• #1

The following story act was created through my lovely app One More Branch (link for the repo), which is a platform for interactive branching storytelling. In the case of this story, I didn’t explore alternative branches: just picked among the offered choices whichever sounded better. The result is quite good.

If you’re a veteran of reading whatever nonsense I post on here, you may recognize the trio involved in this story; they’re the same idiots from my short story from years ago named Interspecies Misdemeanours.

New changes in the app: I’ve implemented a complex feature that forces the LLM to actually structure a story in three acts and 2-4 beats per act, based on the character concept, worldbuilding, and tone/genre provided. The code passes the current act/beat, along with what’s necessary to know about upcoming ones, to the LLM so that it can produce the next page. That keeps it on track. However, this is an app for branching storytelling that necessarily would allow one to go off the deep end, so I’ve also implemented the ability for the LLM to determine if a choice has deviated too much from the pre-planned structure, which would trigger a re-plan of the story from the last concluded act/beat onwards. I haven’t seen that in action yet because the current test story was quite on point.

Perhaps this is not obvious, but there was an issue with my instructions to the LLM regarding when it should decide to conclude a story beat. The first act’s introductory beat was about the trio exploring the strange place and establishing what kind of trouble they were in. Well, the app still considered them to be in the same beat deep into the pages, where they were in serious fucking trouble. I fixed the issue; from then onwards, it concluded the beats appropriately (by page 18, it has entered the second act), but this issue has colored what has happened in about half of these pages.

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Page 1

The ruined brick building squats in the woods like a corpse nobody bothered to bury—three stories of broken windows and poison ivy, the kind of place adults tell you not to fuck around in, which is basically an engraved invitation. You are Sam, fifteen years old, and you’re standing at the tree line with Betty Krommer and Frank Haimer, watching Frank bounce on his heels like a kid who just discovered his parents’ porn stash.

“I’m telling you, it’s not just a basement,” Frank says for the third time, pushing his glasses up. His nose is already running. “It goes down, like, way down, and then it opens up into these rooms. Tiled rooms. With pools.”

“Pools,” Betty repeats flatly. She’s in her pink polka-dot dress, arms crossed, one eyebrow doing that thing that makes you feel like an idiot even when you’re right. “In a condemned factory.”

“I’m not making it up!” Frank’s voice cracks. He pulls out his camera, waves it like evidence. “I got pictures, but they came out all—the light’s weird down there, okay? You have to see it.”

You can feel the buzz already, that electric itch under your skin that says this is it, this is the thing that makes today matter. Frank’s been weird for three days—jumpy, secretive, smoking again even though he swore to his dad he quit. Whatever he found, it’s real enough to scare him, and that makes it real enough for you.

Betty’s watching you now, waiting to see which way you’ll jump. The sun’s getting low, painting everything orange. Frank’s already moving toward the building, his backpack bouncing.

“If this is another fossil thing,” Betty says, “I’m gonna kick both your asses.”

Page 2

“Hold up,” you say, catching Frank’s shirt before he can disappear into the building. “Pictures. Now. You’re not dragging us into some bullshit without proof.”

Frank stops, looks back at you like you just asked him to solve calculus. “I told you, they came out weird—”

“Then show us weird,” Betty cuts in. She’s moved closer, close enough you can smell her shampoo—something fruity that makes your brain short-circuit for half a second before you shove it down. “Come on, Haimer. If it’s real, the pictures’ll show something.”

Frank’s face does this thing, this trapped-animal flicker, but he digs into his backpack and pulls out a stack of Polaroids. His hands are shaking a little as he fans them out.

The first few are what you’d expect—darkness, the flash catching brick and rebar, Frank’s thumb over the lens on one. But then there’s a shot of stairs going down, and the light in it is wrong. Not dark, not bright, just… off. Like the flash hit something that reflected it back in a color that doesn’t have a name. The next one shows a doorway, and beyond it, tiles. Clean white tiles, the kind you’d see in a hospital or a pool, except they’re glowing faintly, and the perspective makes your eyes hurt if you stare too long.

“What the fuck,” Betty breathes. She’s leaning in, her shoulder touching yours, and you’re trying to focus on the pictures but your skin is doing that shivery thing where it’s aware of every point of contact.

The last picture is the worst. It’s a room—square, tiled floor to ceiling, with a pool of water in the center. Except the water isn’t reflecting anything. It’s black, perfectly black, and the edges of it seem to curve up slightly, like it’s defying gravity. Frank’s flash caught something else too: a doorway on the far side, and beyond it, another room. And another. The perspective stretches back like a hall of mirrors, except there are no mirrors.

