A/N: A bit belated but I wanted to thank the people who reviewed for me, I appreciate the feedback!
It's the smell that strikes her first.
Lady pauses at the end of the hallway, her suitor stopping to grin back at her, mistaking her sudden caution for fear. "Don't worry, people kind of avoid this hallway but it's never been dangerous." He moves forward as if to put an arm around her and she steps smoothly out of the way, preoccupied with identifying the smell.
"Blood…" she murmurs, more to herself than him. It's unmistakable, that metallic stink she can almost taste in the back of her throat.
"Yea," the man turns his head and points down the hall toward the room at the end. "That's where it comes from. The police tore it apart because they refused to believe there wasn't a body in there but they never found anything. Then some girl died in there and the landlord locked it up and won't let anyone go in. For all the good that does, the lock is broken…" He grins over his shoulder at her again, which changes to a frown when he takes in her expression. She looks disturbed, yes, but not totally freaked out.
Coming to a sudden decision, he starts down the hallway toward the room. Lady stirs as she realizes what he's doing and starts down the hall after him. "Wait…"
"Don't worry, the landlord never comes up here," he says, mistaking her alarm. "Not getting scared, are you?" He twists the knob and after a moment of resistance it turns. He pushes the door open boldly and moves inside.
Lady swears under her breath and charges after him, her hand sliding under her skirt to the gun strapped to her thigh. She's so focused on stopping him she barely manages to keep from crashing into his back when she gets through the doorway. He's stopped a few feet inside, body stiff as he stares. The smell of blood is so thick in here, Lady gags as she regains her balance and looks around, her eyes widening.
It's raining blood in the room. Thick, dark streams of black-red falling from the ceiling in long drips to pool on the floor, seeming to soak into the floorboards. It runs over the walls slowly, in some places it drips down, in others it drips up. Here and there it coils into odd letters that cover the wall.
Dully, Lady looks down at the floor and the edges of the room, seeing how much is caked everywhere, blackened thick blood building up in the corners and where the floors and walls meet. How long this blood has been dripping she can't tell. Days? Months? No wonder the scent is so strong. All those layers upon layers of new blood running over old.
She's heard of demons that can make the walls bleed, but if there's a demon here, it's not showing itself. In fact she can't feel anything in that regard. Usually demons give off some kind of weird scent or aura of power, something that hints to their presence.
Not here…everything feels normal in here. Except the room is freaking bleeding.
In her study of the room, Lady has forgotten about her suitor. The man, after getting over his initial shock, has drifted a bit further into the room, eyes fixed on a wall where writing drawn in blood has been appearing over and over. It's in a language he can't possibly read, and yet it seems to draw him.
His feet slip a little on the blood as he crosses the room. The squelching sound his shoes make in the mess brings Lady out of her horrified reverie. "What are you doing?" The sharp tone of her voice doesn't stop him. He walks up to the writing and lays his hands on it, blood smearing under his palms as he leans forward toward the moving words, so close his nose almost brushes the wall.
"What are you doing?" Lady's voice is softer this time, her eyes wide as she makes her way across the room towards him.
He runs his tongue up the wall, smearing some of the letters. She smells burning meat and a thin line of smoke drifts up, creating a weird picture since all she can see is the back of his head.
"It's speaking to me. It's telling me secrets…" The man can barely whisper it through his now blasted tongue, the words slurred and almost incomprehensible. Lady grabs his shoulder and tries to pull him away. He resists, trying to pull back, and slips on the blood, nearly taking her with him. He laughs as his back hits the floor. He starts clawing handfuls of old caked blood from the bottom of the wall and smearing it over his face, laughing happily all the while.
Horrified, Lady tries again to drag him up but he pulls away from her again and crawls over to the next wall, clawing at the faded, bloodstained wallpaper with his hands. They sink into it up to his wrists, gouts of black-red spurting from the wounds to pour over his hands and arms.
She doesn't follow him this time, some instinct telling her he's beyond her help and it would be suicide to follow. She starts backing away, her head reeling, her boots sliding in the blood on the floor. The man has continued to claw his way through and the wall gives way. By the time she reaches the door he's almost completely swallowed, the sick wet sound of it making her stomach roil.
The turns away, stumbling into the hall, and bends over slightly, breathing hard and trying not to retch, closing her eyes tight. Once she's sure she isn't going to throw up, she straightens up, unable to stop herself from glancing back over her shoulder.
At first she doesn't register what she's seeing. Because it's so normal.
No blood.
It's an old, slightly deteriorated studio apartment. Unfurnished, the windows blank and bare, the floorboards covered with a thick layer of dust.
"What…?"
But there are bloody footprints just outside the door, leading up to her boots, which are caked with the stuff.
She steps up to the doorway and peers in cautiously, looking around. Nothing.
Except…
In the corner diagonal to her, across the room, there's a hand sticking out of the wall, fingers curled slightly inward. And she can still taste that metallic stink in the back of her throat.
There's a sickening crunch and a sucking sound and the hand disappears into the wall as if pulled through. A single, thin line of blood seeps down from the spot where it was.
Her bizzareness quota is completely filled then. She doesn't investigate further, backing away from the door and striding down the hallway quickly. She feels the same way she used to when she was a little girl and had to go get something in the basement of her house. The lights switch had been across the room from the stairs, so she had to turn the light off and then cross half the basement in the dark. Sometimes she'd hurry as fast as she could because she was afraid if she turned around she'd see something coming from the darkness at her, the fear real enough she could almost feel the thing coming at her before she would reach the stairs.
She gets that feeling now, not quite running, but fighting the urge to. But she's not a little girl anymore, and she's already seen what horrors come out of the dark. So instead of running she pulls her gun and turns…
…to face the empty hallway.
The door to the room slams shut.