Chapter Text
A cacophony of wheels and wood echoes through dim-lit halls, flowing over tile like a rhythmic tide, reaching up into the cathedral-like cavern of the ceiling. Its grandeur could fool the ignorant into thinking it was a place of worship, were it not blank. Instead, the light of the old chandeliers wastes into nooks and crannies above. There is no holiness, no glory, no vastness but empty space in this place, split by support beams suspended in stagnant air, branches of a dead tree.
Un oiseau y nicherait, s’il le pouvait.
Birdsong is something He can only imagine now. Warbling notes are recalled from memory, but not fully, not the way they were first sung, like fraying sheets of music.
Oiseau. À quand remonte la dernière fois qu’il a vu un oiseau ?
Has it been months? Years, now? Days lost to a place with no sun. He can’t remember when its light dimmed for the last time.
There had been a finch once. It landed on his shoulder, prodded at his hair with its little beak before shooting off in a panic, pursued by observers. Some yelling. Some laughing. A girl with a net almost caught it. It wasn’t supposed to be there.
The finch’s last note was ripped from its beak when the wide end of a broom crushed its bones against a wall.
Like an insect.
Damaged wheels absently turn for the hundredth time, for what must be the thousandth time, following a recently-made path of dried blood. Quaint, easy for uncaring eyes to overlook. Not His eyes.
Wheels come to a stop before a familiar object: The little black box.
Someone hasn’t come looking yet.
Rustling fills the dark. Enormous fingers reach the floor, practically crawling, loosening smaller vines that take to the box like ivy to tree bark, clinging. He lifts the entangled object to His face.
No light.
His eyes refocus on foliage around the box, His hands. Traces of red paint the leaves. Stems where thorns once sprouted are dyed brownish-red.
pourquoi ai-je fait ça ?
Blood, human blood that pumped through the veins of workers in yellow hats and bright vests, milling about like a colony of yellowjackets picking at a corpse. Upending the walls. Unmaking, piece by piece, to be cast into the earth.
Yet the pieces have found one another in the dark. Whole, but missing too much.
The thud of human bone against glass comes to mind.
Vines overtake the black box, pulling them deep into a coarse thicket. Someone is not coming back.
Je ne suis pas censé d'être içi.
Silence and inhuman sounds, the same song that’s filled this place for a length of time unknown. Too long. The song fills the Artists’ Wing, where it belongs. Home, supposedly. Wheels turn meticulously, clumsy as they bump an unseen corner, before shifting to His spot at the wall.
The few remaining lights at Valley View Center fade to blackness.
…
Air vents shutter, clanging in the maintenance corridors.
…
The earth shifts, rumbling like thunder.
…
He can’t sleep.
Wyatt can’t sleep.
The same nightmare, seven nights in a row. Practically the same- over time, the details have begun to bleed together. Sometimes the dark forest is razed, dead and browning, or the mall and the white-epoxy rooms blend together, mosses and fungi feasting on spilled blood as the same monster stares into the abyss. The spiraling stairs stopped showing up after the second night. Now, it’s just the hole, with something gazing up from the bottom of the stairwell, looking through Wyatt and into a starless night on the surface.
In every nightmare, it reaches for him, never quite touching. Always getting closer.
Staying up makes it worse, more raw and vivid when he inevitably falls asleep. Taking an edible and hoping he’d black out made it way, way, way fucking worse. The forest was thicker that time, everything was louder.
Sleep doesn’t feel like sleep. Exhaustion hangs on his frame, waring down to his bones.
At least his head doesn’t hurt as much. Most of the puncture wounds have closed, too, save for the biggest that was ripped out, remaining stubbornly bandaged. His fingers still twitch with the urge to reach for a phone that isn’t there.
Dad had the sense to grab a 30-something-dollar flip phone as a temporary replacement until they could figure out where this landed on their cell plan.
It’s not the same.
At least the computer has Discord and Tiktok.
Wyatt sighs, sitting on the edge of the bed. Eleanor trots out from beneath the frame, half-stretching a back leg before she hops up onto the nightstand. While one hand brushes down her fur, the other pulls at his bandaging, undoing it. It comes off easy after having been roughed up in his sleep.
It’s a matter of routine, to be roughed up.
His mind flees back to the morning after the thorn ordeal; Aunt Kim was there again to give a strong hug and a quick apology. Dad had followed her lead in that, but the way they looked at him hadn’t changed from the night before. They carried their worry in overfilled buckets, leaving a clear trail in every word and action. Near the tail end of the talk, something new was added to that concoction, and whatever feeling of security that had started to seep in was evaporated in an instant.
“We shouldn’t have been so- …You needed help, but it was wrong to force it.”
But then.
“You’re sure you were on the right property?”
“I’ve never seen a plant around here that could do this.”
“Any way we can help track down the phone?”
The apologies were nice. Really, they were, until suspicions began.
He can’t afford to let their trust fall through if he’s ever going to get his phone back, or the trail cams.
If I go back, he tells himself, scratching at the comforter. If I go back.
If you survive, if you live to tell the tale, if anyone believes you.
He hasn’t uploaded in two weeks now.
An image of the hole in the forest is burned into his mind, fading in and out like the rocking tides, when Wyatt thinks about what happened that day. When he thinks about his phone. When he thinks about anything.
It let him go home. Not without a price, but it let him go home.
But why- why can’t he-
Night and night and night again, the vines pull at him, deeper and deeper, closer and closer to the place that shouldn’t exi-
Nonono- No. It’s too real. It’s not real. Fuck.
Chittering from Eleanor scatters his thoughts. She paws at the window by his desk, tail swishing back and forth with enough force to knock off one of his sketch pages. She stands taller, but it won’t bring her any closer to the bird out of her reach. Still, she chirps in irritation.
The bird takes off. The clumsy flapping of a mourning dove isn’t hard to distinguish through the window. Eleanor’s gaze follows until the bird is gone.
He’s woken up before sunrise since the nightmares started, but that’s alright. That’s good. Need a strong morning routine, can’t let it get away from him. It’d be nice to let some air in before the heat of the day. Give humidity somewhere to go before he showers.
Wyatt makes his way to the window, giving Eleanor a quick pat and unlocking the window latches. He looks over the yard as an early-morning breeze sweeps into the room.
Outside, a white glint among the trees catches his eye.
Two white glints. A dark shape standing amidst the bark, arms outstretched and thorny hands blending with the branches.
Eleanor bolts from the room as Wyatt half-screams, jumping back and ramming his hip into the corner of the desk. The monitor tremors as Wyatt steadies himself, his heart pounding,breath quickening.
He looks out again, lowering himself to the thin screen between himself and the world, scanning the treeline for the towering shadow.
Nothing. Only a breeze, steadily drifting through grasses and foliage.
God fucking dammit. He can’t do this shit anymore.
Wyatt grips the windowsill until his knuckles turn white. One breath twists into a brief growl.
That’s it. That’s fucking it.
Change of plans. He’s going back, he’s getting the phone, and he’s burying that fucking stairwell until it chokes.
Enough of the fucking nightmares. This ends today.
Feed the cats, medicate August, take pain meds, check Gertrude’s blood sugar, take Zeke outside…
The house is vacant, save for Wyatt and the usual entourage of animals. Morning light seeps in from the outside, the first hints of sunrise pushing against the horizon and sneaking in through the windows in a gray-blue glow. In the dull light of the room, Wyatt notes that Dad’s bag is gone from its place by the door.
Perfect. Just as it should be. Dad and Kim had planned to head out early for that appointment.
That’s where normalcy ends and The Plan begins.
Wyatt holds a heavy orange cat in his arms like a baby, working an insulin needle into her shoulder. She doesn’t give half a thought to fight him on it, only going as far as looking up at him with a sense of disgruntled betrayal. This is par for the course.
