EDIT 12/28/10 - Or maybe it's 12/29 at this point, because it's kind of after midnight. Anyways. Edited this chapter - This is most likely the final draft. Minor edits to grammar and/or spelling may be made, but as far as word choice, story flow, and structure, this is the final edit.

Chapter 1

What's with this room?

An apartment covered in what appeared to be blood and rust greeted him as he woke up. The air was heavy and bleak, reinforcing his procrastination in getting up. He had to eventually though, so he groaned and rolled over, forcing his aching limbs to stand.

He quickly observed the damage done to his room. When he had fallen asleep it was fine, but now it was…terrible. Just in his bedroom his red typewriter was missing, replaced by cobwebbed notebooks and disturbing graphic pictures.

This room…is this really my room?

A chilled bewilderment ran down his spine as he moved into the living room. His false hope shattered when the room turned out to be the same as if not worse than the horrific bedroom. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he passed the static blaring on the TV.

What's this…? I thought I had a turn table here…

His heart rate increased as he walked around the room. Observing everything didn't help it as he found that it was all new or replaced, rusted and bloody on top of that. Even the walls that were dripping with moldy fluids were decorated with odd paintings.

There was one framed in the corner, a picture of an unfamiliar man; slightly messy and scruffy but still somewhat refined. Aside from that he looked mostly uninteresting and gray. At least, compared to the picture to the left of it.

Where they were in the picture was unidentifiable, but it was clearly an unfriendly realm. He shivered and wished he could step back when he saw twenty-one bodies strewn about in a crazy but definite pattern, within pools of their own blood. The gore and condition of their bodies was a crime that could only be committed by a fellow man, making him retch. Passing the picture quickly only led him to freeze again.

Creepy…it looks like a face.

It resembled one so much that he nearly cried out and fell backwards. He told himself it was just the bizarre rust on the wall and nothing else. Though he relaxed when he realized that the folds and wrinkles in the wallpaper only looked like a face, he began to worry just a little bit more when his head began to burn with pain the longer he squinted at it. He prodded his temples gingerly with the pads of his fingers and shuffled into the compact kitchen.

A horrible, rotten smell infiltrated his nostrils, causing him to retch again. Tears sprung from his eyes, but he forced himself to keep them open to navigate his way around the counter. The stench was wafting directly from the fridge. He approached it, the smell worsening. It was like burning leather, rotting flesh, and gagging bile snaking its way about, deteriorating the atmosphere to its toxic taste. Too afraid to open it up, he stumbled into the front hallway of his (or what used to be his) apartment.

In a stupor, he just stood and stared as things began to form on the far wall. Cracks, small at first but rapidly growing before his eyes. Emerging and stretching from the plaster, it all seemed to center around the portrait of the twenty-one bodies. They deepened and spread, imitating the maw of a formless monster. His confusion turned to panic as the cracks spanned across the entire side of the room, the maw of the beast at its greatest size.

The panic soon morphed into a raw terror when oily spots began to drip from the wall out of nothing, carelessly painted into this realm. Before his very eyes fingers wriggled jointlessly away from the oily blackness, clawing and tearing at the wall. A sick groaning emitted from the hole as the strained hands pushed its body forward, beginning with a pasty head, thinly spread with sparse threads of hair. It wasn't mind-shattering until the face emerged, bulging, twitching, mouth yawning open in an infinite moan and eyes glowing yellow with hatred. Molten and burning, they were fixated on him.

He tried to run, but asudden knife tore through his mind, searing through his brain and causing his knees to buckle underneath him. Watching him collapse, the haunted thing forced its tainted body into the ruined, rusty threshold. The pain in his head worsened until he swore his skull was slowly shattering, flaking away piece by piece.

The thing fell to the floor with an unnatural thud. Part of the ooze from the wall still followed the humanoid, acting as multiple umbilical tendrils until it broke away and began to drag itself across his floor, reaching, twitching, moaning for his flesh, his soul, his hope.

As if he was wearing cement clothes he remained completely paralyzed as the thing crept closer, seeping through the counter chairs as if they were merely air. He only moved when the pain in his head made him spasm, the…ghost only inches away.

The pain in his head was blazing hot, but the heat was a blessing to him when the ghost's icy fingertips brushed against him, searching for a weakness in his skin. Dry ice entered his blood as the ghost's arm plunged into his heart, feeding off of his life.

–

Henry Townshend awoke in his pale, stuffy bedroom, eyes staring up at the rotating fan. His heart rate was racing to rival a horse derby and he was clawing at his comforter frantically, heels digging into the foot of the bed. They had grown more intense. They had grown too intense.

