Silence. It seemed to expand in my head, like those disposable earplugs. Eating up all the empty space.

Finally he turned back toward me. “I think something’s following us.”

Something. Not someone. Oh. “Like what?”

“You know about the other versions of us down here.” He snickered. “Probably more than you’d like to. The doubles, and their doubles from other houses, and so on. They’re us, more or less exactly. Which is why we get that sick feeling when they’re close. And because they’re us exactly, it makes them easy to take out. You don’t have to learn their weaknesses, because fuck, you already know them.” He paused for a moment. “But there’s... other ones.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to prod, but found myself doing it anyway. “Other ones?”

He shook his head. “You ever see someone watching you down here? Like at the edge of your light?”

“No,” I said, hair rising. “I mean... I don’t think so.”

“If you get closer, you can see they look like us, too. Always a Niko or an Orion. On the outside, anyway.” The pattern of light shifted as he swung it briefly down each of the other hallways, then back to the first again. “When you get close to a double of yourself, you can feel it. Right? It feels wrong, somehow. Bad. Something to do with the synchronicity, I think, the risk. If the two of you see each other get out of sync, if you understand you’ve broken it... bad news, and your body senses it. That danger.

“But. These other things. You get close to one of them, even if it looks like you, you don’t feel anything at all. And that somehow makes it so much worse.” He spat. “Because it means the Lookie-Loos aren’t human. They look like us, but they’re not, not really. They’re something else.”

“You named them the fucking Lookie-Loos?” I was horrified. “Thanks. Not creepy at all.”

He laughed a genuine laugh, then cut it short, like he was upset with himself. Like I was pulling something over on him. “They are creepy, dumbshit. They just stand there. They don’t usually come too close, but if you walk up to them, they don’t move away. They don’t move at all. They watch you.” He sniffed. “I mean they move their eyes, you know. To track you. Their heads. They breathe.” He unscrewed the water bottle and took a swig. “But they don’t respond to anything you do. Anything.”

He paused, as if to let that sink in. Or as if remembering something.

“And if you walk off,” he finally went on, “they’ll follow you. At a distance. But if you stay in one place for too long, sometimes. Sometimes. They kind of creep up on you. Slowly. Edge a tiny bit forward every now and then. Like they’re eager, but also real, real patient. I woke up one time and two of them, two Nikos, were bent over me. Standing there for fuck knows how long while I slept. Staring. Mona Lisa smiles.”

He shrugged. “If you sprint for a while, take some twists and turns, you can usually shake them. Creepy, yeah, but not a problem.”

Oh well that’s fine then. “What are they?”

“No idea.” He laughed that hollow bark-laugh again. “Maybe echoes, or waves, or something. Waves and particles. Superimpositions. This whole place, Downstairs, it’s like some kind of huge multiplier. You’ve figured that out, right? At least that much? It multiplies. Dimensions, people. Rooms. Ideas. Emotions. Some kind of chain reaction that got started somehow, sometime. There’s a spring down here,” and suddenly he was almost chanting, murmuring, his voice gone strange, “clear waters at the source. Deep. All the water comes from there. Very, very deep. It splits, and splits, and splits again, and keeps splitting. Thousands of times. Millions. And each stream is as big as the one it’s splitting from, and they shouldn’t all fit but they do, and it’s wrong, it can’t fit in your head, it’s too big it’s too big...”

He seemed to catch himself, stiffened.

“But the Lookie-Loos,” he said, in control again. “They do it too, sometimes. There’ll be two of them, moving almost in sync. Or four. I think if two bump into each other, they sort of stick together, cluster up. And if those two meet others, they all join up, like a fucking molecule. Snarled in bigger and bigger tangles.” He was watching me now, I guessed; I got the sense he was smirking, enjoying the effect the story was having on me. “One time I had to walk through a whole room full of them. All just standing there, packed shoulder to shoulder as I shoved my way through. They weren’t doing anything. Just looking. Looking at me.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I turned my head nervously in the direction of the hallway I couldn’t see. “And you think there’s one back there now?”

“Oh, I know there is,” he said calmly. “It’s standing right there, watching you.”

I jolted back, lost my balance, and fell heavily to the floor, kicking back with my feet and scrambling to right myself. My skin was crawling and all I wanted was to get farther away, except I couldn’t see it, couldn’t see anything, and what if a second one is coming up behind me—

But Niko was laughing now, big belly laughs, and it slowly dawned on me through my terror what that probably meant.

“You fucking pussy.” He climbed to his feet, grunting. “Probably dumb of me. If you’d wet your pants I’d have to smell it the rest of the way.”

I awkwardly struggled upright, stood, furious. He made no move to help.

