AN: Another Friday, another chapter. Please enjoy (and maybe leave a review?).
***8***
Tumbling through the window, I found the court yard in disarray. Lodged in the snow was a wrecked car, most of the police and other people had ducked out of the way and hadn't come back out by the time I had ran over to the shredded piece of metal. There were no other wrecked cars and nothing appeared to had caused the accident.
I looked at the woman in the driver's seat.
Her eyes had been burned out of her head, her face frozen into a scream, dried and flaking blood ran from her charred sockets over her face and down her neck.
As the sight registered so did something else, something more sinister and harder to name. Looking into the back seat, something moved. I peered harder.
A ragged hand shot out and clawed at my eyes. Moving backwards just fast enough not to be mauled I stumbled onto the frozen ground and let out a startled yelp as the back door flew off the car. The few people that had began to shuffle into the yard began to stir themselves into a panic. I tried to take in everything at once, uniformed men rushed civilians away, a couple of them came running to help me and the person they thought was trapped in the car.
We need to leave. Now.
Everything felt wrong, even the Walrider was terrified.
Wait.
The Walrider sounded terrified.
I felt my muscles spasm in panic, I tried to yell at the police that were running up.
"No! Turn around!" one of them reached me.
"Whoa there, I can help"
"No, I can walk on my own, run!"
My words didn't come fast enough, there was a yell and a crunch from the car, half the other officers body hung from the rear door. Whatever was inside started pulling itself out.
"...what the hell" the cop wasn't speechless.
It looked like one of the more unfortunate patients from the asylum.
Each limb was thin as bone, the skin stretched over them was a sickly yellow, half of it turned brown from decay. The only thing covering it was battered cloth that could have been a jumpsuit at some point in the past. Every joint on the things body swelled and threatened to rip through the paper thin skin. It's face was the most striking part of the thing, it seemed hollow, like a skull. There was no flesh over the bone, no hair on its patchy scalp, bits of skull broke the surface of its skin. The area that should have been its mouth was sewn shut, the thread straining under what could have been words or a scream. I couldn't see it's eyes, they were covered by a blindfold made from a soiled gray cloth, tied haphazardly in half a dozen different places.
I got to my feet. It rushed me, pulling itself with nothing but its arms over the icy lawn.
Don't even look at it!
A gust of the swarm flew from my arm without my permission.
I pushed myself from the ground, the cop next to me had started to run the other way the second that thing had begun to charge. Before I got a single step in it was on top of me. It's twig-ish limbs were almost as strong as I was with the Walrider's full cooperation. Jagged nails on a skeletal hand dug into my face and neck. I punched out at it, missing its head by a fraction of an inch.
In my struggle the swarm had begun to bleed out of me and into the fight. A cloud of it engulfed the thing on top of me. For a second the struggle lessened, I thought I had won. Then the dark cleared and it was back in front of my face. This time I swung with less coordination, the blindfold came off as I moved my hand.
Don't look at it!
Too late.
It didn't have eyes.
Just empty sockets that seemed deep and dark enough to be black holes. For a second I thought the only thing I'd ever see again was that blank void.
The I looked up.
I was surrounded by an empty darkness, not unlike the first time I'd been conscious of the Walrider, though I wasn't embedded in a wall of shadow this time. The void stretched out in front of me.
"Where the hell did you go, you son of a bitch!" needless to say I was a little bit pissed off at the thing.
There was no reply, no sensory input of any kind. I couldn't even contact the Walrider. Then, then I was suddenly back in Mount Massive, back in the theatre. On the screen flashed the same inkblot image that I remembered from my first visit. I stumbled through the haphazard chairs, trying to remember how I'd found my way out in the real world. The dim light flicked across the wall, there was no way to climb out, the wall was completely solid. I turned back around, there had been doors at the back If I remembered correctly. I picked my way back across the room, the wall with the doors was solid too.
I wasn't in kansas anymore.
There had been a side hall leading up to the projection room, I went to where it had been. Nothing.
A little bit of panic hit me. There was no reason for it, this was all just a hallucination. It had to be. I was still back in Chicago, in a wrestling match with some half dead freak. Or that's what I told myself when something put its hand on my shoulder.
Without flinching I considered my options. This was not real, I had to remember that. Nothing could actually hurt me here.
Then I felt the nails digging into my flesh.
Ok, calm down.
I flailed an arm back, trying to swat whatever was back there before sprinting to my left. I hurtled chairs, traced the wall looking for an escape, found none, slid over the piano in the corner, and crouched under it. I could hear whatever it was out there, it's bare feet and hands scratching across the rotting floor. There might have been a sliver of movement at the edge of my vision. Then the room went completely dark. The images on the screen died, something went thud a foot from my face. I didn't dare to breath, just incase that tiny noise attracted its attention. Not a single sound stirred, there was no movement in the thick black. I didn't dare to leave my hiding place.
There had to be a way out, there was always a way out. I heard a scrape to my far right, I took the chance to run to the left and search for an escape. As long as I knew where it was, I was ok.
