Chapter Text
Derek woke up from yet another disturbing and horribly realistic nightmare to a distant conversation he probably wasn't supposed to be able to hear.
Thankfully, he'd never given Dr. Owens his full medical history. If he had, she'd probably be a lot more careful before talking out loud near his room. And the King was unusually quiet, so there was no additional noise in his head. He'd always had a really acute sense of hearing. Sensory processing disorder. But now, with the additional help of his near blindness and infinite knowledge, he didn't only hear the voices. He could understand them.
So he bit his tongue to confirm he was awake. And then listened in.
From its silence, Derek assumed the King was listening in as well.
"—in 2019," someone said.
"There is no way," Dr. Owens' voice sounded… excited? Derek wasn't sure.
"From the views of the video and the name you gave us we could track the computer. Not only did he look the case up, we're also pretty sure it even is the same exact device."
"That is so cool. You guys are like, straight out of the X-Files."
There was an awkward silence.
"Sorry. Please continue," Dr. Owens said.
"It seems he recently either shut it down or disconnected it from the internet, which is good. Our team is working on taking down all the articles and content about the case while he can't notice."
"Okay, that's good."
"We unfortunately can't account for the file that was sent to him by the library. He'll still be able to access that one until we can get the warrant to remove it from the university's archives."
"Is there any mention of us in there?"
"None. It was a serious paper. They wouldn't have dwelled on what sounds like conspiracy theories."
"Then it's okay, right? That guy from YouTube can't track us."
Derek's efforts to avoid thinking about Avery all instantly crumbled. Were they referring to him? What on Earth… Avery wasn't supposed to be involved at all anymore. But, despite having known him as completely as he knew everything, in the little time Derek had actually interacted with him… he never could predict him. Avery had an unusually powerful will. He tended to go against all probabilities, no matter what variables Derek took into consideration. But still… why would he still be involved? The King didn't seem to want Derek to know that.
Was he safe?
"Right. The only thing he could try to track from that article was a set of coordinates. The one from one of the PDF files from 2019."
"I don't remember that one…"
"It's not far from here. But back then, we did an extensive search of the area, and found nothing of interest other than that white house with the creepy gallery."
You've kept things from me, from the start. I didn't even think to check, Derek thought, and got no answer.
"Good. Okay, good. Go check the place out again soon, anyways." the doctor continued outside.
"There's a team out there now, and we will be going back there periodically. Just in case."
"And what about Hutchins' videos?"
"We've taken them down. Unless this Avery guy downloaded the whole footage onto his phone, there is no way for him to access it."
"Thank God…"
"We left Avery's video up, however. We believe that one not to be too much of a threat since It didn't make much of an appearance. And the video is both too long and reads like fiction."
'It'..? And did they not know about the other guy's videos? Derek was torn between hoping they had also been taken down and hoping they hadn't.
"Sure. That way he won't get suspicious about all this so easily. So for now, there's nothing to worry about."
"Yeah. Good to see you, doc. If you have any other questions you know where to find us. Keep it up, science guys."
Derek heard some steps growing quieter, and some growing louder. Owens was on her way to check in on him. So he shut his eyes to pretend he'd just woken up. Used all his knowledge of the parasympathetic nervous system to calm his heart rate as much as possible before she noticed it had spiked.
The door creaked. "Oh, you're awake!" Dr. Owens said, startled. "You shouldn't be. It's like, 4 AM." Derek felt the most chilling déjà vu. He remained calm.
"I had another dream," Derek's voice sounded realistically drowsy and rasping, from the painkillers and the fact he hadn't said a word since he woke up.
"Ah, just woke up then. Heart rate seems to indicate nightmare. Am I right? Happens a lot with cases like yours."
"You keep saying that, doctor, but you haven't given me any diagnoses. How can you know what other 'cases like mine' look like if I'm still undiagnosed?" Derek carefully pushed, speaking slowly.
