Unnamed POV
It was nighttime when everything happened. I had gone through the entirety of this house top to bottom, looking for anything that I could use, and came up with nothing. Figures as much, whoever owned this house before probably took all that with them. Regardless, I was determined to make my way over to that house. I just had this feeling that whatever brought me here, or at least something to help me find out who, was somewhere in that man's basement. I wasn't sure how or why, but I just... knew. Maybe it was the fact I'm stuck in what was basically a giant video game that gave me that impression, but at this moment, it didn't really matter, I just had to get down there, and from what I could gather, it wasn't going to be simple. Just from what I could see from the front window, the door leading to the basement had 3 different locks, each red, green and blue respectively, a couple planks of wood nailed across the door, and some sort of strange... thing that looked like what you would put a credit card in at an ATM. This guy really did not want anyone getting into this basement, and here I was about to do exactly that. However, while I looked on at the house, something caught my attention. In the windows to my right, I could make out what looked like the man inside of the house being attacked by something. My immediate instinct was to run over and see what was going on, but I managed to hold myself back. Eventually, he was able to bring himself up and took off running. This was my chance, I had to get over there now while he was gone. Without a second thought, I burst through the front door of the house and carefully made my way over towards the giant house, keeping myself as low as I could make myself on my feet, and planted myself beneath the same window where I last saw the neighbor.
It honestly took me a moment to realize that I was actually about to break into someone's house. Even though I had my reason for doing so, it still felt incredibly wrong to do so, but I knew I had to go through with this if I wanted to know what was going on. So, slowly bringing myself up towards the window, I was surprised that the window was in fact, unlocked and slid open with relative ease. Deciding not to question it, I quietly slipped inside, shutting the window behind me. The hallway was dark, with only a few overhead lights giving me any sort of view, most of which were faced towards the door that led to the basement, which to my utter shock... was already opened. I was completely flabbergasted by this.
"Who else could have wanted to get down there?" Is there someone else trapped in this world with me?" I thought to myself. I was positive I was the only one. It didn't make any sense that someone would be here, wouldn't they have shown up in the house with me? I quickly shook those thoughts out of my head. That wasn't important right now. What mattered was that it was opened, and that my answers had to be down there. I quickly scanned the area to make sure the neighbor was still missing and hustled over to the door, shutting it behind me as I started the trek down the creaking wooden stairs. It's just some creepy old basement, right? What's the worst that could be down here?
Each of one of those stairs sounded like they were about to break as I slowly made my way down, grasping onto the red bars for dear life. It felt like forever, but I finally felt my feet reach the blue tiled floor, I was shocked to discover... the laundry room? Yea, that's what it was, complete with a washing machine, a metal shelf leaning to my left and... something huge and polished grey to my right that reached the ceiling of this place. There was also a pipe leaking water onto the washing machine, which was opened as well. I looked through, only to find that this "machine" was actually not a washing machine, but rather it hid a secret passage that leads to a white door. Confused as to why something like this would even exist. I pushed myself through the washer, which had an open hole cut on it's back to serve as a tunnel of sort to the door and made my way through the door. The room beyond it was fairly empty, save for a few candles sitting next to the far corner. The walls were covered with a green and dark green vertical striped pattern and for some reason, the window had a picture of a bright sunny day on them. Odd, but I couldn't stop to question. Grabbing one of the candles, I saw a large square hole in the wall just to my left, so I hurried over and hopped through the opening, being careful not to let my candle go out. Even with the candle, it was still hard to see, but I could see another candle set to the right, along with a light barely showing around the corner. Seeing nowhere else to go, I made my way over to the light and discovered a fuse box attached to the white marble wall. It was already opened and the switch was pulled. I was really getting nervous over who else was down here, but I also knew I wasn't going to find out unless I kept going, so I pushed on past that room into another, this one looking much worse for wear. It seems to resemble a living room, as there was a TV and couch to my right, along with a rug very similar to the one the other house had, although I could hardly make them out with how dark I was. The hallway to my left was thankfully slightly better lit, so I hurried down that way, pushing past random oil barrels, bunk bed frames, doors I couldn't open, what looked like a knocked over fridge with it's doors ripped out... what was this fucking basement? I couldn't even bring myself to comprehend half of what could have happened down here, let alone the fact that everything in this basement, including the floor itself, left like it was slanted slightly to my right, adding to my confusion. Regardless, I pushed onward, till I came across another leaking pipe, water rushing down to the wall, and I could make out another light past set of seemingly random stacked objects, all of which I couldn't tell what they were.
I was about to head through the opening to see what the light was when suddenly, I was grabbed from behind, their hand wrapping around my mouth as I yelped, pulling me back into the corner of the stack, dropping my candle in the process, which rolled down the slant into the water, where it was quickly put out by the leaking liquid. I was instinctively about to start yelling, before the person in question quickly spun me around and while keeping their hand on my mouth, made a calm shushing sound and motion with their hands, which I only barely made out through the darkness of that corner. They certainly didn't seem to be the neighbor, which made me silently breathed out in relief. Whoever this was had to be the person who opened the door down here to begin with. I had too many questions I wanted to ask them, with the only thing stopping me being their hand lashed to my mouth. I saw their hand gestures over the opening I was about to head through before, as they carefully turned my head around to face where they were pointing. They then spun me back over to face them, doing the same shushing gesture as before. Understanding what they meant, I nodded, and they slowly let go, allowing me to lead the way toward that opening.
