The young man strode forward through the ash laden street, steering clear of the shadows that spilled from the silent city. The day brought with it so many possibilities, each with its own malice and malcontent. The grey sky above was no different than any other day, the darker grey ash falling gently like snow. Empty streets surrounded him endlessly. The day promised to be simple, just a friendly visit to his parents, but he knew full well that the promise was a lie. Pulling out the battered map, he noted the frantic circles over buildings and gashes through streets, all written in vibrant red ink.
His first stop was the old hotel on the right. The only door available let him into the kitchen, bereft of unperished items aside from a bottle of olive oil, which he took with a bored expression. Seeing nothing that hadn't long rotted beyond consumption, he shifted his focus to the empty dining room. There was a mundane metal statue in the center of the room, just another human long forgotten. The only thing worth noting was the golden chain that adorned its neck, and after stowing it in his satchel, he departed. Behind him, the sound of something melting behind him was ignored.
His path would be clear to the hospital now, he thought to himself, as he walked through the fog lost in his ruminations. It would be nice to catch up. Some papers drifted through the street on a momentary breeze, and on long borne instinct he grabbed one out of the air to read. It seemed to be an advertisement for the recently released Ford Model A, and yet, it had the air of archaic production that he found quite often found in printings from before his birth. Indeed, it felt in his hands the same way that a handwritten copy of a book felt, knowing that the printing press had long made the method obsolete. He pondered it for a moment, then let it fall back into the breeze from whence it came, and began walking again.
A broken melody began to play from the music box in his satchel moments later, and his keen eyes noticed a figure in the dense fog. The shadow that lurked beyond sight was also moving along the sidewalk, its lurching form slowly becoming more distinct and familiar. He tipped his hat towards it, and continued walking without delay. It regarded him shrewdly, the tilting of the horns upon its head the only noticeable change in its stance. The shredded wings upon its back expanded, revealing their skeletal appearance. It silently turned as he went past, the spaded tail whipping behind his back, the featureless face following intently.
The man turned to it as he passed, and muttered under his breath, “Lovely day for a walk, isn't it?”
The creature said nothing in response, and the man continued on his way unhindered.
Halfway to the hospital, the road he was walking on abruptly became a cliff, jagged edges of pavement tapering off into a foggy abyss, twisted railings and the edges of shop walls cut as if by the raging force of a meteor. He shrugged, noting the broken path on his map before turning back. He would just have to rearrange his schedule for the day, and go to the club meeting first. He turned down the necessary route, seeing another broken road ahead, and frowned. There was a house to the left, a duplex, that extended past the break. Deciding to skip the hassle of finding another way, he walked to it, absentminded pulled out the ring keys he had found so far, and opened it.
Upon opening the lock, the key fell into dust, and he wiped his hands on his pants to get rid of the remains. Inside, four skeletons sat around a table, with an open seat for a fifth. One sat back in the chair, grinning an eternal smile, holding a bloody organ of some kind in her lap. Another was slumped against the table, a broken penny in its hand. The fragment missing from the penny lay in the hand of the third, its other skeletal mitt clasped with the fourth. Upon the table itself there lay a battered hat with a torn red ribbon, the fabric disconcertingly new and clean looking against its surroundings. The house itself had fallen into disrepair, but had no signs of disturbance. Windows left open let flakes of silt drift gently in, and areas around them were covered in the soft grey ash. In the corner lay a violin, which caught his eye. He absently retrieved the ribbon, followed by taking the key hidden under the hat without looking towards it.
Picking up the violin, he noted the distinct lack of debris, and the pristine state in which it looked. He slipped it into the nearby case, in which he found a small songbook written in strange symbols, with tunes nearly indecipherable even by a knowledgeable musician. Seeing nothing else around, he walked to the opposite door, only to find it locked. Around the knob was a circle filled with more strange symbols, and several empty bars for music. He sighed. While glad that the key was so close to the lock compared to the alternative, the fact that they were so close together made the whole exercise one of futility. He pulled out the violin, and played a quick refrain to test the sound.
As he tested the last perfectly tuned note, the room became dark, lit only by the gentle lantern that hung upon his belt. The dreary light that had flowed through the windows had stopped. He didn't turn around to find out why, but merely sighed again and began turning the keys on the instrument and pulling upon the strings. Slowly, the sounds produced by the instrument became unrecognizable, filled with strange intonations and haunting reverberations that were felt more than heard. He smiled gently and lifted it to his chin. Closing his eyes, the bow drawn sharply against the strings, he pulled deeply against the notes, stringing them together from memory alone.
