CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Our new headquarters were just as creepy as I imagined. Seriously, school cafeterias are unsettling in the daytime when students are beating each other up under bad fluorescent lighting, and disgruntled lunch ladies are throwing down sloppy joes. Although in this school it was apparently wild salmon filets with quinoa. Whatever. Give me sloppy joes any day.
We picked three tables near the far end of the cafeteria, ensuring we had a full view of the door in case anyone (or anything) came in. Of course, there were the windows just above us that were enduring the wrath of the wind, rain, and flying pine needles, and I knew that if anything really wanted us in here, it would get us. But it was the little things that made you feel safe, even if you weren’t.
Once we got everything sorted and Dex passed around the last of the bottle of Jack Daniels—no shock as to why Rebecca wasn’t partaking—we took our pre-EIT shots for the last time. If I wasn’t so damn freaked out, I would have shed a tear.
“Raise your cup and let’s propose a toast.” He sang a line from one of our favorite Faith No More songs.
I raised my plastic cup. “To the thing that hurts you most. To the paranormal and to never being normal.”
He winked at me. “To us.”
Then we gathered up the equipment and set off on our last shoot. Though the late afternoon light was coming in through the windows, there was a sense of urgency and dread with every step we took. It didn’t help that we were starting with the fourth floor.
The worst floor.
The floor where they used to have a gate to keep out the terminally and mentally ill.
I understood why Dex and Rebecca thought it was a good idea to go up there. In the dim light of day, it was easier to stomach. Daylight had this way of making things less scary, though we all knew that monsters didn’t care what time of day it was. I was all too aware of that.
We didn’t need to use the flashlights much, which was a relief, since the windows that lined the staircase and the ones on the floors were letting in just enough gray light. I was nervous and on edge as we climbed the stairs, passing the second floor and the third until we rounded the corner where Gary Oldman had stopped. Everything after that was unknown territory for me.
I took in a deep breath and walked in front of Dex and Rebecca. Even though they were the last two to visit the floor, there was no sign they had ever been up there. The shattered windows had blown away the dust and covered the floor with pine needles and leaves. Up here, it was about ten degrees colder, and the difference hit you like a sledgehammer.
“Was it this f*cking cold when you were up here earlier?” I asked, the air hurting my lungs, my breath frozen in a cloud.
Dex shook his head. “No, not at all.” His teeth started chattering. “You know what, you ladies hold tight and I’ll be right back.” He thrust the camera into my hands and started running down the stairs.
“Dex!” I yelled after him. “Where the hell are you going?”
“Getting you guys your jackets,” he yelled back as he rounded the landing on the third floor.
I looked over at Rebecca, expecting her to say she was fine. Instead, she was slightly hunched over, holding her arms close to her, her face like ivory snow.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
She swallowed hard and nodded. “I’m fine. I’m just cold too.” The she straightened up and walked down the hall, peering into the rooms, illuminating them with her light.
“What are you doing?” I asked, following her.
“Taking another look,” she said, her eyes darting from doorway to doorway as she walked. “When I was up here earlier I thought I saw something in one of the rooms.”
Of course only someone who never saw a ghost in her life—only weird lights, abnormal sounds, and strange music—would be brave enough to investigate this.
“What was it?’ I asked, keeping right behind her.
“A painting or a drawing on the wall,” she said. She aimed the light into one of the rooms and said, “Ah hah.” She went in and stood by the missing door, and I watched her as she ran her fingers over the wall. She was right, there was something. It looked like a mess of black and red, like someone was painting with charcoal and blood. Given the fact that the floor was where a lot of the mental patients were, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
“What does it say?” I asked, not wanting to get any closer.
“Help me,” she said grimly. “Help me, they’re going to kill me.” Her words put a block of ice in my chest. She slowly turned to look at me. “Who are they?”
I took a step into the room. “I think they are the nurses.”
She straightened up. “How do you know that?”
