Chapter 18: Love
There was quite a selection of doors for Adrian to choose. A set of double doors, a beaten down looking wooden door, a door with a faded restroom symbol on it, and an elevator in the corner. The elevator seemed a bit too unstable to head into, and Adrian wasn't about to head up another floor until he checked everything on the first floor. The other doors he deducted through random choice, and he picked the double doors. He swung one open and glanced around- in doing so he took quick notice that it was the kitchen. It didn't seem all that sanitary, however- pots and pans were scattered everywhere, the tiled walls bronzed with rust.
There was obviously a much more comforting light blue decor that strained to break through the filth that piled up over what seemed to be the years that the hospital hadn't been in use. However, it didn't seem like that mildew and rust would go away any time soon, either.
Frowning, Adrian left the room- wasn't much of a reason to beat around the bush in the kitchen. And even if he were hungry, a haunted looking hospital was not his ideal place to satiate an appetite. He closed the door behind him and headed farther down the hallway in hopes that he would continue to have luck with the lack of a menacing presence. The last thing he wanted was to be caught in one of the building's small hallways by that Pyramid Head, as he so affectionately referred to it as in his mind. But the more he let it sink in, he really didn't want to be caught by anything other than Cybil in that hospital. And if something moved in front of him that wasn't Cybil, he convinced himself that he was going to shoot it.
The next door had finally opened after numerous failed attempts at getting the doorknob to move. The wooden door was so badly damaged through age that it almost refused to work, until Adrian bashed his shoulder into it. He had to not follow through completely with his charge however, as doing so would have caused him to fall down a nasty, steep flight of stairs.
The moment the door flew open, Adrian clutched the doorknob in what was like a death grip. One could discern that the ultra narrow hall was shrouded in a heavy layer of darkness, And Adrian was no exception to that. His eyes squinted as he tried desperately to cut past the darkness in any way possible, but it was no use. Thinking a step forward would help, his right foot poked around for the floor, but came up with nothing.
"Can't see a damn thing like this.." he mumbled under his breath as he turned to open the door further and get the little light from outside to illuminate the hall, but it was no use- he found the door slammed shut again.
"No," he pounded on the door, suddenly coming to a decision that it wasn't a good idea to enter the non-lit room. He had backed up to try and get the door open the same way he had before, but in doing this he forgot that there was no floor.
"Ergh, no!" He fell backwards. His hands swiped for the doorknob, but to no avail. He tumbled down a flight of approximately fifteen steps. His body made a sickening thud against each smack against the ground, until there were no more steps underneath him and an even floor presented itself. "Oww..." he groaned, slowly trying to sit up. He reached out for maybe a wall next to him and found it- the hallway was so incredibly narrow, it didn't take much stretching for him to reach both walls with his hands only. And it was dark. Very dark.
And to make the expereince worse, a noise was beginning to develop nearby. Not hard on the ears but not exactly comforting, either, it sounded like an out of tune song playing on a broken record. A song that sounded like it belonged in the thirties.
"H...ver f.....ay, I will alwa.. l.. you
..owever lo... I st.. I wi.. al...
Whate.. ord... I.. s... w....ways.. ..ve you
I will always lo......."
The words were barely recognizable over the static that overpowered the song. Adrian's ears were at full attention, trying to pick the song out but to no avail. Why he was trying to hear it in the first place, he didn't even know.
"Sounds like it should be an uplifting song," he said to no one in particular, "with all that static in it though, just adds to the depression."
Reaching out for whatever it was, he accidentally bumped into something. He jumped from the shock, but upon feeling about what it was, his hand recoiled when he felt a coldness that practically stung him. Not long after this did he hear a screech of a wheel along the ground, but that only lasted a second. Adrian slowly brought his hand back to whatever it was, and upon some more inspection, he found that it was indeed a broken record player, still spinning in a candid effort to bring forth music. A pitiful expression marked Adrian's face although it would have been impossible to see in such darkness. But either way, it only took a few further gropes through the air to stop the record. But once that happened, Adrian spun around as he heard a voice- a familiar voice.
"I was listening to that," the voice said sharply. No emotion behind it- just a simple declaration that Adrian had ruined someone's good time. Yet Adrian stammered out a reply, although he hesitated to think about it for a minute before he did.
"Maria?"
He then heard a shuffling movement afterwards. The sound of feet clacking on a tiled floor, mixed with the swishing of cloths brushing against one another. Adrian began to grow very uneasy, his stomach beginning to tie into knots as the tension was laid on thick in the dark hall. And then, silence. A few long, somehow stress removing moments, of silence. And then came the click.
Adrian snapped his eyes shut out of reaction to the light over him. This would soon change once he was able to get his first good look at the hall, however, realizing that the light wasn't that bright at all. It did the job in showing the thin area off, however, as there wasn't even much to show off really. Unfortunately, when Adrian got to have a detailed glimpse at the place, he soon wished he was bathed in the darkness again.