Give Gertrude her insulin, check.
His mind drifts, waiting for another blood sugar test to come back.
He thinks about episodes of Ghost Adventures an old friend roped him into watching years ago. Middle school, roughly. Stories that came off as glaringly fake, played up to keep a captive audience, always filmed in eerie green night vision, recordings played over and over and over to create the illusion of disembodied words. The effort was more than enough to be convincing to a ten year old, but they were twelve. They knew better, had all the tips and tricks figured out.
Now, almost a decade later, old stories of restless spirits manage to haunt his mind. The things they supposedly did, and where they came from.
A woman who burned to death in a theater who sets the stage aflame every year. A little boy, murdered by his own father, who grabs adults’ hands and scatters toys in the upstairs nursery. Inmates of a penitentiary who don’t even know they’re dead, screaming obscenities into dark halls and rattling the bars of rusted cages.
The idea of restless spirits is… cliché. Vengeful spirits, even more so.
But through all his contemplation, his google searches, his nightmares, Wyatt can’t think of what the fuck else that place could have been. The puzzle isn’t complete, yet it seems clearer than every other picture on the table here.
‘That’s SO fake- they put those scratches on him between takes! Duh.’
Wyatt glances at the scabs on his arm.
Funny, how ‘ ghostly manifestation with a resident demon ’ manages to make more logical sense than ‘forgotten bunker’ or ‘government experiment’.
Maybe he’s just crazy or fucking mentally ill or something.
It’d make a good video, a half-buried influencer whispers.
It would. It would mean he could tell Dad and Kim what really happened out there. Proof of some inconceivable thing out in the woods, waiting for someone to fall prey.
And bury it, part of him whispers. So no one else takes it.
So it takes no one else.
He could prove to himself that he is a deranged fucking idiot jumping to his own death in a place he shouldn’t be, in a place that should be buried. Surely filled with some kind of hallucinogenic gas, or low in oxygen. Something. The footage would prove that.
Glowing eyes, creaking wood, cracking foundations- thunder beneath the Earth. A shopping mall. Blood and flowers-
You know what you saw.
As Wyatt snatches a little pack of salt from the top of the fridge, he wonders if anyone’s died in that dark shopping mall.
Knowing how long it’s taken them before, he’ll have until early afternoon until Dad and Kim get back. The clinic is a couple of hours out, some specialist, and the traffic will stall even longer. Plenty of time to get back to the oak, run down the stairs, grab what he needs, and bail before the fucked up statue finishes what it started.
Give Gertrude insulin , take Zeke outside, grab the utility shovel from the workshop, the flashlight, pack water, pack food…
Car headlights flood to life, draping the gravel driveway in long shadows. Wyatt checks his rear view as the car backs up, dramatically shifting the steering wheel when the back tires meet grass. Headlights streak across the yard as he makes a full turn, heading towards the road.
He checks the treeline one more time. No white glints.
The bag in the passenger seat clinks as the shovel head taps against an old metal lunchbox. Always wanted to use that one.
Feed the cats, medicate August, take pain meds, check Gertrude’s blood sugar, take Zeke outside, grab the utility shovel from the workshop, the flashlight, pack water, pack food, get there, get the stuff, get out.
Good. Wait, no, forgot one.
Don’t get caught.
A staticky radio host reads off the time, 6:15 a.m., droning on about today’s weather and traffic holdups. A jam located westbound on Interstate-
Fantastic, that’ll be even more time. Dad should be on that road.
Ah, fuck. They might call about being late home.
Wyatt won’t answer. If they spam call, he’s simply busy, out picking up Aunt Kim’s trail cams. Nothing more, nothing less than a half-truth like the few dozen others that reassured Dad before. Ideally, they’ll see him come home safe and remember he knows how to take care of himself.
…So as long as he isn’t caught.
The car emerges from a gap in the trees, turning onto the main road’s cracked pavement. The horizon glows with hints of the encroaching sun, radio promising cool breezes and scattered showers into the morning. The accelerator is given a hearty press, moving faster, over the speed limit and into the dawn.
Perfect weather to get out and get some business done. Coming up, we’ve got Miley Cyrus with Flowers…
“Thanks, Kim. You- you really didn’t have to do this.”
Kim stifles a yawn in the passenger’s seat, sitting with a professional habit of her back kept straight and hands resting on her thighs. Her own way of relaxing, keeping herself awake.
Driving towards sunrise does wonders for keeping the light in their eyes.
“It’s nothing.” She waves him off, crossing a leg. “I’d rather be here than sleep in. Something’s in the water these days, I swear. Especially when it comes to this.”
“Yeah.” Marvin’s shoulders slouch at the wheel. “Yeah. I appreciate the backup.”
“Mmhm.”
Kim pulls out her phone, evidently checking the time. Her nail taps the screen as she squints down through the morning glare.
“You think Wyatt’s awake yet?”
Too many ways to answer that question. Marvin settles for what seems the most logical after the uphill climb these last couple of weeks have been.
“Maybe. The meds really knocked him out those first few days, but he’s been bouncing back strong.”
He certainly kept all the sass and rebellion, but his routine is off by a few kilters. Late mornings, some time lost and some time gained through the phone being out of his hands. On one hand, the phone being gone has him looking for more distractions. A bit twitchier, more irritated, but relatively productive in an endless search for something to mess with.
The “Morning Grindset” has been a work in progress, but Marvin doesn’t plan on pushing that in particular. Wyatt may have the clear to drive, but weight lifting and jogging are still out of the question.
As long as Wyatt’s happy. Safe. That’s what’s important.
‘PRIVATE PROPERTY - NO TRESPASSING’
The third ‘private property’ sign marks the halfway point. Almost there. The morning air is gentle, golden rays dappling through branches hanging overhead. Old growth of oaks, birch, and maple line either side of the path, the occasional young dogwood reaching out its flowering branches for a taste of breeze and light.
A bee flies by, here and there, but Wyatt knows not to react.
‘They’re natures little helpers’, Kim told him years and years and years ago, in that patronizing sing-song voice he loved so much, after he’d panicked at buzzing near his ear. ‘She’ll find her way. Don’t be afraid, just be patient. She’s working very hard.’
Wyatt takes the few breaks he needs, despite hospitable conditions. There isn’t nearly as much wind this time around, but while nature is agreeable today, his bones are not, chest distinctly aching from the constant motion. He’s lucky to find a stump so close to the old path.
They’re better off than before, but his ribs will still need time to heal. Just be patient.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink, as a daddy long-legs toddles out from a hole in the rotting wood and down the side of the stump, onto the forest floor to grapple through leaves and sticks in search of breakfast.
They work together, Kim had told him a long time ago. The bees carry their dead from the colony, laying them to rest for the harvestmen to take.
He doesn’t think further on it, habitually flipping open his airpod case and shutting it again. No spotify out here, no real phone to listen with. Forty-five minutes until he’s back at the spot, not counting breaks or detours. No detours. He doesn’t have time to get lost right now.
He’s on a mission, after all. Get the phone, get the cams, get the fuck out of dodge.
Trees clear up on the path ahead. West, where the sun rises. He slips on a pair of sunglasses pulled from a side-pocket of his bag.
As Wyatt stands, a pair of cardinals startle from the trees. They pass through upper branches splitting off overhead into the open sky, white clouds lazily drifting over the hills. He can hear their song growing distant in the soft blue above.
That day , the sky couldn’t have been a more welcome sight, peering down from the branches of the old oak.
When the time comes to bury the stairwell, He’ll have to dig away from the tree so the roots don’t get damaged. Kim would kill him if he fucked up an old tree like that, and in a weird way, he owes it some respect. It was nice to have something to lean on after nearly passing out.
