World of Darkness: FLOOR 13

[Grumpy]

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PART ONE – DARK DREAMS[/size]
[size=+1]"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
- H.P. Lovecraft​

TARAS

Your dream is a dark one.

It follows no coherent narrative, instead being made up of a series of images and memories played back to you; sometimes rapidly, so fast that they barely register before your subconscious moves on, sometimes painstakingly slow, drawing out every aspect of the recollection before finally shifting to the next.

The smell of your mother's rooms in her third husband's mansion.

The feel of your first Tarot cards, a gift from your mother during your time in the 'loonie bin'.

Standing in the office of Detective Seinberg as he hands you the folder entitled 'JENNY HENDRICK: CC12.06.05', a dismissive smile on his face as he says to you, "All right, boy scout. You want a case? Try this one on for size."

Memories, experiences... some half-remembered, some as vivid as the day you experienced them.

Then something changes.

You are in a corridor, not unlike the hallway your flat is connected to and yet... utterly different at the same time. The walls seem to move into different shapes even as they remain still and the hallway stretches along far longer than it normally should. You find yourself moving along it and can make out a lone figure facing away from you standing at its end. As you draw closer, the feature's of the lone figure start to become clearer. Pale skin, around your height, with pale-blonde hair...

Recognition hits you, followed immediately by a sensation of panic as you find yourself being drawn ever closer...

...the figure turns to you.

"Witches," says Taras Novikov with a horribly familiar smile, "Must be."

With a cry you snap back awake, your body covered in cold sweat.

MICHELL

Your find yourself drifting from the edge of sleep into a plane of infinite creation.

Your mind is your palette, the world your easel; here you may create the stuff of literal dreams at your whim, your only limitation being your imagination. At your command the empty canvas that is your dream begins to take features; mountains of the deepest crimson rise in the distance, stones form hew themselves into impossible shapes at your fancy.

You are as a God here, and with your imagination you can create masterpieces.

Lost in this trance of raw creation, it takes you a while to notice the subtle, insidious changes.

A colour of deepest black begins to trickle into your created world, so infinitesimal at first that you barely notice it; a colour you previously imagined becomes a shade darker, a dark stream you never willed to exist comes into your dream anyway. Small changes... yet slowly, that trickle becomes a steam, and that stream begins to flow...

...when you finally realise what is happening, it is too late. The stream has become a river and finally an ocean. Your world is being drowned in the deepest darkness, swallowing all colour, all creation, until there is nothing but thick, visceral black. You cannot escape it, cannot hold it back; it flows like a tsunami towards you, destroying all.

Your last sight before you are engulfed by the darkness is a familiar sign appearing in the black-stained sky you once created that has now rebelled against you; a sign you know well...

...for in your last painting it was your signature, your mark.

The blackness swallows you whole and you begin to drown in it, cut off from all light, all life. You cannot breathe nor can you move, sinking ever deeper into the dark as something inhuman laughs at you...

...gasping for breath you somehow manage to drag yourself back to wakefulness, lying in a tangled mess of bedsheets and pillows.

JEREK

You stand at the doors of an impossibly huge neo-Gothic Cathedral.

Yet its every detail you know like the back of your hand, for it was crafted by your very hands.

When last you saw it the cathedral was barely a fraction of its current size; a model you crafted for your current employers. Yet in your dreams it has expanded to its full majesty, the model a reality in the realm of your subconscious. Along it's vast main chamber you walk, past the pews of polished gun-metal and the monuments to future Saints of mankind.

So taken are you by this scene that you jump, even in your dream, as the lights go out and plunge you into complete darkness.

For what feels like forever you stand in the dark, totally lost and alone. Then ahead you catch a fleeting glimpse of a neon sign, flickering indistinctly in the gloom. Desperately you race towards it, and suddenly find your feet pounding across asphalt. The scene becomes ever more familiar the closer you get to the neon sign, the sort of sign you might find advertising a bar...

...the realisation and horror hits you as you feel a sudden weight enter your hands, the smell of discharged gunpowder and stale beer. From behind you, a voice echoes.

