Decemberland

Chapter 39: Searching

Darkness surrounded her, the light above from where she fell a blur. Her head spun and pain shot through her left leg as she pulled it out from the pile of rubble it was buried underneath. As she slowly regained control of her vision, she looked up once more at the hole of light above only to see three layers of concrete crumbling above her head. All of a sudden she became aware of the fact that she was breathing, and it hurt to inhale. Another look around the dark space she fell into and she saw the hospital bed that Clarity had been lying on while she was on the roof. It rested on its side, wheels spinning, empty.

She pulled her arm back to adjust herself better, and underneath her palm she heard a crack. Hesitantly, she turned her head, heart pounding at the terrifying idea of what exactly broke her fall. Her arm had set itself elbow deep into a brittle, bloodstained human rib cage. Her head spun around frantically as her eyes adjusted to her surroundings. There she fell smack in the middle of a pile of human bones. The missing hospital staff.

Her body trembled violently as she desperately crawled out of the pile of bones, chest in piercing agony while she hyperventilated uncontrollably. Her leg felt as if a dozen knives were piercing it as she forced herself to stand and find the wall. She looked into the dark carefully for any sign of Clarity, hoping beyond hope she fell unharmed.

After circling the room once, with no other signs of Clarity, she assumed that she might have fallen into the pile of bones. Suddenly, the sound of a door slamming behind her made her jump out of her skin. Did she miss something?

“Clarity?” she called out. Rushing to the sound as fast as her limping leg could carry her, she found herself at a door that she could swear wasn’t there before. Without wasting another thought on the anomaly of its sudden appearance or perhaps that she might be hallucinating, she tore for the handle with her good hand and ripped it open to a set of stairs leading upwards, just in time to catch a glimpse of straight blonde hair waving through the air and disappearing around the corner.

“Clarity!” she shouted, but she gave no response. “Clarity? Where are you going?” Nico chased after her as fast as she could, racing up the stairs, ignoring the shooting pain throughout her entire leg. Unfortunately, the pace she carried herself was only fast enough to catch another door slam on the next floor. Nico gave chase as best she could, tearing open the next door, but to her astonishment, Clarity had disappeared from her sight completely. Instead, an empty hospital hallway presented itself before her.

“What exactly are you looking for?” rang a gruff, disembodied voice from down the hallway. At the end of it, like a ghost, stood Trust, staring her down from the other end before walking another direction and disappearing just as quickly. She did not answer to anyone except herself, inside her head. Slowly this time, she limped down the hallway.

His voice echoed again from all directions. “Magic? A companion to share in your anguish?” Ignoring his voice as best she could, she searched for any signs of where Clarity might have gone to. Without warning, another door creaked open right next to her. Cautiously, she peered into the lightless room, compelled by its phantasmal invitation. Her gut instinct, the only thing she could trust among all her jumbled senses, screamed for her to walk through the passageway; that this was where she would find what she was looking for.

“A long lost brother?”

Along the wall inside was a row of beds, sheets covering the deceased. The smell inside made her gag, almost vomit. A light flickered on, and the room expanded into a much larger looking house for corpses, as beds lined the floor like morgue. The wall layered with the reflective surface of steel, she saw her own blurry silhouette reproduced on it as she walked by.

A mirror hung at the end of the room near the next exit, with a figure standing next to her own. It walked with her as she approached it, becoming larger and clearer.

“The world is unforgiving,” it said, “In the end, you are nothing more than an empty shell among a trillion empty shells.”

He stood next to her in the mirror, his single red eye fixated on her with lust, a dark look that she had been familiar with only twice before. A look that sent endless chills down her back. The gurgling voice of a dead man whispered in her ear.

He’s right behind you.

Suddenly the mirror cracked, and she spun around to catch him—but nothing was there except empty space and malevolence.

The floor beneath her trembled and shook, displacing the rows of dead bodies and sending them rolling across the room, lifeless arms falling from beneath the sheets, hanging limp. Nico backed out of the room through the doorway next to the broken mirror and into the side of another long hallway; a more beaten down, torn hallway. Large cracks ran from the floors up the walls and across the ceiling. On the flooring just ahead of her a large, gaping hole prevented her from proceeding any further down the corridor. And when she looked up, her heart rose in her chest to see Clarity staring back at her, but sank again when she realized that she was on the other side.

“Clarity!” she called, “Thank the gods! W-Wait right there, I’ll be over in a moment!” She looked around frantically for a passageway across, but to no avail.

Of all the things she noticed, one odd, out of place phenomenon caught her eye for a moment. It was so odd, that her attention was actually cut off from making her way across to Clarity. Right in front of her, in the middle of the air, rubble floated with no platform or strings to hold it up. Tentatively, she reached out for it. It felt just like rubble--had the same density and texture, but for some reason, defied gravity right before her very eyes. Her hair suddenly rose when she realized that it wasn’t the only one doing it. All around her, rubble of all different shapes and sizes began to defy logic and fall upwards at different speeds. Her hair floated around her head as well as the hairs on her neck standing on end.

Trust stood in front of her, above the hole, standing on nothing. His grin menacing and eerily wider than a normal smile.

He bend down on his knee, nose to nose with her, and gently traced his finger across her collarbone to pull out a bit of Clarity’s necklace from underneath her shirt. “Oh, the choices we make… To think a tiny little thief like you made all this happen,” he said, his voice as smooth as honey, “What a destiny.” He stood straight up above the hole again and walked away from her, towards Clarity, as if the air were solid. “But it’s alright, because in the end, that’s just who you are, isn’t it?”

He took Clarity’s hand as they walked towards the end of the hallway together, her mindless footsteps following his. Nico screamed after them at the top of her lungs, “Clarity, get away from him! Clarity, no!” And she stumbled forward into the hole, but she did not fall downwards. The pull of gravity wrenched her towards the sky trying to feed dark of night above. Nico hung on to the ledge of the floor above for dear life, screaming after them, but they would not hear her as they walked through the doors leading to the outside.

The force pulling her upwards would not relent, and the ledge she clung onto for dear life finally gave. Gravity pulled her towards the stars to be swallowed up by the blackness, but before a hand from the floor above thrust forward and pulled her away from the gravity for its own wicked agenda.