If all goes well- or even if it doesn’t -he’ll be getting another workout in.
As Wyatt walks into the open field, he thinks of Dad.
What were you thinking?! - I’m fine, promise.
Sun spots blot his vision like those glaring lights on the drive home that day, aching and disoriented along the back roads, patches of trees offering solace from near-blindness.
Disregarding the creeping sense of catharsis, this isn’t his brightest idea.
But he has to try. He has to- to make the dreams stop, to bury the problem, to get some fucking answers. Something to get eyes on his channel, an explanation for it all, if Dad will believe him. If anyone will believe him. If the phone kept recording, it would have caught everything. Or nothing, if it wasn’t real.
If he’s lucky, maybe the hole won’t even be there anymore. Gone by morning, faded into obscurity like all those stories of people who swore they’d seen the resident ghost, or demon or goat man or whatever the fuck.
On instinct, he checks his back pocket for a phone. It’s not his phone, but a phone. Not a chance in Hell it’ll have a signal out here, but it’s a better contingency plan than he had before. Fuck, there hadn’t even been one before.
It doesn’t even have a camera. He may as well be lugging a potato with him.
It’s enough. It’ll be enough, until the Iphone is back in his hands.
Pebbles scatter down concrete steps as Wyatt slips into darkness, flashlight in hand. The lights are still on down here, bright enough to see until he gets to the right-turn and second hallway, but sure as fucking hell if he’s gonna let anything get past him at this point. The flashlight stays on.
The first target is easy. He kicks aside a large rock, letting it tumble and crack down the first few steps, snatching a smaller trail cam the rock had been keeping in place.
No sign of it being moved, or damaged. The motion trigger activates as Wyatt pulls it up, flashing.
Covering his eyes comes too late. Fuck- the flash leaves him blinking and shaking his head.
…Battery’s still going. So far, so good. He flips open the camera’s back panel. A small image display lights up, lighting the dust on his fingers.
Click, click, click.
There are pictures, but no signs of movement. Images taken at random intervals, some in the day, others bearing the harsh black-and-white of night vision. Camera glitches, and a big moth in the sixth image that makes Wyatt’s heart spike.
One small difference, between six and seven, besides the moth. Another stairway light is out.
Wyatt looks up. The same light from the sharp black-and-white image is dark, the second one down from the first light that went out before. If someone’s powering this place, they’re not maintaining it.
Click, click, click. He cards through everything again, just to be sure. The last images are his pale hand halfway against the lens, second to the less-than-flattering flashbang of his face.
Hm. The potato phone doesn’t have a camera, but... If he really needs it, he can use this, too. Or… Hm, no. He’ll grab the second cam, yeah. It’ll be smoother that way, less stopping to zip and unzip his pack.
The sooner he’s out, the better.
Cold seeps down to his bones. There’s no other reason for him to be shaking.
You’ve got a plan. You’ll be fine. Don’t get caught.
There’s water down here, this time.
He can hear it through the old door, pushed open centimeter by centimeter to stop the creaking. It gives him time to stare at the side windows, leading only to walls, glass filthy and orange with condensation and calcium buildup between it and the wall. Outer layers of wood finish crumble under his touch. Once open enough, he slips through as silently as he can.
He catches a glimpse of the stairwell as the door closes. Old dust suspended in a yellowish beam of light, cut off before the whole picture has time to sink in. He stops the door before it slams, slowly letting go so that it hangs open.
It could collapse again, concrete slamming in on all sides, heard as the distant sound of thunder. Just like before.
Hurry.
Yet he practically tip-toes on mildew laden tile, carefully avoiding crumbled bits of ceramic that could risk making noise if tread on. What little sound he does make is thankfully masked by the flow of water beneath the grates along the walls of the room.
He leans over one, hesitantly shining light into its depths. Light finds the shimmering surface of moving water, no telling which way it’s flowing.
It hasn’t rained in more than a week.
Quit it, quit it, stop trying to make fucking sense of it.
It’s go time. This is go time, it has to go right. If he can get out once, he can do it again.
Because It let you.
He feels nauseous. It’s fine.
The flashlight is clicked off, for one terrifying moment, and clicked back on at a lower setting. A weaker beam of light dances across the floor as Wyatt wriggles under the iron bars, pulling the backpack through after getting to the other side. He keeps the light low to the ground, only showing what he needs to see to get around at all.
The light jitters as he illuminates the shop gate, partially hanging down from a gap in the ceiling.
Still open. The mall beyond the threshold is as dark and silent as the stairwell.
It’s… dormant? Asleep. Something like that. Wyatt stays crouched, pacing forward, leaning against the edge of the gutted kiosk as his lifeline. Carefully, he reaches out to the corner of the counter, where the second trail cam should be.
A few seconds of pawing go by. Gone. Shit.
He’s not leaving without these cameras- if the fucking thing messed with it…
Wyatt pulls himself up on shaking legs, scanning the counter where the camera should have been. Nothing but the usual dust and wires occupies the space. He follows the edge of the counter, rounding the corner, when the toe of his shoe bumps a hunk of plastic and metal.
There. The trail cam, almost where it should be. Must’ve gotten knocked over after last time.
He practically scurries to the side of the kiosk closer to the exit, kneeling behind cover to sort through the camera’s contents. Chilled air sinks deeper into his skin as he finds… Nothing. The power light blinks red as Wyatt tries to turn on the cam’s manual panel. Indication of a dead battery, according to Aunt Kim.
These were set up together. Same batteries and charges. Maybe this one’s just weaker?
But he thinks back to all of those times on Ghost Adventurers where equipment went dead, monsters in the dark feeding on the electrical energy.
Nah, fuck that. Head in the game, Wyatt. This one’s battery was just shot.
If the Thing messed with it, that’s all the more reason to choke this place once he’s out. When he gets out. He will get out.
What were you thinking- No, NO, fuck you. Not now, Dad.
Wyatt’s just beginning to peek over the kiosk when something creaks outside- no, inside, in the wide-open space of the Mall. He poorly stifles a gasp, ducking back down and clutching the camera for dear life, expecting the lights to turn on and the air to fill with off-key muzak.
Still nothing. Just… an air vent bumping around, like all old ones do. It’s fine. The Thing is way heavier. Probably.
A second bump in the darkness confirms the theory. Suspended somewhere in an access hall, too far and narrow to be this prison’s warden.
It’s fine. He’s fine.
In those moments, he’s conscious of every breath, willing them to come slowly as he peeks around the counter into the darkness. There’s no movement outside, no eyes gleaming from the dark or slow creak of shoddy wheels. No creeping feeling of being watched, like last time. Everything is as it’d been left before, save for the lights. No danger yet.
Just adrenaline, and silence low enough to hear blood flowing through his veins.
Go time. It’s doable, if he pretends he’s in A Quiet Place or something. Make a noise and the demon gets you. Yeah, sure, that checks.
The camera is stuffed into his backpack and slung over his shoulder, a few steps away so as not to hit the counter. Body low and steps light, he shines the flashlight forward, pulling white-and-brown tile into his line of sight. Through the haze, he can make out a thick pillar on the left side, same from last time. On the right side, emptiness, and a long shop window out of view. That’s his path. Follow the wall, dash across to the left side.
If he sticks to the walls, it’ll be easier to navigate.
It would also make it easier to get caught.
No. Stay quiet, stay low, stay in the dark. The dark has to be safer, so as long as the thing can’t see well. Wyatt thinks, as he shakily slides beneath the gate, that the thing might not have appreciated having light shone in its face last time.
He clicks the flashlight down to its lowest light setting. Agonizingly dim, but enough to get on the right track. It’d be hard to forget the shops, the walls, the outdated tile flooring.
