“The wrong thing to do about any given circumstance or situation is to do nothing.” –L. Ron Hubbard
The dark hallway that Sam saw from her bed, was indeed as she had seen it. It looked every bit like the hallway that connected the apartments in her building, but twisted by the Nightmare to be beyond comprehension. The walls were even more ruddy with the foul stain of ink, rain and rust than her apartment had been; the stench was also stronger, and made her head begin to throb the minute it assaulted her senses. The carpet that the maintenance crew worked so hard to keep clean every Wednesday appeared at first glance to be charred by an unseen fire; Sam heard it crunch beneath the weight of her boots. The old fashioned lights that aided in traversing the hallways were out. She should have moved into a “proper” apartment after all, she realized, not this bizarre refurbished hotel that opened onto hallways with low ceilings and empty walls, rather than outdoor breezeways. Any other residence would have seen her outside already, giving her a pause for fresh air!
One thing was different, between the Nightmare replica of her apartment, and the hallway. The pooling foulness from the walls ran into rusty metal grates that were set into the ruined carpet. Those had never been there in the real world, she was certain. What use could there be for drainage in an apartment complex? Steeling her resolve, she stepped closer to one of the grates and looked down; it was to be one of her first mistakes since leaving her apartment. Where any sewer would have had a bottom, after a fashion, this grate had none; the water, if it could be called that, ran, endless, into the blackness as if it had never existed at all. Even her flashlight proved useless in penetrating the depths of the darkness. She had moved into a second-floor apartment; how could there not be anything below her? Her palms were sweating already. Falling was yet another of her personal phobias.
The sound of heavy grinding gears that now seemed like a frequent if irregular occurrence, again penetrated the silence and darkness, interrupting her panic. Sam took an involuntary step backward against her door, brandishing her keys in the same breath that she realized how foolish she must look with only her keys as a weapon. This time, she was able to determine that the sound came from far ahead of her, down the hallway; far enough to not be an immediate threat, but closer than she might have hoped. Could the creature be coming back at last? If it was, had it forgiven her for the glasses incident? She still had not determined why her eyesight was just as good without her glasses in this world; it was a thought that she had pushed to the back of her mind, in the face of more pressing questions. The hallways were dark enough to challenge her sight without the aid of her flashlight, in any case.
The frequent shifts between the rush and calm of Sam’s heartbeat were beginning to put more stress on the headache that the stench of the air had triggered. With an inward curse, she realized that stopping to take a painkiller, with an enemy so close to her position, seemed like a poor idea. Even if the rustling of her backpack as she searched for what she needed didn’t alert anything to her presence, it would be a good half an hour before any relief set in; if anything attacked her before them, it would be far too late anyway. Trying to push the pain behind her, she squared her shoulders and looked ahead into the dark hallway that surrounded her. Her own apartment was at the end of the hallway; there was only one direction to go, and – of course – it was in the same direction as the grinding noises. There was no choice; she would have to risk it.
Her slow, deliberate progress took her past the door of her nearest neighbor; a woman she didn’t know, but whom she had seen in passing a time or two before. She was a typical woman in her mid-twenties, like Sam, but unlike Sam in that she was one of the “beautiful people.” She was always having some party with her friends, giggling until the wee hours of the morning, long past the scheduled apartment quiet hours. There was always at least one man seeking her favor; not all of them went home at the end of the day, Sam was certain. The music was what really bothered Sam, when all was said and done; a constant stream of pulsating dance beats that left her wanting to break down the wall and scream for silence.
Silence was what came from the other side of the door, now. As a creature of habit, such minor interruptions to her admittedly small view of the world seemed even more disturbing than they might have to anyone else. Part of her considered knocking on the door in search of help, or to offer her own, but she knew that she would never do that, and she knew all the reasons why she wouldn’t. The woman was too much like everyone else Sam had ever known; the ones who had everything handed to them and worked for nothing in life. They were the kings and queens of the world, fit for nothing more than to rule over the lesser beings, like Sam. All she could hope for, in the end, was that the woman still lived. That much, at least, was the human thing to do. Somehow, even if the world was coming to an end, Sam knew beyond question that the woman would never want help from a lesser being, and she herself would die rather than beg at the feet of a queen.
