Out of the Darkness

125

After wiping the layer of dust off of it, with my hand, I kneeled down so that the fire would offer a little more light. "Who are they?" Sam asked, appearing behind me. "I don't know," I said, looking at the fair woman and man, with the three younger girls standing behind their sitting parents. Two of the girls had the same light hair as who I guessed were their parents. The smallest one had hair, dark as night. The adults had the perfunctory smiles that you do when you take pictures, and the girls as well. Except for the little one. She couldn't have been  more than 10. Her lips were poking out in a severe pout, her forehead screwed up from her scowl. Normally, this would've been funny to me, but the humor didn't come to me now. "Well, it looks like we'll need to find whatever it is that we are supposed to find here," Ash said, bringing me back to my current surroundings. Sam and I followed his voice, finding him over by the front door. "What do you mean? What are we supposed to find?" Sam asked. Ash shrugged, and took his hand away from the door knob. "I don't know. Ask Colby. This is all for him. This door is locked however, so whatever it is, we have no choice but to find it." "What do you mean the door is locked?" I asked, standing up and walking over to him. "Exactly what I said. It's locked. Go on, give it a shot." He moved a few steps out of the way, so that I could get to the door myself. I reached out and turned the knob, pulling at the same time. It wouldn't budge. "Are you shitting me?" I groaned, turning harder, trying to force it to open. "What about the windows?" Sam suggested. "We can always just bust a window right?" He started over to the closest one. "I mean, you can try. I don't think it will work though. Whatever whoever is behind this, obviously wants us here," Ash replied. Sam ignored him and walked into another room. I was still dumbly trying to yank the door open with every bit of strength I had. "Damn it, what the fuck?!" I exclaimed, beating my fist against the hard wood. "Watch out," Sam said, walking back into the room. He was carrying a wooden kitchen chair, and headed towards a window with it. "What are you-" I was cut off with him chunking the chair as hard as he could towards the glass pane. Instead of shattering it, like it should have, the chair simply bounced off of it, and right back towards Sam. "Sam!" I yelled, just as he dove to the side. The chair flew by where his head was just two seconds before. "God Danggit!" he yelled from his new position on the floor. "You good?" I asked, walking over and offering him my hand. He gave me a smile as I helped him to his feet, although it didn't reach his eyes this time. "Yeah. I'm good brother. So, what do we do next?" I shook my head, and glanced at Ash. "Do what we do best brother," I said, looking back at him. "Explore." The smile reached his eyes this time, and I was grateful. "I think we should stick together though. Go through each room, and see if we can find anything useful, or this door that we're supposed to be looking for." "I think we've already found the door," Ash said, walking over to us. "Huh?" I said, swinging my head back in his direction. "When? Where is it?" "There," he said, pointing at the front door. The door that we had came in through. "I don't get it," I replied, confusion setting in. "Look out the window," he said. "Why?" I asked, walking towards it. "It's too dark, but there's still nothing to see. Just a lot of barren l-" The rest of my sentence died in  my throat as I looked out the window. The rain was still coming down, the lightning keeping the sky lit up, but I didn't hear any of it anymore. I think the sounds of the storm had disappeared when we entered this house. This strangely familiar house. I didn't see the barren landscape that we had been in before, though. No, now it was something else. Like we were in Hell, itself. There were winged creatures tearing through the sky. Some that looked like dragons with glowing embers where their eyes should've been. Some that resembled gargoyles, their mouths open in shrieks that weren't reaching my ears. Instead of the field that we had run across, it was now jagged rocks and hills, with an assortment of creatures that I didn't want to meet face to face. I recognized some of them from my own nightmare. The same sort of demons that had chased us before. Then there were some that more closely resembled that of the little boy that we had just escaped. Two little blond girls walked past my window then, holding hands and laughing. One of them seemed to look right at me, and I saw the red flash in her eyes, before they kept going. "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto," I whispered, unable to tear my eyes away from the scene before me. It was too much for my brain to comprehend. "Are we in Hell?" I asked, finally turning away and meeting Ash's eyes. He shook his head. "No, not Hell. I believe that we are in the Demon Realm, however. I have never been here before. I must warn you both, that I don't know if I will be able to safely free us from this realm. I didn't think that we would come here. I've never been able too before." I felt Sam stiffen beside me. "That's not good," he groaned. I steeled myself, and took a deep breath. "Let's just go see what the rest of this house is like."