“That’s not possible,” you say, but your voice sounds thin even to you.

“I know,” Frank says. He’s wiping his nose with his sleeve, his eyes huge behind his glasses. “I only went three rooms in. I got scared. But Sam—” He looks at you, and there’s something desperate in it, something that needs you to believe him. “It keeps going. I could hear echoes, like… like it’s massive down there.”

Betty’s breathing has gone a little raspy. She’s still staring at the pictures. “This is fake. This has to be fake.”

“It’s not fake!” Frank’s voice cracks again. “Why would I fake this? Why would I—”

“Because you’re Frank,” Betty snaps, but there’s no heat in it. She’s rattled. You can tell because she’s not making eye contact, and Betty always makes eye contact when she’s tearing into someone.

The sun’s lower now. Maybe twenty minutes of good light left. The building looms, all broken windows and shadows. Frank’s already moving toward it again, like he can’t help himself, like it’s pulling him.

“We don’t have to go all the way in,” he says. “Just… just to the first room. So you can see. So you know I’m not crazy.”

Page 3

“Alright,” you say, shoving the pictures back at Frank. “I’m in. But we’re not going in blind.”

You scan the ground, spot a broken chunk of brick near the foundation, and grab it. The edge is chalky, crumbles a little in your grip. “We mark the walls. Every turn, every room. That way if this place is as fucked up as it looks, we can follow the trail back.”

Frank’s face lights up like you just solved world hunger. “Yes. Yes, that’s—that’s actually smart, man.” He’s already moving toward the building, backpack bouncing. “I went three rooms in last time and I swear to God the echoes—”

“Wait.” Betty’s voice cuts through, sharp enough to stop both of you. She’s still staring at the Polaroid with the black pool, and when she looks up, her eyes are doing that thing where they’re too bright, like she’s forcing herself not to blink. “We tell someone. We leave a note or—or we tell my dad where we’re going, because if something happens—”

“Your dad’ll call the cops,” Frank says, and there’s this edge of panic in it. “My dad finds out I’m back here, I’m grounded until college. Minimum.”

“Then we leave a note somewhere,” Betty insists. “We’re not just disappearing into some—some fucking nightmare dimension without anyone knowing.”

The sun’s almost gone now. The factory’s a black cutout against the purple sky, and the trees are close enough that their shadows feel like they’re reaching. You can see the doorway Frank’s talking about, the one that leads down. It’s just darkness from here, but you keep thinking about that picture, that wrong light.

Frank’s already got his flashlight out. Betty’s got her arms crossed, waiting.

You’re holding a chunk of brick and the night’s coming fast.

Page 4

You don’t give Betty time to argue. Three strides and you’re past Frank, shouldering through the doorway into the factory’s gutted interior. The floor’s unstable—chunks of concrete and rebar poking through like broken teeth—but you keep moving, following the path Frank must’ve taken, and yeah, there it is: a hole in the floor near the back wall where the foundation’s collapsed inward, except it’s too regular, too deliberate, like something carved it open from below.

“Sam, wait—” Frank’s behind you, flashlight beam bouncing wild.

You drop through before you can think better of it. It’s only a six-foot drop, and you land in a crouch on tile. Actual tile. Clean white tile that shouldn’t exist under a ruined factory, glowing with that sick pale light Frank’s pictures showed. The air down here tastes wrong—sterile and metallic, like licking a battery.

Frank lands beside you with a grunt, immediately fumbling his camera up. “Holy shit, okay, okay—” The flash pops, blindingly bright in the enclosed space, and for a second the walls look curved when they’re definitely flat.

Betty drops through last, landing harder than she meant to, and you hear it immediately—that hitch in her breath, the whistle starting. She’s already fishing for her inhaler, but her eyes are huge, scanning the room.

It’s exactly like the Polaroid. Ten feet by ten feet, perfectly square, tiles unmarred and impossibly clean. Two doorways: one ahead, one to the right. No door frames, just rectangular absences in the walls. The light’s coming from everywhere and nowhere, like the tiles themselves are luminous.

“Three days I’ve been thinking about this,” Frank whispers, and his voice multiplies, echoes layering over each other from the doorways, from deeper in. “Three days and I thought maybe I imagined how wrong it felt, but—”

“Mark it,” Betty says, voice tight. She’s got the inhaler to her mouth, takes a hit. “Mark the fucking wall, Sam.”

You’ve still got the brick chunk. The tile’s so clean it feels like vandalism to touch it.

Page 5

You press the brick’s chalky edge against the nearest wall tile, dragging it hard enough to leave a mark. Except there’s no mark. No scratch. Not even dust. The brick crumbles against the surface like you’re trying to write on diamond, leaving a gray smear that fades as you watch—actually fades, the tile absorbing it or rejecting it or something, until the surface is pristine again.

