25th July, 2004
Into the Void
Sunday, 2:32 pm in Corner
Back to the in-sequence parts of the story! I don’t particularly like Sigmund’s room in this…
”Sig! Sigmund?”
Nothing. I check all the bedrooms just in case – nothing in those but the slowly-rotting world. I guess the personalities of the inhabitants have effected the way things are starting to break down in this place. Mr. Sussman’s room is dominated, like the study, with the ghosts of his wife and work. Sig’s room is just… weird. It’s growing corn through the floor, the walls are blackened and sooty as if burnt. There’s an arrow laid out on his bed – it’s thin and green and wreathed in leaves – and underneath it is a great big sol rune made from red berries. There are stalagtites starting to form on the roof, too.
I hurry out. I think about taking the arrow momentarily but, well, it won’t really do much good without a bow. I suppose if I got real close I could stab it into his eye – the one I didn’t bite out, at any rate – but from that distance I could also probably just kick him in the nuts and cut his throat while he was busy. So I decide against it. Best to avoid being repedative, anyway.
On a more immediate problem; I’m alone in the house, have no idea if Sig’s safe or not, and the world is going to shit all around me. I can’t really think of a reason Sig would have run off while I was in the study – unless he really had to for some reason, but I wasn’t gone that long. I think. More likely he got caught in a reality-shift and sent back to the really real world. In which case he’s probably pretty safe, especially if he has the sense to run back to my place, which knowing Sig seems pretty logical. Guess I’m going home, then.
The front door does not cooperate with my plans. “I’m starting to get really sick of this haunted house bullshit,” I tell it, angrily. It looks at me and kind of clinks and burbles. I don’t particuarly think it’s sentient, but I’m here alone and despite everything am starting to get seriously weirded out. Under these circumstances, I feel, talking to (mostly?) inanimate objects is the least of my worries.
I much more worried about the lights, which are flickering like they’re going to blow at any minute, and the distrubring thumping noises that are starting to come from the basement. It’s roughly at this juncture that I realise I’m still holding the gun; checking the chamber I’m very annoyed to find that it isn’t loaded. I didn’t think to grab bullets, am definatley not going back into that study, and despite fervrent hoping am not really convinced that I’m going to start finding old boxes of ammo lying around in useful places.
1:30am, I’m wirintg shit like this and the lights start to go on the fritz. Goddamnit, I’m off to bed…
Not having bullets shouldn’t be too much of a problem, however, and I shoot the gun experimentally into the front door a few times to check. The thing works – partly because reality is pretty much broken, and partly because I’m just that damn good – but I wouldn’t want to rely on it unless I had to. I decide it’s time to stop pussyfooting about, and start getting some serious kit together.
Tucking the gun away proves to be slightly difficult since I don’t actually have any pockets. In the end I just vanish it; it means I won’t be able to give it back when this is all done, but again this is one of the least of my worries.
The Sussmans’ living room is thankfully still mostly sensible-looking, and as a super-top bonus for yours truly has a large open fireplace. Fireplaces mean fire pokers, and if there’s one household object that makes an excellent improvised melee weapon, it’s a fire poker. The Sussmans’ is a big old-fashioned brass one, too. Nice and heavy, and I swing it about experimentally. I have my knives, of course, but they’re a bit like the gun, and I’m currently not entierley keen on relying on semi-magical weapons in this place. It doesn’t get much less magical that a fire poker, and that little hook thing on the end could come in handy, you never know. My next stop is unfortunatley the kitchen; unfortunatley because it means going back into the flourescent flickering. I’ve got my fire poker now, though, and even though it’s next-to-useless against the flash-dark, it still makes me feel a whole lot more in control.
I find what I’m looking for in the bottom drawer next to the sink; a big, heavy-duty flashlight. One of the kind that’s as long as a forearm and almost as thick; more like a glorified truncheon someone has added a light to as an afterthought just in case you need to blind someone before bludgeoning them to death. My problem now, of course, being that I’m trying to handle three things – Hel’s head, the light and the poker – with only two hands. Eventually I send Hel to the otherplace, too, simply because nothing that gets send there ever really comes back right, and I want to keep my flashlight and poker as mundane and thus reliable as possible.