In the moment it took Sam to step beyond the woman’s door, everything happened all at once. The sound of a feminine scream split even the sound of the grinding gears in two, followed by a sudden slamming sound that made the closed door shudder. Sam leapt away in horror, her heart frozen and paralyzed with fear, but the sounds continued. She could hear the woman begging, pleading, whimpering like a small child, but there was no response from whomever shared the room with her. The door shuddered twice more, and then the pitiful wailing stopped, punctuated by a scraping sound that ended in a dull thud. Silence, except for the occasional gear sound, reigned again.
Sam could not catch her breath. She was hyperventilating, choking, but she could not even begin to settle her mind. There was no question of what had happened. The only questions were who had done it, and why? Was the murderer one of the woman’s many suitors, come to punish her for some foolish betrayal of his trust? Or was it something more sinister? Could Sam have done something? Should Sam have done something? She had no love for the woman, no responsibility for her, and no desire to involve herself in anyone else’s affairs; yet now her neighbor was dead, and Sam had not even lifted a finger in her defense. She hadn’t known until it was too late; the thought did not ease her pain.
Deep and painful gouges in her arm led Sam to the realization that she had dug her nails into her own flesh to try to stop her panicking mind. Pain was often her only recourse, when focusing on something else did not stop her panic attacks. The doctors had not noticed the marks and scars that littered her body from previous abuses of that fact; she had not been interested in telling them of her failure to heal herself the way they wanted her to. She took great pride in the fact that she only had to hurt herself twice, maybe three times a week, but the rest of the time, she could stop it with her mind. It was enough, for her.
The gouges in her arm remained, even after she had relaxed her grip; at least she had not drawn blood. Her writer’s mind offered a grim reminder of how many stories she’d read – and written – in which monsters could track and follow the scent of blood. Focusing on this idle train of thought, divorced from the immediacy of the violent act that had just occurred, at last allowed her to pull herself together. Her temples pounded a heavy rhythm that brought a sense of nausea to the forefront, but she forced it back in favor of moving on, past the door that had so upset her, and onward toward the freedom she had promised herself lay beyond.
If she had looked back, she might have noticed the thin trails of blood that crept out from under the abandoned door, joining the ruddy, pooling filth of the walls and disappearing into the nothingness below the metal grates. If the monsters could smell blood, Sam would be the least of their concerns, now.
The next door down was empty and heavy with shadows; Sam could not have been more grateful for that fact. The man that had lived there – well, more of a boy – was a college student, and shared the same habits that young male college students prized. He seemed to be always drinking and carousing with his friends, but Sam had never seen him do anything beyond ogle the young women, herself included, in the apartment complex on his off time. She had guessed that he was acting, in order to fit in with the expected norm, but had not bothered to inquire further about his behavior. It was none of her business, and knowing would not change the fact that she had no desire to look outside her own apartment for companionship. He had moved out without warning, or so the front office claimed; the payment they received in turn for his breaking lease was enough to pay for the renovation of several empty apartments.
Sam’s surprise, therefore, when a human voice echoed from behind the door, was greater than it might have been otherwise. The voice grew louder, and Sam realized that it was the voice of the student after all. Had he not left yet? The tone of the voice grew desperate, and she focused in on its words.
“What’s wrong with me? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me, Dad. I’ve been living a lie for the last twelve years, all because you’re too stupid to handle the truth!” A pause punctuated this angry outburst. “Yeah, well, maybe you’d feel different if you hadn’t married Mom. You didn’t even love her and you know it.” Another pause. “I’ll talk to you any way I please. If you can’t accept that I was brave enough to tell you, after all these years, that I’m gay, then you’re not my father anymore, period. I’ll live my own life.”
Shifting, uncomfortable with the frankness of the conversation, but at least vindicated by the knowledge that her guess had been accurate, Sam took a step past the door. As with the woman’s door before it, this door commanded her immediate attention just as soon as the thought of leaving entered her mind. The voice changed in pitch, and rather than being laced with anger, it was laced with absolute terror.
“Dad? What the hell? Put that down. I’m not your enemy, I just want… Dad, stop! Dad… Please! I’ll change my name, if you can’t take having a… fag carry on the family name. Just don’t… Don’t do this!”
Sam’s hand was on the doorknob, trembling, by sheer instinct rather than any personal goal of protection or aid. She twisted it, preparing for the worst. The door was locked. Inevitability came, disguised as the sound of a bullet, fired from a heavy shotgun. The accompanying scream did not echo as much as the sound of the bullet itself. This time, the blood came quicker, creeping beneath the soles of Sam’s heavy boots. It was enough to undo her sanity at last.
