly insane laying here failing to block her memories, thoughts, and the words of others.
Eileen wanted him to wake up as badly as Walter wanted his mother to.
There was only the gentle quiet to answer her plea.
Henry grunted and shifted some several minutes later, long after Eileen's thoughts drifted to nothingness. She sat up on the couch and watched as his eyes blinked slowly. Wincing as he started to come to terms in the awkward position he had slept in, he gingerly stretched his limbs and yawned, eyes fluttering shut in a futile attempt to catch even a few more seconds of sleep. When the kinks in his neck, joints, and extremities made it clear to him that there would be no more rest he wearily opened his eyes and sighed quietly, staring into the distance.
"Good morning," Eileen said softly. Henry noticed her for the first time since he awoke and made a rumbling hum in reply, sitting up and grimacing from the aches and pains both new and old.
"How did you sleep?" she asked.
"Good," he mumbled as he rubbed the side of his face with his scabbing fingers. The stubble on his face pricked at the scabs but he no longer seemed to care if he was hurt further or not.
"Good." she replied.
"Relatively." he added.
"Yeah."
"You?"
Eileen rested her head to the side of the couch, "I woke up once, briefly. But other than that...fine. No nightmares."
Henry looked relieved before he bent forward to rest his head in his hands, gently massaging his brow and cheeks. Eileen closed her eyes and breathed slowly. Despite the dark whirlpool her thoughts had become, it wasn't oppressive here in this room. She appreciated that perhaps more than she realized.
Henry stood up and groaned as things that shouldn't be popping popped as he stretched, occasionally wincing and whimpering. At one point he cried out in pain and Eileen's eye flew open, seeing him doubled over in pain, his burnt left arm gingerly hovering over his ribs.
"What is it?" Eileen asked worriedly, lifting her head away from the couch.
"Everything," Henry growled, struggling to bite back frustrated and pained tears. Eileen laid her head back, watching him as he carefully unwound himself until he could stand comfortably.
"Do you need help with anything?" Eileen offered, "I can't do much but I might be able to massage something if you wanted,"
"No," Henry rejected quietly, nursing his burnt arm before carefully moving to his legs and feet, "It's alright."
"It's okay," Eileen persisted, "I don't mind doing you a favor."
Henry flinched and looked at her as though he was going to be sick from how incredulous he was.
"Oh...," Eileen said quietly, "Did I...say the wrong thing?"
Another wince escaped his lips as he contemplated what to say. Slowly he allowed himself to limp to the unoccupied seat of the couch before sitting himself down on the cushions near Eileen's feet. Sighing, he laid his head back, exposing his stubbly neck and adam's apple. Eileen's gaze dropped to her feet and knees, bent in such a way that they were still securely on the couch.
"Cynthia had said something similar," Henry swallowed after a while.
"The ghost in the subway?"
He made a noise in affirmation, "She...well...offered me a favor—a 'special favor'—if I managed to find the exit."
Eileen raised her eyebrows, "Oh? Did you find the exit?"
"No. She said she did, but...she was attacked before I could reach her."
Eileen reached over and placed a gentle hand over his as he drew a breath to continue.
"I don't know," he swallowed hard, "I think I could've reached her, if I had just been faster up the escalator, hadn't tripped and fallen, if—,"
"If you had paid more attention, or were faster, smarter, more agile, if you had just done things differently, maybe this would all been different." Eileen filled in the words for him. He looked over at her with tears stinging his eyes. She breathed shakily. She did not need to be told that this description fit with all the victims he saw die—including her.
"Lie down, Henry," she said, standing up.
"Eileen—,"
"I promise I'll try not to hurt you more," she smirked. Begrudgingly he did as she asked, his legs hanging over the arm rest on one side as his chin hooked over the other. Gently Eileen slid herself into the soft groove of his stomach, flexing her fingers.
"Do you think anything is broken?" Eileen asked before smirking again, "Other than your ass?"
Henry tensed, "U-um, I think a rib or two, lower right side."
"Down here?" Eileen asked, gently touching the right side of his waist and avoiding where the ribs started. When he confirmed Eileen lifted her hand and placed it in the space between his neck and shoulder. The tips of her fingers were on fire from her broken and split nails and it was awkward with only one hand, but she tried to work past it the best she could, carefully and slowly massaging his shoulders and upper back. More than once she had to remind him to relax no matter how hard it would be forcing himself to do so. When he had begun to whimper and tense up in anticipation as she had gotten halfway down his back she stopped.
"Sorry if I got too far," she muttered, flexing her hand again. He mumbled something inaudible, she guessed it was a dismissal of her apology, before slowly sitting up again.
