The Fear-Man awoke, as he had for as long as he could remember, to screams. For so long now, the pained chorus reverberated through the halls and rooms of the prison, leaving nowhere to escape their cries. Not that he wanted to, of course. It had become the background noise of his life, and he enjoyed the terror and fear contained within. Some days, he would hum along. But today, something sounded off, and the music was wrong.
He arose from his bed – a rock slab covered in dried reeds – and walked to the far end of the room. There, he tapped a single finger against the surface of a glass ball affixed to the end of a stick. A faint warm light grew within, illuminating his gangly, naked body. After tying loose fitting clothes around his body with a rope belt, he wrapped his boney fingers around a wooden lever and ratcheted it downwards. With every push, the gears in the walls around him groaned, until finally grinding to life and dragging open a stone door. As the gears went silent, the lever arm loosened and he pulled it free, sliding it through a loop on his belt to hang at his side.
He could already feel the gaze of Those-Who-Watched upon his body like warm sunlight, scanning him as he would squeeze the fear from the inmates like blood from a stone.
“Must feed,” they whispered to him. “Obey or suffer.”
On the good days, when the screams were loud enough to satisfy them, the whispers would stop. But today was not a good day, and the whispers were already deafening.
Down a corridor of stone lit by glass-bauble torches, he entered the prison command room – a grey place made even smaller by the wooden table and chair stuffed in the corner. High above a canopy of palm fronds, he scanned over the perimeter of a courtyard through an elongated gap in the wall. The fronds irradiated a sickly yellow light, illuminating a cobblestone path that ran from the thick of the trees, down beneath the metal bars of a gate gapping the outer wall like the space between two great front teeth. Past that, where the path came to an end, there was nothing but overwhelming emptiness. Darkness, as infinitely far above as below.
Why do their screams sound so thin? the Fear-Man wondered, hearing the yelling from the cellblock below creeping through the room.
He inserted the lever arm into a slot on a nearby wall and pulled down. The doors of a cupboard inlaid within the wall slid open to reveal a square battery glowing red. Next to it, an indentation for another battery lay empty.
A tightness grew in his stomach, like someone snugged a piece of string around his guts.
Where’s the blue battery?
With the red battery in hand, he shuffled down the hallway and slotted it into the top of a pedestal standing beside a gate. As power surged through the pedestal, the carvings along its side glowed red, forming long shadows that crept across the walls while the gate slowly opened.
Move faster, damn it, he thought, the string around his guts pulling tighter. Once, checkpoints like this had given him piece of mind that no one would escape, but now, after years of crawling the maze-like halls of the prison, they just slowed him down.
When the gate was open wide enough, the Fear-Man squeezed through the gap between the bars and the wall. Once through, he reached into a window above the pedestal and removed the battery, the red carvings going dark as the gate reversed. At the end of the hallway, he rushed down a curled staircase, the clack of the locking gate behind him inaudible beneath the roaring static of Those-Who-Watched.
“Must obey. Feed, must feed!”
Exiting the stairwell and stepping into the cellblock, the muffled duet of a man and woman’s strained vocal cords became clear, and the Fear-Man realized why it all sounded so wrong.
There were two voices – there should have been three.
Down the row of cells along the side of the room, a cell door hung open. The knot in his stomach clenched, and for a moment, the Fear-Man could feel the tension bubbling up into his throat. He forced it back down and ran to the open cell.
Each inmate had appeared in their cells over time, one by one, delivered by Those-Who-Watched while he slept. He spent years twisting their minds, planting the fears and phobias he would dream up like seeds in fresh soil. They would not fear death, he would make sure of that. They would fear what he wanted them to so that Those-Who-Watched would leave him be. Until, when he had broken each one too many times, madness overtook, and their fears became irrational, the soil soured, and nothing more would grow. It was only a matter of time before the Fear-Man would awake to find the inmate gone, replaced with a new, fresh mind.
But no one ever left the cells. No one ever escaped.
“Teeth,” a woman in the first cell wailed as he passed. She lay on the floor, surrounded by dead fronds, and held her leg, as if nursing a rotten wound. “Teeth.”
The Fear-Man lifted the lever arm from his belt, holding it up like a club as he reached the empty cell. Within, a wooden barrel crusted with bits of moldy food lay shattered on the floor. In the light of a nearby bauble torch he could see a splintered piece of wood jammed within the door lock. It had, no doubt, allowed the tall man who was once housed within the cell, freedom with some careful wriggling.
“H-Hey!” the man in the next cell said. He stood pressed into a corner of the far wall, his hands trying to block the cascading light from the bauble in front of his cell. “Just… turn it off, just for a moment. Please?”
“Where did he go?” the Fear-Man barked.
“No. Please, the light…”
“Tell me, or I bring another.”
“No, oh God, no!”
The Fear-Man grabbed the bauble stick and reached it through the bars, sharp light exploding within the cell.
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” the man screamed. As he scurried around the cell, trying to escape the light, he pulled a reed from his bedding and swung wildly. The reed struck the bauble and it shattered, engulfing the cell in darkness. Surrounded by shards of warm glass, the man cried in his corner.