It’s good that he’s getting the phone back. Getting this on tape would tie in well, whenever he posts about this. Looks like a fucking horror game. Feels like a horror game, heart spiking if he steps too loudly.
He rakes the tips of his fingers over the glass shop windows, following the wall far as it’ll guide him to the spot with the boarded window. His fingers come away dusty. He rubs them off on his shirt, careful not to ruffle the material. Teeth dig into his tongue as he pulls up the flashlight, flipping it to a higher setting as he preps to dash across.
Don’t run. Quiet steps, keep your weight even. Like one of those stupid balance beams in elementary school.
He moves briskly, light on his feet, to the other side of the hall. More than halfway there.
The flashlight beam stays on the ground, Wyatt unwilling to risk alerting the monster by waving it around. He pans it, back and forth, checking if the phone might have been pushed down this way in the scuffle.
Bone to glass and blood to thorns probably amounts to a little more than a scuffle, actually.
The light stops in its scanning. Wyatt squints down in the dark, unfamiliar marks dotting the floor. Tiny, brownish-red smears smatter the tile.
Blood. His blood, he realizes.
Around the dots, little bits of glass, shattered from the lights above.
Wyatt steps over the bloodmarks as though they were also glass. He’s close. A bit of debris crunches under his shoe, too quiet to echo, too loud for his liking.
Tables, chairs, and wet floor signs are meticulously side-stepped. Can’t bump them. No noise, or the monster gets you. It’s simple, to the point, as terrifying as it should be.
A familiar scene emerges from the darkness ahead.
The tiles are covered in larger dried blood drops, from where it readjusted its grip on him, pulling out thorns and grabbing him again. More wounds, more blood, more pain. The window board is still in place, but a gap gives way to deeper darkness inside the shop.
One more hit, and he would have made it.
A bump echoes in the dark. Wyatt freezes.
Above him, metal banging sound through the ceiling. Right… right. Just the air system here being weird. It must take a lot of electricity to keep this place above freezing, wherever that electricity comes from. If it comes from anywhere.
He creeps forward, scanning with light again. Blood marks, scratches on the floor, a bit of warping in the shop window, but no phone.
Fuck. how? It wasn’t in the stairwell. He could double back and check the shop, but the shadows are long in this dead end. Better to be thorough.
He takes a few steps, skirting around the bloodstains to check under tables and chairs. No phone yet.
On the second set of chairs he scans, a glint catches Wyatt’s eye. Sharp white against the light, halfway behind and under one of the chair legs. Carefully leaning down, he reaches for it, pulling it out and shining the flashlight over its slick surface for a better look.
He stands, quietly pacing away from the chairs as familiarity sinks in.
A laminated white tag, dark letters spelling out StudiObregon with the “O” colored bright red.
…Damn. He’s seen this before.
Something plastic falling to the floor, kicking, screaming, flickering lights.
Wyatt’s heart sinks to his stomach. He holds the tag at further length, as though it were something sharp and dangerous, taking slow steps backwards. It is dangerous, a piece of that- the-...
It could have killed him. It didn’t. But-
Nah, fuck this. He’s out.
Wyatt slips the tag into his pocket, ready to turn back and check the entrance shop before getting the hell out of here. The phone’s not here. Wasn’t worth it, he’s not pushing his-
Creeeeak.
…luck.
Wyatt takes a step backwards, angling his light up to the shop window.
Cloth brushes against his upper back. Something metal at hip level.
In the reflection, an enormous shadow looms behind him. Two white glints reflect in the dark, looking down at Wyatt’s figure.
“...hey.”
It doesn’t move. Wyatt doesn’t either.
Fuck.
The food court lights flood the distant center of the mall, residual light creeping into the hall. Only one or two lights by the entrance of the corridor manage to flicker to life, the rest burned away weeks ago.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck- you fucking retarded piece of- I- I fucked up-
A waiting game. It doesn’t move.
Wyatt glances down the hall, glances back to the reflection. It caught you so easy, last time.
Don’t get caught. Not yet. He hasn’t failed just yet.
Adrenaline begins to pump, sweat gathering on the back of his neck. The sounds of leaves rustling fills the air.
Wyatt pivots in a reactive burst, grabbing the front of the statue’s cart and swinging it aside. He bolts, narrowly avoiding the thorny hands that lunge for him, ignoring the clang of metal and wood, sprinting down the other side of the hall towards the food court. His footfalls echo through the vast empty space, any semblance of stealth lost on them.
Sneaking, hiding, not options anymore. He runs, flashlight in hand, bag slamming against his lower back, beelining out of that hall and into the mall center. Lights begin to flicker again.
It’s lighter than it looks, a thought passes by. He thought it would be heavier for something so loud, or something that could grab him and thrash him around like a doll.
Something that’s about to try that stunt again, right now, and might not let him go this time.
Wyatt glances back, stopping to pivot for the exit. The few remaining bulbs in the corridor rapidly flicker as the statue watches him, now turned to face him. The pattern of flickering lights trails into the food court, then the other halls, a thousand eyes blinking down at him.
With every flicker of darkness, the unmoving statue is somehow closer.
I fucked up, I fucked up-
Not over yet. He breaks into a sprint again, nearing the escalators-
The straps of his backpack pull back hard. Yanked back with force, taking Wyatt with them, startling the breath from his lungs.
“No!” He yelps, struggling, catching a glimpse of a thorny hand pulling him along with ease.
Metal and wood clang, blending into one terrible sound, joined by the rustling of thorny plants. Distant music warps around the mall’s old pillars.
“ Not again! ”
Yes again, it seems to reply by dragging Wyatt back across the floor, away from the exit as the lights begin to slow in their flashing. It’s still disorienting, Wyatt blinking through the discordance.
Not out of options. Not caught yet.
“Let me go! Let me go! ” Wyatt tucks his arms in, slipping from the bag’s straps. The bag is yanked away, zipper coming partway undone.
He tumbles forward, rolling over onto his back and scrambling to kick away from the statue. It’s reach isn’t fast enough this time, thorns scraping against his denim jacket as he makes a break for the exit.
Fuck the cameras, fuck it all, he wants to live.
Almost there. His heart beats as hard as the war drums from that awful forest. He skids past the escalators, and-
The lights go out in perfect unison. He makes the mistake of hesitating.
Light floods the mall again, the statue now standing before the exit, hands strung up on those old bamboo poles as though they couldn’t be used on their own.
One hand holds his bag, dangled from the straps by one of its curled fingers.
Wyatt trips in a poor attempt to double back, skidding and landing awkwardly on his leg. Pain shoots through it in the same instance, not enough to stop him. He kicks out again, backing up and then freezing up as the statue remains still and silent in front of the empty shop’s gate.
Off-key notes flow through the underground mall. A river with Wyatt caught solely in its cold waters.
He struggles to sit up, the ankle he’d landed on throbbing in pain as his breathing comes out in short, labored panting. Abandoning his flashlight, limping footsteps lead him to one of the many support pillars reaching up into the dark. The mall lights are dimming again.
“I don’t…” Wyatt half-whispers. His gaze turns to the shadows closing in, the thousand eyes closing.
The statue doesn’t move from its place in front of the exit. It remains unmoving, observing. Seconds pass, nothing changes.
It reminds him of September when she manages to catch a mouse. Taunting it, biting and ripping into it, letting it get away before catching it again to do the same thing. Tormenting them to death.
The ache in his ankle won’t go away, but his anxiety does. It bleeds out, sapped into the cold around him. Cold acceptance fills the gap left behind.
Cope.
“You win. You- you got me.” Wyatt hesitantly raises his voice. “So just kill me already.”
Coward.
The statue doesn't make a move. Its fingers curl around the straps of his backpack, white dots glancing to it for a fraction of a second. Or maybe that was a trick of the light, his vision straining in the dark.
