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It was the seventh of April when we were beset upon. Giant fleshy tendrils, with the souls of the unremembered still within. It came from somewhere underground, though none of the poor saps sent to investigate ever found its true origin. Billions were lost during the first week, though none seem to truly remember them except for me. Our active destruction has become but a normality. Today, I woke up to a scraping noise coming from my floorboards. I have less time than I thought. I must write, or none will realise the true dangers we are facing. The threat is only visible or noticeable to those whose minds can recognize both worlds. Not many have escaped the Other World without fully accepting it as their home, and vice versa. Many of the others simply died. Those who are left won't leave; who would want to come to us now? Its roots have burrowed through the world, skewering and absorbing its inhabitants. Your mind will probably tell you that you have always been alone, that Riverside has always been a ghost town. This is a lie. Everyone is dead; that is why the world is so empty. If you find this, the Riverdale Warehouse has an entrance to the Backrooms. You must inform everyone, if the warehouse is even safe anymore. Your friends, your family, even, have been pulled out of the very fabric of reality by this entity, and consumed. As I write this, I have packed up and set off through the flesh and corpses. The creature looms above us all; as I watch it, I wonder if those who cannot see it are concerned about the eclipse. I hope to find a safehouse at a neighboring town. If you are reading this right now, though, I didn't make it.
You pocket the note. You came to Riverdale because of its purported hauntedness; however, something more seems to be going on here. Everything seems to have been abandoned mid-day. Meals rot inside each house, uneaten. None know what truly happened. You sit, pondering the note. On one hand, it seems unplausible. On the other hand, it would explain why you and virtually every other child you knew growing up were orphans, why you kept finding random belongings with you, and why this town seems to have entirely stopped in the middle of the day. After a moment, you make up your mind and begin to walk.
The warehouse is utterly dilapidated. Overgrown plants stretch around it,the brickwork is falling apart in certain areas as if hit with a sledgehammer, and the door has been long gone. A chill runs down your body as you step inside of the warehouse, with the lone tapping of your feet on the ground becoming sharper. Sunlight seems to hesitate entering the warehouse, as it seems to dim its beaming past the roof. One section of the wall is noticeably darker than the others, as if light ends before contacting it. You approach the wall, and then stop. Your vision becomes blurry, your legs unsteady. A sound eerily similar to human screams becomes audible, as well as a light scraping noise coming from the other side of the warehouse. You take a step back towards the wall, and the scraping grows agitated and louder. It has now become an unmistakeable burrowing noise. You back up against the wall, and fall - directly through it.
You wake up in an old building, its wallpaper a sickening yellow. The carpet is stained with some sort of liquid, and smells of mildew. The buzzing of the lights immediately strikes you as an unbearable, and unrelenting. Seems like the kind of place that you'd go insane in. Normally, you'd simply curl up and die. However, you have to see what the note was talking about. You walk, and walk. The yellow rooms are unchanging, and seemingly infinite. The buzzing seems to grow louder and louder. You feel eyes on your back, and turn around. Nothing is there. Your throat is dry, and hunger pains intensify before dulling once again, coming with constant fatigue and nausea. Time starts to blur together, and you can no longer tell whether it's been minutes or days. The only indicator is the increasing soreness of your feet, and heaviness of your eyes. You attempt to reach an uneasy sleep, but the buzzing and the light won't let you. Death always seems just around the next corner, indicated by the occasional sound of growling or screaming from behind the walls, but it never comes. Your pain is the only independent variable of this place. You are entertaining the thought that you may be trapped here forever, when you notice the buzzing lights start to dim and the walls begin to darken once again, eventually turning to concrete. The hall expands and expands, until it resembles some kind of parking garage.
Relieved at the sudden change, you begin taking uncautious and heavy steps forward. Your footfalls against the concrete grow louder and louder, reverbating and echoing through the cavernous "garage". Your footsteps are soon answered, by a low snarling. Adrenaline surges through your veins as you begin to panic. You instinctively pick up a length of rebar (seemingly fallen from the ceiling) off of the ground with a loud clattering noise likely alerting whatever else lurks here, and also by instinct hide behind the nearest object: a pillar. A second later, you realize the pile of seemingly random abandoned furniture which would have granted better cover, but you have frozen up in the meantime. Emerging from the shadows is what seems to be a cross between a dog and a human child. The thing skitters towards your pillar, seeming to know your position. Before you can react, it lunges and latches onto your arm. Blood quickly wells up and begins to drip onto the floor. The sudden pain causes you to drop your rebar, and attempt to shake it off. However, it has a vice grip on your arm and you only succeed in tearing more flesh away. It claws at your chest, drawing more blood. You manage to lift its 60 pound body off of the ground, and strike at the back of its head desperately. The wound deepens, but the thing lets go. As it falls, you manage to grab its hind legs. Before it can react, you slam it into the concrete four times before it finally dies. You smash in its head with the rebar for good measure. As your heartbeat slows a bit and the adrenaline begins to wear off, you realise the severity of the wound. Your movement had made the bite much more severe than it was initially. A few human tooth-shaped puncture wounds, most likely infected already, torn into a much larger wound. You are losing a large amount of blood. You tear off a piece of your shirt and use it to staunch the flow, but the damage has been done. You are trapped in this hostile environment, with a most likely infected wound, and something more dangerous has probably caught the scent of your blood.
