Nameless

NAMELESS

The day was rather overcast and windy. Sam was standing at the window sipping a coffee as usual. He felt a tug on his shirt. Looking back, he saw his daughter standing next to him. He put his coffee down on the table and asks whether she has school. She nods and leaves the balcony. Sam stops her saying “I’m sorry Lilly, it’s just that things haven’t been the same since mom left”. She comes close to him, gives him a tight hug and says, “It’s okay dad, I miss her too” she looks at her watch and leaves the balcony. Sam picks up his coffee mug again and looks at the overcast sky and starts thinking about his wife, Mary. A school bus pulls up on the road, Lilly runs towards the bus waving at him, and he waves back, and the school bus leaves.

Sam goes to bed after finishing his coffee. He dreams of his wife calling out to him, and, in the dream, she whispers something. But before she can finish, the doorbell rings and he wakes up. He rubs his eyes in disbelief as he thought she was talking to him, but he was just dreaming. The doorbell kept ringing; Sam rushed downstairs and opened the door, but there was nobody there. He closes the door and goes back upstairs. The bell rings again. He ignores it for a while, but it keeps ringing. Tired of hearing the bell ring, he goes to check again. He still couldn’t see anyone outside, so after he looked around the house, he went inside. Sam brews another cup of coffee and turns the tv on. The news shows some random headlines, but one headline catches his eye. “Local hospital gets shut down because of ethical concerns”. As he was reading the headline, he could see someone’s reflection on the screen. He turns around, but there isn’t anyone there.

He turns back to the tv and watches it for a while and turns it off. Sam notices his wife’s picture and pulls out his phone to read up on the hospital. The article on his phone reads “local police shut down hospital”. He remembers he took his wife Mary to the same hospital when she was about to give birth to Lilly. But after she returned from the hospital, her behaviour changed a lot. Mary started sitting alone, mumbling random things. She started drawing weird figures and stuck them to her bedroom wall. She never came near Lilly. Whenever she saw her daughter walking towards her, she took two steps back to avoid her. One day Sam noticed track marks on her hands, worried he takes her to the hospital rehab centre. While his wife was in rehab, Sam had to take care of Lilly himself. Sam used to send postcards and letters to his wife, detailing their daughter’s first words and her first steps. On Lilly’s 7th birthday, Mary is declared free of drugs and Sam drives her home. For a few days, everything seems fine. Mark takes care of Lilly and they all enjoy together as a family. Going to amusement parks and picnics. But Sam notices Mary seems withdrawn and concerned. He tries talking to her, but she just brushes it off. Until one day he notices her collapsed in the hallway. Sam runs toward Mary to help her. Suddenly, he hears a little voice behind him. He turns around and finds Lilly standing behind him with tears rolling down her face mumbling ‘it’s all because of me’. Sam comforts his daughter saying, “don’t worry Lilly, mum’s going to be okay”. He picks up his phone to call an ambulance, but no one answers. He picks Mary up and rushes to the car he tries to start the car, but it fails over and over. After trying for a while, it finally starts, and he rushes with Mary to the hospital. As they were driving to the hospital, the sky darkened. The hospital was visible at a distance, but something didn’t feel right. As black clouds formed over it, Sam feels a chill ride down his spine, but his love and his urge to save his wife overcame the gut feeling.

Disregarding all the signs, he sped towards the hospital. He reached the hospital, but there was no one outside. Sam carried her inside, hoping to save her. Entering the hospital, he calls for help. The doctors came rushing and told him to put her down on a stretcher. As they rush her to the operating room, she whispers to him saying “You won’t understand right now”. They tell Sam to wait outside. While waiting, he calls home to check on Lilly and tells her to wait at the neighbour’s house.

After talking to her, he sits on the bench with his head tucked into his hands, hoping that they could save her. He kept on asking the staff how she was, but they told him to wait. After quite a while, he saw the doctors coming out of the room and he asked them how she was. The doctors looked at him and said, “we tried our best”, as soon as he heard them his eyes started tearing, and he fell to the ground with tears rolling down his face. He couldn’t believe she was gone. He didn’t know what to do, he just couldn’t find the strength to stand up. The doctors tried to tell him to do the paperwork, but he couldn’t hear anything. It was as though the entire world had become numb. The promise they made to each other was the only thing that was going on in his mind. He kept on mumbling, “you’ve left me and Lilly alone. You promised that we’d be together forever”. He gets up and walks towards the exit as the doctors surround him, but he pushes them away and goes outside. Sam enters his car and drives for a while before stopping in the middle of nowhere. Getting out of his car, he breaks down. He still couldn’t believe she was gone. He tries to stop his tears, but they keep flowing uncontrollably. As the clouds thundered and the rain came pouring down, drops of rain rolled down his cheeks mixed with the tears. But he was still sitting with his eyes pointed towards the black sky. Suddenly he hears a voice whispering, “Lilly”. He suddenly gets up, starts his car and drives off.