A voice that eminates from something that could not possibly be human.
"GUILT," it laughs, "IT CAN BE A KILLER."

At the sound of the gunshot, you jolt awake.

DEVON

Even when dreaming, your mind remains in your room, your sanctuary from unfamiliarity.

Here, though, it is different. Brighter, the walls and objects found within taking on colours and hues they never could in waking life. From your window, you can see the entire world unfolded before you, and you know that if you should wish it you could see anywhere you wanted from the comfort of your own room; the great pyramids of Egypt, the Niagara Falls, your brother's home in California...

You pull up a seat in front of your window to watch the world, and are lost to the sight for what feels like hours.

A sensation of elation, of euphoria, overtakes you.

That's what makes your floor shattering so terrifying.

The wooden floorboards crumble to pieces, or are smashed apart by unseen hands, and you topple into darkness, falling towards a bottom you cannot hope to see. For several minutes, maybe even more, you continue to plummet; you begin to wonder if your fall will ever end.

When you finally land, you wish it had not.

Despite falling an impossible height, you land carefully, unharmed. A single speck of light illuminates the spot you stand upon, and all else is obscured. Yet slowly, you begin to see shapes moving in the darkness. Shapes so large they could not possibly be real. Yet this is a dream; in this place, they are.

As your eyes begin to adjust to the gloom, you begin to panic more. The huge shapes are beginning to take a humanoid shape to you, their vast legs striding past the spot upon which you stand. The terror grows evermore as they become clearer and clearer; you want to run, but find that your legs are refusing to move.

If you move, they might realise you're there.

Finally, you can see everything, and it is all you can do to keep yourself from screaming. Striding past you are the impossibly large figures of human men and women, dressed for work, dressed for life, all moving to and fro and completely unaware of your presence. They could almost pass for human, discounting their vast size...

...and their faces, which are horrific visages of demons and eldritch things that defy the human imagination. You stifle a scream, and just before you drag yourself back to wakefulness you feel something rest a hand on your shoulder and intone,
"YOU'D NEVER LEAVE ME, WOULD YOU?"

MICHAEL

From sleep, you find yourself sitting at a table surrounded by complete darkness.

Alone, you find yourself somehow unable to even rise from the empty table and remain seated, just waiting for something to happen. It is a long time before anything does. You find yourself growing nervous and apprehension as to what could be lurking in the black that is all around you.

Then suddenly, light. It hits you like a fright train, the sudden dazzling display leaving you blinded for a moment. When your eyes adjust, your surroundings have changed. You are inside what resembles a darkly-lit courthouse, though there are subtle... faults with what is a very familiar location to you. The walls move and seem to wobble of their own accord and the lights have a surreal, translucent quality to them.

Most disturbing of all are the judge and jury, who completely lack faces yet seem to stare at you constantly, lacking eyes to break the unwavering look.

And even though you cannot see any expressions upon their faces you know exactly what they are thinking as they stare. They are judging you, and it's a ruling not in your favour.

Staring down, you break into a cold sweat as you realise you are dressed in the orange prison jumpsuits with a ball and chain around your leg. You attempt to scramble up and run, to get away from those terrible looks, but faceless guards hold you in place.

You cry out as the judge rises to his feet, and from somewhere in the courthouse a terrible voice that comes from no human throat utters,
"GUILTY AS CHARGED."

When you finally awake, you find yourself lying in tangled heap of covers and pillows beside your bed.

[/size]

 

[Vay]

It was with a huge intake of breath, clawing at his own throat Michell suddenly sat up pulling the tangles sheets up with him and knocking a pillow to the floor with a thump that made him jump. For a moment he remained panicked surrounded by the darkness of his room before breathing heavily he ripped the sheet off of himself the tightness only increasing the claustrophobia he has felt in the dream and with his face in his hands he let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

Then he removed his hands the irregular yet familiar shapes fell into place. One didn't sit well though. The dark rectangle of painted canvas against the white wall. The one that hidden in the brushstrokes was the symbol in his dream. Like a child seeing the ajar closet and untold monsters within he shrunk away from it even as he half mentally scolded himself for doing so. The easiest solution was to leave the room.

