Nightshift 55: Sun Room

[scarletspeedstr.livejournal.com]

[from here]

Only a couple more rooms and then he was going to eat everything he laid eyes on in the pantry. Even the condiments, at this rate. How much nutritional value did tomato ketchup have anyway? And was he really in any position to turn it down if that was all he could find?

Even with the hunger twisting his stomach and making him feel slightly sick, Wally wasn't quite so bad off that he needed to just rush into the room beyond. His luck had been pretty good so far, well, apart from his speed dumping him into a wall like that, but that didn't mean a thing here.

But the sun room seemed empty, from what he could make out in the darkness and with only a flashlight that had seen better days, so Wally relaxed and headed further into the room, weaving through the chairs and things as he aimed for the cafeteria doors.

Comments

[deathandgin]

If there was anything to be thankful for about these ridiculous uniforms, it was only that they held heat a little better than sweats. With the weather outside, it wasn't any big surprise that the institute wasn't exactly the warmest place. Considering no one was big on paying the electricity bills at night (or just wanted to up the creep factor), there probably wasn't heat pumping into the place, either.

Yeah, speaking of heat. It sure as hell hadn't been winter when he'd left - er, been taken from - Mystic Falls. So where were they supposed to be now? Canada? Did Canada even have snow this time of year? He'd lived in the south his whole life, so that wasn't exactly the hardest thing to picture.

Alaric shivered involuntarily in the draft, noting the distinct echo of Damon's voice in the empty room. Not a single patient in here? Seriously? "No, I haven't even seen him yet. I figured since we're all stuck here, there's no rush." Well, that was kind of only a little bit of the reason. The biggest reason was Alaric was not exactly keen on describing this whole Katherine business for either Salvatore brother, let alone both of them. It just happened to be that Rick was just slightly more comfortable with the more unstable brother because he was... still somewhat predictable. And, of course, he hadn't really expected to meet a Damon who was out of the loop.

The teacher kept his light leveled close to the ground just so he could avoid tripping, whether or not his bad luck seemed to have faded away. It was a relatively slow journey through the room, but he still wasn't taking chances.

"Besides, I thought you'd want to be the one to bring up the Katherine, uh. Stuff." Bad enough that he'd had to relate all of the curse and doppelganger crap with Damon, and even that was just a quick summary.

The sooner they could get out of here, the better. Not that escape seemed like such a close goal anymore, not now when his biggest priority was finding something sharp. Damn. All those unfinished weapons...

His flashlight finally hit a wall after a few careful maneuvers around couches and tables, but the door wasn't reflective like he'd expected. Instead, it was...

Alaric pressed his fingers against it. "Paper?" Did he get turned around or something?

All right. All right. He knew he was a newbie and he'd only been in the sun room once, but he was pretty sure there hadn't been any paper sliding doors in there. "Are you sure this is the sun room?"

[saviored]

Inclined to mind his own business. Damon could like that in a person.

He started to comment, but cut short when a rustle to his left caught his attention. He glanced over, slowed just a touch. If that was a breeze, it wasn't coming from an open window. No window was gonna be left open in this weather. The more he walked, too, the more he realized that it wasn't just growing darker so much as blacker. There was an unnatural density to the darkness, the moonlight filtering out, and he couldn't help getting the distinct sense of being...stalked. Or toyed with. He'd done more than enough toying of his own to know it when he saw it. Fog, anyone?

So. Awesome. What was it now? The variables on that one were too wide for his liking. He wasn't an idiot—just over six days, yeah, he'd well caught on that things got a bit outside his expertise from time to time around here.

Damon had wandered away from Rick, eyeing what little he could see if the room, but strolled back when the teacher stopped in front of...

A paper wall. What? No, a door. A sliding screen. What the hell. And what kind of question was that?

"Well, the sun room is only the single largest room in the middle of this floor." Unadulterated impatience colored every word. "Yes, I'm sure."

Someone had just decided to dick with the interior design, apparently. He turned around, but it was like looking through a bottle of ink. The entrance was gone, blotted out. As was pretty much everything else.

Okay. That was it. He didn't appreciate getting the atmospheric equivalent of a blindfold.