As I carefully brought myself through that opening next to the stack of objects, I saw the same light that I was about to follow earlier, only before I made another step, I froze in the gap when I saw the light began to move towards me. Dropping to my knees, I carefully peaked around to see a strange shadowy figure shuffling over towards the left side of the hallway the gap lead to. It was seemingly human-like and hunched over, the light coming from its eyes as it moved past the stack without caring to look. It was silent as it walked, but there was this strange... feeling that surrounded it, almost like the room itself was vibrating as it moved through. It was bizarre, and I'm guessing this is why the person behind me grabbed me in the first place. Who knows what that thing would do to me. After a few moments, however it did make it way down the hallway into the shadow, so as carefully and as quietly as we could we made our way down the opposite way of the hall towards another light, this one clearly mounted on the wall, past some steaming pipes and another set of random objects leaning against the wall. At the end was the light, sitting above an open frame along with a switch with an up arrow on it. As I turned to question the other person about it, my eyes nearly shot out of my head when I discovered who was following me.
"Yuri-!?"
That was all I could get out before she cut me off with her finger, pointing back towards the shadow figure went. Realizing what she meant, I took a quick breath, trying to regain as much as my composure as I could, although that in itself was hard to do as I had to fight to stop myself from questioning how and why she was here, before the two of us heading through the opening to another dark room. This one had another series of candles across the ground, along with two doors with green light pointing down at them, which also revealed the barbed wire fence that separated us from another open door with a white glow coming from it. We headed down into the left door, which had a wooden chair leaning against. I carefully moved the chair off to the side while Yuri was looking behind us to make sure the figure wasn't following, and we both entered the next room. A fireplace lit this room up better than anything this basement had before, which showed off the randomly empty wooden shelf that extended to the ceiling in front of us, the boxes filled with random stuff to our left, the large furnace to our left, and the pipes that run around the room to our left and above the fireplace. As we looked around, Yuri pointed towards the red wall opposite the fireplace, which looked like a very lazy attempt to hide a secret exit using stacks of cinderblocks. As we attempted to start pulling the stack apart, the whole thing toppled over, blocks hitting the ground with a loud thud. We both gasped. What if the shadow heard that? We glanced at each other, the expression on her face made it obvious neither of us wanted to know that answer, and we both hurried toward the open light filled door, trying to be still quiet in case we were wrong, which turned out was fake, my hand burning slightly as I touched it, stepping back as I winced in pain.
As we frantically spun trying to figure out where else we could go, Yuri quickly realized we could get to the other door from this side, pointing me toward it and we both hastily went through it, locking the door behind us. We both found ourselves in a sparingly lit corridor that seemed to be set up like a path through a maze, but with only one path walled on both sides by upright planks of wood. Not wasting a moment's pause, we hurried down through the path, constantly twisting and turning until we came across a lonely white door at the end. Not wanting to waste a second if the shadow was behind us, I threw the door open only to find... the neighbor on his knees, clearly frightened by something? In another room containing only wooden flooring with a dark green rug with yellow stripes resembling train tracks, light green wallpaper with faded diamond patterns, two yellow framed windows with a "T" pattern on them, an empty light brown and grey wooden bookshelf, two strangely shaped polished boomboxes and a wooden skateboard all smashed apart to our left, and a mattress with a dark blue sheet, a light blue pillow and a broken wooden frame of what looked like a young boy thrown against the right wall. The neighbor was on his knees at the end of the room, seemingly begging for his life. What he was facing was in fact, the shadow figure we saw earlier, who turned around to face us as it heard our gasps. Even with the light shining through the windows, illuminating the room, the figure remained in shadow, and what looked like shards of pitch black glass were attached all across its body, and it's body seemed to constantly warp and fidget like of sort of liquid body, like it was struggling to keep itself together. The only thing that was clear was its unmoving white eyes, which we could tell were focused directly at us now. The neighbor was taken aback by our sudden entrance as well, but made no attempts to move away from the shadow. The shadow didn't move, but rather just stared at us for a moment, not attacking or anything, before turning back towards the neighbor, who was continuing to tremble at the shadow feet. What it did next caught me completely by surprise. Its left hand suddenly shot into its chest, and it pulled out what looked like an old wooden hourglass, only floating and spinning above its palm with light circling and shining around, before suddenly grabbing with it's hand and smashing it down on the neighbor head, shattering it and knocking him out cold. We both gasped as it did so, the shadow watching as the broken hourglass began to shake on the ground before a large purple vortex rose up and appear where it once was, pulling the hourglass and the neighbor threw it, the shadow turning back to face us once more before soon following through the vortex, vanishing as it did so. Turning to face each other with nervous glances, she simply nodded towards me and I quickly knew what she meant. Without a second thought, we hurried through the vortex, hoping to find where the shadow and the neighbor ended up before something bad could happen.