Groaning he stood kicking the last of the blankets tangled up with his feet and making for the open bedroom door. He tried to push the dream from him mind, it was just from the stress of trying to sell paintings. And the symbol was there because he had bee focusing on it while painting. He wen strait to the kitchen and grabbed a glass fro the rack and filled it with water from the tap. It was a wonder he didn't trip over the clutter in his apartment but he had developed a teen instinct for where everything was and on his way to a chair only kicked over one jar of brushes cursing quietly before sitting heavily.

He'd drink his water, maybe read a chapter then go back to bed. It was just a dream. He caught a glimpse of the painting through the bedroom door and quickly looked away. And in the morning he'd see about selling some paintings.

 

[Jack Shade]

Even when he woke, he assumed he dreamed. Shadows loomed impossibly from every corner of his bed, all the paintings and pictures on his walls seemed to leer without emotion or humanity, his sanctuary transformed into a nightmarish prison. Devon couldn't speak, couldn't move. If it weren't for his breathing, tight and swift like a rabbit's heartbeat, he might have thought himself dead. For hours he panicked, a sickening feeling of raw adrenaline pumping through his leaden limbs. What was only five minutes felt like five eternities, spaced after each other.

But even nightmares cannot persist in reality, and eventually the shadows revealed themselves for what they really were. A chair, a desk, an easel, a book case, a clock. Letting out his terror in fits of small, short breaths, Devon massaged life back into his limbs. Pushing out of bed he shuffled through the dark bedroom to the main room beyond. As light flooded his apartment, every dark thing he had feared retreated to only the corners of his imagination. The dream did not leave him, couldn't leave him, and despite the fact he was within the only place in the world he felt safe...the outside pushed against his window and door.

So much for an early start on cleaning.

Throwing on a robe, Devon sorted through drawers of dried foods till he settled on a small box of Frosted Flakes. The friendly tiger comforted him, and the sugar was a sweet comfort from the tang of horror still floating on his palette. It was early, maybe too early...but with his heart still beating feverishly in his chest, he couldn't very well start outside. Light had not yet touched the horizon and the city slumbered beneath his window.

Well.

Pretended to slumber.

Settling in front of his canvas, Devon slapped sleep from his eyes and mouth and retrieved his painting supplies. The painting had been one he had been working on after waking up every day. Recently, as his dreams turned darker, so had his painting. It was far from completed and a part of him didn't even know what he was exactly painting at all. It seemed faintly menacing, dark colors looming like savage shadows from an otherwise bright meadow.

Shivering, he began texturing the darkness, trying to find out what it was. He doubted he would today, and his strokes were somewhat stammered, nervous.

Maybe he'd ask advice from Michell, the other painter on the floor. He did things with color Devon could only dream of, and perhaps he might have some insight how to finish the piece. Sometimes Devon gave Michell his work, asked him to sell it or keep it, maybe paint over it. Some of the things Devon painted he didn't like, nightmares he had or ghostly figures looming outside his bedroom windows. Those he could not keep, and it was looking as though this one would be the same.

Humming, more as a habit than anything thought, Devon darkened the figures and brushed against what seemed to be the head...a single point of white bleeding into the otherwise opaque surface.

As he stared, the color seemed to draw him in...capture him, bind him.

Stare at him.

Stopping, Devon retreated back to his bedroom with the lights on, suspiciously staring at the window or the slightly opened door to the main room. Something about that point of white, something about that eye seemed to follow him, haunt the corners of his imagination.

Something was wrong, he knew that now, but the most frightening part was the realization that the only thing that had changed...was that now the 'wrongness' knew he knew.

And it turned its pale eye upon him.

 

[Sir Basil]

Taras awoke in a cold sweat, his breath heaving in his small chest. He clambered up in bed, running hand through his thick dark hair. He breathed in and out, and watched his chest move as he did so, looking down at his skin with an eye normally reserved for a scientist and his specimen. His skin had a film of wetness, sweat, and maybe even some of his own tears. His eyes were sore. He swallowed roughly, hearing his adams apple bounce in his throat. He sat up in bed a little more, trying to recollect the details, interpret them. Dreams were often valuable, if convoluted. Taras rubbed his eyes, and the room came into clear, grey focus. The images from his dream, however, showed up behind his eyes as he opened and closed them, like some horrible imprint.