"Right, yeah, I meant like. People with your symptoms," she blatantly lied. A lie of omission like so many Derek had told her himself. "Nightmares, headaches… Closely related."
They were. But still.
"What is the specialty of the NMPI hospital? Is it only for treating coma patients?" Derek asked and tried to sound innocent.
"The where?"
"The NMPI hospital? You said that's where we were, right?" He'd caught her.
"Oh, this hospital! NMPI! Ah, I rarely call it by its name… Sure, we do treat comas, amongst other stuff." She was starting to sound nervous, so Derek backed out.
"Okay, thank goodness… Do you have anything that would maybe help with the nightmares?" He put on his best sleepy face.
"Unfortunately not, but I can give you some pills to help you feel sleepier, if you want. They'll knock you right back out."
Strange choice of words. "No, thanks, I'm tired enough already." Derek said. It probably wasn't the best idea to give a recovering 'coma' patient some sleeping pills, but since he hadn't been officially diagnosed, Derek couldn't compare his supposed medical state with that of any other recorded cases. Derek knew, however, exactly what it was that was wrong with him. And he had a growing suspicion that Dr. Owens knew it too. She was just waiting to somehow get the information out of him.
"Okay, then, I'll leave you to it," she said, seemingly buying Derek's act.
She walked out of the door, and Derek let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
He'd been right. He wasn't sure what exactly this place was, but it was certainly not a normal hospital at all.
And unfortunately, Avery was still, for some reason, involved.
Your destination is to your left, Avery's phone stated. Of course it was.
Avery parked the car on the side of the road. Those coordinates had led him to the outskirts of town, beyond the suburbs, to a place where the golden street lights faltered and twitched, the air felt less thick with pollution, and the houses were so far from one another that they got lost in the distant dark. Maybe he'd made a terrible mistake coming out here at this hour. He felt scared and didn't want to leave the car. He tried turning off the headlights. Big mistake. The darkness engulfed him further, and the nearest lamppost flickered so much that it made a really unsettling stroboscopic effect which made it seem like the grass was glitching in the wind. And he hated that he couldn't tell any colors apart. Every single thing within sight was stained yellow by the faltering sodium light above. So he turned his headlights back on for a little longer. With them he could see further into the lot where the coordinates led. It was mostly empty, save for a distant stone fence and what looked like a wooden white building with a gabled roof. A small arched window revealed the unnatural darkness inside it, and there was an inhumanly large arched door. It was unsettlingly familiar. Avery did not like it here at all. He turned his attention to his right side, and obviously he saw what looked like a brick well and plants which he knew only grew around bodies of water. Nope. He couldn't be here at night. He felt too unsettled. He started the car again and got back on the road, moved what he determined to be a safe distance forward, and parked again, this time to the right side of the road. He found a lamppost that didn't flicker too much and settled down there for the night, locking himself as safe and sound as possible in his car. He turned his phone off to save battery overnight, since he shouldn't keep the car going all that time to use his charger. And felt a wave of anxiety and regret over not having brought himself anything to entertain himself as he waited for the sun to rise.
Well, how could he have known he'd want to spend the night here, locked in the car next to some creepy lots beyond the frontiers of any organized human settlement? Avery started to pick at his fingers. He then decided to dive into the glove compartment instead to see if he'd stored anything at least mildly entertaining in there. He needed a distraction. Like a tourist guide from some old road trip, a CD box with one of those fun little booklets inside it, or even the damn car manual would do, at this point. He found nothing worth his time, just some old broken sunglasses. So he moved his seat back so he could crouch on the car floor in front of it and check underneath the seats themselves to see if anything had ever made its way down there. Because there was no way on Earth he'd step out of the car in this dark. Thankfully, under the passenger seat, Avery found the car's papers and an old worksheet from back when he'd tried to study accounting to impress his dad. He hated that career, and thus hated this worksheet. But hey, there wasn't much else to do as he waited, so he tried solving it in his mind since he obviously didn't think to bring pens and paper with him either. It wasn't fun or easy at all, but it kept him from ruminating his way into a panic attack. Little before he would have started hearing birds sing, Avery fell asleep with the worksheet in hand, and had a dream he was drowning.