The wall was bare. Probably. Even if there was a door I wouldn't be able to see it.
Another scrape came from behind. I took off in an adrenaline fueled run. Around the room I went, there was no door.
I slid back into my place under the piano.
The screen ticked back to life, but it wasn't the inkblot footage from before. It looked like a home video of a funeral. There was a messy zoom on the memorial placard. My funeral, to be exact. Not a soul was in sight save for a funeral director and a half drunk homeless man that I only barely recognized as my brother, Tim. The footage just sat there, with nobody moving for a full three minutes until the funeral director asked Tim if he wanted to say any final words.
"No" I heard him say "he never did anything to help anybody, the son of a bitch doesn't deserve the pine box he's laying in."
The video just sat there, nobody moved or spoke for another five minutes before the film ended with a click and a rattle.
If the thing was trying to make me feel bad it was doing a shit job of it. Maybe I had to pull some sort of feel good bull shit where I faced the thing?
There was an earth ringing crash.
Ok, maybe that wasn't it.
As far as I could tell there was no way I could contact the Walrider, it just wasn't there. Maybe I could stack some chairs up to the balcony? That's if it was still there at any rate, I hadn't seen it. I might be able to-
The piano flipped from above me, flying through the air it landed with a deafening thud and the ring of keys. The thing in the dark got a vice grip on my ankle. Clawing my way forward and thrashing my legs I tried desperately to peel away from it. The grip on my leg didn't give, as hard as I tried. Instead I found myself dragging the two of us across the floor. It climbed from my ankle up my legs, cracked and chipped hands dug into muscle and scrapped bone with every inch that it advanced. In the inky black I fought for my escape. A mile long yard later my groping hand was met with an empty space where the floor board should have been. Kicking blindley I slid myself and it to the hole.
Maybe this had been what the crash was, maybe this was a way out. I had to know soon, the creatures weight was up to my shoulders, I all but felt its strangled breath creeping over my neck. I hung half way into the hole before I fell.
In the air all the extra weight of another body vanished off of me, I landed and sat up in a flurry of motion. I opened my eyes, only to be greeted by the inside of a stolen car and view of the desert through the windows.
"...Miles?" a small child's voice said my name from the back seat.
I twisted around to get a view from my place behind the wheel.
In his normal spot was Garrett, huddled against the door. Where Connor had been sat the thing.
The skeletal body lunged through the seats at me and hooked it's rotting hands around the back of my head. Tumbling back I fell from the car, through the desert, through the heat of burning sand, through the bright sunlight and back into a black maelstrom.
Pain burst from where its hands held my skull, familiar static rushed my ears
The living corpse's face filled my view. The swarm flowed around it, leaving its putrid figure untouched. Instead I felt a thousand particles burrowing through my skin and deep into my bones. This is how it felt to be shredded from the inside. Through the pain and my own vision going red I could only just see the blistered sockets that should have held eyes. I tried to push up and away but my arms were being crushed and liquefied by the thrashing of the swarm.
As the nails on the things hands drove themselves through my softening bone I tore my gaze away from its empty eyes.
I refused to die here.
With the all the strength and fortitude of a freezing kitten I began to tear myself away from the creature's grasp.
"I'm not dying… like this"
The swarm began to reverse its direction, flowing out of my bones and into the air. For a split second I saw and felt the snow around me. Taking that piece of reality I pushed back against the monster. It gave slightly.
I had to keep going, another shove, stronger now. It fought to keep a hold on me. A last heave.
It's ragged frame went flying across the courtyard. Gasping I slumped to my side and teetered to my feet.
I wiped the red out of my vision, moving my hand away from my face I saw that it came away covered in thick blood.
Whatever it was rolled itself back onto two feet after skidding to a stop. I wasn't about to pretend that I was ready for another charge, I swayed on my legs as it slinked into motion. I braced myself for impact.
It never came. The thing was torn from its path by a wound to its knee. The lanky frame crumbled in on itself and tumbled under its own power. A couple of seconds later the sound of gunfire caught up with my brain. It took me a minute more to realise that the thing had been shot.
The blow to its body was apparently enough to send it away. It rolled back through the snow, dripping heavy blackened blood as it retreated down a street drain and into the sewers.
The events of the past five minuets were catching up to the rest of me. I swiveled around unevenly, only to see Sanchez hanging out of the window, with a smoking gun in his hand. The majority of the courtyard had been cleared, though the crashed car still sat in the middle of it.
"What the fuck was that?" I asked no one in particular
I'll explain later, move.
I tried to put one foot in front of the other, but somewhere around my knee the message got lost, instead I stumbled face first into the snow.
We're not doing this now!
My arms pushed me up from the ground, people were starting to trickle out of the court house. Without consulting me first, my legs decided that today was a nice day for a walk, then a jog, then marathon training. The buildings blurred as I whipped by, weather that was from my speed or the blood loss and half consciousness I didn't know.
At any rate the Walrider had steered me back to the motel just fine. It even managed to fish the key out of my pocket and land me safely in the bed.
The passing out part, however, was all my doing.