Elsewhere, it was raining.

He could feel the echoes of it against his skin, like snowflakes tapping warm and ethereal. Not here, exactly, but somewhere else, in a world full of stars and sunrises and real wind, it was raining. He relished it regardless, tilting his head up toward a ceiling weighted with slowly shifting trunks of dark vines.

Living cobweb stirred, lifted up by its own will in a silver banner flapping slow and heavy with loose strands curling and reaching, anxious for a new surface to cling to.

A heavy exhaustion and heavier vines pinned his body to a corner crowded with torn clothes and bones that looked far older than they should have.

Skeletons of old prey he'd failed to save.

The slow, smooth slither of a viscous ooze, lines of false veins appearing with irregular pulses across tattered shelves. A relentless devouring of every scrap of organic life in this broken library.

There was no quick skitter of tiny paws. No grumbling hiss of bipedal crawling. Only empty space crowded with dust and death and creeping rot between tall stacks where books had long succumbed to decay.

Only silence.

Awareness.

A dark and wary regard for jellyfish spores that danced weightlessly in their own undulating clouds, spinning close before bouncing away. Watchful for the grey striped slugs that crawled wet between human teeth like a thick and cancerous tongue.

He was so tired.

They'd gotten out, though. They'd torn open a wall with fire and help from the outside. Climbed through with monsters on their heels, and Danny relished the swell of satisfaction thrumming in his core. He'd managed to save the kids.

Barely younger than him, but kids regardless, because he was supposed to be a kid, too.

This was so fucked up.

Danny exhaled, watching the pale threaded spores leap out of the way with absent regard. The ceiling stirred in creaky twists, walls crawling and tightening around his wrists. The transformation to his ghost form had been brief, fizzling out as energy was consumed to defend against the dark storm that appeared to rule this place. It resisted his intangibility, saw through invisibility, but still flinched away when his fists lit up with green plasma. Still recoiled from his electric blood.

He suspected that was the only reason he was still alive, trapped as he was instead of sprawled open for slugs to burrow between his ribs.

The storm beyond infected walls grew closer, perched heavy and dark over dirt-smoked windows. It rumbled through everything, a growl of presence and fury and hunger restless for satisfaction. He could feel it considering him in oily smoke and shadowed ridges where eyes ought to be. Felt its irritation when shadows were matched by his own sharp green, challenging. Foolishly challenging, perhaps, but there was nothing else he could do with woody lashes keeping him secured to a wall and such close observation.

Atmosphere bore down with a smothering weight, invisible but no less crushing. He fought against the feeling of helplessness, trapped under a living storm.

A lone heartbeat in the dark, framed with thundering clouds.

Dark intent turned elsewhere, dissatisfied, and the pressure lifted from his chest.

Danny closed his eyes, focused on the stubborn glow in his core. Prodded it with memories and the whispers of an urge to protect, watched a ring spark white from his chest and die back down like a snuffed candle.

His restraints had flinched, so he did it again.

Like an unhappy snake being prodded, vines sucked in to themselves, away from the radiant energy pulsing over his skin.

Again.

He freed an arm, fingers splayed and sparking to burn free his other.

Again.

He wiggled, fell forward, squirming to kick free his feet until he could roll to a spot of flooring free from creeping tendrils that coiled and twitched. His core ached, weariness seeping down through his bones as he pulled himself to his feet. The burst of energy from the two kids, from their small victory, he had to conserve it somehow.

Danny felt a small squish and quickly hopped off of the spot he'd stepped back onto, black ooze waving little tendrils up at him even after he scraped it off his heel on the musty floorboards.

He took a breath, a quick look around, and ran.

The vines reacted quickly, snapping a barrier up around the obvious exit out to the street, lurching up in wet groans to guard a broken glass window, so Danny took the next-best offer. His foot slammed against a rotted side door, crunching it inward in a shudder of wet splinters that bounced off his shoulders as he pushed into the new space. His foot hit tile, and momentum carried him into a narrow hallway where the walls were grimy grey and broken, but… free from rot.