So Wyatt shifts, leaning his back against the pillar to face the statue head-on.
This fucking thing- it wants to fuck around? Fine.
He’s not going home, that much is obvious. He’s not caught yet, but he doesn’t have to be. This- it doesn’t follow rules. It breaks them, the same way it’ll inevitably break him. Might as well speed up the process.
“Do you even understand what I’m saying? I said kill me already. ”
It doesn’t. It doesn’t do anything.
Muzak has never been so goddamn annoying, the only thing filling the silence. He’d rather die in silence. I don’t want to die- but he’d still rather die that way. Quick, quiet, and clean.
Beggars can’t be choosers. So why won’t it get it over with?
“What do you want?!” Wyatt shouts across the way,
Creeeak. A couple of lights flicker on and off. The statue loosens its grip on the bag, dropping it to the floor where its contents spill out onto the tile. The clunk of the cameras hitting the floor makes Wyatt grit his teeth.
Better the bag than his guts spilled out everywhere- a reality that could be soon, as the statue teeters toward him.
Wyatt presses against the pillar, heart quickening.
“I said, what do you-”
The mall goes white.
His ears ring. A scent of smoke and sulfur hangs heavy in the air, ringing hearing giving way to the echo of a weapon. Wyatt blinks, shaking his head as he coughs out the overpowering scent. He raises his head, feeling far more clouded and heavier than it should.
The image before him flashes and blurs together, a cavernous building filled with filth and graffiti and debris. The loudspeakers scream with a voice Wyatt can’t hear, slow and distorted, singing nonsense into the familiar horror. Nothing has moved here, but it’s changed- foliage in the food court replaced with flame, columns of smoke streaking into the ceiling. Fire illuminates the columns and the fountain, plastered with graffiti and words in a language that Wyatt can’t understand, the back of the elevator painted with the image of a bound woman.
Another flash. The flame and graffiti is gone.
Wyatt can see his breath in front of him. It billows out, bright white beneath a tinted light from above, one of four hanging from the pillar.
The same light reflects across the mall over thousands of snow crystals, piled all the way up to his knees, freezing wetness sinking into his shoes. No lights shine but this one, yet even from here, Wyatt can clearly make out the gleam of the statue’s eyes, gaze as cold as the frozen world around them. Above, icicles of all sizes hang from the ceiling and support beams. The food court is all but buried, a flooded plane of ice where tile and water should be, most everything buried in the frost.
Hunger claws deep inside of him, borderline starvation, Wyatt trembling as he shifts his arm over his stomach and leans against the pillar.
“Wh- what the fuck, what th- the-”
The mall flashes again, rapidly. A scene of flame returns.
On pikes, scattered all over the floor, the corpses of animals and men lay rotting, the stench of decay overpowering the room Wyatt covers his mouth and nose, unable to look away as the corpses rapidly putrefy into blackened husks, their melted blood and gore reflecting firelight like freshly laid tar. The upper crevices of the mall glow orange instead of the blackness from before, licking flames breaking through the drywall above, eating away at the beams.
A few fall away between him and the statue, who stands amid the chaos unmoving.
Wyatt’s heart beats like thunder, sweat from the excessive heat soaking into his clothing. No- That is thunder, up there, or the sound of the fire coursing through the air system.
Panicked, he tries to run. A pair of beams fall to the ground, flames still clinging to them as they trap Wyatt in his place, a short distance between him and certain death. He cries out in fear, pushing himself back up against the pillar.
It doesn’t follow rules, it breaks them.
A crack splits the pillar, crawling down into the floor, the structure groaning in imminent collapse. Far away, men yell, and a flash of red and blue briefly envelops the burning structure. Wyatt screws his eyes shut.
The intercom distorts further, growing in volume until the feedback shrieks over the roar of flame and thunder and collapse.
Wyatt crumples to the ground, the only stable thing left, and covers his ears in a vain attempt to make it stop. He screams through the storm of noise and terror.
“WHAT ARE YOU?!”
Fires roaring, wooden creaking, a world on the verge of destruction, and then…
Silence.
Wyatt opens his eyes to a vacant shopping mall.
Nothing.
Just him, the statue and the darkness.
His whole body trembles, unwilling to move from the feign safety of the pillar. It’s not safe. It’s all he has, between the emptiness and the terror. His head hurts with an unfamiliar ache, pain behind his eyes. His ankle throbs, and raw hunger claws at his core, but those begin to fade.
All that remains is Wyatt, hands over his head, struggling not to break down into smaller pieces of himself.
Old wheels slowly approach. Finally, the end of this. Rustle, rustle- a hand reaches for him, plastic furls brushing over his back until bold fingers find the grip of his leg, tugging it out from underneath him to pull across the floor.
An attempt at escape is half hearted at best, Wyatt tugging his leg back and lightly kicking when it reaches again. The monster learns quickly, catching him off guard in snatching his other leg, retaking the first in Wyatt’s surprise.
Easy prey. Wyatt doesn’t bother to look up. Why bother watching your own death?
He’s not given much of a choice as the statue pulls him across the floor, forcing Wyatt’s arms to uncurl and his head to pull up on instinct. Still, Wyatt doesn’t fight it, keeping limp. Please, please just make it quick.
There’s a sickening level of familiarity that comes with being dragged across the floor of a shopping mall that shouldn’t exist. At least this time there isn’t as much blood. Branches and vines bind to his leg, anchoring onto his flesh with raw strength instead of thorns. The thorns are far from gone, pinpricks scraping his skin, but it’s not like before.
The dragging stops after what feels like ages. Wyatt doesn’t move, laying into the cold floor, eyes screwed shut.
He’s going to die. That doesn’t mean he’s going to cooperate.
The statue doesn’t take kindly to that.
Thorns grow in the foliage of its hands, scratching and prodding at Wyatt’s sides in what feels like an attempt to make him get up on his own. He doesn’t, giving another defiant kick instead, awkwardly splaying out on his side to give the motion more leverage.
He steals a quick glance at the statue. Same as ever, darkened gaze glaring down at him. A home with the lights off, someone lurking inside.
A chill crawls up Wyatt’s spine.
The statue takes its perfect opportunity, hand slamming down over Wyatt and digging its grip behind his back in the resulting daze. It scoops him up in its enormous hand with little resistance. Wyatt yelps as he stirs, putting his arms out in front of him to weakly reach for the floor.
The branches and thorns wrap around him tightly, as suffocating as the bramble tunnels from his nightmares. There’s no getting out of this one, but still he squirms, on instinct or in denial, or from something more petty that tears through him as thoroughly as thorns and fear.
Fight or die, pick a fucking lane.
It holds him low enough for him to touch the floor. He scrapes at tile with the tip of his shoe, wriggling, trying to lower himself in the monster’s grip for a solid foothold. He glances up again, away from the statue, stealing a snapshot of their surroundings- one of the other hallways, away from the art wing, glass display cases lined with a random assortment of posters about fucking Texas of all places, random black and white photos. Wyatt doesn’t bother to begin to wonder why, only how he could get away from this thing again.
He owes Aunt Kim those fucking cameras.
Recent history repeats itself. Whatever he does, it pisses the statue off- He manages to brace this time, hands meeting plexiglass before his forehead does as the statue swings him into a display.
“ Hah,” Wyatt manages to rasp, briefly glaring at the statue
He’s not as lucky on the second blow, hesitating too long in the next swing. His face hits glass before his hands do, vision blackening and nose going numb. A pained grunt works its way out of his throat, hands flying up to cover his face, now pulsing in pain. The statue lowers him as it pulls him back again, Wyatt’s legs drooping to the floor and dragging.
