Walking Up The Gardens Path | Creepypasta

Breakdown

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. It was as if time had frozen, leaving him in some kind of twilight zone debacle. The sound of other patrons bustling around for their items, the ring from the door as people entered, the click from the register as it processed a purchase, it was all gone. Silence replaced it. Cold hard silence. The only sound was the ringing in his ear.

Tim looked around, trying to gather his senses. The gas station was empty and the lights had been dimmed. His shoulders hunched as he poisoned himself for some kind of encounter. A fight? Something?

It was so off so suddenly. Tim felt like he had already been hit in the chest hard enough to knock the remaining air out of him. What was happening? Where did they go?

Even his footsteps were quiet as he began to move away from the isles and back towards the entrance. The air was thick, hard to breathe through. He wasn't sure whether that was just him or the actual space.

"Hello?" He called out, his voice deafening to his own ears. It echoed through the building impossibly loud, to the point it startled him.

He opened and closed his fists. What the fuck was happening?

The world felt heavy all of a sudden, as if he was suddenly hundreds of feet below sea level in the oceans depths. His feet shifted, hardly lifting as he dragged himself towards the entrance. He felt like he had been hit over the head with a garbage can lid.

"Brian?" He called out, a little more careful of his volume but still sounding like a blasting car horn. "Toby?"

When the silence continued, he took a deep breath. This had to be his mind fucking with him, there was no way everyone was suddenly gone and he was alone.

This was something that happened sometimes, when Tim's mind would wander and lose focus on reality, changing it to be something entirely different in his perception. Usually it took him a lot longer to realize, but he'd been so on edge since the motel that every small change in the atmosphere was like a glowing flag saying this is bad.

This was bad. This was extremely bad.

The ringing grew more intense as he kept walking towards the entrance. He tried to take a deep breath and ignore it, but it didn't do much to quell the noise. Instead, it seemed to exacerbate it. His head pounded. The gas station was gigantic, impossibly long and seeming to grow with every passing step.

Tim didn't know what was happening. This wasn't normal, even for his most outlandish days. This was different, this felt different than anything he'd ever experienced.

He walked through the final shelving units in the aisle and was greeted by a tall figure in black.

The Operator stood before him at its full height, the tall ceilings allowing it the pleasure of not crouching or bending awkwardly into the space. It was nearly ten feet tall, its blank white face staring down at Tim.

He paled.

His mouth opened, as if he was going to say something, but closed when he decided against it. Cursing out a being like that wouldn't do him any good, regardless of how much he wanted to. He felt frozen to the spot he was in, feet planted firmly on the linoleum as he realized what happened.

The ringing.

The disappearance.

This was what it did, this was what it always did. He felt it in the motel, he saw it in the back near the trees, he knew it was there. He didn't trust his own gut, and now he was staring at this, this thing that haunted and dragged behind wherever he went. Wherever they went.

Brian warned him.

Brian had told him repeatedly not to do it, not to risk any chance of this happening again. He didn't listen. Why can't he just listen?