He stood there, his tall and lanky frame leaning against the gray stone wall. With thin arms clutching his heaving chest he breathed as silently as he could, worried that any noise would attract it. Scanning his surroundings he looked for anything familiar about this alien landscape he found himself in, a landscape of gray. Like an overcast winter afternoon everything was a shade of gray, and completely silent. Despite the adrenaline thoughts seemed to move glacially through his mind; 'How did I get here and how do I leave? Surely I'm dreaming'. The oppressive silence of this nightmare was occasionally broken by distant wailing, screams from some unseen victim of that nebulous black cloud of horror he had narrowly escaped. Looking down at his arms he could see the marks, a deep red that seemed to almost glow in contrast to his surroundings, left by the tendrils that had latched onto him. Finally feeling his pulse start to slow he raised his hand, wiping his brow and pushing his hair from his face. Slowly he started walking forward along the tree line, peering up he saw the trees were equally as alien as the rest of this horrible place. Twisted, dead, and bare of all but their thickest branches, as if some torrential storm had blown through. The few remaining branches loomed over him, reaching like the tendrils he had almost fallen prey to. Looking to his left, away from the forest of spiked trees, he could see a small clearing. Walking into this clearing he saw it was simply more of the same, flowers faded and ash like, crumbling into dust beneath his feet. Then he heard it again, that low and body shaking rumble he had heard before when that thing had attacked him. Sprinting across the clearing he could hear the rumble slowly increase in volume, and feel the emptiness in his chest the sound seemed to create. Pushing himself he ran, and ran, and ran until his legs went limp. Falling to the ground he quickly scurried, turning to face the beast that was pursuing him. As the tendrils coiled themselves around his limbs he wished he would have buried his face in the dirt and died without having to see it. Thousands of eyes stared into his very being while the thousands of mouths made unspeakable utterances inside his mind. A mournful wail, the same he had heard earlier, was all that could escape him as he became engulfed in that nebulous blackness.