Chapter 4 – Leon #2
“Oh god,” James whispered behind him, and Leon tightened his grip on his hand.
“It doesn’t look like there’s much in our way,” Leon whispered back. “How about we move through this one quickly?”
“Okay,” James whispered, and Leon started walking forward.
“You can ignore me all you want,” the person said, tipping their head at an angle. “But you can’t escape me.”
“Wanna bet,” Leon murmured, and James made a pathetic noise behind him.
“I am your worst fears,” the person said, tilting their head all the way to the other side. “I am what haunts you late at night.”
Leon snorted. It wasn’t very scary if the person didn’t chase after them with some sort of weapon. The last time he’d been to a haunted house had been with his ex, and a woman wielding a chainsaw chased them from room to room. Now that had been scary.
“Okay, whatever you say?—”
“I am every person who has ever left you because you were no longer of use to them,” the voice said, and James’ hand twitched in his. “I am every failure that plays on a loop in your head.”
Leon ignored them as he led James to the door about four feet away from the person. Still, the person made no move to get up or come after them.
“Weird room,” Leon murmured to himself as he grabbed the door handle.
It didn’t budge.
James pressed in against his back, then quickly pulled away.
“Are you…” James said quietly, but the person interrupted.
“I told you, there’s no escaping,” they said. “How can you escape your own mind? You can try, of course. Clawing at the walls, ripping open old wounds until they bleed.”
They gestured at the walls around them, and Leon looked around and noticed there were, in fact, what looked like claw marks all over the walls.
“You have to face your fears, otherwise one day, they’re going to consume you,” the person said, nodding their head sagely.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Leon asked.
He turned around, and because of how they were holding hands, he ended up pushing James behind himself, backing him up against the door so Leon was facing the stranger.
Fine by him. Better he do it than James, who had gone eerily quiet. His grip was still firm in Leon’s, though, so he figured he must be doing okay.
“It is as I said,” the person said. “What are you most afraid of? The loss of love? The loss of status? Letting down someone important to you? What about a life filled with loneliness, one that ends much as it began? With you, screaming all alone?”
Well, shit. The guy at the front hadn’t been joking. This was some sort of psychological house of horrors.
“I start off small,” the person said, and they began to shift around, slowly standing up from what Leon hadn’t realized was a kneeling position. “A tiny moment of hesitation, or a doubt that creeps in.”
The person stood up to their full height, and Leon figured they had to be wearing stilts or something. They were easily seven feet tall, their robes billowing out around them.
“And before you have time to take your next breath. I. Am. Everywhere.”
The lights in the room began to flicker and slowly dimmed. The sound of the blood trickling down the wall, which had been soft and barely noticeable at first, picked up speed and intensity.
James didn’t just press up against him this time. He latched his fingers onto the back of Leon’s jacket and buried his face in the leather.
“I am the reason every one of your relationships fail,” they said, as the lights fell to a low twilight level. “I am the reason you feel so alone at night.”
Leon had to hand it to them. They had their horoscope bullshit down to a science.
They had hit on almost every type of insecurity a person could have.
If Leon had been younger, before he started getting therapy and really working on himself, he probably would have resonated more with what they were saying.
Sure, all of Leon’s relationships had failed thus far, and he was letting doubt win out more than he liked to admit in his relationship with James.
However, based on how James was practically glued to his back, Leon hadn’t failed him.
Failing would have meant ruining their friendship, which was one of the best things in Leon’s life right now.
No, he hadn’t taken their relationship further, but he also hadn’t blown it up by pushing too hard, too fast, when his advances wouldn’t be welcome.
The tighter James held onto him, though, the more Leon thought that maybe, just maybe, his advances might be a little more welcome than he’d once thought.
“There’s no escaping,” the person said again, their voice growing louder, as if somehow being amplified around the room.
“I will continue to grow, taking over every aspect of your life until you can’t see the light of day any longer.
Until there’s nothing left to hang onto. Nothing left to live for.”
Okay, bro, trigger warning, why don’t ya?