A great chorus of resounding notes filled the room, lingering long after they were played, settling on the skeletal audience at the table, who now all faced him, black ichor residing where they had previously rested. He opened his eyes and bowed as he heard the click of a door unlocking. He stowed the violin once again, and hefted it to his back. It was rare for him to find something that would survive the proper tuning. A great and guttural growl came from outside the window, something that spoke of dark dreams and unspeakable thoughts. Light filtered back through the house, leaving everything in dreary light once again.
“Glad you enjoyed it,” he said with a grin as he walked through the now musically engraved door.
Stepping once again onto the streets, he glanced back at the obstacle he had just surpassed, only to find a boarded up door behind him and a perfectly average road where a jagged cliff had been before. He looked at the renewed scenery for a few more seconds, shrugged, and continued down the fog laden path.
Pulling out his map, he wiped some red smudges away, nodded, and turned down the next street. The broken music box melody resumed, and he looked around for whatever was disturbing the tune. He saw, silhouetted in the fog, a shape not unlike that of a man, albeit a grotesque resemblance. It stood seven feet tall on the right half, and five feet tall on the left, as if two people had been sewn together halfway through the body. An unsightly bulge of flesh extended out of the shorter halves shoulder, with dimly glowing lines and pustules that pulsated with strange colors that exist only at the edge of the eyes perception. It lurched forward, a mindless expression on its dark flesh.
The man gently crossed the street, avoiding any acknowledgment of such an unfortunate individual, and continued ahead a a mildly faster pace. More shadows presented themselves in the fog, and he deftly avoided them, not letting them delay him for long with their lumbering gait. The shortest route to the hospital was blocked by several of these wandering beings, and rather than have to deal with them, he decided to go through the schoolhouse to the other side.
The schoolhouse was built in aged and worn brick, with signs that were once bright and welcoming tattered above the door. The door itself hung halfway off the hinge against its counterpart, adorned with peeling grey-orange paint. Boards and pasted newspapers drowned out the windows, letting nothing see in or out. He didn’t come here often, but today it couldn’t be helped.
Gingerly, he set the door aside, careful to not tear the remaining hinge. No reason to break what is already broken, if you could help it. His hand slipped however, and with a loud crack, the door fell sideways into its right counterpart before they both slammed into the hallway. Grinning sheepishly, he walked inside, whistling as gently as he could, ignoring the clatter of the doors under his feet.
The long dark hall spread before him, the only dim points of light cast inside through the holes in the classroom windows. None of the classrooms had doors that he could tell, and they were all completely empty. Where doors should have been, only torn hinges and deep jagged scars along the walls could be found. Aged and dirty bulletin boards dotted the spartan walls, a few scraps of paper tacked on with rusty tacks.
Stepping briskly through the halls, the only sound in earshot the clacking of his shoes. Just as he began to relax into the stillness, it was shattered by a screeching wail. The air raid horn was sounding once more. It blared sharply into the open air, its echo overlaying and creating a disconcerting harmony. The man stood still, knowing that nothing he could do would make a difference. As the sourceless sound resonated against the walls, he began to feel the floor vibrate. He watched, bemused, as the edges of the nearest board shook apart and dissolved into the air. The shattering particles moved out. cracking the walls before they tore away like burning paper.
Behind the quickly evaporating surfaces, dark rusty beams could be seen, some with holes eaten away by years of neglect. The floor underneath him crumbled in some areas, leaving only patches of broken and jagged concrete on a mesh framework of metal bars, and a deep chasm filled with fog below. As the intangible fire finished its first course of walls and windows, the it began to eat through the roof above. The man deftly dodged the few disintegrating chunks that fell around him, not bothering to take cover knowing nowhere was safe. Behind the destroyed roof, a great dark red sky bloomed, slowly fading in from the retreating hazy grey of clouds. Distorted black and grey nebulae shrouded sickly blotches into the heavens, and the occasional pale star shone as the only familiarity to the nightly black tapestry. A moon of fiery orange and yellow slouched along the horizon, its center eclipsed by a writhing mass of black tendrils of unknowable origin and composition.