“Jesus Christ,” you breathe, and your voice comes back at you from both doorways, layered and wrong. You try again, harder, grinding the brick corner into the tile until your knuckles scrape. The brick disintegrates into powder. The tile remains perfect.

Frank’s got his camera up, flash popping. “Did you see that? Did you fucking see—” He’s practically vibrating. “It’s like, like self-healing, or the material’s rejecting contamination, or—”

“Or we’re in some fucked-up alien bathroom,” Betty cuts in. She’s moved to the doorway on the right, peering through without crossing the threshold. “Because that’s not tile. Tile doesn’t do that.”

You look down at what’s left of your brick—barely half its original size, crumbled to dust in your palm. Your path-marking plan just became a lot more complicated.

The echoes are still going. Not from your voices anymore, but from deeper in. A sound like water dripping, except it’s coming from multiple directions at once, and when you focus on it, it might not be water at all. It might be footsteps. Or something dragging.

Frank’s already moving toward the forward doorway, camera raised like a talisman. “We should go straight first. That’s what I did before. Straight, then right, then right again, and that’s where the big room with the pool is—”

“The pool with the black water that doesn’t reflect,” Betty says flatly. She’s still at the right doorway, and her breathing’s evening out, but her hand’s white-knuckled around her inhaler. “The one in the picture that made me want to fucking puke.”

The forward doorway yawns open, perfectly rectangular, leading to another tiled corridor. The right doorway shows a glimpse of another room, but from this angle you can’t see how big it is or what’s in it. And behind you, the hole you dropped through is still there—you can see the factory’s broken ceiling, daylight filtering through gaps.

Still an exit. For now.

Page 6

You step toward Betty and the right doorway, leaving Frank frozen mid-gesture with his camera. “Fuck the pool,” you say. “Let’s see what’s behind door number two.”

“Sam—” Frank’s voice pitches up, but you’re already moving, and Betty shifts to make room as you join her at the threshold.

The room beyond is smaller. Maybe eight feet square instead of ten. Same white tiles, same sourceless glow, but the geometry’s wrong in a way that makes your eyes water. The far wall looks closer than it should be, but when you focus on it, it seems to recede, like you’re looking through the wrong end of a telescope. There’s no doorway on the opposite side. Just walls. A dead end.

Except there’s something in the corner.

A pile of fabric. Dark, crumpled, definitely not tile. Your heart kicks into overdrive because it looks like clothes, like someone took off their jacket and jeans and just left them there, except the pile’s too flat, too deflated, like—

“Is that a fucking shirt?” Betty whispers, and her hand finds your forearm, fingers digging in.

Frank crowds in behind you both, camera raised. The flash goes off and the room inverts for a second—black tiles, white fabric—then snaps back. “Holy shit,” Frank breathes. “Holy shit, someone was here. Someone else found this place.”

The clothes don’t move. They’re just lying there, bundled in the corner like laundry. A jacket. Jeans. Something that might be a sneaker, tipped on its side. No body. No bones. Just the clothes, arranged in a way that suggests a person was wearing them when they… what? Disappeared? Evaporated?

The echoes from deeper in the space suddenly sound a lot less like water dripping.

“We should check the pockets,” you hear yourself say, because your brain’s decided this is an adventure, not a horror show, and adventurers loot the environment. “Could be ID. Could tell us who—”

“Could be fucking cursed,” Betty hisses. Her breathing’s getting raspy again. “Could be, I don’t know, a trap, or contaminated, or—”

Frank’s already stepping past you both, camera dangling from his neck, reaching for the pile. “It’s evidence,” he says, like that settles it. “We need to document—”

That’s when you notice the second detail: the tiles under the clothes are darker. Not discolored, exactly, but shadowed, like the fabric’s casting a stain into the floor itself. And the stain’s spreading, creeping outward in a slow, organic way that makes your stomach flip.

Frank’s hand is six inches from the jacket.

Page 7

“Go ahead,” you tell Frank, stepping back to give him room. “I’ll watch the floor.”

Frank doesn’t need to be told twice. He’s already moving, camera swinging from its neck strap as he crouches beside the pile. His hand hesitates for just a second—you see his fingers twitch—then he grabs the jacket sleeve and lifts.

The fabric comes up stiff, like it’s been starched, and there’s a wet sound as it peels away from the tile. Not wet like water. Wet like something organic, something that’s been sitting too long. Frank makes a noise in his throat, but he doesn’t drop it. He’s shaking it out, checking the pockets with the methodical focus of someone who’s decided facts are safer than fear.

