CHAPTER SEVEN
Our new sleeping quarters didn’t get any less sterile once we started to unpack. For some reason the cloth partition between the beds wasn’t movable, so when Dex and I picked our beds, it seemed like we wouldn’t be able to push them together.
“You can still squeeze in with me here,” he said, patting the middle bed. He gave me a wistful look that I found downright charming. “I don’t like sleeping without you.”
I smiled but said, “Dex, it’s a single bed. My ass barely fits on it as it is.”
“You might change your tune later.”
“And you’ll be the first to know about it.”
Rebecca peered at the third bed then looked over at us. “You know what, I really don’t feel like having a repeat of Eureka. Please try and keep your hands to yourself.”
“You are absolutely no fun,” Dex told her while I blushed furiously. One night when we were camped out at the haunted library, Dex broke out the Jack Daniels. One thing led to another and we ended up having sex in the library stacks—and not too far from Rebecca. Poor woman was probably traumatized from that.
After we’d put our bags on the shelves and Rebecca brought out her planner, discussing our goals and objectives for the shoot, the school bell rang and Davenport came to see us.
“I trust you’ve made yourselves comfortable,” she said with nary a smile. “You’re free to use the break room anytime you’d like. There’s a microwave, a hot plate, and a fridge. I know heading into town can be quite a pain, so I suggest you stock up at the Fred Meyer in Tillamook and have all your meals here.”
Great. A week of ramen noodles and microwavable mac and cheese. My thighs were going to love that.
“Please, no alcohol,” she added. “This is a school, first and foremost.”
Actually, it’s a sanatorium, I thought to myself. I looked over at Dex, knowing what he thought of that. His mug was tellingly impassive. I knew he had beer and whiskey under the bed already like a rebellious teen at a sleepover.
“When do we get a tour?” Rebecca asked. “I’d like to start getting as much footage as we can.”
“I’m afraid you’ll just have to be patient,” she said with a cock of her scary penciled eyebrow, not even picking up on her own pun. “Originally I thought I’d do it myself, but I’m running out of time today. All you need for now is to know this first floor, and I’m sure Kelly showed you that well enough. Tomorrow morning at nine o’clock I’ve arranged for a local historian to stop by. Patrick Rothburn. He runs the maritime museum here and comes from a family who used to run the post office for Sea Crest. He’ll show you the rest of the building. Hopefully you can get some good footage.” She lowered her voice. “To be frank with you, as much as I’d love to believe Ms. McIntosh, I’m not entirely convinced she is telling the truth. I hope the three of you will at least prove her wrong or right.”
She drummed her fingers anxiously along the side of the doorway, her attention off in the halls as a few students straggled in the background, heading to the main doors and the way home. She looked back at us after a few moments. “I’ll be working in my office for the next hour. I suggest if you’re going to get food, you go now. We lock this place up at night and I don’t feel like entrusting the keys to you. No offense, of course.”
“None taken,” said Dex. He turned to me. “Well, kiddo, what say we get some provisions before we get locked up in The Overlook Hotel?”
“Very funny,” I muttered. Images of the twins from The Shining were the last thing I needed in my head.
We bid goodbye to Davenport and hopped into the Highlander. We were halfway down the mountain when Rebecca exhaled noisily.
“What?” I asked, twisting in my seat to face her. She had rolled down the window, the cool air messing up her black curls. Her face looked paler than normal and her eyes were closed, exposing the perfect lines she’d drawn on her lids with liquid liner.
She kept her eyes closed. “I don’t know, I was just feeling I was going to be sick back there. Didn’t realize it until now.”
“Altitude sickness?” I suggested.
“It’s only 400 meters above sea level,” she said. “That doesn’t make sense.”
I looked over at Dex. His lips were pursed in thought. He eyed her in the rear view mirror. “You know, Becs, if you ever feel, uh, creeped the f*ck out, you know it’s okay to admit it, right? Perry and I know the feeling better than anyone.”
“I’m not scared,” she said through clenched teeth, her eyes still closed and head back on the seat rest. “I’m not creeped out. I just feel sick.”
“You’re not preggo, are you?” I asked her.
Finally, her eyes flew open. Man did she look pissed off, considering it was an obvious joke.
“Really, Perry,” she said.
