Lab C: Chapter 3 - Getting Ready

An abandoned brick building stands unassumingly intimidating betwixt two large empty lots. A random guy starts to walk past it, slows to a halt and then turns on a dime and goes back where he came from. A car drives past it, and slams on the breaks for a second, then speeds away from it.

Blocks away, John rides in a large SUV and reads over documents covered in redactions. He bites the inside of his lip.

“It used to be low income housing?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.” The conspicuous man replies.

John flips the page, “And before that it was employee housing for a mining company.”

“Wild.” The conspicuous man grunts, looking out the window.

“The Shradder Mining Company,” John continues, “faced mega legal trouble for it’s exclusive use of child labor up. That is, up until it began hiring all of their parents to be supervisors, disciplinary managers, and employee housing chaperones?”

John reads on in silence, the driver, nor the guy in tactical gear in the passenger seat, nor the conspicuous guy, nor the guys in the back row are listening. He hits a paragraph that makes his his eyes go wide. “The children, fed up with the abuses, launched a coup that resulted in the death of everyone, except one child whose was unaccounted for in the aftermath.”

“Seems like we already know what caused it.” The man in the suit says to himself.

Our guy shoves the file towards him, “No! No, cause look at this.”

“John, I would rather not look.” The conspicuous man says, holding up a hand.

“I’m just saying! Look at this, colloquially, it was later discovered that the CEO and board members of the mining company had been deeply involved with the occult and had used the basement of this building in their rituals, which involved sacrificing pets, some of their employees and family members using the raw ore their employees found.”

“Great.”

“It gets better, apparently these rituals were so successful that these kinds of ritual chambers have been discovered at all of their subsidiary companies up to this day and their usage can be accurately tracked using their internal books, though there is no noticeable correlation with their public data.”

The conspicuous man grunts approval, trying not to get pulled in.

“Samples acquired outside of the building confirm that the concrete contains human remains. No samples from within the sight have been acquired thus far. All attempts to enter the premises have resulted in irreparable damage to task force members and drones.

Used task force members include, 4 adult human males. 4 adult human females. 3 dogs. 2 birds. 15 rats.

Drone attempted gathering is blah, blah blah ok. Got it.

Ok. Understand why I got called in.”

He hands the documents back as the truck slows down in front of the building. Everyone sits up straighter, their faces turning white. The driver grips the wheel but remains stoic. The passenger seat goon grips a gun on his hip tight.

“I’ll contact you when I get something.” John says.

“Do you want any support?” The conspicuous man says as he hands John his back pack, now with bundles of herbs, and pouches hanging off it.

John steps out of the truck and looks back, “Nah, I got this.” and closes the door.

The truck TAKES OFF as John looks over the building. It sure looks spooky, but not in any abnormal way. You’ve driven by hundreds, if not thousands of buildings that look just like it.

John cracks his neck, grabs an ankle to stretch his quad, then the other. He looks down, and the fluffy white dog is there again. He smiles, and they approach the front door. He puts his ear to it and can hear scraping. He draws a symbol on the door with his saliva, nothing. He draws another, and another, until finally one glistens.

“Hm,” he looks down at the fluffy white dog, “I forgot which one that is.” The fluffy white dog sneezes.

John sets his backpack down and sorts through it. He pulls out an oil lantern, a water bottle, and a dog treat. He tosses the dog treat on the ground, and the fluffy white dog sniffs it and looks up at him. “All you Lily.”

Lily tilts her head, then walks forward and sniffs the door.

John stretches a bit more. Shakes his head. “ok, ok ok ok ok ok. OK! ok ok ok ok.”

He tilts his head up, eyes closed, face towards the sky. He slips off his shoes, bare feet on the cold concrete. He bounces a bit, warming up his body. “OW! Oh, damn it.”

He stumbles a step, then looks down at his foot. A quarter sized rock is lodged into his foot. John growls, then plucks out the rock. It scatters across the ground leaving a drip trail of blood.

“AAHHHHH! AH! Ah, ok. OK! Alright.” he says, bouncing on his feet, treating the right one more gingerly now. He moves his arms and shoulders warming up his whole body, staring down the door now. His eyes would bore holes through the wood is he had that power.

Lily scratches the door, and looks at him. He groans loud, like a growl into the night.

“I KNOW! I know. I know know I know I know I know I know I know I know.”

He puts his hands on his knees, stares at the ground, and takes deep intentional breaths.

“I already know when I’m going to die.” He looks up at Lily, “I already know when I’m going to die right?”

