James A. Hunter
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Backrooms 2: Kiosk Kingdom - Chapter 39
🕑 Added 2024-10-20 16:15:23 +0000 UTCThirty-Nine – Vampires
Even though we were working against a shot clock, Ed had a few extra preparations to make before we could depart, which was good because we needed to catch a few hours of shuteye. I was more than ready to leave this nightmare floor behind and never look back, but everyone was exhausted, especially after the adrenaline from our cookout battle faded. We headed back into Ed’s living quarters and passed out on the floor—though Jakob stayed up to keep watch.
When I offered to split the watch, Jakob just shrugged it off and said it was nothing.
“Cendral’s are far more physically resilient than humans. We need much less rest and recover more quickly, as well.” Then he pulled a test tube vial from Storage. “I also have a few of these lying around. I call it, Eine gute Nachtruhe. A good night’s rest in a tube.” He popped the stopper and chugged the liquid with a grimace. “The formula could still use a little work. It functions well, but tastes like a smoldering tire fire.”
Croc also assured me that it could help Jakob keep an eye on things—though I found that a little disconcerting since the dog tended to literally watch me sleep whenever it got the chance.
I just pushed all of those uncomfortable thoughts to the back of my head, curled into a ball, and passed out in less than a few minutes. I considered that one of my unique superpowers—a gift imparted to me during my time in the Marine Corps. I could fall asleep on command, and I could do it anywhere, no matter the circumstances, and no matter how physically uncomfortable the situation was. I’d slept in ditches, on the top of tank treads, and curled up in a gunner turret, while suspended from a cargo strap.
In a war zone, you never knew when you were going to get a chance to sleep again, so you grabbed every opportunity you could get.
I didn’t dream, which was a mercy. I was certain that golf-cart centaur thing would be waiting for me behind my eyelids, but instead it was just a field of blissful black.
Jakob shook me awake a few hours later and though I was still groggy, I no longer felt like a microwaved dog turd. I took a few minutes to freshen up in Ed’s cramped bathroom, splashing some water across my face, then brushed my teeth with the emergency toothbrush I always kept in my storage space. Scrubbing the taste of fetid cat ass out of my mouth was a requirement before I could properly start my day.
We ate a small meal of all beef franks—still piping hot—and chased it down with off-brand energy drinks filled with so much caffeine they made one eye twitch. Nitro Volt – Plug into the Chaos! It tasted like regret, burnt Skittles, and Type 2 diabetes, but holy shit did it get the job done.
Then we were off.
Ed loaded Big Bertha into his personal Storage Space, which was supremely convenient for travel—though, I suspected it also served a secondary purpose. If he died, anything inside his Subspace Storage System would be gone. Lost forever and eventually reclaimed and recirculated by the Backrooms. Sure, we could loot his physical corpse and take any of the Relics stored in his Spatial Core, but we’d never see Big Bertha again. Which meant, we needed to make sure Ed survived, because without him we’d be trapped here indefinitely.
I was pretty sure, that’s just the way he wanted it. It was a smart play, and exactly the kind of thing I would’ve done if I was in his shoes.
It was daylight by the time we left the bunker; the sun had risen, dispelling the darkness of the night and driving the Kevins and Kathys back indoors. Ed assured us that they’d stay away until sunset and leave us be, so long as we didn’t attempt to enter any of the houses. Likewise, the cornfields were now empty and harmless, since the cannibal kids had returned to the streets of suburbia where they roamed about on their bikes.
We caught sight of various gangs once or twice, but mostly the kids of Sunnyside kept their distance, doing whatever it was that monster children did during the daylight hours.
We walked for several hours, Ed leading the way without the use of his dowsing rods. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, turning left and right down various streets, cutting through fenced backyards, all while carefully skirting around the occasional neighborhood playground. There were quite a few of those and they seemed to serve as a communal waterhole and meeting ground for the various child biker gangs. The kids would watch us with cold, unnerving eyes and perpetually flat expressions, but never made any attempt to pursue us.
It was almost like they didn’t quite know what to do with us. Obviously, we were adults—although at five-foot nothing, Temp could’ve passed as a teenager—but we were outside during daylight hours, which meant we weren’t Kevins or Kathys. Ergo, we didn’t fit into the natural order of things, and so they left us be, at least for now.
Eventually, we found ourselves in front of the Sunnyside Tiny Tots Preschool.
It didn’t look particularly ominous from the outside, but that was par for the course on the twenty-fourth floor. It was a neat, two-story building that seamlessly blended into the cookie cutter suburban surroundings—tidy brick walls, framed by neatly trimmed bushes, a colorful sign with happy, blocky letters out front. All in all, it was innocuous, and I’d seen a hundred different preschools just like it, before noclipping. Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t have given the place a second look.