“Nothing,” he mutters. “No wallet, no phone, no—wait.” He digs deeper into the inner pocket and pulls out something small and white. A receipt. He squints at it, pushes his glasses up. “Gas station. Route 47. Date’s… shit, that’s from last year.”

You’re barely listening because the stain is moving.

It’s subtle at first—just a darkening at the edges, like the tile’s absorbing something it shouldn’t. But then it spreads, a slow creep of shadow that fans out from where the clothes were lying. Not black like the pool water. Darker than that. A color that doesn’t have a name, that makes your eyes try to slide away from it.

The stain reaches the wall and stops. Just stops, like it hit an invisible barrier. The tiles around it look… wrong. Puckered. Warped. Like skin around a burn.

“Frank,” Betty says, and her voice is thin, stretched. “Frank, put it back.”

“I’m not done—” Frank’s got the jeans now, shaking them out, and something falls from the pocket. A keychain. Car keys. Toyota logo. They hit the tile with a sharp clink that echoes wrong, bouncing off walls that shouldn’t exist.

The stain pulses.

It’s not spreading anymore, but it’s moving, rippling like water disturbed by something underneath. You can see the tile beneath it warping, buckling, and there’s a sound now—low, grinding, like stone on stone—and the temperature drops so fast you can see your breath.

“PUT IT BACK,” Betty shouts, and she’s backing up, hand fumbling for her inhaler.

Frank drops the jeans like they’re on fire. The fabric hits the stain and the rippling stops. Just stops. The grinding cuts off mid-note. The temperature normalizes so abruptly you almost stumble.

The three of you stand there, frozen, staring at the pile of clothes that’s now half-on, half-off the stain. Frank’s breathing hard, his glasses fogged. Betty’s got her inhaler to her lips, taking a hit. Your hand’s wrapped so tight around the brick chunk your knuckles are white.

“What the fuck was that?” Frank whispers.

The clothes don’t answer. Neither does the stain. But you can hear it now—that rhythmic sound from deeper in the space. Closer than before. Definitely closer. And it’s not footsteps.

It’s dragging. Something heavy, being dragged across tile.

Page 8

“Fuck that,” you snap, grabbing Frank’s shoulder before he can back away.” Get photos. All of it. The stain, the clothes, the keys—everything.”

Frank’s head whips toward you, eyes wide behind his glasses.” Are you insane? We need to—”

“We need evidence,” you cut him off, your voice harder than you mean it to be.” Nobody’s gonna believe this shit without pictures. You said it yourself—document everything.”

For a second, Frank just stares at you. Then something shifts in his face—that manic gleam he gets when his brain catches up to his curiosity. He nods once, jerky, and raises the camera.

The flash goes off.

The stain recoils.

It’s not a metaphor. The dark spreading across the tile actually pulls back, contracting like a living thing flinching from light. The warped tiles around it seem to flatten, smoothing out for just a moment before the darkness surges back, angrier, reaching farther than before.

“Holy shit,” Frank breathes, and he’s already winding the film, already lining up another shot.” Did you see that? It reacted to the—”

The second flash stops him mid-sentence.

This time, the stain doesn’t just recoil. It erupts.

Not physically—there’s no spray, no explosion—but the temperature drops so fast your breath mists in front of your face. The tiles beneath the clothes crack with a sound like breaking ice, spiderwebbing outward in jagged lines that glow faintly at the edges. And the dragging sound—the one you’ve been hearing from deeper in the space—stops.

Complete silence.

“Frank,” Betty says, and her voice is barely a whisper.” Frank, we need to go. Now.”

But Frank’s already taking another picture, the camera whirring as it spits out the Polaroid. He’s shaking, you can see it in the way the camera trembles, but he’s not stopping. He crouches lower, getting the angle on the cracked tiles, the keys, the stain that’s now pulsing in rhythm with something you can’t hear but can feel in your chest.

“One more,” he mutters.” Just one more and I got it all—”

Something moves in the forward doorway.

You don’t see it clearly—just a shift in the shadows, a shape that’s too tall and too wrong to be human but too deliberate to be anything else. It doesn’t step into the room. It just… stands there. Watching.

Frank’s finger freezes on the shutter button.

Betty’s inhaler hisses as she takes a desperate pull, her breathing ragged and wet.

The shape in the doorway doesn’t move. But you can feel its attention, heavy and cold, pressing against your skin like a physical weight.

Page 9

You throw yourself sideways, putting your body between the doorway and Frank’s hunched form. Your voice comes out louder than you intended, cracking on the edges.

