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He wants you to understand him. To find him. This is where he plans to kill you.
Something's wrong. My thoughts are shifting. My pulse is racing. It's, it's the tea, the chamomile.
You've been dosed with LSD.
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Malcolm has a number of thoughts in quick succession: if the tea has been dosed, then the killer is probably already in the house; Dr. Brown needs immediate medical attention for what could possibly be a fatal dose of LSD; he needs to call JT, who is out in the car and unaware that Render is here; Dr. Brown had offered Malcolm tea when he came in to ask her about repressed memories… and he drank it.
He does some quick calculations. George Holton and Carl Mitchell both had 50 times the standard dose of LSD in their system. Assuming Dominic Render used the same dosage in the tea, and Bright was well aware that Render’s psychotic state made it impossible to assume consistency in any thing he did, then the few sips that he took of his tea should leave him out of harm's way in terms of cardiac arrest. But he was definitely about to be tripping balls on a too-high dose of the hallucinogen. And considering his fractured mental health, he was quite sure that it was going to be a very unpleasant experience.
The first pangs of anxiety strike when the lights suddenly go out. Malcolm’s heart starts beating so hard against his chest that he's sure it's going to break through his ribs and do a runner. He bows his head, holding onto the desk in front of him with a white knuckled grip, and takes a few steadying breaths, inhaling slowly through his nose and blowing out in sharp puffs. Dr. Brown is panicking behind him, moaning about turning it on and going back, and it is absolutely not helping Malcolm stay calm. The panic is already setting in and he knows he only has a short amount of time before his ability to make rational decisions is ripped out his hands, so he needs to calm down and move.
He lightly pads over to the door and silently pulls it open. There's a silhouette slowly moving through the house, moving to lock the front door with a key. Malcolm closes the door as quietly as he can and turns back to face the room, leaning back against the heavy wooden door. He can feel the fear creeping in – the temperature of his blood is steadily falling and an icy claw is wrapping around his heart, squeezing and ripping and trying to tear him to shreds.
He pulls out his phone with shaky hands, taking two tries to unlock it before he can get into his contacts. He takes a few steps into the room as he scrolls to JT's name and presses the call button, squeezing his eyes shut as he brings the phone to his ear. JT is huffing slightly, obviously on the move as he answers, but Malcolm starts talking before JT can even say hello.
“JT, Render’s in the house.” Malcolm is impressed how steady his voice sounds, considering he can feel the dread consuming his from the inside and is about to lose the battle against his panic. He can hear the front door rattling, but doesn’t hear it open.
“Front door is locked, going around back,” JT replies gruffly.
Malcolm barely contains a whimper as he hangs up the phone and slips it back into his pocket. Dr. Brown has been ranting nearly incoherently the whole time, but when she mentions that the walls are breathing, Malcolm instantly freezes and then slowly turns his head towards the wall and watches as it swells and deflates, and realizes that she’s right. The walls are sucking in rasping, wheezing breaths, and then exhaling a on a long, demonic growl straight from the bowels of hell.
He slowly backs away from the wall but stumbles as he bumps hard into a chair. He spins around in a panic, irrationally afraid that somehow the wall had gotten behind him in an attempt to ambush him. He is intensely relieved that it's just a chair. He grasps the chair-back, nails digging in to the upholstery, and bends himself in half, resting his head on the top of the chair as his breathing stutters and catches in his chest.
“No, no, no, no, no, no,” he whispers to himself.
He’s dealt with hallucinations in the past, but even if there’s a tiny little reasonable part of his brain that is aware that the walls aren’t actually breathing or attacking, it does him no good at all when all of his senses are screaming otherwise.
He needs to get out of this room.
He straightens abruptly and scrubs a hand over his face, huffing out a breath and making his way back to the door, studiously avoiding looking at the walls as they respire loudly around him.
“Stay right here,” he calls to Dr. Brown over his shoulder, as he pulls the door shut behind him.