The longer I stared, though, the more I realized something was subtly off.
The fenced in playground was fastidiously clean, the swings still gently swaying as if recently abandoned—except there was no one to be seen. All of the other playgrounds had been occupied by kids, but not this one. Almost as though the older kids were avoiding it the same way the parents avoided the cornfields. Bright slides and jungle gyms waited for the next burst of laughter or the squeal of a happy kid, but none came.
It felt more like a graveyard and left the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention.
The lights inside were all off, and through the darkened windows, the empty classrooms felt frozen in time. I didn’t see anyone. No teachers or administrators. No janitors or maintenance workers. No chatter, no footsteps, no distant hum of activity. Just the deep unsettling silence of a mausoleum—almost as if the entire place was holding its breath in anticipation. Waiting for something. Waiting for us, perhaps.
“I don’t like this at all, Dan,” Croc said, shuffling nervously from paw to paw. “I know we need to do this, but it feels like a very bad idea. Remember when I said we shouldn’t fight Funtime Frank and then we did anyway, because no one listens to me, and everyone almost died?”
“That does ring a certain bell,” I said.
“Yeah, well this is like that. There’s something bad inside that place. Something even worse than the Kevins and Kathys at the party or that weird monster in the cornfield. I can feel it inside me.” The dog dropped its voice low, so only I could hear it. “And this isn’t just a gut feeling, either, Dan. I can really feel something. Inside my spatial core. I think… I think these things might all be some variation of mimic. But specialized ones.”
“That makes sense, I suppose,” I said. “Ed mentioned that the original inhabitants on this floor were humanoid mimics. I am curious about why you’re bringing it up now, though.”
“Because all mimics have a certain instinct.” The dog paused and frowned. “It’s a bit like how salmon swim up stream to lay their eggs? Mimics do the same thing—though there aren’t any streams involved. We have specific breeding locations where we hatch our clutches, but the thing is, that instinct never goes away. Hatchlings are extremely violent, they have no self-control whatsoever, and have a singular desire to feed. Most mimics die without ever leaving the nesting grounds.”
“Holy shit, newborn Thunderdome,” I said. “That’s messed up.”
“Yeah,” Croc agreed. “But they don’t just kill each other. Hatchling mimics will swarm anything stupid enough to blunder into the nest. Which is why juvenile and adult mimics can naturally since a hatchery. It keeps us from ending up as food. That’s the feeling that I have right now. If we go in there, it’s going to be a bloodbath.”
“And if we don’t,” I said, “we’re never going to make it down to the next floor.” I patted Croc on its snout. “Don’t worry bud, we got this.”
“Just promise me that if things go wrong, we’ll get use a doorway to escape?” Croc asked earnestly. “Because I’m telling you, Dan, a mimic hatchling nest is the one place no Delver in their right mind should ever go. Not unless they have a deathwish.”
“Duly noted,” I replied. “And, for what it’s worth, you’ve got my word. If things get too dicey, and we’ll bail. Pinky swear. We can always come back with extra reinforcements if we need to.”
“Alright, gather on me,” Ed called, waving everyone over to his position, not far from the front doors. “There’s a couple of things we need to do before we can go in.” He reached into his coat and pulled out the impossibly long bong. “First things first, y’all are going to need to get high.” He loaded something into the bowl and used his thumb to summon a dash of fire.
“Danke Schoen, but I would prefer not to,” Jakob said, politely refusing. “Despite my background as a chemist, I’ve never been one for recreational drugs. Other than beer, of course. As we say, Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalt's. Should all else fail, may God preserve hops and malt.”
“Sorry, hoss, but this isn’t optional,” Ed replied with a grimace. “This stuff isn’t of the purely recreational variety, if you catch my drift. It’ll help to dispel all the illusions for a while. Let you see through the SporeFeed Social filter. I’m betting you’ve never had to kill a toddler before, but I have and trust me, it’s the sort of thing that sticks with you. Without this”—he tapped the side of the bong—“that’s what you’ll see. A bunch of little sweet, chubby-cheeked babies and toddlers all trying to gut you like a luau pig.
“A lot of Delvers can’t bring themselves to do what needs doing, even while these little monsters eat them alive. Seeing them in their true form helps bucket loads. Once you get a glimpse beneath the veil, you won’t have any problems setting these things on fire. You’re also going to need these.” He pulled out several Vietnam era gasmasks, which had all seen better days. “The buff from the high usually only lasts an hour or so, but these will prolong its effects. Part of the reason the illusion magic is so powerful here is because it’s not entirely mental. There’s a physiological component too.”
“The spores,” Jakob said, as a flash of enlightenment flicked across his face.
