Little Nightmares: The Damned Child

Chapter VI - The Pale City

The two let the door drift along with the current, wherever it decided to take them. The shape of a large city came into view through the fog. The many structures loomed above as the door slid up onto the shore. The boy went on ahead while the girl stopped at the edge of the door, looking up at the buildings. She eventually followed after the boy after realising how far ahead he was. They ran towards a figure that looked like another child next to a T.V, but he was glitching. 

As the paper bag boy got closer it seemed to get absorbed into him making a small static sound before disappearing entirely. They headed across the sand to a door illuminated by a single light above and entered it. There was a long sleeved shirt and pants hanging from a broken T'.V. that hung from some place else higher up. There was nobody in the clothes. They jumped through a hole in the opposite wall into a street between the buildings. 

Boxes and some blank T.V's were littered on the street along with piles and piles of thin clothes., some more falling from the rooftops above. Perhaps they were simply falling from the clotheslines. The street ahead was completely taken out, leaving a jagged chasm. They crossed the street to another glassless window. Crawling through it into what seemed to have once been a bar or restaurant. But all the seats had a set of clothes slumped in them. 

Not like someone had taken their clothes off and left them there, more like the people in the clothes had suddenly evaporated into nothing. Leaving their clothes behind. The two ventured past that area going through to a different room that had a pile of T.V's the T'V on top was attached to a rope that went up somewhere.. A vent. Was in the furthest wall. The girl housed the paper bag boy up to it and into the next room. 

There was another T.V with a rope on one side of a hole in the floor. The other end of the rope seemed to be a noose. The boy jumped from the broken T.V latching onto the noose. He swung back and forth, using the force of his momentum to push the T.V over the edge into the second hole in the floorboards. The T.V plummeted down as the rope pulled the boy up higher. Once the rope stopped he swung onto the upper platform. The girl's voice called out to him from the other room.

"Oi..." The boy went through a doorway that led back to that room. The girl was on top of the other T.V attached to a rope. "Hey..." The boy pushed other T.V attached to her rope off the edge. The T.V the girl was on quickly rose up to a third floor. Her midnight blue hair was barely visible in the dark. The boy quickly ran around following a path of stairs. A section of the stairs had for whatever reason broken off leaving a gap. The girl held out her hand again. The boy jumped and caught it and they continued on their way up. They made it up to the third floor. 

Crossing a narrow plank and jumping to another ending up in another room. This one has a white shirt with a tie and black pants hung up around the collar by noose. Like whoever was wearing them had opted out before whatever happened got to him. His shoes sat on the ground beneath him. The two stared at the hanging clothes as they passed them. The boy stumbled into the next room as he squeezed through a missing panel in the door. A crackling sound echoed around as a T.V in the room flickered on sending out an ear piercing transmission from a white glitching screen. It seemed to warp out of the glass screen like an overflowing cup of milk. The boy held his ears as he slowly neared the screen. 

Getting closer the sound grew louder. Particles from the boy's body floated from him towards the screen, pulling him towards it. The boy reached his hand up pressing it to the glass screen. The blinding white disappeared replaced by a warping hallway with a door at the end. Everything seemed to grow quiet as it made a screeching sound like a kettle on a stove when the boy was suddenly pulled into the screen. He was visible on the screen of the T.V. Headed towards the door. The girl spotted him in the T.V and ran up to the screen, reaching her hands through the warped glass she pulled him back before he got to the door. The both of them being spat back out of the screen. They climbed out of a window landing in a dumpster filled with trash and clothes. They dropped from the dumpster coming across another they had to pull to get through a hole in the chain link fence. They ended up in a yard with a large building shaped in a U. 

There was a seesaw, a set of swings and a few benches and toys strewn about. A clock was set at the top above the window atop of the front door. One of the windows to the right had a link of tied bed sheets forming a way up, or a way down. There were some soccer goals there, the girl seemed to want to play but the paper bag boy started climbing the makeshift rope to the window. She followed after him. They crawled through the open window into a hallway. There were hooks hanging clothes to the wall and a framed picture of a smiling woman. Pages and shreds of what was once books surrounded a bin with smoke rising out of it. The greyed white wall was blackened beside it...

I was startled awake by feeling my body get thrown forward. Hitting my head on the bars while the porcelain student cackled with amusement. My long brown hair hung over my face. It needed a cut, I've needed to cut it for a long time. I ignored the bully shaking my cage. Pulling my knees to my chest I tucked the laces into my boots so they couldn't steal them from me. The last thing I wanted was to walk around barefoot. I still didn't know who they were, all I could know for sure was that whoever those two were. They were in the school and they had no idea what they were getting into...

So, we now know where they are.
What next? Will they find the child in a cage?