There is no time to waste. You begin moving once again, in search of something that could help you. People could survive this place, after all. There must be something that could help you. You gingerly walk with your back to the wall,hoping to see something helpful. As you search, you come upon a small cooler. Opening it, you find a package of 8 bottles labeled "Almond Water". Only looking at this label do you realize your thirst. The last time you drank was, from what you can tell, a long time ago, and you only brought a single bottle of water. This liquid is dubious, but it is the only potential option for survival. It smells of vanilla and rose water. As you drink the first bottle, an immense soothing feeling falls over your soul. The pain dullens, your aching throat stops, and your paranoia as you look towards the shadows is lessened. You almost feel as if this place is your home. You carefully remove your bandage and attempt to clean your wound with the water, and hope that it contains some form of alcohol. However, to your astonishment, your wound begins to knit itself up until there is no sign of the attack other than dried blood on your clothes. You rub it on your cuts, and they heal as well. With this sense of security, you finally allow yourself to fall asleep.
You wake up hungry, but alive and not sleep deprived or bleeding. Your eyes are adjusted to the shadows, and you can see more clearly. You take a sip of almond water, and the soothing feeling washes over you once again. Your current situation is safe, but your almond water won't last forever, nor will it continue to stave off the starvation slowly sapping your ability to continue. You feel that you should have taken that thing as food, but even if you could still find it predators will have claimed it already. You have no choice but to pick up your cooler and continue trudging along. As you walk along the seemingly infinite parking garage, you find something which is quite peculiar: A hallway. The walls, in contrast to the concrete, are stark white. Lining the walls are doors. The hallway is much too tight for you to feel comfortable in, but it's a change. You hesitantly step into the hall and try a door. It's locked. You try the next six doors in the hall, until one finally opens. Out from the door radiates a pure supernatural darkness, one which could be hiding anything. Your heart skips a beat.
You don't belong here.
You don't belong here.
You don't belong here
You don't belong here.
It's a trap.
You don't belong here.
The world grows blurry, and you just manage to keep yourself together. You see something with the corner of your eye. You swivel to meet it, and it disappears. You try, and fail, to regain your composure. You swivel, as a light down the hall goes out, or is it just your imagination? No sound of growling or footsteps can be heard. You steel yourself, and continue your search around. You hug the wall, and tentatively walk through the darkness, keeping your eye on the glimmer of light for a sense of direction. Suddenly, your leg hits something unseen and you fall with a loud noise. You freeze up, entirely unable to move for a few seconds. The noise remains unanswered. You slowly crouch down, and feel whatever you just fell onto. You hit a latch, and you feel whatever it is open. Reaching in, you find a cylindrical device. Pressing on it, light radiates off of it and illuminates the blank wall. You turn the flashlight downwards into the box, showing a few wrapped nutrient bars, a handgun with a magazine and a few clips of ammunition, and a bottle of almond water with something floating inside. Suddenly, you hear a flicker and buzz. You fumble with the magazine, and finally manage to load the gun and get the safety off in the dark after what feels like an eternity. You turn to face the threat, and a loud popping sound accompanies the lights going off.