“Yep, you got it, hoss,” Ed replied. “All of the Sunnysiders are carriers. Those boils all over their necks? When they pop, they release a cloud of airborne spores that pass through the nose and mouth and eventually get into your blood stream. The resistance you get from Grit helps some, but unless you also have a Preservation score that’s through the roof, the Social Filter will still worm its way into your head. The gas masks will help with that. Now who wants to go first?” he asked, thrusting the bong toward us.
Although I hadn’t smoked weed since well before my Marine Corps days, I’d be lying through my teeth if I said this was the first time. There wasn’t a lot for teenagers to do in rural Ohio, so alcohol and drugs ended up at the top of the damned list along with cow tipping, dirt biking, the occasional cliff diving, and, of course, bottle rocket wars. Just the bullshit that every midwestern kid gets up to while they’re waiting to get the hell out of Dodge and go someplace better.
“I’ll take this one for the team,” I said, snatching the bong.
Even though it had been years, I’d spent plenty of afternoons in Tyler Edenson’s basement, smoking shitty weed while his dad worked late at the FeatherGold poultry processing plant, and the muscle memory was still there. Just like riding a bike. I took a deep long rip, and felt the pungent smoke fill my mouth and lungs.
A notice appeared in the haze of smoke as I exhaled.
You’ve transcended beyond the realm of Stoner’s Insight and reached the next level of cosmic understanding. Or, you know, you’re just really, really high. Either way, reality’s never looked clearer. While under this buff, you gain a 20% boost to Perception, Grit, and Evasion for a full hour—because when you’re this relaxed, nothing’s going to hit you. Enjoy the ride, spaceman.
Despite the message, I didn’t actually feel high at all. Just the opposite.
My head felt less fuzzy and everything around me seemed to snap into sharp, high-def clarity. The illusionary façade laying lightly over the Tiny Tots preschool disappeared in a heartbeat, replaced by a fleshy edifice of bone and meat and sinew. The entire place looked like an oozing sore, and now I could see dark shapes scuttling around behind the frosted windows.
That wasn’t the only illusion it dispelled, though.
I stumbled away from Ed with the bong still clutched in one hand and instinctively yanked my hammer out with my other, branding it like a cross as I fed mana into the weapon. It ignited with blue light and swelled to the size of a medieval battleaxe.
“What the fuck, man?” I yelled at Ed. “You’re one of them!”
It seemed like a perfectly reasonable response since normal human Ed was gone and a nightmare version of him, complete with hair tentacles, six eyes, and a circular lamprey mouth was now standing in his place.
“Eh, sorry about that, kemo sabe,” Ed said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “I didn’t think I’d need to warn you since most people don’t have a high enough Grit to see through my Mutable Persona illusion—not even when taking a hit from the Cosmic Rip. That’s what I call the bong, by the way. The Cosmic Rip.” He paused and squinted at me with all six of his weird eyes. “You must have a crazy high base Grit stat.”
“What’s wrong?” Temp and Jakob both asked, almost in the same breath. They couldn’t see what I did. Couldn’t see Ed for what he really was. This would look awfully strange from their perspective. One minute everything was fine, the next, I’d taken a single hit from Ed’s weird bong and suddenly, I was raving like a lunatic. Threatening to bludgeon a teammate to death with a magical hammer.
“He’s a Sunnysider,” I growled, though I never took my eyes off Ed. “Now answer the question, dickhole, before I set your blood on fire.” My knuckles were white from gripping the hammer so tightly. “What the fuck are you?”
“A Delver…” he said solely. “Also a prime example of what happens to people who stay here too long,” he admitted with a shrug. “Not all of the Sunnysiders are former Delvers, but some of them are. The kids? They Timmys and Tammys? They’re all pure blooded Dwellers—they come out of hatcheries like this one”—he motioned toward the building—“and eventually they evolve into the Kevins and Kathys.
“The big honchos, though? The HOA board members and the Arcade bosses? They’re all like us. Or they were once, anyway. That’s why the HOA is so keen to keep Delvers here. To convert them. The process is long, but once a Delver turns, they make vastly more powerful thralls than anything the HOA can naturally produce. I’ve managed to hold the change at bay the better part of three decades, but not before they got their nasty, spore-filled hooks into my brain good and deep.”
“Holy shit,” I said, licking my lips as I considered his words. “That’s awful. Once you get away from this level will you go back to normal?”
Ed frowned and shook his head. “Afraid not. This is what I am now. Maybe there’s tech on one of the research floors that will help me reverse the process, but that’s a pipedream at this point. That’s why I have the Mutable Persona Relic equipped. It lets me look more or less normal, most of the time.”
“Are you contagious?” I asked sharply. “Like the others, I mean?”
“Naw,” he said. “See for yourself.” He lifted his chin and turned his head back and forth, this way, then that. “No spore sacks. I won’t infect anyone else, though there is one slight, little issue that I should probably bring up since we’re having a moment here.”
