Let the creepy tour begin...
Tradewinds 09: The Building is Hungry!http://www.absolutechaos.net/viewstory.php?sid=10567Summary: Wherein our intrepid adventurers face unknown perils as they challenge the twisted depths of the Harken Building…
Categories: Original Fiction
Characters: None
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Supernatural
Rated: R
Warnings: Death, Graphic Violence, Violence
Series: Tradewinds
Challenges: None
Published: 05/25/11
excerpt, from the Chapter I:
…And on that note, Justin Black entered the Harken Building, as well.
Max and Shades simply stood there.
Neither was really sure what to say. Shades was once again struck by how things were done in the Sixth Dimension. The sign above that door, along with everything they had heard so far, gave it all the appearance of some ominous tourist attraction. He had a bad feeling about this, and he could tell Bandit seconded the motion. Even Max seemed perturbed.
The numbers kept marching on Shades’ watch display, but he was no longer certain they meant much here. He suspected that days were not necessarily twenty-four hours in this world, and before long, his watch reading would be utterly irrelevant to what time of day it really was. Assuming it wasn’t already. Five, ten minutes, and he watched Max keep glancing from the door to the alley where the words The Building is hungry! were slashed on the wall, before either spoke.
Shades tried to act nonchalant, but there was something about this place that was getting to him more and more by the minute.
“So, do you think we should go in there and help ’em out?” Shades finally asked. He was trying to be a smartass, lighten things up, but somehow it just didn’t quite come off right.
“Yes,” Max replied, and Shades was taken aback at how serious his friend sounded. While they stood outside, the words of that graffito-tag, which had bothered him since he first laid eyes on them, finally rang a bell. From the start, he had a gut feeling he should know this place, and it finally came to him. “Trust me, they’re gonna need our help.”
“What do you know about this?”
“Just Outlanders’ stories,” was Max’s opaque reply.
As they stood there, Max recalled part of a tale he wasn’t meant to hear. His parents seldom spoke of this incident, but the longer he repeated those words in his head, the more certain he was this was the very place they had spoken of. It was an account he had found more than a trifle unsettling when he overheard it as a child. So much so, he had largely managed to bury it in the back of his memory.
Only to be remembered now as he stood before this place.
Both he and Shades seemed to realize that there wasn’t much of anything else to be said about it, so they stepped up to the door. Though Shades was more concerned than ever, he could see Max’s growing resolve to help his friend, and remembered that not long ago he himself had said that any friend of Max’s was a friend of his. Even if he was being an asshole. Bandit gave them a look that seemed to say You guys are nuts, followed by a look of exasperated resignation, then followed.
And the three of them entered the building…
Enter ye the Spooky Door...