It yawned at him from across the room like a gaping mouth, the darkness inside complete as if a sheet of midnight had been hung just inside the doorway. The horrible, immovable door was open. Lance staggered back, feeling returning to his numb legs. He stared at the perfect darkness of the room until it seemed to swirl and move. Or had it actually moved? He remembered the dark shifting through the keyhole on the tour of the house, the blackness stirring like dust motes as something moved through them.
The door creaked open another inch, reminding Lance of a flytrap widening its jaws as an unsuspecting insect hovered nearby. He felt it then. The divide before him, like a swooning height not to be looked down upon but felt in its immeasurable depth.
He could walk away now. Leave the house, his belongings, his story and drive into the night. He might never write again. He knew the writer’s block would return the moment he left the drive of the house, and would continue to thicken as the miles fell away behind him. He would never write again. The thought seemed too large to fit in his mind. But he would be safe from whatever presence resided here.
He hesitated only a split second before he crossed the distance to the doorway.
Cool air that held a faint musky odor flowed from it, like a mushroom that had sat inside a plastic bag too long. Lance peered into the room, trying to discern if anything waited beyond the line of light. His body thrummed with adrenaline, making his hand shake as he cautiously reached inside the doorway and felt for a light switch on the wall. He expected something cold and wet to grasp his hand, and that’s when he would lose his mind. The fright would be too much for him to bear and his circuits would simply overload. Instead, his hand slid along the smooth wall without meeting any switches or other hindrances.
He pulled his hand back and dropped it to his side. The thought of just stepping into the room to look for a light crossed his mind, and he flung it away in revulsion. He turned from the doorway and walked to the stairs, throwing a look over his shoulder every few steps.
It took him only a few seconds to bound up the stairs to his room, where the shotgun lay. He held it up and flicked the flashlight on. A satisfying jet of white light erupted from the end, and Lance walked back down to the room, prodding at the darkness with the beam.
The room wasn’t deep, no more than ten feet from the doorway to the far wall, which looked to be unfinished stone. As he neared the threshold, Lance shone the light into the crack where the door hinged into the room. Nothing peered back at him from the crevice. He had almost stepped into the room when he stopped. He turned and grabbed a nearby box of books that he hadn’t had the chance to unpack yet. Placing the box directly in the doorway like a wedge, Lance stepped around it and began to sweep the room with the light.
The room ran farther down the edge of the house than he expected, almost twenty feet. An object at the far end grabbed his attention, and his finger tightened on the trigger. When he looked closer, he realized that the form was a chair of sorts. As he approached, swinging the gun and light in all directions to assure he was truly alone, the chair began to take on detail. It looked to be made out of stainless steel. Its shape resembled a fat capital H with its bottom filled in. It had no back for a seated person to rest against, only the two flat armrests. Its bottom was bolted in place, heavy lags disappearing into the wood floor. Two steel shackles were attached to the front of the base, their mouths open, awaiting a meal. Lance shone the light upon the armrests and saw another two shackles bolted there.
“What the fuck?” he whispered. He stepped to the back of the chair, sidling around it, his face held in a wrinkled grimace. There were no other features in the room save the chair. The walls as well as the floors were bare. He scanned the ceiling and confirmed that there were no light fixtures.