Nightmares that couldn't just be dreams.

He sat up, body filled with sand and spine creaking in protest. The past five days had been worse than Hell for him, and the nightmares weren't included in that. Groaning he swung his feet over the side of the bed, gathering up enough courage to lift up his head to stare at the closet. He used to always wake up to stare at the window, but the outside that the windows led to now taunted him, and began to avoid them.

"Oh man…what a dream…," he murmured to himself, the only resident in the empty room.

Empty was the perfect way to describe his apartment home. The apartment was everything but empty, but to Henry it was the emptiest, saddest place in the world. It had gotten so sad that it began to mock him. He had been locked here for five days with no possible means of escape. Such tolls on his sanity twisted everything so that all the items here began to fade from his mind, and only himself was trapped there in his room's separate little dimension, but sometimes even he was gone. The place was empty to him and to every other tenant in the building because nobody cared if it was empty or not. Five days wasn't enough to convince the other residents that his room wasn't empty. His incessant screaming and pounding brought nothing, his attempts to break out were fruitless, so it boiled down to waiting.

Henry could wait for eternity though and no one would notice. He never really talked to any of the other people save for the common hallway small talk. Even the landlord wouldn't notice he's missing until he didn't pay the rent, and how long would that take? And it's not like that disappearing from view for a while would raise suspicion. People knew he didn't talk much, but they also knew it was just because he was shy and reserved. The only suspicious thing Henry could think of him doing was him running around with his thick batter-proof suitcase that protected his precious camera and equipment. To not see his face for a while was normal, so it could be a long, long time before Henry could even be filed as a missing person. He was forgettable. For better or for worse, he was locked in here.

He couldn't see how it would be for better. Henry was losing sanity fast. He had always been a lonely, introverted child, but always having the option of social contact was more comfort than he knew he had. It was so bad that his parents wouldn't notice his situation until a holiday rolled around. Henry was stuck.

He stood up, picking up the phone to dial a number. In the beginning he had been specific in the numbers he called, but now he just mashed at the buttons with a number that sounded realistic, hoping to get a promising response. He didn't even care if he accidentally dialed a phone sex line; it was at least proof that he could contact someone or something about his predicament. (It took a lot for Henry to not care about dialing that sort of wrong number. It had happened to him once and his face didn't return to its normal color for a week. His next door neighbor even asked him if he was okay, which in truth scared him.)

Henry set the receiver back down as the expected nothing blared back at him. No signal, no dial tone, only soft static he had to strain to hear. Just as he thought. He turned and began to walk out of his when he thought his ears would burst from that exact phone ringing its heart out.

Stopping with a short jolt, Henry turned on his heel and stared at the phone, wondering if it would keep ringing. When it did he picked it up, sitting on the bed for the lack of support his legs were giving him.

"Hello…?" he said a little sheepishly. Who the hell…?

A woman with a deep voice spoke, ignoring his greeting and replying with words that sent a confused shiver down Henry's neck, "Help…me…,"

The phone jumped to a gurgling static before throwing a dial tone in his ear. Bewildered, Henry picked up the receiver as if it would fix the issue.

"What…?" he said into the phone, wondering if the woman would come back. His mind started to work and he glanced down at the receiver gripped in his hand, noticing something crucial and ugly as it moved without resistance.

"The…cord's cut…!" he gasped. Setting the phone down quickly he moved away from it as if it was plagued and left the room. He desperately hoped that the rest of the day would go without any other hinderance. A quick glance in the refrigerator's direction ruined his wish though when his stomach growled. White wine and chocolate milk was all that remained for him to consume.

The wine he was reserving for some special occasion, such as a birthday or a holiday. The milk was the last of a chocolate and white milk six-pack called a 'spotted cow.' He had been saving it for last if it had to come to a bitter end or something, even though it was nearing its expiration date. Milk was something of a guilty pleasure of Henry's, and though the chocolate milk often was a little too sweet for him he relished in the thought of its taste on his tongue.

Even still he cursed the contents of the fridge, turning to his front door. Saying that he was locked in was a deep understatement. Henry stared at the once operating slab of wood that stood between him and freedom. It was hard to see the door through the thicket of crossing chains and locks that barred his one escape route. The chains looked heavy and rough, the locks were even more so. A household wire cutter would not stand against these. Someone or something really wanted to keep him tucked inside this cage, so much so that they locked him from the inside out. Henry stared at the door created from the mind of Salvador Dali, hypnotized with a distant, buried resentment.

In the blank space just below the peephole red letters began to bleed and stain the white paint, seeping into the wood in the form of a blatant message. He had to shake his head to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

Don't go out!

