Interminable - A Backrooms Story

Chapter II: Entities

They searched through the endless hallways, and of course, shouted back at Ian every minute. Mazie was also extremely worried for them, shouting back equally as many times as Ian.

"Nothing again," Charlie told Ryan. The two were trying to quickly scan every room off of the hallway they were in.

"ARE YOU GUYS OKAY?!!?" came Ian's voice for the fiftieth time.

"YES!!!!" Ryan shouted back.

"I'm beginning to think this whole shouting thing wasn't a good idea," Charlie joked.

The two searched a bit more but again didn't find anything.

"Great, another room with carpet, those annoying lights, and yellow walls," Ryan muttered to himself as he entered yet another seemingly identical room. Weirdly, he began to notice the air was thick with the smell of rust as if they were in a junk or scrapyard.

But suddenly, Ryan stopped when he heard a faint scratching sound. "Charlie, is that you?" he asked, his heart beating faster as he thought of all the possible things that noise could have come from.

But weirdly, Charlie didn't respond. "Charlie!" Ryan called out, louder this time.

After a bit, Charlie appeared behind him. "What is it?"

"Thank god," Ryan said with relief.

"What? What was wrong?"

"Nothing...just thought I heard something."

But then he heard it again. They both heard it. And it was more than a scratching sound. There was a weird almost mechanical sound, like that of metal grinding on metal.

"Do you hear that...?" Ryan whispered.

Charlie nodded. The two friends' faces were pale as the full moon, their legs trembling in fear. They were frozen, waiting for whatever was about to happen. For whatever reason, they began to feel as if they were being watched. Surely they weren't alone in this seemingly endless maze of hallways and rooms.

And then it happened. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan saw something move quickly across his peripheral vision. He nudged Charlie, who glanced over but was too late to see it.

The two waited in silence, frozen like a deer in headlights. They waited in anticipation–hoping against hope that perhaps it was simply imagined. Several more sounds of scurrying as if there were mice behind the walls were heard, but other than that and the sounds of their increasingly fast heartbeats and breaths, there was nothing but the faint buzzing of the fluorescent lights.

Suddenly after what felt like an eternity of being frozen, whatever was moving had come back, and this time, they both saw it with their very eyes.

In the distance, but still close enough to make out its features, stood a terrifying monstrosity. Its body was made of jagged black metal-looking plates that glinted like knives in the dim light. Its limbs were elongated and spindly, ending in sharp claws that scraped against the carpet. It didn't resemble anything in particular, but the closest object one could compare it to was a camera tripod–with arms. They couldn't tell if it was alive or just a machine, but it carried itself with a fluidity that suggested it had a consciousness of its own.

"What do we do?" Charlie whispered, his hands shaking and his heart pounding like a large drum in his chest.

"Don't move," Ryan replied, his face ashen. "And don't make noise."

The entity seemed to walk on as if it were patrolling, which, maybe it was. Finally, it was almost out of sight when Ian's shout echoed through the halls, louder than ever.