Deep Shadows and Creaking Floors

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"I can never be fixed!" She sobbed as she gripped her leg more tightly, porcelain clinking against porcelain. "Murderer!" She screamed as the tears refused to stop.

With the word, hot pain seared through Adam and the world suddenly grew heavy and dark. He could feel the electricity in his limbs that he'd never noticed before fading as slowly, they disappeared from his awareness. Everything grew cold, but pleasant, and he could feel his mind slip slowly from the being that was 'Adam' into quiet nothingness.

And then his eyes opened. Above, a dusty curtain, untouched by ages hung, and he rested on a bed, as covered in dust as it was. The slightest movement set it stirring, and in the darkness, he could hear footsteps. "Man, what kind of dump is this?" The voice came from somewhere to his left, and if he rose, he found himself in a familiar room he couldn't remember, strewn with toys. The attic above was caved in, and a young man walked toward the door. He had a pompadour and a leather jacket, and he reached toward the door, either not hearing or not caring about the heavy breathing on the other side.
 
"It's not that bad. We'll just have to..." Adam didn't get further than that before an unpleasant feeling jolted through him and everything turned black. Moment after moment, a pleasant darkness was all there was. There was nothing to think about, nothing to do, nothing that caused him anxiousness. If only he could have stayed like that forever, but alas, all good things had to come to an end.

Soon he woke up in a room that felt familiar, but he was certain he had never been there before. A man walked towards a door. It wasn't anyone Adam knew based on the voice. At first he was about to let the man leave, without saying a word, but as he became aware of the heavy breathing on the other side of the door, Adam was suddenly filled with horror. Something felt familiar with this setting. Why?

"Excuse me. Who are you? Where is this?" He asked the man, mainly in an attempt to stop him from opening the door until he had collected his thoughts properly. What was he so scared of? Why did this toy filled room seem so familiar even though it was dusty enough to not have been visited since before Adam's birth?
 
The man paused and looked toward Adam. "Everest." He grinned. "Weird, huh? Ain't got a clue where or how, but I'm here now." He paused and looked toward the door. "I figure it's just my buddies keepin' me here. You look like you been here a bit. Your buds leave ya too?" He stuffed his hands into his jean pockets save his thumbs and walked toward Adam, then held out a hand. "Man, you're coated!" He pushed aside the dusty curtain and coughed as dust fell in great clods. "Nasty!"

With the curtain thrown aside, Adam could see the room better. An old cracked mirror hung on the wall, large and framed in gold an gems, but dusty and smudged with darkness about the edges. A doll all in white sat whole upon a divan near the large windows to Adam's right, and a trunk from the attic looked ready to topple from its precarious perch at any moment.
 
Good, for now he seemed to have forgotten about the door. Adam wasn't sure what frightened him so much, but it didn't feel like they should mess with it. "I... I can't remember. Though I guess it wouldn't be beneath them. Friends do such funny pranks some times." He obviously didn't mean that last sentence. Tony was quite good at walking over the line time and time again, and even so, Adam always forgave him in the end. He should really stop doing that. "I'm Adam by the way." He fast introduced himself, just to get it out of the way.

"Though it would be quite the coincidence if both our friends just happened to leave us in the same place on the same day, don't you think?" Adam asked the stranger as he rose from the bed. How big was the chance that that would happen? His eyes trailed off towards a porcelain doll. He had never seen that doll before as far as he could recall, but somehow, it felt familiar. More so than the room itself. Odd.
 
Everest laughed. "Yeah, wouldn't it just? Anyway, let's get out of here, Adam." He turned toward the door and reach for its handle, once more unaware of the heavy breathing on the other side. His hand grasped the door knob and turned, then pulled, but it remained stuck. "Mind giving me a hand, man? It's stuck!"

The heavy breathing stopped abruptly, leaving silence to hang in the air.

The doll didn't move, still and silent and eyes ever-shifting in the slightest change in angle, even from mere breathing.
 