“Leon,” James whispered, and Leon turned to look over his shoulder before quickly turning all the way around when he saw that James’ face was streaked with tears.
“James—”
“I think either they have the key, or it's hidden somewhere,” James said, staring very purposefully at Leon’s chest, refusing to meet his eyes.
“Do you need to safe word?” Leon asked, not giving a flying fuck about a key.
James glanced up at him and then quickly away, shaking his head. “No, I…I want to keep going. But…I would very much like to get out of this room.”
Well, yeah, that was pretty fucking obvious. It seemed like the lights had stopped dimming, and they were going to be left with enough light to see their way around. That gave credence to James’ theory that maybe the key was somewhere in the room.
He heard the person moving around behind him, and James stepped forward and pressed his face into Leon’s chest.
Alright, fuck it.
He wrapped his free arm around James’ back and pulled him against his chest, turning to scan the room quickly. The person was slowly walking away from where they’d been sitting, revealing a nest of dark fabric similar to their robes, as well as something written on the wall behind them.
“Have you ever felt like giving up?” the person asked, their voice now practically filling the room.
Clearly, they were turning the volume up on some type of speaker system; Leon just hadn’t spotted it in his first assessment of the space.
James whimpered, and Leon hugged him tighter. “If you need to safe word?—”
“No, just…how do we find the key?” James asked, his hand tightening in Leon’s shirt, unfortunately brushing against his exposed skin through one of the holes in it.
Well, that certainly wasn’t helping the matter.
“Do you want to come with me while I search that pile over there?” Leon asked, nodding to the corner.
James lifted his head, but right as he did, the voice said, “Or maybe, you already have. Maybe you think there’s no one out there who cares. Do you think anyone would notice if you weren’t around?”
“No,” James whispered, and Leon tilted his head down to hear him better.
“No?”
“No…I don’t really want to move. Could you look?”
“I notice,” the voice boomed. “I notice every time you bow your head, every time you look away. I am that moment’s breath where you could ask for help but choose to say nothing.”
James tightened his grip on both Leon’s hand and shirt for just a breath before releasing him.
Leon didn’t hesitate. He turned and practically dove for the pile.
“Yes…dig. Dig through your memories and try to recall a time when you didn’t feel this way. A time when everything didn’t feel like quite…so…much.”
Leon’s fingernails scraped the floor as he reached the bottom of the pile, and he turned in a circle, squinting in the dim light to see if he somehow missed the key.
“You can search and search… Try and remember a time where things were easier… But you’ll come up empty,” the voice said.
Leon turned to glare at them, surprised to find they had made their way back over and were practically hovering over him now. Again, they didn’t attempt to touch him.
They were just going to talk him to death.
He turned to look at James and saw him squatting down with his head buried in his arms. That familiar tingling came back into his fingers, and he turned to face the dark being.
If he didn’t find the key in the next sixty seconds, he would safe word himself.
Whether it was the darkness, the idea of being locked in, or the actual words the specter was saying, James was clearly not doing well.
“What am I supposed to do then, huh?” Leon said, and he was surprised at the ferocity that the words came out with. “I searched through the ‘memories’ or whatever and couldn’t find a way out.”
He looked around and spotted the writing on the wall. Figuring it was worth a shot, he stumbled over to it, tripping on some of the fabric on the way. He pressed his face close to the wall to be able to see it.
It looked like it had been carved into the wall, with fake blood and even a few fake fingernails stuck in the cement.
What are you willing to do to save yourself?
Himself? He had saved himself. He’d survived his shittastic childhood, gotten himself through school, and come out the other side.
He worked on himself, over and over, to try and be a better man than every example he had growing up, despite the many assholes he’d dated, befriended, and worked with throughout the years.
He spun around to look at the towering figure. “What would you do?” it said. “When the darkness comes closing in?”
Of course, the lights began to dim again until he could barely see his hand in front of his face. He used the wall to guide him as he raced back over to James’ side.
He’d had periods of darkness. Never quite like what the specter was alluding to, but there had certainly been bad times. As he kneeled next to James and gently wrapped his arms around him, he was hit with a sense of clarity.