The tears Sam had been holding back burst forth in a flood far greater than the one that rushed down the walls. She thrust herself away from the door and the blood, falling hard onto the disgusting carpet below. Her fist was in her mouth, her teeth biting down hard on her knuckles in a blind attempt at inflicting pain; even pain failed, this time. The weight of her backpack unbalanced her fall and toppled her over; she curled into a fetal position, her mind gasping out fifteen different forms of begging for help. Nobody heard any of them, of course, except her. The smell and sight of the blood brought her up to her knees again, retching; she could only thank herself for failing to eat a heavy dinner the night before. Blood was high on her list of phobias, higher than she had realized until that moment.
She closed her eyes and began to breathe through her mouth, trying to shut out the terror that invaded her senses. Relief, at least in some small part, was immediate. She could not pretend that the scene before her had not played out; there was not enough imagination in her to cast aside that level of reality. The most she could do was to cast her attention away from it, and on to other things. The throbbing in her temples reached critical mass, and in a rare stroke of luck, she found that the pain was aiding in her ability to recover, rather than interrupting her attempts at thinking her way out of her panic. She had no choice but to be grateful for her headaches at that moment; it was a thought she had never had before.
Reason began to creep through her inner chaos as she considered her position on the floor, and the unusual violence of her reaction to what had just happened. The man was dead, that much seemed obvious; yet grief was the farthest thing from her mind. Her own fear had paralyzed her, left her helpless, distraught and unable to spare any consideration for anyone or anything else. It was far from the first time she had been disgusted with her own perceived weaknesses, but this time it seemed even more disgusting. People always cared about others; people always grieved when lives were lost. How could she fail at that?
A second realization entered her mind. She had passed two doors; both had made her witness to death within moments of her passing. The Stone of Promise felt as if it were burning her flesh through her pocket; guilt washed over her like a tidal wave. The Stone had the ability to work miracles, but at a cost that Sam was not yet prepared to pay. She could not deny, however, the knowledge that she might have been able to save either of the departed souls, had she only possessed the courage and the will to do so. That made her as good as a murderer; an accomplice, if not the hand that killed. She could have denied fate; instead, she had become a slave to it, like the rest of the world. Guilty though it made her feel, she could not fathom choosing any other path but the one she had chosen.
What would become of the next door? It was almost too much to consider. One last apartment lay between Sam and the stairwell that would take her to the first floor, and then onward to freedom. The heaving in her gut had stopped, and Sam made an effort to drag herself to her feet. She put a hand out to steady herself, in what had become near pitch blackness, and found it against one of the filthy, running walls; her mental state was such that she dismissed it without further panic. It did not cling, or drip from her hands; it was as if she had never touched it at all. Did it even exist, or was it a figment of her imagination? Could this be a hallucination after all? Her mind spun in exhaustion, desperate for the answers that she knew would only come with further exploration, yet terrified by the prospect of an answer that confirmed her worst fears: that this was reality, and there would be no going home.
Sam took slow, mechanical steps forward through the increasing darkness, still trembling. If she could spare her last neighbor the pain of death by not walking by, she might have done it; but past his door lay everything she hoped to gain, and everything that would save her sanity if it were indeed the key to her freedom. This neighbor, she knew, albeit very much in passing. He had introduced himself; a move that no other neighbor ever had before. She had never had trouble with names, having so few to remember; he was Miles, a freelance photographer. His young daughter, Melissa, lived with him after a messy divorce. She would not have known any of this, if Melissa had not mistaken her for her mommy and thrown her arms around her, breaking any hope she’d had of ignoring the new tenants.
Miles was the kind of person she’d read about in fairy tales. He was kind, thoughtful, and smart. He loved his daughter with every breath in his body, that much was evident with every move he made. He was lonely; to look in his eyes was to know the bitterness and grief he felt over losing his wife. It was too much to bear for Sam, who had to look down and away from his naked need for companionship. In another life, she might have been the perfect match for him, and the perfect match for his young daughter. As it stood, however, she had both a grudging respect and a deep seated fear of them both. They had broken through her barrier and made her aware of them like nobody else had; but resentment had crept in with the surprise and admiration of that fact. Nobody got to Sam, not even her own parents.
