Chapter 17: It Begins

The hall seemed endless and winding. The air was thick and musty. The pair walked, hip to hip. Eli stared into the endless black just beyond the light of his lantern, sure that he saw something move. “Alice?” he called.

“Yeah.” Her voice was shaky.

“About the first time we met, in the library,” Eli said, hoping a conversation would ease his mounting stress. “Why did you approach me?”

“Well,” Alice paused for a moment. “I thought you were a bit strange.” She paused again, “Well not strange in a bad way.”

“What other way is there?” Eli joked.

“Shut up, it’s just, day after day you would come in, sit in front of a mountain of books, and flip through page after page,” she paused again. “I guess after a while I started to paint an image of the kind of person you were and finally had to see if I was right.”

“Were you?”

“Not by a mile,” she said carelessly. “Though, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.” She avoided Eli’s gaze. “What about you? What did you think of me?” she asked, trying to sound as though she didn’t care about the answer.

“I thought you were impossibly beautiful.” Eli let the last word hang, “But then you opened your mouth-”

Alice playfully slapped him on the back of his head. The pair continued to chat. Through the laughter, they almost had forgotten where they were. Almost. The conversation couldn’t last forever and eventually, it died down. Soon after, Eli stared into the darkness again. His vision widened and blurred as the darkness crawled. It was moving, it was living, Eli was sure of it.

“Eli!” Alice barked, breaking him out of his trance. “Jeez, where did you go, I called you like five times.” Her voice was soft and filled with worry.

“I-I saw something in the dark, all over, moving. Didn’t you?”

“No, the darkness seemed pretty still to me.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

” Yeah, and you’re trying to creep me out.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.” The pair burst out in laughter.

They walked forward with no idea where they were headed. Alice heard a clutter and snapped her head around but saw nothing. They continued, and again Alice heard something. Insect scuttling over each other. A shiver ran up her spine when the image flashed through her mind. She turned to find nothing. The sound had stopped.

A little further, it returned, and it was louder. The volume grew. The insects were burrowing. The sound grew until it engulfed her. all she heard was the sound of a thousand insects. Before she could scream something called out.

“Alice!” Eli chipped, pulling her back to reality. “Look who’s zoning out now.” he took a jab. He thought of poking fun at her but decided against it when he saw her expression. He patted her back. “It’s fine, it’s all going to be fine.” He said that but wasn’t too sure himself and so his words rang hollow.

A knot had formed in them both, though neither told the other. instead they kept it to themselves. Once again, to Eli, it seemed the darkness had come alive. Slowly moving and writhing in a thousand different directions in a thousand different places. His vision widened as he lost focus. He was deep in a trance. A terrible oozing feeling covered him, then he stumbled over a rock, the fall snapping him out of it. He turned to Alice before she could worry at him, but there was no one. He turned to his other side. Still no one. He looked all around but Alice was gone.

***

“Eli!” Alice called out. For a split second, she had lost focus to the creeping sound and when she regained it, It was dark. She then quickly fished a flashlight from her bag only to find that Eli was nowhere to be seen. “Eli!” She called again. She gripped the breast of her shirt tightly as she crept forward making herself smaller, as though she wanted to hide within herself. She continued to move forward, calling Eli’s name. Then the sound returned.

Like before, it was that of a thousand insects that crawled, writhed, and burrowed. They burrowed into something hard. Alice turned, and like before, saw nothing, but this time the sounds didn’t stop. They grew louder and louder. Alice picked up her pace, eventually breaking into a full-on sprint, but the sound didn’t vanish. It only grew. Then, she felt it, The sensations of a thousand bugs crawling over her skin and through her hair. She screamed. A spike of pain pierced her body as they tore into her skin.

She cried out. With tears running down her face she cried for help. “Eli!” She screamed until her voice grew raw. “Someone help!” the words turned into a hopeless sob as she slumped to her knees. With no other choice, she slapped the back of her head with her hand but felt nothing but hair. She didn’t believe it. She scraped her fingers through her scalp but no bugs fell. Still, the sound grew louder. She could feel them, a thousand crawling. Then it struck. They weren’t on the skin, they were beneath. She felt nothing but desperation, a desperation that drove her to do the unthinkable. Driven mad by the army of writhing insects, She plunged her nail into her flesh. She tore at it. She dug until blood flowed from the back of her neck to her face, mixing with the bitter tears of madness.