“Back the fuck off!”

The shape doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. It just stands there in the doorway, impossibly tall, and the longer you stare at it the less sense it makes. The proportions are wrong—arms too long, head tilted at an angle that makes your stomach lurch. It’s not quite blocking the light from the next room, but it’s not quite letting it through either, like it’s made of something that doesn’t interact with illumination the way solid things should.

Behind you, Frank’s camera whirs again. The flash goes off.

The shape flinches.

Not back. Sideways. It jerks to the left, and for a split second you see it clearly—a person, maybe, or something wearing a person’s outline like a coat that doesn’t fit right. Then it’s in the doorway again, and you can’t remember if it moved or if your eyes just lied to you about where it was.

“Sam,” Betty hisses, and her hand closes around your wrist, nails digging in. “Sam, it’s not alone.”

You hear it then. Not from the doorway ahead. From behind.

From the entrance you came through.

Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. The sound of something heavy being dragged.

“Oh god,” Frank whispers, and you can hear the Polaroids fluttering in his shaking hands. “Oh god, oh god, there’s two of them.”

The shape in the forward doorway tilts its head the other direction. Watching. Waiting.

The dragging sound from behind gets louder.

You’re trapped in a dead-end room with a stain that cracks tiles and two things that shouldn’t exist closing in from both directions. The only other doorway is the one to your right—the one Betty was examining before Frank found the clothes. You don’t know where it leads. You don’t know if it leads anywhere.

But the dragging sound is getting closer, and the shape ahead hasn’t blinked, and Frank is hyperventilating so hard his glasses are fogging up.

Page 10

You don’t think. You just move.

Your hand shoots out and grabs Frank’s shirt collar, yanking him sideways. Betty’s already moving—she anticipated you, or maybe she just has better survival instincts—and the three of you stumble through the right doorway in a tangle of limbs and panic.

The room beyond is longer. Rectangular. The tiles here are the same sterile white, but the light is dimmer, like it’s coming from farther away or through something thick. There are three doorways: one directly ahead at the far end, one to the left about halfway down, and one to the right near where you’re standing.

Behind you, the dragging sound stops.

You spin around, chest heaving, and see the entrance you just came through. The dead-end room is visible beyond it—the stain, the cracked tiles, the abandoned clothes. But the shape that was in the forward doorway is gone. Just gone. And the dragging sound from the entrance has gone silent.

“Where—” Frank starts, then cuts himself off with a wet cough.

Betty’s breathing is ragged and wet, that familiar wheeze building in her chest. She fumbles for her inhaler with shaking hands, and you can see the pink fabric of her dress is dark with sweat at the collar.

“They’re not following,” you say, but your voice sounds wrong. Too loud. The acoustics in this room are different—your words don’t echo, they just sort of die in the air like the space is swallowing them.

Frank wipes his nose on his sleeve, his glasses still fogged. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would they—”

“I don’t give a shit why,” Betty interrupts, her voice tight and high between pulls on her inhaler. “I don’t give a shit about any of this. We need to get out. Now.”

You look at the three doorways. Ahead. Left. Right. No way to know which one leads back to the entrance, or if any of them do. The room you came from had two doorways—forward and right. You took the right. But now you’re in a room with three exits, and the geometry doesn’t add up.

“Frank,” you say, “where did you go when you were here before? Did you see this room?”

He shakes his head, still trying to catch his breath. “No. No, I went straight. Forward through the first room, forward through the second. This is—we’re off my route. I don’t know this room.”

A sound echoes from somewhere. Not the dragging. Something else. A wet, sliding noise, like something moving through water. It’s impossible to tell which direction it’s coming from—the acoustics make it seem like it’s everywhere and nowhere at once.

Betty’s nails dig into your forearm again. “Sam. We need to move. Right now.”

Page 11

You point at the left doorway. “That one. If we went right before, left might take us back.”

“That’s not how geometry works,” Frank mutters, but he’s already moving, his flashlight beam cutting ahead into the next room.

Betty doesn’t argue. She just follows, one hand pressed to her chest like she’s trying to manually slow her breathing.

The doorway opens into another square room—smaller than the first, maybe eight by eight. The tiles here have a faint yellowish tinge, like old porcelain, and there’s only one other exit: straight ahead. No choices. Just forward.

“Shit,” you breathe.

Frank’s already at the far doorway, peering through. “Another room. Same size. One door.”

You move up beside him and look. He’s right. It’s like a hallway made of identical cells, each one feeding into the next. The yellowish tint gets stronger the deeper you look, and the light is dimmer, more amber.