The broken record player sat on top of one of many gurneys that went off in two lines, one down each side of the hall. Each one seemed to be occupied by human figures, but one couldn't say for sure with the damp red sheets that concealed each frame. Adrian winced at the sight, and his body stiffened when he felt something touch one of his black and white high-tops: a huge cockroach, almost the size of an average fist. It seemed to look up at Adrian, and it locked eyes with him for a brief moment before it hissed cruelly. Adrian shook his head and regained his senses enough to kick the mutated cockroach down the corridor, as if it were a soccer ball. However the person that he kicked the bug towards didn't like that very much.
"Oh, I'm uh.. I'm sorry." Adrian seemed a bit flustered by Raven's presence not too far down the hallway. Her right hand was raised, and clutched in it was a nearly unnoticeable little chain connected to a sole swinging lightbulb.
The look on her face was different from the way she looked three months ago- whereas then she seemed to look like a kid in a candy store whenever Adrian made his presence felt, now she seemed as if terribly infuriated by him. It was safe to say that she cared less for the cockroach that scurried off down the hall behind her, though.
"What did you call me?" She said softly, although soft could hardly describe the look she had on her face. She didn't seem to like being mistaken for someone else very much.
"Sorry," Adrian stammered, "you just sounded like someone else, that's all." He let out a soft sigh- the disappointment in his features that it wasn't Maria at the end of the hall waiting for him could be felt. And it only seemed to tick Raven off even more.
"It's not okay, what you did to her," Raven said grimly, "not right at all."
Adrian took a baby step forward, trying not to alert the young woman. "What do you mean?" He cautiously continued toward her, holding his hands high to show that he wasn't going to try anything. Raven didn't seem to buy it however, and she began to back off.
"Stay back, Adrian," she muttered. It was the first time he had remembered her call him by that name. But given the current situation he was in, he couldn't bring himself to think that was so important. Frowning, Adrian complied and stopped where he was.
"I- I don't understand," he answered slowly, "what is it that I did?" Upon getting no answer, he started to show signs of frustration. He wasn't liking what Raven was doing. "What did I do that is so bad compared to half the things I was put through? Huh?" He got so carried away that he completely forgot about Raven's plea and marched towards her once more. "You answer me, you tell me what I did that was so bad! What did I do?! Stop with the riddles and tell me if it's so important, bitch!" As he closed the distance between them both, Raven reached into her black kimono and pulled out a knife.
This had stopped Adrian dead in his tracks. He couldn't bring himself to shoot any human other than the one he originally intended to shoot, so he refused to draw his handgun in response. He simply stopped and took a small step back. "You don't want to use that," he insisted, in regards to her weapon.
She looked down at the knife she held, and then back up at Adrian. Her eyes squinted slightly, as if deliberately holding back emotion. Holding back remorse. "I could never bring myself to hate you," she whispered. She then trailed off for a moment, before she confirmed to herself what to say next. "But what you did to her.. what you did to me is inexcusable." She sighed, and turned away from Adrian, looking to leave. Adrian didn't want any of that just yet, though.
"So that's how it is?" Raven did not answer his question, she just continued walking. Adrian began to walk after her once more, and he raised his voice the next time. "What in the hell did I do wrong? Aren't you going to answer me, for Chrissake?" At that remark, Raven stopped. The knife in her hand was grasped in a vice of iron. But still, she did not turn around. She took a deep breath, and continued walking. "Hey!" Adrian yelled after her, though it was no use- she disappeared beyond the wooden door at the end of the hall.
"Shit."
He ran a slow paced jog after her. Reaching the door he made no second thought about not entering- there was nowhere else to go, anyway. And to make sure of that, he looked back over his shoulder at the small amount of light which was now behind him. It was blatantly apparent that he was going to miss that light.
He exhaled loudly out his mouth and tugged on the doorknob in his right hand. It opened easily, and revealed more darkness as a result. The lightbulb in the middle of the hall Adrian was standing in managed to show off some of the room in front of him, but not much. And not nearly enough for that matter.
Adrian frowned as he stepped into what was another very narrow hallway. "Raven?" He eased on forward. This time he had his Walther raised and ready to blow a hole in anything he came across. He was fairly sure that the hall was safe, however- if something was in there, he'd have heard it.
To his surprise, though, the hall had opened up into a large room, which was also pitch black.
'Why does this place gotta be in the fuckin' dark? I hate the dark.'
The darkness proved to be as much of an annoyance as it was a fear factor. There were a couple instances where Adrian had bumped into walls because of the inability to see anything in front of him. He'd need his other senses on high alert, and they were- his ears picked up movement to his right.
"Raven?" He immediately glanced in the direction of the sound and squinted his eyes. He could notice that in the middle of the large room was a long wall that stretched down most of the area, but stopped to leave space in the back for another way to walk around it. The wall was only a few feet thick, and seemed somewhat out of place. However, as he carefully moved closer to it he noticed a small slit where one could walk in. He peered inside of it and noticed another stairwell going down- this one made of steel, as the flickering lightbulb on the ceiling had shown.
