Alt Name: Maw
They ran like rats. Shifting and turning through the manse’s moldering intestine like hallways, the fetid floorboards groaning under their hurried steps.
What little they saw pulsed by flickering sconces, offering little light. Their dying flames cocooned in torn coves that cast fleeting shadows shaped writhing veins.
They still heard it.
Kayla tried looking back, but the nail peeling cracks and gobbled giblets caused her to cringe and keep running. Sounds of melching ribs and squelched spines, beats of pulped esophagi and chunked liver.
The undeniable death behind them slithered down their spine.
Noone spoke, just sprinted, or at least tried. Alan and Waylen settled into a two person arm carry for Maria who silently seethed at the sounds. Faint tears were smothered with her left arm, unstoppable, the tears still peppered the ground.
They trudged as quickly as they could, passing the drudden baseboards until they found a weirdly placed smoking room, littered with matchsticks. Waylen could have swore there was nothing here in his first pass through, about where Kayla and Alan split off. Regardless, he slowed, motioning for the others to do the same.
Their panicked breaths echoed in the stomach shred silence.
“Quiet,” he hissed, his voice barely audible. He couldn’t make it louder if he tried.
“We don’t know how well it can hear.” Waylen tapered down the agitation, fear, and a not small amount of pain.
The sprint had agitated an old knee injury that never quite healed properly, flaring with every step. He couldn't keep this up. And by the looks of the others, neither could they.
“You're not the boss. “ Alan snided before a gasp. He set Maria to lean on Waylen, and folded his suit over and tied it to his waist. Suitcase long since discarded, and clothes ruined by passing cobwebs and crumble bits, the businessman’s face rictused in layers of stress.
Waylen didn't comment on that or what he said, all this had gotten to him too. Best let sleeping dogs lie.
“Fuck off.” Kayla rebuked at Alan. Regardless she still carried the chair stick in her other hand, and stayed the most pointed towards the way they came. “Whatever gets us home, ” she meted out, pointing towards Waylen.
Yashin nodded, sweaty palms clutching his phone and muttering prayers.
Maria grumbled, sagging against Waylen’s shoulder.
“We can’t stop,” Alan whispered. His voice trembled, but his grip on his phone remained steady. “But she’s losing too much blood.”
Waylen glanced at Maria. Her overalls were soaked through, the fabric clinging to her skin in sticky, dark patches. Her face was pale, her eyes half-lidded. She wouldn’t last long without help.
“Keep moving,” Waylen said. “There has to be something in this place. A med kit. Supplies. Anything.”
Alan scoffed. “Of course, because the murder mansion would have a first aid kit lying around.”
Breathing, Kayla paused, scanning around. “Wait. The fuck. We came through here and there was a washroom at the end of the damn hall.” She said, looking towards one of the two exits.
What smoking room had three entrances anyway?
Waylen stilled.
If Alan and Kayla ran through this way? Yes the light shaded differently but he credited that to deterioration. Unless…
Focusing on the breadth of the situation despite his lack of breath, something clicked in his mind. Considering the damn vamp not breaking out and all the strangeness of this place, the monster and themselves might not be the only ones out of place.
Waylen gathered his thoughts.
“You’re right that this hellhole might be shifting on us, but we don’t have a choice,” He added.
The group pressed on, Maria once again carried by Alan and Waylen.
The oppressive air, and Maria’s sides, grew colder with each step.
The architecture brought them twisting and shifting as they moved, the walls closing in and then expanding in non-normative weirding ways. The rickety wood pulsed with dust, watching, waiting.
Waylen would put a bullet through his gullet to be home, gambling overtime dimes on stocks and sports. Home & work, despite the fuckery it put him through, was better than what Dean went through.
Come to think of it, was that even Dean’s real name?
Waylen shook his head, for better or worse he was a betting man, and the 1:26:12 on the clock meant they’d have to wish on a well to go another hour and a half without seeing that thing. Soon enough and he would have to put it all up. At least—
“Fuck.” Waylen bleated.
Pain shot up his foot. He had stepped on a nasty nail, spear-like and feeling like rusted sand, piercing straight through his shoes and middle foot.
“Focus.” Maria silvered, slackened. “Keep your head on a swivel, don't step where you don't see.” She added, shifting to rest fully on Alan.
“Leave it there, that nail– the accident.” Kayla said. “Might have hit an artery, removing it would make things worse.”