When he woke up, his surroundings were finally lit by the rising sun and no longer only yellow. His hair was now in an unfortunate state, flattened at the wrong places, curls sticking out at odd angles and probably already starting to frizz even more than they already did from the dye he applied unprofessionally a few months back in an attempt to feel more like himself again. And he missed his weighted blanket and his pillows and he wanted an excessively sweetened coffee and he hadn't brought his meds and his back ached like it hadn't ached since… Well, since New Year's, he noticed with discomfort. Avery stretched as much as he could within the confines of his car and rolled down the slightly fogged up window. Fresh morning air, slightly too cold, slightly too moist, made its way into the car. Avery wondered if this was the earliest he'd woken up in months. It probably was. Before turning the car back on, Avery looked out of the window he'd opened. Trees lined the back of the lots, stretching indefinitely into both directions. Unnaturally planted at the same precise distance from each other.
Avery drove back to the coordinates and parked the car again, rolled up the window and stepped outside. He locked the car despite not wanting to. It was probably safer if nobody stole his car, even if he craved a quick getaway.
He wasn't sure what he was most afraid of: the possible wildlife of this area, which he assumed would unfortunately include several local arachnids; the chance that there would be any supernatural activity indicating the presence, past or present, of the King; or the possibility that some random human would come after him with a gun or something for the multiple charges of trespassing Avery knew he was about to commit.
He had to ensure he could have an easy and quick way out. But a stolen car would not be the best escape plan. Avery turned his phone back on and sent his location to a cousin of his that he hadn't messaged since his last birthday. He told him he'd gone out to this rural area for a school project, which, since he was studying biology, made sense. He felt safer if someone else knew where he was. Ignoring the sadness that came with feeling like the only person he could send his location to was a distant cousin and not any friends, closer family or a partner, he put his phone into his pocket and turned to face the building.
In the daylight it was even more uncannily similar to the church in Minecraft, which only unnerved him more. It even had flowers growing around it, though thankfully not blue ones.
It was now or never, he decided, and took a step towards the building. And knocked on the closed door.
Of course, even though he waited for a minute and knocked a few more times, nobody answered the door. Avery wasn't sure if that made him feel safer or just more uncomfortable. Well. Not much else to do but try the doorknob.
To his surprise, the door wasn't locked. Avery took a quick step back.
Why was he so scared?
He felt like something was looking at him. Then he noticed. The golden doorknob had an intricate carving of an eyeball. And Avery did not like it at all. He wiped his hand on his pants as if he had just touched something dirty and needed to clean it. He even felt tempted to go over to that well hoping there was water in it so he could rinse his hands, but something told him that being close to the well in the lot across the road would feel just as awful as standing by this door, if not worse. He pulled his sleeve over his hand and turned the doorknob again, then pushed his way into the building.
His first reaction was relief that this was not at all like the church from the Minecraft world.
His second reaction was horrifying dread. The door led into a tall and thin corridor the length of the whole building, with dark yellow wallpaper peeling from the walls. On these walls were a bunch of beautiful and detailed paintings, lined up one after the other. And at the very end of the hallway there seemed to be two doors, covered in cracked golden paint, one to the right, the other to the left. The hallway was lit only by the natural light that came in from that small arched window and from a thin skylight the same length as the corridor. But what disturbed Avery the most about this place was not its claustrophobic architecture but the fact that the paintings on the wall all depicted a different landscape, and even at first glance, several of them looked like ones he had seen in Minecraft on New Year's Eve. He had the feeling this would all be part of another stupid puzzle.
His heart was beating faster now, his anxiety screaming at him to leave. The place felt wrong. But the itch felt so much stronger. This was definitely connected to Derek. There was something to do here, something to solve, something to find.
"I wish you were here," Avery said under his breath. He didn't even know where to begin with this.