Mind Half-there, half-not, blinking flashing blurs from his vision, remembering how to breathe as a familiar ache sets in. He braces to be dropped like before, like last time.
It never comes.
Instead, it holds him up by his torso, hooking a finger under each arm to keep him upright. The chill of cold metal pushes into his back. His arms fall.
His legs splay out in front of him, eyes locked on the tiles between his knees, struggling to put together a picture that doesn’t blur and truncate into itself. The image clears over a few seconds, drawing attention to a little branch on the floor, seemingly freshly plucked from one of the plants scattered around the mall.
Gradually he remembers how to breathe again, tongue running over his upper lip and swallowing the taste of blood.
Thick blood that drips from his broken nose, onto his chin and the front of his shirt, a few droplets on tile and leaves. It’s broken. There’s no fucking way it isn’t broken.
Leaves rustle in the haze. Wyatt freezes.
One of the statue’s fingers meets Wyatt’s forehead. Lacking rough branches or thorns, it pulls his head up, setting his gaze equal to the display in front of them.
Wyatt blinks, squinting through lights refracting over cheap plexiglass. In front of him, an old man’s portrait looms, blurry behind multiple barriers. It’s- not a painting, deep black shadows and gray-white highlights giving away the age of the photograph. It just as easily gives away the man’s age, white beard frazzled at the tip. His eyes are barely visible behind the harsh shadows of the photo. Details obscure in its size, the image clearly blown up from something much smaller.
Inky letters dot the edges of the portrait, framing the old man’s face. An emboldened name at the base of the photo sticks out, letters larger than the rest, the full statement partially blocked by Wyatt’s own blood smeared on the glass.
‘PROF. JULIEN R—.’
Wyatt’s voice comes in a hoarse whisper. “Julien…?”
The grip of the statue immediately loosens. Wyatt coughs, catching himself to stay upright, arms shaking under his weight. He shifts his leg to sit on it, catching his breath, absentmindedly running his arm under his nose to clear away blood. He just as carelessly wipes it onto his shirt.
There he waits, catching his breath, waiting for the statue to make its next move.
Waiting, waiting… nothing.
Wyatt leans back, staring up at it. Its hands, at some point, returned to their usual pose. Everything else remains the same, statue facing the glass, its weight partially leaning off to one side. He’s never had time to notice that.
Its eyes remain locked squarely on the portrait, darkened irises and glowing pupils lowered in paper sockets to look down. The glowing whites flash- a blink?
He swears for half a second that the statue’s brow creases, gone the moment it came. It shouldn’t be possible.
It’s thinking. It’s distracted.
Wyatt closes his eyes. One deep breath in, another out, slow enough not to make a noisy huff . He moves his leg out from under him, reaching forward with his bloodied arm, slowly crawling away from the statue, refusing to use his feet in case one of the shoes squeaks and catches its attention.
Twenty feet pass under him without a hitch. The statue remains unmoving, occupied with the portrait.
Wyatt takes his chance to grab the edge of a planter, quietly pulling himself up on his bad ankle, not as bad as he’d expected. It can take his weight, but not without some pain. Limping will have to do. It’s all he’s got.
Get out, grab his bag, don’t get caught again. He makes a conscious effort not to shift his feet too much, not to risk making too much noise. His heart picks up as the mall’s center opens up before him, escape within reach if he can just-
An electrical buzz fills the halls, lights flickering. Between flashes, the statue appears in front of him, blocking the way as it did before.
Gleaming pupils glow with a new spark of interest, the blooms in its hands more intense. It looks him up and down, eyes twitching.
Easy prey, in a game of cat and mouse.
Just like that, Wyatt can feel whatever hope he’d mustered drop to the pit of his stomach, muscles similarly weakening in exhaustion as adrenaline drains. Flashing lights take a few blinks more to get out of his sight, vision not right, probably damaged again by this fucking thing. He reaches out for a nearby railing, leaning his full weight against it. Involuntarily, his bad ankle gives out, taking the rest of him with it.
He submits to the same position as before: Storm drill, though not bothering to pull his arms up over his head, instead shoving his face into his folded arms. The contents of his pocket scrape into his thigh, the plastic tag pushed out thanks to the awkward position, tumbling to the floor.
Creeeeak, the statue rolls closer. Wyatt braces.
Foliage snakes to the floor, creeping closer, preparing to grab him for whatever torture session is next.
“ Sorry.” Wyatt whispers into the crook of his arm, soaking blood into his jacket. “‘I'm sorry.”
Tap, tap. Its fingers whisk at the floor, agonizingly close, the sound of plastic skimming on tile. It continues for a short distance, the silence returning after a few moments of rustling.
He tenses, bracing again. It must be trying to get a reaction out of him, or something. Anything. Whatever he has to do to explain this, for the temporary relief before Hell starts again.
Cre- creeeak. A harsh metal squeak.
Quieter, moving away from him.
Followed by the click of something dropped. Then a quiet rustle, a longer hiss, something slid across the floor with respectable force. The object hits Wyatt’s arm, wedging itself between the floor and his flesh. Something flat, smooth, cold.
The quiet buzz of flickering lights falls around him.
A few more beats pass, occupied only with the distant ambience of the mall. Wyatt cautiously uncovers his eyes, peering over his arm to find one light remaining above him, the rest of the mall as dark as it’d been when he came here.
It’s still playing with you. Still waiting for a reaction out of you-
He looks around. Left, right, below the railing, in the rafters. Squinting through the dark, there’s no white glint or vaguely human outline to be found. No presence, no gaze burning into him.
Wyatt slowly uncurls after what feels like ages. He snatches the item pinned under his arm, blinking down as his eyes adjust to the lighting.
Blinking a few more times, to be sure he isn’t seeing things.
There’s an Iphone in his hands. Black cracked screen, backing dented. An Iphone.
An Iphone.
HIS FUCKING IPHONE.
He looks around again, checking all the spots he did before, details obscured in the dark. All that remains is the mall’s center skylight, weaker now, as though the sun already made its way to the horizon. Nevermind there’s no hole up there, no way for natural light to reach this far down.
Still nothing. His rough breathing is the loudest thing down here, heard well over the air system’s quiet thrum.
The words are there, but he doesn’t dare speak them.
You’re kidding me.
It’s a little beyond fucked up at this point. The situation and his phone- the screen doesn’t even blink as he spams the power button. Completely dead.
He should be dead. Shouldn’t even fucking be here.
Get there, get the stuff, get out. Get out.
There might still be a chance.
Wyatt holds his breath. He pulls himself up by the railing, testing his footing. It’ll hurt like a bitch, but- yeah. Yeah, he can run on a bad ankle. It won’t be long, one short burst until he gets to the crawlspace, and then he’ll be able to take it slow-
Click. Something skidding across the floor, bigger than the phone. Wyatt’s heart jumps. He twists to check every angle he can, somewhere the statue could manage to hide-
It reaches his foot before it reaches his gaze, an object thumping against his shoe. Another thing, slid with greater force, hits the base of the railing, metallic thrum echoing through the mall.
Wyatt startles, looks down, half-expecting to see his heart pumping out of his chest.
Instead? One, two…
Trail cameras.
He wants to laugh. He wants to scream. He wants to pick them up and chuck them as hard as he fucking can at this thing, whatever the fuck it is.
What the fuck is it playing at?
When Wyatt looks back up, a pair of gleaming eyes examines him from the artist's wing.
He swallows the expletives waiting on his tongue, swallowing a second time for a heart that made its way into his throat. His posture straightens, turning to face the statue in its shadowy hiding place. Eye contact. The fucking trail survival shit, it always said to keep eye contact. It’ll freak it out, if he’s lucky enough. As if anything could freak this thing out. Wait- no, avoiding eye contact. That’s what the survival guides say.
