Chapter Three
Once again, Johann awoke in a strange place. After taking a moment to adjust, he realized this was the hospital he had awoken in earlier. In fact, He was just down the stairs from the hospital room he had occupied when he first awoke, with a strange lantern precariously hanging from a stick planted in the ground. He quickly checked his person. He was a little startled to realize that he still had the cane and pistol that the strange creatures had handed him in the dream, as well as the peculiar note from his first dream. Confused, he took stock of the room and noticed the staircase that led back to his initial sickbed. As he looked up he noticed that the doors were now closed. Curious, he crept up to the doors and tried to open them; they wouldn’t budge. From the other side of the doors came a quivering but resolute voice,
“Are you… out on The Hunt? Then I’m very sorry, but… I cannot open this door. I am Iosefka. The patients here in my clinic must not be exposed to infection. I know that you hunt for us, for our town, but I’m sorry. Please. This is all that I can do.” From under the door came a small vial filled with a strange, red substance. “Now, go. And good hunting.”
Johann pleaded with her, “Out on The Hunt? What hunt? Please, I don’t know where I am or what’s going on, could you just tell me where I am?”
Once more, Iosefka’s voice came from the barred doorway, “Are you still in need of something? But I have nothing more to offer. Please, try to understand my position. I can only pray, for a fruitful hunt.”
“Please, just something. Anything! Just tell me where I am!” Nothing more came from within. “Fine. Thank you for letting me stay here initially. I assume that was you? I was in that very room when I first awoke, just on the other side of these doors.” Still silence. Cursing in frustration, Johann finally stooped down to pick up the vial Iosefka had rolled under the door. The vial was filled with a thick, crimson ichor that seemed strangely familiar. He popped the cork off the top and dripped a small drop onto his finger, the touched it to his tongue. It tasted of iron, but also something he couldn’t quite place, with a fragrance like gore and sparks; he soon realized this was some sort of blood. Revolted, he quickly put the cork back on the bottle. He was unsure why she had given him such a macabre tincture, but she must have thought it would be helpful in some way. Maybe she was just deranged. In any case, he slipped the vial into his coat pocket and proceeded back down the stairs.
When he reached bottom of the stairs, he eyed the strange lantern. Now that he knew where he was, it seemed an odd thing to have planted in the middle of the room. And it definitely hadn’t been there the last time he was here. He had been waking up and falling asleep a lot though… maybe this was all a dream? In that case, something such as the lantern or the closed hospital room with it’s mysterious occupant made more sense. Dreams rarely follow any coherent logic. Shrugging, he reached down and lit the lantern with an attached sparker. It didn’t seem to add any more light to the room, but it did look much less strange now. It was at this point that he had finally looked up, and saw the opposite end of the room he had been in.
Once more, he saw the great lupine beast hunched over his grotesque meal, he heard the quiet snapping of bone and the tearing of flesh, and the squelching of blood as it gushed from the corpse. Having seen this before, he was slightly less terrified, but that only left him more aware of the nightmarishness of the situation. His stomach heaved, and barely kept himself from vomiting as the strong scent of the gore finally assailed his nostrils. Struggling to remain quiet, he once more attempted to sneak past the creature, careful this time to avoid any possible debris on the ground. But as he finally neared the door, the beast turned his head slightly and barely caught sight of Johann through the corner of his eye. The beast quickly leaped towards him. In desperation, he made a mad dash towards the exit, only to be pinned to the ground by the beast. He screamed in agony as the it’s terrible jaws bit into his shoulder, and it’s hideous claws ripped into his spine. Mercifully, the tearing of his spine saved him from any further pain as the beast continued to rend and tear his now mangled body. As the beast devoured his flesh, his vision faded as the life was quickly torn from his body.
Johann jumped awake, alert and terrified. He was in the room with the lamp again. Nothing seemed any different from when he had earlier awoken here, in fact. The beast continued it’s monstrous repast, the door at the top of the stairs remained closed, and the lantern he had lit remained so. He still had the note, the cane and pistol, and the strange vial he had received. It was as if everything had still happened, but he had simply fallen asleep and dreamed being eviscerated by the beast. He scrambled back up the stairs, violently banging against the door. “Please! I think I’ve gone mad! There’s a monster downstairs, and I keep waking up after dreaming I’m being killed by it with no memory of having ever gone to sleep! What is happening to me!?”
There was a startled yelp from the other side of the door. Now he knew that she was there, but simply refused to speak with him. He tried to throw himself against the door, to break it down and escape from the beast below, but no matter what he tried the door would not move. The gateway remained closed, and no amount of force would pry it from it’s position. Still, he frantically assaulted the door, scraping and scratching and bludgeoning it in some mad attempt to force it open, until his hands were bloody and broken. While he frantically hammered at the door, he thought he had heard a plea from the other side, but his mind was so consumed by desperation that it didn’t even register to him.
At some point in his fevered rampage, the vial in his coat pocket shattered, it’s gruesome contents spilling over his chest in a scarlet cascade. When he finally stopped his crazed thrashing, he looked down at the red liquid now staining his shirt, still dripping from his coat pocket. His mind frayed and tattered, deranged giggling broke free from his lips as he reached down to touch the bloody ichor, trying to wipe it from his shirt in some instinctive attempt to clean himself. As he did, he noticed that the pain in his hand quickly ebbed from a roaring agony to a gentle throbbing. He looked down to note that his hand, misshapen and torn from his attempts to force the door, was visibly mending itself. The bones sickeningly scraped against one another as they forced themselves back into place, knitting themselves into their initial form just as his flesh healed before his eyes. He quickly dug into his pocket and pulled the broken glass from within, staring in awe at what was once so hideous and revolting to him. In no time at all his hand was completely healed, with no evidence that it had ever been broken.
Johann scrambled to his feet and began frantically knocking on the door; not the frenzied assault of a desperate man, but the quick rapping of someone seeking an audience. “Hello? Hello!? Iosefka! That vial, that fluid you gave me, do you have any more of it!?”
Anxious breathing could be heard on the other side. After a few deep breaths and a moment to comport herself, Iosefka finally responded. “Are you calm again? Thank goodness. You mustn’t let the hunt overcome you. Remember yourself. You are not a beast. But I’m afraid nothing will change. I cannot open the door. I’ll do what I can, of course. Perhaps this will help you, if only in some small way.” Another small vial rolled under the door.
Johann quickly stooped down to grab it, carefully and reverently placing it in his coat pocket. “Yes, thank you! Thank you! I can’t believe how useful this is, what is this!?”
Beyond the door, Iosefka sighed. “Now, go. I pray for your safety.” With this last missive, her shadow vanished as her footsteps moved away from the entrance, disappearing slowly into the building. Johann lightly pressed his forehead against the door in frustrated relief. He muttered quietly to himself, “Yes… thank you. At least this is something. I hope you remain safe for the night so I might thank you directly in the morning. Now then… to move forward.”
With renewed resolve, Johann walked back down the stairs and towards the beast that blocked his only escape from this building.
