No-Clip - A Backrooms Liminal Horror - EBOOK

NO-CLIP

I landed with a thud and a yelp. One moment the wall had been there, and the next, it was gone and I was falling sideways with nothing to stop me. For a moment, it had felt like I was falling forever as shadows whipped past, as if I’d no-clipped through the wall, like in a video game when you phase through the geometry and drop out of the world entirely.
It was the most bizarre feeling.
One moment the wall had been there as I leant up against it with my shoulder, and the next, it was gone, and I stumbled into darkness and shadow.
I’d only stopped to read a text as I’d walked through the underpass. I’d moved to one side of the tunnel to stop and focus. Ahead, the light from the exit silhouetted the few people who’d been down here with me.
Had they seen me fall through the wall?
It had been dark in that underpass and everyone had their faces in their phones. So maybe not. I felt like I’d screamed, but, I couldn’t be sure.
For a very brief moment, I was weightless and in a void of nothing, before I landed with a thud.
I hissed as I rolled off my arm. I’d landed on it, sending lances of dull pain through my shoulder. For a moment, I feared I’d broken something, but the pain quickly faded as other, more worrisome thoughts started to filter through the fog that briefly clouded my mind.
I lay on something soft, and as I rolled onto my front and placed my hand down to push myself up, I realised it was also damp. Gross.
Yellow.
That was my first impression of the place I’d found myself in. Everything was yellow.
The carpet below me was a deep pile of soft, tightly wound fibres in a dull tan or yellow, and it was damp. As I pressed my hand into the fuzz, a discoloured moisture pooled about my hand.
I pushed myself up, getting a foot beneath me, making the carpet squelch under my weight. My jacket arm and my jeans were wet from the moisture, and it stank. A musty, old smell hung in the air. I wrinkled my nose in disgust as I took a moment to let my spinning head settle.
As I took my first look about me, I felt dizzy. My stomach sank, as if a gaping hole had opened up deep in my gut, and for a moment, it was as if I was in freefall.
What the hell had happened?
Where the hell was I and how did I get here?
Somehow, I was standing in the middle of a large room. Metres away, walls hemmed me in on all sides. There were adjoining rooms too, but there were no doors between the spaces. The carpet was everywhere, extending all the way to the walls, which were also yellow and covered in a bland, repeating pattern.
A moment later, I realised it was wallpaper as I noticed areas where it was peeling away from the cream plaster beneath.
Briefly, I wondered if I’d fallen through a poorly constructed wall that had somehow collapsed under my weight, and I’d dropped through to an office or something below the underpass.
It didn’t make much sense, but my mind scrambled to find an answer that might explain all of this.
I looked up, hoping to see a hole through which I’d fallen, and maybe the faces of the people who’d been in the underpass with me, looking down, ready to help.
But I didn’t see any of that.
Above me was a suspended ceiling, of the kind you usually see in an office, with recessed florescent lights behind cloudy plastic square coverings that diffused the sickly yellow glow. The intensity of the light, and the incessant hum-buzz of the tubes threatened to give me a headache if I looked at them too long.
Squinting, I looked away, and turned on the spot. There was nothing in here. Just yellowed walls, peeling paper, buzzing lights and a damp carpet giving off a stink that turned my stomach. I could see three ways out of the room I was in, but I wasn’t sure if I should move. Was that the right thing to do? Where was I?
Suddenly remembering the phone I had in my hand, I tapped the power button. Maybe I could call someone? But my hopes were instantly dashed by the ‘No Signal’ icon at the top of the display.
Opening up the call screen, I tried anyway. I opted to call my parents, and tapped the icon, but the call failed. I tried again but got nothing. In a rising panic, I tried several other friends and family, but nothing was working. I held up my phone to try and get some kind of signal, and wandered around the room, but the bars stubbornly refused to appear. Finding myself near one of the exits, I looked out beyond the room.
A long, wide corridor stretched off, with more branching rooms leading off from that. I felt sick again as I stared off into that endless maze.
Beyond the constant background hum, there were no other sounds. Nothing. I couldn’t hear anything. No traffic, no voices, no sounds of movement other than my own feet on the squishy wet carpet.
The absence of noise and the stillness of the room triggered a rise in tension, deep inside. I was alone down here, wherever this was.
Utterly alone.
Opening my mouth, I went to shout, to call out, only to clamp my mouth shut, and say nothing. Was that a good idea?
What if I wasn’t alone? What if there were others down here with me? Would they be friendly? I’d watched horror films before, I knew what happened to people in these kinds of situations.
Terror gripped my mind, its claws biting into my brain as I fought with myself, wondering what the best course of action might be.
I walked to another exit from this room, and saw a long branching series of rooms, all with the same carpet, walls and ceiling. Far off, one of the lighting panels flickered, as if broken. I watched it flash for a moment, before it snapped on, and flickered no more.
Turning to the next exit, I saw a huge room, dotted with square pillers, that seemed to go on forever, again with the same endless carpet and décor.
I honestly thought my mind would break. It felt like I was going utterly insane as I stared off into that never ending complex.
“Where the hell am I?”
I’d spoken without really thinking about it, and for a moment, once I’d realised what I’d done, I froze. Would someone hear me?
But no new sounds came.
“Hello?”
I’d thrown caution to the wind. I had to know if there was anyone else in here with me. I just had to know.
No answer.
“Hello? Anyone?”
Again, nothing. I went to each exit and yelled as loud as I could, screaming into the void as my emotions rose and the panic set in. Again, there was nothing. No answer. No reply. Just nothing.
In the end, I found myself kneeling in the centre of the room, screaming and shouting, until that dissolved into mindless sobs with tears streaming down my face. With wet knees, I brought my sobs under control and calmed myself. I’d get nowhere by screaming and crying. I needed to be smart about this and think it through.
I was alone, cut off from… everything, with no idea where I was or how to get out of here.
But somehow, I’d managed to get in, and if I could get in, maybe I could get out.
But how?