Eyes narrowed, he reached over, grabbed Alaric's hand, and switched off the flashlight. Little test, no big deal. The darkness swallowed them. So much for that bit of night vision he had left. He could barely see a foot in front of him. Damn it.

However. There was a door and doors opened. Why not? Good idea as any. If they stuck around, they'd be bait, and he wasn't about to stumble through the darkness searching for a way out, either. He doubted Rick wanted to reenact a generic scene from a million teen slasher flicks. Minus the pseudo-Hitchcock score.

He glanced at Alaric, shrugged, and slid open the paper screen.

[deathrattling.livejournal.com]

As soon as the door slid open, an inhuman yowl rent the air -- something that might have been feline in nature if not for the loudness of it. A dark animal-shaped blur leapt forth, passing between them with a touch that snarled over cloth and skin like tangled, water-drenched hair, and landed behind them, the sound never stopping. As it hit the ground it resolved briefly into visibility: not a cat but a human boy, about seven or eight. Completely nude and ghostly pale in a way that caught an invisible light-source, he turned his head toward them to with a mouth gaped open to reveal nothing but blackness inside.

And then with the next blink he was gone, leaving behind a ringing that seemed to reside in the ears and yet echo around the room. As it bounced back from the walls, the darkness receded.

But the room it revealed was not the Sun Room: rather, a much smaller, domestic-sized room, with whitewashed walls and a ceiling made of a dark wood panel. A single window was embedded in the wall, but the light it let in was of a sickly grey quality, casting the room in sombre shadows.

Behind the doors they had opened was a standard storage closet with a few boxes stashed in the corner -- the only feature out of place was a trapdoor above that looked as if it would lead into attic crawlspace. Masking tape had been liberally plastered around the edges of it, as if shutting something in, and should they attempt to peel it off they would find it a stubbornly and unusually sticky task.

And indeed, as soon as the rest of the room had fully come into being, there came from the attic a loud thump.

[[From this point on, they will be able to hear the goings-on in the Wally thread, but they won't be able to get all the tape off until threadmerge proper. :|b Also, nobody saw me had to repost this three times.]]

[deathandgin]

Rick's response to that was automatic, snapping his head as he asked, "What the hell are you -" before realizing that, yeah, the darkness was a hell of a lot more palpable than a simple absence (total goddamn absence, thank you) should make it. He put his hand on the paper door thing just so he had some kind of idea of where he was just in case his body decided to lose balance without any kind of guiding light to stare at.

This is what you get, a little voice told him. That little voice had been speaking up a hell of a lot more in the last two years than it ever had before. Traveling with a vampire.

His personal Jiminy Cricket was very welcome to shut up now.

Alaric was used to crap jumping out of him from his stints at hunting, so he didn't scream so much as have his heart snap into a startled run when he heard the - the cat. It was also the reason his finger snapped back to the switch on the light and nearly blinded him. Regardless of whatever Damon had wanted, he was not walking around in an insane asylum without a flashlight. Every Friday the 13th movie he'd seen warned against it.

Not that flashlights had really, uh. Ever saved anyone's life. Crap.

Of course, that didn't really stop anything. The howling went on and Rick knew, before he'd even switched the light back on, that something had brushed past them, loud and wet and god, if he ended up dying again tonight he was going to be so pissed.

When he could focus on freaking anything, his poor human eyes could see that Damon was flat-out wrong. There weren't couches here, or huge windows in the ceiling, or anything that said hey, you're still in the asylum. This was a house. A very. Not American house, if he had any idea about architecture. Jesus, this place would give Tanizaki a hard-on.

"Yeah, well. I think it's safe to say this isn't the sun room." If only he had the voice to sound smug, with his heart still pitter-pattering against his chest.

The last thump made him jump. Just a little salt in the wound. There was something underneath the noise, a sound that made it obvious there wasn't silence in the darkness - the darkness that had creeped away from them, letting light reflect more prominently off every surface. It sounded like gurgles or something, so maybe it was that... cat. Thing. Whatever it was, it made his spine turn cold and Alaric didn't want to try to focus to pick up what it really might be.

What the hell was going on?