So he decided to start with whatever. He would walk down the corridor and write down on his phone the order the paintings were in compared to the order in which he'd entered those worlds in Minecraft. He saw a painting for every single place he'd seen then: the disappearing mountains with the huge tree, the foggy round stone tower city, the desert, the red grassland, the town where the lights had gone out, that huge pool with the even larger columns, the godforsaken netherite pond monument thing, the library… And a few places he hadn't seen at all before. Except there was one place that was missing.
He didn't care that Derek had said the world didn't exist. This awful place was way too real. Avery got a heavy feeling in his chest by the time he reached the other side of the hallway and found himself once again at a crossroads of sorts.
There had been no painting of the church.
That was the only place missing. Looking for excuses to avoid going though those doors for as long as possible, Avery went back through the corridor to double check. But there was definitely no painting of the church. Whatever that meant. Maybe it wasn't there because this whole place represented it. Avery walked back to the doors again, but stopped by the painting of the library. At the center of the composition was a platform with a lectern. Just like the one he had met Derek at. In the painting, the lectern wasn't holding any book, and the wood was a much duller hue. It was almost like looking at his memory of the library where he found Derek, but though the lens of his grief.
"I need help. I still don't know what to do with these things," Avery almost prayed. "What would you do? If you were here?"
Nostalgia taking over, he almost considered stealing the painting. There was nobody there to judge him for it. It probably wasn't cursed. Right? That library had been a safe place, as far as he knew, and the painting probably was as well. Avery, almost entranced, decided to touch the brushstrokes. He somehow felt closer to Derek like this. The paint had left a very light texture on the canvas. The colours were so dreamlike and faded. How had it stood there for so long without anyone taking it? How was it still so clean and— oh shit.
Avery had taken painting classes as a kid. Proud of one of his pieces, he hung it up on his bedroom wall himself. He thought it would look nicer if it was framed, but he didn't really have much money, and he definitely didn't want to ask his parents. So he just stuck the canvas directly on the wall. He obviously didn't imagine he'd have to dust it, so he never did. The changes had been too subtle to notice, but the dust slowly settled between the fibres. After a year, no longer as proud of his old work, Avery wanted to take it down to put up a poster instead. And when he lifted the canvas, his hands got completely covered in dust.
Which meant that… This painting was too well preserved.
That realization sent another chill down his spine. There was absolutely no dust. Not on the walls, not on the floor, not on the paintings. No detritus on the skylight at all. Even if it was a gabled roof, at least some leaves and rainwater stains would still cover the glass with time. But there were no stains, no leaves, nothing. The only signs that this place might be abandoned and not cleaned daily were the peeling wallpaper and the cracked paint. All other aspects of the house were clean, perhaps supernaturally, or worse: someone had been there recently.
And yet, he couldn't back down now. Terrified as he felt, he had to go through with this for Derek. He was determined to. But his heart hadn't raced this quickly from pure anxiety in months. Nobody had answered when he knocked. That probably meant he was alone. He thought of that on repeat, a mantra to stay calm. Slightly calmer, at least.
He went back towards the doors, trying his best to keep his steps as silent as possible. Just in case.
"Fuck it," Avery said under his breath as he noticed he could reach both doorknobs at the same time, one with each hand. If he didn't want to make any choices, then he wouldn't. He opened both doors.
Obviously, he first turned his attention towards the left. The choice felt lighter now that both doors were open. He just had to look in. His eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the darkness behind the door. The room had no windows, and all the light came from the now open door and the gaps between planks in the wooden walls. There was a large stone slab propped against the furthest wall with an inscription in it that Avery couldn't read because of the dark. There were no floorboards or tiles in there, the floor was the same dirt from the surrounding grounds, except without any plants growing in it. Candles, thankfully unlit though almost completely burned up, framed the other three walls of the room, only enough distance away from the wood that the chances of them causing a fire would be slim. Dozens of foldable plastic chairs were piled up in the corner of the room directly opposite the door. This room, unlike the gallery, was definitely dirty. Which made the sterile appearance of the corridor so much weirder.