When he reaches home, his neighbours tell him that lily left for the hospital with him quite a while back. Frantically, he runs to his house and started looking for Lily, but to no avail. Suddenly, he felt like there was someone behind him and when he turned. When he doesn’t find her, his face turns pale and his knees feel weak. He bolts toward his car and races to the hospital again. As he drives, he makes mental connections between his wife’s condition and the hospital. He hears his wife’s last words “You won’t understand now”. Disregarding the weather, he rushed to the hospital, but when he reached the entrance, it was sealed off. He jumps out of his car and hastily looks around for an entrance. Suddenly a strange fog started appearing enveloping the hospital.

Sam walks into the fog with his hands in front of him to help him get a sense of direction. He keeps walking aimlessly in the fog, desperately trying to get to his daughter. He takes each step carefully, knowing well that the next step could be his last. Suddenly, the ground beneath his feet seemed to give way. He desperately tried to claw to the edge of the hole, but his hand just slipped. As he falls, he keeps thinking to himself, “I’m sorry Lilly,” and he lands with a thump and blacks out. He wakes up after some time and tries to open his eyes, but they don’t seem to focus. Sam feels a thumping pain in his head as he pushes himself to get up and search for his daughter. He looks around and finds himself in an empty room with light from the ceiling illuminating him. The room is dark, so he pulls out his phone and turns on the flashlight. Sam notices an old metal door with a rusty latch. He pulls on it and the door creaks open and suddenly there is this pungent smell. He pulls out his lighter and lights it to navigate the pitch-dark hallway in front of him. As he keeps walking, he feels something tugging at his feet. Disregarding it as nothing as he just fell through a hole. He notices some broken pillars with chains around them. The chains look all rusted and seem to have a red coating on them. It seems like dried-up blood. Suddenly, he remembers the headline about the unethical experiments done in the hospital. When he hears a shrill cry, it sounded like his daughter. He runs to the voice holding his lighter to light his path. At the end of the corridor, he notices a door. Kicking down the door, he notices another hallway and at the end, he notices a light. Sam keeps running to it, hoping to get closer to his daughter, but the light doesn’t seem to get closer. It’s as though the light is running away from him. He keeps running until all his strength leaves him and he collapses with exhaustion. He opens his eyes and was still near the hole that he fell through. Sam gets up and walks around to find a storage room filled with medical supplies. He uses some bandages to patch himself up and walks out of the medicine closet. After walking for a while, he comes across a hallway with the other ends all boarded up haphazardly.

Suddenly, he hears a high-pitched scream that sounds like his daughter. He runs to the blockade and tries to remove things, but none of them seem to budge. Sam notices a small ray of light coming from a peephole and investigates to find a bizarre-looking creature walking with a large blade in his hand. He also notices a girl’s head bobbing around the corner. It appears the creature is hunting for the little girl. Sam whispers to the girl to head closer to a small opening as the creature heads toward the girl. In an intense sequence, Sam pulls the girl out of the gap in the wall. He asks her whether she’s okay when suddenly the creature bursts through the blockade. Sam gets knocked down as the creature slowly walks toward the girl and Sam. The girl at first is scared to even move. Sam tells her to snap out of it and run away. After shouting at her twice, she finally snaps out of it and gathers enough courage to run away. As she runs away, Sam looks at the rubble over him and tries to escape but cannot. As she lies there on the cold floor waiting for his death, he closes himself from the outside world. He sees his wife call out to him and sees her gently reaching out to his face. As he feels a light touch, he opens his eyes to find that the creature has disappeared. He rubs his eyes in disbelief and notices that a ray of light shining over his face.

He gets up and notices that he is still close to the hole he fell through. Confused, he sits down for a moment to gather his thoughts, as he cannot make heads or tails of the situation. As he sits over the rubble, he feels the warm embrace of the sunlight. Suddenly, he hears something whisper ‘Lilly’ in his ears and he remembers his daughter’s toothless smile. Worried about his daughter. He pulls, tries to search for her again, and navigates the hallways in front of him. As he proceeds deeper into the hospital, he comes across horrifying sights. Being in the hospital takes a toll on him as he sees his wife call out to him. But Sam keeps moving forward unflinchingly, and with each obstacle, his resolve is strengthened. Finally, he rushes into a room and notices a strangely dressed man holding onto his daughter. Sam shouts at the man to let his daughter go, but the man sinks into the ground and the entire room is darkened. He pulls out his lighter and fumbles to light it in a hurry. When he hears a roar and the floor thumping, suddenly there is silence. Sam looks at the door as it opens to reveal his Mary standing in front of him. Sam looks at her in disbelief as she reaches out to caress his face. Her touch was as cold as ice, and her eyes were as empty as a void. Sam knew that this wasn’t Mary, and he pushed her hand aside and started looking for Lilly. As he turned his back toward her, he felt a cold puff of air brush against his back. He turned around and saw the horror that was standing behind him. Mary looked like a shadow that was waiting for the right moment to pounce. Luckily, his lighter was still lit, but as the flames flickered, his heart skipped a beat. He kept walking forward as the flame kept flickering. Suddenly, a gust of chilly wind blows the flame out. Sam shivers as the shadow moves closer to him. He runs as he hears the shadow whispering his name. His heart beat faster as he keeps running in search of a faint glow of light. He spots a bulb glowing in a distance and with all his might, he runs to the light.