Sam’s arrival at Miles’ door was, if anything, more stunning than either of the previous two doors she had faced, and in a much more immediate way. There was no abnormal silence; no passing by as if nothing had ever happened. Instead, Sam’s flashlight fell upon a pair of human feet in the hallway up ahead. Her beam shot upward to reveal Miles himself, dripping blood into small puddles on the floor. His face was a mask of frustration and anguish as he glowered, helpless at his door; it was not a door at all, anymore. Where a door should have been, a giant panel filled with levers, switches and gears loomed large from floor to ceiling. Sam could see the edges of a door behind the monstrous panel still; could one of those endless gadgets be the key to getting inside?
Melissa was nowhere to be seen. A lump found its way into her throat at the memory of the little girl who had thrown herself at Sam’s legs with a need that far outstripped any that Sam had ever known before. Her own loss of Poe was grievous enough, but if anything had happened to that beautiful child… She couldn’t finish the thought. Whatever sick, twisted thing had happened, it could not have twisted Melissa with it; she refused to accept it.
Miles noticed her, Sam was certain, but he was too focused on the task before him to address her at first. Using the opportunity to benefit from her light, he pulled a lever at what seemed to be random, producing the low grinding sound that Sam had been hearing since her exit from her apartment. When the sound failed to affect his door in any way, he slammed his fist against the panel in a fury, succeeding only in hurting his fist. Cursing, he looked up at Sam at last; something almost approaching a smile crept to his face. This act alone convinced Sam of the severity of his panic; Miles never missed the opportunity to smile at her, even when she did her best to ignore him. When he spoke, his voice was harsh, as if he had been yelling or screaming for too long at once.
“So I’m not the only one here, after all. I’m sorry to see it’s you, Sam. I hoped you’d be free of… this.”
Sam studied the repulsive walls, unable to meet his gaze any more than usual, and unable to look at the bloody spots on the carpet. He was always so kind, so chivalrous to her; he only wanted to protect her, and to find what mysteries lay inside her mind. Indeed, in another life… but in this one, she was terrified at the thought that he might, someday, succeed. “What’s happening, Miles? What is this?” It was all she could manage to say.
He laughed, but the laugh was a bitter one. “Damned if I know. I left to get Mel’s birthday cake, it’s her eighth today. I was driving home and something just… twisted. I don’t remember what happened, but I woke up with my car wrecked, the cake trashed and everything like… this.” His eyes were unfocused as he relived the day’s events in his mind. “I can’t get to her, Sam, I left her inside, sleeping, and now…” His voice broke. “I don’t know what to do… I don’t even know if she’s…” He couldn’t finish the thought any more than Sam herself could.
A heavy silence fell as Sam fought and failed to find something to say that would ease Miles’ suffering. At last, Miles sighed, sitting down hard in the middle of several of his own blood stains. His eyes shifted back into focus as he forced his mind onto a different topic. “There are things out here, Sam. Things that I can’t even describe to you. I fought them when they attacked, but… they’re not human. They’re stronger, faster…”
“They attacked you?” Sam frowned. “There was something in my room. It broke my glasses and then left without hurting me. I was tied down, but something freed me.”
“Be grateful for small favors. They don’t seem to like me, much. I’m not sure why, I wasn’t the aggressor the first time.” After a moment of thought, he added, “I thought you looked different. Can you see okay? Maybe you’d better stay with me. I’m not the best fighter, but…” He gestured to something in his right hand, and Sam noticed that he carried a pistol for the first time. “It was my father’s. I keep it where Melissa can’t find it. Just in case, you know.” He turned away from Sam, unable to look at her. “It’s bad enough that I left Mel behind… I’d rather know you’re safe, at least.”
He winced as one of his many wounds began to bleed anew, and Sam tore her own gaze away from him, unable to tolerate the blood. The Stone of Promise again ached in the back of her pocket, pulling at her mind, demanding that she use it to restore Miles to safety again. He was only the best kind of man; a man who loved his daughter and who looked out for those who had no way to look out for themselves. Who else could be more deserving of the power she had at her disposal? Despite that knowledge, she couldn’t manage to bring herself to use it. The feeling of regret, of guilt and shame, grew tenfold in her heart. If not Miles, then who? If not for Melissa, then who?