He shook himself a bit, as if trying to get the sleep off of him. Though behind his eyes, the curl of a blonde strand of hair loomed ominously. It was interesting, but Taras had never thought of blonde hair as a symbol of dread and anxiety, but at this point in his life, it was. The dream seemed to symbolize something - had his...other self returned? Had he been the one to murder that poor girl? The dream seemed to suggest that. Taras untangled himself from his sheets and bed coverings, and began to walk, half dressed, to the kitchen, where he blearily began a cup of coffee for himself. He slumped at his small table, eyes dull and rimmed with red. Witches, he thought to himself, What is it about witches... His mind drifted back to the man who had said those words, the man in his dream. The man in the dream. Was it too much to already assume? Was it too much to already get an idea of who he might be.

He stood, and retrieved his cup of coffee, dunking two sugars in it, but no cream. He sniffed at it, then took a long gulp, feeling his system perk up, every nerve and fiber of his being tingling with energy. He thought for a moment, and walked back to his bed. He sat his steaming mug of coffee on his nightstand and stuck his hand under the bed, madly searching for something, and then, in a moment, his hand closed around it. A pack of tarot cards, given to him by his mother. The same tarot cards from his dream. He sat with them, cross-legged on the floor, and organized them into a horse-shoe spread, and began to look for answers to all the questions that he had in the future, and in the cards.

 

[TheNeverThere]

Jerek was jerked awake from his nightmare, the sensation made all the more worse from a stiff body. He had fallen asleep at his computer again, and upon waking hit the mouse, causing the screen to jump out of sleep mode, now displaying a half-finished 3D model he had been working on. The sudden burst of light added further insult to his rude awakening by temporarily blinding him, and nearly caused him to tip his chair over as he instinctively darted away from the searing light. When he moved his hands to his face to rub the stars and sleep away, he noticed his face was covered in sweat, even though it was no where near hot enough in the room to make him do so, and for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why. Then he remembered the dream, or at least, the end of the dream. "'Guilt. It can be a real killer.'" These words sent shivers right into Jerek's very soul, but for a reason he couldn't quite place.

Stretching once more, Jerek saved his work and shut down his computer before pushing himself away from the desk in his rolling chair. Getting up, he realized that his face wasn't the only thing covered in sweat, but the rest of him too. After putting on a pot of coffee, he got out of his clothes and stepped into the shower. While he washed, he couldn't shake the words from his head, and decided to focus on trying to remember the rest of his dream. By the time he'd finished his shower and gotten dressed, he'd remembered most of it: The monolithic building, the dreadful plunge into darkness, but that was it, and it bothered him. He felt as though there was something he was forgetting...something important. But, not wanting to dwell on such dread thoughts, chalked the whole thing up to falling asleep while working, and set about making himself a breakfast of eggs, cereal, coffee, and venison goetta made from a deer he'd bagged on a company hunting trip a few weeks back.

 

[Myrnodyn]

Micheal opened his eyes and took a few deep breaths before he got up and sat on the side of his bed, looking down upon his sweat-stained shirt with tired eyes. He yawned and scratched, first his head and then between his legs. Outwardly, he didn't seem to disturbed by his recent dream, but on the inside his thoughts were still spinning. It had been terrifying. He was a good man and didn't deserve to be judged as the faceless men had done. But...was he a good man? There was still the one incident that weighed on his mind, albeit not too heavy. In the end the man had confessed to everything after all. He had been guilty, it just had been hard to prove.

With a sigh he stood up from the bed and walked towards the shower, in the meantime stripping himself of his T-shirt and underwear. He opened the door and stepped inside, the tile floor cold on his feet and the air chilly. "you're a good person...You're a just person..." He thought. A sort of personal Mantra that he repeated in his head, though the tension in his shoulders and back was clearly visible through the skin. He turned open the hot water, and a slight bit of the cold and used his hand to test the water. Slightly too hot. He turned the cold water knob a tad further and stepped under the shower. Michael then closed his eyes, and finally started to relax.

