They rested for over an hour. Matt tried to clean up and stop the bleeding as much as possible given the circumstances and the improvised first aid kit he used, made of towels and napkins.

“Damnit, I told you to control yourself, Karen.”

“Hey, shut the hell up,” she snarled. “It was your idea to come here in the first place. I’m trying to keep us alive. Don’t provoke me now!”

It was easy to blame him for it all, but that wasn’t a good enough reason to get pissy at him and she knew it. In a way, she felt bad. Matt had done his best to help her out ever since she had left Basin. But even if she was angry at everything in a general sense, she was also angry at him specifically, although she didn’t quite understand why. She wanted to both hug him and punch him, but mostly the latter. She would do neither, however tempting it was.

Her threat had worked: Matt was bewildered by the sudden outburst and chose to remain silent. She needed the quiet to think and focus. There was one question she was anxious to find the answer to: why would they be safer in here than outside? She couldn’t find how or what kept the creature from entering this place.

“Let’s look around further. Maybe we can find something useful; there’s still a large area we haven’t searched. This place is much bigger than I remember it being,” she said.

“You’re not imagining things. Trust me, I’ve eaten here more times than I care to admit. I know the place. It’s changed a lot… it’s different. Distorted, somehow.”

They got up and began exploring. As they passed the glass door to enter the cinema side of the complex, they found themselves completely confused: this area seemed to extend for thousands of meters in every direction, including the one they had just come from. There was no wall, no furniture – only a floor and a ceiling extending forever into the infinite.

They walked in silence side-by-side. Besides their own footsteps, all they could hear was a constant ticking, as if someone had recorded the sound of a clock, increased the reverb, and played the audio on a giant speaker. Occasionally, they could hear a high-pitched laugh. They obviously weren’t alone, but no threat arose. They kept going for hours and hours, perhaps even days. They felt no hunger, no thirst, no tiredness. There was only the monotony of the endless walk, an infinite trek to nowhere on the tune of an omnipresent grandfather clock.

The noise grew louder with each passing hour. Eventually, Matt brought Karen’s attention to a faint glow in the distance. They would normally be careful, trying to study what it was from afar. This time, though, they had grown weary of being lost, of feeling like there was no end to their journey. Perhaps death wouldn’t be worse than this eternal emptiness.

As they approached, they could distinguish a pale blue light on the floor in the shape of a clock. The closer they got, the more the echo in the ticking noise faded, until it was no more. The sound was now clear and sharp, and it came from that light on the ground.

They stood there for a moment, pondering its meaning – until Karen looked up ahead.

“Look! A door! Let's get out of here!” she pressed him. She had been in here for so long, she had almost forgotten about the dangers they had faced outside. Matt kept staring at the clock; she lightly pulled on the sleeve of his jacket. He didn’t move.

“It’s going backwards,” he simply said.

“So? Who cares?” she replied.

“Maybe it’s a timer?” he asked.

Before she could reply, there was a new voice to be heard, presumably belonging to the same entity they had heard laughing earlier. A short man stepped out of the shadows. He wore an elaborate black and white outfit, consisting of pointy shoes, large gipsy pants, a fool’s hat that split in three, and a trimmed tunic that revealed part of his well-defined stomach and his unnaturally snow-white skin. The figure had an exaggeratedly pointy long nose, as well as a set of big full teeth that could put a lion to shame.

“Matty, Matty, Matty! Clever as ever!” he said, approaching the duo nonchalantly.

Karen stepped in between the two, ready to pounce. “Who are you?” she asked.

He stopped about five meters in front of her before bowing in an exaggerated gesture. “Oh! Forgive me, miss! I am known as… the Jester! at your service.” He straightened back up.

“How do you know Matt? And how did you get in here?” she asked impatiently. He seemed way too cheerful, which made her wary of him. He was up to something, she thought.

He chuckled. “I know you, too, Karen darling. I know – I know a lot of things. It is my role in this, to know. And I… I have been watching for a long, long time. As for your other question, I am not quite here, you see…. This is but a projection of my being, because I have come here to tell you… hmm… stuff. And to help.”

Karen turned to Matt, who was staring intensely at the Jester. He had kept quiet so far, and she wondered why. He wasn’t being his usual self.

She turned back to the Jester. “Tell us stuff? Like, how to get out of here or what this clock shadow is about?”

“But of course!” he screeched a little too loudly. “This is a countdown, a warning, of sorts. You see, Matt was right: this area is… cursed, if you will. Tainted by the shadows of the cosmos, plagued by every single nightmare you can ever dream of.”

“And this is telling us when it’s going to get worse,” Matt theorized, a grave expression on his face.

“Partially correct,” said the clown with a maniacal grin.