Adam gulped as the man went back to the door. It didn't feel safe. "Maybe we should try some other way out." Adam proposed. "I mean, doesn't it feel a bit like... A trap?" Gosh, did he sound paranoid or what?

"I'm just saying that just putting us in here seems like a very lame joke. I doubt this is all there is to it. Maybe we should try..." His eyes was searching the room. Was there a second exit? No, but there was another way. "The attic. It probably has some stairs down somewhere. They would never suspect that we took that way." Somehow, all of this felt familiar. Not Everest, but this place, the attic, the door, the breathing. Everything felt like he had experienced it before.
 
The man looked back toward Adam. "Dude, no need to be such a rabbit." He laughed. "It's just a door, and if it's just our friends pulling this, the worst they'll do is a pie to the face, right?" He tugged again at the door and threw his weight into it, but it remained steadfast. "Help me out with the door, ok? I don't wanna crawl through that attic. Looks gross!" He laughed as he yanked again on the handle.

"Besides, the trunks will probably fall up there or the floor will give out. Ain't safe-looking!"

The breathing on the other side of the door picked up again, slow and heavy, and it did not pace. The temperature in the room began to gradually drop.
 
Adam was so nervous he started to sweat. Couldn't this man he was locked up with hear that breathing sound? Didn't it freak him out? Apparently not.

"And what if it's not them. What if it's someone else. Someone we don't know?" He asked, clearly showing his paranoia. "What if it's not a joke?" How could this man be so calm? He had no idea if their friends had tricked them or not, he hadn't seen their friends put them in that room. At least not as far as he had told Adam.

"I mean, people are kidnapped all the time for random reasons. Maybe this is something like that, and someone is playing some sick twisted game with us." He proposed. It sounded more like a movie than real life though.
 
Everest just laughed. "Man, you're paranoid!" He grinned, then looked around before he approached the fireplace and grabbed a rusty iron poker, then showed it to him. "You open the door, and I'll whack whoever's on the other side. I'm not dragging my new jacket through the dust when I can just smash someone's head to get out." He hefted the poker, then turned a grin towards Adam. "Come on, let's go." He walked to the door, then pointed to the knob.

The silence grew as the breathing sounds faded, and the air seemed to grow heavy as Everest waited.
 
This seemed to be the worst idea, but it was better than getting killed. If it was their friends, he would stop. If it wasn't but they didn't try to hurt them, he would probably also stop. If it was someone whom decided to attack as the door opened, Everest would probably attack back. He had something to defend himself with. Better than nothing.

"Fine, it's your funeral." Adam told him jokingly. He still sounded slightly nervous, but he was able to sound a bit more relaxed.

Adam walked up to the door and took a deep breath as his hands wrapped themselves around the door handle. "Ready?" He asked and waited for the good to go before he tried to forcibly opening the door.
 
The door flew open with ease, and Everest drew back the poker, only to blink. He shoved his head out. "Nothing, man. Nothing!" He laughed and walked out of the room. "Come on, man. Let's get out of here."

Outside of the room, there was a hallway with three other doors. Two had fallen to time, and one hung by a single rusted hinge. To the right, the hall ended in a dead end with a mirror hung by a visible wire, askew on its nail and framed with tarnished silver and gold, with stones inset and dust clouding its face. To the left, the hall opened to show a railing with a chandelier beyond. The railing, half broke and covered in dust stood as a weak barrier between the walkway and something below.
 
Adam breathed out in relief as Everest laughed. Nothing was there. Maybe he was a bit too paranoid after all. He just had to calm down and realize that things weren't as bad as they seemed. He was just overreacting. He laughed a little, but still there were a bit of nervousness in his voice.

Walking out of the room, not a single living soul could be seen. "Jeez, this house can't have had living people in it for decades... Or maybe a couple of centuries." Adam stated as he looked around at the hallway. It didn't look much better than the room had done. "Kind of weird, isn't it? That I could get the door up so easily while you struggled so much." Adam said. It wasn't anything he thought deeply about, just an observation. It wasn't like he was stronger than the average person. Quite odd indeed.

He walked up to the door that hung on one single hinge and peeked into the room.
 
