Off to the right was an open door leading into a small room, likely a management office.  Next to that was a storage room.  Farther down along that wall were restrooms.  He could see the gender signs on the door, which struck him as a little bit funny in a nudist resort.  What was the purpose in segregating public bathrooms if those using it were unconcerned with privacy?

Maybe it was because no self-respecting female would care to share a restroom with the gender responsible for the kinds of abominations Eric had discovered in far too many public restrooms to count.

His eyes drifted to the far left, where a hallway waited.

He was already familiar with the building.  He was here in his dream.  He explored all these rooms.  He could describe them if he wanted to, without even entering them, though there wasn’t much to describe.  The building was mostly empty.

The kitchen was off the hallway.  The stairs Taylor described to him were behind a door on the far side of the right-hand wall, in the corner beside the refrigerator.  Except that there would be no refrigerator.  The appliances had been removed long ago.

The stairs led down.  But this building had no basement.

He had no recollection of whatever monstrous thing the foggy man left for him, of course.  According to Grant, the dream only showed him what he would have seen if he’d come here immediately after waking from it the very first night.  At that time, the foggy man hadn’t been here yet.  But last night, something in this building changed.  Something was here now that wasn’t here before.  And it wasn’t going to be gentle about revealing itself.

It was going to scare the living hell out of him.

Ignoring the rooms on the right, he turned left and walked to the hallway.  Then he stood in the kitchen door, staring in.  Ugly tile floors.  Bland countertops.  Stained ceiling tiles.  Spider webs and dust.  He could see the faded shadows on the walls where the refrigerator and stove once stood.  Directly across from him was the back door with a grimy window that let in the sunshine.

He focused on the dream, tried to remember every detail he could, but he couldn’t find anything that was changed.  Everything seemed utterly untouched.

Cautiously, he stepped forward, his eyes watching the cabinet doors for any sign of movement, ready to bolt at the first sound of a creaking hinge.

But nothing attacked him.

Just to the right of the back door, directly between the corner and the refrigerator’s lingering shadow on the wall, stood the door to the mystery stairs.  He walked to this door and then looked back into the kitchen again, holding his breath with anticipation.

Still nothing jumped out at him.

He turned and opened the door.

Nothing awful waited behind it.  There was only a narrow hallway leading to a dark set of stairs.

Again, he looked back at the kitchen, half-expecting something to be rushing toward him now, but still there was nothing.

He dared to hope that perhaps the foggy man had left the trap on the other side of the building and that he wouldn’t have to deal with another wardrobe monster.

Then he glanced at the back door and saw a terrible face staring in at him.

Chapter Ten

Eric wasn’t entirely sure whether the door exploded before or after he ran screaming down the hallway.  He also couldn’t recall which obscenities actually made it out of his mouth and which ones became knotted together into incoherent nonsense as he rushed precariously down the dark and narrow stairs.

He did not dare look back, but he could clearly hear the thing tearing after him and uttering horrible, unearthly noises that filled him with indescribable terror.

He did not notice when the concrete walls changed, but by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs he was no longer inside the resort’s main building.  He was now running along a narrow concrete path between a tall stone structure and a dense hedge.

Off the stairs now and at a full run, he finally risked a look over his shoulder.  The thing was nine feet tall, pale green with sickly black blotches.  Huge, grotesque legs, like deformed tree trunks, pounded the concrete almost at his heels.  He saw massive arms reaching out for him, terrible claws slashing the air like the blades of some hellish machine.  And that awful face…  Oozing, bloody eyes, pulsing gashes for a nose, countless gnarled and jagged teeth gnashing together.  But it was worse than all of that.  He couldn’t quite grasp the entirety of everything he saw before he could no longer bear to look at it.  Despite having a face, he didn’t think it had a head.  And though it had arms and legs, it lacked a discernable torso.  It also had many other appendages, most of which he could not seem to even comprehend.

Eric ran.  He reached the end of the stone wall and turned the corner.  He found himself in some kind of overgrown garden.  He dodged an ivy-covered statue and an ornate bird bath, ducked under a low limb and barely avoided falling into a weed-choked fish pond before launching himself over a stone bench and darting behind a small, brick structure.

Behind him, he heard a series of crashes punctuated by his pursuer’s terrifying yowls.

Already, he was gasping for breath, his body aching.  He couldn’t go on like this much longer.  He had to find a way to break the monster’s focus.  But how the hell was he supposed to do that?  He could barely think clearly enough through his terror to keep running.

A set of steps ascended a small hill.  At the top he would find a patio with enormous, fifty-gallon planter pots overflowing with gnarled weeds.  He remembered these pots perfectly.  They were in his dream.  They were clay, with ornate designs.  They looked very expensive.

Rushing up the steps, he realized that he had a marginal advantage here.  He did not recall being attacked by a monster in his dream, so he must have had time to explore.  That meant that he was already at least minimally familiar with this place.

The patio was located against one wall of the enormous structure that had somehow replaced the main building of the abandoned resort.  Though he still didn’t know what this place was, he suddenly recalled that there were signs of construction.  It was obvious that no one had been here in a very long time, but the last time anyone was here, all of this was either still being built or undergoing repairs because just off the patio stood an aging set of scaffolding.

He had barely passed the first pair of giant planters when he heard the distinct sound of one of them shattering.

Uttering another stuttering barrage of curses, Eric forced himself somehow to run even faster, rounding the ledge and racing along the narrow, paved path that ran alongside the building and past the scaffolding.

Quickly, calculating his movements, he leapt onto the side of the scaffolding and began to scramble upward, desperately hoping the whole thing wouldn’t collapse or tip beneath his weight.

He dared a quick look down in time to get his foot out of the way of a slashing claw and scurried upward with renewed energy, spouting a frenzied string of words that he was pretty sure were not words at all but merely half-assembled grunts and terrified blubbering.

Something crashed against the bottom of the shaky structure.  He heard the clanking of metal rods striking the pavement and felt the platforms lurch beneath his feet, tilting perilously to one side, threatening to spill him into the reaching arms of the monster below.

He forced himself not to look.

Slipping between the support rods and onto the highest platform, he immediately began to crawl on his hands and knees back toward the far end of the structure as it wobbled beneath him, praying it would continue to support his weight.