Bright nearly jumps out of his skin – his skin which is vibrating and contracting and pulling like shrink wrap over his bones – when a psychedelic rock song begins reverberating loudly throughout the house. And boy is that making it hard to concentrate on what he’s supposed to be doing. The music is dancing and swirling through the air as it fills the room with a viscous, molasses-like substance that starts out purple and fades to blue and then green with the changing baseline, colours vacillating as he swims through the weighted atmosphere, moving so much slower than he should be, but the pressure of the music is pushing him down, crushing him and trying to ground his bones into the floor beneath him.
He makes it to the bottom of the stairs before he collapses to the ground with an anguished cry, wrapping his arms over his head in an effort to stop the onslaught of sensory input that is overloading his already besieged mind.
He screams loud and long, a primal howl ripping from deep within him and scraping his throat raw as all of his fear builds and swells and spews out of him, choking him and leaving him gasping. When he finally catches his breath and uncovers his head, the room had cleared of the thick substance and changing colours.
He tentatively gets to his feet and begins to slowly make his way up the stairs.
“Dominic Render!” he calls out loudly. Too loudly. He startles himself, but continues on. He knows he needs to keep going, even if he can’t quite remember why. Which stops him in his tracks only three steps up. Why can’t he remember? They’re taking his memories. He knows they are. It’s what they do. They take his memories and steal them for themselves and they leave him with nothing but a gaping emptiness, a black hole that sucks in everything and leaves nothing behind but terror.
He launches himself at the bannister and hugs it tightly, wrapping himself around it as best he can as he tries to hold on before they pull him away and take everything he is, leaving him nothing but an empty husk. He won’t let them take his mind. And with that thought, he suddenly recalls George Holton, with his missing brain, and remembers why he’s here and what he’s trying to do. He needs to stop Render before he kills again.
He carefully uncurls himself and runs his trembling hands through his hair, reminding himself to breathe.
“No one else needs to die,” he calls out unsteadily as he begins his ascent once again.
“I know how you feel. I’ve had my share of nightmares.” Malcolm's voice breaks as he adds the last part. He feels like he’s trapped in a nightmare right now and wants nothing more than to wake up.
He’s made his way to the landing of the stairs and sees the door on the left. He doesn’t want to open it. He stands with his hand on the knob, thinking of all the things that he wants to say; that he knows that they trapped Render in his nightmares, that it’s not too late, that he can help. But he can’t bring himself to say any of it. His heart is in his throat as he tries to talk himself into opening the door, but the doors in his mind have a tendency to turn into the bars of a jail cell and he just can’t deal with that right now. His hand is trembling on the doorknob, making it rattle in its fitting.
Suddenly the door swings open and he is thrown back against the wall, slamming into the picture hanging there and hearing the glass shatter at the impact. He jerks to the side as Dominic comes at him, swinging a knife and clearly aiming to do serious damage. Somehow, Malcolm gets behind Render for a moment and tries to pin his hand behind his back as he pushes him up against the bannister, but Render jolts his head back, head-butting Malcolm and knocking him to the ground.
Before Malcolm is aware what is happening, Dominic is hovering above him, a two-handed grip on the handle and about to plunge the knife into him. Malcolm doesn’t even bring his hands up in defense as he’s overcome by flashes of a forest, a pocket knife, a warm body behind him. He doesn’t understand what he’s seeing, but doesn’t have a chance to think on it as gunshots ring out only half a second after JT yells, “Police!”
Render’s body jerks back as the bullets rip through him and he falls to the side, dead before he hits the floor. Malcolm props himself up on an elbow and turns to the bottom of the stairs to see JT standing with his gun still aimed at the spot above Bright.
“Bright, you good?” JT asks.
But Malcolm is distracted by the antique trunk that has appeared on the floor behind JT. And that’s it for Malcolm. The breaking point. The one thing that he absolutely cannot deal with in this state. He knows what’s in that box. He dreams of it every night. But now it’s here and it’s real, and there’s something inside that’s rocking and trying to get out.
The blood drains from his face as his stomach rebels and attempts to exit through his mouth and he is inordinately thankful that the only thing he's eaten that day was the sucker from his therapist's office. He dry heaves and doesn’t hear as JT worriedly calls out his name a second time, but when JT's hand lands lightly on his shoulder, his head snaps up in fear and he scuttles back until he hits the wall beneath the ornate stained-glass window, wide-eyed and panting.