Adrian slipped inside and looked down the stairs. There were about ten of them before there was a sharp turn at the bottom, where there would presumably be another flight of them awaiting. The path down, though, was extremely thin- Adrian could barely fit inside as he slowly took one step down. He could hear a very faint, very distant mechanic sound coming from somewhere. He couldn't figure it what it exactly was, although the sound could have been compared to the one a roller coaster makes as the cars are dragged up that long hill up to the top before the huge fall that usually started, and/or capped off the ride. And no machine Adrian heard of before that sounded like that did him any good. Roller coasters always made him puke, at least they did in the memories he had of them.
He eventually thought it best to pay no mind to the noise and continued to make his way downstairs. Once Adrian had reached the bottom of the first flight, he looked to his right and saw what was around the sharp turn and found his intuition to be correct- more steps awaited him, but this time it was different. Halfway down the walls disappeared, leaving nothing but the stairwell leading into pure, unbridled darkness. It wasn't a change of scenery from the shadowed room above, but yet something felt strange to Adrian as he slowly went down a step. And another. And another. And after about seven or eight steps down he realized that the walls didn't stop nearly half way down. The stairs had instead led much farther downward than the lack of light would allow Adrian to see. Slowly but surely, things had been starting to get worse.
That mechanical sound had grown a little louder- not too much, but just enough so you simply could not block it out of your head if you tried. But Adrian still did not bring himself to be affected by that. He was too busy staring at the stairs that seemed to head through the darkness forever. But still, he couldn't bring himself to turn back- there was nowhere he could go anyway.
He then began to move at a brisker pace down the stairs, logic telling him that the sooner he reached the bottom the less fear he'd have to endure. He had broken out into a run at one point, before something stopped him. A figure that Adrian could see as clear as day, shot up over the railing on the right and hunched over it. A human figure that looked like a burn victim- it's skin was pink and flaky, it's scalp free of hair but not without numerous bloodied burns. Its hands were no easier to look at- the fingernails were so long they had become claws.
It looked up at Adrian and grinned, but in a far more menacing grin than friendly. It did not look good in any way, shape, or form.
Adrian stopped right where he was, before hopping up two or three steps. "Holy fuck..." he mumbled, although it was drowned out by the machine noises that grew loud to the point that they would have been unbearable to Adrian if only he wasn't fixated on how to get past the thing about seven steps down. And then, the last thing Adrian expected to happen, happened.
The stairs underneath Adrian's feet started to move, causing him to fall on his back and get dragged down towards the abomination before him. In doing this, his gun left his hands.
'Escalator to hell. Going down. Not GOOD!'
He stood up and took a couple steps back up the escalator to have enough time to get a clean shot off on the monster, but he was forgetting something.
"Aww man!" He could only watch helplessly as his gun drifted down past the monster's outstretched arms. It simply waited patiently for Adrian to get into its range, but the young man disapproved of this. He turned and ran, trying to catch up to the light from the top of the escalator, but it was no use. It was beginning to work like a treadmill- slowly building speed until Adrian was flat out running to keep himself from dropping down.
He peeked back over his shoulder to see that no matter how hard he ran, he was being inched closer to the thing by the minute. It had finally come to a point where there was nothing left to do.
"Ah shiii-" Adrian yelled as he vaulted over his right side of the railing and let himself fall into the blackness below. And before long the shouting was cut off by the abrupt bashing of his body against a cold tile floor.
When Adrian's eyes began to flutter, his head shot in both directions from sheer paranoia. His black hair was already damp with a cold sweat, and for a moment he was sure he was going to piss himself at the sight of that... thing, that was reaching out for him like a child looking for an embrace from their parents. And it didn't help matters that he still couldn't see very much. He could only make himself look up at the place from which he jumped- and found a ten foot high stairway, nowhere near the huge distance the escalator had previously covered.
"That- that's not possible.." Adrian stuttered as he got to his feet. "That fuckin' thing was... it was like a mile long.. like it had no goddamn end!" He moved around to the front of the stairs and found his Walther at the foot, waiting for him. He quickly leaned down to pick it up, before he pointed it around the room. There was no sign of a burned monster anywhere. At least he was alone again.
He walked over and sat on what were now wooden stairs, and caught his breath. "That went well," he mumbled to himself, "Cybil was right. I am going to get myself killed if I keep this up." He seemed ashamed of himself, as if a person that could only be derived from the worst of nightmares wasn't supposed to scare him.
Adrian was about to stand up when his foot had kicked something on the floor by accident. "Huh?" He looked down and picked the item up, examining it as best as the darkness would allow.
'Looks like a journal or something.'
He flipped it open, and was a bit amazed to find only one page in it. And no matter how tough it was to see without the light, the large black lettering on the nice white paper made it for a relatively easy read- there wasn't much to read anyhow.
ROOM 105
SAM