I shrugged and sat back in my seat. I also felt a million times better now that we were away from the school and back on Highway 101, winding south toward Tillamook. After we stocked up on simple groceries—frozen meals, freeze-dried coffee, health bars, and some fresh fruit—we pulled into a local diner to catch a quick cup of coffee before we headed back up.
As soon as Dex parked the car, I realized where we were. It was the same diner that we had gone to when we first met. The faded orange awning, tired-looking patrons, and peeling graphics all looked exactly the same.
“Wow,” I whispered, feeling the past rush through me.
“What? What is this place?” Rebecca asked as she peered at the aging café.
“Where Perry and I had our first date,” Dex answered with a grin. I looked over at him and smiled. With his newsboy cap pulled low on his brow, his light black jacket and scruffy face, the Dex of now—my Dex—could have been the Dex back then. Of course, that Dex would have been nervously chomping on Nicorette or breaking a toothpick in his mouth, his hands fidgeting, his face thinner and drawn into a mysterious scowl. Oh, and now he had hard, tight muscles to f*cking die for.
Once again I was reminded about how far we’d come in such a short amount of time.
Rebecca eyed the both of us. “This was your first date? I thought that was at Zekes.”
Dex sighed. “If you want to be technical, then this was more our first…real chance to talk.”
I frowned and folded my arms. “If I recall correctly, we didn’t get much talking done. You were being an a*shole.”
“That’s right,” he said playfully, “and you stormed out of here like I lit a fire up under that bouncy ass.”
“You said I was faking it,” I countered.
“Well you could have been a famewhore for all I knew.”
“You guys,” Rebecca spoke up. “This is really sweet and romantic and all—in a twisted way—but are we going to get coffee here or what?”
I ignored her. “And then when I came out here, that’s when I saw Pippa. Where she talked to me for the first time.”
At the mention of her name, their faces became drawn. I continued, “She warned me about Dex, told me to watch out. Then she said I’d need him.”
Rebecca looked over at Dex. “She was kind of right.”
“And after that,” I added, “she went into the diner. Next thing I knew, Dex was coming out of here like he was the one with the fire under his bouncy ass. He nearly drove us into a tree before he admitted to me that he’d seen Pippa before.”
Rebecca clucked her tongue. “All right then. You two definitely win the award for the most f*cked up history. It still blows my bloody mind that your grandmother used to be his nanny.”
I was barely listening to her. I was staring at Dex, deep into his dark, brooding eyes, wondering if he was feeling what I was, the full circle of everything—that feeling that no matter what happened to us in the future, there was this aura of destiny about us. Okay, that was a pretty cheesy analogy, but I had nothing else. There was just this indescribable feeling that every little step in our lives had been a lead up to us meeting each other. I could only hope that the same fate would continue. After all we’d been through, that’s all we could really hold on to.
“Have you seen her lately?” Rebecca’s voice came into focus.
“Huh?” I said, snapping out of my daze and tearing my eyes away from Dex.
She snapped her delicate fingers in my face. “I said, have you seen her lately. Your grandmother?” When I didn’t answer her right away, she looked at Dex. “Is this a sensitive topic?”
I shook my head. “No. Sorry, I haven’t. Not since New Orleans.” It was a lie of course, but sometimes it wasn’t worth getting into my dreams, especially when I knew Rebecca couldn’t understand them the way I did. It was hard enough for me to figure out if my dreams were something to consider or not.
The image of the little girl and the bouncing ball flashed into my head. If I ever ended up meeting this Shawna I’d be a little bit closer to the truth.
She nodded and walked to the door of the café. “Well, shall we go in? We don’t have much time before we have to go back.”
We went in together with Dex putting his hand at the small of my back, a gesture I found so enticingly protective.
“Are you all right, kiddo?” he asked gruffly in my ear, his breath tickling the hairs on my neck.
“I’m okay now,” I told him. We found a booth at the back—it wasn’t hard since the diner wasn’t very busy—and the waitress came over with some menus. It wasn’t quite the same waitress as we had before—this one had severe bangs and a crooked smile—but Dex flirted with her just the same.
While we downed the tarlike coffee, we quickly went over the plans for the coming week. I wasn’t too keen on staying at the sanatorium for that long, but Rebecca shrewdly pointed out that we should take advantage of the free accommodations.
