Ennis is on a road trip. It's mid-January (2016), he's on his gap year before he intends to start college. His mother traveled before she started college, and it at this rate it might become a family tradition! He's almost to the edge of Washington, and has been driving for a few hours. The weather has only gotten worse, today.

His music is interrupted when his phone starts blares an obnoxiously loud siren over the car speakers. He turns down the volume and looks at his phone.

Emergency Weather Alert: Severe
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING in effect for this area until 3:30 AM PST for DESTRUCTIVE 70 mph winds.
Take shelter in a sturdy building, away from windows. Flying debris may be deadly to those caught without shelter.

Well, shit. He's in the middle of nowhere. He keeps driving until he finds a building, an old-looking house. There are no cars in the driveway. He quickly parks, walks up to the front door, and knocks.

Ohhhh shit oh fuck…. Uhhh… hopefully its not the cops? If its someone else looking to squat here he guesses he can share… it’s a big house. He’s not a jerk. Andrea peaks out the window, sees the weather, and sees its just some guy.

Worst that happens is the dude tells the cops later and he has to find a new place to squat in. Andrea goes to the door and calls out through it without opening it. “This house has abandoned for years it looks like man, nobody lives here.” In case they were looking for the owner or something.

Well, that's not exactly encouraging, but shelter with random homeless people is still shelter. He creaks opens the door — it takes some effort with how fast the wind already is — and enters the house.

"Uh... Hello! I'm Ennis! There's a really big storm that's supposed to go well into the night, I wouldn't head outside until tomorrow."

And once Ennis is inside they see a scruffy and kinda dirty and VERY dusty looking young adult white guy, wrapped up in multiple hoodies and cargo pants.

“Uhhh… sure man. Just you know… don’t tell the cops when you go? Be cool?” Andrea hopes this guy could please for the love of something, be cool about this. This is a real nice place to be for at least the next week or so. Giving it up would be annoying.

Andrea’s usual accent isn’t perfectly American, not yet, and certainly not midwestern. So he tries to play up the americanness of his accent. 

"Yes, yes, I won't tell anyone." Ennis has short black hair and a typical Washington accent, if you can recognize it. He wasn't going to tell the police about some guy in a random abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. He doubts they would bother coming all the way out here, they have better things to do.

Ennis turns on his phone flashlight and looks around. "My goodness, it is insanely dusty in here. I wonder how long this place has been empty for.... Anyways, what's your name? And does this place have working... anything?"

Andrea shrugs. “Years and years and years at least. All the stuff is old too. Doubt anyone will come back to live here. I’m Andr… Anders…” Yes, picking a boring name that will NOT be tracked back to him. Nailed it. “Water and power is out. I checked. Even in the yard there’s no pressure in the faucet. It’s got furniture at least. If you don’t mind the dust.” Andrea flomps back into the living room couch, kicking up some, but less dust than anywhere else would produce.

Ennis sits down at the other end of the couch, and sets his backpack down next to him. He pulls out a really generic looking black laptop that's probably a few years old, opens the lid and messes around with it for a minute before sighing in annoyance. He turns off the laptop and puts it back in his backpack. "Of all the nights to forgot to charge my laptop, it's the one before the day I have no power... I actually some movies downloaded in case I lost internet." He thinks for a minute, and then rummages around in his backpack some more, before pulling out a large unopened bag of potato chips. "Want any?"

Gosh he remembers being so attached to his tech… pity he had to leave it all behind when he escaped. The worst part is losing all his save files. And on the road any money he begged or did other things for were better used on warm clothes and food and greyhound tickets.

Andrea is starving and this stranger is now actually the greatest human to ever live. “I haven’t eaten in ages. Absolutely I want some.”

Ennis scoots towards Anders on the couch, opens the bag, and sets it down between them. "Feel free to have some. I have some more better stuff, but I want to save it for dinner. And it's in my car, which..." He gestures towards the door, where the howling winds can be heard rattling the walls of the house. He grabs a chip and starts eating.

Mmmmm salt and grease and starch. The best of combos. Delicious Idaho potato. The state has to be good for something and it is for enabling chip factories. Om nom nom. Andrea is quite rude about shovelling chips into his face hole as quickly as possible.

The storm picks up even more, the windows are rattling alarmingly. Andrea looks nervous, never having been in the kind of storm that produces tornadoes. He is more used to tropical monsoons. “Should we uhh… find the bathtub? Or a table? You hide under tables for storms like this right? It’s getting pretty wild out there…”

Ennis looks around, thinking for a moment. "I think hiding under a table is typically recommended, but the storm warning on my phone said it was going to get up to, like, seventy miles per hour or something. I... don't know enough about wind speed to know how bad that is, but it sure sounds bad." He gets up from the couch and goes into the dining room. "There's a big dinner table in here, and a smaller one in the kitchen." Even though he's shouting, his voice is quiet compared to the wind, which has gotten even louder.

