Chapter 27: The Heebiest of Jeebies

Demarcus leads us back the way we came, all the way back to the forked tunnels, but this time brings us down the right tunnel instead of the left.

I shoot Mato a mockingly disapproving look for bringing us down the left— which he completely misses.

A few minutes of quiet trekking, stepping over the brutalized corpses of doppelgangers that Demarcus had killed on his escape, and we reach another cavern.

This one, unlike the last one, stretches 100 feet high, and 200 feet across. All along it, in regular cookie cutter intervals, are the same exact tunnel opening.

The openings look like standard caves, with a few differences.

There is no moisture along them, there are no grooves from the creatures traversing them, and they are all exactly the same.

I step up to examine one, and the shadows are a wall, just barely held back by the threshold. My [Light] falters and fails in the face of that darkness. Just barely making it beyond the wall before it deserts its task to illuminate.

“The one I went through is here.” Demarcus says, gesturing to one of hundreds.

“I'm not sure it matters.” Isabella says, staring up at the countless tunnels lining the wall.

“Yeah but this is our hole, it was made for us!” I joke, voice echoing off the walls.

The group looks back at me, a mixture of annoyance or confusion among them.

“What? No Junji Ito fans? Fine. So, what, we just go down the tunnel?” I ask.

Demarcus snickers at my failed reference. “Yeah, pretty much. I'd ditch the lights just to be safe but, we walk down this tunnel in the dark, for longer than ya think, and wind up somewhere else.”

“How'd ya even find this?” Mato asks.

Demarcus rubs at his neck and replies “Well I knew where you were but not how to get there. Couldn't exactly dig. Sorta just started running down random tunnels. Then I came to this one— the monsters didn't seem to want to follow me here— so I went in one of the tunnels as there was nowhere else to go and the entrance was full of the fuckers just waiting for me to turn back around.”

“How'd ya deal with them when you came back?” I ask.

Demarcus shrugs. “They couldn't get any closer so, I just started throwing rocks at em. They left after I broke an antler.”

Izzy gives an approving nod at the sound strategy.

“Well, unless there's anythin’ left to do, I guess we move on.” Mato says, looking between us and seeing us all ready.

He turns back to the tunnels, and I can see his jaw set and tense before he speaks up.

“I gotta say though. Some part of me is screamin’ not to go in there. Way beyond the heebie jeebies. I think it's my skill [Heed The Omens].”

“You don't need a skill to know we shouldn't be going in here. I've got the heebiest of jeebies right now. Why are we doing this again?” Izzy says, turning to me at the end.

“The ruins my future self made for us apparently needed to be somewhere that time and space don't really work right. So, Backrooms.”

“And why do we have to go to these ruins?” She continues to press.

“Cuz my future self worked hard on them and we should at least give them a try.” I joke.

“But seriously, apparently they're gonna be the perfect challenge to get us all to quickly level without risking death—”

“Much.” I whisper the last part.

“Plus, he left us a bunch of presents that we're gonna need.”

I omit mention about maintaining the timeline or branching. It feels like the less I mention that as a main motivator the more likely it is for people to cooperate.

I don't know what's so wrong about maintaining causality and predestination but it just doesn't appeal to them much.

“Does it say what we get?” Demarcus asks, greed peeking through his eyes.

“Just says that if we want the good stuff, we'll have to earn it.”

He shrugs, always down to go along with my suggestions. “Guess we'd better get going then.” And he steps into the tunnel.

He disappears into the dark.

Mato curses under his breath and chases after him, probably frustrated that he didn't go first and fulfill his assigned responsibilities as scout.

Isabella calls after them, and it is as if her voice disappears in the murk. Physically muffled by the dark.

She turns back to me and I, unhelpfully, just ask “you wanna be last?”

She doesn't even scoff before stepping off into the dark.

I step to the threshold, and place one hand against the lip of the opening. My thumb feels the temperature drop noticeably just from the inch it passes in from.

I take my Pokin’ Stick and sensibly stick it into the dark of the tunnel, reaching as deep as I dare. I pull it back out and notice no abnormalities; no frost around it, no bites taken out of it, it didn't come back as a doppelganger of a stick or anything. So, that's good.

I take a deep breath, and I dismiss the [Light] spells.

The darkness is absolute. Still and silent save for my breathing and the shifting of my clothes. But despite this, the tunnel ahead of me is somehow darker. As if it had a color of its own, not merely the absence of light but the presence of dark.

I take a step into it, then another, holding my Pokin’ Stick in front of me and dragging it along the floor like a white cane. I walk for nearly a minute, before calling out ahead of me.

My voice barely makes it to my ears, let alone deeper into the hall.

My breaths are heavy, as if it takes more effort than normal to get any usable oxygen from this air. The air is soupy— not humid, but thick, as though I'm breathing in more than just air.

It goes on like this forever, and by the time I've walked what must be a mile I can feel myself getting lost. My Pokin’ Stick tests the ground, and I drag it left and right and never find the walls. I take several steps to my left, counting exactly how many paces, and give up after 44, attempting to return to exactly where I left.

All I have to guide me is faith in Demarcus and myself. But even that faith begins to wane as time drags on.

I have no idea where I am, no real idea where I'm going, and am simply lost in an expanse of endless dark.

I think this, and feel my Pokin’ Stick snag on something, jab me in the gut, and I go toppling forward.

I impact the ground, and my skin brushes against something hairy, while my ears immediately pick up on a growing buzz, like the distant sound of insect wings. My eye shoots open from where it shut from flinching and I see an endless sea of deep blue.

I hear snickers and look up from the carpet to see Isabella, Mato, and Demarcus standing around me.

I look around and see Demarcus leaning against the middle-class christian white wall, Isabella tuning her guitar as she looks around the same, and Mato just staring up at the off-orange fluorescent light above us.

On the ground, I shift to see behind me, where I fell from, and realize I just stumbled out of a small closet of office supplies.

Demarcus kneels and gives me a hand up.

“Freaky right?”

I step back towards the closet and Demarcus grabs me.

“Don't close the door behind you or you'll go back into the tunnel.” He warns.

I nod, and step into the closet. I pull on the chain to turn on the single, sad lightbulb, and look around, touching the walls. I'm about to cast [Eye-dentify] on the closet to see if it registers as a portal of some kind when something catches my eye on one of the shelves.

Stacks of plastic white 3 ring binders, still in their wrapping, next to reams and reams of pre-punched paper.

I grab a binder and a stack of paper, heart pounding as I realize what this will wind up being, and begin to step out of the closet when something else catches my eye.

I pocket the stack of yellow sticky notes and step back into the office hallway.

We look both ways down the long empty hallways, seeing the bland doors to vacant, soulless rooms before the corridor turns.

“Alright half-baked, we're here. I'm admittedly impressed that this place exists but, where to now?” Izzy asks.

I pull out the binder— the old, filled in one— and replace its spot in my bag with the new binder, which is also the old binder from the past.

I flip to the section on these Backrooms and find a map leading us to the ruins, complete with origami instructions and pop-up flaps because the map could best be described as… non-euclidian. I unfold the page and watch the pages drop open like the worst playboy model as the fourth dimension lies naked in this shitty hand-drawn map.

Izzy groans and Mato half-heartedly rolls his eyes as I simply stare in consternation at the inscription near the top:

Hurry. You’re not alone.