The day dawned. Bright and cold. Not the sort of cold that leaves your muscles trembling. It was the sort of cold that leaves you feeling empty. Anxious spiders spun their lacy webs in the honeycomb of your bones.

Something is watching you.

It doesn’t want you here.

This is its place and you’re in it.

Get out now before it kills you.

Yet there is nothing there is there?

An empty room yawns back at you, shrugging in confusion. The room knows. Its dark miasma leeching into the cracks in the walls and soaking into the worn rickety boards. Venomous tongues lap greedily at the doorstep, trying to feed on the innocent air that is just out of reach.

You sensed it. They didn’t.

A single step further and you would be at its heart, the pulsing source of the whirling negativity. Your ears flooded with a thundering, pounding, thumping whoosh of blood, it drowned out their words. Through the blinding heavy mist that clouded your vision you saw them stride in slow-motion through that door. They wouldn’t walk out again. Not in the way you knew them, their experience in that room would change them.

Change them for the worse.

Swallowing hard, you forced down the guilt lodged in your throat like a toffee penny, would you be responsible for what happened to them? That’s when realisation raised its weary head, not once had they spoken to you let alone physically touched you. Not even a brushing of your shoulders as you turned the corner in synchronicity.

Their liquid ink waterfall reflected the light as the strands swished unnaturally, unperturbed by the humming breeze. A shy crisp nightgown hung awkwardly from their slender shoulders, not really sure how to conform to the soft curves of a human body. You had felt yourself pinned to the wall by their glowering gaze, soulless and seething. It shouldn’t be possible for a living being to hold such withering intent, everything made sense.

They weren’t living.

They weren’t even human.

They were woven from all the demonic intent that lingered in the shadows.

Shadows.

Now you saw the shadows, reaching out asking to be understood.

Rotating your head clockwise you gazed down and saw your own shadow stretching out behind you. Even you had a dark side, would you be willing to nurture it and let it consume you? A whispering breath tickled your neck, stealing your attention from the what-ifs and into the present moment.

They didn’t have a shadow.

Sifting through the dusty motes you tried to catch a glimpse of them through the streaming golden light.

Nothing.

No one.

“Is it me you’re looking for?” A laugh of sparkling champagne wormed into your finely tuned shells. Spinning around, your eyes glazed over in dizzied confusion unable to focus… “Not there try again.” Once more you chased the voice.

Always searching and never finding.

A deadly game.

One that you were losing.

Then you saw them, her, it, the creature. Standing in the shadow of the unlit stairs, their cascading mane dripped forward partially shrouding their pale complexion. Under hooded lashes they held your stare; you saw them, and they saw through you. Creeping upwards, following the sharp contour of their cheeks, their lips stretched out. Cracking their innocent façade. Deliberately, they raised a skeletal arm, extended a single bony digit. Curling it up carefully, an unfurling fern in reverse, they beckoned you.

Day turned to night.

Trapped under the rafters of hell.

You felt yourself suffocating.

Drowning in poison.

Floundering mesmerised and enraptured.

A single step.

You felt it.

Your left foot raised just a whisker off the stained boards. Extended and lowered itself once more.

Not wanting to be forgotten your right foot hurried to join its companion.

Don’t be mistaken for the wisdom that you lost. You lost it the moment you stepped over the threshold. Into the draughty, isolated shell of a building that once thrived. Now you were its prisoner and you had lost your chance to escape its misery. You gawked too long, you strode too far, you out stayed your welcome.

Or had you?

Soon, too soon, you reached the smirking figure. They knew something; something they knew. Your eyelids bowed, flickered, and rose waiting for their maestro to command once more. “Down,” the word took flight, weightless and hollow.

Pivoting robotically, you faced the gaping canyon. Once uninviting the drop had grown appealing, promises curled through the railings, hope slid down the banister and the empty voice compelled.

How strange it seemed to dream when you were wide awake.

Let go.

Let go of all you know... knew.

It is worthless now, where you’re going you need to be uninhabited.

Again, you strode, only this time your foot never connected to the solidity that was the ground. Instead, it found the silent breath of the emptiness; momentarily buoyant and then it hurled you forward. As if repulsed by your tainted soul. Twisting elegantly like a leaf in a storm you rushed forward eager to greet the evening star.

It didn’t hurt the landing.

You did not hear the sickening crunch of bones crumpling.

Or the squelch of tender flesh being pulverised.

You did not get to witness your organs being laid bare.

Or the gurgling rush of the crimson flood.

You did not get to smell the contents of your perforated gut.

Or the rich metallic sting of life fleeing a shattered shell.

What you did see were a crowd, shuffling closer… closer.

“We’ve been expecting you.”

Came rough rolling syllables.

“Welcome to the Dead Club.”

Came a honey smooth tone.

For that is where you went, and no one would know. No one would find you. Not here in these echoing halls, or callous walls that leaned, or at the bottom of the missing servant stairs. No one would remember of your existence nor would they weep strings of smoky pearl and sparkling crystal. They wouldn’t know…