Soundtrack: Soundcloud -Things Of Position The –

I have to fight to wake up, I have to really struggle, something urgently calls me. But it feels like something else is pushing me down, trying to water down my strength into nothing. I struggle harder, I give it all I’ve got and suddenly I come out of the darkness into a state of pure terror.

What? What?! WHAT?! I look around in a panic, I have no idea why I’m panicking or where I am. I see a shadow outside of the bus window and I freeze in a state of even more panic. Then it fades as the shadow blinks out of existence. I look around the bus interior and then I remember that I’m on a trip going by bus into the mountains of Norway.

Right… I calm down considerably, it was only a dream after all. No wonder, the bus is warm and it’s shaking everywhere as it’s going up to some village whose name I’ve already forgotten. The bus rattles as it drives over a bridge.. no.. a ferry loading dock and onto a boat. 

As it stops inside, I start to panic again, my hands and wrists are itching, but I’m not really paying attention to them as I rush out of the bus and mingle with the other passengers, desperate to get away from something. I feel like someone’s hunting me and I’m the prey whose going to end up on this someone’s dinner plate. I look down at my itching hands and wrists and notice they’re riddled with scars now, scars I’ve never had before. My stomach feels like it’s falling into the ground, my legs start shaking. But I keep my composure as we go up the deck into the boat where I sit down at a table, watching the boat leave the harbour.

I look out the window, trying to calm myself down and think, what’s this happening right now? Am I alright? Maybe I should see a doctor about this, have I had a memory lapse? My thoughts just swirl around and I look at my arms again where my scars are still visible and still itching as if they’re still fresh.

After what feels like an eternity between the sky and the water, the ferry connects with another port and I go down into the bus and sit down in my seat. I resolve to go see a doctor when we reach the next village or town or whatever is next on our schedule. The bus keeps driving and soon enough the comforting rocking puts me to sleep again.

I wake up at a hospital, my hands and lower arms are now bandaged, I try to talk but my throat feels hoarse, the doctor comes in, talks to me and asks me if I can remember anything.  I tell him what I remember, that I was on a bus and what happened after that with the ferry. He asks me if I remember how this all happened, I tell him that my mind is a blank and that I’m scared that I might be losing my mind. He assures me that it’ll be fine that it’s just shock and that it’ll likely wear off soon. I tell him that I’m still very tired, he says that it’s no wonder, considering how much blood I’ve lost. 

He gives me a shot with something that’ll help me sleep. As I drift off, my mind is ablaze with panic, but the drug soon takes hold and I mercifully fade out.

I wake up in pure terror again, I’m at some rest stop further up the mountains, the shadow is back, I scream as I feel intense pain in my hands and arms as I hold them in front of me, I feel something tearing at me, growling with a sound that isn’t human. I lose my composure and just panic, running towards a truck and jumping onto it’s bed, barely getting over the edge of it.

I’m still bleeding profusely as I squeeze myself in between some black crates, I’m not safe anywhere I think to myself. I don’t know what’s happening and soon enough I black out.

I wake up again with a start and look down at my hands and arms which are OK again. How are they fine again? HOW?! I feel my mind starting to lose it as I start to wonder if any of this is real, am I real? What’s happening? This has to be a dream hasn’t it? But what kind of dream has you bleeding everywhere and feeling it so well?

I look down at the bed and the crates, no blood, no nothing. And that’s when I notice that it’s not the same truck as before. How did I get on this one? I have no idea where this one is going. But I stay hidden, ever aware of the shadows around me, terrified that they might come to life and hurt me.

After an hour where nothing of note happens, I look around and see that the area around me is positively beautiful. The nature is just so inviting that it makes me want to hop off and take a walk right now. I shake my head and realize that it’d probably mean my death, because at least now I’m moving somewhere instead of being a stationary target. I still feel a sense of peace as the sweet air and the feeling of putting distance between me and whatever that was is a comfort.

The truck stops at a complex with what looks like an over sized skiing lift. Only it’s a huge industrial elevator that takes things up the mountain. It’s loaded with machinery and various crates and as I try to sneak on board, I hear somebody say “Excuse me?” and I freeze in place. When I direct my gaze to my right, I see a couple of backpackers smiling at me. I apologize for sneaking aboard and they all laugh saying that we’d all better hide before the elevator starts up because the guards are gonna check this any second now.

So we hide behind some more crates while we hear the rustling of someone walking around checking that everything is in shape. Just when I think that we’ll be discovered, the guard walks back and yells something to someone and the lift rumbles and starts up very slowly towards what seems like an astronomy tower up in the distance.

I introduce myself and they in turn give me their names as well. There’s two girls, one whose a bit shorter and heavyset and the other whose a tall lanky one. The guy addressing me looks like a serious hunk and I almost have to forcibly tear my gaze of him with force to notice the last guy in the group which looks like a classic nerd. Zits on the face, glasses and greasy hair that’s going everywhere. 

As the trip is taking quite a lot of time, me and Hunk have some time to talk about things. He tells me he’s from Norway himself and after some hesitation I tell him I’m on a trip from abroad to see as much as I can. He brightens up and tells me lots of stories about the surrounding area while the two girls and the nerd guy sit quiet browsing on their phones, doing their best to ignore us.

