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“Oh, Jonathan,” it purrs in the dark. He can hear it, slithering around down the hallways, searching for him and the others. But he’s the only one still in this strange building. Anxiety crawls in his chest, his heart leaping out of its cage as he tries to steady his breath.
The shotgun in his hands shakes, but this time he was wise enough to wear gloves - it won’t slip out of his sweaty grasp like last time. The amount of times he’s done this, you think Jonathan would learn, would grow used to all of this.
But he hasn’t and he isn’t. He’s still terrified. And for good reason. He can see shadows of the thing's silhouette flittering about, until he sees the bright flashlight glow of its eyes. It's not looking at him, but he can still see it as it pries open a wooden door. He waits, trying to push down the panicky thoughts, the feeling like there’s nothing he can do.
Jonathan watches in quiet terror as the thing rips open the door down the hallway. He can’t see any part of its body, only its eyes. He’s only ever seen its eyes. They’re without pupils, and shine like stars in the fathomless dark. Blinding, in this world of absolute black he was dragged into. He hasn’t seen the sun, or stars for that matter, in what feels like years.
Jonathan’s hands clench subconsciously, gripping the gun tighter and tighter, until there’s a light squeak of his gloves on the wood and polymer and metal. His heart drops at the sound, and the thing comes speeding out of the room it was searching in. Based on the movement from the light of its eyes, it's like it's swimming in the air.
His heart beats harder and harder as the terror mounts. It's crawling up and down the walls now, coming down the hallway in a jerky spiral of movement as though trying to fill the entire space. It doesn’t make a sound as it does so. It's unnatural, and it causes the animal brain in his mind to scream.
Jonathan doesn’t have anywhere to go. He’s stuck in this corner towards the end of the hallway. The stairs that had been there were gone when he came back, after finding the nails Quentin asked for. Like everything in this fucked place, it changed on a whim.
And now he was effectively trapped with something he was pretty positive had killed him a dozen times over already. Something he thinks knows him personally, but he’s not sure how. It was like, despite not knowing where he was, it had a connection to his mind.
It knew he was near, knew he was living. And while Jonathan found it completely unfathomable, it seemed to find a perverse joy in showing it at least knew his name somehow. He hated it. He hated this damn place. He hated this thing. He hated the people he got stuck helping.
“Friend of mine,” the thing whispered in the dark as it hunted. It grows closer and closer to Jonathan’s hiding spot in the dark, and as it does so, it seems to slow down. Like it's savoring the moment. Jonathan lifts the gun, feeling his mind go empty. He only has three shells, and he’s not sure any of them will do anything.
“You breathe like the walls,” the voice echoes sinisterly in the close space. Jonathan’s hands shake, and suddenly he feels like he’s forgetting something. He can’t breathe. He’s frozen. It's nearly on top of him, and he can’t even shoot.
And then it's there, in his face, its eyes blinding him. Something grips the gun and yanks it out of his hands. It clatters against the wall on the other end of the hall. “Oh Jon, oh Jon,” It breathes. “Why must we do this to ourselves? Hurt ourselves again and again?”
It cocks a boneless face at him. “Why are we gripped by such insanity in our hearts and brains?” Something grips his face, and suddenly a maw is revealed. Something dark and black and violent and pulsing. It's all-consuming, and he has the sudden realization that the eyes are not the only thing he’s seen. He’s seen and felt every bit of it. He merely keeps forgetting.
He screams until his lungs give out, even as it destroys every part of him. This thing subsumes him, and once again, he loses a piece of himself to it as he’s rendered down into nothing as it holds him.
But then it's over. Jonathan wakes with a choked gasp, three days earlier. And just like last time, he can’t remember a thing about what happened. He scratches his head, trying to figure out why he woke with what felt like constricted lungs.
Quentin and Becca give him a queer look, like he’s lost his mind. Carson looks at him like he knows what he’s feeling. That endless pit in the chest, like something you left the fire on at night. Like something is gone. Like you’re not actually real.
That’s when it happens again. The landscape permeating chant that buries itself in his bones. “Oh, Jonathan,” it croons in the distance, like an old insidious friend that is in the same room with him.