A great tangled ribbon of shadow loomed throughout the abandoned hallway, leaving large fiery moonlit patches untouched in between arm width stilled specters. Everywhere it touched, the cement fell, the creaking wall beams cracked and warped, and the deep gouges on the door frames oozed a putrid dark liquid. The scent of recently decayed flesh and the thick iron scent of blood mingled with the deep gaseous olfactory tone of burning rubber. The man solemnly pulled the morning newspaper from the messenger bag and, unfolding it to hold over his head, was glad he thought to bring it. Walking down the hallway at a decent clip, he nimbly dodged the broken sections of the frame walkway, which were slowly melting into a black goo at the edges of the shadow. The paper in his hand sizzled a bit, but didn’t give way to the corrupting penumbra.
Through the empty walls, he looked into the classrooms as he passed. Dark inarticulate shapes moved just beyond sight on the edge of his vision, and he did not strain himself to see them. A splatter of dark red could be seen far down the hall, drops of thick liquid dripping from the mesh grating. It dragged across concrete further in, before taking a sharp turn into the nurses office. The end of the hall had been destroyed completely for six feet, leaving torn metal and concrete standing on the edge of the abyss. Beyond it, the ceiling looked much less destroyed, and though it was decidedly ominous in the resulting darkness, it looked a mite better than the moving shadows that ate through concrete like sugar. He sighed, resigned to what was about to happen as he followed the crimson path. The gouges in the walls that had been sparse in the hall were covering the doorframe, as well as the broken lower half of a door that remained.
Peeking in over the doors edge, the room was dark but otherwise completely innocuous. There was a dilapidated desk crumbling in the middle of the office, surrounded by paper debris. He could see a bit of the sink and supply area, not that seeing the tendrils of splotchy black mold it presented was told him anything he wanted to know. A filing cabinet was overturned against the doorframe over the small patient room off the office. The dark stain on the ground dragged off to the edge of that room, and seemed to pool just before the cabinet. After grimacing at the sights, he noticed the final thing of import about the room: it was intact. The shadow hadn’t eaten away the roof, and the protection seemed to emanate out into the hall for a few feet.
Deciding that there was no use putting it off, he pushed the door open, the creaking hinges giving no resistance as it swung into the wall. Cringing at the sudden noise in otherwise silence, he straightened and relaxed, walking straight to the desk and grabbing the key that he knew would be in the only serviceable drawer, which would obviously be the bottom right. Pulling out one of those new soda bottles proclaiming to be filled with “health drink”, to which the key was attached, he shrugged and put both into his bag. Seeing nothing else lurking in the room, he headed to a closet door that was opposite the patient room, and tested the lock. Hearing the satisfying ‘click’ and knowing that he wouldn’t have to investigate it, he smiled and turned towards the overly ominous cabinet.
Holding its top edge on the countertop, the cabinet completely blocked the entrance.. Pushing from assorted angles, it wouldn’t budge back towards standing. Turning towards the supply station, he was pleased to see a push broom in fairly decent condition. The handle was broken off near the top, leaving about two feet of sturdy wood to work with. He braced the broom against the inner edge of the metal, halfway down, and gave a strong shove. The fulcrum proved successful, and soon he had a triangle shaped hole to crouch through.
Inside, he found a small lantern and some candles, all just barely visible from the last of the hallways light. Underneath, he found a decent length of rope with a grappling hook. Taking the hint about how to proceed, he pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned before stuffing the rope into his bag, the hook edged on the rim. Lighting the lantern with the book of matches he always kept in his pocket, he looked once more around the room. At the end was a note, typeset in what looked to be black woodblock letters.
“Aeons it awaits
to consume earth
not ever knowing”
Below the message was a slot, and a series of blocks lay strewn about a stand underneath. A glance at the blocks revealed them to be a strange alphabet in an indecipherable language, one which he intrinsically knew had to be missing a few key glyphs.
Turning to leave the riddle behind, he found the door fully blocked by the cabinet. It had slid further down, leaving no space to crouch through. Not wanting to get his clothes covered in blood of mysterious origin, he set down the lamp and braced his stance. Pulling all of his weight into the act, he shouldered into the heavy cabinet, and with a colossal crash, it slid into the room. Nothing noticeably stirred, other than the plume of dust that was thrown into the air. Coughing from the disturbed spores, he gathered his things and gingerly hopped over the overturned cabinet and turned towards the door.