“This is wrong,” Betty says behind you. Her voice is flat, drained of its usual bite. “We should’ve hit the entrance by now. We weren’t that far in.”

Frank pushes his glasses up. “Maybe the rooms… rearrange? Or maybe we’re moving parallel to the entrance instead of toward it?”

“Or maybe we’re fucked,” Betty snaps.

You’re about to respond when you hear it: a sound from back the way you came. Not dragging this time. Not footsteps. It’s more like… breathing. Slow, wet, deliberant. Coming from the rectangular room you just left.

Frank hears it too. His flashlight beam jerks back toward the entrance, and for a second you see something in the doorway—a dark mass, low to the ground, too many angles to make sense of—and then it’s gone, sliding sideways out of the light.

“Go,” you say. “Go, go, go.”

The three of you stumble through the next doorway, into the next yellow-tinged cell, and the one after that. Three rooms deep now, maybe four, and the amber light is getting thick, almost soupy. The air tastes stale and metallic.

Frank stops suddenly, his hand shooting out to grab your arm. “Wait. Listen.”

You freeze. At first you don’t hear anything except Betty’s wheezing and your own pulse hammering in your ears. Then you catch it: the breathing sound is still behind you, but now there’s something else. Ahead. A rhythmic tapping, like fingernails on tile, coming from deeper in the chain of rooms.

“We’re boxed in,” Frank whispers.

Page 12

“Keep moving,” you say, and your voice comes out steadier than you feel. “Whatever’s making that sound, it’s gotta be smaller than those tall fuckers behind us.”

Frank makes a sound that’s half-laugh, half-sob. “That’s your plan? Fight something because it might be smaller?”

“You got a better one?”

He doesn’t answer. Just pushes forward into the next room, and the next, his flashlight beam bouncing off yellow tiles that are definitely darker now, almost mustard-colored. The tapping is getting louder, more distinct. Not rhythmic like footsteps. More erratic. Like someone drumming their fingers on a desk, except the fingers are made of bone.

Betty’s wheezing behind you, each breath a wet rasp that makes your chest hurt in sympathy. She’s trying to keep up, but her legs are shaking.

“Sam,” she gasps. “I can’t—”

“You can,” you say, not looking back. If you look back you’ll see how bad she’s getting, and if you see it you’ll stop, and if you stop you’re all dead. “Just a little further.”

The tapping stops.

Frank freezes mid-step, his flashlight fixed on the doorway ahead. You can see into the next room now, and it’s different. Bigger. The tiles are almost brown, and there’s something in the center—a shape, maybe three feet tall, hunched over like it’s examining the floor.

It has too many joints. That’s the first thing your brain registers. Arms that bend in three places, fingers that curl backward, a head that sits at an angle no neck should allow. It’s not moving. Just… waiting.

“Back,” Frank whispers. “Back, back, back—”

But then you hear the dragging sound from behind you again, closer now, and the wet breathing, and you realize you’re out of rooms to retreat into.

The thing in the brown room tilts its head. Slowly. Like it’s listening.

Frank’s hand is shaking so bad his flashlight beam is strobing. Betty’s pulled out her inhaler but she’s not using it, just clutching it like a talisman.

You’re still holding the brick chunk. It’s pathetic—half-destroyed, barely bigger than your fist—but it’s all you’ve got.

The thing in the brown room makes a sound. Not tapping. Not breathing. Something between a click and a purr, like a cat with a mouthful of gravel.

Page 13

“Frank,” you hiss. “Flash it. Now.”

“What?”

“Like you did before—hit it with the flash!”

Frank’s hands are shaking so bad he nearly drops the camera. The thing in the brown room hasn’t moved, but its head is tilting further, further, the angle getting worse, and you can hear a sound coming from it now—a clicking, purring thing that makes your teeth ache.

You step sideways, putting yourself between Betty and the doorway. She’s pressed against your back, her breathing a wet rattle that’s getting quieter, which is somehow worse than when it was loud.

“Frank—”

The flash goes off.

The brown room explodes into white light and the thing screeches—a sound like metal scraping concrete—and launches itself backward, arms folding in ways that hurt to look at, fingers splaying wide. It hits the far wall and scrambles sideways, up the wall, across the ceiling, moving like a spider made of coat hangers.

But it doesn’t run. It just repositions. Crouches on the ceiling, head rotating to track you, and that clicking-purring starts again, faster now, angrier.

“Oh fuck,” Frank breathes. “Oh fuck, it’s still—”

Behind you, the dragging sound stops. Just stops. The silence is worse than the noise. You risk a glance back and there’s nothing in the doorway you came through, but you can feel something there, just out of sight, waiting.

