The Edifice

9. Kansas

I'm falling.

I'm flying.

Possibly both, given direction is impossible to sense in this all-encompassing pitch black. All I know for sure is I'm hurtling at indefinite speed through what feels like complete nothingness, my braid beating at the back of my neck.

My surroundings are no longer as wet and stifling as the concrete of the basement floor. An insubstantial weightlessness encompasses me, and after several agonizing seconds of oxygen deprivation, I finally part my lips and gulp down air. I don't think I've ever savored a breath more than this in my life.

Time is as meaningless as direction here. I feel like I'm trapped in some dizzying brain-teaser, like the GIF of that spinning ballerina, where my movement is solely up to my neurological interpretation. One second, I feel like my body is plummeting into the abyss beneath my feet, the next I'm being dragged upwards by gravity.

Something is changing. It's an age before I can trust my senses enough to believe that my freefall is coming to a standstill, but as the air whistling between my fingertips fades away, the leaden terror in my chest follows suit.

Where the hell am I?

Even the darkness around me seems to shrivel away, so faintly I can barely believe it, but ever so slowly the world begins to shift to a deep burgundy red. I have to rub at my eyelids to assure myself that they're open.

I'm high. It's the only explanation for this. When I was eighteen, I'd accidentally double-dosed my anti-histamines and spent the next twelve hours sinking into the carpet of my dorm room. This has to be the same effect. The smell of Bob's basement was sewer gas- or the bursting lightbulb sprayed me with mercury or the-

I reach for my phone and switch it on. 23:42 blinks back at me with such an unexpected flash of light that my retinas burn. Dammit. If this were a dream, I shouldn't be able to read this well. A no-signal warning glows at the top of the screen.

"Shit."

Something slithers behind me.

Only some ancient instinct keeps my mouth shut against my rising scream as the sickly scraping of wet flesh echoes through the darkness. I stumble two paces, shocked to feel my sneakers touch some invisible ground, before I'm immobilized by fear. I'm not alone in here.

The little red light still blinks from my darkened screen and I hurriedly stifle the light in my jacket pocket, ears straining for more noise. Every nerve of my body comes alive, but I'm only greeted with more silence.

After several seconds, I breathe a sigh of relief. I must have imagined it.

Squelch.

The slick rustle returns behind me, even closer than before. Another follows suit to my left. I track two more of the creatures slithering on my right. All moving towards me.

I break into a run. They follow.

I pour every ounce of terror-fueled power into my legs, my shoes thudding heavily against the indiscernible ground in an effort to put as much distance between myself and those things as possible. Seemingly triggered by my sudden movement, the air becomes a rippling cacophony of that same sound.

It's still far too dark for me to make out the shape of the creatures in pursuit, but the sickening squelch of flesh is reminiscent of a leech, the telescoping and contracting of fleshy slime. There has to be dozens of them, unfazed by my speed they're impossibly close on my tail.

Beyond the sound, beyond their speed, the worst part is the prickling at my neck of hairs on end. Because while their presence is utterly invisible to my blind eyes, I feel their gaze on me. Whatever they are, whatever their intentions... these creatures see me.

I sprint with one arm outstretched, the terrified of running head-on into some unseen post or wall. The silhouettes of my fingers are barely distinguishable in front of me.

Something wet collides with my shin.

I tumble into nothingness, landing painlessly on the not-earth beneath my feet. The thing writhes against the fabric of my stockings, cold and wet and almost the size of my leg itself. I buck frantically, using my left foot to stomp it away but in the darkness, I kick myself more often than it. Another latches onto the back of my neck and the screams finally arrive.

Leech was the right guess.

Something sucks against my exposed skin with excruciating grip, some dreadful wet mouth latched on tight. Another finds my arm, trying to burrow beneath the sleeve of my top. I contort myself into the tightest ball I can as one slithers for my face.

Seconds later and what feels like hundreds of the enormous parasites are coating at me, sightless mouths biting at my flailing arms. Smelling me. Tasting the fabric of my clothes. Tugging at my earrings.

The rustling is unbearable. No longer as slick and wet as before, I feel like I'm thrashing beneath a bed of leaves. As suddenly as the attack began, the monstrous leeches retreat and I realize that's exactly what's happening.

I scramble to my feet as soon as their weight begins to lift, spitting crumbs of dirt from my mouth. My newly opened eyes take in the woodland clearing around me.

What the hell?

The outline of my flailing body is still etched into the leaf litter beneath my feet. I run a hand through my hair, my fingers catching on half a dozen twigs and muddy clumps cemented into my braid.

The nauseating probing of those slick mouths still burns against my skin. I twist frantically for any sign of the creatures that had submerged me just seconds ago, but the forest floor is as bare of life as the planters on my bedroom desk.

What. The. Hell.

The night air is almost as cold as I remember before my descent into Bob's basement, but an insidiously warm breeze stirs the trees around me. I glance to the heavens for some sense of direction, but the sky is murky beneath a thick layer of cloud.

How did I get out here?

My earlier theory of some accidental poisoning comes back to me. I must have tripped to the point of blacking out and somehow made my way into the woods behind Bob's house while stuck in that awful fever dream. No tracks in the earth offer any sort of insight into the path I took, so I try my phone again.

No service.

"Dammit."

I pace the clearing despondently, at a loss for ideas. No matter the harrowing visions I'd felt earlier, it's almost a shame how sober I seem to be now. Even with a clear head I'm incapable of coming up with a plan to get back to my car.

My eyes ache with the strain of searching for any sort of trail around me. It wouldn't be the first time someone was lost to hypothermia in Hersely's woods. As if acting on command, the cloud cover above shifts and the woods flood with moonlight.

In an instant, I forget all thoughts of Bob's house or the warm, safety of my car.

Because the calming, oceanic blue of tonight's full moon has gone. No longer are the tall, sinewy tree trunks cast in the cool silver light of a fully illuminated lunar phase. Instead the world warps hellishly under a very different colour.

My jaw slackens as I stare up at the blood red orb centered like a scar in the vast night sky. A phrase from worlds and centuries away comes floating back to me.

"I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore..."

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AN// Thoughts????

Also, I promise we'll be seeing actual people next chapter, so there will be a break from all this narration.