“Because,” I said, looking down at my sneakers, “last night, when I was sleeping in the break room, I saw Shawna again. She told me that she was killed, that though she had TB, she didn’t even have a chance to die from it. She said that many were thrown into the incinerator or smothered with pillows to make room.”
I could feel her eyes on me, deciding if I was telling the truth, if I were crazy or not. I finally looked up and saw in the weak light that she was wiping away a tear. “I’m sorry,” she said with a sniff. It took me a moment to understand what she was apologizing for. “I’m sorry for telling you the way I did. I’m sorry for not taking your feelings into consideration…”
My grudge evaporated on impact. “Rebecca,” I started.
“No, Perry, let me say this,” she said. “Please. I’m angry, alright? I was angry before I even got here. And then when I got here, I started feeling sick. Started feeling like this was real, I was actually bloody pregnant. Then I got scared and I got angry all over again. Because there you and Dex go, deciding you aren’t doing the show anymore. You’ve made me jobless.”
I felt like she punched me in the gut. “I’m sorry. It’s not that we weren’t thinking of you…”
“I know,” she said quickly, her eyes flashing, her liner spilled under her eyes in dark pools. “I know. You and Dex are the show, you are each other’s show, and what you say goes. I know that. I also know I wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for you. But there you are, in love with each other, about to start a new CHAPTER of your life together, and here I am. I’m pregnant. Joblesss. Alone. I’m bloody alone, Perry.” She started to sob but caught herself quickly. “I am so scared. So, so scared. I’m so good at so many things, so good at pretending. And yet I can’t deal with this imperfection. I am so f*cking scared!” she sobbed.
I forgot my fears and immediately went across the room to hug her. I took her in my arms and held her tight as she sobbed into my shoulder. “It’s okay,” I whispered into her hair. “We’re here for you, you know that. You aren’t alone.” >
“I feel alone,” she whimpered, “and that’s the scariest feeling of all.”
“You aren’t alone,” I reassured her. “And I’m not even talking about Dex and I. You’re keeping the baby…I can tell.”
She pulled away and looked up at me with glassy eyes. “Yes. I want to. It was the thing that drove me and Emily apart, but god, that’s all I wanted.” She looked down. “I just wish it was with her.”
“I know you do,” I said, holding her tight. “But we have to deal with what we have. This is a blessing, you know that. A challenge, but in the end, it’s a good thing. Maybe the best.”
“Do you ever want kids?” she asked.
I found myself nodding. “Yes. As funny as it seems, I think Dex would make a great dad.”
She smiled. “I think so too. I am happy for you, really I am. I’m just...”
“Scared?” I asked. “You’re allowed to be scared. We all are. And I don’t mean with ghosts. I mean with life.”
She smiled gently and put her head on my arm. That’s when I bit the bullet and asked, “So, who is the baby daddy?”
She stiffened against me before finally looking up. “Promise you won’t tell Dex?”
“No,” I said. “I tell him everything.”
She managed a small smile. “Then…just don’t tell him until I do.”
“I promise.” I held out my pinky finger and she hooked it with hers.
She took in a deep breath and let it out through her nose. “All right. It’s…Dean.”
I’m not sure why my first instinct was to laugh, maybe because Dean was so totally not the person I was expecting. And it had nothing to do with the fact that Dean was black and Rebecca looked like Snow White. It was that Dean was Dex and Rebecca’s friend, not a lesbian and so totally not Rebecca’s type, even when you ignore the non-lesbian thing. Dean was a f*cking awesome guy but he seemed really chill whereas Rebecca was well-manicured and slightly uptight.
“What. The. F*ck,” I said slowly, examining her face as if she were lying to me. “Dean?”
Rebecca nodded, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. “Yeah. Dean.”
“Does he know?”
She shook her head and then looked at me with big eyes. “Please don’t tell him.”
I assured her I wouldn’t tell. It really was none of my business.
I sighed and told her, “Rebecca, whatever you and Dex did, it’s in the past. It’s a lot for me to handle but...I’m not mad. Let’s just forget about it and move on.”