Sam sits down with his back against the wall, huffing and gasping for air. When suddenly he notices that the bulb’s glow is getting weaker and it flickers. Panicking, he pulls his lighter out in a hurry and starts flicking it. But all his efforts are in vain, as the lighter doesn’t burn. He notices the shadow around the corner of the room when the bulb goes out. As his heart goes into overdrive, he closes his eyes and imagines his daughter smiling at him. He gathers all his strength and gets up to face the shadow. Sam yells at it saying “I am not afraid of you anymore”. As the shadow comes closer, he collapses. He feels weightless as he floats in the dark void. Sam suddenly feels a fuzzy warmth and wakes up to notice a ray of sunlight falling on his face. He rubs his eyes in disbelief as he notices the same room he started in.

As he keeps searching for his daughter in the hospital, he ends up back at the same place many times. But with each time he loses his mind, with each step he sees things that aren’t there. He started seeing his wife in the corridors. Only one thing kept him going through everything: his daughter’s smile. He kept on walking forward no matter what he saw in the hallways of the hospital. Finally, he reaches a room where he notices his daughter standing on a raised platform and the strange man reading something aloud from an old-looking book. Lilly screams in pain a reads the book. Sam yells at him to stop, and the stranger slowly walks towards him as he stands frozen, unable to do anything. The stranger tells Sam that his daughter is a demonic entity. He is a priest tasked with exorcising an ancient evil that sleeps within Lilly. There is a prophecy that states that if the demon is let go, the world will suffer and will become a hellscape. Sam makes an instant connection as he remembers his wife’s ramblings and how she ran away when she saw Lilly. But he is still hesitant about letting someone else take her daughter. After all, he lost his wife because of the people from the hospital.

The priest seems adamant to exorcise the demon from her. At first, Sam hesitates but finally agrees to help him. As the priest begins the ritual, Lilly screams and wails at the top of her lungs. Unable to bear it, Sam closes his eyes. But as the priest shouts and calls Sam, he is forced to open his eyes and help the priest. As Sam walks over to his daughter, a hooded figure appears behind her and picks her up and walks into a thick black fog behind him. Sam rushes to the altar, but he is too late. But before the stranger disappears, he shouts, “She will be reborn, and the world will be reborn through her”. Then the hooded figure disappears into the shadow with the girl. Runs towards the altar to search for something he can use to find her. The priest tells him that searching is futile, as he knows the people responsible for abducting his daughter. He tells Sam that the “Cult of Kosmos” is tasked with bringing about the end of the world and that he used to be a part of the cult until they started slaughtering innocent people. Sam begs him to help save Lilly, and the priest agrees, but on one condition if the “Ancient One” is released, Sam must do the necessary. But when Sam hears that, he freezes in his place, but the priest can bring him back and Sam agrees. On the way to the cult’s hideout, they encounter horrors never seen before which signals that they need to hurry as the ancient one’s birth will unleash everything perverse in this world. They disguise themselves in robes and head to the main hall where the ceremony is taking place. They notice the same hooded figure spouting something from an old book. Sam runs to the stranger and tackles him. But when he looks at the stranger’s face, he is shocked. Under the robes Sam finds himself, his evil self kicks him away and starts the ritual. Sam looks at the priest and he tells him that the ritual once started cannot be stopped without spilling blood. Lilly transforms into the ancient one and Sam’s evil self jumps into the hole the ancient one is in sacrificing himself. The priest tells the good Sam that to stop the ancient one, a sacrifice must be made, as it feeds on guilt. Sam remembers his past as many years ago he accidentally ran his car over a little girl. The same girl he saved from the creature. Thinking that his guilt is enough, he tells the priest to take care of his daughter and is about to jump into the hole when the priest pushes him aside and jumps instead. Sam remembers the priest felt guilty for all the innocent people murdered. The ancient stops and melts into a black sludge, Lilly comes out of the black sludge gasping for air. Sam saves her and they embrace as he tells her that he loves her with tears in his eyes he closes his eyes and wakes up next to his wife in their house. His daughter died in an accident years ago but Sam blames himself for her death. He finally accepts her death when he tearfully tells her that he loves her and lets go.

The end