Lily paws at the air toward him then motions to the door.

“Right! Right. So what could go wrong?”

He straights up, does one last wiggle down his whole body, cracking joints and muscles the whole way down.

His face turns stoic. He picks up his back pack, and gets it comfortable on his back. He stick his hands into the lantern and lights it with a flick of his thumb against his pointer finger. It glows red, and prominently, it’s flame moving slowly.

His hand approaches the handle, turns the nob easily. The door comes loose from its inner mechanism but just as he’s about to pull it open, he yoinks his hand back. He takes three small laps around the front of the door.

“GGGAAaaaahhhhh! GAH! OK! OK! Let’s GO!”

Then he rushes inside, Lily runs after him.

Calmly running, John finds the entrance leads to a central staircase that goes up 4 flights. Inside is a heavy, inky darkness, barely lit by the moon perfectly perched directly above a sun roof.

John scans the doors, the floor, the walls. He notices the shadows move like mold towards him as he gets in deeper. A shadow blob shifts towards his foot and he his steps over it, sharply turning to go up the stairs.

As he crests the second story, he notices heads forming from the shadows. They stick out of the walls and floor, watching him curiously. Moving in towards him.

He groans, planning his path to avoid getting close to any of the shadows but its impossible. His red light causes the shadows eyes to sparkle, rather than be merely darker circles on an already inky dark thing. He tries to see something in them, but all he finds is curiosity.

As he laps around the second story, checking all the doors, a shadow grabs his ankle. He duck and rolls, continuing his run. He looks down and his ankle is scratched, bleeding. He shakes it off as he goes up to the third floor.

Whole human shaped shadows wait for him, peaking out from the corners. He look up towards the fourth floor and dozens of head look down at him. His jaw clenches as he crests the third floor.

A light is on the in the room in the farthest corner, with a crowd of shadow shaped people bumbling around it. John’s eyes narrow. He reaches into a pouch and produces a paintbrush and ink well.

He runs to the opposite corner and starts writing a rune. A shadow grabs his shoulder and he seizes up, like when ice water is poured on your head. He whips around, blows into his lantern, causing the flame to surge. The shadow pulls back, more annoyed then anything. It’s “head” separates forming a sort of mouth.

John finishes, and circles the rune. He bites his thumb to produce blood and stamps it onto the symbol. It glows, and all the shadow people near the lit door turn to it and begin moving toward it. Shadows pass by John, ignoring him, on the way to the rune.

He walks backwards, making sure it stays lit as a receding ocean wave of semi solid shadow oozes past him.

A breath of relief escapes him, but as he turns, he notices a hulking figure in the door way. He clenches his face, then hears a large crack in the floor behind him. He looks back and the shadows have formed a wall of subtle faces, blocking out the moon light completely.

He growls lowly, thinking.

The door creaks open, and the hulking shape tries to push through but its too massive and too dumb to really get out. The wall closes in on him with all the faces tilting curiously, nubs start to form towards him.

His teeth start to chatter, while his eyes remain calm. He looks between the wall, the door, back and forth. He paws at his back pack trying to think of something. His back hits the building’s wall as he runs out of room to be. The wall oozes thick shadow as he stops patting his back pack.

He clenches his eyes shut as the faces get within inches of him.

Then, he hears the jangle of a dog collar and looks down. Lily walks through the shadows and into the door, through the hulking shadow figure. John rolls his eyes, shakes his head.

“Duh, they’re fucking…” He moves forward, pushing through the wall of shadows. Cuts and scratches softly appear on his face as he does. He speeds up, covering his face, then shoulder tackles his way into the room.

The door bursts open and he falls to the floor, as the light fades from the room. He looks back at the faces and shapes coming to the door, and shakes his head. “Nope! Nope nope nope.”

John slams the door shut, whispers some stuff into the door handle, then draws a circle in his blood around it. It chills.

He produces a large jar from under his back pack and pops the wood top. He tips it and a thing stream of sand pours out of it. He makes a line from one end of the door frame to the other, but as he does, a shadowy blob oozes into the room.

“Nope.”

He draws a line of sand around the blob. It tentatively stops and tries to ooze into it, above it, testing out the space. It can’t make up it’s mind of what to do and just stays there.

John nods, then turns back around.

The space is an infinite expanse of an open concept studio apartment. Sitting dead ahead of him, two shimmering orbs close to the ground, more visceral and solid than any of the shadows, stare at him. They twinkle in the light of lantern.

“Ah.” He reaches down, and Lily finds his hand. He scratches her ears and she nuzzles his leg.