It is very surprising the windows haven’t broken with how much they are rattling. Even the walls seem to be shaking. Things are falling off of shelves. “I think the chimney is supposed to be the strongest part of old houses!” Andrea yells. He goes to the big dinner table to scoot it over to the fireplace.

Ennis holds one end of the table, Anders holds the other, they push and drag it over to the fireplace. The fireplace is fairly large, and all it contains is old soot. "Do we try to push it inside the fireplace? I don't know if it'll fit!"

The wind screams, rain slams against the windows and walls of the house, and a peal of thunder cracks in the distance.

“Just resting against it should be fine!? The chimney is for like! making sure the roof doesn't collapse on us!” Scoot scoot scoot. Andrea ends up up stumbling at the latest crack of thunder and trying to catch himself against the side of the fireplace and… he just goes through. Right through the solid brick wall.

There is a yell and horrible bone snapping sound. “FUCK AGH GOD FUCK MY LEG!”

Ennis pauses for a moment, looking at the brick wall and lack of Anders. He stops pushing the table and moves over to the wall. It looks like the wall of a fireplace. Anders is nowhere to be seen.

...

....

"the fuck—ANDERS, YOU OKAY? WHERE ARE YOU?"

“I’M DOWN HERE!” The sound sure sounds like its coming from through the side of the fireplace that ‘Anders’ fell into.

“THERES A BUNCH OF OLD JUNK IN HERE THAT MOSTLY STOPPED MY FALL! MY ANKLE OR SOMETHING IS DEFINITELY BROKEN THOUGH!”

From Andreas perspective its like there somehow was no side wall to the chimney, and where the fireplace was when looking at it from the front there is just a deep hole that he fell into. He can even see Ennis above him looking into the space he's fallen into.

He’s landed on a pile of books and old papers and some really antique furniture. His foot is pointing in a direction it REALLY SHOULDN’T POINT and hurts SO bad.

Ennis is pretty sure fake walls this realistic don't... exist, but it sure seems like this fireplace has a fake wall.

"I'LL... I'LL BE OVER THERE IN A MOMENT!" He steps forward hesitantly and reaches his hand out to touch the fireplace.

And his hand goes right through the wall. Not even a bad movie special effects ripple around where his wrist sticks out of the wall. More like he just shoved his hand through something green screened. His hand feels fine, no resistance or anything. Just it looks like it’s inside a wall now.

“Theres a ladder down!” The storm is way less loud down here, very insulated. If he hadn’t fallen in Andrea would think this was a great place to ride out the storm.

Ennis maneuvers himself through the wall, upper body first. It looks like he's going to hit his head but he passes through fine — the wall might as well not exist. As he climbs down the creaky ladder, the storm fades to a faint whistling and the walls stop shaking.

“This is some platform nine and three quarters shit right?”

Andrea is at the bottom of the hole?room? On top of a bunch of old books and scrolls and papers. The corners of the room have some truly ancient looking antique furniture. Even some old bronze busts of bearded old men. In pride position there’s a display case that contains a long gnarled wooden staff with twin snakes at the top. Knowers of greek mythology or people who pay attention to hospital logos might recognise it as a caduceus.  

"I-I have no idea. I guess it wouldn't surprise me if the government had invisible walls holed up somewhere in a military base — but this is just some house!"

Ennis reaches the bottom of the ladder. He takes in the old junk, elaborate bronze busts, and Anders' snapped ankle. "Ahh, fuck. That looks really bad. I don't think an ambulance can make it out here in this weather."

He helps Anders off of the junk pile and on to an open space on the ground. He somehow looks even worse from this angle. "I have a first aid kid in the car, but I really don't think it'll do much for this..."

Being moved produces lots and lots of cursing from Andrea. So much that it is not worth typing it all out.

“It’s not that bad unless It moves. Ache pain doesn’t bother me so much, its the brain blinding stinging whenever it moves thats bad.” He can’t pay for an ambulance, he’s a runaway! And an ambulance would blow this awesome hideout! Invisible walls? Hidden basement? So cool! He definitely doesn’t want to lose access to this place now. “If your car is still fine when the storm ends it’d be real cool if you could do me a solid and drive me to the ER. I should be fine until then.”

And then he accidentally shifts his leg and has to bite back a hiss. “Ffffff-“

"Alright. Damn, I really hope my car is fine after this mess."

After making sure Anders is... stable, Ennis looks around the basement, stumbling over old books and papers scattered across the floor. "I wonder if those bronze statues are worth anything, they look... extravagant. And what even is all this junk on the floor?" He picks up some of the papers and starts skimming them.