“Besides,” she said, sipping from her cup of green tea, “I don’t want us to pull the usual get in and get out.”
>
Dex snickered at that and I kicked him under the table.
She smiled mischievously at him. “That is what you call the Dex Foray Special, right?”
He gave her a stern look. “Hey now.”
“What’s the Dex Foray Special?” I asked, suddenly intrigued. Sometimes the two of them had these inside jokes that drove me nuts. I just hoped it wasn’t something that involved Jenn.
“Baby, you’ve already had the special,” he said with a wag of his brows. “And you liked it. Anyway, I agree with Rebecca, but only if it’s what everyone wants.”
“And by everyone you mean me,” I said, starting to feel the slightest bit annoyed. “Seriously, don’t treat me like my head might start spinning around at any moment. We’ll do what we have to do for the show.”
He opened his mouth but I cut him off with the raise of my hand. “It’s been almost six months since all that…shit happened. We’ve been taking it easy, and when things have gotten too scary or risky, we’ve gotten out. We’ll do the same here. There’s a difference between having our lives at risk and being scared. I know I’ll be scared every second we spend there this week, that’s just the way it is when you see f*cking ghosts every day. But please don’t start treating me like I’m some special case. The three of us have been through a lot already—I don’t see how this is going to be any different.”
Yet the minute those words came out of my mouth, I knew it was a lie. Whether it was the warnings from my dreams, the look of utter fear in Brenna’s eyes, or the fact that Rebecca—our rock, our island—was being affected by the place, I didn’t know. But I knew we’d find out.
***
The plan for the next few days seemed simple enough at first. We would start filming tomorrow with the historian and take in an actual tour of the place from top to bottom. Then, depending on what we felt about each floor, or if there were any particular areas that stood out to us from the tour, we would start concentrating our efforts there. Rebecca wanted to make sure every corner of the place was covered, from the playground at the back of the building to the roof where Dex saw the paper planes come from, with the most haunted sections getting the most attention.
Once we got back to the near-empty school and put our meager groceries away, the plans changed. Like usual, it was all Dex’s doing.
While Davenport was bidding us farewell, she noted that Carl, the custodian, would be the last one in the building and locking up when he was done with his shift in a few hours. Rebecca, feeling her claustrophobia come back in full swing, was happy to know that the emergency doors at the ends of the first floor wings opened up from the inside.
“Remember, it can be very unsafe for you to investigate the upper floors without being supervised. I’ll have you know that I do have security cameras monitoring the first floor, turned on by motion detector,” Davenport said as she was ready to go out the main doors. She seemed to direct her eagle gaze at Dex, who didn’t squirm under her scrutiny. “Just keep that in mind. Of course, as long as you stick to your rooms, the break room, and the washrooms, that shouldn’t be a problem.” She finished that off by eyeing a place on the wall behind us.
We turned to see a tiny video camera mounted just above the grand staircase that led to the upper floors. Big brother was watching. We didn’t have to voice it to know that we weren’t expected to go anywhere else in the building except for the first floor.
And I didn’t have to look at Dex to know what he was thinking. I could just feel it. He was already plotting ways for us to get around that camera. As soon as we saw Davenport get in her Lexus and drive off into the darkening fog, he turned to us and said, “There’s more than one way upstairs.”
Then he grinned impishly, the dimples sticking out on his stubble-flecked cheeks, and turned to head back to the nurses’ quarters. I looked at Rebecca and sighed. She shrugged, apparently not expecting anything less.
“Okay, so what exactly is your plan?” Rebecca asked as we followed him into our new bedroom.
He sat on the edge of my bed, his weight nearly lifting the whole thing, and looked up at us, completely devious. He really was something else when he was in this mode. His attitude was infectious, even when it proved to harbor a terrible idea.
“The way I see it, Custodian Carl is probably here for another two hours tops. I say while he’s here we film a bit of the first floor. I mean, that motion sensor camera is going to be activated anyway. Then when he leaves, we hunker ourselves down in the break room where I’ll whip up my patented mac and cheese and hotdog special, we break out a few contraband beers, relax a little. Then, when it’s dark as sin and we’re sure Carl and anyone else are miles away from here, we pick up the cameras and go upstairs.”
