Spoiler (Click to Show)
A younger me would have needed to turn on the lights when he went down for a glass of water, not really knowing why he feared the darkness. Now that I'm older and wiser, I comfortably do without. I did it right now, staring blankly into shadows that some small part of me still feared. It told me that there could be predators lurking out of my sight. It worried that nameless things could be around every corner, waiting to eat me.
I yawned as an image of some clawed specter filled my mind. It whispered, “what if it's right behind you?”
I'd conquered this fear by facing it. I knew there was no such thing as ghosts. No such thing as monsters. No such thing as anything that the primal part of my mind was still afraid of. When it screamed to me, dreadfully afraid that an imagined beast would tear me to pieces if I didn't leave the darkness right now... I always turned around and faced it. Nothing was ever there. Nothing ever will be there. It's just not the way the world works.
I turned around now.
But this time, there was something there. And it reached out and touched me.
I didn't strike out or scream as I saw its gnarled face. I didn't bolt for cover, and if I did it probably wouldn't have mattered anyways. This being was wrapped in a cloak, formless and solid at the same time, sinking into the darkness so purely that it may as well have been the darkness itself. How do you run from something that encompasses the entire world around you?
Instead I stood still, terrified, violated in the most dreadful sense of the word as the safety of my own home could no longer protect me. I watched as a bony arm emerged from its darkness with a key in hand, holding it with endless patience as empty eyes stared into my soul, feasting on it.
“Six trials you must overcome if you wish to be free. Each one harder than the last.” Its whisper was a tortured sound. “Six keys you must acquire, six doors you must unlock. The darkness will follow you, and the darkness is where I lurk. If you allow the darkness to consume you... So will I.” The hand shot out. Bony fingers as cold as ice clasped around my palm and forced my fingers closed around his gift.
Contact snapped me from my trance. I suddenly screamed, lurching for a light switch as if that creature was some imagined monster that I could scare away into non-existence. It flipped with a click and filled the room with blessed light. I quickly whirled back around...
And the demon was gone. But in the next room over where it was still dark, every primal part of me screamed that something was there, waiting for me. It screamed at every shadow and every pocket of where the darkness was. Where the monster was.
And in my hand its key was still there, shining blue in the light, still cold enough to hurt the skin at its touch. I knew that what had just transpired was real.
I glanced around me, breathing hard, trying to figure out what to do. My daughter Jessica was sleeping somewhere upstairs, and for the first time I thanked God and every being in the sky that she slept with a night light for comfort.
On the other end of the room, though, was my front door.
The number 1 was painted neatly on its face.
Six trials you must overcome. I remembered. But why? So that the monster wouldn't eat me? Did I need to do these trials and I'd be safe again? What was that monster? Why was this happening? Why?
The lights flickered. I realized at once that if they shorted out for any reason that the creature would be upon me before I even realized what happened. I swallowed my fear, snapping my frozen body into motion as I stuck that cold blue key into my own front door. When I turned the knob, it swung the wrong way out.
The room beyond it was not the outside world.
I stepped into a well-lit kitchen. Knives were hung along the walls. Along the racks. They sat in a heap in the kitchen sink, so full that the slightest jostle threatened to send the pile spilling out and into the foot of whoever stood nearby. There were no windows, but somehow this room felt like it was the only room in the entire universe. I could not imagine what could be outside these walls.
Opposite to me was another door, and this one had a simple orange “2” on it.
There was a drawer next to the kitchen sink which had a handle made into the shape of a “2.” I could only imagine that meant the next key was inside. Only one way to find out.
I stepped lightly, eyes fixed to the teetering pile of knives as I gently pulled the wooden drawer open, and I saw I was right. A dark red key waited for me in the same shape as the one before.
Uneasy, I shut the drawer.
Knives spilled suddenly, pouring down from the sink in a startling clatter of blades. It was a flood of banging metal that hurt my ears, raining down in an endless torrent that threatened to cover the floor with their razor-sharp edges. I yelped, watching where I put my bare feet as I scurried to the exit, jamming the key in its place and quickly disappearing behind its face as the knives continued to flood the room.
Room three was dimly-lit just one candle, and it was mostly empty. My instincts screamed at every shadow and I could feel the demon's presence within them like a physical pressure. There were windows which provided no view except a black abyss, so dark that I could not tear my eyes away from its maw.
