"When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival."
-Yann Martel
***
Adam was honestly tired of all the crap going on around him.
At first, it was just ghosts, but now there was an eldritch greyhound without its eyes perched in one of the hallways on the second floor, grinning at him.
His tense body crouched low, ready to run back outside if that thing tried to get to the lower floors, but strangely enough, the... thing looked back at its hands, where some of the white figure's foggy remains lay.
It then continued to chomp down on the foggy remains while faint screams sounded from them.
After a minute or so, the thing finished eating, licked its mouth as if tasting the lingering flavour of its meal, and then walked straight into the window from which it was seen.
The window rippled, trembled at the edges and then became still; the eldritch abomination was nowhere to be seen.
That sight made Adam's mind practically shake inside his skull. Due to the sheer ridiculousness of the sight, his mouth was wide open as if trying to fit a whole fist in it.
' I'm so dead. '
That was his first thought after witnessing the entire spectacle, for good reasons too. If that thing resided in the glasses, then it could pop up out of any place, as practically the whole mansion was filled with those.
The only saving grace was that the... thing was blind... probably. He was still unsure of that theory. After all, one wrong assumption would cost him his life if not more.
The only thing he could do was to stay silent, akin to a dead person, and hope that the creature didn't fancy Adam as his dessert for the night.
Cursing in his mind, he started looking around the place, but without making too much noise, and if he heard anything, he would stay still like a mummy.
After looking around the first floor, he came back to the stairway.
Looking at the stairs going up, he frowned tiredly.
"Here goes nothing, I guess."
Grabbing one of the cleavers tightly till his knuckles turned white, he stepped onwards to the upper floors.
After reaching upstairs, he opened his mobile and turned the flashlight on, and glanced vigilantly at every corner of the place.
Seeing nothing, he continued to the unchecked rooms to his left.
Passing the first room, he checked the other rooms one by one.
After some time, he had searched the entire hallway with the stairway and had arrived at the last one, which remained unexplored.
Feeling a strange urge, he grabbed his mobile and turned the recording on.
He wasn't as sarcastic as the last time while recording.
After a couple of seconds, Adam spoke in a grim tone laced with certainty.
"I'm going to stab this sh*t into the brain of anything that dares to creep me out."
Stepping forward, he examined each room with the meticulousness of a surgeon; the sight was funny to say the least, because contrary to a doctor, he was going to kill anything he saw with a cleaver.
Just when he was going to step into the last room, he heard faint mumblings from the room; it was the same voice of a child crying that he had heard when he was hidden in the closet downstairs.
Feeling his blood pump faster, and his body heating due to his rapid heartbeat, he opened the door and saw a small child-like whitish figure crouched at one of the corners of the room.
That... child was like the white figure he'd seen earlier.
Feeling the hair on his back stand on its end, he looked beside the child. The same black, hazy figure that had tried to choke him earlier was crouched next to the child, trying to extend its foggy limbs around the child as if coaxing it.
But that was merely an illusion; in reality, half of the child's figure was already dyed foggy grey as if it had atrophied.
Just then, the dark figure's two emotionless eyes fixed on him.
His body tensed, ready to sprint the opposing way.
Feeling some disturbance, the child looked back at him while crying. The sight was horrendous. Half of the child's face was a tangled mess of desperation and hope, while the other half was ashen grey, with the eye colored grey, looking at him aloofly.
"Sav...save me.... Do.... don't leave me... Don't..."
Just then, the dark haze moved in a flash, trying to reach him.
Reacting just in time, Adam slammed the door closed and rushed to the stairway.
Looking back, the door was almost ripped off its hinges due to the collision force from the thing inside ramming into it.
Not paying it any mind, he sprinted to the stairs. Just as he was going to step down, he saw one of the tall, dark figures from outside standing silently between the way downstairs with its glassy eyes focused on him.
'fu*k!!'
Not daring to go that way, he stepped back and tried walking to the other end of the hallway, but something was wrong at the end of the path.
There was an amalgamation of flesh moving silently towards him. It had a myriad of mouths stitched to its every part, which wailed in a desolate voice.
The discordant symphony of crying voices made him flinch; that was the sound he heard when he hid in the second room he had been in.
'Damn...damn...damn'
His mind instantly overclocked and tried to look for a way out of this mess.
He reached one inevitable conclusion in a second.
'Upstairs... Or I jump out of the window.'
Peering through a window, he looked down at the courtyard and was frozen in his place.
The other dark figures from outside were sitting in the courtyard, looking at where he was quietly.
His voice trembled as he whispered.
"Motherfu*ker."
It was an instant checkmate; he was surrounded from every direction, and the only place left was upstairs.
Right at that moment, the bang of a door splintering echoed through the place, and he didn't think about anything anymore; he sprinted straight to the upper floor.
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[A/N]
I'm writing this on my mobile, hope you guys like the chapter.
PS - comment your thoughts down below.