-Walter

Henry crept closer, hesitating. Cautious, he approached the door with care, barely skimming the chains as if they could burn him. He bent down, examining the many links to assure himself for the hundredth thousandth time that they were real.

"What the hell?"

His fingers twitched, just about to touch the chains when the sound of shattering glass rang just on the other side of the door. Henry inhaled sharply and jumped before straightening up to look through the peephole.

Eileen Galvin, his young neighbor, was crouched over outside his door. A paper bag nearly stuffed with groceries was pressed to her side by her arm, carefully held upright as she picked up fallen items. In an act of clumsiness she had dropped them on her way to room 303 next to him. She placed the last item into the bag on top of the others and stood up, staring at his door.

"Oh man…," she groaned, turning away to enter her apartment, "I hope my luck changes before the party…,"

She tsked at herself in exasperation and moved out of sight. Henry had tried pounding and screaming before, and he knew it was to no avail. That never stopped him from trying whenever somebody wandered close, but he did not even attempt the smallest peep for help now. The reason why was because something else caught his eye and breath.

Bloody handprints were smeared in an obscenely compulsive order on the wall across from his room. Henry gaped as he stared, counting fifteen prints in all. Shuddering, he backed away from the peephole, nearly tripping on his incompetent heels. As if things weren't already turning him in the direction of insanity enough—if this day kept prodding at his head the way it was he'd be admitted to a straight jacket in no time.

Overwhelmed, he grabbed the door handle of his side closet to balance himself should he trip and fall over. His eyes wandered from the peephole, wanting to look anywhere but there until he spotted a slip of paper underneath the door.

Did Eileen drop this? he wondered as he bent down to pick it up. Immediately seeing that the writing was sloppy and childish on a crumpled colored note card, he concluded that it was not. The conclusion did nothing for his nerves. Henry did not know or see any sign that Eileen had a child or a much younger sibling, and this note had come from a small kid just entering the first grade. The note was soft, suggesting that it was overly handled, and wrinkled as if it was used as a handkerchief for tears. Henry felt some sort of sympathy for whoever wrote this, but his sympathy was overtaken with confusion as he deciphered the messy handwriting.

Mom,

Why doesn't u wake up?

Henry carefully folded the crumpled note and slipped it into his pocket for lack of a better place to put it at the moment. For some reason he felt as though throwing the note away would be treading on the child's soul. Perhaps it wasn't something to believe if one was right in the head, but there was something written in the words of the note that seemed to foreshadow Henry's footsteps. Turning from the door, he spotted another note across the room, shoved unceremoniously between the bookshelf and the wall.

Curiosity had gotten the better of him, and he cared not what sort of trouble he got himself into at this point—as long as it was trouble that led him away from anything but this room. Henry gently eased ancient book pages from behind the shelf. They practically dissolved at his touch, causing him to take extra care as he laid them on the coffee table so that the oils of his fingertips wouldn't further corrode the old text.

Through the Ritual of the Holy Assumption, he built a world. It exists in a space separate from the world of our Lord. More accurately, it is within, yet without the Lord's world. Unlike the world of our Lord, it is a world in extreme flux. Unexpected doors or walls, moving floors, odd creatures, and world only he can control…Anyone swallowed up by that world will live there for eternity, undying. They will haunt that realm as a spirit. How can our Lord forgive such an abomination…?

He tried to understand the book's warnings as best he could. It was the first thing he had done since the five days had started. There were books everywhere in his apartment, yes, but he never found the motivation to read any of them or do anything else. Trying to decipher and read as much as he could to keep the boredom away with unfamiliar prophecies, he gently brushed the dust away from the acid-ridden paper. The next paragraph was too damaged to read properly, so he skipped to the final part where he could continue.

…it is important to travel lightly in that world. He who carries too heavy a burden will regret it…

Brain wracked with the sudden stimulation and worthless but well-kept knowledge, Henry left the book scrap on the small table. The first logical thought that ran through his head was to find a place to keep the two notes he had received. If he was going to keep getting such things he would need to record it, even though he felt as if the notes were mocking him in his very face.

A rather large chest that doubled as an uncomfortable seat was his first instinctive place to look, but as the chest creaked open he frowned. It was deep and woody, not a good place for storing papers—especially deteriorating texts of older days. A brown, spotted spider stared back at him in curiosity as he scowled at himself. He must've been strained to his limit if he resorted to this first. Other fragments similar to the book pages would be completely ruined if left in here. The spider shifted itself as he shut the chest, never noticing the comfortable creature.

Henry suddenly remembered the scrapbook he scarcely used, and was just about to stand up to retrieve it when something exploded.