Shakily, you get up and point the gun at the doorway, as if you can see anything. The darkness does not acknowledge your threat with any noise. You put the vital nutrient bars in your other hand in your pocket so you can hold the gun with two. You step over the box, and back yourself into a corner. A strange silence falls over your ears and you realize that the buzzing sound had never left until now. You can only pray you'll hear something coming before it kills you. Seconds pass. With your gun still quivering in the direction of the door, you dive for your flashlight. The noise probably alerted something, but you don't care anymore. In a panic, you stumble to your feet with the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other, and the nutrient bars still in your pocket. Almost tripping over yourself, you exit the room. Turning to your right, a pair of luminescent pupiless eyes above an unchanging, glowing, smile. You try to scream at it to stay back, but the words get caught in your throat. You unload 1, 2, 3 rounds at it. The eyes don't blink, the smile doesn't waver. You step back for a second. That's when the smile rushes at you. Out of instinct, you drop your flashlight and sprint in the opposite direction. You hear whatever mass is chasing you divert courses for your light as you reach the end of the hallway. Feeling the wall, you turn the corner and reach an indent in the wall. You curl up in a fetal position under the indent, ready to die. Death doesn't come. The thing must still be hunting you, waiting for you to come out. Why are you even here? Even if the note is right, you'd rather die a quick death in a familiar environment than slowly be hunted by whatever you can't even identify in this infinite hellhole. Eventually, you regain yourself enough to crouch with your handgun. You don't see the point in it if it can't even phase whatever's here, but remembering your encounter with whatever that dog thing was you know that some of what is here can bleed at the very least. That encounter reminds you of the "Almond water" you found earlier. You take out the bottle held in your belt, and take a swig. May as well die in comfort. As the familiar — yet otherworldly warm — feeling goes down your throat, your mind clears from the fog of panic.
You must have dropped your cooler of almond water at the room, but even with the calm induced by the almond water you still have no courage to step out through the darkness. You wait, as if inaction could help you in any way. After a few minutes, the lights begin flickering on. You don't give the lights any time to go back off. You run back down the hall to pick up the cooler, but are met with more closed doors. You open the same one, and are met instead with a hallway lined with pipes. You step inside, and double check behind you to find more hallway. Confused, you take a look around you. The hallway is dimly lit, with only the occasional fluorescent light. Occasionally, they crack, leaving entire sections in darkness. Their buzzing combines with the constant hissing of steam to create an even more unbearable noise. The hallways are caked in rust and grime, as though abandoned. Finally, the hallways are small - averaging around 4 feet in width, and hot enough to begin sapping your already lacking energy. You unwrap a bar, and bite into it, leaving the wrapper on the ground. You take another one and begin to eat it. The hissing covers up your noise, and you realize just how hungry you were. You hope to find a real meal soon, but at least these can stave off exhaustion and death for a while. Reluctant to proceed for fear of entering an even worse environment, you realize that you'll die if you stay. Behind you is an area with malfunctioning lights, and if you've learned one thing from your run-in's with death, it's to stay in the light.
Your march continues, as you begin to feel slightly more energized from the bars you ate. You realize that in your panic you didn't grab any clips, and you only have 12 rounds left. You hope it won't matter. You pass some doors, and put your ear to them. The first two you try are silent on the inside, but have hot handles. The last one you put your ear too, and hear scratching as if in reaction. You quickly leave the door without trying the handle. You begin to sweat, when you realize that the hall is heating up to an unbearable level. As you quicken your pace to try to find another door, pressurized steam erupts from one of the pipes and more ruptures begin to form as you scream in pain. Bursting into a full-on sprint, an unmuffled scratching noise can be heard from back down the hallway. Not daring to look behind you and irrational from the pain, you luckily find another door. Without listening, you manage to open the door as the doorknob sears your hand. Raising your gun with your uninjured arm, you feel around. Suddenly, your hand hits a switch and a single fluorescent light turns on overhead, illuminating the room. There are four rows of metal shelves in the room, none of which have anything of use on them. You look down at your hand. It's raw, and feels like it's on fire, but isn't severe enough to pose a threat to your life right now. Seems like you'll have to live with it. As you roll up your sleeves, you're reminded of your arm's pain. It's blistering and bleeding heavily. You can't risk infection or fresh blood, so you uncap your bottle of almond water and dab it on. The burn subsides with a cool feeling, which helps you appreciate how cold this room is. You'd rather stay here and eventually die than leave and enter that hellscape again. That's when the scratching starts at the door. You freeze and wait for it to go away, but it starts to intensify. Your scream must have been what gave you away. You pray for the door to protect you, when two long claws, around ten inches long but appearing not to bend and weaken like fingernails. As the claws separate and begin ripping a hole into the door with a terrible rending sound, you fire two shots through the door. Your shots echo through the smaller room, causing your ears to ring. A mixture of a screech and a howl answers the shots on the other side, and you hear no more. The room isn't safe anymore, but neither is the hallway. You sit against the wall for a while, before finally making up your mind to leave the room. Opening the door from the cold side, the hot air blasting against your face is not painful. More importantly, there is no body. Simply two spatters of blood and a trail leading a few yards, before the trail stops. You continue walking at a brisk pace, as to avoid the scene of the incident. The oppressive heat continues to fail to burn you, and you hear distant echoes of howling as you walk. You cannot tell the proximity, so you simply continue with your gun in hand.