***

Eli ran carelessly throughout the darkened halls, calling Alice’s name. He was completely lost but he didn’t care. “Alice!” he called out into the darkness, “Alice!” There was no reply but he wasn’t about to stop. He took every twist and turn walking deeper into the labyrinth getting more and more lost by the second. Eli froze in his tracks. This time he was sure of it, something was alive in the darkness, twisting, writhing. Entranced, he inched forward, but the movement was always just beyond the light of his lantern.

After realizing the futility of it, Eli eased out of the trance and for a moment forgot about his lost friend, but only for a moment. Before he could resume the search, however, something cold gripped his ankle. Eli looked down and saw a hand, black and slimy, pulling him into the ground. Eli went rigid. He pulled his leg hard and slid free, but fell to the ground. Suddenly, more hands shot out of the ground grasping for him. He didn’t stick around. As fast as his legs would allow he sprinted down the hall. After half a minute of all-out running, Eli’s stopped to grab a breath. The hands were gone, he was safe.

Until he wasn’t.

Exhausted, He leaned against a wall hyperventilating. He closed his eye’s and focused on the feeling of his heart trying to escape from his chest. He steadied his breathing and calmed himself. Calm down, you still need to find Alice.

Finally deciding that he was ready to start searching again he leaned off of the wall, or at least, he tried. His arm was pasted, held down by something cold, hard, slimy. Eli gripped it with his other hand and pulled, hoping to slip free. Slowly, it worked. His arm slid free. Just as the hand seemed to have lost it’s grip, another arm popped out of the wall and held his free arm. He still tried to pull away. Another arm popped out and gripped his shirt, then another and yet another. Soon, the wall was made of nothing but arms and hands. Eli took a breath to shout for help but another slimy hand reached out and gripped his jaw. It squeezed away any chance he had. Without effort, the hands pulled Eli into the wall.

With tears in his eye’s, he fought and struggled but to no avail, with one final pull, Eli freed his jaw and called Alice’s name once more.

Once more, before he was pulled into the wall where the only thing he could do was suffocate.

***

Alice’s vision blurred, her fingers grew numb and her face was drenched in blood from her neck. She’s been digging into her own skin like her life depended on it but the sound remained, there was nothing there, but the sensations remained.

Her body grew heavy as her resolve faded into nothing. Her mind was muddled and her thoughts slow, but right when she was about to give up she remembered. In the leather book, the first clue: ‘NOT REAL’. Alice stopped scratching her skin and focused. The sound grew louder, and the sensations grew more vivid. But she remained focused and repeated the two words to herself, over and over.

“not real, not real, not real.”

She repeated the words until she believed them. And, as suddenly as they appeared, the sounds and sensations stopped. The only thing she could feel now was the pain of her mauled skin, a pain that was without a doubt real, a pain she was thankful for but she had not time to celebrate. She had to find Eli. She was sure he was in similar trouble.

She ran aimlessly through the halls, then a voice echoed.

“Alice!”

Eli. She ran in the direction of the shout, and warmth overrode the cold dread in the pit of her stomach when she saw a light. The light of Eli’s lantern. Alice turned a corner and saw him laying on the ground, gripping his own throat, convulsing.

She ran over to him and pulled his arms away from his throat. But he still wasn’t breathing, in fact, it was like he was suffocating. Alice held him down and called his name “Eli!” she cried. “It’s not real, Eli!” She said those words, again and again, but Eli continued to suffocate. Eventually, his body stopped moving, his tail went limp. Tears welled up in Alice’s eyes.

“Eli!” there was no response. “Eli!” She cried out again, shaking his lifeless body. “Eli please,” Her words were coarse and broken by sobs. She looked around at the darkness beyond the light of the lantern. It was quiet. She trembled at the thought of facing it alone. “I need you.” Still no movement. Alice’s vision blurred. Ice cut through her veins. Then something happened. Eli’s tail twitched. “Eli!” Alice called out with tear and hope-filled eyes. With a jolt, Eli shot up gasping for air. He turned to Alice’s blood and tear-stained face and smiled weakly.

“I figured it out,” he said. “It wasn’t real.”

Alice hugged him as tight as she could, either laughing or sobbing. As far as she knew they had just survived hell. But this was only the beginning