Rounding the rest of the corner with a grimace, cold shocks sprouted from his foot, but he left it there. He bent at the knee, picked up any nails he saw at the head of the group, and soldiered on, ideas fermenting at the back of his skull.
His other hand tightened on the crimson jar in his pockets. Its surface was smooth and cold, he needed a poison, acid, anything for that threat pacing the halls.
They rounded a corner, and the hallway opened into a large room. Waylen’s flashlight swept across the space, revealing a grand dining hall. A massive table dominated the center, its surface cluttered with tarnished silverware and broken plates. The remnants of a feast long since spoiled littered the floor, the smell of long-tarnished luxury hanging heavy in the air.
“This looks like nothing,” Kayla said.
“It’s better than fuck all,” Waylen said. “Spread out. Look for anything useful but stay within earshot.”
Yashin hesitated. “Shouldn’t we barricade the way we came? What if—”
“That thing out dashed a bullet, or at least our best perception of it,” Waylen cut him off. “It could mow down a few stray tables. So we don’t wait: we move.”
Maria was sat in a half broken chair and the rest fanned out, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous room.
Waylen moved to the head of the table, his flashlight illuminating the grotesque remains of a roasted bird, its flesh blackened beyond rot. Dead flies dotted around it, their normally annoying droning would have filled the silence, he idly thought.
He tore his gaze away and focused on the walls. Faded tapestries hung in tatters, their intricate designs obscured by grime. One depicted a scene of revelry—figures dancing and feasting under a pale moon. But the longer he looked, the more distorted the image seemed. The dancers’ faces were twisted in agony, their eyes wide with pain.
A chill ran down his spine. He turned away, his flashlight catching movement on the far wall.
Waylen’s heartbeat broke, but it was only Kayla, rummaging through a dusty cabinet. She pulled out a knife, stocked it and kept searching.
On that matter, Dean came here with a gun, Waylen thought towards while fingering through a table's underside. There wasn't time to focus on it, and the nail was a reminder of not eyeing his steps, but fuck.
He got thrown into this madness in his work jacket with only a phone and fuck all, but Dean damn knew something and now he was gone. He’d have to ask Maria, but whatever Dean knew, it couldn't save him, would it help him, them?
“Anything?” he rumbled.
She shook her head, unstocking silverware, rusted to the dregs. “Just more junk.”
Alan cursed from across the room. “This is a waste of time.”
“It’s all we’ve got,” Waylen said, his frustration boiling over. “Unless you want to sit around and wait for that thing to find us.”
Alan glared at him but said nothing. They heard Maria shift her weight, Alan’s jaw tightening as her head lolled against the stained chair.
“Here,” Kayla said, pulling a chair away from the table. “Set her down more comfortably. At least give her a minute.”
Alan hesitated, then lowered Maria into the joined chairs. She slumped forward, her breathing shallow.
Waylen moved closer, his gaze falling on the wound in her side. It was deep, the flesh torn and jagged. He grimaced. “We need to stop the bleeding.”
“With what?” Alan snapped. “This place doesn’t exactly scream sterile.”
Waylen ignored him and tore a strip from his shirt under the jacket, like Dean did. “It’s better than nothing.”
He pressed the fabric against the wound, and tried to tie it and Dean’s cloth to cover the deep gashes, eliciting a weak groan from Maria. “Stay with us,” he said, his voice softer now. “We’re going to get you out of this.”
Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Waylen leaned closer, catching a faint whisper.
“Vampire…”
Alan rolled his eyes. “She’s delirious.”
Waylen frowned but didn’t argue. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some truth to her words, as absurd as they sounded.
The sound of shattering glass snapped him out of his thoughts. He spun around, his flashlight darting across the room.
Yashin stood near a broken display case, his face pale.
“Sorry,” he stammered. “It was an accident.”
Waylen’s jaw tightened. “Be more careful.” He said then sighed.
Alan and Kayla were on the other side of the room, muttering something to each other, but a sound broke the quiet.
A sudden creak drew their attention to the far side of the room, beyond the hallway’s egress. The air grew colder, the oppressive silence broken only by the faint sound of footsteps. Slow, deliberate, like fluid dripping down an IV, it measured forward.
Waylen’s heart pounded as the shadows shifted, coalescing into a figure. The same creature that had attacked Dean emerged from the darkness, its gaunt frame illuminated by their flashlights.
A beacon in black, but bearing a body in tow.
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