White dots blink from the shadows. Too late for second-guessing now.
His ankle burns. His nose throbs in pain, still bleeding. Wyatt holds everything in one arm, gripping the phone and holding the cams to his chest. Following a mental map, he takes slow steps, backing away towards the exit shop, limping.
“I- I’m leaving.” He stammers. One foot after another. Right foot, pain, left foot, right foot, pain, left foot. Overhead, muzak kicks back on. Keep eye contact.
The light by the railing flickers off, but the glare from the dark remains. The only lights left in this awful place.
“I’m trying to leave.”
The eyes blink again.
In the furthest corners of the mall, whispers drift through the darkness. Secrets quietly spoken. The unseen audience grows from one, to ten, to a hundred at least, voices mounting in number with every step Wyatt takes.
Keep walking. Keep walking. Keep walking…
Metal wheels turn. Wooden scaffolding clatters. The statue moves forward.
Wyatt pivots. He bolts, ducking and sprinting through the dark, pain forgotten. The voices go silent- that, or his footfalls ring over them, or the rush of blood is louder than whatever the ghost can convoke.
The statue goes equally unheard, stopping in its tracks.
Maybe disappearing entirely, maybe getting ready to ambush him again.
It never does.
Wyatt blindly rushes through the mall, through the empty shop, practically diving to wriggle under the rusty grate as fast as his legs will force him through after rolling his phone and the cams to the other side. In the pitch blackness, he claws for them, just as quickly scrambling for the door and swinging it open.
Without a guiding light, he half-trips on the first step. From there, he settles for desperation, making a slow crawl on three limbs through pitch darkness.
Like a rat running with a scrap of food.
Wyatt collapses at the halfway point, rolling over on his side between sets of stairs. There’s sanctuary in the artificial light, Wyatt soaking in the safety of the stairwell. Not entirely safe, no, but the safest he’s seen in the last… how long has it been? A span of time that feels like hours, stretching longer as he pants like an animal.
It’s real. Too real, a fucking hallucination can’t do this. It’s real.
Every breath aches, but the pain somehow isn’t much worse than last time, when it was his ribs. His sinuses are fucked, but maybe not broken.
Avoiding a visit to urgent care would be nice.
He sits up, brushing the concrete dust from his hair and face. It’s still cold down here, the tips of his fingers beginning to numb, coated in dust and blood.
But he’s alive.
Alive. Phone in hand, cams tucked under one arm as Wyatt hobbles up the last few steps.
He pulls himself through the crawlspace, into open air. A heavy gust sweeps across the hillside, flitting through Wyatt’s hair and carrying weaker treetop leaves with it. The oak above him stands sturdy, only its outermost branches disturbed by the winds. It’s seen worse storms than this.
Wyatt heaves, struggling to take in air through the rushing wind. He coughs a few times. Only then does the weather grant him some mercy, wind slowing enough for him to catch his breath.
It hurts differently this time, burning through his sinuses with a duller ache in his chest, not the same way it could have ached if this happened sooner. A thick splotch of blood clings to his skin through his shirt, the patch he’d wiped on his arm now drying with the other spots. The flow of blood comes lightly, easier to wipe away.
Better track record this time.
He pulls a vape from his pocket, fingers shaking, keeping the hit slow and steady. A light burn settles in the back of his throat, fading, spreading as the nicotine kicks in. His shoulders relax- he hadn’t even realized they were so tense. Why wouldn’t they be so tense?
An appropriately deranged-feeling smile crosses his lips as the thought passes through: almost die, then vape about it- you’re getting better at this.
The storm must’ve blown in while he was down there. Dark clouds hang low in the sky, a distant shelf flickering with flashes of lightning. It moves at a steady pace, drifting closer to the hillside for every beat of passing time.
He won’t be outrunning the rain. The stairwell will do fuckall for shelter- with his luck, it’ll start taking on water just because he’s down there. The oak won’t do much better. An outcrop down the path might do the trick, but he won’t be making it without getting rained on. He’ll wait, let the worst pass… Shit. The plan. What was the plan, again?
Bury it. Choke the path so it can’t take anything else from anyone.
Anyone but Wyatt.
The burden he came with is gone, the heaviest things to hold resting squarely between his arm and side. Backpack, flashlight, shovel, lunch- those may as well be dead to him, ripped away by the thing . This wasn’t like dropping the phone.
It’s more… personal. Belongings snatched up by unliving hands, discarded in favor of trying to snatch him instead. If it wants his shit, it can keep it. Unlike the phone, he’s alive, and sure fucking well won’t stay that way if he tries his luck again. It’s the footage that matters.
Finally… finally.
If the world sees this, it all might have been worth it.
Wyatt closes his eyes, leaning against the oak. Another gust rattles its branches. He takes a deep breath, feeling it through the ache in his nose. It might not be broken, the way he’s feeling it now.
The wind carries the lightest scent of fresh-cut grass.
…Most people are gonna think this is fake. Maybe others could go looking, approximate the location with the bits of travel footage from the last video…
Someone out there who knows what this place is, knows he’s not supposed to be here? They wouldn’t think it’s fake. They might even do something about it.
And Dad? He would do something about it. Die of a terror-induced heart attack, most likely.
It may be time for a new plan.
Wyatt trudges down the hill, pelted by the coming rainstorm’s first heavy droplets. With his free hand, he drags the thick end of a newly downed branch, fresh spring leaves stubbornly clinging to the limb as they’re dragged through the grass. He unceremoniously drops the branch into the stairwell, heavy end hitting the concrete with a plunk that echoes all the way down. Scraggly branches stick out, looking a bit like a small tree or bush growing at a weird angle.
Just to be sure, he grabs two more unlucky branches brought down in the wind, setting them in front of and around the hole, sticking them down inside where the largest branch doesn’t give enough coverage for his liking. Far from buried, but it’s better than leaving the stairwell out in the open.
Without a phone or the sun, there’s no telling what time it is. If he hops between jogging and limping, he could make it to that outcrop in a few minutes, wait out the worst of the storm, get to the car in lighter rain…
Get home, wash off the blood and dirt, feed the cats again…
Wyatt practically stumbles into the house, struggling with his keys at the door and unceremoniously pushing it open to escape the rain. He locks it just as quickly, soaked from head to toe, hesitantly stepping over more than one curious cat in an awkward rush to get to the stairs. Zeke follows, tail wagging, only to be shut out twice- once at his bedroom door, where the cams and phone are shoved under the bed, twice when Wyatt loudly shuts the bathroom door behind him.
Sorry, girl.
Setting towels on the counter, Wyatt catches himself in the mirror.
Much of the blood has faded, thanks to the rain. He no less looks like a character from some cheap vampire show: hair horribly plastered down from the rain, reddish-brown marks on his skin and all over his shirt. Cheap vampire character or even cheaper slasher murderer, either works.
A dark bruise is starting to form from the bridge of his nose, spreading out to lighter marks under his eyes. It looks like he hasn’t slept for days. He barely has, but that excuse won’t cover it.
It’s a mercy that his nose quit bleeding in the car. The blood spots on his jeans should wash out easily, and the shirt should go unnoticed if he beats Dad to doing laundry. He tosses everything into the same unkempt pile while limping into the tub.
Wyatt sighs under the hot water. Exhaustion is made welcome here, behind a locked door, with only the noise of water hitting the back panel to bother him.
…Alive. He’s alive. He made it out.
Again.
A lucky idiot, with a plan that mostly worked.
The water beneath him swirls with reddish plumes as blood is scrubbed off, dripping away from his face and chest while he works on his arm. He doesn’t bother to think very hard about it. Doesn’t want to - the thoughts are there, but he’s got enough to think about.
Today isn’t over yet.
