Before I could really do anything, the dark shroud went away. The sudden dread was gone, and I couldn't find any traces of it ever having existed within my mind. Back to my senses, a little off guard, I followed Ted up the stone steps, through the mahogany double doors, and into the first room of Locus House.
Or not. It was a simple vestibule with a fireplace, some leather chairs, a coffee table, and a painting of a Native American looking out towards a valley. There were doors to the left and right. Ted tried the one on the right. It was locked. We went through the left door into the first official room.
'The first floor of Limbo,' I thought. It wasn't too bad. Everywhere we looked, there was nothing but red mist. I noticed the red light in the ceiling that must've been causing this. It looked like a crimson star, looming over us. Mock oak trees without leaves seemed to float and jutt out of nowhere in the thick, red fog.
An element neither of us were expecting was the presence of other people here. Thin, cloaked shadows frolicked about in the red fog. Some of them approached us with glimmering red razors, and pretended to hack at us, which earned them a yelp or two from Ted. A faux murder, if you will.
We found a door at the end, which also seemed to be floating in the swirling red fog. We entered the second room.
This one was definitely a bit more unnerving. There was very little light here except for the scarlet glow from the other room, leaking in from under the door like incandescent blood. Another source of meager light were the lanterns which the shadows now carried in place of their razors. A faint floral scent lingered in the air.
The dark room was large, offering plenty of space for the shadows to dash from one spot to another before inexplicably disappearing. I soon realized the trick: scattered throughout the room were room dividers, the kind one would see in a massage parlor, painted black and positioned at such angles so that it would seem as if though the shadows were disappearing into the abyss. A classic, it would seem.
However, as we stumbled through the dark, one of us would walk into these room dividers, and they would not budge. Were they bolted down? The shadows pranced about like strange mantises holding orbs of light. Disturbingly enough, their footsteps made little to no sound.
Many times I felt as though one of them would collide with us, but we made it to a staircase without incident. We went up, and reached a door with incense sticks lit at its sides. Wisps of floral-scented smoke floated up into the black nothingness. We entered the third room.
Or rather, hallway. The walls and ceiling, which was positioned higher than it normally should've been, were all painted coal black. The floor was a milky white, which gave me the sense that I was walking on a thin strip of rock through a forboding void.
I stepped into that dark corridor before noticing that Ted was not following me. He stood sheepishly at the doorway, not seeming to want to take another step forward.
"Are you coming?"
He hesitated. The shroud of dread returned, and I had to make sure nothing was standing at the end of that hallway.
Ted sighed and reluctantly followed me. We began down the hall, on the thin strip of rock floating through the void.
At first it didn't seem as if there was a door at the end. The lighting here this time was the occasional candle on the side of the hallway. Then I strained my eyes and saw that the door at the very end was painted completely in inky black. That gave me a small confidence boost.
"The hell!?" The exclamation echoed throughout the void like a tolling funeral bell, and I very nearly screamed my head off then.
"Sorry," he muttered. He was very pale now. "But I swear to God that door isn't getting any closer. I don't know why, but it's scaring the hell out of me, man."
He was right. We had walked a good twenty feet or so, but we didn't seem to be getting any closer to the door. And this time, I had nothing. No rational explanation, no clever clarification, nothing to hold onto. And that same strange dread seemed to press at my throat, twist my stomach, doing anything to make me go stark raving mad.
"I'm... I'm going. Back to the car. I'll wait for you, Eddie." He said nothing more and left. I don't think I could've said anything to him in that moment that would've changed his mind.
I pressed on. The door was not getting any closer. I huffed and tried to get my thoughts composed. It didn't work. The dark was messing with me. Making me see shapes in the walls that weren't there. The candles were throwing my shadow at several deformed angles. Not good.
