Henry Cheng (livetotell) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-10-05 08:37:00 |
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But come to think about it, he wasn’t entirely sure how he had gotten here in the first place. There had been the crunch under his hiking boots, Henry’s fingers entwined in his own, Blue swearing at them as she struggled to keep up. There had been laughter, teasing, fond looks.
Now there was silence. Mostly silence, as the hum of the hotel lights was faint above him. It was distracting him away from judging the ugly 80s decor, as he walked forward.
“Jane? Henry--” His voice, which he was sure was coming out of his throat, seemed to die off and go nowhere, the words just falling flat instead of echoing throughout the long corridor in front of him.
Gansey didn’t know what to make of this. With a confused little noise, he fumbled around in his pocket for his phone, and pulled it out. He dialed Blue’s number first.
Nothing. No answer.
Henry’s, the same.
He tried Adam next, straight to voicemail. The same with Noah.
Ronan was his last ditch effort, his fingers had been shaking by the time he’d gotten to Adam’s name, and he knew that Ronan was both the least and most likely to pickup. He hated his phone, but he answered Gansey.
Nothing.
“Don’t panic, Gansey.” Talking to one’s self might’ve been a sign of insanity, but that had never stopped him before. “There’s likely just no service. Perhaps it’s a puzzle.” A puzzle or a game, he could handle.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, the vision blurred beyond the rim of his glasses, so he turned sharply, just in time to see Blue and Henry walk through a door, laughing with one another. “Guys--”
They ignored him, and then were out of sight. He could still hear laughter on the other side, and it sent a pang of hurt through his heart, but he pushed past it and brought a hand to the doorknob.
Locked.
His polite, brief knock went ignored.
Just as he took a step back, there was a blur of black and he saw Ronan, walking away from him. “Ro-” His tall friend’s long strides were catching up to Adam, at the end of the hallway, the two grinning at each other as they started talking. Gansey let out a sigh of relief, and struggled to catch up. “Thank goodness, I thought--”
As if he wasn’t there, they left through the door behind Adam, hand in hand.
He stopped, giving himself a moment to square his shoulders, despite the tears pricking behind his eyes. A puzzle. It was just a puzzle.
Determined to figure it out, he reached the door they had gone through to just try it.
Nothing, of course. Gansey let out a noise of frustration, and turned back around, attempting to make sense of the corridor. Perhaps it was in a pattern, each ugly door corresponding with something. Maybe he just had to find the right door, and--
Distantly, he realized the overhead light humming had gotten louder.
Gansey froze in place, the sound that assaulted his ears was one he’d heard before, one he hilariously heard daily, either in a nightmare or from Henry’s pocket.
Maybe, just maybe, it was Robobee. Or this was a dream after all.
Surely he hadn’t just been teleported to a strange hotel that was filled with bees.
His hand was shaking when he tried the door again, just in case. Locked.
Next one, locked. Every single door after that, locked. Behind one, he could hear laughter. Behind another, what sounded like Blue ranting-- A sound he loved every other day of the year. He longed for it now, wanting that piece of comfort and terror to be the real fear he felt, not this sense of loneliness. Abandonment.
He slumped against the ugly wallpaper at his shoulder, feeling defeated. He knew they would all be fine without him, why wouldn’t they be? They still all had each other, and without him pulling them into his orbit, their lives could have gone a completely different route.
A better route.
Minor self doubt was normal for Gansey’s brain, it came with the anxiety and the everyday fears, but this was a whole new beast, one that almost made him collapse in fear. But he couldn’t seem to pull himself out of it, the tears now flowing freely down his face as he gave up and waited for someone to come for him.
No one did, but the buzzing in the background got louder, as if it was going to round a corner and there would just be a swarm of bees. When it got to be too much, too overwhelming, his feet finally moved, broken free of their invisible concrete holdings.
No one is coming for you. It was a harsh reminder, but it had Gansey’s heart in his throat as he started running, back the way he came. On a normal day, he was smart and fast, but filled with fear and doubt, he couldn’t help but look back, some part of him hoping to see any of them, there, ready to fight for him. Brandishing an epi-pen that was bound to be useless, but it was something.
It was better than the nothing he saw. No friends, no loved ones. Just a moving black cloud, swarming, getting louder.
He tripped and stumbled out of the building, his hands balled into fists as his knees hit the ground outside of the hotel.
“Jesus-- Fuck.” He could barely get the words out as he gulped in the air, desperately trying to catch his breath after it felt like the hotel had just taken a little part of him with it.
Henry hadn’t come into this house alone either.
He felt like he’d been in the middle of a joke - something immature that he hoped would make Gansey blush and Blue cackle - and then he was stepping through the lobby doors into a hotel with no one else in sight. The decor was retro and familiar in an eerie way. But everything else about his surroundings felt unsettlingly foreign. Like stepping into someone else’s dream.
Someone else’s dream in the seventies anyway. God, that green swirly carpet was murder. Henry spun around, frowning.
“Gansey? Blue?” No nicknames, no teasing tone. He could sense the wrongness here, even if he wasn’t even a little bit psychic. He felt pulled down a hallway and up a flight of stairs.
Henry!
The voice sounded like Blue; it sounded like Blue afraid. Henry rushed down the hallway and it grew darker around him. The hall seemed to be getting smaller but that was ridiculous.
A door at the end of the hall was open.
Henry, hurry!
“Ganseyman, you know I love an adventure with you but I am not having a good time,” Henry called out, trying to keep his heartbeat from racing. Trying to keep the supernatural sense of dread from pinning his feet to the floor. He hurried into the open room.
There was no one there. But there was a closet with its door open and only darkness inside. The bedroom door slammed shut behind and all light in the room narrowed into a spotlight on that open closet door.
It wasn’t the trunk of a car, but God it felt close. Henry turned to try and open the door but it didn’t budge. When a scream echoed from the closet, his heart seemed to stop. He gasped out a few words as he banged on the door.
“Okay, okay! I’ve seen this movie! The asian kid definitely bites it! Let me out of here!” The darkness of the small closet seemed to reach out and pull at him, and any remaining instinct to find Gansey and Blue was swallowed up with anxiety and terror. He jerked so hard at the door that the wood cracked as it snapped open and he tripped out into the hallway.
Scrambling to his feet, Henry bolted for the exit. He’d look for help. He’d get someone! He’d get a lot of someones!
He ran out the door in a cold sweat, the image of a terrible little closet full of darkness in his mind’s eye.