HERO

35 / Arrival

The darkness is a strange place. It can take your mind and lead it to places it would, otherwise, never go. The darkness is a liar. It conjures things to whisper in your ear. Monsters. Killers. Creatures of fang and fear. That's not to say its conjurings are not real. You just can't see them.

But, you know they're there.

You can hear them.

As Thomas could.

A first, he didn't notice the sounds. They were buried under the noise of his clambouring, trampled by his panting and occasional cursing. As the volume grew, he put it down to the voices of those outside of the warehouse. When he realised the sounds were coming from within it, he moved faster, finding an extra spurt of energy where he'd thought there was none.

Then, the voices weren't just in the same room as him, they were next to him.

He looked around, but the darkness was complete. He was running headlong into the unknown, vaulting obstacles as he came upon them. The voices could belong to anyone. They were whispers, loud enough to be spoken words, but still spoken with a hushed urgency. He couldn't make out the words, just his own name dropping occasionally into the swamp of hidden meanings. It wasn't exactly gibberish, but it was garbled. Thomas didn't want to know what was being said. He felt, if he did, then whatever they threatened would come to pass.

The whispers chased him across the room. He was only just outrunning them, fully aware that he'd run into a wall at some point. Then the voices would have him.

He was upon the wall almost as soon as the thought was mentally voiced. If he hadn't slowed briefly to surmount a particularly bulky box of unknown contents, he could easily have hurt himself. As it was, he hit it with enough force to wind him, but not to break anything.

He fell back, gasping. His back was to the box he'd just climbed over. The floor he was sitting on was cold. Concrete, he thought. He reached out slowly to feel for the wall and found it to be as chill as the floor. He was hot from his exertions and was thankful for the cooling effect of the surfaces. The whispers fell back slightly, taunting him from a distance, not close but near. He did his best to ignore them. If they'd wanted him, they'd have him, particularly now he was no longer running. They kept away, though they didn't relax their unrecognisable mocking.

Thomas's searching fingers found an edge. He followed it around. It was a doorway. Small and square and reminiscent of Coraline or Alice in Wonderland. They could see theirs. He could only tell his was there by touch. At first, her couldn't find a handle. His hands ran over it multiple times, finding nothing. Was it even a door? Was it simply an inset, there from some previous modification to the warehouse? A disused hatch or part of mostly one decoration?

The whispers were increasing in volume again, banging on his eardrums to be allowed to enter his brain and force his mind to succumb. When he thought they'd finally break through and he'd be lost to them, his fingers found a small indent. It wasn't close to being a handle, but it was a change. He pressed it. Nothing happened, so he pressed it again, harder. There was a soft click and the door swung silently inwards, revealing a narrow tunnel.

Hoping he wasn't going to bump into an Other Mother, Thomas crouched and entered, leaving the suddenly fading voices to talk amongst themselves. He jumped when the door closed behind him, its movement silent but the click of its lock engaging louder in the confines of the tunnel. He expected it to be dark but, from nowhere he could see, like surrounded him. It didn't look like a glow. It was more like daylight had been trapped in there with him, though he'd been in darkness when he climbed in. He didn't look for the source. He was just glad it was in there with him.