“By this secret other way that you know about?” Rebecca repeated sardonically.
He stroked his chin. “Yep. The one elevator in this building doesn’t work anymore. I saw it just past the washrooms. It’s boarded up, the power probably cut a long time ago.”
I put my face in my hands. “Please don’t suggest we’re climbing up an elevator shaft, because I’m not doing it.”
“Relax, kiddo,” he said. “This ain’t Speed.” I watched him carefully to see if he was going to launch into another Keanu impression. He didn’t. “Anyway, that normally would be the only way upstairs. But I’ve done my research, just like Becs here has done, and I know there’s one more way. We may have to search for it, but it’s there.”
“Hold on,” I interrupted. “Before I find out what this way is, what do you propose we do? Go upstairs and film? Alone? The three of us? Sure, we won’t trip the camera and it’s not like Davenport explicitly said we weren’t allowed upstairs but…you know she’s eventually going to see the footage. She’ll know we went up on our own.”
“So?” Dex said, looking at me as if I was crazy. “By the time this episode airs, we’ll be back in Seattle and she’ll be stuck down here with her Sharpie eyebrows and her shitty haunted school. No harm, no foul.”
Mmmhmm. I hated burning bridges, but he did have a point. It’s not like we were trespassing since we’d already been invited to stay on the property. “So what’s the way?” I asked with trepidation.
Dex wiggled his lips back and forth and looked at Rebecca. She stared blankly back at him for a few beats until she groaned. “Oh dear, I think I know what bloody way you’re talking about.”
“Bloody is right,” he said. “Unless the bodies had been drained already.” He read my puzzled expression. “The body chute.”
“The what?” I asked.
“Almost every sanatorium has a body chute. It was a way to get the bodies from the morgue or autopsy areas out of the building and into the hearses outside. Think about it…a hospital like this had at least five hundred deathly ill patients at a time. Thousands died, right here. How could you instill hope in people, the hope to survive, if you were wheeling out dead bodies in front of them on a daily basis?”
Shit. This was a lot bigger than I’d originally thought. Usually when we did a show, we went to where one or two people had died. Only in very few instances was it a group of people. I think the leper colony at D’Arcy Island was the largest amount, about thirty to fifty of them. But thousands of people—children—died here over the course of Sea Crest’s operation; right in the very building I was in. Thousands. This was so damn different from just one ghost. It was so different from just worrying about Elliot or Shawna or a few suicidal nurses. There would have been dead upon dead upon dead here.
“Perry?” Dex asked. “If you don’t want to come, you can stay behind.”
I nearly laughed. “Stay here? Alone in the room? And do what? Knit you guys some socks?”
“It might be less scary,” Rebecca offered. At that moment I kind of wanted to hit her. She was never scared, what the hell did she know about anything being less scary? She was barely even right. Yes, staying in the room seemed like a better idea than going up to the other floors, but being alone was being alone. I’d rather see horrendous gore with someone else by my side than hear the giggle of a child on my own.
“I’m good,” I said firmly. “So where do you think this body chute is?”
“I’d think there would have to be access on this floor considering all the nurses were staying down here. We just have to do our usual try every door and see which one is a winner.”
None of them are winners, I thought. “And this chute…”
“If I’m right,” Dex said, “it’s just a tunnel with a steep incline. Stairs on one side, a slab on the other where you can wheel the gurney.”
“You do realize I’d rather trip Davenport’s security camera and deal with the consequences tomorrow,” I said.
“And where is the fun in that?”
So we decided to go with Dex’s plan. While Carl—a quiet and small-eyed senior with the unruliest ear hair I’d ever seen—mopped the hall, we started filming the first floor. Rebecca operated the light while Dex filmed, and I tried to look both scared and pretty on film. Considering Carl was watching us at times, I’m not sure I succeeded at either.
Then when I ran out of interesting things to say and we’d filmed every single classroom, trying to find cold spots or weird sounds or unexplained breezes and coming up empty, we acted like we were done for the night and retreated to the lounge for Dex’s redneck special. Carl eventually got in his beater of a car and drove off into the night, leaving us feeling completely and utterly alone.
“So,” I said as I washed down a bite with a mouthful of warm beer. “It’s just the three of us.”