 

[Grumpy]

[size=+1]Normality begins to reassert itself after the events of your dreams.

Each of you begins to move on from the dream, though sleep remains out of the question just yet. You move through routines and motions, calming your minds to the visions you have born witness to. At least twenty minutes pass; things are calming down, some of you are even beginning to consider sleep.

Then a sound emanates from the hallway, outside your doors.

It is not a sound that any of you can find words to describe; it defies categorisation, definition, comprehension. As your ears struggle to come to terms with what they have just heard you each hear it again, further away this time, followed by a series of brutal smashes against solid material, most likely the walls of the corridor.

One thing is clear. Something is in the hallway.

What do you do?[/size]

 

[Vay]

The sound send chills up Michell's spine and again his eyes darted to the painting as if it was somehow to blame. "UUgh.." it was then that it dawned on him that he most likely wasn't getting any more sleep. The banging was horrendous and he had half a mind to go out and confront whosever's kid was causing it but he was half naked and unarmed and hooligans were never alone. He sighed massaging his temples before looking down at the empty glass in front of him. He'd need something stronger to get through today, something with caffeine, but not this early... what was the time anyway?

He checked the clock on the kitchen wall and cursed silently, too early to do anything, too late to get back to sleep before he had to get back up. But enough time to satisfy an itch in his mind. As the sounds from the pipes, had to be the pipes, receded he pulled a books closer to himself and opened the cover, paging through to a memorized page number. The symbol in his latest painting, its meaning had slipped his mind, it was time to satisfy his frustrated curiosity.

 

[Jack Shade]

The sound startled Devon, shivered his limbs into a spidery dance of surprise. He listened for a moment, the 'something' sound of crashing down the hallway. It wasn't like anything he had heard before, not on the Discovery Channel or MTV or the History channel or any other program to the outside world. It was foreign, foreign in his place of sanctuary. A familiar fear ratcheted his bones into a twitching fit, sending him back against his refrigerator. Although he wanted to pursue this noise, to categorize it, to know it, all he could think about were walking legs and demon faces, his dream creatures come to life just outside in the hall and searching for him.

He imagined he saw his doorknob wiggle, even break, could see the shadows outside his room and knew he had nothing to defend himself.

Breathing increasing, narrow chest rising and falling quickly, Devon curled beneath the cower of his kitchenette and tried not to throw up his lungs. His breathing would not calm down, he could not calm down, he was having a panic attack alone. Outside the darkness leaped beneath his door, seeped in like smoke. Fear clogged his lungs and pushed out sanity from his nose. In this respect he was lost, completely.

Unable to control himself, knowing he was moments from passing out, he tipped an easel. A painting of shadows, incomplete and still drying, clattered onto the hardwood floor loudly, smearing the paint and ruining his work, maybe the whole work.

Beyond caring, past understanding, Devon saw a tunnel in his vision. At the end lay the other side of his room, a field of vision growing darker and more distant as time went on. There was no one here, no one, no one, no one.

And the strange noise receded.

But as Devon lost consciousness on his kitchen floor he knew

This was no longer a sanctuary.

 

[TheNeverThere]

Jerek was startled at first by the noise in the hallway, nearly dropping his coffee. He swears to himself it sounds just like he'd imagined a daemon of Slaanesh would sound. Shaking the nerves out quickly, he decides it was just a cat or some other animal. Then he hears it again, but this time it is followed by what sounds like someone, or something, slamming into the walls of the hallway. After nearly dropping his coffee again, he sits it down and heads to his door and peers out of the peep-hole. Halfway to the door he began to feel a chill run down his spine, and the closer he got, the more the chill turned into fear. By the time he reached the door, the only thing he could think of was his childhood notion that if you could see it, it already saw you. Not wanting to be found by whatever was in the hallway, if there was even anything in the hallway to begin with, Jerek instead placed his ear against his door, listen for the sounds of either a creature or one of his floor-mates. Surely, if one of them were to peer out, he'd be safe to do so as well.