Despite common perception, magical items generally aren’t more durable; magic attracts entropy like a magnet, and if there’s one thing this place has got in scads it’s entropy. This is one of the reasons my ward-tattoos are next-to-useless here; why I’m still walking around on clawed toes and trying not to knock things over with the tail I’m not used to having to deal with.
I turn my flashlight on and am rewarded with the kind of bright and solid light that’s welcome after sitting around in the creepy gloom. Of course it tends to make the shadows everywhere outside of the torch’s direct beam more sinister, but such is the price of not tripping over your own feet in the dark.
Thus armed and feeling more in control, I retun to the front door. I still don’t think it’s alive, really, but that doesn’t stop my getting the impression that it’s annoyed at me for shooting it earlier. The goopy ropey flesh shit that’s holding it closed has spread somewhat into the hall, and since I don’t particularly want to get any closer to it than I absolutley have to, I means I’m standing quite close to the staircase.
The staircase has a door underneath it leading down to the basement. Every now and again, something throws itself against the door with a kind of a sick, wet thump. Like liver on a chopping board.
Sig told me once about this dog they found injured on the road one day; dumb thing had been hit by a car, was alive but barely, and mangled something chronic. They’d bought it home and put it in the basement, thinking to get care for it, but it had died before they could reach anyone. Sig told me he thinks about it sometimes; what must it have been like for the animal, alone and dying in the dark, abandoned by everyone.
It’s that kind of shit that, in a place like this, really fucking shines. I fancy I can hear a kind of whimpering howl accompanying the sick pops.
I decide to write off the front door as a dead loss, even though – theoretically, in an allegeorical sense – it would probably have been the safest way out of here. The living room contains a large bay window, but when I get there it has mysteriously and inconveniently grown bars, so that’s not particularly helpful. So, short of smashing a hole in the wall, I’m left with the back door.
I really hate the back door, and not just because it opens out from the kitchen.
When I get there it is, disturbingly, open, swinging slightly on its splintered hinges. It looks like its been beaten in via someone using their own body as a battering ram; the little windows in it are shattered, and the dirty white paint now features a great big red-brown blood smear, which continues along the floor, through the living room and up the stairs.
I was in here maybe five minutes ago. I’ve been downstairs ever since. My hearing is infinatley better than a human’s. If something had broken down the door, I would have heard it. If something had dragged its bloody corpse across the kitchen, I would have heard it. If is was standing right behind me breathing down my neck, I would feel it. Would see the reflection of its one baleful mad red eye in the grimy kitchen window.
Have I mentioned I fucking hate this place.
I make a bolt for the door, get about halfway there before slipping in the smear of blood and gore and come down on my back, hard. Have I mentioned the floor is covered in borken glass? It hurts like fuck and I cry out, which I think is not unreasonable under the circumstances. There’s a clinking-plop – metal and raw flesh – and it is standing over me.
“Draugadróttin…”
Halfway on the edge of hearing I think I hear a drowning gurgle that might be ‘lodhur’, but is probably just my imagination, and the next moment my vision is filled with something rusty and metal and sharp coming towards me very, very quickly.
I roll at the last minute – glass crunching all the way – and manage to angle it so the spear only grazes my shoulder. It burns where it touches, but I don’t really have time for that because the thing is coming around for another swing. It’s unnaturally fast, but I’ve made a career out of being faster, and I manage to scrabble myself into a crouch; the spear embeds itself into the floor about a foot infront of me, and the lino instantly begins to melt and curl around the gash.
I take my chance; hook the fire-poker around the spear handle and give it a good, hard yank. The angle is awkward, but I have the luck of the gods when it comes to timing these things, and manage to catch the thing just as it’s off-balance from the swing. It stumbles forward awkwardly; it’s legs are long and kind of insect-like, and while it’s scary to look at, doesn’t give it a particularly broad base of balance.