“Honesty is the best policy,” Croc said. “Like Dan always says, friends don’t lie to friends. Better to just get it all out in the open here and now.”
The mimic’s words were like a knife to the kidney, since I was actively concealing some very important things from Ed. But I pushed my own guilt away for the moment.
“Well, see the thing is, I need to feed off regular Dwellers. Just a little.”
“Wait, like some sort of vampire?” Croc asked instantly, its tail wagging excitedly.
“Yes and no,” Ed admitted, “though I don’t drink blood, if that’s what you mean. I eat…” he faltered for a long beat. “Memories,” he finally finished. “Because that’s what this place takes from you.” He tapped at his temple with one finger. “It gets inside your head and starts eating away at your personality. At your memories. At who you are until, eventually, you’re an empty husk and there’s nothing left. Then it regurgitates it back up and feeds it all into the floor. Once the transformation starts, the only way to keep your own memories intact and stave off the evolution is to eat little bits from other people.”
“Wait, does that mean you’ve eaten from us?” Temperance hissed, her cleaver flying into her hand in anticipation of impending violence.
“Yeah, because that would be bad,” Croc added. “On top of not lying to each other, friends also don’t kill, eat, or dismember each other. Emphasis on the eating part, which is something I’ve personally struggled with. Like this one time, I was helping this Delver named Tanya who lost a foot to an invisible bear trap on the fourth floor—and then I ate the foot because it was just sitting there doing no one any good at all. But it turns out Tanya was very attached to the foot and unhappy about that I’d eaten it, which ended up “emotionally scaring” her for the rest of her life—which wasn’t very long, by the way, on account of all the blood loss.”
“What, god no?” Ed said, sounding repulsed—though whether from Croc’s story or from the accusation, it was hard to say. “That would be monstrous. I’d never eat from an ally. I only take from people who are already lost causes. Or corpses. Turns out memories stay intact for several days after someone dies. I mean, they degrade, but I don’t need much to survive.”
His answer didn’t make me feel good, but it did make me feel minutely better. “That’s something, at least,” I said.
“Sorry, just to circle back around back to the whole vampire thing,” Croc said, “because it sounds to be like you are a vampire, right?”
“Yeah,” Ed said after thinking about it for a moment. “I guess in the most technical sense of the word I am a vampire. But not blood-sucking, crosses and garlic vampire.”
“Why does that matter?” Temperance asked, still gripping her cleaver.
“Why does that matter?” Croc scoffed. “Am I the only one who sees what this means? We’ve found a man, named Edward, who is a literal vampire with a traumatic and tragic backstory. It’s happening, guys. I can’t believe it’s really happening. Don’t you see what this means, Dan?” Croc said, turning its googly eyes on me. “It’s fate. Clearly, he was meant to be part of our crew. We already have a Jakob, who’s a Transmog—which is basically a werewolf if you think about it—and now we have a vampiric Edward. This is just… wow. I’m at a loss for words.”
“I’m sorry, what’s this now?” Ed asked, glancing between me and Croc, confusion evident on his inhuman face. “If this some kind of cryptic prophecy thing or?... What am I missing here?”
“It’s from a book series,” Croc said, practically bouncing up and down on its paws, “called Twilight, from internationally bestselling author Stephanie Meyer, the voice of a generation.”
“—You really don’t have to include that she’s an internationally bestselling author every single time,” Temperance said.
Croc didn’t seem to hear her, or care one way or the other. Not when it came to Stephanie Meyer.
“Twilight? Never heard of it,” Ed said, shrugging.
“Oh, you will now,” I warned. “But Twilight aside, this changes things. I’m not going to hold this”—I waved a hand at… just all of him—“against you. I know exactly how fucked up the Backrooms are, and I know what they do to people.” Which was true. This place tried to turn everyone into monsters of one kind or another. Sometimes it twisted people into moral abominations, while other times it was a bit more literal. “But if I ever find out you’ve taken memories from me or my friends, I won’t hesitate to put you down like a rabid dog.” I offered him a hard, unflinching gaze. “Is that clear?”
“Clear as good glass,” Ed said, offering me a nod.
“Good.” I took a deep, calming breath and slid my hammer back into my tool belt and shoved the enormous glass pipe toward Temperance. “Now the rest of you take a fat rip of this bong so we can go kill a bunch of demon babies. Our time is running out,” I said as I slipped the gas mask into place.
Comments
Critical Meyhem
I would really love to see a ridiculous looking tin foil hat in one of loot drops for this floor.
James A. Hunter
Thank you! It's such a blast to write. I'm just glad you guys are enjoying it.
Austin Gibbs
Yo this is legit a great book series keep it up and thanks for the chapter