 

[Sir Basil]

Taras pocketed the cards, right before he heard it. The noise. It sounded strange and inhuman to his ears, and he wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't still dreaming and that this was some half dreamed fragment of a nightmare. The young man swallowed, and stood up from the floor, coffeee momentarily ignored. He glanced at the coat-rack hanging by the door. His coat, his black wintercoat, was hanging right there, and in its pocket he knew there was a gun. A small, not terribly threatening gun, but it was a weapon. He was shirtless, defenseless, lacking the manufactured armor of the heavy black wool. It was less of armor for him, and more of a sanctuary - in his coat he was no longer Taras Novikov the scared, scarred boy from a small town, he was Detective Novikov in that coat. The young man walked calmly to the coat rack, and slid the heavy cloth over his shoulders. He buttoned it, slowly, steadily, ignoring the fact that his hands were shaking.

The memory of his long lost blonde haired fellowed stuck in his mind, and somehow mutated with the sound from outside his apartment until the image was infinitely more terrifying and unrecognizable of somebody he possibly had once loved. Taras reached into his pocket, and there was the gun sure enough, a comfortable weight in his pocket. He walked to the door, and listened for a minute at the wood. The sound didn't seem to be stopping. The young man held his head up, standing straight infront of the door, one hand in his gun pocket, as the other tentatively opened the door. He was scared, yes, but everything he could imagine was bound to be worse than what was actually out there. It was time to stop dreaming and confront whatever it could be.

"Taras?" He said softly, barely more than a whisper, as he took his first step outside the door, "Taras, is that you?"

 

[Myrnodyn]

"What in the name of..." Micheal muttered as he closed the final buttons of his uniform. He collected the holster, gun inside it, from his sock-drawer and placed it on his right hip. He didn't think he would sleep anymore tonight and thought he might as well get ready for work in the morning. He stepped into his shoes when the sound passed again, followed by the hard sound of something smashing against the walls of the corridor.

"Damn punks." He muttered on again. Perhaps one of the artists on this floor had gotten raging drunk again. Or maybe it was some of the teenage kids living on some of the other floors making a ruckus. The cop tied his shoe-laces and straightened himself. He walked over to the door and peered to the glass bead that would normally show him who was at the door. He saw nothing so he deliberated for a moment and carefully opened the door to peer outside.

"C'mon! Stop making loud noises! Some people are undoubtedly still asleep!"

 

[Grumpy]

[size=+1]JEREK

You press your ear to the door, alert for any sounds from just beyond the threshold of your home. The wooden door is thick, however, and highly resistant to allowing sound to pass through it; try though you might, you are unable to hear anything from the corridor.

What do you do?[/size]

[size=+1]THE CORRIDOR

Floor 13 is one of the smaller hallways of the apartment block you all inhabit. An L-shaped corridor, you all live on the shorter line of the L. As those of you who chose to open your doors the darkness is the first thing you all notice; light spills from your apartments and vainly attempts to hold back the black veil that has engulfed the corridor, but it is a losing battle.

From the light coming from the other doors as well as Taras' words and Michael's shouts, you are aware of the others also watching from their doors.


What do you do?[/size]

 

[Vay]

He traced his finger over the symbol simulating the brushstrokes he had used to create it as he read what it represented a shiver running down his spine. When he had chosen it he hadn't even considered the negative meaning hinted at in the tome. He stood, closing the book and leaving it on the table. More noises from outside, people opening their doors, most likely about to have an impromptu meeting over the hooligans. It was an empty gesture on their part, the brats had moved on.

He sighed at the realization that he was far too awake to get any more sleep tonight and swiped a mug from the table. Let the cop down the hall handle things, this painter had plans to make. It was all written down on the back of an envelope. 9:00 gallery, 9:30 meet Tony from the dealership for brunch, 10:30 catch the subway to his lecture, 13:00 meet Melissa. !3:30 drop painting off at apartment if unsold. 14:00 Second lecture.... and that was it until the evening. He needed to sell this painting, rent was coming up, his cupboards were near empty aside from cans and packet noodles and coffee other than black was a fond memory. Christ, now he really wasn't getting back to sleep, and his temple was beginning to throb.