He took a few steps in, but the tendrils had stopped just past the doorway, weaving back and forth.

Danny raised his hand, a tiny orb illuminating between his fingers.

Tiles stretched on down a narrow hall much further than the point where the library's room ought to have ended. He cast a wary glance to the hesitant tendrils, and turned to follow the empty space.

Far away, thunder rumbled.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"Is he awake?"

"Maybe. He deserves all the sleep he can get, though. I wouldn't try to wake him up."

"How is- I mean, is he going to be alright?"

Will struggled minutely against the cottony weight of sleep, eyelids sealed painfully together. His dreams had been menacing, but the creeping fear of being trapped and blinded spread alertness with jolts of adrenaline.

He felt a warm hand settle over his, squeezing gently.

"Hey honey, I'm here. It's alright."

Oh.

"Your brother is, too. We've been so worried."

Will managed to twitch his fingers in an attempt to squeeze back, lips and tongue useless as he tried to mumble a question. It was Johnathan that answered, voice thick with restrained emotion.

"You're probably feeling a bit out of it. They're just sleeping pills, since you…um."

His mom's hand squeezed his fingers again, thumb petting the back of his knuckles.

"You had some really bad nightmares, and... panic attacks, so they gave you pills so you would sleep. If you feel better by tonight, you might be able to come home with us."

Will licked his lips, folding his tongue against his teeth and chewing on the edges to try to get some articulation back into it. He swallowed.

"Where's-" His head swam, and the question died out as he fought against syrupy exhaustion.

"Barbara just got out of surgery." His mother's voice sounded like it was so far away, echoing and anchored only by the soft callous still rubbing over the back of his hand. "She's in rough shape, but the doctors are hopeful she'll pull through."

Good to know, but that wasn't what he'd wanted to ask.

He opened his mouth to try asking again, but the thick molasses of drugged sleep was pulling him down, down, back into darkness.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The tunnel kept going.

Danny walked far longer than he'd expected to, not sure if the endless straight line was more or less unsettling than the strange doors he passed. They'd all been rotted, perforated with vines and rot that never extended past a finger's length into the tiled space.

The air felt stale, in here. Like a closet in an old house, aired out for the first time in years. Musty and dry.

A door caught his attention, steel and cold and sterile. The first in a long row of them, identical where past doors had been of all shapes and materials.

He paused, green glow dancing across his fingers in wavering reflections on a shiny metal plate and glossy window too smoked over to see through. On both sides of him, the hallway stretched on and on into darkness, broken only by his own light.

The handle bit frosty cold into his hand when he pulled it down, pushing to creak it open in a slow arc.

The inside was just as hard and cold as the tunnel outside, but the ceilings were taller, walls framing a square room with a glass observation pane blocking off one end, and a stainless steel table with a single chair perched to face it.

Danny tilted his head in, keeping one foot outside to look around the tiny room. It only had one exit, and dark glass reflected only the table, and-

He paused, muscles tensing as he realized the reflection didn't match. He was there, yes, but sitting at the table was a young girl, younger than Will had been, with similar coloring and a pale blue medical gown doing nothing to hide bony wrists and sunken collarbones. Spread across the reflected table was a collection of little potted plants, and wires with needles that perched into each succulent leaf. The girl looked up toward the observation glass, and Danny bristled, but no attack came. She wasn't even looking at him.

The reflected plants twitched, and the girl looked back down to them. One unfurled a little white flower. Another spread its leaves, wiggling in a slow undulation. It grew upward, leaves multiplying, unfolding, and the little girl winced, looking away.

She pressed a hand to her nose, tiny fingers coming away dark with blood, and the reflection dissolved into mist, until Danny was just staring at a metal chair and equally empty table.

He swung the door closed, the small click feeling unnaturally loud.

In the corner of his eye, another white door swung open.