Until I saw the monster staring right back at me. Smiling.
It was here. It was waiting. It followed. Should the candles here be snuffed out by wind or luck, I knew that it would be upon me and it was excited to the point of ecstasy to have that chance.
The key to the third room was on the ground at my feet, and I tore my eyes away from the windows to take it. The door to the next trial was simply on the other side of the room... but there was a problem. That candle that lit this room sat in the center affixed to the ground. Next to the door was a hinged pillar with a bowl at the end, and I could see that if I opened the door, no matter how little, the hinge would be bumped and fall and snuff out the candle. The room would be filled with darkness. The room would be filled with the demon's presence.
I looked down to the key in my hand and saw that I was shaking uncontrollably. This experience was horrible; unreal and entirely too real at the very same time. I wanted to believe I was dreaming, but I could feel every detail from the pounding of my heart to the grains of the wood beneath my toes. Something about the darkness scared me in a way I had never felt before and for the first time since childhood, I wanted to curl up and cry.
Instead, I made myself take a step forward. I had to be strong for more than just myself. My daughter was not going to wake up to an empty home.
Even if I held the pillar up so it wouldn't fall, I knew I couldn't fit through the door without it clamping its bowl over the flame and snuffing it out either way. My only option was to go as fast as I could. The key unlocked door number three easily. Light spilled in from the other side as I peeked through the crack, and with a surge of willpower I yanked the door back.
I was halfway through when the candle choked out, and a horrible roar core screamed back from the darkness behind. My blood froze to ice and my limbs turned to jelly as I felt something surge towards me, ravenous. I barely slipped through the opening before an unstoppable weight slammed it closed again, banging furiously against the slim wooden barrier between me and certain death. But the light was too heavy for even the demon to push back against. It was screaming and howling and it sounded like the wails of a million tortured souls.
The pounding stopped, but the screaming went on. And on. And on.
Eventually I realized that the screams were coming from behind me.
Room three was built into a rocky cliff, raised above an endless abyss. From the darkness below came the wailing cries that twisted my heart with its every echo. Down there was something horrible and beyond comprehension. It wasn't Hell, I think. That would be too easy. These were the ones who had been swallowed by the darkness. Swallowed by the monster. The demon. It was the fate that awaited me should I fail; to be trapped in oblivion for eternity as I screamed and screamed and screamed.
From the wall behind me, a door with a silver four on its face sat a meter or two to the left. To my right was a rickety bridge that swayed and creaked in the wind. Across the bridge was a display shaped like a 4, and on the display was a bowl. I guessed it was there where I'd find the key to my next trial.
The bridge and its height wasn't what scared me as I crossed it. It was looking down into the black sea below and trying to imagine what was there that rattled me. How many people had been taken by that horrible creature? Would there ever be an escape from this place? How many thousands or millions or billions of years would they have to endure this torment before death released them?
When I took the key, it almost fell from my shaking grip and into the abyss. White hot fear burned my veins before relief extinguished their fires, and I held that key to my heart as I slowly made my way back across.
It was hard not to let the screaming get to me, but I knew those people would not want me to join them down there. I knew that I needed to press on.
The screams dissipated the moment I stepped through and closed room four's entrance behind me. But even though they were silenced, I knew they were still there. Countless people still suffered, and I would never be able to forget that. Even if I survived this, the knowledge of their eternal agony would haunt my sleep for the rest of my life.
Room four was much different than the last. Before me was a long hallway lit by fluorescent lights, stretching on for about half the length of a football field. I could see a white door at the end with a barely-visible “5” in its center. Right next to me was a table, and on the table was a key with a bright green sticky-note attached. I picked it up, frowning, turning it around so that I could read the text inscribed on the note.
“Run.” It read.
What? I looked behind me to find that the door had vanished, and so had the walls. The hallway instead stretched on forever, closing in to a single point as the corners and lights shrunk to a single point in my vision somewhere in the distance.
And then with a very distinct noise, the lights began to shatter one-by-one.
I yelped, holding the key tight in my grip as I sprinted towards the door ahead, racing against the darkness that closed in from behind. With every passing the second the sounds of shattering glass intensified, coming closer faster and faster. I could feel the monster's hunger and excitement as it roared towards me.
