Hallway

Horror part 1

A long winding hallway edged towards a familiar door. I'm not sure quite what brought me here, but it happened, and it's all I could accept. My hearts beat drummed in my ears with a rugged rhythm. I nodded it off the best I could while I took a step, then another. The hallway was narrow like a snake coiled beneath its walls. The ceiling reached eerily tall, leaving shadows that played and danced along the top of the walls, cast from the curvature of the lamps that lit my way.

I found myself taking a few more steps before my lungs started to ache, my skin felt cold, and my eyes became heavy. The door was so close, just a few more steps I told myself. To my right there was a single door, I jiggled it but it was rusted shut and wouldn't budge. There was a small hole in the handle, so I bent over to see inside. My entire attention rested on my left eye while I closed my other. I saw nothing in the room but heard something whisper. Through the hole to the right was a window that had moonlight flooding into the room, it was misty and damp. I turned my gaze over to the right to see a candle laying on a shelf. Leaning in to get a better look, I saw a shadowy figure with its head slanted, its back was crooked and it hobbled. Bony fingers protruded from its hand. They were abnormally long, with the nails curling into themselves. The candle light from behind it blew out, and it fell dead silent. A loud sound came from the window and the moonlight shattered into darkness. A creaking noise scurried from the ground to the wall connected to the door. Something was lightly tapping the wall in a heartbeat rhythm. The tapping edged to the door and it became faster. My heart sped up with it, and I couldn't tell if the sounds were influenced by my own heart.

I backed from the door quickly as little scrawny fingers came bursting from the hole. They moved like tentacles, scratching with epileptic and vigorous movements. It intrigued my adrenaline, so I hastily moved back to the door and wrapped my entire hand around them. They quivered and tugged, trying to pry my skin from bone, but I overpowered it. I bent the fingers back until I heard a snap protrude, a dark bellow screeched from behind the door. The lamps became dim and the hallway warm. It worried me that it became warm so immensely that I started to quiver. In my deepest memories warmth had been the sign of pain, the color of fresh blood splattered on the wall. It all felt so surreal that I was sure it was all just an illusion.

A felt a disturbance ripple through me, the hallway twisted and shattered the fabric of my reality, a rift opened up between me and the door. Vast space and emptiness was between me now, a metaphor for everything I wanted to achieve in life. I chuckled to myself at how conscious I was to my own previously thought obliviousness had become. In such a short time this reality was set into my mind, it was handpicked by none other than myself. I bent over to see a carpet of cats I'd seen before, little-weaved cats played on it, circling a pentagram. One cat in the middle was different, it was the only white cat, its eyes were bloodshot. I bent over and felt the fabric and noticed something was underneath. Swiftly I grabbed a laser pointer and gripped it tightly.

I heard the fingers retreat from the hole so I looked over to see what happened. Turning the laser pointer on, I pointed it into the hole. I saw the beam reflect back. I knew what it had meant. Something that could see in the dark rested their eye on it. The receptors in its eyes projected it back at me, but at least I was comforted that it watched me. It meant something paid attention to me.

I looked behind me, a stairway formed with a metal railing supporting it from one side. The door with the eye was behind me now, to the left a wall, to the right the rift.

I walked forward to see the stairwell that led down flights of stairs. Thinking of my cat, I remembered pointing the light up and down the stairs to give it a workout.

But now I wanted comfort, and so I pointed it down the long receding stairwell. It spiraled down into a deep darkness, of which low pitched murmuring could be heard. In the past, I would call my cat over by getting him to chase the beam of light by taunting him at the bottom, just so I could hug him and have him close to me. But now the stairs had no end, and the beam was consumed into the dark pit.

What happened next tested me. A figure that was distorted rested its gaze on me, keeping eye contact with me as its limbs raveled on the stairs. It stayed at a very slow speed, piercing my eyes with its. Lamps lit up as it circled further up the stairs to me. I felt like it saw something I didn't, but I couldn't distinctly pinpoint what It was. My gaze was locked in now, out of fear I couldn't conjure up the strength to move.

To my side, I felt a disfigured hand slide onto my shoulder. The hand was crippled and boney, bent backward, a dark residue ran down the hand onto my clothing. A dark breath heavily spiked the hairs on my neck, sending a wave of tingles across my body. I looked down to see a deformed leg that's muscles tensed and wrapped like veins around a boney interior. Black blood oozed around it like wounds. Holes, rips, and tears covered its entirety.

I leaned forward slightly and shifted my body's weight onto a railing.