"True madness is perhaps sanity." — Fyodor Dostoevsky.
***
The voice of the door splintering echoed hollowly in his blurry mind, making his racing mind truly work in overdrive.
This was an unescapable situation, he realised.
And just as he came to this conclusion, his face became deadpan, devoid of any semblance of human emotion.
His heartbeat accelerated to an inhuman level, and the blood rushing inside his body made his face look like that of a frenzied berserker about to rampage.
His pupils dilated to the extreme, and his quads flexed as he sprinted straight up to the second floor without looking back at any of the ghastly entities.
With just two steps, he was halfway to the upper floor. With a few more stomp-like leaps, he finally reached the upper floor. Thoughts and ideas of how to get out of this predicament crossed his mind in a whirlwind, but none of them were fail-proof.
'Escaping through the windows... not possible, stalling for time... won't work because of the numbers, hiding someplace... not possible, they'll sniff me out eventually, guerrilla tactics... I don't know their battle capabilities.'
Just then, a crazy... but feasible plan whirred to life in his mind.
'The chances are that the eldritch hound... thing from earlier is blind and my pursuers are hell bent on making a ruckus while chasing my a*s.'
It was a crazy idea, a suicidal one, even. Fortunately, he hadn't been titled the sanest person in the room his entire life.
There was more than a seventy per cent chance that he'd probably fail and die in the process, but as the saying went, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
A toothy smirk crossed his face as he continued darting through the hallways, while trying to minimise the sound. A faint chorus of screams and loud thuds could still be heard coming from the stairway with ever-increasing intensity. Maintaining a relatively quick pace, he reached a corner of the hallway and came to a halt.
After arriving there, he heaved short but quick breaths, trying to calm his beating heart.
From the end of the hallway, he could see the dark, foggy figure shooting forward and the blob of fleshy madness following it from behind.
Focusing all of his attention on the upcoming task, he pulled out two of the smaller knives he had hidden in the bathrobes earlier and hurled them straight to the window to the left, a few feet in front of him.
The knives glinted slightly in the incandescent moonlight and hit their mark accurately; the window in front shattered, and a muffled growl echoed from it.
The window he had thrown the knives to was the same one where the eldritch hound had disappeared into earlier; the reason those wraith... things caught up with him was that he intentionally slowed down when he passed that window, not daring to make even a single squeal.
Well, this was it... If that thing, that eldritch monstrosity, were to move towards him, he was finished. But if what he was thinking in his mind were to happen and the hound went towards the sound, the fight would become less impossible, from entirely impossible.
Just then, the eldritch hound howled while screeching in agony, its body was marred with faint bloody lines like someone had tried opening it up from the inside with a scalpel, and it lunged towards the most noisy creatures.
"Well, that was unexpected."
It wasn't like he hadn't thought of this, but the possibility of the huge beast getting injured due to breaking a simple window pane was unimaginable, to say the least.
'Anyways... I should fu*k off from here.'
Darting sideways to the other hallway, he heard pained howls and screeching wails coming from behind.
"At least some of those things have to be mangled badly."
His mind was in vindictive glee; he had managed to inflict just a tiny bit of misery on those things that had brought him.
The ghastly entities might have been slowed down for now, but he didn't think he had escaped them safely just about now.
'Now to the second half of the plan.'
If the first half of the plan was suicidal, then the second half would definitely be considered insane. The reason being, he was going to try getting to the rooftop and then... There was nothing.
Even his mind couldn't find a way out of this scenario.
He couldn't think of anything after that, because the situation was unsalvageable from the start, and he could only try to prolong his life for a little while.
The main culprit behind his desperation was the dark, unmoving, lanky figures from beyond the wall boundary.
He had thought that they would stay at their original positions and would not chase him around if he didn't make any sudden moves in front of them; unfortunately, his luck was working wonders as usual.
And what do you know?... The crisis was increased tenfold due to those things suddenly appearing everywhere in the courtyard, and maybe in other places too.
The only thing left to do was to gamble, gamble with his life, and so he did.
He was terrified in his heart, but along with the terror came the excitement of the moment, and the feeling of his body moving like never before. His moves were perfect, his body did what he commanded it to.
This feeling was accompanied by the feeling of absolute synchronicity and harmony with his self like never before.
Just as he was enraptured by this budding feeling, he crushed it ruthlessly in his heart; there was no need for such a thing in the middle of a heated situation as this one.
One thing was clear in his heart: he wouldn't survive this place; he would die here.
That was an irrefutable fact at this point; from all the clues he had gathered, he would be just one of the many wretched souls that would perish in this fu*ked place.
So he did what any person would do in his place, he crashed out... literally.
Grabbing one of the wooden pieces from a chair lying on the floor in the hallway, he smashed it through the window in front of him.
Then, clutching the two cleavers in his hands and placing his mobile in his bathrobe, he readied himself.
A loud crash echoed, and he sprinted with all his might and then jumped while placing one of his feet on the shattered window frame, which cut through his shoe sole and made him bleed. Adam then plunged the two knives into the wooden extension of the roof till half of the blades were inside it.
His heartbeat was beyond what any normal human might have at this moment, and his mind had reached a state of clarity like never before.
With a sudden jerk, he pulled one of the knives out and tried balancing himself on the other one.
Right about now, he was dangling like a chicken caught by its neck, and the only thing between him and his death was the single knife buried diagonally through the wood.
With the effort of a will he didn't think he had, he moved to and fro like a pendulum.
After gaining enough momentum, he reached forward with his other hand, clutching the other cleaver and plunged it at the ledge of the roof.
Grunting while exerting all of his strength, he pushed down on the knife, burying it into the wood deeper and pulling his weary body up with one hand.
Releasing his other hand, he grabbed the ledge and screamed while exerting his strength to push himself up.
A few seconds passed, and his tattered body could be seen lying on the roof while bleeding from his foot.
"That was the craziest sh*t I've ever done in my entire fuc*ing life."
His pale, frightened and dumbfounded face was illuminated by the everlasting moonlight from above.
Then, he laughed... he laughed and laughed till his laughing caused him to cough violently because he began choking on his own spit.
"What a crazy day to be alive... or dead, I guess?"
As the muffled screams and grunts from downstairs started dying down, he began preparing for anything else that might come at him.
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[A/N]
This horror story's about to end in 1 or 2 more chapters.
Pray for poor Adam, y'all. 🙏
P.S.- again writing this through my mobile.
Ps2- comments 🥺