The small thing on the ceiling makes a new sound. A chirp. High-pitched and questioning.

And from somewhere deeper in the brown rooms, something chirps back.

Betty’s fingers dig into your shirt. “Sam,” she whispers, and her voice is so thin you can barely hear it. “I can’t breathe right.”

The thing on the ceiling clicks three times, then goes silent. Watching.

Frank’s camera whirs as it spits out another Polaroid. His hands have stopped shaking, which is somehow worse—like he’s gone past fear into some kind of documentary autopilot. “There’s a doorway,” he says, flat and mechanical. “Right side of the room. Behind it.”

You look. He’s right. There’s another exit on the far side of the brown room, past where the thing is crouched. You’d have to go under it. Or make it move.

Behind you, something scrapes against tile. Once. Deliberately.

Page 14

You plant your feet and raise your voice, trying to make it sound steady even though your heart is hammering so hard Betty can probably feel it through your back.

“We’re not—we’re people, okay? We’re just kids. We didn’t mean to come here, we’re just trying to leave.”

The thing on the ceiling goes very still. Its head stops rotating mid-turn, locked at that impossible angle, and the clicking-purring cuts off like someone flipped a switch.

For one insane second you think it worked. That maybe there’s something in there that understands, that remembers what people are, that might let you pass.

Then it chirps again. Three sharp notes.

And the entire brown room answers.

They come out of the walls. Out of doorways you didn’t see, out of shadows that shouldn’t exist in this flat tile lighting. Four, five, six of them, unfolding from corners and ceiling edges, all clicking and purring and chirping in a rhythm that sounds horribly like laughter.

“Oh Jesus,” Frank says, and the camera flashes again on pure reflex.

The nearest one screeches and flinches, but the others surge forward, filling the doorway, their too-many-jointed arms reaching, fingers curling backward in ways that make your stomach flip.

Behind you, something massive scrapes across tile. The dragging sound, close now. So close you can smell it—something chemical and wrong, like burnt plastic and meat.

Betty makes a sound that’s barely a wheeze. Her inhaler rattles—she’s trying to use it but her hands are shaking too bad. The small click of the trigger, once, twice, and you can hear her trying to breathe in but nothing’s working right.

“Betty—” You spin, grabbing her shoulders, and her face is pale, lips starting to go blue at the edges. Her eyes are huge and terrified and she’s trying to say something but no air is moving.

The things in the brown room are clicking faster, coordinating, and Frank is backing up into you both, the camera clutched to his chest like a shield that won’t do shit.

“The doorway,” Frank says, and his voice cracks. “Right side, we have to—”

The massive shape appears in the entrance behind you. You catch it in your peripheral vision—tall, wrong, the same kind of thing that watched you in the dead-end room but closer now, so much closer, and it’s not stopping.

Betty’s knees buckle. You catch her weight, her inhaler clattering to the tile, and the small things chirp in unison like they’ve won something.

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You drop to your knees and grab the inhaler from where it’s rolled against Betty’s leg. Her hands are clawing at her throat, nails scraping her own skin, and when you shove the inhaler toward her mouth she tries to grab it but her fingers won’t close right.

“Frank, fucking flash them!” you scream, and wrap one arm around Betty’s shoulders to hold her steady while you jam the inhaler between her blue lips. “Breathe in, Betty, come on—”

The camera goes off behind you. The brown room fills with white light and the things screech, that horrible metallic sound that makes your teeth ache, but they don’t retreat. You can hear them repositioning, the skitter of too-many joints on tile, the clicking-purring rising to a fever pitch.

You press the trigger. Once. Betty’s chest hitches but nothing goes in—her throat is locked up too tight. You can feel her heartbeat against your arm, way too fast, fluttering like a trapped bird.

“Again!” Frank yells, and the flash goes off again. The dragging sound behind you stops. Just stops. Which is somehow worse than hearing it move.

You tilt Betty’s head back the way you saw in some health class video, trying to open her airway, and press the trigger again. This time you feel her chest expand slightly, a tiny desperate sip of air and medicine, and she makes a sound like a broken vacuum cleaner trying to start.

“It’s working, come on Betty, one more—”

Something touches your shoulder.

Not a hand. The texture is wrong—smooth and cold and slightly wet, like a salamander’s skin, and when you jerk away and look up there’s one of the small things right there, its head tilted at that sickening angle, and its mouth is opening.

Not opening. Unfolding. Like a flower made of teeth.

Frank screams and the camera flashes so close the light burns purple ghosts into your vision. The thing flinches backward but two more are coming through the doorway you need to exit through, and the massive shape is finally moving in the corridor behind you—you can hear it now, a wet sliding sound accompanied by breathing that sounds like hydraulics failing.