 

[Sir Basil]

Taras heard nothing, no reply, but he saw something out of the corner of his eyes, something dark and strange. Now, he figured it couldn't be what he thought it was, it couldn't be who he thought it would be - in some senses, he was relieved, in another, he was even more afraid. This meant to Taras that he was clueless, groping in the dark, but he assumed that whatever these dark tendrils were, the dream had some factor in it. Dreams like that didn't just happen. Taras remembered something, something that he had told him once, near the end of his existence and start of Taras' insanity; None of it was real, Taras. It was all just a dream. He bit his lips, and figured that for this moment he needed to rely on that philosophy. He was scaring himself.

He readily pulled the gun from his pocket, holding it tightly, but at ease in his hand. He had no intention to harm anything with it, not really. It was a dream, afterall. He was still asleep. That seemed logical. Or perhaps it was a waking nightmare - he had read that such things happened when one didn't sleep enough, and Taras had been so rattled with witches, cards, and memories of another life and another person that sleeping was never really second nature. He wracked his mind, thinking back to the books he had reead in the loony bin - and the spells and words contained within. Circles of protection, rings of salt, bars of iron, silver bullets. Not that he had any of that. The books from that time were sitting in his room, in a bookcase in what some might refer to as a den - though it was more of a nook. Taras was hesitant to turn his back on the thing, whatever it was. He swallowed, and held the gun up a bit. His hands shook a moment, but he calmed them.

He began to recite a poem that his blonde compatriot had told him once, mumbled, under his breath, "Godfrey Gordon Augustus Gore..." Names were important, he realized. His duplicate had never told him his name. He had used Taras' along with many aliases. It occured to him, that things' true names had power. He began to mumble the aliases of his long lost companion, wondering if they would help him, alert the thing (which Taras must admit, he still believed it to be the man with the blonde hair), or maybe give him power of some kind, "Nosferatu... Zarathustra..."Godfrey Gordon Augustus Gore....Genghis Khan..."

 

[Myrnodyn]

Micheal stepped into the pitch black corridor, closing the door behind him after checking if he had his keys with him. Micheal wasn't the cowardly sort, but this darkness had him worried. Worried in the most complicated sense of the word. Worried that something might happen, without knowing what could happen in the absolute darkness surrounding him.

At least he wasn't the only one in the hallway. Some distance up ahead he could see the light coming from the detectives door, though why it didn't illuminate the hallway more clearly as it did remained a mystery. With the light from the door as a beacon, the policeman started to walk through the hallway, one hand on the wall at all times while the other rested on the nightstick that was part of his equipment. If those punks were out here, they might use the darkness to plan something nasty after-all. It might not be as innocent as some drunk teens. Robbers were known to lure people out of the safety of their houses on occasion.

Inching closer to the door he noticed the silhouette of the tenant moving in front of the door. What was his name again? Thomas? Lars? something like that? Micheal decided it didn't matter. It was not like they spoke each other very much outside the occasional smalltalk in the hallway. "Hey you! Are you alright? Do you know what's going on?"

 

[TheNeverThere]

Jerek breathed a slight sigh of relief after no further noises came from the hallway. He decided it was safe enough now to poke his head into the hallway. As Jerek went to turn the knob on his door, but as he reached for it, the jitters from his coffee and recent rush of adrenaline got the better of him. He went back to his work table and grabbed one of the larger hobby knives, not really caring (or realizing) at the time that anything big enough to make those noises wouldn't be bothered by such a small blade. Trusty "sword" in hand, Jerek opened his door just barely wide enough to slip out. He started to close the door behind him, but stopped as he suddenly grasped just how dark the hallway was. As he stepped out of his room, he noticed light and voices coming from other rooms and occupants. This made Jerek feel better for two reasons: One, he wasn't the only one that heard the noises, and thus wasn't going crazy, and two, he wasn't alone out here in the hall.