Lucky enough to be running ahead of schedule. According to a cursory glance at the kitchen clock a few minutes ago, it’s only noon. There’s still time before Dad gets home.
The water grows darker. Most of the blood is off, good as new. His nose hurts where the water hits it.
So Wyatt turns, letting the water hit his back, and he thinks.
A cover story… hm. Half-truths are the way to go, usually. They’re easier to set up, easier to believe when the other person wasn’t there to see everything. A branch to the face while he was snagging trail cams makes enough sense. Oh- and the rain. He’ll throw that in too, say he was rushing.
He was hurt while getting the trail cams. An easy half-truth about an unlucky son who can’t help but get his shit rocked all the time. Yeah. Yeah, it works.
Water runs over the still-fading marks of thorns in Wyatt’s arms. Fresh thorn marks dot his skin, far more shallow and varied between pinpricks and scratches. They could pass as cat scratches.
Thorns scratching at tile, plastic gliding over the floor and hitting his arm. The phone, given with purpose, trail cameras soon to follow.
It could’ve been a trap that went wrong. That statue could have been planning another move, or… something. It likes to mess with his head.
Bloated corpses, fire, rotting, freeze, human bones, human bodies, a tag reading STUDIOBREGON, a ghost standing amid the- Shut up . Stop it.
It was in control, took what it wanted, gave what it wanted. Why the fuck would it give anything back?
Not luck.
It made a choice.
It’s been a long morning.
Marvin’s shoulders droop as he hangs his bag on the door hook. He fishes out a little paper sack, flipping the bag closed, taking off his shoes and setting the paper sack on the counter. With the rain, the long drive, and the hassle, bed sounds better than just about anything else right now.
Except for a couple things.
Zeke comes trotting down the stairs, nearly flipping her stocky body in excitement, hips wagging to compensate for her lack of tail as she prances up to him.
“Hey there!” He coos, cupping her face and scratching behind her ears. She smiles all the same, panting happily. “Was Wyatt good for you, hmm?”
As Marvin takes a step, his heel meets the edge of a cold rain puddle on the hardwood. The work of Wyatt, Zeke or both- he’s been onto them about tracking water in. Maybe a lost cause, now, with so many years behind that battle.
Zeke trots away, leading Marvin straight to the culprit in their living room, only to double-back for the door. She moves on to investigate his bag and shoes the way she always does. Their official-unofficial investigator, burdened with the task of knowing every smell-oriented detail of where they’ve been.
Wyatt rests on one of the older recliners, remote in hand as the TV rattles on with one of the usual obscure video essays. He gives Marvin a tired smile.
“Hey, Dad. How’d it go?” A dowel drapes over Wyatt’s shoulders. Eleanor rests curled in his lap, eyes wide and ears perked at Marvin’s homecoming. Her eyes are so cute wh- wait what the fuck-
No, it’s not just the dim lighting from the rain- a dark bruise covers the middle of his son’s face, lightly streaking out under his eyes and at the top of his cheeks.
“What happened to your face?! ”
Wyatt tries to slow him down, holding his arms out submissively. Marvin closes in all the same, pushing Wyatt’s hands aside, fingers tracing a particular dark line under Wyatt’s eye and balancing him with a firm grasp to the shoulder. His son winces. Eleanor, disappointed with the disturbance, slips from Wyatt’s lap.
She’ll be back. It doesn’t matter nearly as much as this.
What did you do? Who did this to you? The words wait to jump out like sparks, but Wyatt sputters his case first.
“I’m okay!” He takes his Dad’s wrist, gently pushing it away. “I’m fine, I was just- it’s not as bad this time, I promise.”
“ This time?”
It sure as hell looks worse, the dark impressions giving a heavy appearance of pure exhaustion, but some of that really could be the bruising. On instinct, he pushes Wyatt’s head up, checking his eyes for dilation that shouldn’t be there. If he’s concussed again, they’re going to the ER-
“Hey- stop! ”
The result is an awkward dance, Wyatt holding both of his Dad’s wrists away. He doesn’t push back. It’s a good sign when Wyatt’s still got fight in him.
“Just stop, okay? Chill out. I’m good.” Wyatt slowly lets go, giving his Dad a moment to relax.
Marvin sighs, arms dropping to his sides.
Compromise- he needs to be compromising here. This can’t end up like last time. Kim being back on the road instead of here, with them, could be something for better or for worse.
She messed up, too. Talk to him, just talk to him.
Wyatt takes the passing moment to pause the TV. A heavy silence falls, occupied with rain pattering on the window and the creak of another chair as Marvin sits down.
“Does it hurt?” He can’t bring himself to relax, leaning forward and intent. That changes quickly, Marvin standing up as soon as he’d settled. “Can you tell me what happened? Give me a minute, I’ll- I’m going to bring you some ibuprofen. And ice.”
Wyatt smiles an awkward smile, a little too forced, an inch too chipper. He quietly raps the carpet with the slow, controlled rhythm of his foot.
“I’ll be here.”
More incidents like this, and he may not be- No, don’t think about that.
It takes more fussing to discover that the ice hurts more than it helps. There’s a rasp to Wyatt’s voice, tired and damaged and a bit extra nasally.
“I don’t think it’s broken.” He insists, taking an extra swig of water to get the ibuprofen down. He winces as his nose crinkles. “I can kind of still smell. Hurts, though.”
Likely not as bad as last time, with the blood and concussion and the rushing panic of treating it all, his son snapping left and right in irritated agony. It kept on like that for a while.
Wyatt’s never been good at hiding pain. This kind of pain, at least.
So Marvin nods, forcing himself to settle in the chair next to his son. Wyatt readjusts, facing his Dad.
“So I- I went back for some cams I set up, out in the woods…”
WAIT- WAIT-
A flash of orange, a flurry of metal, Mark’s cry as metal rips into his flesh. Blood, blood- Screaming, howled with distorted lungs, stomps ringing out through a misty hallway, a gunshot, a shadow, Wyatt-
Marvin’s body reacts before his mind. He jerks awake, gasping for air.
A stuffy hazmat, filters filled to the brim with black mold. No- nonono, You’re not there anymore. Years, it’s been years. Why, why now? It’s been weeks since this started again.
He blinks the sleep from his eyes, haphazardly reaching around for a remote. He finds it halfway under his hip, snagging it and flipping on the TV.
Blueish light floods the covers. Marvin squints again, shielding his eyes. Too bright.
A poor defense for a nightmare- the same fucking nightmare - but if he doesn’t do this, it comes right back. Trapped between the waking world and memory, twisted, brittle at the edges. The words, the memories as a whole, refuse to fade.
You have to tell them, they already know. There’s no one to tell anymore.
Marvin slumps back onto the pillow, rubbing his temple until the fresh headache fades. In half-asleep stupor, after what could be minutes or hours, the TV shuts back off. He stretches in a largely empty bed, blankets bunched up to one side. A few readjustments and he settles back in, waiting for sleep to return to him.
Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s fine. He’ll just stay here.
Maybe check on Wyatt- distant thunder rumbles outside, disrupting the crickets’ usual raucous song. I might wake Wyatt up, might not. Better yet, maybe Wyatt had the better idea of staying up way too late and fighting off sleep in the morning. It’s fine.
Dealing with it alone really should be easy.
It should be.
White dots gleam in the cavernous dark of Valley View Center.
Warm air flows through the shops, the halls, pumped like blood through an age-old corpse. Much of it remains cold.
Hands of foliage drift from the dark. Fingers find the straps of a backpack. Its contents spill out as He lifts the bag, examining it through the darkness. His attention falls to the contents of the bag: Shovel, box, other things, small from His view.
New things that Someone left behind.
Things that He stole.
No wonder He is still here, this Hell.