“Are you sure? I never wanted to hurt you, Perry. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I told her. I let go and straightened up, looking around the dimly lit room. “Weird how Dex isn’t back yet.”
She nodded and got up. We walked back into the hallway, looking up and down, but didn’t see anything unusual.
“Maybe he’s in the loo,” Rebecca offered with a shrug.
“Maybe,” I said as we went back the way we came. Suddenly, every single hair on my body was prickling. This wasn’t good. This was very, very bad.
And whatever it was…was right behind us.
“Rebecca,” I said carefully. “I know you’re the wrong person to ask. But. If you look over my shoulder, do you see anything?”
I watched her as she craned her elegant neck around and looked past me down the hall.
A small, breathy sound escaped from her lips. Her eyes grew wider. Her mouth gaped open. The delicate muscles in her neck stood out as every section of her skin grew tighter.
She was seeing something.
Holy f*ck.
Rebecca was seeing something. I knew that terror like a second skin.
I slowly turned my head and followed her terrified gaze.
Down the hall, lit faintly by the light that was spilling in the windows, was the bad thing.
It was upside down, crawling on the ceiling, long arms stretching out in front of it, and coming straight for us. The weird crackling, skittering sound filled my ears as its razor-lined mouth snapped open and shut.
Somehow, I managed to tear my eyes away and look at Rebecca. She was paralyzed by the fear. I pushed back on her shoulder and yelled, “Move! Run!” in her face.
It took her a few seconds—terribly long seconds—to realize what I was saying. Then she wasted no time at all. She whipped around, her dark hair flinging in my face, and together we started sprinting down the hall. We ran so fast, so desperate to get away that we ran past the staircase and were halfway down the next wing before we realized our mistake.
We both ducked into a room, trying desperately to catch our breaths, and I poked my head around the doorway.
The bad thing was no longer on the ceiling—I couldn’t see it anywhere.
“I think it’s gone,” I told her, even though I had no idea how that could be. Like fear, it was never really gone, was it?
She cautiously stuck her head around the corner and looked to see for herself. She made a noise that I couldn’t decide was agreeable or not.
“Wait, hold up,” she cried out as I was about to turn away.
I looked back to see Dex running up the hallway at the other end, where we had been before, and start running down the stairs.
“Shit!” I cried out. “What the f*ck is he running from?”
I pulled at Rebecca until she was running beside me, heading down the hall. We got to the stairs and I looked over the railing just in time to see him heading off on the third floor.
“Dex! Where the f*ck are you going?” I yelled after him as I picked up speed and leaped down sets of stairs until I was on the third floor. I looked to my left and saw him running away, making a sharp left into a room.
I kept running while assuming that Rebecca was hot on my trail and ducked into the room that Dex disappeared into.
All it took was to see the faint metal glint of the operating light before I screeched to a halt.
Dex had led me into the room of blood.
And as the heavy door shut behind me, I realized that it hadn’t been Dex that led me in there.
Oh shit.
I spun around, completely taken over by the dark, and ran forward until I smacked against the door. I felt for the handle, trying desperately to get it to turn, while pounding on the door with my fist and yelling for Dex and Rebecca.
The door wouldn’t open. The thump of my fists died in the air.
I couldn’t hear anything on the other side. No sign of the howling wind. No sign that someone was yelling to me, trying to assure me everything was going to be okay, trying to help me escape, to let me out of that room.
The room of blood.
I breathed in deeply, trying to keep my senses focused, my mind sharp, my heart rate under control. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to succumb to the black room that nipped at my back. I was going to hold it together and find a way out.
I turned around and faced the void of the unknown.
“Hello,” I cried out softly. “I’m here. Whatever you want with me, please, just show yourself.”
I sucked air into my lungs and waited for a voice to set me free, for a shape to show itself.
Nothing happened.
Except there was a noise, in the far corner of the room. The slick, sharp sound of metal on metal. I thought back to when I was peering into the room the other day and I couldn’t see anything in my mind’s eye except the three operating tables in the middle of the room.