"Better?" she asked.
"A little," he answered honestly, "Thank you."
"You can thank me when you return the favor after we get out of here," her smile was forced but her eye shone at the thought. Henry forced a small smile back. Neither of them were sure if the other thought the idea of escape was honestly believable.
He stood up and offered his hand. Reluctantly she took it. Though she had mentioned the idea of escape she didn't want to leave this area, so full of the calming quiet that she know will be destroyed the moment they step out of here. Eileen was terrified of what could happen, terrified of the memories that weren't hers and what they would do to her if they took over. Henry led her down the small hallway where a green-bladed pickaxe was stuck in the wall between the doors. Easing the pickaxe free, Henry carried it into the bathroom. There in the bathroom she saw the hole for the first time, ringed in red runes and completely dominant over everything else in the bathroom. The sink was bent and shoved aside, the mirror was broken, and bits of plaster and metal still dusted the floor.
She gripped his hand as it began to slip away, preventing him from leaving and causing him to turn around.
"I can see the hole." she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Henry set the pickaxe and the shovel down.
"Do you...want to go through it together?"
Eileen started, "N-No, no I don't...I don't know. Where would it go?"
Henry stared at it thoughtfully, "I'm not sure...,"
"Could it send us to two different places?"
Henry looked back at her. Anything was possible in this world—that is to say, a rule shouldn't be expected to be kept the same all the time. Eileen's face noticeably twisted in pain before she could hide it.
"You go," she squeaked, "I'll follow."
She avoided his gaze. Worried, Henry reached forward in an attempt to study her face but she stepped back, her shoulders rising like insecure peaks. Desperately trying to search for something to say, Henry felt dismay sink into his stomach when he once again came up with nothing that would be remotely comforting or open to her.
That was a lie for once. There were several things he wanted to say, some of them so incredibly mundane they wouldn't have made a difference and others so deeply personal he was frightened that he would disturb her and lose her trust. After an awkward minute of standing in silence, Henry audibly gulped down his wilted pride and stepped away to enter the hole.
Eileen's hand lashed out, her fingers latching onto his arm. He turned around again.
She was crying.
"Please look for me when you get there, don't forget me!"
He looked at her incredulously.
"Please, if you find me again, please don't leave me alone, I'll go where you go, I don't care about ladders anymore, I just don't want to be alone!"
"I will," Henry answered, reaching up to her hand and running his thumb over her knuckles, "I will, it's okay."
"Nothing's okay," she sobbed quietly. Henry shifted and her hand fell from him, hiding her ugly blotched face, "Henry, nothing's okay, but—,"
She looked at him. He blinked, startled from the intensity of her gaze that was rife with too many emotions he couldn't name. Fear, there was definitely fear in her eye, but there were too many other emotions alive and burning that fear might as well just been the understudy for their grand performance. Henry waited expectantly for her to finish her sentence.
Eileen cupped the side of his face, feeling his stubble on her palms as she stood on the ball of her feet to kiss his lips. Henry stumbled on his footing from the shock. Before he could pull himself together enough to respond she had retreated, her hand dropping to his lapel and her gaze dropping to his collarbone.
"Please don't forget me," she whispered, "Joseph is right about everything. I...I don't know who you'll find if you find me again."
"I won't," Henry answered just as softly as her, "I can't."
Her breaths became shakily uneven and her grip on his shirt tightened. Henry lifted a hand and gently closed it around the shoulder of her broken arm.
"Eileen...,"
She inhaled and held her breath, bursting at the seams with tears before she released it, "Go. Go, Henry. Now. Please." Eileen stepped away from him, her hair hiding her face. Henry instantly became trapped between doing as she wished and leaving or staying just a moment longer to see her face again. Damning his awkward instincts, Henry reached forward, placing his hands on either side of her head. She flinched and stared at him, trembling. For a moment she was terrified that he'd kiss her and never stop, for a moment she was afraid she had made another innocent mistake like she had all those years ago as a girl in the subway and that this was ultimately going to lead to her harm and undoing.
But no. He simply gazed at her despite the ugly condition of her face, drinking in every detail as specifically as he could before she wrenched her face away. Undeterred by the abruptness of her actions, Henry politely stepped away from her.
"I'll find you." he promised her before he climbed into the hole.
Eileen covered her face and sobbed.
–
The soft sensation of her scabbing, broken lips remained on his chapped ones as he eased himself out of his bed. He hadn't seen it coming. One minute she was sobbing and then all of the sudden she had pulled him close. The corners of her lips were a mix of copper and salt—salt from the tears, copper from the dried blood when Walter had dug a knife into them. She was warm, almost feverishly hot. It worried him.
