"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane."

- Philip K. Dick, VALIS

4:34 p.m

9 days earlier

Vashmir Commons' townhouse was lodged between a sex shop and a bikers bar. For Tim, it didn't matter if the shops came before or after the house, being equally disturbing a location to live in either way.

Stella noted, “Doesn't look like anyone's home.”

Most of the blinds of the building were drawn shut, and those not were boarded up by wooden planks. Unlike the other buildings surrounding the trio, the Commons' two stories, black-bricked- Victorian house was the sole structure left untouched by looters or rioters. A group of wandering bandits simply circled around the building, staring with amazement at the three teenagers that stood before them. Eyes gazed out of the apartment buildings opposite the street, fearfully watching their every move.

Clay scanned the people, meeting their gazes only to have them break eye contact or ducking away into the darkness of their homes. “That's not creepy at all,” he noted sarcastically.

From his bag, Tim pulled out a torchlight and the others followed suit. “Let's get this over with.”

He climbed the steps and opened the door to his side, letting Clay and Stella in first. Tim turned back and scanned the streets, seeing something in the eyes of the watchers aside from fear.

“Reverence,” Tim mumbled his observation. Turning his back on the watchers, he closed the door behind them.

In the main hallway, darkness swallowed most of the corners. The light that gleamed through the blinds barely made it past their rooms to even reach them.

“The power's out,” Clay deduced as he flicked the light switch a few times before turning on his torchlight. Tim and Stella followed suit.

The trio ran their beams over the hallway, their light reflected hazily on the plastic sheets that covered the leftover furniture.

Tim asked Stella, “I thought you said Vashmir had a family?”

“He did,” she replied. “But they left for vacation quite a while ago. Never borthered to return. Maybe they've moved?”

“Too many memories in a home like this I guess,” Clay continued, “And from the looks of the people outside, nobody's likely to disturb us.”

Tim replied, “Good. There will be no one stopping us from ransacking the place. Let's split up. You and Clay search around here. I'll go upstairs and see what I can find.”

As Tim stepped onto the steps of the stairs, Clay reminded, “Remember to look for the diary, kid. That's what we came for.”

Tim gave a thumbs up as Clay headed into the living room and Stella left to explore the rest of the first floor. Tim watched the lights from their torches faded as the siblings dispersed to their own investigation before turning back up the stairs.

Dried and lacking maintenance for unknown months, the wooden boards creaked and bent with every step. The darkness was disorienting, as was the act of focusing solely on looking down at the light from his torch to guide him. He fully expected that when he looked back up, the Sawman would be staring back at him from the landing, having crossed the boundaries of realities and dreams in its hunt for him.

When he reached the second floor and finally looked up though, he saw nothing but a wall, with an oil painting of a farm in the countryside. “Get a grip,” he criticized himself.

The second floor corridor was bland and straight. Without any windows, it stretched into the void until he brought his torchlight up. Equally plain with lighting as it was without, the two doors on the left stood out in the empty path like a baseball player on a soccer field. Stepping fully into the shadow, he headed for the closest door to him.

Surprisingly, the old oak door opened noiselessly and without resistance, missing the rusted creaks of the hinges that typically showed in fiction. Peering in, the room was somewhat lit by the light that seeped through the blinds. Though the room was large, only a single bed frame, devoid of its mattress, was kept in it. It wasn't hard to conclude there was nothing there from sight alone so he closed the door behind him and headed for the second one further down. Once there, the teen faced the closed entrance, a gut feeling telling him that this was Vashmir Commons' room.

Then his torch burned out and threw Tim into complete darkness. Panicking, he leapt forward to find the knob, only to smash his nose into the wall instead. Losing his balance, he was about to tumble over when his outstretched hand found the metal grip. Using it, he pulled himself up to regain his balance, only to crash face first onto the floor of the room as his grasp slipped and the door opened inwards.

“Ow...” he groaned as he lifted himself off the ground.

“Kid?!” he heard Clay shout. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Tim replied, watching the blood from his nose drip onto the blue carpeted floor. “Just tripped over myself, that's all.”

Getting to his feet, he scanned the room while rubbing his bleeding nose with his shirt, knowing full well it would stain. His nose did not feel fractured or broken, but the bruising pain still lingered enough to make his eyes water.

The first thing he noticed was that the windows had been boarded up, but not enough to prevent rays of light from shining through, floating in the air on the reflection of dusts, platforms of light in suspension. Aside from that, the room was the same as the one from the picture Stella had showed him. Dried blood still stained the walls and the yellow-green striped bed sheets. Even the pillows were left untouched on the floor and he wished he had the luck to had fallen on them instead. The room was a stark contrast to the otherwise emptied-out house, and an even stranger scene when the blood was factored in.