I slammed into the fifth door, shaking so badly that I couldn't get the key into the knob as I cried and whimpered until some stroke of mercy slipped it in with a click. I didn't look behind me as the darkness screamed closer. I didn't see how close I had come to a fate worse than death when I dove through door 5 and it slammed shut behind me.
“Daddy?”
Suddenly I was in my daughter's room. My ragged breathing was hard and loud in the closed confines. My nerves were jangling so bad that I looked into Jessica's face in the dim glow of her night-light, and for a second I saw the demon staring back at me. It was enough to make me flinch back, until I realized that it was just her.
“Jessica!” I cried. “Are you alright? Are you safe?” I scrambled to my feet, holding the eight-year-old girl's concerned face to make sure she was really there, that she was really okay.
“What's going on? You look so scared.” She allowed my touch for one last second before uncomfortably pushing my hands away. I acquiesced.
“I... Nothing's going on.” I gasped after a moment of deliberation. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Wanted to come up and say that I loved you.”
“Well... Love you too, Dad.” My lie was pathetic and it showed, but for now that didn't matter. I would explain everything once I knew everything was okay again. I just needed to find...
I turned around, and saw that the bright-pink door of Jessica's bedroom was plastered with a wet, bloodstreaked 6.
The next door.
Looking back to Jessica, my eye caught the glint of a small piece of metal on her bedside table. It was an ornate key. My daughter followed my gaze, gasping in startled surprise as she quickly snatched the key from its spot, hiding it behind her back.
“Where did you get that key?” I demanded. I was more frightened at the prospect of the demon finding her than I was confused by her need to hide it.
“What key?” She lied.
“The key you have behind your back, Jessica. Who gave you it?”
“Nobody gave me it! I don't even have a key!” Her lie was even flimsier than mine, but something was wrong here. Jessica wasn't a liar, and even stranger was her reluctance to fess up when she knew that I knew she lying. The girl sounded genuinely terrified by me finding out about that key.
“Listen to me, Jessy...” I breathed, trying to be calm for the both of us. “Daddy is in a lot of trouble. I need your key to get through this door. If I can't make it through to the end, then a monster is going to eat me alive.”
“But I don't have a key!” She cried out once again. My explanation was forgotten.
“Why are your hands behind your back then, huh?” I tried not to raise my voice, but I was frustrated and scared. I took a step closer.
After a second of fidgeting, her hands were outstretched towards me, empty of any key. It was obviously underneath her now. “I don't have a key! See?!” My stubborn girl was not going to listen to me, but if I needed that key if I wanted to survive. I would apologize later.
Before she could react, I struck my hands out to grasp Jessica's arms and yank her from the bed and off of that key. But as soon as I gripped her, the girl let out a bloodcurdling scream so horrible that I flinched back and fell to the ground.
“Please don't take my key, Daddy.” Jessica was crying now. “Please.”
“What am I supposed to do then?!” I cried, dumbfounded. Something was definitely, horribly wrong. The glow of my daughter's night-light was darker. More sinister. Jessica's face was pale and gaunt in its glow.
“Please.” She repeated again and again. “Please, please, please, please, please.”
“Jessica...” I was disturbed. I felt like my sanity itself was being worn thin. “You're not real, are you? This is just the fifth room's trial. It has to be. If Jessica had a key... she wouldn't have made it through the fourth room.”
“What do you mean? I'm Jessica! I am!” The girl stood up onto her feet. Her eyes had become empty black pools, reflecting none of the room's meager light. I took a step closer.
Her mouth became lined with fangs and her hair became wild. Black ichor dripped from her eyes and from her ears as her cries became more and more warped and distorted. “I'm Jessica! I AM! I AM!”
This time when I grabbed her, the creature that called herself Jessica howled and began to claw at me with her nails, gouging scarlet lines into my flesh as her screams shook the room itself. I gave a mighty shove that sent her flying, wailing, and she hit the ground with a sickly crunch, landing head-first and jamming her neck at a grotesque angle behind her shoulders. Even though it wasn't truly my daughter, the sight of it was enough to make me heave. I barely avoided vomiting onto the floor.
The key to room six was still on the soft white sheets of Jessica's bed, warm from the heat of her body. I forced myself to not look back as I took it, and I stumbled out and into the maw of whatever waited for me in room six.
It looked like I was back in the second roo