“Bright. What’s wrong, man?” JT is a little over halfway up the staircase, still holding his gun up and looking around for whatever threat it is that’s causing Malcolm to have that tragic, terror-stricken look on his face.
JT looks down the stairs, following Malcolm’s gaze, just in time to see Dr. Brown step forward with a double-barreled shotgun, uttering complete nonsense but eyes bright with an unerring intensity.
“NYPD. Put down the…” JT starts but is cut off by the crack of a shot being fired. It takes him in the shoulder, throwing him backwards to land hard against the stairs, sliding down until he reaches the bottom, legs stretched out on the floor while his torso remains awkwardly propped up on the steps.
Dr. Brown drops the gun with a cry and buries her face in her hands for several seconds, before turning and running out of the room yelling, “It’s too quick. I have to go back.”
Malcolm watches the whole thing happen from where he’s curled up against the wall, arms wrapped around his knees. It’s like he’s in two places at the same time. Or, rather, the same place at two times. Two scenes overlaid, unrelated but somehow happening at the same time.
He knows he has to go check on JT. His partner has been shot and he needs to make sure he’s okay.
But the trunk is waiting for him, menacing and forbidding, its metal fittings jangling as something tries to break out. And Malcolm would have to go down right next it to check on JT.
He rocks back and forth, moaning and repeating, “No, no, no. It’s not real” over and over, hands tangled in his hair, for a few minutes while he works up the nerve to move. Eventually JT groans and shifts slightly on the stairs and it’s a reminder for Malcolm that time is of the essence.
He inches his way down the stairs in fits and start, his body constantly jerking back upwards, trying to get away, but he overrides the urge to flee and eventually makes his way to JT's side just as JT's hand drops to the stairs, holding his cell phone.
There’s blood. A lot of blood. A distracting amount of blood that Malcolm can’t look away from. It's creeping its way out of JT’s shoulder, spreading its tendrils along his shirt and down into the stairs beneath him. Malcolm is utterly transfixed by the horror in front of him, staring unblinkingly, unsure what to do about the parasitic being that's apparently growing out of JT's shoulder. He’s snapped out of his reverie as JT's voice gradually filters into his mind.
“…already called for backup. Bright? Bright!” JT's voice is laced with pain but there’s still an edge of intensity as he calls Bright’s name in a tone reminiscent of his military days, hoping to break through to the younger man.
Bright blinks a few times and then finally looks away from the wound and into JT's eyes. Although it’s dark, they’re close enough that JT can tell that Malcolm is tripping something fierce, and not in a good way.
“Of course you'd be high right now,” JT mutters to himself. “Bright. I need you to secure the guns and get me something to apply pressure with. Do you understand?”
Malcolm nods slowly and looks up the stairs. JT's sidearm is sitting on the top of the landing, and frankly, it’s farther away from all the scary things at the bottom of the stairs, so Malcolm is quick to scramble up and take hold of the gun. It gives him a jolt of confidence. He can protect himself and JT now. The darkness isn’t going to get them.
He slides one step at a time back to JT, hugging the gun to his chest, breaths coming faster and faster the closer he gets to the box and to the thing crawling out of JT. He sees the shotgun lying on the floor beside JT’s feet and realizes that their best chance for survival is for both of them to be armed. He slides down to the bottom step and slowly reaches forward with his left hand towards the shotgun, careful not to make any sudden movements, in case the blackness hasn’t realized what he’s doing yet. His hand wraps around the barrel of the gun and slowly lifts it while straightening himself up. He passes the gun to JT without even looking at him as he makes his way up a few steps, still cradling JT's revolver to his chest.
Malcolm is still warily eyeing the box, deaf to JT's words as he calls out his name, asking him to hand over the gun. He’s so intent on keeping an eye on the trunk that he’s forgotten JT is even there. So when JT reaches over to take the gun, his hand brushing against Malcolm's, at the same time that the lid of the trunk starts opening, Malcolm loses his shit. He fires the entire clip at the box.