The isolation wrapped its cold arms around me. Outside, the fog was lifting but the sun had set and the sky was turning a purplish bruised color, darkening by the moment. Though the lights in the lounge and the outside hall were on, it still felt dark as hell. The only sound was from the hum of the fridge and from the clank of our forks against the plates. Everything else was quiet, deathly quiet. The kind of quiet that became a character of its own.
Rebecca gathered her frilled cardigan around her. “If I admit that the whole situation is a fair bit unnerving, will the two of you laugh at me?”
Dex took a swig of his beer before asking, “Do you want us to laugh at you? You know I’m always game.”
She glared at him. “Here I am, admitting that I’m borderline scared and you’re taking the piss.”
“Ignore him,” I told her. “I won’t laugh. This place is like its own entity. I swear if you listen hard enough, you can hear the walls breathing.”
“Perry,” she admonished, giving me a dirty look. “That was something I didn’t need to picture.”
It was true though. Even though the lounge was tastefully furnished, resembling a trendy waiting area for a downtown office more than a staff break room, there was something in the air that reminded you where you were: miles above sea level on the Oregon coast, locked in an old sanatorium where thousands of children died, spending the night and hoping to film at least one of the many ghosts who were rumored to live here. I was hit again with that overwhelming urge to flee. I guess that fight mechanism of mine petered out from time to time.
I glanced at Dex, who seemed to be acting normal, eyes dancing slightly in anticipation of the night. “How many beers did you bring, by the way, because I think I might need another,” I told him.
“I’ll have some tea,” Rebecca spoke up, pushing her plate toward us. “I can’t eat anymore.”
“Feeling sick again?” I asked her. I leaned in more to observe her face. Like earlier, she still looked more tired than normal, her skin taking on a lackluster bluish tone that looked vampiric against her dark hair and brows.
“Nothing tea won’t fix,” she said as she got up to put on a pot. Dex pulled another lager out of the fridge and handed it to me.
It wasn’t long though before he started cleaning up and suggesting we get ready. I know it was my job as host to look as attractive as possible, but when your face was filmed in grainy, green night vision and you were usually making the stupidest expressions, I’d learned it was kind of a lost cause. I brushed my hair back into a ponytail, added some powder to my nose and liner to my lids, but the jeans and Kyuss hoodie stayed and I was ready to go. Or at least ready as I’d ever be.
With Dex taking the small camcorder, Rebecca with the external light, and me with…well, me, we headed out the door and down the hallway. I was immediately creeped out. The hallway was completely dark down the wing where the classrooms were. Our wing was only lit by the occasional wall sconce, giving off a romantic but dim light. The whole place must have been on timers.
“Do you know if there’s power upstairs?” I asked as we slowly walked down the hall of the administrative wing, Dex and Rebecca peering at every door or wall paneling we came across.
“Probably not,” said Rebecca. She walked along the wall, her fingers trailing beneath intricate white molding. “There would be no point if no one ever used the space above. Which reminds me, we have no idea what the physical state of this supposed tunnel will be, let alone the floors above. What if some places are out of bounds for a reason?”
“Relax,” Dex said as he looked through the camera, aiming it around us. “We’re just going to the second floor for now. We’ll take a peek and if anything looks unsafe, we’ll turn around and head back.” >
I licked my lips nervously. If we did have to turn back in a hurry, I knew I’d be sprinting down that main staircase, two steps at a time.
The thing about the building that made things extra eerie in the darkness was the way the floors were laid out. The main hall, where the nurses’ room was, the offices, the lounge, the showers, it was all one straight shot up and down. If you stood in the absolute middle of the building—where the staircase was—and looked down past Davenport’s office to the end, it looked like that was it, ending at a distant room. But the hall actually veered sharply to the left, so that if you were viewing the building from above, it would look like angular bat wings. We were almost where the hall turned down the wing when Dex let out a satisfied sigh.
“What?” asked Rebecca, shining the light where he was looking. There was the faint outline of a door in the wall in front of him, wider than normal, and though it had no handle or visible way of opening, it was obviously an entrance to somewhere.
