Double Doors

...the continuation of Chasing Oddities

The double doors guarded secrecy like dust settled on old things. There they were, like I had always seen them only with a slightly important difference, now one of them was slightly ajar. The darkness behind it may as well have been a waving finger, inviting me into the unknown. I knew the big guy was still after me but once the silent siren of the new darkness gestured me towards the forbidden room, I forgot about the chainsaw-wielding psychopath that could not have been more than one-hundred yards behind me when I first entered the house.

I pushed the door open, away from the beckoning emptiness and waited for the creaking to spoil my elusiveness, but the silence reflected the seriousness of this part of my trial, and being the greatest warrior meant honing the patience that came before that ever elusive moment of spiritual discovery, and I was always taught to stand up to fears – all kinds of fears – and horrors.

The room was carpeted gray; the whole identity of these quarters was completely opposite in tone to the ransacked, floor peeled kitchen area before it. There were chairs and plastic fern trees decorating two corners of the area. It was a polite waiting room made eerie only by the gloomy shade and the wicked chamber that partially illuminated my side of the window but was brightly lit on the other side.

There were no stairs, no doors, and no other windows that I could see, only a grungy tiled wall. In fact the whole enclosure resembled an Olympic sized, ill-kept swimming pool without any routes for escape. However, I had to press myself against the glass to see exactly where the water was, and it was well below the floor level of the house, embedded tightly into the earth, and at the bottom of this devious pool were humanoids – what exactly I could not tell. At first glance they looked like normal, full-grown humans curled up into fetal positions except instead of being spread out into single vials they were all gathered and grown in this one monstrous pool.

And then one of them moved their head.