OH, and here's a very rough draft for something, or at least a concept I had in my head. Especially inspired by @keltka and @thegrimsqueaker. Spoiler: A Guide to Dark Places, Vol. I, Issue VIII: Descriotions of Various Doors, Pt. I There’s a doorway that no longer goes away. Right between the hallway closet and the bathroom. Nothing special about it. It’s the same wood as the others, the same height, as if it’d been there all along. The well lit hallway it opens up to is exactly like the rest of the apartment. The same walls, the same floor, nothing at all wrong with it, save that the wood flooring is exposed and looking a little worn, along with a deep gouge into it leading from midway to the door on the other end of the hall. Nothing special about that door, either. ------ Konstantin never seems to see it. Wēi is the only one. ------ The room at the other end is almost completely empty, except for a worn, wooden table, an equally worn chair, a floor to ceiling bookshelf on the far wall, and a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Or at least it’s blank to start with. No amount of searching gives Wēi any kind of clues about where the room came from. Nothing to tell him why it’s there to begin with. Eventually it stops mattering. It becomes his safe haven when he needs it. Particularly when Konstantin is away. Especially when Konstantin is away. ------ Konstantin sees the door when he comes back from a weekend trip, and again after a longer one weeks later. He sees the door and immediately knows something’s wrong. Mysterious, sudden doors were never good, but it’s hard not to get curious. It opens to a well lit hallway. The walls are aged and peeling, cracked, the flooring ancient and gouged. It smells of must and long, slow decay, and underneath that he can smell Wēi, too. The only light is from the crack at the bottom of the door at the end of it. Light that’s broken only by the obvious signs of someone walking back and forth. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, over and over. Wēi hasn’t answered his phone since Konstantin got back into town. Something is wrong. Konstantin finds him in the room at the end of the hall, and if it weren’t for the spiraling scrawling across the walls, it’d almost seem like there was nothing to have been worried about in the first place. He finds Wēi pacing, headphones on, pulling an old, old book from a tall, dilapidated bookshelf. A bookshelf that is full of the same title, over and over. but Wēi doesn’t seem to notice. He cracks open the book, Konstantin’s mouth parted in silent surprise. The books murmur softly. Wēi thumbs through it, pacing back and forth, and the light of the room is all wrong. Scratching. Konstantin can’t help but look. Words carve themselves into the wood of the table, and he knows the handwriting. It’s sloppy word salad in Wēi’s left-handed chicken scratch. Wēi eventually lifts his head, blinking. “Oh, you’re back,” he says, sounding a little surprised, but acting as if it were all normal. “What day is it? Is it Tuesday already? How’d it go?” Konstantin doesn’t think twice about taking him by the hand and yanking him out of the room, out of the hallway, back home, Wēi still clutching the book. ------ On each and every spine of each and every book there had been the same thing. A Guide to Dark Places The same title to the book Wēi brings back with him. ------ The door disappears. Wēi has no memory of it when Konstantin asks. Konstantin binds and hides the book, doesn’t dare to read it.