“What the fuck, dude!” JT screams, hauling himself up with a groan and throwing himself at Malcolm, yanking the spent gun from his hand. The sudden movement causes JT’s already dangerous blood pressure to suddenly drop and he sways slightly, barely getting the gun back in its holster before his eyes flutter shut and he collapses into Malcolm.
Thankfully, the box disappeared in the hail of bullets and Malcolm's mind clears to a moment of near-lucidity when JT slumps against him. He lays the unconscious man back down on the stairs and runs his hands beneath him, checking for an exit wound. His hands come back soaked in blood and he curses as the liquid starts to pulse on his hands. He shrugs out of his suit jacket and balls half of it up under JT, letting the man’s own body weight apply pressure on the one side, while bringing the rest of the jacket towards the front and pressing down.
“JT? Can you hear me?” Malcolm is unsure how much of what is happening is real at this point. Is JT really even there? What if all of this is a trick to get him to stay in one spot, a sitting duck for the blackness? Should he run? Get away before it gets him? But what it’s real and JT is depending on him? JT is his partner. He can’t just leave him.
Malcolm scrubs his hands over his face trying to work out the best course of action, completely unaware of the blood that he just smeared all over himself. He let's out frustrated cry before placing pressure back on the wound, making his decision to stay with JT, real or not.
JT groans and his eyes flicker open at the renewed pressure on the wound. Looking up at Malcolm, past the streaks of gore that make him look like a horror movie extra, JT can see the panic in his eyes, can tell the kid wants to dart but is sticking with him. He’s grateful, and begrudgingly impressed.
“You’re still here,” JT pants.
“You're my people,” Malcolm shrugs, like there was obviously no other choice to be made.
The kid keeps jerking partially away, eyes skipping over the room, occasionally letting out a terrified gasp as his nightmares become real in front of his eyes, but he never takes his hands away from JT.
It’s not long before flashes of blue and red and white are lighting up the room, which is good news for JT, but not so great for Malcolm. The colours are too saturated and are trying to drown him and the changing light sources are causing the shadows in the room to shift ever so slightly, and Malcolm knows it’s all distraction and that the blackness is making its move.
“It's coming!” he screams, throwing himself crosswise over JT and wrapping his arms around his head once more.
The next thing he knows, there are hands pulling at him, and JT is shouting but he can’t understand the words, and there’s too much light and noise and movement, and Malcolm is struggling to get free, to get away from the claws that are squeezing him and pulling him and trying to drag him into the walls, and the walls aren’t just breathing, they’re trying to consume him, and there’s a pained screaming coming from somewhere but Malcolm’s mind can’t make the connection that it’s coming from him.
And right when he thinks his heart is about to explode, Gil steps in front of him looking more worried than Malcolm has ever seen. He places his hands on either side of Malcolm’s face and suddenly the screaming stops and the lights don’t seem so heavy anymore.
Malcolm is gasping for air and there are tears streaming down his cheeks, mixing with the blood that is streaking his face, but the claws that were pulling at him let go as Gil pulls him in and wraps his arms around him. And for the first time since the whole thing started, the fear that had settled in Malcolm’s chest eases just a little and Malcolm sags into the embrace, wrapping his arms around Gil's waist and breathing in the familiar smell of the man's spicy aftershave and leather jacket, smells that Malcolm associates with warmth and comfort and home. He lets out a choked sob and Gil squeezes a little tighter, talking in calming tones that are helping Malcolm to catch his breath, even if he doesn’t quite know what Gil is saying most of the time.
He hears the words IV and Diazepam, and is only slightly surprised when his arm is pulled away from Gil and there is a sharp poke near the bend of his elbow. At this point, he is far too wrung out to care about anything besides being safe in Gil's arms. There’s a flash of a different kind of fear as he feels himself fading and slumping to the floor, but Gil catches him and suddenly he’s laying on a bed and it doesn’t matter that there are still flashing lights and raised voices and all kinds of movement happening around him, because Gil has Malcolm’s right hand wrapped in both of his, and Malcolm thinks that maybe he can sleep, just for a little while, and then hopefully he can wake up from this nightmare.