We hit it off and soon enough I find myself telling him the honest truth, because I’m still scared. He gives me a sharp look and asks me for more details. As I tell him what I can, he tells me that it’s strange that I’ve experienced so many odd things considering that him and his friends are actually occult explorers and are going to sneak into the facility above us. 

He originally thought I was doing the same and that we perhaps had been browsing the same forums online. But we get interrupted by the elevator soon coming to a halt up close to the facility, as before, we wait for an opening and then we all quietly rush out and sneak past the guards who are tired and bored. Then again, it’s no wonder considering that it’s now getting close to night time with the sun setting slowly.

We make it into a sort of sterile looking cafeteria and steal some food and chomp down on it, it’s all very drab stuff like chocolate bars and some kind of bran crackers. We rinse it down with some water from the taps, but since the cupboards and drawers are are locked for some reason, we can’t get any glasses, so we settle for some of their canteens.

The others decide to explore the facility, but I’m so drained that I just have to sit down. The hunk sits with me, he’s worried about me too. The other three tell us that they’re going to see “The core” which is apparently some device they’re testing out here. After a while, the nerd guy comes down and screams at us that the girls are acting crazy, he’s got a nose bleed himself and his skin doesn’t look right for some reason. We still get up and rush up to higher levels of the facility, everything around us is turning darker the higher we go and the guards are nowhere to be seen.

Floor after floor of stairs until suddenly we come out into a big domed room which obviously used to be an observatory since the slits in the ceiling are still there. But the rest is dominated by a huge machine displaying a spinning 3D hologram in the air. I stop in my tracks, staring at it, my mind recoils    because it just feels wrong. “That shape shouldn’t be” I think to myself as it spins around in a way that makes me question if our world is the unreal one and that hologram is the only real thing around us.

I hear a scream to my left and my eyes snap off the impossible glyph and I see blood everywhere, on the walls, on the floor, on the screens and on the controls to the huge device. And then I see the girls sitting on the floor in a pool of blood, laughing and moving in ways they shouldn’t be able to. In the dusk of the control room their faces are white ovals, their eyes are completely black and their laughter sort of warps around us and cuts out in unsettling ways. I notice with a strange sense of detachment that their hair has fallen off completely and their their skulls are undulating in strange ways as if something inside wants to break out. 

The hunky guy seals his fate when he rushes to the console and tries to pull a big lever. The instant he touches it, he falls to the floor instantly and screams only to get cut off mid-scream. His opened eyes turn white as I see his face starts to grow cracks. He soon collapses into dust and I realize that he’s very much dead and gone. As I back peddle towards a window, a strange babbling-creaking-chittering sound grabs my attention and I see the nerd guy, or whatever he’s become now, come at me with a knife.

Half his face is torn away down to the bone and he smiles a happy gleeful smile as the blade is sinking towards me, I react instinctively and push him away from me, which just so happens to be towards a window which shatters. As he falls, he laughs even harder and the knife clatters against the floor and then falls out the window as well, leaving nothing behind.

I turn away from the hole where an icy wind now howls into the room and look at the device, this has to have been the source of all of this. The girls are still sitting and their heads are wobbling on their necks as if they’ve become mannequins. I grab a piece of fabric and wrap it around a steel rod I find nearby and I smash what I think is the main electrical components, the machine makes a shuddering sound and sounds like it’s starting to power down.

I waste no time and run down the stairs into the darkening facility, behind me the echoes of the girls laughter follows me. Thankfully it fades out as I make it down to the ground level again and find myself at the big elevator. I run into the booth and thankfully the levers and instructions are simple enough that I manage to get the thing going down again. As the machinery hums to life, I spot what appears to be a satellite phone for emergencies, I grab that and a first aid kit that I find and rush to the platform elevator, getting on it before it starts going down again.

While the elevator goes down, the air has grown heavier and lighting is tearing up the landscape around me. Whatever I started certainly doesn’t seem like it’s going to end up well for this place. I sit down and lean towards one of the crates and let out a big sigh of relief. At least I’m safe for now… right?

However, my adrenaline-filled body’s anxiety still holds me in it’s grip until the great freight elevator finally reaches the ground. I rush off and look for anyone to help me, anyone that I can warn of whatever it is up there. There’s nobody, the entire complex at the bottom seems abandoned as well. I make it into one of the offices and find an old withered and scratched board with numbered keys, I realize that these are keys for cars and grab one and rush outside and find it’s corresponding vehicle.

As I get into the car, I put the sat phone on the seat next to me and start it and quickly speed down the road towards civilization. As the miles behind me increase I feel my tension slowly starting to slip away. I must be far enough away now I think to myself. I pull into the side of the road and decide to try and call some emergency services with the phone I have. 

When I turn on the device, the LCD screen lights up with a faded green hue and I see the following rows appear:

REVERSE 
REVERSE 
REVERSE 

And that’s when I realize that I’ve been doing all of this in the wrong order….