I also remembered Oldman saying that the body chute opened up somewhere in the room. It was a long shot, and a f*cking terrifying one, but if I could get to the chute and somehow get in it, it was at least a way out.
I swallowed hard, willing my eyes to adjust to the dark, but with the room having no windows and receiving no light from the outside, nothing happened. Everything in front of my eyes was just black on black on black.
I stepped away from the door and walked forward, taking slow, careful steps, my hands straight out in front of me in case I ran into something.
I walked in as much of a straight line as possible, trying to pull the layout of the room from my memory. I wished I had paid more attention at the time, but the truth was, even with Dex and Rebecca and Oldman at my side, I had been scared as hell. I would have done anything to have them at my side again.
And then there had been Dex, running away from me, the Dex who was never him at all. His doppelg?nger. I could only hope that neither the real Dex nor Rebecca would run into the doubles of themselves—apparently if you do, you’re supposed to die.
And I hope I don’t run into myself, I thought, trying to imagine how surreal that was. Of course, in some ways it had happened before. Back in Red Fox, the skinwalkers took the shape of me, trying to lure Dex in with a kiss. That was as f*cking trippy as it could get, not to mention aggravating, since Dex’s first kiss with me wasn’t with me.
The thought of him though, the thought of New Mexico and how far we’d come since that episode, gave me a new kind of strength. I’d been through so much already. We’d both fought against death and won. Now it was the last shoot of our last episode, and all I needed was just to come out of it alive. F*ck having the best episode—I just wanted to keep living my life.
I walked forward, determined to make it out.
I didn’t make it far.
I walked straight into something cold and hard. I gasped from the pain, having hit my hands at an odd angle, and immediately felt along the chilled, slick surface, hoping it was a wall.
It wasn’t. It was the corner of the body cooler. I nearly walked myself right into the morgue. I shuddered, my heart racing, my legs threatening to give out on me. I had to keep going; I had to get out of there.
I walked more carefully now, feeling my way along the edge of the cooler, when I felt something banging against it from the inside, a dull metal thud. I shrieked, taking a step back, the blackness disorienting. There was someone inside the body coolers. For a second I thought it could have been Dex, for a second I thought maybe I should make my way back to the doors and fumble through the dark to open one of the drawers.
But all it took was to hear silence—silence punctuated by a click and the slow, metal groan of one of the body cooler doors opening by itself—to know it wasn’t Dex in there.
I waited, frozen on the spot, until I heard a dull slap. The sound of bare feet hitting the ground.
Someone coming out of the body cooler.
Someone dead.
I turned, and in my panic I started to run. I ran away from the sound, but only made it a few feet until I collided with the wall, biting my tongue as my head banged against it.
The world swirled in colors behind my lids then the colors were erased by a dull red.
I opened my eyes to see a light in the room, to see everything coming into focus.
The big, eye-shaped light above the operating table was turned on.
Beneath it was one of the tables, the one with the narrow moat around the edge.
The moat was red with a shiny river of blood. The young body on the table was pale as ice, its chest carved open like a turkey, flaps of skin out to the sides.
Standing in the shadows, a few feet behind the table, was a doctor. His eyes were cold and lifeless, and focused on me, his mouth and nose covered by a blood splattered mask. In his bloody, gloved hands he held a dull scalpel.
I didn’t know if I could scream, if I should scream. I just stared at the sight, my eyes darting between the lifeless, massacred body on the table and the sadistic doctor standing above it, that sharp scalpel wielded in his hands like a weapon.
I heard the creak of one of the body cooler doors opening again and my eyes slid over to it just in time to see a young, naked boy stepping out of it, his chest exposed, balloons stuck inside him, expanding and deflating with each and every breath. When my eyes finally saw the big picture, saw what was really there in the room, I let out a pitiful cry.
The wall opposite me by the door I’d come through was lined with children. They were all naked or half-dressed, all of them sliced open for me to see. Their hearts pumped slowly, their lungs wheezed, the blood spilled out of them and onto the floor, creating a stream of blood that was slowly flowing toward me, pulsing with each ragged breath they all took.