Unhooking the poker, I bring it up again just as the thing makes its tumble. I realise the worst part of this plan just as it occurs; and that is the whole lot is going to come crashing down on top of me. I really hope it’s not too heavy.
Fortunatley I don’t get to find out; the thing catches itself on it’s scythe-like limbs before it huts me, but not before it hits the poker, which goes clean through bloated black flesh into the gooey centre beyond. The thing screams like you’ve never heard nor ever want to, and tries to pull back, but the poker is hooked into its cest, and I give it a twist better to catch it on… whatever hard internal structure this thing might have.
“Gotcha now, you bastard!”
It pulls back violently, and I’m pulled roughly to my feet. Wide, rough-padded, clawed feet, which I drive hard into the floor to give myself grip and swing as hard as I can, turning and pulling the poker at the last minute. The thing’s stupid little bug-legs can’t keep up, and it goes flying across the kitching and slams into the fridge.
I don’t stick around and wait for it to recover, am out the back door before you can say ‘run like fuck’. My brain just registeres a sound like splintering wood and a sickly howl, but by that time I’ve vaulted over the back gate and am running full tilt down the street; houses and streetlamps and half-seen shambling figures all left in my wake.
Eventually, however, I run out of street and into a brick wall; I stop myself before I can hit it, but only just. It turns out to be the side of a toilet block, which means I’ve reached the park at the end of Sig’s street. Unfortunatley this also means I’ve run off in the exact opposite direction of where I’ve left the car; not that I really think it’ll be either there or working, but it would’ve been nice to have been able to check.
I hurt. Everywhere. Lots of little ‘think’ noises seem to be coming from somewhere near my feet, and I look down and notice they’re shards of glass, so at least my body is still healing itself properley. Though by the feel of it when I move, not everything has been expelled before the wounds closed over, which means I’m going to have to go back later and get someone to dig them all out. I hate having to do that. Hurts like a bitch, and besides, it’s not easy finding a surgeon willing to work on an Eater.
My arm doesn’t hurt, which is worrysome because it means its gone numb. I risk a glance and sure enough, the wound has gone septic – the flesh around turning from its usual unhealthy grey colour to an even less healthy green – and is topped by a thick crust of yellowish-red pus. The cut’s not all that long, but it runs down my bycep, straight across the tattoo. Another part of the wards rendered useless.
“Fucking great.”
I’m going to need to lance and burn the wound as soon as I can. I don’t think it can kill me, but I really don’t want to have to deal with blood poisoning right now. Or, at the very least, any more blood poisoning than I already have to deal with. There’s a small corner shop just cross the park which hopefully will be avaliable for looting, and I swing myself and my torch around to walk towards it.
I stop absolutley dead.
Sig’s road ends in a little cul-de-sac, which turns into the footpath that leads to the toilet block. This is what I ran up while very much not paying attention, which just proves what a lucky bastard I am; everything that’s not the path is covered with varying degrees of nasty-looking grass, and coming up out of this grass…
It’s like someone’s gone through and thrown a handful of seeds randomly on the ground, except instead of sprouting something nice like, say, daisies, they’ve come up hands. Hundreds of dead, stiff hands. The hands of drowning men, reaching for the sky, palms open and fingers splayed, like a garden of demented venus flytraps. Like venus flytraps, I can just imagine them snapping shut on anything unfortunate enough to brush up against them. Snapping shut and waking something perhaps far deeper and darker still.
The entire way between me and the fabled convenience store is littered with them. I consider going around, but the thing from the house is prowling around down there somewhere – and may very soon be prowling around up here if I’m unlucky – and I don’t really want to take my chances with it again. Not to mention the Basement Dog, which I still haven’t seen and don’t particularly want to. So. Hands.
I’m about to take one tentative step towards them when I hear something behind me that sounds a lot like, “Raargh!” before pain explodes behind my eyes and my face and the concrete decide to have a poorly-timed meeting.
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