Dex handed the camera back to me to film, and as I did so, he reached into the pockets of his cargo pants and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. I pretended I didn’t notice the way his large forearms and biceps were flexing as he stuck one end of the knife into the door’s edge and tried to pry it open. After a few frustrated grunts and failed attempts as Rebecca and I watched helplessly, he found purchase and with extra leverage, the door began to part from the wall. It let out a low groan and we were all hit with a blast of stale, frigid air. It wrapped around me and chilled me to the very core.
“Oh, man,” I said, taking a step back but remembering to keep filming.
“What is it, Dex?” Rebecca whispered.
He took a small flashlight out of his other pocket and stuck it in his mouth as he pushed the wooden door open the rest of the way. He grabbed the edge of the wall and poked his head into the cold abyss. I could only see the light from his flashlight bobbing faintly against stark cement walls, and I had this fantastic urge to reach forward and pull him back, as if something was going to come out of the darkness and take him.
He pulled the flashlight out of his mouth and turned his head to look at us. “Looks like we found the body chute,” he said just as a loud smacking noise resonated from the tunnel, echoing loudly and making my heart thump.
He aimed the flashlight back inside in time to illuminate a lone bouncing ball roll past him and disappear into the rest of the darkness.
“Holy f*cking f*ck!” I screeched, my voice catching in my throat. “No. No! Bad!”
“Shit,” he swore, now frantically trying to light up the tunnel. ”Did you guys see that f*cking thing? Holy shit!” He waved at Rebecca. “Quick, bring the f*cking light here.”
Though my heart was in my mouth, I watched Rebecca as she stepped forward and handed him the light she was holding. In the dim glow of the hallway, she didn’t seem scared at all.
“You did see that, right?” I asked her, my eyes begging for sanity. “Please tell me that wasn’t just for me and Dex again.”
She gave me a half smile. “The ball again? Oh, I saw that. I just don’t believe we’re truly alone here after all. And I don’t mean in the supernatural way, either. Who knows who Davenport has upstairs, playing tricks on us?” My mouth dropped slightly at her resistance to believe. She nodded at the camera and continued, “By the way, I really hope you got all that.”
As it was, I had gotten all of that, albeit a little shaky and peppered with our obscenities. But it was there. Despite how Rebecca saw things, it did feel good to actually capture something like that on film. It wasn’t proof by a long shot, but if it scared the shit out of Dex and I, it would scare viewers.
I looked up from the footage to see Dex staring at me impatiently.
“What?” I asked.
“Do you want to go in or not?”
Honestly, after seeing that ball go past, my answer was hell to the f*cking no. But since Rebecca was so certain that everything was a set-up, a cruel part of me hoped we could prove her wrong. Besides, when you were with a skeptic, it made things a little less scary.
Well, in general. Probably not this time.
I took in a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves against the idea of going inside some long, closed up tunnel that some ghost child was playing ball in. “You lead the way,” I said. Then for good measure, I added, “Rebecca you can take the rear.”
I half expected to hear Dex make a joke about that, but he was so wrapped up in the moment that he didn’t even notice.
He pointed the flashlight into the tunnel and very carefully stepped down into it, me holding his upper arm for balance. Once he was in, he looked up at me. “It’s just about a foot or two lower than where you’re standing. It’s kind of slippery in places though, so watch your step. I’ve got you.”
Before I could say anything, he reached out and grabbed me around the waist. My weight was no match for his brute strength, and he picked me up and gently placed me in the tunnel so that my feet were on the step just below him.
“Thanks,” I said, never tiring from the feel of his strong hands around me. It definitely tried to take my mind off the current situation, but really, there was no getting around that I was now standing in a long-forgotten tunnel that was used to transport dead bodies. As Dex helped Rebecca climb in, I looked all around us. There wasn’t much to see except a few feet in front and back, as far as the light would reach. The stairs we were standing on were worn cement, splattered with dried stains that I hoped were dirt and rust. Beside the steps was a smooth incline for the stretchers to wheel on. The walls were cold and grey, and with a strange bit of relief I could see the remnants of a graffiti tag where someone must have left their mark back when the place was abandoned. If the vandals could brave it, so could I.
As Rebecca shined her light around, it seemed like the tunnel went on forever in both directions. “Should I prop the door open with something?” She looked genuinely concerned which threw me off for a moment, until I remembered her claims of claustrophobia.