When I looked back at the doctor, he was gone. In his place was the bad thing, standing upright on two legs and hunched over the patient, his/her heart dripping from the bad thing’s razor-toothed mouth. The patient on the bed, a girl, slowly turned her head to look at me. Her mouth moved.
“Help me.”
But I had to help myself.
I had to.
If it was the last thing I did.
Somehow I broke free of the terror, looking away just as the bad thing’s white eyes sought me across the room. Using the light of the operating lamp, I ran my hand down the wall as I scurried alongside it, desperately searching for the door of the body chute.
I was almost at the far corner when I saw a small handle. I put my hands around it and tried to pull it open with all of my strength just as I heard a clatter behind me. It was probably a mistake to turn around and see what it was. But I did. It was the bad thing crawling across the room toward me, the dead, carved open children following it and coming for me with dead eyes and snapping mouths.
If I let the fear take over, I would have died right there and then. No question. Fear wanted me prisoner, for my limbs and organs and mind to just give up and give in.
But I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
I jerked the door toward me and it opened, assaulting me with a heavy gust of stale air. Wasting no time, I jumped inside, a sloping concrete incline leading from the room into the tunnel and quickly pulled the door shut behind me. It was pitch black inside the tunnel but it didn’t matter, I couldn’t think about it. I started running down the smooth walkway of the chute, my feet echoing as I ran. I didn’t get far before I saw the fuzzy grains of light appearing around me and heard the sound of the door opening. I paused and looked behind me. >
The door to the room of blood was opening, light spilling inside the passage and the shape of the doctor stepping into the tunnel. He shut the door behind him.
Everything went black again.
I was sealed in the tunnel with him.
I sucked in my breath, surviving only on instincts now, and I ran. I ran as fast as I could, occasionally tripping down the steps that were alongside the path, or bumping into the cold walls. I kept running despite the fact I had no idea where I was in the chute, no way to get out, no light to see by. I kept running because I could hear the quick footsteps of the doctor coming after me, hear his coat flapping as he hurried.
He was Shawna’s father. I knew that now. Was he trying to appease her, to make amends for supposedly failing her, by trying to take my lungs? Was he really the bad thing now, something that would feed off the hate and fear in me?
Either way, I couldn’t get caught. I had to keep going. I had to keep running.
Eventually though, when I felt I’d been going forever, the sound in the tunnel changed. The footsteps behind me had dropped off and the sound of my own body, of my stride, of my breath, became dull, almost muffled. By the time I was trying to figure out where I was, if I’d possibly run as far as the post office, I ran straight into something hard.
I cried out, nearly falling over, more from surprise than from pain. What the hell was this? I stuck my hands out and ran it up and down the barrier.
It wasn’t really a wall; it felt more like a bunch of wood planks nailed together.
I heard a noise behind me, a scraping sound, and I knew that this was far from over. The sound continued, coming closer, like nails dragging across a rough surface.
The bad thing crawling on the cement ceiling.
And I was stuck. Trapped. It couldn’t end like this.
Suddenly, a pair of tiny, cold hands grabbed my wrists and yanked me forward.
I cried out again, only this time I heard something in response.
“You’re so close, so close, Perry.”
It was Elliot. He tried pulling me further in, my arms disappearing through some of the barrier, the rest of me pushed up against it. It took me a while to realize that the whole thing wasn’t solid. It must have been the thing that Oldman had been talking about when that teen went missing and they had to block off the tunnel in some way.
“Keep trying,” Elliot yelled.
It was then I noticed the air around me had grown grainy and grey with the gradual increase of light. I still couldn’t make out anything, but I knew that I had to start prying the boards away, that freedom lay on the other side.
I was so close, as Elliot said.
I began grabbing every edge I could find, pulling the planks toward me until they either gave away with the flying clank of nails hitting the ground or snapped in two, and more dull light began to fill the tunnel. I kept at it, my fingers raw and bleeding, all too conscious of the malevolence that was quickly closing in on me.