[saviored]

Christ.

He spun around, hand still on the door. Felt like he'd just been pounced on by a drowned cat (and what the hell was that noise?), but that wasn't what materialized before them. He stared, one eyebrow arching slightly as Casper split in a heartbeat. Couldn't have said hi?

Expression questioning, he looked briefly at Alaric, then back. It might've vanished, but he knew better than to assume it was gone. Solid looking thing for a supposed spirit, though. Even Emily had to hitch a witch to get around.

Oh, and second bullet point—what the hell happened to the room? A fact Rick helpfully observed right on cue.

"Try 'isn't the institute.'" Paper screen doors: yeah, not exactly asylum chic.

Damon circled around the newly renovated room, curious and cautious all at once. They'd gone inside the sun room. He had no doubt in that regard. Either they'd physically relocated, which was impossible (probably), or someone was screwing around inside their heads, which was...vaguely more possible.

His gaze landed on the window. Forget the weird hazy light; why was there light in the first place? Last he checked, the sun had set barely a couple of hours ago.

Ugh. You know, they didn't have time for this. If he didn't eat tonight...

The distinct thump of a body hitting the floor snapped his attention elsewhere. Muted, coming from above. Whatever this room was, there was an upstairs. He followed the sound—wet, muffled; reminded him of someone choking on their blood—past the screen door and. There they were. Attic, with a door decorated by someone who'd raided the tape section of the local Home Depot.

Even as he peered up at it, Damon stood neatly out of range in case anything fell through. Frankly, he'd rather figure a way out, but the lack of brightly lit Exit signs or even any doors really put a kink in that plan. So if they were gonna be trapped, he'd like to know what was trapped in here with them.

Now, what were the chances of the teacher feeling the same way?

[deathandgin]

And you'd think the guy could understand sarcasm after - well. A lot of years. He was still pretty vague on the specifics, which was fine in the long run.

Alaric's flashlight and his gaze turned up at the trap door, wishing for that neon sign again. Instead of announcing the presence of the sun room, this one would be glowing and blowing trumpets as it blinked DO NOT OPEN THIS DOOR. YOU WILL REGRET IT AND/OR DIE. It was all the nice b-movie tropes rolled into one. Random teleportation (or vivid hallucinations?) into a foreign home that didn't pay electricity bills and believed that attics were corrupted enough on their own to require masking tape across every damn edge of the thing. If that wasn't a warning enough in and of itself, he wasn't sure what was.

The obvious warning labels were all very nice and all, but for the first time Alaric looked behind him to realize... well, all of the sun room was gone. Including the doors. Which left them with one window, one room, and a trap door, all of which limited his options sorely.

After a moment of strict indecision despite that, the teacher sighed and pressed closer into the storage closet, reaching up with the aid of a few unsteady boxes and the stretch in his toes to begin pulling at the tape with the flashlight under one arm. It was stuck fast, and it only took a moment for his hands to be sticky as well -

And wet. That was -

"Please tell me that is not blood." He brought his hand down to the light, red and cold and part of the reason he was sticky. "Great."

[saviored]

Since Rick seemed willing to get a face full of what was up there (hey, he was the one with an unlimited supply of lives here out of the two of them), Damon just stood back and let him do it as he kept an eye out for anything sneaking up behind them—until the scent of fresh blood hit him, accompanied by more muted screaming.

His attention snapped towards Rick instinctively (who really should know better than to slice himself open while next to a hungry vampire), but of course it wasn't him.

He looked up at the door, then back at Alaric. His eyes hovered briefly around Alaric's throat before he shooed the teacher off the boxes so he could hop on. "Tip: wipe your hand," he said casually. "It's human." He picked at the edges of the tape where Rick had been messing with it, testing it. "And I haven't had dinner."

Sometimes, he believed in fair warnings.

The blood wasn't strong enough for there to be much, meaning if what was up there was dead or dying, they weren't accomplishing that goal by bleeding out. They were probably just right over the door, then, for the blood to be able to make its way through the cracks.

Granted, he was operating under the assumption that actual logic applied. Considering he and Rick been teleported into another location entirely...