A small desk was installed into the wall closest to the window, which was where the diary was placed in the photo. The sole difference between the picture from months ago and the present was the cardboard box on the desk then. Though the hair on his hands stood and Tim felt his heart was beating fast enough to punch a hole through his ribs, he managed to gather enough strength after a deep breath to approach the table.

In large red fonts, the box was stamped 'EVIDENCE' on the side. A piece of paper detailing the contents and identity of the owner, in the case, Vashmir Commons, was pasted on the lid. A 'Diary' was listed as one of the things kept in the box.

Sure enough, when he opened the lid, the leather bound diary was at the top of the pile. He took out the book and set it aside on the table and rummaged through the remaining items in the box. A bloodstained singlet, a toothbrush, and a pen missing its cap. Nothing of interest.

Returning his attention to the diary, he unfettered the strap that held the book close and flipped randomly to one of the middle pages. Vashmir wrote of his day at work and a few other thoughts about his life. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Running his fingers through the edge of the book, he found the last few entries of the man and glanced through from there instead.

They keep coming. Every night. I can't take it. Everyone's telling me I'm just having bad dreams but I know they are real. When I wake up, I feel the pain from all the falls I took while running. My friends keep telling me to see a doctor. They don't know I already am. It's not helping. I'm not crazy! It's been three days since I've last slept. I don't think I can keep it up much longer. So tired. But they're coming.

It seemed obvious to Tim that the man was suffering from Sin, but he reminded himself that at that time, it was not a recognized phenomenon and understood why Vashmir would have been taken for being insane. He flipped the pages, glancing at lines after lines of similar experiences from night to night. Then an entry popped up, shorter than the previous half dozens.

I met a guy in the dreams. He said he can get me out. Give me power to fight back. All I have to do is agree to his conditions.

The record abruptly ended, and the pages after that contained no other entries. Tim turned through the remaining pages of the diary and after over a dozen empty pages, he found one sentence scrawled hastily, all in uppercase letters, in red ink across two full pages near the end of the book.

THE END IS HERE!

Tim turned to the next page and was bombarded by scrawls of red ink and dabs of blood, all repeating the same message.

The world will end in 139 days and we will ascend. The world will end in 139 days and we will ascend. The world will end in 139 days. In 139 days. 139 days. The world will end. We will ascend. 139 days. In 139 days. 139. 139. 139 139 139 139 139 139......

The number continued to repeat itself, covering the rest of the pages before Vashmir, having found no other room on the two pages to continue, started filling in the gaps between the lines with the number.

“What the fuck...?” Tim let out, closing the book in fear. He had never thought pure text would be able to spook him out as much as the diary had.

He stored the diary in his backpack and almost immediately, the bag felt heavier, as if the weight of the diary consisted of the physical manifestation of Vashmir's experience with Sin. The teen turned back to leave the room, again expecting some sort of spectral form of the late Vashmir to appear before him, ready to murder him for going through the dead's belonging. But no such entity existed.

Exiting into the corridor, he left the door to Vashmir's room opened to allow some light to guide him. He headed back past the empty room with the soundless door, ignored the farm painting on the wall, and down the dry stairs with the eerie creaks. A wave of relief washed over him as he heard the voices of Clay and Stella coming from the living room. He entered after them.

The pair stood in the middle of an otherwise normal looking living room, save for the obvious empty space on the television table. All the remaining furniture had been wrapped in plastic. A fireplace resided in the corner, though Tim was sure he had not saw any chimney from the outside.

Tim asked the pair, “You guys find anything?”

They turned to him and Clay held up a large, soot covered book. “Photo album. Seems like the Commons tried to burn it but it didn't do so well in that.”

Stella added, “But most of it is covered in soot or damaged. Lot's of the pictures will take some cleaning. Did you get the diary?”

Tim thumbed to the bag on his back as a sign of affirmation. She then shone her torchlight over his face, temporarily blinding him. “Hey!” he called out in discomfort.

“What happened to your nose kid?” Clay pointed out.

She followed to state the obvious, “You're bleeding.”

“Fell on my nose,” Tim replied. “Can we just get out of here? This place gives me the creeps.”

Stella took the light off him, granting him vision again. Clay noted, “I've never seen you scared before.”

“Yeah, well, you haven't seen what's in the damn diary. Come on, let's get back to the car before sundown.”

Stella corrected, “S.U.V.”