In a situation such as this, one would expect a normal, sane person to run and panic. But Alex was not known for being particularly sane. He walked through the hall nonchalantly, taking occasional bites from his almost finished bar. Dull red and amber light tiredly halted the advance of darkness, the eerie glow gave one the feeling of being hunted.
"I feel like I'm in Outlast," he murmured, he absentmindedly brought the bar to his mouth before realising that all that was left was a wrapper. "Huh... Finished already? She wanted my soul for a crappy bar that didn't even taste good or last more than five minutes?".
He shook his head sadly, it would seem that even demon children couldn't understand the importance of a good and equal deal.
His phone buzzed again, the caller ID was unknown, still he decided that it wouldn't hurt to answer it. "Heyo, Alex here, may I ask who is calling?" He inquired.
A distorted voice answered. "I am Procter, you must listen, you are in terrible danger-".
Alex cut the voice off in an instant. "You're Procter? The guy who almost interrupted my chocolate bar?".
There was a sigh on the other end. "Your bar Isn't important right now. Did you see her yet?".
"Who? Can you stop being so cryptic? You're not Batman... Are you Batman?".
For a second Alex was sure he heard Procter pray silently, there was wince. "No... I'm not Batman, just focus, please. This is important, listen please, I'm begging you.".
Now was Alex's turn to sigh. "Fine. I'm bored though, where did everyone go? And why was that girl so weird?"
Procter groaned. "I can't do this any more, they were right, you are a pain. Just do me a favour and look for the spider, and listen for five." The call cut abruptly, Alex glared at his phone. "Talk about rude." He muttered.
Slipping the gadget into his pocket and looking around, he quickly realised that he was lost. "And this is why you don't walk in the dark." He quietly murmured to himself.
He headed towards the nearest map in an effort to get his bearings.
Pinned haphazardly to a corkboard that was hung across a wall, he found a poster resembling very vaguely a map. The directions on it were confusing, to say the least.
The only path on the piece of paper was a narrow thin line with 'You Are Here' crudely inscribed at the start. Tracing his eyes to the other side of the page met him with an equally ridiculous statement. A simple red spot underlined with the word 'Destination' was all that lay at the end.
His eye twitched, this was starting to get stupid. Ignoring the map, he kept on walking forward and immediately hit a dead end. In front of him, where previously there wasn't, lay a door with a sign inlaid into the glass that read in bold letters - 'STEP INSIDE'.
"Nope... I see where this going..." He muttered.
Turning around to backtrack his steps, he was only slightly surprised to bump into a blank wall. "I knew this would happen." He said shaking his head slightly.
He took a deep, self-reassuring breath and spun on his heel, turning around yet again. The text had changed, now it read 'Good boy, you're learning'.
Scowling, he pushed the door open. Behind it was a small dark room with a long metal table in the centre.
"Hello!" He called out. There was no response, and so he called out again, louder. "Hello!" Still no answer.
Something rustled in the dark, the little light in the room started to violently fade. Shafts of light shakily disappeared, then, as if by dramatic cue, the light died. Alex shivered and stayed still, something was in the room with him and it was breathing sharply, almost like it was looking for something.
He held his breath, there was a snort of frustration and then a hard thump followed by two harder thumps. The thing grunted in what sounded like anger before briefly going silent, a few moments later a warm exhale of moist, stale air hit Alex's face.
He inwardly shuddered, the thing gave one last snort before slinking back off to where ever it came from.
Almost immediately the dim light returned, Alex remained still for a few seconds before relaxing, his shoulders slumped in exhaustion. He walked towards the table and leaned on it, his peripheral vision caught sight of something nailed to the table with a big, rusty metal stake. "What now?" He grumbled.
The stake seemed to be deeply embedded into the table, bits of metal, sharp and rusty jutted out at all edges, the table itself seemed to have buckled slightly. Suffice to say it must have taken a ridiculous amount of strength to hammer it in, Alex involuntarily shuddered again.
He looked closer, the stake held a note to the table, ripping the note off as he inspected it, reading aloud. "First to rise, last to fall? How nice." His eye twitched, none of this was making any sense whatsoever and it was starting to irritate him.
"I'm probably in some kind of shock, I'm way too cool with whatever is going on right now." He spoke absentmindedly to the empty room.
Suddenly, the room fell into darkness and the floor heaved then gave way. Alex screamed as he fell to his apparent doom.
...Or not, a feeling of intense and abrupt vertigo hit and then vanished as suddenly as it had arrived, many would have found it slightly annoying.
Alex was thinking the same thing as he peeled himself off his hospital room floor. He clutched his throbbing head, muttering curses under his breath. He took a deep breath to steady himself and immediately grimaced at the taste of morning breath. "Better freshen up or I might actually upchuck.".
He got up and headed to the small bathroom, however the moment he got within touching distance, the door slammed open. The force threw him halfway across the room, from the snap he assumed he broke something.
Erica stepped out of the bathroom grinning. "Alex! Guess what.".
He clutched his side in pain and glared at her. "What?".
Her smile grew even wider. "We're going to visit Grammy!".