As you continue along your path, two of the dog creatures you encountered before come sprinting at you from either side. You level your gun at one, and stare it down. Cowed, it backs in the opposite direction. The other attempts to lunge at your calf, but is met with you turning and kicking it in it's disturbingly human (And therefore weak) windpipe. It loses breath, and seems hurt, but relatively uninjured. It also backs away, presumably in search of easier prey. Finally, you see a red EXIT sign up on the ceiling. Walking towards it, you see more. They lead in a trail to a door on the right. You ponder for a second if it could be a trap or not, and then decide that you'd rather walk into a trap than spend another minute here. As you enter the door, the hallways give way to a much cleaner-looking hallway. All of the lights are working, intensifying the buzzing. Rather than the sound of steam, you can hear the sound of liquid running through the pipes above.
You feel a chill wash over you, as you did not realize how hot the room had been. The burn on your hand reminds you that as much as you run, you cannot escape pain. Your almond water is running low, as is your will to continue living in this hostile world. You take a right, and find more rooms. More room to run, but no cover either. You feel like you're being watched, and you expect the scratching to start at any second. It never does.
You count the rooms you're passing by the dozen.
1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8... On your 96th room you find two bottles of almond water. You smear one on your burn, helping with your pain. 9... 10... 11... 12... 13... 14... 15. On your 180th room, a metallic object on the floor catches your eye. Picking it up, it's a 4 inch curved blade. With nowhere else to put it, you sheathe it in your pocket. 16... 17... 18... It takes you 30 seconds to cross a room. That makes each dozen 6 minutes on average. You're approaching 2 hours. Your feet are sore from all of this walking, yet you continue. 19... 20... 21. This room's got no lights. Striding in, you hear a familiar melody begin to play. Your eyes begin to droop, before you snap to attention as you hear footsteps coming your way. It's a human-looking creature, a few inches shorter than you, seeming to glide faster than any human could. It has no hands, or natural weapons you can see. You draw your knife to save your limited rounds. As it comes out of the shadows, you get more detail. It appears to be an adult human, with no face. Their skin sloughs off in the fashion of an apron or dress. As a surrogate face, a smile has been drawn onto their head with their own blood. Tied upon one handless arm is a red, heart-shaped, balloon. As it approaches at breakneck speed, you brandish the knife and it slows, seeming to be coming to a decision. That's when it begins singing. However, singing is not the correct term for it. It simply supernaturally projects music which no human throat could produce. You begin to lose focus, as you decide to go through with your plan. As you lunge with the knife, the thing raises it's arms in front of it and you can see lamprey-like mouths inside of both. As you lunge, it knocks your knife arm out of the way with surprising speed and strength and immediately attempts to latch an arm onto your other. You pull away and interpose your body between the arms as it lunges at you, it's calculating nature seemingly disappeared. You decide to take a risk and turn back around, wrapping your arm around its chest to hold it back while your knife cuts through its catorids. It reaches it's arms up, seemingly unhindered, when you start running. It chases at first, but begins to slow down before collapsing.
You drag the corpse out a few more rooms, before you begin chopping off pieces of it. You get your hand close to the pipes, and you can feel heat radiating off of them. You spend an unknown amount of time rubbing small pieces on the pipes just enough to be safe, and eating them. You have no way of storing perishables, so once you've eaten your fill you leave the corpse for the scavengers.
19... 20... 21... 22... 23
You hear what sounds like a chicken. Rounding the corner to find it, what you find instead resembles a crocodile, swimming through air itself. You immediately begin sprinting, your erratic turns slightly negating the speed difference. It chases silently, and you have no way of telling how long it chases you for. After many turns and much confusion, you are fairly sure you lost it. These attacks are becoming more and more common, as if the land itself is trying to get rid of you.
You lost count, so you restart from 23.
23... 24... 25... 26... 27
You hear growling, but hide in another room and evade something passing.
28... 29... 30... 31
You see a series of green exit signs. They seem like a trap, but you just need to escape. You run to the end of them, and hit an elevator. You struggle with the buttons, hitting one that says "2". The elevator goes down for a few minutes, before it suddenly stops. There's no emergency service. You try dialing it anyway, but there is no answer. Looking at your rations, you might survive a week. Finally, the doors somehow empty anyway to another office building, this one more modern than the last. The walls are drywall, with windows everywhere. Looking out of the windows yields nothing but a dull white glow. Fluorescent lights and pipes are quieter here, and a sense of relief washes over you. A significantly cleaner carpet lines the floor. You once again allow yourself to drift asleep slowly and take this respite to your aching lungs, throat, and legs.
Category: Tales