Everything worried him, especially now that he was separated from her after what Joseph had told them and what she had done. The skeptical part of his mind chastised him for getting his hopes up. What if she had just kissed him to ensure he'd find her again? It didn't seem probable that she would do that—Henry hoped that she knew him too well to know that he'd just leave her to rot if it were in his power to save her, and he knew her too well to honestly suspect her of something like that. She would've resorted to it long ago if she wanted to. He would've been putty in her hands. Hell, who's to say he wasn't from the start with or without a kiss?
Henry rested his forehead against the cool door frame in his bedroom. Somehow his heart was beating steadily even though his mind was so jumbled he didn't know where to find it or how to stop it.
There was nothing he could do for her. He had to get out of this room as quickly as possible so he could find her again and hopefully take her somewhere safe if not out of this hell entirely. That was the greatest gift he could muster.
He opened his bedroom door.
A muffled, forlorn yowl greeted him. Henry paused, listening intently. Another one, softer this time, followed. It sounded like a cat. Wary, he crept out to the trunk, listening as the lonely cat continued to cry. Picking up a Holy Candle, he located the sound to his fridge. A terrible smell wafted from it, similar to the nightmare he had had what seemed like eons ago. Keeping his distance, he reached out at arms length and opened the fridge.
His face twisted in disgusted pity. On a platter there was a mauled lump of flesh with a dingy tail attached to it. Patches of orange fur still clung to whatever skin it had left, and the mass was resting in a puddle of its own blood. The tail twitched and moved as well as what Henry guessed was supposed to be the neck. The lump moved as though it looked at him with a bloody cavity for a face and meowed hopefully.
A flash of red clouded the sides of his vision as a dull pain throbbed at the front of his head. Henry sighed, lighting the Candle and setting it between the door and the fridge itself. The cat meowed again, as if recognizing what he was doing, and the lump of flesh began to shrink as the Candle burned. The tail swished and curled around the body and it gave one last farewell before disappearing all together. Quietly shutting the fridge, Henry rubbed his nose to get rid of the rest of the smell.
A red note was tucked underneath his door. Bending down, Henry tried to read it but much of it was faded or too stained to make out.
No. 1: Ten heart...
No. 2: Ten...
No. 3: Ten hearts...
No. 4: Ten hearts – Steve Garl...
No. 5: Ten...
No. 6: Ten heart...
No. 7: Ten hearts – Billy Locane
No. 8: Ten hearts – Miriam Locane
No. 9: Ten hearts...
No. 10: Ten...
No. 11: Assumption – Walter Sullivan
No. 12: Void...
No. 13: Darkness...
No. 14: Gloom...
No. 15: Despair – Joseph Schreiber
No. 16: Temptation – Cynthia Velasquez
No. 17: Source – Jasper Gein
No. 18: Watchfulness – Andrew DeSalvo
No. 19: Chaos – Richard Braintree
No. 20: Mother – Eileen Galvin
No. 21: Wisdom – Henry Townshend
August 7
Henry wondered why he didn't get this chilling list earlier. Perhaps he would've been able to do something about it—then again, he probably wouldn't have known what the note was and it would've gone to waste. Still it deeply unsettled him to see his name in Joseph's handwriting placed in the last of the 21 Sacraments. He had never met Joseph—never even knew that Joseph was connecting him to the murders. Then again Joseph probably hadn't known this until he himself was in Henry's shoes—far too deep to escape now.
Folding the piece of paper carefully, Henry placed it on the counter-top as a grim reminder. He and Eileen were the last. Hell, Henry was the last. If he couldn't finish this, then nobody could.
Feeling oddly confident, Henry took the pickaxe that he had retrieved from Joseph's room 302 and approached the wall between his bedroom and bathroom.
Joseph couldn't break down the wall. Henry wondered why. The pickaxe had been stuck in a spray of unsuccessful cracks, and Henry was worried that it would do the same to him. In his mind he knew it was just a wall between him and room 301, but he wouldn't get his hopes up. Using whatever strength he could find, he swung the pickaxe in an overhead motion, hoping it wouldn't get stuck in the wall.
The sharp end of the pickaxe broke through the drywall like it was paper. Henry coughed and sputtered from the spray of dust, twisting the pickaxe so the broad-bladed side pointed at the floor. Grasping the handle with both hands, Henry pulled. The pickaxe did not give him as much resistance as he expected and as a result he tumbled back onto his butt, sending bolts of pain to his head. He cried out as a chunk of drywall collapsed onto his feet, startling him. Coughing from the dust, Henry eased himself back up.