The door that was now stuck closed because of an open cabinet drawer. Upon prodding the the problematic metal with his foot, he snorted and looked for the puzzle that would obviously appear. Crouching to check the open drawer, he found a block with one of the missing glyphs, as well as a silver keyhole that would unlock the drawers. As he looked around for other possibilities, he felt deep scraping noises reverberate through the floor. In a touch of panic, he threw his head around, seeking the source. The room he had left was still empty, and the hallway had no unaccountable shadows. He relaxed slightly, before hearing the telltale click of a lock turning.
The closet door groaned open, and the shape of a child stumbled forward. It was pitch black, and covered in long jagged barbs and spikes, the most prominent extending from the outstretched hands. The music box in his pocket once again began its dulcet tones, certifying the danger in a way that only the strange gentle notes could. It appeared to be blind, as it crashed into the desk and hugged its arms around it, searching the surfaces with its thorns. Deep scratches tore through the desktop, and as a small pointed foot smacked against the wooden leg, the entire thing succumbed to its decay. The prickly child held its faceless head downcast, shaking it back and forth while holding its arms to itself. He let out his breath gently, trying to not alert the pointed child to his presence. His attempt failed miserably, as the small head perked up and turned towards him immediately.
Reaching out quickly, he retrieved the broken broom from its rest on the floor, and held it out defensively. The dark arms spread wide and the form stumbled towards the man. It was deftly intercepted by a thick brush of bristles to the face, but was not deterred. Flailing its arms around, it pushed its face into the broom, several jagged edges catching and giving splintered gashes to the broomhead. He pushed the broom forward, the child pushed as well, but eventually backed away as the strength proved too much. In the now open closet, some dark cubes could be seen by the rapid flickers of his lantern. He moved to retrieve them, and nearly had his leg grabbed for his troubles. Letting go of the pressure on the broom, he forced the creature to stumble forward and took his chance to grab the blocks.
He didn’t expect the thing to stabilize quickly, but as he ducked down to pick up his loot, he felt the sharp tug at his jacket and heard the fabric shredding along his back. Quickly jabbing the broom behind him, he spun around and raced over to the front door, hoping against rationality that whatever key he would get by solving the riddle and block puzzle wouldn’t be necessary. Sure enough though, the door was locked tight and not budging. He could hear the shuffling behind him getting closer.
As the hopelessness of the situation caught up with him, the adrenaline coursed to its peak. At that moment, he had an epiphany. The horrifying absurdity of it all threatened to overwhelm him with manic laughter, but he managed to keep his mind in check. With a less than graceful lunge, he leapt through air of the broken door. The scratching behind the door abruptly ceased, the sudden silence disorienting him momentarily. After gathering his wits, he stood and dusted himself off, looking to his next objective.
Staring at the gorge, he momentarily wished to be back in the room, struggling for his life. Reaction at least took a more active role there than chance and raw strength. Knowing that nothing would change if he stayed where he was, he pulled the grappling hook out of his sack and swung it to gain momentum. It gained purchase on the rebar and jagged concrete on the floor of the other side, and without further ado, he leapt into the unfathomable abyss.
Landing on the spongy floor, ten feet below the concrete gap, he once again was threatened with hysterics over the anticlimactic development. The city was being kind, and it was worrying him. With a tug on his anchor rope, he assured that he’d be able to get back out after picking up whatever he needed here. Lighting the lantern, he looked down. Unidentifiable living flesh made up the whole of the area, pulsing gently in random patches.
In front of him lay the only feature of the chamber, a drafting desk dripping in nearly black, thick, gelatinous blood. The source of this blood appeared to be a circular chain of paper links, forming a necklace. Grimacing, he pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket, and moved the necklace into his bag.
v Not yet written spoiler filled structure stuff v
Across the chasm,
Outside the schoolhouse,
The world is red, filled with mannequins posed like people on a busy street. The air is silent, and not a single one thing is moving.
Breaks the chain that is tied to a large group of mannequins that are attacking. They fall to the ground instantly once the chain is broken. Takes a length of it with him.
Siren blast, world fades back to Fog
Hospital
He knows the way, he's been there so many times before.
Statue with open hands hands- Puzzle note requires melted mamon, chains of toil, and a mans leash. Places the gold necklace, the chains, and the red ribbon
Creatures
Patient creature
Catching up with his father (monster or human?)
walking down the street playing a tune that wove into the street like water, filling all the cracks, it was just another day for Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
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