It was a sound he'd expect to hear when a superhero punches through a wall. Nothing shook but the blast was loud enough to be heard from the landlord's room on the first floor. There was the rocky sound of debris tumbling to a hard floor, then a spooked silence that echoed around—daring noise to be made.

Henry stared in fear in the direction of the bathroom where the noise had originated. He had been ruthlessly startled out of his skin, first by the sudden noise and second by the fact that he hadn't looked there when he had gotten up. Somebody could have been…

Survival instincts thrived in his nerves, and his usual avoidance of violence no longer mattered. He tensed, racing to think of a reachable, adequate weapon. The closest one was in the fridge, lying next to a bottle of chocolate milk.

Moving as stealthily as he could Henry opened the fridge, keeping his wary eyes toward his bathroom. He fumbled for the neck of the wine bottle, hands slipping and causing it to drop. His chest froze though his hand had been quick to catch the bottle before it shattered. To Henry it seemed as though he had just set off a set of firecrackers and it made him cringe. If the intruder heard it, what would they do?

Nothing stirred in the bathroom, allowing Henry's confidence to carefully rebuild, though it was nothing more than a simple jenga tower in the first place. He was shaking as he held the wine bottle, standing outside the door to the bathroom. He stood there for some time, trying to get himself to stop trembling. After several moments where nothing happened, Henry reached out and clutched the door knob. Taking a deep breath he pushed the door open as forcefully as he could, raising the wine bottle over his head in preparation to swing it.

The bathroom was deserted, but what Henry saw instead stopped him dead in his tracks. There, in the once drearily plain bathroom wall, was a dark, ominous hole. It was a little wider than Henry's shoulders and hung precariously between his sink and toilet just below chest level.

He lowered the wine bottle, keeping his firm grip on the neck as he ventured forward into the new, alien room. Someone, or something had to have done this, and whatever it was couldn't have gone very far. His eyes flicked to the bathtub, expecting a face. Sniffing at himself dismissively, Henry turned away. Of course no one would be in the bathtub. Instead, they would (or should) logically be in the hole. The hole, where he could not see the end of the tunnel that it had crafted.

Henry approached it cautiously, wanting to look but afraid of the unknown.

"What the hell?"

He reached his hands forward to peek inside, hearing breathy, vaguely human noises from within.

"S-Somebody in there?" he called with a stutter, jerking backward. Standing up straight, a thought crossed his mind. Though the intruder may still be in there and dangerous he was willing to take the risk for his freedom.

"I wonder if I can get out this way…?"

Henry set the wine bottle down for a moment, looking into the hole. A steel pipe hung down from the top. It was loose enough that he could pull on it and possibly wrench it free. Gripping it with both hands, he grimaced as he tugged. After three sharp pulls the pipe broke away with a puff of dust, the breaking point hissing with disturbed gas that died down shortly afterwards. The corroded steel felt rough and unnatural in his soft hands, and Henry thought about dropping it and leaving it behind it felt so unnatural and harmful in his grasp. Just as he set it next to the wine bottle the thought of combat occurred to him.

It seemed like a silly thought at first, climbing through a hole in the bathroom to face enemies. True, the intruder could still be on the other side, but even then Henry was sure that the wine bottle would be fine and there would be no need for anything as serious as a steel pipe. But the hole had a sinister air about it. There were noises that bled and twisted out from the depths of the hole, thick, shrill, unidentifiable, soulless. Sin radiated from the depths of the blackness. It drew him inwards, tried to trick him into crawling into the hole unarmed and unprepared. Something about the yawning vastness of the small hole scratched at the insides of Henry's eyes. There was something not right about this. Beyond the fact that it was a bizarre happenstance that had no place in reality, there was something not right about this. This was a hole that Alice wouldn't return from should she jump down it.

Instead of leaving the pipe, Henry reached down and picked up the bottle to keep along with the pipe. It was clumsy and must've looked ridiculous, but he had a weapon in both hands now. As long as he felt somewhat safe, he could enter and face whatever sort of surprise was waiting for him. He drew in a long, somewhat steady breath and climbed into the hole.

Though he knew he was manually scraping through the craggy cement on his hands and knees, he still felt like he was being sucked in by a greater, greedy force. As he advanced through the hole his vision blurred and a blinding light burned the rest of it as he drew closer. Just before the light overwhelmed him Henry hesitated. The greedy force that seeped from the walls were pulling as hard as ever, and it had become clear that the light at the end of this tunnel was not one of those cliché ones where the protagonist breaks free of his confinement into sunlight at the end of the movie. No. This light burned coldly.

Henry sucked in a breath, wondered if he should turn around, then was pulled maliciously into the world of cold light.