Finally, with Elliot’s hand yanking me forward, I found the small opening I had created and dragged my body through it, landing on the other side of the wooden wall in a heap. Elliot’s hands were at my arms, trying to get me to my feet. By the time I got up, I saw him running into the distance, toward the grey light, his silhouette disappearing.
I ran after him, my lungs filling with fresher air with every step I took, the light overtaking my eyes with hope until finally I burst out of the tunnel and into a dirty, abandoned room covered with empty shelves and mounds of dust, the late afternoon light coming in through the intact windows that shuddered with each blast of wind. I’d never been so happy to see daylight before, never been so happy to be inside an abandoned building.
Knowing I still wasn’t one hundred percent safe, I closed the heavy door to the tunnel behind me, marveling as it camouflaged into the wood stylings of the wall, then turned back around, looking for the door out and looking for Elliot.
But while I could see the door in the corner, looking rusted beyond repair, I couldn’t see Elliot anywhere.
I took a few steps forward into the middle of the room. I had to get out of there. I had to go back to the school and see if Dex and Rebecca were alright. I had to do all of that. But while I was crossing over to the door, I nearly stepped down into a hole.
I stumbled back, catching myself just in time, and looked down. A few of the floorboards were pried up. Maybe it wouldn’t have normally been of importance, except that Elliot’s hat was lying beside them.
I crouched down and picked it up, turning it over in my hands. Then I peered down into the space in the floor.
There was a large mail sack sitting in there. I frowned and reached my hands inside, hoping nothing was in there ready to bite them off. I pulled out the burlap sack and started rifling through it.
Inside there was nothing but letters upon letters upon letters. Curiously, every single one of them had already been opened, some ripped in two, some neatly sliced along the top.
I picked up a letter in an orange envelope, closest to the top, and turned it over in my hands. It was written in the faded scrawl of a child’s writing and addressed to Mrs. Valerie Wolfe in Seattle, Washington, from Elliot Wolfe.
I opened up the letter and pulled the paper out.
It wasn’t very long and seemed to be written in an ink that had almost all but faded, but I could still make out the gist of it.
Dear mommy,
I hope I can visit you sooner now. The doctors here say they are closer to a cure. We can’t speak about it but we all know. My friends Sam and Phillip died the other day. I think they were left outside in the cold here for too long. It gets really cold at night. Please send me some slippers and socks. Love Elliot.
I blinked a few times, reading it over and over. I put it aside and picked up another letter. This was also from Elliot, addressed to his mother.
Dear mommy,
Please come get me. I am very scared. I think that nurse Amy wants to kill me. I think she killed Susan. I don’t want to be here anymore. Everyone is scared that Amy will come after them next. She didn’t let me eat dinner for all of last week until I started crying. Please come get me and take me home. I love you. Elliot.
I swallowed hard and brought out another letter from the bag. This one said Mildred Wachman from Gold Beach, Oregon on the envelope but had no return address. Inside the letter though, it was obvious who it was from.
Dear Aunt Mildred,
I keep writing you every day but I still haven’t gotten a response. You never call or write or visit and I’m so scared. After father died, I’ve had no one to turn to and no one to talk to. We are not allowed to talk about death at Sea Crest, and yet that’s all I see, all day long. The nurses promise me that I’ll be allowed to go free, but the other day one of them told me that I would need to be moved up to the fourth floor in order to make room. I don’t want to go up there, that’s where the children go to die. I don’t want to die, in fact I feel better each day. Oh, please come see me Aunt Mildred and take me out of here. You’re all I have left.
Love, Shawna.
I exhaled slowly, trying to wrap my head around it all. My heart was still galloping from the escape, my nerves still buzzing along on adrenaline. And yet, the crazy thing was that the minute I found the bag, the fear seemed to blow away from me, like the wind that was howling at the windows. All these letters were from children pleading to be taken away, that they were in danger and scared for their lives, letters that were never mailed.
And souls that were never found.