“No. Must fear,” Those-Who-Watched hissed. “Must suffer!”
“He’s already suffering,” the Fear-Man mumbled.
“Not right. Not fear.”
“Teeth?” the woman asked from her cell. The Fear-Man went to ask her about the tall man’s escape, but he knew her mind was ruined, and that Those-Who-Watched would take her soon.
He hurried away from the cells, following the cellblock down into a foyer with another security checkpoint. The two-story security gate of crossed iron bars was gone, pulled into a wall recess beside a humming pedestal. And within the pedestal, he saw it: the glowing blue key.
The Fear-Man got sick, the nerves within his body shaking him as he wretched. It was all coming apart. Those-Who-Watched wouldn’t take the Teeth-Woman next, they would take him. He needed to find the tall man.
He passed the checkpoint and started down the cobblestone path. The babbling of the Teeth-Woman and the Light-Man faded within the forest of trees, replaced by the sound of water lapping against the trunks, somewhere down the hill. With each snaking curve of the path, his worry grew that he would never find his way out, that the forest was another trap Those-Who-Watched used to prevent escape. There had never been any reason for him to leave the prison before, and the unfamiliarity of the dense forest, even in the light from the fronds above, felt like its own prison. The Fear-Man rounded a corner, and when he was certain the path had looped back and he was lost, the wall at the outer edge of the courtyard appeared between the trees, guiding him out.
He stopped at the locked gate and turned, the prison looming above him like he had never seen before. It reminded him of a pained face. The squinting eyes of the control room windows, the gaping mouth of the checkpoint at the top of the hill, and the slithering tongue-like path leading to where he stood now.
“Come on out! Gate’s still locked, and I have the only key,” the Fear-Man yelled into the marsh, holding up the battery. “I know you’re in there.”
He rapped the lever arm against the side of a tree, shaking loose a glowing frond that floated down from the canopy. He could picture the tall man huddling in the dirty water, bolstered by the adrenaline of making it this far. Well, this was far enough, the Fear-Man would make sure of that.
The pedestal lock hummed to life as the Fear-Man inserted the battery. Sounds of thumping machinery echoed throughout the courtyard as the gate chugged to life, lowering through a slot in the floor.
“Obey,” Those-Who-Watched hissed. “Find, no escape.”
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he yelled. “Freedom, right there! Go on and take it.”
He watched the gate finish its descent as the marsh went silent. Past the high outer walls, the stone path came to a jagged end, hanging from the edge of the suspended island like a diving board. He wondered what, if anything, could be at the bottom of the abyss they all floated within. What creatures lurked down there, and did the gaze of Those-Who-Watched reach there too?
“No waiting. Hungry, must suffer. Must feed.”
It was then, standing there in the shadow of the prison, listening to the threats of Those-Who-Watched repeating in his head, that he realized he did not control fear – it controlled him. A fear that Those-Who-Watched had threaded through him with their words and stares, like the nightmares he sewed in the minds of the prisoners. He had so much power over them through fear, the same power Those-Who-Watched had over him. That nervous knot of fear within him was not growing because of what he feared they would do, but rather it was growing as he lost control. Control of the tall man, control of the prison, and control of himself.
As the knot within him pulled tight, he found himself past the open gate, at the edge of the abyss, and jumped.
“No escape! Must-“
But the sound of Those-Who-Watched quickly faded behind the enormous sound of air rushing past him. He blinked, or thought he did, but found that his eyes were useless in the dark. The surging fear inside him melted as he surrendered all control to the abyss, and soon, the peace of it granted him sleep.
The Fear-Man opened his eyes to sunlight spreading over a valley of flowers. Above, shades of blue and orange swirled in the sky as morning peaked over the surrounding hills. He stood, catching a soft breeze carrying the scent of daisies and delphiniums, and walked through the meadow.
Was this the bottom of the abyss?
Then, somewhere in the distance, he heard them.
Two distinct screams.
The voices grew louder until he was sure the Light-Man and the Teeth-Woman had followed him, but he couldn’t find them. He began to run, trying to escape the cries that never left his side.
Teeth.
The light, turn it off, please!
His heart raced and he collapsed on the ground. He expected the soft padding of a patch of flowers, but instead fell upon dried fronds that crunched beneath him. He blinked, and it was all gone. The meadow, the sky, all of it, replaced by stone walls.
A man appeared outside his cell, wearing ragged clothes and a metal mask with a long hose draped over his shoulder. He could see the man’s stare behind the mask and hear his unintelligible whispers behind the screams of the others.
The fear returned, stronger than he ever remembered it being. He pictured the meadow, the flowers, the sun. There was never any escape. He would never be in control, not of his fears, or of his life. It all broke him, and he screamed with the others.
The whispering stopped, and Those-Who-Watched began to feed.
Author’s Note: This story was wholly inspired by Abyss: Prison of Fear, an atmospheric puzzle game developed by Drew Van Camp. You can, and should, download and play Abyss, which can be found here: https://drewvancamp.itch.io/abyss.
Thank you to Drew, without whom, this story and world would not exist.