But I knew him too well. He might have been bluffing at the end, but only to cover for being legitimately scared. He had heard something down the hall, or thought he had. And he hadn’t been teasing when he’d started talking.

At least some of that had been true.

He tugged on the rope around my neck. “Storytime’s over, bitch. Get moving.”

----------------------------------------

Walking blind into the unknown isn’t fun, and gets worse when you’re freshly terrified of it. I kept expecting now to walk into a body, someone standing in my way, fleshy and warm and inhuman. Staring. But I didn’t. To my captor’s credit, he never let me walk into a wall (or a pit), although he was sometimes rough with jerks to the rope around my neck to correct me.

But I was reaching the limits of my endurance. My collapse by the nightlight felt like eons ago, and maybe I’d only slept for an hour or two there, anyway. Waves of emotion had washed through me since then, each one leaving its own high-water mark. I stumbled even over level ground. I was barely awake.

Niko finally noticed, and agreed we could stop for “a sleep.” He let me lie down, but kept my head covered and hands tied. It was better than nothing.

It’s a testament to the depth of my exhaustion that I fell asleep within moments. This time, I didn’t dream.

I blinked awake some time later, not quite sure what had woken me. Niko breathed quietly, a few feet away. I got the sense he was sitting up against the wall, legs folded up, and I was lying at his feet in the center of the hall. It was dark. He must have turned the flashlight off, not that I’d be able to see much anyway with a t-shirt tied around my face.

I wondered if I could, very slowly and very quietly, wriggle away. Like a worm out of a tackle box.

He reached out and nudged me with his foot. “Don’t even think about it, bitch.” But the nudge was gentle, and his voice tired.

We stayed there for a long moment, listening to each other breathe.

Finally, he exhaled, loud, frustrated. “You think I want this?” He sounded desperate. Near tears. “I don’t. Any of it. Scaring you like this. I’m not a monster, man, I don’t get off on it. I’m just doing what I have to. You don’t get that, I know, but you haven’t been down here long enough. Nowhere near long enough.”

I stayed quiet, afraid to say something that might make him angry again.

He sighed. “I don’t always kill you, either. Or at least not right away. Sometimes, first. For old times’ sake, you know. I fuck you.”

The word fuck stung me.

He leaned forward, holding his head a foot above mine. His breath tickled the fabric at my ear. “You do remember, don’t you? The time we did it?” He sounded concerned. “That night, after I tried to kill myself?”

Sometimes when a person is stung their body overreacts. They swell up, maybe so much their eyes are forced shut. It’s called anaphylaxis. Unprotected, in the Greek. But the point is it’s not the sting that’s doing it to you, not really. It’s your own body, blinding you and destroying itself in a misguided attempt to keep you safe.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“That was maybe the closest I ever felt to anyone.” His voice was calm, bland, like recounting a mildly good lunch he’d had. “I loved you so much. Not in that way, you know. Not the way you wanted me to. But I figured what the fuck. You saved me. No, not just that.” His finger brushed my cheek through the fabric and I flinched. “You needed me. I was everything to you. That felt so fucking good.”

I was trying to stay motionless. I remembered a safety video they’d made us watch at Yellowstone. If you’re on the ground and a bear attacks you, curl into a ball and play dead. Don’t fight back. The bear will win.

He breathed out. “You shouldn’t have done it. Or I shouldn’t have made you. Do you remember, now, whose idea it was?”

I couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was the anaphylaxis. Something somewhere was terrifying. Doppelgangers lurking in basement hallways. A camper in a tent, terrified by his own snores.

The bear will win.

His hand moved over the shirt wrapped around my head, not quite touching it, not quite pulling away. “I just want to get that feeling back sometimes, you know? It’s so fucking lonely here. You can’t blame me.” He laughed, so loud and close to my face I cringed. “I mean. Don’t get me wrong. I’d prefer a girl but there aren’t any down here. Just us. Only us.”

His fingers outlined my face. “Anyway. Doesn’t work. Never works. Never the same with you.” He breathed out through his nostrils and it tickled the fabric by my cheek. “I can’t trust you. Any of these versions of you. Ry, Ryan, Orion. You seem different but you’re all the same. Everything you ever said or did after that. Was bullshit. None of you gave a shit about me, did you? What I needed. Who I was. You just wanted it to happen again.

“And the next time I tried to off myself, that’s the only reason you stopped me, isn’t it?” He rapped his knuckles on my forehead, through the shirt. “Isn’t it, bitch.”

“No.” It was so soft, I’m not even sure he heard me.

I could feel him shrug. “Anyway, that’s why I kill you, after. Case you were wondering.”

He sat back up, wincing. “But sorry, man, not tonight. Got a headache.” He stood, kicked me roughly in the side. “Come on. Better keep moving. We’re close. I can feel it.”