There was an entire different room attached to his apartment. Henry stared at it, stupefied. Frank had never mentioned it to him, and none of the other tenants knew of its existence. Carefully he stepped inside, ducking to be able to fit inside the hole. He didn't want to know what Frank would say or what sort of fines awaited him for this damage if he ever got back to a normal life.
The moment he crossed the threshold a pungent, sickening smell hit him like a train. Covering his face and finding support against some portable shelves near the hole, Henry staggered forward, struggling to breathe as lightly as possible. Resting his burned arm against the corner of the shelving, he stopped to try and survey the small room despite the hot tears stinging his eyes.
An empty chemical bottle from the shelf dropped to the floor in front of him. The cap skittered off and rolled down the groove of the floorboards, swinging to a stop in front of a puddle of decayed mush. Henry's eyes traveled from the puddle, staring in horror at what hung above it. It was the body of a long dead man, tangled in wire and strung to a crucifix fastened from medical gurneys. Feathers and bodies of dead crows were nailed to the crucifix alongside the body. The body itself was dressed in a long dark coat splattered with blood, and its paling brittle hair just barely covered his glassy-eyed, assuming expression. There were numbers carved on his bare feet: 11121, 11/21. Walter's true body. The arrangement of his hands was stiff—one by his side and one offering a small token to the meager altar in front of him. The altar displayed two blood-stained goblets and a book—no doubt depicting the Ritual of the Holy Assumption. Behind the crucifix an open refrigerator washed the body in an eerie, unfeeling glow. Henry crept forward, counting ten bags of blood within the fridge.
Unwillingly he inhaled, dragging in the disgusting smell deep into his throat. Coughing and retching, Henry grasped his stomach as he stumbled backwards, feeling tears and mucus drip down his face. Covering himself with his arms and trying to breathe through his shirt, he struggled to keep his footing and inched himself closer to the body.
This was behind the wall. This was just on the other side every single day he went to sleep in his bed. The body was watching his every movement in his apartment. This was why his room sometimes smelled a little sweet and funny during the hottest days of summer. There was the dead body of a psychopathic serial murderer just on the other side of his home.
He crept further.
What should he do? He had found his true location like Joseph had instructed, but now what? This body was most definitely dead, and Henry didn't think that attacking it any further would change anything about his current situation. Though it was disgusting—if applicable—information, Henry had no idea what to do now. If anything he should just go back through the hole and ask Eileen for her point of view.
He was about to turn around when he saw an odd shape sticking out of one of Walter's coat pockets. Despite the fact that he was about to throw up again, Henry leaned forward, squinting past the tears to try and see what it really was.
It looked like a key.
Holding his breath and trying to be quick, Henry put a shaking hand forward. Grasping the tip of the key, he pulled it up and out of the pocket. It was attached to a ring with three other keys. Biting his lip, he turned away and fled the room. Even though his apartment and that room were now connected the smell didn't seem to get there yet. Gasping for air (no matter how stuffy the apartment was to begin with) Henry looked at the keyring in the palm of his hand.
The four keys were small and each one seemed of a different make than the other. On the side of the ring the word LIBERATION was carved with an unsteady hand. It seemed odd to him, until he glanced back at his door and the four padlocks holding the sturdy chains in place.
Henry wasted no time. At once he was at the padlocks, trying the keys until each one sprang free. The chains loosened, and Henry raked his fingers at them, pulling them free from the door. He was breathless as thoughts of freedom and normality ran through his mind. This was the end. All he had to do was find Eileen, bring her through a hole that worked until she was safe, then track down Walter and kill him. No telling the authorities. He'd be locked in a loony bin, and he did not come this far to wrench his freedom back to only be thrown in a nice white little padded room for the rest of his life or until they deemed him "sane".
Henry's eager hand closed around the knob and, without taking any chances, he put his shoulder up against the door and pushed with all his might. The door swung open and he took his first step back into the hallway of South Ashfield Heights.
But he did not take a second.
He stood there, frozen by where his eyes met the floor. The tile outside of his room degraded after only a few measly feet. Slowly, as terror lumped in his throat, his eyes traveled upwards until he saw the festering red walls of the Other World apartment complex writhing and squiggling down the entire hallway.
"No way...," he breathed, feeling all of his confidence and bravery slide away from him like an old carapace, "Not here too...,"
He wanted to scream and curse, he wanted break down the walls and tear them apart as if it was only shitty wallpaper and the real world was just behind it. Anger and grief swelled in his chest, culminating in tears at the corners of his eyes.
He couldn't escape.
