That Which Lingers In The Dark

Omnipresent

I was running. I'm not even sure where, or for how long; I don't even remember what happened before this. All I know is that It was still behind me, and I wouldn't stop running until It wasn't. My heart was pounding, it felt like it would leap out of my throat. My legs burned as if there was a red-hot rod being shoved into my calves. Half of my mind thought about slowing down a little, catching my breath, but the other half remembered the Thing chasing me and forced me to keep running.
    "Turn left." A voice said to me, and I automatically obeyed it and turned left sharply. There was just darkness all around me, but once I'd turned I could see what looked like a cement wall next to me. I chose to stick to that wall.
    Then the rational side of me questioned the voice I'd just heard; was it in my head? It had sounded like it. But it wasn't my voice; this voice had been much too deep. Then what was it? Who was it?
    "Pay attention." The Voice returned. "Turn right."
    To test the authority of the Voice, I didn't turn right. That proved to be a poor decision, as now I could hear the Thing behind me seem to be getting closer; I heard the thump of Its feet on the floor behind me, and the bated breaths it let out between snarls at me. Just hearing It made my heart race faster, more adrenaline rushing through my veins to try to push my body to its limit. I began to wonder how much longer I could keep this up; with no idea where I was or where I was going, I couldn't escape or hope to find a way to.
    I didn't hear the Voice for a few minutes as I kept running, but it took me a second to realize that I didn't hear the Thing either. Not even the sound of Its feet behind me; just my shoes pounding on the cement floor and my panting in the heavy darkness. But I kept running, sticking to that one wall.
    I saw a gap in my wall and quickly turned to go down that direction, running a bit longer. Upon still not hearing the Thing anymore, I slowed to a stop to try to catch my breath and calm my heart a bit. Once I stopped I could feel the burning pain in my legs again, my throat feeling tight. Then the Voice returned again.
    "Don't stop, what's wrong with you?" it said, the tone heavy with judgement, but it also sounded exasperated, as if this wasn't the first time this had occurred. "Keep running. You'll never get away if you don't keep running.
    "Or do you want to stop and let It take you?"
    I wanted to ask this Voice what it was talking about, but then I heard the Thing snarl again, much closer than earlier, and footsteps even faster than they had been before coming towards me. I immediately started running again, away from where I had heard the Thing in the darkness. My legs burned up even more now than before; maybe stopping hadn't been a good idea.
    But I kept running. I seemed to be going just fast enough that the Thing couldn't catch me; I could hear it's breathing and feet on the cement close behind me, but it didn't seem to be gaining.
    "Turn left." The Voice told me again, but again I chose not to listen to it.
    "What are you?" I said aloud to the Voice that may or may not be in my head. It didn't respond to my question, though, or try to give me more directions. So I kept running still; the Thing's sounds faded behind me again, but this time I didn't stop. I knew that if I did, the Thing would catch up to me again, and I wouldn't be able to start running.
    I ran for a good five minutes. At least, I think that's how long it had been. It was hard to tell when I didn't have any sort of light to indicate time or day. The darkness seemed to press in on me even more, almost suffocating now. I couldn't see anything in any direction; I had lost the wall when the Thing had caught up after I'd stopped. I just had to trust that I wouldn't hit any walls or other obstacles.
    Suddenly the darkness didn't seem so suffocating, as if I had arrived in an open area, but I still couldn't see anything. Then as I ran a little further, I could. A column of bright white-yellow light, as if coming in from a ceiling light, penetrating through the darkness. I felt a rush of relief; if there was light, that meant outside. And outside meant a way out of whatever this hellish place was, and away from the Thing. I slowed down to quickly try to find a way to get up to where the light was coming from; I couldn't see if it was a skylight or a hole or what, but I was determined to get to it. I found a ladder propped up from the floor, almost undetectable in the heavy darkness around the light column, seeming to go right up into the light. I didn't even think about why there would be a ladder here, or why it felt sticky when I put my hands on the rungs and pulled myself up.
    I was so close; I could feel the warmth from the light column as I climbed the ladder up. Somewhere around the middle of the ladder, I decided to look down again to see if I could find out where I had just been. That's when all of the excitement from having found a way out drained from me and was replaced with the need to vomit.
    All over the floor of the room the column was in was covered in sticky red-black blood, and I could see that the floor that I had been running on had not been cement, but hard packed dirt. Hard packed from having been run on many times for a long time. There were bodies all over the room. Human bodies. It seemed like it had been by a miracle that I hadn't tripped on one; they were literally scattered everywhere, most half rotted with mostly bones showing. But some looked... fresh, with blood still wet on the bodies. All of them sported huge gashes covering them that probably caused their deaths; gashes that looked as if they had been made by claws. And they all looked like me.
    Then my eyes traveled back to the bottom of the ladder, just as the Thing leapt from the floor and grabbed me by the calves. I tried to scream as It dragged me off the ladder, the pain was excruciating, but I didn't have the breath to get the sound out.
    "Well," The Voice returned once again as the Thing gave one final tug on my legs and I hit the ground hard. After that I could only hear the Voice as my vision went dark.
    "Let's try this again, shall we?"