He pounded the heel of his hand against the door, light at first, then a little harder. The sound was dull, hollow, but the wood felt sturdy. Okay, but that damn tape was krazy glued on. Or maybe someone had heated Stefan's hair gel to it. Either way, pulling it off was painfully slow and not worth his time. Besides, whoever sent them here obviously wanted them to pull the tape off. He'd been willing to play along until they made the task more complicated than it needed to be.

"Screw it."

He got off the boxes. The blood was becoming harder and harder to ignore. Not as bad as when the blonde had bled on him that night, but it was getting there. He'd never had the same trouble resisting the urge to snap like Stefan had a tendency to snap, but that was because he hadn't spent decades on decades being a recluse and denying himself a good hunt. Here, he was neither hunting nor feeding regularly. It was becoming an issue.

Well aware Rick was watching, Damon eyed the blood on his thumb with idle interest and put it between his lips. Mm. He flashed Alaric a smile. "Still interested in exploring the attic where someone's clearly getting torn limb from limb?"

Oh, wait. Was he supposed to care that this was happening to some unfortunate soul up there? Oops.

[deathandgin]

Knowing it was human wasn't exactly improving the situation. In fact, while he had a brief moment of human disgust, it only made him want to tear through the tape faster. The blood was coming from someone, and if those screams were any indication, it wasn't going well for them. There wasn't a lot of blood that he could see, but it was more than enough to be worried. The rate of leaking wasn't exactly a good indication, anyway. With how tight the door was taped, it could just be taking time for it to leak around the wood.

Alaric only moved out of the way for Damon for two reasons: 1) well, blood. Vampire. Easy equation there. And 2) there was still a chance the vampire was a bit stronger than him still. He didn't have the sense of urgency Rick had, of course, but he'd want to get through the trap door for his own desires.

Unfortunately, he didn't seem to get very far himself. Alaric had wiped the blood off on his pants, though it didn't help very much. Besides, Damon would still smell it. He always would.

Ugh. The teacher didn't hide his disgust at that particular gesture, especially since he knew it was deliberate. It was a lot harder to pretend Damon was just sipping on thick wine when it wasn't in a tumbler. Not that he was stupid. He didn't ignore that part of Damon. It was just easier to deal with when he didn't have to be a witness to the whole blood drinking thing. Damon was also flamboyant about it, trying to shove it in his face.

It worked. He was annoyed and confused and wanted to get out of this damn room and actually help someone for the first time in a long time. He wouldn't have been above pushing the vampire out of his way if he hadn't stepped back off the boxes. Whether or not it was working, he was going to keep working on the tape. If only they'd gotten the knives before this -

"You know the answer. You can stay here if you're just going to end up making it worse."

[deathrattling.livejournal.com]

[[Wally is in the house your faces!! (from the thread above)]]

The tape stuck stubbornly despite the efforts of both man and vampire, the blood seeping through it first cold, then abruptly warmer. Fresher. The sounds from above grew clearer and sharper, as if a thick veil were being drawn away from between them --

And then finally the tape in Alaric's hands shredded apart and the wood of the trapdoor itself splintered with impact, Wally's body hitting it as Kayako's hands still buried in his mouth yanked him down by the jaw. The man smashed through the flimsy wood headfirst, body contorted by forces invisible to Alaric or Damon despite the lock of her eyes on his for a long moment.

But as he thudded into the boxes below the scene changed, and the physical manifestation of her broken body had melded away into the oppression of rage complicating the air in the room below. The light wavered, darkening as if the sun was setting behind thick clouds, and the hair that had been wrapped around Wally until mere moments ago had disappeared -- replaced instead by thick plastic sheeting, liberally spattered with blood and obstructing his movement. Another blink, and Wally would see her no longer, her death-pale face replaced with the occupants of the grey-lit room.

[scarletspeedstr.livejournal.com]

The second scream the woman tore from him was no less pained, for all that his jaw was dislocated and not broken, and for a wild moment, Wally wondered if she planned to break every bone one by one while he was bound and powerless to do anything to stop her. His thoughts were so messed up by the pain and shock that at first he thought the splintering sound was something else being done to him, his body not yet recovered enough to feel it, but then he was falling and it must have been the trapdoor or the ceiling itself that broke underneath him because he slammed into something solid a second later.

