If caution guided Travis's path in, speed governed his path out. He had what he needed, and he had no desire to stay down any longer than he had to. He ran through the hallways, eyes glued to the floor, his heart thumping in his ears. His motion clearly disrupted the fragile reality that surrounded him. Screeching noises assaulted his ears, the lines on the floor seemed to warp and snake, he felt heavy, then light, then like nothing, and then like everything. His brain ached as his subconscious understanding of physics and reality was defied in front of his eyes.
As he approached the stairs, his flashlight caught a mound of red flesh pushing through the wall in front of his path. He stood in fear as it pushed out into the hallway, blocking its entire width. At the end of the mound lay an incredibly thin, sharp blade, his light glinting sharply off its edge. It bent slightly at its center, and Travis realized that what he was looking at was the largest finger he'd ever seen. The appendage snapped, forward, the long blade soaring at him like a horizontal guillotine.
Acting on instinct alone, he slid under it, the broken glass on the ground tearing into his back. The claw gouged deep into the opposite wall, and metal glass and plaster sprayed out in a fountain of unholy debris. Travis briefly gazed at the tear it had made in the wall as he got back onto his feet, the image burned into his memory. It was familiar and unsettling, but he couldn't quite place it. After this brief pause Travis began to vault up the stairs, not waiting to see what the creature's next move would be.
He heard crashing and smashing noises below him, and a cloud of dust began to float upwards as he ran. Whatever that thing was, it didn't seem to know where he was. Travis noticed that all of the additional strangeness around him was gone, as if that monster's miniscule appearance had sucked all the other insanity out of the environment. He eventually burst through the top of the stairs, passing by the very spot he had seen the ghostly face earlier. As he ran towards the door, a powerful shockwave of air and sound pushed him back. Years of dust pulsed towards him in a massive wave, and he held his arms in front of his face to keep it out of his eyes.
In front of the door, a massive eye blinked into existence, long and oval, and pale yellow in hue. It had to have been six feet wide or longer, and tiny black pupils were scattered all about its surface. The tiny pupils drifted across the surface, slowly coming together in the center to form a huge, compound eye the size of a small kitchen table. The thousands of eyes stared into Travis, through Travis, piecing apart every weakness in his heart. He felt violated in a deep and indescribable way. Angry and terrified, he finally pulled the gun from his waist and began blasting away. His shaking arms did not fire accurately, but his target was too big to miss,
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The demonic organ didn't flinch as several bullets pierced its surface, thick globs of coagulated blood sliding down from its wounds. For a moment, nothing happened at all. Travis stood, shaking, struggling to stand upright, and the creature's eye continued to float in the air, bleeding and staring. After a minute of this it faded from existence, as if this small manifestation had drained all of its energy away. Travis wasted no time in escaping the building. Not wanting to even risk standing where the eye had sat, he ran to the side of the foyer, and using the heel of his gun, smashed open the window. He didn't care about the noise he was making, he was almost out anyway.
He crossed his arms in front of his face and jumped through the window, rolling painfully on the concrete outside. With a pained limp, he got back into his car, chucking his backpack into the passenger's seat. He threw the old vehicle in reverse, tires screeching and skidding as he evacuated the area. He floored the accelerator, hands almost crushing the steering wheel, as he made his way out of the city as quickly as he could. After about an hour of death grip driving, he was well into the countryside again, and noticed his gas was running low. He finally pulled over to refuel, and for the first time in hours, let out a deep exhale. He couldn't even begin to process what he had seen. He should be lucky to have even made it out alive.
Travis could not shake the things he had seen, however. The ghostly visages, the bending of reality, these were all to be expected in an area with such a weak reality. That monster though, it was different. It was some intelligent being, strong beyond comprehension, actively stalking and attempting to impede his process. For whatever reason, its ability to influence the world was limited, even in the twisted reality of the abandoned university. Travis knew that in an R4 or R5 zone, that creature likely would have killed him with ease. Images flashed in his mind of that claw mark torn across the wall. It was so familiar, but he couldn't place it. He felt like his mind was obscuring something from him, hiding some horrific truth.
He shook it off. His next goal was to make it back home, and evaluate everything he had collected. He had a feeling that Dr. Francis' notebook held the keys to a lot of the things he had experienced. But he wasn't ready to open it just yet. He popped his Queen CD back into his player, and tried to focus on the words, drowning his racing thoughts in the old lyrics. He did not know it then, but this was not the end of a journey, but merely the beginning.