Dex gently took the camera from my hand and the light from Rebecca. He eyed the door with consideration. “It’s heavy and has traction on the floor, see?” He gestured to the bottom of the floor in the hallway where the door scraped along. “There’s no draft in here either. We should be okay.” He slid his eyes to me, giving me a silent chance to back out.
“Well, let’s go,” I said. “We don’t have all night.”
He nodded and aimed the camera in front of him. “I’m assuming the tunnel runs diagonally along the length of the building. The very top probably lets out above the far corner of the west wing.”
I felt the darkness sitting on either side of us, the coldness of the tunnel seeping into my clothes. I quickly jabbed Dex in the back. “Hey, we’ll worry about that later. Let’s just get to the second floor.” It never left my mind for one second that the ball had rolled somewhere behind us, at the end of the chute, and there was no telling if the ghost that kicked it there had gone after it or not.
In other words, I didn’t know what was worse—the void in front of us or the black emptiness behind us.
Thank god I was sandwiched between the two of them as we very carefully made our way up the passageway. I felt all my senses on fire as we went, my eyes happy to be watching my feet instead of the unknown that lay in front of Dex and his camera. The only sounds were our footsteps that echoed faintly from the closed-in walls and the raggedness of our breaths.
“Everyone holding up back there?” Dex whispered. As if he couldn’t feel me hanging onto the back of his jacket like a little kid.
“Uh huh,” I managed to say, my mouth dry.
We waited to hear Rebecca’s response but she didn’t say anything, though I could feel her breath and presence at my back.
“Feeling claustrophobic yet?” I prodded her for an answer. When she still didn’t say anything, I dared to look behind me.
Despite feeling her breath a second ago, I could barely see her. She’d stopped in the middle of the tunnel, about ten feet away, her figure backlit faintly from the residual light of the hallway.
“R-rebecca?” I asked, my voice shaking. I stopped and pulled Dex back. He immediately shined his light on her.
“Are you all right?” Dex asked. “Why are you being creepy?”
“Shhh,” she said softly. “I’m listening.”
“To what?” I whispered as goosebumps prickled my arms.
She didn’t say anything but remained absolutely still. I could hear my own heart thudding in my chest, Dex’s breathing, the whir of the camera as it tried to focus.
I was about to ask again what on earth we were listening for when I finally heard it.
It was a few notes of music. But more specific than that, a xylophone, like the kind I used to play around with as a child. I held in a gasp as my brain tried to recognize the faint melody in it. The notes would come and go, as if being swept away by an imaginary breeze, so the song never felt fully formed.
“Ring around the rosy,” Dex said in a low voice. I turned to look at him, wincing at the light he was holding in his other hand. “Listen.”
He was right. I could pick out the tune, and once I did, I got pummeled with that get the f*ck out of here feeling. We’d made it about fifteen feet into the tunnel and I’d already had enough.
Of course, I didn’t tell them that. I could feel Dex watching me closely.
“Let’s keep going,” I said quickly. I looked over to Rebecca who slowly nodded. I could see the music was intriguing her and that her rational mind was trying to attribute it to something logical. I wished she could pass some of that logic on to me because her mind seemed like a safer place to be.
We resumed walking, and as we did, the tune began to fade until we were left again with the sound of our own breathing and blood pumping within us.
“Okay,” Dex said slowly, coming to a stop. He shined the light forward, illuminating nothing but the never ending tunnel as its greying walls disappeared into the black. I was terrified of the darkness that lay ahead, getting that same peculiar feeling I’d gotten earlier in the day when I stared up at the building. Seeing nothing, but feeling—knowing—that something was hidden in front of your eyes and watching you.
He looked over my head at Rebecca. “Do we want to try communicating in here or on the second floor?”
“Communicating?” I repeated, my skin dancing with raw nerves. “In here? No way. Not tonight. We should do that after the tour tomorrow so we know what the hell we’re dealing with.”
“There’s obviously something in this tunnel with us,” he said, his voice an octave lower. “Don’t you feel it?”
At that, a loud, gritty scraping sound rushed up from behind us. Dex immediately shined the light down the chute, illuminating the door to the first floor.
It was closing on us. Slowly.
As if someone on the other side was pushing it shut.
“Oh god,” I gasped as the door closed with a groan, sealing us inside the tunnel.