The impact jolted through him, pain like knives in his arm and jaw from it, and Wally thought he might have blacked out for a couple of seconds because the horrifying corpse-like woman was gone and he was staring up at the hole he'd fallen through.

But something was still holding him still and there was something nearby, and Wally was really in absolutely no condition to try fighting anything or anyone. He had to get free and away from here, he decided frantically, kicking out at whatever was wound around his body as tightly as the hair had been, before the adrenaline burst the fall had supplied wore off and he fainted.

[saviored]

Having successfully pissed off Rick (he was so easy sometimes. All of the time), Damon let it go with a quirk of his lips. He took the flashlight as Alaric hopped back onto the makeshift box stool. Might as well give the teacher both of his hands if they were gonna do this at all. Besides:

"That falls and breaks, you're on your own," he said pointedly. He wasn't about to play vampire guide dog to the visually challenged just because Rick apparently suffered from a deficiency when it came to keeping useful objects in his hand.

His fingers drummed against the flashlight as he stepped back and shined it at the attic door. The bloodstain was spreading, noticeably, getting thicker and darker, the metallic smell sharper. Yeah, probably for the best Alaric was the one up there. It was distracting, a constant tug on his attention. Heat rushed behind his eyes. He didn't push it aside right away (why should he?), instead letting himself just feel it for a moment or two. He ran his tongue along his teeth and glanced over his shoulder into the room. Still empty? Still empty.

The attic, on the other hand....Seriously, what the hell was up there?

"Don't lie, you love it when things screw up so you can play the badass." He switched the flashlight to his left hand. "I would never deny you th—"

He heard the crack and the straining tape a split second before the entire damn thing collapsed in. On top of Alaric, no less. Was he gonna break own his neck again? Because that would be the ultimate cherry on top. And was all that shit—wait, was that hair or—no, he was seeing things now. Figured. Where did—?

He spun on his heel, searching the area for any hint of a remaining threat, but there was nothing and it was rapidly getting darker again. He threw up a hand in exasperation. It wasn't until he turned his attention to all the blood that the face on the body clicked, even distorted by the serial killer approved plastic.

"I know this guy." He cocked his head. That blood, not all of it was human or fresh. Some of it was...different. Decidedly unappetizing, too, which helped a little in suppressing his lurking need to take a bite. The thought that he was a hunter, not a damn scavenger took care of the rest.

[deathandgin]

There wasn't much preparation to be done while he was looking up in time to see the trap door splinter right above his head, so he took the brunt of the force of the - whatever's fall with his back slamming against the floor after he made a surprised yelp. It was no surprise that a hot splash of pain spasmed out of his spine; the real surprise that he hadn't magically died upon impact this time. Poisoned food or not, he wasn't really holding any high standards for what his luck normally was.

It also didn't help that the thing that had landed on him was heavy as hell and managed to nearly kick him in the face. Add a moment of complete disorientation, the pain, and Damon's complete inability to be helpful whenever it counted - and that left a thirty something teacher stuck on the floor until the pain had subsided enough he could drag himself out from under the -

Body. Oh, shit.

It took a few grunts of annoyance to untangle himself, but Alaric was as quick about it as he could manage. He was ignoring the blood, considering what mattered now was that someone was trapped in that plastic and they had stopped moving. (Suffocation? Pain? Already dead? Shit, shit, shit.)

"This is a total mess," he said, just for something to say. For the second time he wished for a knife as he took a position next to the - guy? - and began pulling at the plastic. Damon's lack of reaction wasn't exactly a surprise, and it was irrelevant whether he knew him or not. Unlike the tape, the plastic wasn't so tightly wound and it came apart as long as he attacked it with enough tenacity. Alaric only looked up from his work once, just to make sure there wasn't anything too damn enticing about all the blood for Damon.

And because he was annoyed that only one of them actually cared about the bleeding body, but what could he really expect? "Look, at least drop the damn light and help for a second before he suffocates!"

