Nichelle Trudery, Elmer Treedweller, and Totchell Zizzzard were gone now, probably assuming he would be impossible to find or had been killed or captured. The upright-walking dog had also vanished, presumably following the three humans to the car for a long-awaited ride with its head out the window.
Until his eyes adjusted to the overall lack of light, Jim would have sworn he fell through some kind of trap door. In reality, he had fallen because he had come to a staircase on the opposite side of where the steps began and the guardrails were missing. Apparently unable to find him or learn what had occurred in the darkness, the others assumed the worst and made their escape. He could not help but feel a little disappointed by this development, especially considering he would not have left any of them in this building without an exhaustive search. Then again, perhaps something else, a more imminent threat, had prompted their departure.
Jim struggled for several minutes to find a light source, a long chain attached to a bare bulb that burned surreal yellow and revealed nothing in particular. The floors were hardwood and surprisingly clean, the walls recently painted ivory with cobwebs in the corners. This struck Jim as stranger than just about anything he could previously have imagined. Considering the presence of the bizarre dog and the apparent emptiness of the facility and the sinister feel of the whole affair, he would have been less surprised by a chamber of horrors or signals of longer abandonment. Instead, the area was simply a long, open and low-ceilinged basement that looked something like a laboratory, but with no experiments present, only countertops and tables and chairs.
When Jim made his way carefully up the staircase he had used about half of to get down, he could see a few drops of blood and various dings and dents and bruises on the steps, any one of which could have been caused by part of his body. At the top of the stairs, he discovered what, in all likelihood, had impelled his friends to leave the area in the first place. It was a grotesque and horrifying sight, a man of roughly his own age who had apparently coughed up a fatal dose of tangible hubris, a huge blob of grey, rubbery gunk that apparently had poisoned him or choked him to death or damaged his esophagus, or whatever tangible hubris did to kill its victim. There was a handwritten sign attached to the man's corpse, evidently intended for anyone who ventured down the stairs.
DO NOT ENTER: CONTAMINATED AREA
Perhaps Nichelle, Elmer, and Tott had not known exactly what happened to him and ran across the corpse in their search. Maybe they didn't even see the staircase or the fact that there were no guardrails on the far end. It remained fairly dark, but the light of the still burning bulb downstairs and Jim's well-adjusted eyes rendered things more clear than they would have been to his friends. It occurred to him that he had no idea how long he had been unconscious and, therefore, how long they had been gone. In all likelihood, they had seen the body and panicked, especially Elmer, who feared TH more than anything.
Upon closer examination, the dead body proved fake. He could not verify one way or the other whether the tangible hubris was genuine, but now he felt slightly better. One less victim of the scourge, perhaps a little less threat to his own well-being and, if he was lucky, maybe the others had called for help or were waiting outside.
He tried to work his way back to the corridor they had followed after discovering the very peculiar floor door and the bipedal canine. Finding it turned out to be really easy, what with the footsteps and voices. Two people, a young woman and an old man, burst from the corridor as he approached and the woman shouted at him.
"Hold it right there. Put your hands behind your head!"
And there it was. Jim complied after a brief pause, not certain whether to be grateful or frightened.
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