“Sam?” Miles was worried by her brooding silence. He struggled to his feet, reaching a gentle hand out to grasp her shoulder. “I know you’re shy, it’s okay, you don’t have to be afraid. I’ll protect both of us. I don’t know you well, but… I’ve always wanted to know you better. I just didn’t want to upset you by asking, before.”
Her pulse raced at his touch, but not in the way that it should have. Another panic attack gripped her, and she twisted away from his outstretched hand as if it had burned her. His face fell almost at the same time that she backed away from him, her posture not unlike a cat with its back arched in defiance of some sudden enemy. “I don’t need protection. I’m going to get out of here. I can’t take this anymore. I have to find Poe and then I’m getting out of here. I can’t help you. I can’t help anyone. Damn it, don’t look at me that way!”
Her last words were almost a scream. She could see that she’d hurt him by refusing his help, but the hope that he’d held was more than just a romantic one. She was leaving him to seek his needle in a haystack alone; leaving him, injured, to fend for himself against the creatures that infested the Nightmare. Killing him might have been kinder. He had found the only other living human being in this damned place, and he was lucky enough to have it be one of the people he had reason to care for, and she was abandoning him. At last it occurred to her that he had probably been the one to free her as well, not the creature as she had assumed; one of his levers must have done the trick.
The hurt in Miles’ face solidified into quiet anger before she had a chance to run. “Sorry. If you get out, tell my boss I’ll be a few decades late, all right?” The dead calm of acceptance in his voice hurt her far more than any fear or any weapon ever could. He was resigned to finding the right lever, or greet death in trying. “Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself too, you know.” From his wounds, she could tell he was lying.
Unable to muster up any kind of defense or apology, Sam fled past his door with a shudder, anticipating the horror she expected would follow. How could she abandon him to the same fate as her other neighbors? If Hell existed, she would be guaranteed a place; if this was not already Hell.
Behind her, instead of a scream, she heard Miles clear his throat. “Sam, wait. Please.”
For once, fighting her instincts, she stopped. Even if she was to abandon Miles, she could not deny him his final words. To do so would be to dishonor him beyond her other neighbors, and that she was not willing to do for any reason. She waited as he took a deep breath, then spoke. “Just… don’t die, all right? Even if you don’t give a damn about me or Melissa… don’t die.” He kicked something hard in Sam’s direction; it was a second pistol. “I’d like to know someone got out of this hellhole alive.”
With trembling hands, Sam bent to pick up the pistol. She had no idea how to shoot or aim; she’d never handled a firearm before, and had never had reason to assume she would need to. Still, how hard could it be to pull a trigger, in the face of something wicked? She could not deny the effectiveness of the pistol over her own car keys.
As she studied it, turning it over like a live wire in her hands, Miles shook his head. “I’ll do you one last favor. I figured out which of these levers goes to the main door. I can get you outside, but you need to know that it’s all the same out there. The creatures are out there. The world’s twisted just the same. I don’t know how you plan to get free of all this, but don’t be a fool. If you change your mind, I’ll be here. Until I find Melissa, I’ll be here. I don’t care how long it takes.”
He paused, hesitating, as if wanting to say more, but uncertain of what to say. At last he decided to speak; Sam guessed that he didn’t expect to live long enough to have another chance. “You’re not as strong as you think you are, Sam. None of us are. We all need someone to share our struggles with. Life’s not worth living, alone. Maybe this hell is our punishment for trying. Stupid, I know, but I wonder.” He sighed. “If we get out of this… don’t think this is the last time I’ll ask you. You can run as long as you like, but I know there’s more to you than this. You’re just too damned scared to show it.”
Sam came to two realizations as he spoke. The first was that if the Stone of Promise had come to Miles’ hands and not her own, he would have used it ten times over. He wasn’t selfish like she was. Some heroine she was turning out to be. The second realization came at his description of the outside world. The freedom she had promised herself; the normalcy she had assumed lay outside her apartment window, was all just a lie. She wouldn’t be free of anything. Each step she took led her closer to yet another world beyond imagining.
With one last look back at Miles, Sam fled to the stairwell and descended to the first floor of the apartment complex. Miles’ back was already to her by the time she disappeared, the grinding sounds renewed in earnest. Despite her newfound knowledge of what lay outside the apartment complex, she couldn’t wait to be free of the sounds, and of Miles, and of all the confusion twisting inside her mind. For the first time since she’d come into the Nightmare, she was more afraid of herself than what might happen next.