[deathrattling.livejournal.com]

As the patients remained caught up in the mystery of what their eyes read in front of them, was that the ceiling above them was slowly unravelling: the darkness of the room resuming the completeness of night as the rectangle of light on the floor blinked shut, leaving the place in a greyness that was rapidly turning black. Even as Wally and Alaric struggled against the plastic the depth of the shadow changed, plain ceiling coming to life in a woven mass of hair.

The window, too, spun apart like torn cloth, wood grain rent into splinters that in turn lengthened and softened into more hair. What little light remained vanished entirely with a thick sweep of hair across the glass, blocking it from view and flooding the room with complete darkness even as the patients were finally able to remove the plastic from Wally's body.

But the ominous darkness heralded not the beginning of more terror but something rather more innocuous: the floor under their feet blurred into the carpet of the sun room again, shifting in a blink from bloodstained wood to comfortable pile. The black of the walls receded as if curtains were being drawn -- if those curtains were made entirely of hair -- and slowly revealed the Institute as they knew it. Moonlight swept through the room, illuminating chairs knocked over and crumpled bulletin board notes crumpled scattered throughout despite the lack of wind.

The coast was clear -- for now. Faint traces of the death-rattle sounded from the corners of the room, not yet moving closer, but doing nothing to reduce the heavy weight of anger still soaking the air.

[saviored]

Something was lingering, something he couldn't see or hear, and the fact that Damon couldn't identify it was driving him crazy. And wait.

What? No. Forget it. They were not carting someone around for the night. If the guy wasn't dead already, then he would be soon. Damon saw no reason why they should be wasting their time and more than that, if he was attracted by the blood, plenty of other things would be, too. The list of people he'd lend a hand to keep in one piece extended as far as Rick and no further.

On the other side of the equation, Alaric would probably have to be physically pried away, it'd be a whole big thing, and in the end, faster if he went along. Or he could just, you know, leave Rick behind to play good Samaritan to his heart's content until something came along and ripped it out.

Oh, for Christ's sake.

He rolled his eyes and bent down, pulling at the plastic (what the hell was Wally wearing?) as he felt blood coat his fingers. Total mess was an understatement. No need for a gentle touch. His main concern was getting the guy untangled so they could get out and he could put some distance between all this blood. Whatever. It wasn't as if Wally could feel anything. Here was a tip: if you were going to rescue someone, do it when they were passed out. Less hassle all around.

Barely half a minute in, the air shifted. Damon glanced over his shoulder. What, this again?

Never mind. He turned back to what he was doing, keeping an eye out for anything more than another scenery swap. However the hell it was happening. He didn't know and he couldn't care less; they were back in the Sun Room and that was all that mattered. The rest could wait.

Eventually, the plastic gave way completely. Yeah, that didn't take more time than they had.

He pushed to his feet, flashlight in hand. Look, normally he'd be fine with hauling the guy himself, but his leg could only just handle his own weight right now and there was no way spending a single minute more up close and personal with that much fresh blood was gonna lead to anything good.

Alaric would understand, he was sure. If not, really wasn't his problem.

"Grab him and let's go."

[deathandgin]

Damn if he wasn't surprised that Damon did actually up and help - the history teacher wasn't stupid enough to think he knew Damon, but this one was... less predictable. Apparently a month's worth of time changed a lot. He was even smart enough to keep any kind of thanks to himself. Even if it wasn't exactly for his own benefit, he sure appreciated some sort of stability when the damn room decided to transform. He glanced up periodically from his work to spy what looked like hair sliding across the window before it blacked it out completely, eventually melting away to the Sun Room's large, lit windows. The plastic fell completely from the man's body once moonlight streamed into the room again.

All right. Time to get the hell out of dodge.

Alaric simply nodded at the vampire's order, hooking wet, slippery hands under the guy's arms. Good thing he's unconscious. This was going to hurt like hell considering what looked like a broken arm. He didn't have a lick of medical training, but moving someone after that catastrophe probably was the worst possible thing to do. Whoever this guy was... was going to regret waking up. (If he did. Alaric really hoped he did.) Partly because a very small, detached part of him was curious about the suit. Seriously?

Priorities, Rick.

[To here.]