Betty gasps. Actually gasps. Air moving in, ragged and thin but moving, and her hands close around your wrist with surprising strength.

“Can’t—” she wheezes. “Can’t stay—”

The exit doorway has two of them in it now, blocking the way. The things from the brown room are advancing from the other direction. Frank’s flashlight is shaking so badly the beam looks like a strobe light, and you can see the massive shape now at the edge of the light—something that takes up the entire corridor width, something that glistens.

Betty takes another hitching breath and tries to stand, using you as leverage. Her legs are shaking but she’s up, and the inhaler is still clutched in her fist.

Frank backs into both of you, the camera raised like a weapon. “Sam, what do we do, what the fuck do we do—”

Page 16

You lunge sideways and rip Frank’s flashlight out of his hand—he yelps but doesn’t fight you—and swing the beam straight into the faces of the two things blocking the exit.

They screech and recoil, arms folding over where their eyes should be, and for one beautiful second the doorway is clear.

“GO!” you scream, hauling Betty up by her armpits. She’s gasping now, each breath a wet ragged sound, but she’s breathing and that’s all that matters. Frank grabs her other arm and you’re moving, half-dragging her between you, her feet barely touching the tile.

The things recover fast. You hear them scrambling back into position, the skitter-click of joints bending wrong, but you’re already at the doorway and Betty’s through and Frank’s through and you’re diving after them—

Something grabs your ankle.

Not a hand. Too many fingers. They wrap around your leg like a fist made of cold wet worms and you go down hard, chin cracking against tile, flashlight skittering away across the floor. The thing is pulling you backward, back toward the brown room where that massive shape is still dragging itself closer, and you can smell it now, that burnt-plastic-and-meat reek that makes your stomach heave.

“SAM!” Frank’s voice cracks high and terrified.

You twist and see it—the small thing has your leg, its flower-mouth unfolding wider, and there are others coming through the doorway behind it, three or four of them, moving in that horrible spider-crawl.

Betty is on her hands and knees in this new room, inhaler clutched in one shaking fist, trying to breathe. Frank is frozen in the doorway, camera raised but not firing, his face white as paper.

The thing pulls harder. Your fingers scrape across tile, finding no purchase, and you’re sliding backward inch by inch. In the brown room behind, the massive entity’s breathing fills the space like a broken furnace, getting louder, getting closer.

Your hand closes around something. The brick chunk. Still in your pocket, jabbing into your hip.

You could smash it into the thing’s face—if it even has a face. You could scream for Frank to flash them all at once, hope it stuns them long enough to break free. Or you could do something really fucking stupid and kick backward with your free leg, try to connect with something vital, bet everything on one shot.

Page 17

“FRANK! FLASH THEM! FLASH ALL OF THEM!”

Your voice rips out raw and desperate, and thank Christ, Frank actually moves. His thumb jams down on the button and the camera erupts with light—once, twice, three times in rapid succession, the whine of the flash recharging between bursts filling the room like a dying alarm.

The things screech. All of them at once, a chorus of metallic shrieking that makes your teeth ache, and the grip on your ankle loosens just enough—you yank your leg free and scramble forward on hands and knees, tile cold and smooth under your palms, the brick chunk still clutched in one white-knuckled fist.

Behind you the entities are repositioning, you can hear the skitter-click of their joints, but they’re slower now, disoriented, and you’re through the doorway and Frank is grabbing your shirt and hauling you sideways.

This room is different. Bigger. The tiles here are a pale sickly green, like hospital walls left to mold, and there are four doorways—no, five—spaced unevenly around the walls. The air tastes worse here, metallic and sharp, like licking a battery.

Betty is still on her knees, inhaler pressed to her mouth, her whole body shaking with the effort of breathing. Her pigtails have come half-undone and her dress is soaked through with sweat.

“We gotta move,” Frank gasps, and he’s right, because the clicking sounds are getting organized again, coordinated, and you can hear that wet hydraulic breathing from the massive thing getting closer to the brown room you just escaped.

But Betty can’t run. Not like this. And you don’t know which doorway leads out versus deeper, and Frank’s flashlight is still back there on the floor where you dropped it, and you only have the brick and Frank’s camera has maybe two flashes left before the battery dies.

One of the doorways—the one to your far right—has a draft coming through it. You can feel it on your face, cool and carrying a smell that’s almost like outside air, like dirt and leaves and rain.

Another doorway, straight ahead, shows a room beyond that’s brighter, the tiles there almost white again, like the first room you landed in.

The doorway to your left shows only darkness. No glow at all. Just black.