"I must have gotten it loose for ya." Everest snickered, then started walking towards the railing. "I bet the exit's this way!"

The room into which Adam looked seemed similar to the play room, save it was dominated by an even larger bed. The dust laid thicker, and as he leaned forward to look, he could feel the wood under his feet bend with a drawn-out creak. The large windows stood open and swinging in the night breeze, and he could see a tree line and some stars. In the starlight, he could make out no color—only vague shape.

The Orion constellation hung in the sky in view, though some stars seemed missing, so perhaps it was simply a similar cluster.
 
"Doesn't seem to be anything in here." He murmured before sneezing. All this dust was going to kill his lungs. The room was too dark for him to make much of it out. Only the bed was visible enough for him to actually know what it was. The only thing clear in there was the stars outside of the window. Adam had never been much of a stargazer. He had never had time for such things. He ignored the sound of the boards and left the room to return to Everest.

"You sure this way is safe? It feels like this house will collapse at any moment if we take as much as one misstep." Adam said while eyeing the broken railing. Nothing in this house felt safe. Heck, the ceiling had collapsed in the other room. What said the floor wouldn't collapse underneath their feet in the next few seconds?
 
Everest shrugged. "I dunno about safe, but it's the way out." He stood at the end of the hall and pointed down. "I see the door!" He looked back and grinned at Adam in the darkness, his eyes nothing but empty holes now as his grin widened. "All we have to do is... open the door. Freedom comes with open doors." He tilted his head slowly, until his ear rested against his shoulder.

The air around Adam grew cold, like a woman of ice wrapping her arms about Adam. A breath came beside his ear.

"Poor thing." A woman's voice whispered each syllable on its own, a pause between.
 
"Uhm, dude... Are you okay?" Adam asked. Everest seemed... Weird... Was it just the light playing a trick on him? His heart was beating so fast it would probably speed away from the body soon. "Did you hear that?" That had been a woman! It had not been in his imagination, there was definitely a woman there, talking to them. It had sounded as if it was just beside him. He must have mistaken though, it must have been further away because no one was there.

"I... I don't know about this. I think we should... Maybe try something else." Adam said, completely freaked out by this point. It felt as if something really bad would happen if he tried to reach the door, or even walk closer to Everest. Suddenly he noticed that he was standing further away from the railing than before. He had been backing away without even realizing it.
 
"Yeah, man. I'm all good. Come on, we're nearly out!" He turned and walked to the right, then disappeared around the corner of the hallway. His footsteps paused after a moment. "Are you coming, man? I don't mind leaving you behind. I got shit to do, places to be!"

The cold around Adam didn't leave, but deepened. A sense of anticipation filled the air around him, and some invisible thing held its breath. Silent footsteps bent the floorboards behind Adam.
 
Adam wasn't sure if he should move forward or backwards at this point, but he knew there was nothing back there. All he could do was to move towards the door. "Yeah... I'm coming." He finally said, more frightened for the footsteps he was sure he heard behind him than the man in front of him. "How can you not be creeped out by this place?" He asked Everest just as he turned the corner. Even the most dedicated horror fan would hate this place.
 
Everest, he discovered, was gone, but his laughter sounded like it came from just around a corner.

Out of the hallway, he could see the floor he was on had an art gallery along the wall opposite the stairs, with only one painting that hadn't faded or rotted to horrific surreality. On the floor below, he could see discarded old suitcases and a shoe by the doorway, all covered in dust. The walls at the entrance to the foyer was covered in deep, long gashes like claw marks.

"You go on ahead! I found something cool over here!" The voice came from somewhere out of sight.
 
Rotten paintings and clawmarks on the walls. It sent shivers down his spine. "Come on man, it's not safe here. We gotta get out." Adam tried to convince Everest. Walking around there alone was too frightening of a thought and he had no idea what was on the other side of that door, or any door for that matter.

"Where are you?" He asked, needing a voice to follow to find the other man. The other time Everest had spoken, Adam hadn't thought about listening after where it could have come from.
 
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