Then he turned to his right. And to his dismay, he found something else. Hanging on the walls of that room were several wooden squares, all with the same burnt inscription.
You are safe here.
Something in him snapped. He didn't go into a trance, thankfully, since there seemed to be no sign that had anything else from that book burnt into it. No, this time, he became angry. Not unnaturally so, just a perfectly valid response to this awful reference. Okay. This place, despite its many differences, was definitely meant to represent the church, then. Maybe that answered the lack of painting. Avery scoffed and began to run out of the building, but as he passed the painting of the library again, he stopped, still trying to stay quiet, betrayed by his own breathing.
He thought of it again. This was dangerous. This was real. He had no idea what to do. Did this place want him to complete the cycle? Do that routine again? Clear the surroundings of any weeds, plant and replant some flowers, bring water in and out of the well and jump into that pond across the street? He almost laughed. It was all he could think of doing. He couldn't think of any other next steps to take to get closer to finding anything new. Just like the paintings represented every other area he'd seen, the whole building referenced the church, or the other way around, Avery wasn't sure. As if he'd fall for that again. He wasn't in a trance, he was awake. He hadn't seen anything this time. He didn't want to do all of that. There probably would be many other things that he could try doing to solve whatever puzzles this place wanted him to solve before he threw himself into a stagnant pond. But he was alone. And he had no idea what to do. There had to be something here. Somewhere to start, or a missing piece.
He'd check that comparison he made between the order of the places in Minecraft and the paintings again. But he didn't want to just stand there, nor did he feel like sitting on the floor when there were a perfectly fine dozen of chairs right there next to him. He went to grab one, but accidentally toppled over the whole pile. Avery fell backwards under a flood of chairs. Startled, he sneezed and coughed out the dirt raised by the impact and moved away the chairs that had landed on him.
"So much for silence," Avery said to himself, still angry.
But when he sat up, he saw it. Behind the stack of chairs, there was an empty bookshelf. And if Avery remembered the first video he saw from D3rlord3 properly… Then maybe…
He stood up and dusted himself off a bit before he started moving the chairs out of his way. Once he'd cleared out enough chairs, Avery went up to the bookshelf and tried pulling it. Nothing. Pushing, then. Also nothing.
"Fucking… Fuck you!" Avery yelled at the piece of furniture as he kept pulling at every single piece of it he could think of pulling, and nothing budged. "Stupid bookshelf!"
He went back to crying. He was so scared.
"Please…" Avery begged It. He didn't know why he was addressing the King. Ideally, there would be no King at all to hear him. "I already tried all those other puzzles on your stupid Minecraft world. I'm not made for this stuff! But I guess you already knew that, right? And that's why you had to get Derek involved, right? So he'd somehow solve your fuckass riddles and bring me to you. You knew I'd find it awesome how he solved all that like it was nothing, and that I'd feel that sense of debt and worry and I'd want to go back into your damn cave again. You knew. You killed him, and you knew, and you did all that just because you were too stubborn and couldn't fucking settle for any other person to be your fucking vessel who would be smart enough on their own to solve your fucking games but stupid enough to want to join you. Out of literally everyone in the whole wide world. You chose to kill HIM. You should've just skipped all the fucking puzzles and mysteries and killed only me! You stupid," he kicked the bookshelf, "Worthless," he kicked again, "Royal," again, "ASSHOLE!"
The back panel of the bookshelf gave in. Avery fell on his knees back to the floor. He sobbed violently, furiously, loudly. He didn't care if he made noise, not anymore. Too late for that, he'd already toppled a whole bunch of chairs over and yelled and cried. And he felt so hopeless. Then, through the tears, something caught his attention. He wiped his eyes with his shirt, no longer caring about the dirt. A small book had been hiding there, stuck on the wall behind the bookshelf with tape.